The Express.
London, England, 1860-02-11 00:00:00

LONDON, SATURDAY, FBB. 11.

LAST night the political heir of Sir ROBERT Pen
may be said to haver fairly come of age, and to have
entered upon an inheritance which, in spite of care.
less guardians and hazardous investments,is still the
finest fortune in the world. It was augured long ago
that upon Mr. GLADSTONE, the present Chancellor
of the Exchequer, the mantle of the Reformer of
the Tariff would fall, and 1860 was declared by Mr.
GLADSTONE himself to be the year in which Eng-
land was once more to set herself to teach the
nations how to live. The 10th of February, 1860,
will be long remembered in our industrial and com-
mercial annals. Even the six days' illness of the well-
graced actor lent • halo of sentiment to the crowning
performance of his public life, for it will be difficult
even for Mr. GLADSTONE to surpass his latest
achievement as a statesman and an orator. Cer-
tainly no man needs leas than Mr. GLADSTONE to
awaken public sympathy by any theatrical artifice;
and when he walked up to the ministerial bench a
few minutes before five, with a huge bundle of
documentary matter under his arm, it was evident
that, in spite of all the doctors, he disdained
to wear the nimbus of self-sacrifice, or to
look like a martyr who had risen from his
bed. There was not the slightest affectation
of recast sickness and suffering, nothing that the
ladies cage would call " interesting" in the un-
affectedly calm and resolute walk, the self-pos.
weed, unconscious, ready air, and the wall-bal►oced
tomes of ► voice that always sounds to us like the
dialect of Lancashire tempered with Attic. Yet
there was just enough of effort discernible in the
skilful accentuation of certain passages to make
°ireful listeners aware that it was an effort, and •
four hours' speech without a moment's hitch or
hesitation was none the less wonderful that it was
the speech of a patient who had barely escaped
infiemmation of the lunge. To give a man
a good name is almost as serious in its
consequences as to give a dog a bad one. Mr.
GLADSTONE is known to be one of the most finished
speakers of our time; be is, therefore, pronounced a
•' rhetorician." He is • water of all the arts, and
methods, and graces ot eloquence; he never bungles
or breaks down ; he never talks bad grammar, loses
sight of his nominative in pursuit of a verb,
or confounds his relatives in search of an ante-
, cedent ; and therefore he is dubbed with a
doubtful title, which may serve equally to
compliment an orator or to stigmatise a sophist.
Mr. GLADSTONE spoke from five till nine last night
without an instant'. interruption, and we are per-
suaded that in all that hushed and anxious audience
of critics there was not one who could have
detected • word too much. Mr. GLADSTONE, no
doubt, has often displayed an equal prodigality ot all
the resources of mere eloquence ; but he has never
given a more masterly proof of the close and
pressing logic, the vigorous conciseness of expres-
sion, the elearnese of arrangement, and the straight-
forwardness in the way ot " putting a case," which a
powerful grasp of his 'eject alone can give a
speaker, than in his summary of the results of
our financial policy for the last eighteen years.
Foreigners are in the habit of remarking and regret_
ting that the Parliament of England has become of
late years more than ever the Parliament of
European opinion. To speak to such • Parliament
in language not unworthy of its history and its
power, on occasions when not • nation only but all
the world is listening, belongs to few indeed. We
venture to say that uu both sides of the House last
night it was felt that the Commons of England had
a right to be proud of the orator whose words were
flying, almost as rapidly as spoken, along a hundred
wine to all the capitals and marts of Europe. it
was a speech characteristically English, not more in
the pare and idiomatic form than in the frankness,