The Express.
London, England, 1868-07-30 00:00:00

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LONDON, THURSDAY, JULY 30.

MR. DISRAELI AT THE MANSION-HOUSE.

SOCRATES calmly discoursing with his friends
before applying the fatal cup to his lips, the stoic
suicides of the Roman Empire gossiping philoso-
phy in their baths as the blood flowed from their
open
veins,
Sir THWIAS MORE jesting on the scaf-
fold, a Japanese politician quietly winding up his
affairs before executing the happy despatch,
and whatever else illustrates the moral sub-
lime, find their parallel in the calm
self-possession of Mr. DISRAELI and his
colleagues at the Mansion-house. " Aumr,
" morituri le setutent," is virtually the language
of the dying gladiators of St. Stephen's. We are
happy to say that Mr. DISRAELI shows a becom-
ing sense of his situation. He displays an
awakened sense of the shortness and seriousness
of political life. He is evidently chastened. His
tone is vastly improved. The bluster and boast-
fulness of his earlier convivial displays,
if they have not altogether disappeared,
have yet been subdued. There is a pensive
melancholy about his reflections, which ex-
hibits itself with more than common distinctness
through the veil of forced cheerfulness and of a
courage desperately screwed up to the sticking
point, which is thrown over them. He was think-
ing possibly of the time when Downing-street
would know him no more, and other Lord Mayors
would entertain other Prime Ministers. The
Loan MAYOR participated in the improvement
of his chief. It seems now not un-
likely that by the time he quits his office
he will have learned how to conduct himself
in it with propriety, and especially how to combine
the temperate assertion of his own personal
opinions with the neutrality due to his office.
Though Mr. DISRAELI'S manner is better than
it has recently been, we cannot congratulate him
on any improvement in the substance of his
speech. Of course we take for granted a good
many stilted common-places or ridiculous
falsities, delivered as if they were apho-
risms of the rarest value. Such sayings
as " Time brings prudence, economy,
" and industry ; " and that " a prolific harvest
" is now recognised as the surest source of the
" wealth of nations," might be inscribed in
the common-place book of Mr. M. F. TtreeEa.
Time brings, we admit, pretty nearly every-
thing which takes place in the world,
except the moral qualities which display
themselves in it ; and if a man, or a nation,
listening to Mr. DNaAirxes words of wis-
dom, wants to become prudent, econo-
mical, and industrious, by the more
lapse of days and years, the last state

of that man or nation will be wars° than tic. ti st•
Time has not stayed its course iii Rpain. in (Intact',
or in Mexico any more than in England or the
United States. As Lord liazxns long age pomted
out, time does nothing at all. Forces, op ritual or
physical, acting in time riThieve riverythimt
which
is brought to pass in this wor!l and to rely upon
it instead of cultivating them is to imitate the
rustic of the fable who waited on the flowing
stream, and who hi still waiting on it. Tho
economical aphorism is as startling as the moral
maxim. " A prolific harvest is now rooognised
" as tho surest source of the wealth of nations." A
prolific harvest is a part of the wealth of nations,
but is certainly not its souroo. If it were so,
ADAM SIIII7'H'S treatise on the " Origin of the
" Wealth of Nations" should have boon a disqui-
sition on the rotation of crops and the applioa-
tiim of manures. Political economy, in Mr. DIS-
RAELI'S view, is a branch of the art of farming.
We leave this characteristic nonsense, without a
largo infusion of which no book or harangue of
Mr. DISRAELI'S was over made. In the body of
his remarks, Mr. DISRAELI utters himself in a
lower tone, but in the same koy as of old. If he
speaks with bated breath, it is not with whisper-
ing humbleness, for his whispering is boastful,
and ho brags sotto vote. Perhaps his audacity novor
went further than it did when ho selected the
state of Ireland as one that ought to afford us
" the utmost congratulation." On the other side
of the Channel this light talk will be felt deeply
and resented bitterly. It will be regarded as
a cruel and heartless mockery. Even the LORD
MAYOR'S guests, in that festive mood in which
men are not disposed to be critical of after-dinner
speeches, must have felt that they wore being
trifled with ; and perhaps to some of them the
distant suggestion may have occurred that
some slight regard to notorious facts would be
becoming in a Prime Minister. Tho Habeas Corpus
is still, we believe, suspended in Ireland ; and,
though as regards the special danger which Mr.
DISRAELI has in sight there has been a lull, per-
haps as illusive as that which in the beginning of
1867 led Lord DERBY to hint at the possible
return to ordinary methods of government,
yet all the other signs of discon-
tent are as abundant as ever. The states-
man to whom the condition of Ireland meanS no
more than the condition of Fenianism—who sees
nothingbehind it or beyond it—brands himself with
the mark of incapacity. With regard to Foreign
Affairs, Mr. Disaszki speaks with just satis-
faction. The diplomacy of England has been
prudentlyandcautiouslyconducted. Lord STANLEY
is a Foreign Minister of the highest nega-
tive excellence. The external relations of England
are, as Mr. DISRAELI says for the hundredth time,
then most satisfactory, when there is very little to
be said upon them. Considering how much Mr.
Disasxm has said upon them on previous occa-
sions, we welcome the remark from him as a
sign that the unearthly perfections of Lord
STANLEY as a subject of oratory .have been ex-
hausted. If Mr. Thsaatzu had earlier reeked his own
redo, he would have avoided a scandalously unfair
attack on the administration of Lord CLAIULNDON,
and a not very creditable attempt to explain away
misrepresentations that he had not the good sense
to retract and apologise for.

The rest of Mr. DUIRAELI'S speech is simply, to
use a phrase of his own, one vast appropriation
clause. It is a cool assumption to himself and
his Ministers of the entire credit of measures

which they have borrowed from their predecessors
in office. The Electric Telegraphs Bill was ready
before Lord DERBY came into power. The same
may be said of the Court of Chancery
Bill. Lord CAIENs's abortive Bankruptcy Bill
simply follows in the footsteps of the measures of
Lord WILBTBURY and Sir Rom/DELL PALiela ; and
the policy of Poor Law Reform which " we in-
" augurated," was inaugurated by Mr. Irmaxas.
The claim of credit for settling in 1868 the
Reform question, which, but for the factious
opposition of Mr. DISRAELI and his present
colleagues, would have been settled in
1866, is refuted by chronology. As a matter
of fact, the three Reform Bills in their
present shape are the work of the Opposition
and not of the Ministry. Almost all Mr.
DISRAELI'S original proposals were contemptu-
ously rejected; nearly all Mr. GLAnsroxes
were accepted; and the only trace of the nominal
authorship which the Act retains is a provision
which is not likely to outlast the first session
of the Rreformed Parliament. The legislation
of the Parliament of 1832, on which the CHAN-
(=LOB of the EXCHEQUER passed a glowing eulo-
gium, was the work of the Liberal party, in office
or in opposition. In spite of Mr. DISRAELI'S de-
magogic appeal to the prejudices of the lowest
part of the constituencies, against the convictions
of what he calls the over-educated and over-
refined part of it, we do not doubt that the Irish
policy of the Liberal party will receive the sanction
of the country. Mr. DISRAELI'S appeal to the
supporters of Mr. Munrnv against the opinions of
Lord STANLIY is a sign of a lest cause and a des-
perate commander.