The Express.
London, England, 1861-01-04 00:00:00

R. JA3IVI4.

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LONDON, FRIDAY, JA N. 4.

Turns is something painful to the hero-
srorshipper in the reception of that great Parlia-
mentary orator Mr. Houses by his admirers
and constituents at Stroud. The man who has
shaken the Senate of England with his indignant
decimation, and dazzled the Ladies' Gallery with
the burnished glitter of his glancing rhetoric,
is treated with the roughest familiarity by those
matter-of-fact electors of the Gloucestershire

borough. What is a patriot who sits below the
gangway, and spurns party or official connexion in
order to devote himself to the cultivation of high
policy and historic eloquence, to these artless but
inexorable men of s*nple ideas and obstinate prin-
ciples, who consider their representative bound to
represent their interests rather than his own
unportance in Parliament ? "Ah !" exclaimed
the lively Frenchman, when he was pointed
out an edition of CICERO in his friend's library,
" Ah ! mon cher Ciceron ! je le connais Lien ; c'est
" le mime rue Marc Tulle."

The worthy people of Stroud are just as much
at home with their CI4 ER./ as this horribly
familiar Frenchman with the great Roman. They
know his name, weight, and colour, to a nicety,
and are not for a moment awe-struck by the fact
of his appearance in several volumes, and
splendidly bound. The great HORMIAN of the
"independent" bench is the same Minxes"; we
knew at Cockermouth and Stroud. So much at least
is certain, though he is now a mighty speaker, and
talks to Europe and posterity. ("Ist le Inilato floe
Mare Tull.. It must be chilling to a man of
ambition and attainments, who has given up a party,
an office, and his opinions of other days, forthe good
of his country and the world in general, to come
among a set of people who live in a narrow world
of plain interests, plain duties, and plain thoughts,
who honour fidelity and consistency more
than the reflected glory of a representa-
tive whose speeches are fireworks ending
in smoke. It is one thing to make a
sensation in the House, to be the talk of a
morning at the Clubs, and to be named of an
evening at dinner-tables and drawing-moms among
the agile or amusing artists of the season ; to
spend hours of ease in polishing periods, in point-
ing antitheses, in sharpening epigrams, in
hammering out invective, and working up
improvisations ; it is quite another to account to an
unsophisticated but shrewd constituency for not a
promise kept, not a pledge fulfilled, not a prin-
ciple maintained. Perhaps it was something of
this kind that intensified the difficulty and disagree-
ableness of Mr. Himemse's situation in the Sub-
scription-rooms at Stroud. At any rate we cannot
help discerning through the clouds of his aggressive
and excited rhetoric an uneasy sense of public
-dissatisfaction, not absolutely undeserved, nor easy
to explain away. Indeed, the object of the meet-
ing itself was unusual and threatening. It
was not for the ordinary purpose of re-
liming, so to speak, by a public reciproca-
tion of confidence, the stewardship confided to
their member, that the Stroud electors met Mr.
Hoesmsx a day or two since ; it was to bear the
Right honourable gentleman in exculpation of his
own political conduct. This is a novel and some-
what strange part for a representative of the people
to play, however it may tickle the self-esteem of the
principal actor. It is turning the representative
function topsy-turvy. rhe brilliant Member for
Stroud, as a chief of the now transcendental school,
which is a curious combination of the old English
Tory without his faith, the modern French doc-
trinarian without his logic, and the philosophic
radical without his philosophy, is no doubt a warm
admirer of those small boroughs which send mem-
bers into the House to represent first principles,
and to talk good bouncing claptrap about the
British flag and constitution, without expos-
ing them from time to time to the
rough searchers of the market-place, or ex-
acting from them inconveniently precise pledges
and professions. Mr. Heasii.te's school resents
the theory of a deputy becoming a delegate, but
not content with this, it repudiates the idea of
a representative becoming responsible to his con-
stituents, or representing anybody or anything but
himself. This is carrying political transcenden-
talism a little too far, as the honest and sensible
electors of Stroud appear to think, and as we
concur with them in thinking. In the teeth of
Mr. Hoimmax's immense self-satisfaction they
have carried, almost unanimously, a resolution dis-
approving his parliamentary conduct ; yet, in
spite of this emphatic and distinct expression of
opinion, Mr. HORiMAN has the front to declare
that he hopes for many years to come to be the
"liberal representative of the liberal constituency
" of Stroud." For a commercial constituency
it looks like sharp practice, when a member puts
himself up at a fancy price, and then, when he
finds himself going for next to nothing, buys
himself in at his own figure. If the House of
Commons were a Debating Society or a Discussion
Forum we should be sorry to miss so lively and
unscrupulous a speaker as Mr. Homiest; from its
deliberations. Rut as the People's House of Par-
liament is presumed to be a responsible Legisla-
ture, we cannot but e%pect that the electors of
Stroud will, at the earliest opportunity, energe-
tically arrest the flagrant rcandal a reprewnts
tive deriding and dixavowing his constituents.
What is to become ~f the theory or practice of
i;uveritilient if, fur example, a re-
presentative of the people who has lien the con-

td, ac of a 1:::ei al and commercial consti-
tuency as an advocate of peace, retrenchment,
political reform, and free trade, is found through-
out a long and latorions session, neither regular
in application to legislative taskwork, nor dilig,ent
in the business of committees, nor watchful of
Estimates, nor .arnest in domestic reform, nor
saseitoti,, of peace and liberty abroad, nor friendly
to the development of commercial relations, nor
attached to the policy of non-intervention ; but,
on the contrary, solicitous only of personal dis-
play, a bitter, fiery, and rancorous renegade, •
disappointed partisan, • trimmer without modera-
tion, a convert without convictions, a turncoat
without the courage of a turncoat's cynicism. It
appears by the terms of the Stroud resolu-
tion that Mr. Hosea as was sent to
Parliament to support a Liberal Ministry,
to co-operate in the preservation of peace and the
promotion of liberty in Europe. It appears, by
Mr. H0K7474A21'M elaborate apology, that during
the last session he exerted all hit eloquence and
votedeonsistently on the Toryside, against the Re-
form Bill, against the Commercial Treaty, against
Mr. fluneroNE's Budget. On the other hand,
he takes ample credit for having provoked a
rupture of the French Alliance ; for having
insisted on the urgency of an offensive coalition
with "the other Cabinets of Europe ;" for having
been the first to suggest a loan of eight millions
for fortificatims ; for having got up an invosiou
panic, and resisted the Income Tax. Mr. HORS.
NAY is more modest in his reference to the Paper
Duty, aml says nothing of his ardent advocacy
of the inordinate and unconstitutional pretensions
of the House of Lords.

Assuredly it is no concern of ours to burke the
question, " Where is the Reform Bill r or to ex-
cuse the shoet,niii,ie.• of Lord PALM ElisTON'a
Administration in the matter. But when Mr.
How.is 7.: talks of the "unscrupulous machinations
" and successful mameuvres" by which the last
Reform Bill was introduced, we are tempted to
ask what part Mr. HOMIMAN took in those
manoeuvres and machinations by which the progress
of the Bill was stopped. Mr. 1101134 MAN'S sarcasm
on the subject is effective enough, but his own
credentials am a Reformer consist, it should seem,
in the declarations that twenty-four years ago he
was at issue with the Liberal Party on all points,
that he had braved unpopularity rather than pledge
himself in favour of any defined extension of the
suffrage, that he had always held administra-
tive improvement to be the best means of effect-
ing organic change, that he had been in advance of
Liberal Governments on every question, and had
protested against the suicidal folly of breaking up
the party by refusing timely concessions. All this
may mean much or little, or nothing at all ; at any
rate it has very little to do with the phenomenon of
a Right honourable and Liberal member discovered
by his constituency, fiagranfe delicta, in all the
glory of a rampant reactionist and a red-hot Tory
of fifty years ago. Not a syllable seems to have
been uttered at Stroud on the subject of Bishops ;
but on this and other kindred topics Mr. ROHN-
MAN signified that his public utterances in the
Cockennouth days had been grossly confounded,
once or twice, with the confidential indiscretions of
private letters. No doubt his zeal as an adminis-
trative reformer has been taken for granted ever
since he resigned the Chief Secretaryship for Ire-
land because he found that he had nothing to do
in that capacity. But what are all these vague
and contradictory explanations worth in the face
of the damning celebrity which the Right hon.
Member for Stroud acquired' by his firebrand
oratory last session 1 " Who," cried Macbeth,
" can be wise, amazed, temperate and furious,
" loyal and neutral, in a moment ? No man."
Not even Mr. Hosamax. Hence the deplorable
inooneequence of his parliamentary conduct; hence
the impossibility of satisfying his constituents that,
as a friend to commerce, he had done well in op-
posing the treaty with France—as a political re-
former, in abetting the encroachment of the House
of Lords—as a friend to peace, in denouncing the
French alliance, and recommending a hostile
European coalition, with England as its pay-
master—as an advocate of retrenchment, in ad-
vising a premature loan of eight millions for forti-
fications.

There is an air of final impenitence in these
Stroud speeches which might have told better if
Mr. HORSIIAN had perorated by resigning his beat.
Not a word of sympathy has this distinguished
Liberal to utter on behalf of Italy resurgent. He
is glad that the Chinese war is over ; but he sees
a war approaching nearer home in which England
is to be found "in the thickest of the fray." For
Mr. HOISMAN the Venetian question presents
itself in the shape of "English interests
"in the Adriatic," and England "in the
" thickest of the fray. "A consoling vision to the
electors of Stroud, who are condemned to exalt
in the poseession of so tremendous a representa-
tive of " English interests in the Adriatic "! This,
we beg to assure the electors of Stroud, is in /mate
politique, and we hope they like it. What a pity
it is that Mr. Houma", is not a Frenchman and
en Orleanist ! He would make a splendid figure
in the reconstructed tribune of the Legislative Corps,
defending the Pon in the name of " a wise
liberty," and denouncing the unity of Italy
as a danger to France. His place is
by the side of Liberals of the TUTUS,
MOSTALEMBERT, and VILLIMAIN school. For a
vulgar-minded English liberal constituency he is
too much what ABISTOPHILNISri would all "
prancer "in his oratory. The electors of Stroud
are evidently insensible to the graces of high
action, and are content with something eider, and,
if possible, "warranted sound." And yet they
can't get this famous stepper to throw them off !

MR. HORSMAN AT STROUD.