The Sun.
London, England, 1864-09-06 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

TIMES.—it is the melancholy privilege of life
protracted and intelligence preserved beyond the
period usually allotted to mortality that the pos-
sessor of this strange immunity from human weak-
ness is called upon from time to time to lament the
death, and it may be to celebrate the memory of his
less fortunate associates. The duty must in such
circumstances be painful, but it is, nevertheless, a
duty which every man owes to that character which
every public man leaves as a sacred deposit to his
surviving colleagues. On their good or evil report
must in a great measure depend the estimation in
which he will be held by posterity, and it is almost
equally wrong to refuse due honours to the dead
and to lavish them unnecessarily on the living,
This melancholy duty Lord Palmerston has twice
lately been called upon to discharge. A few years
ego he appeared in public to lament the premature
loss of Lord Herbert, snatched away, to the regret
of all who knew him, in the very zenith of a career
of the most extended and enlightened usefulness.
Since then another member of the Administration
—Lord Elgin—has sunk in the performance of great
and onerous duties ; and now the Prime Minister
comes forward to inaugurate a monument to the
one of all his colleagues who possessed the most
varied acquirements, and on whom were founded
the brightest hopes. To the character and attain-
ments of Sir G. C. Lewis, to his services to general
literature, to the warm affection which he inspired
and the unlimited confidence which he commanded,
ample justice has been done by the unanimous ver-
dict of .the society in which he moved, and of the
press by which his career was watched and criti-
cised. A life not exempt from those vicissitudes
from which the most honourable public service is no
protection was concluded amid a burst of sympathy,
admiration, and respect which vindicated his fellow
countrymen from the charge of ingratitude, and did
all that was possible towards healing the wounds of
private friendship. The public duty was fully per-
formed, but it still remained for the place of his
residence and birth to give expression to its regret.
The memory of Sir G. Lewis is commemorated by
monuments erected in Radnorshire, where he lived,
and Herefordshire, which had the honour of being
represented by him for five years, until the county
decided that it was unworthy of such a repre.
sentative, and passed the most complete censure
on itself by repudiating in one vote the noblest
truth that has dawned on political science, and the
most philosophical statesman whom the present time
has produced. For this signal act of injustice and
folly Herefordshire now makes a tardy atonement
in erecting a monument to that departed worth
which she repudiated while living. She has been
slowly wise, but it is better to be wise slowly than
not to be wise at all, and certainly, no atonement
can be so complete as to erect a monument to the
memory of the man whom she repudiated on account
of his adherence to Free Trade, and to intrust the
inauguration of it to a statesman who for two gene-
rations has been its consistent and eloquent advo-
cate. The maxim that nothing but good is to be
said of the dead finds a very qualified acceptance at
the present day. The taste of modern times revolts
against the language of every panegyric, and will
scarcely tolerate even the pardonable suppression of
those faults from which no one born to bear the
burden of humanity is free. There is no task which
the most practised and skilful orator would ap-
proach with more diffidence than that of pronounc-
ing a panegyric over the ashes of his best and most
valued friend. The style of speaking, also, in
which Lord Palmerston may claim to be considered
a master appeals far more to the reason than to the
feelings of his audience, and though eminently
sound and convincing, and often not without a
curious felicity of language, takes little hold of the
imagination, and is more adapted for exposition
than for amplification or ornament. Still it must
be. admitted that Lord Palmerston discharged the
difficult duty which he had undertaken in a man-
ner alike honourable to himself and satisfactory to
his audience, and gave as clear and complete, if not
as eloquent, an account of his late colleague and
friend as could be expected from one in many
respects presenting so marked a contrast to the
theme of his discourse. In the present age, when
we are wearied with the complaint that originality
is extinct, and that all men are ground down to
the same smooth surface of uniformity, it is in-
structive to contemplate the different paths
by which eminence in the councils of this coun-
try may be attained. turd Palmerston has
been through life ph-eminently a man of the
world, mingling heartily in its strife, its pursuits,
and its pleasures, In almost every amusement and
occupation that becomes an English nobleman he
has heartily and genially embarked. A keen sports-
man, an owner of racehorses, and a man of fashion,
Lord Palmerston devoted to the active world and
its pursuits those hours which remained to him after
a singularly exact and conscientious discharge of his
public duties. The recreations of Sir George Lewis
were the exact reverse of all this. The hours that
could be spared from business were devoted by him,
whenever he had the power of disposing of them,
to abstruse and careful study. His relaxations
would have been a painful and exhausting labour to
others. Yet, on the common ground of public duty
these men, so different in other respects, find a point
of contact—nay, of hearty sympathy and esteem.
" Seldom," said Lord Palmerston, " has any man
in a great public career so entitled himself to re-
spect and admiration as Sir George Lewis. As
Chancellor of the Exchequer, he managed during
the Crimean war—a period of great anxiety and
difficulty—the financial affairs of the kingdom ;
and no Finance Minister ever acquired and retained
to a greater degree the confidence of that commer.
cial community who are so much interested in the
accurate and efficient discharge of the functions of
that Minister. As Secretary for the Home Depart•
went, in perpetual intercourse with the gentry, the
nobility, the corporations, and the different com-
munities connected with our domestic administra-
tion, he conciliated their esteem and acquired their
confidence. In debate he supported his opinion
with a coolness, a forbearance, and a power of calm
although he convinced
logical argument which,
many and confuted many more, prevented him,
him, even
in the warmth of debate, from making a single per.
son an enemy. He had an unpretendii2,g gleners
and simplicity of mind. He was not given to any
unnecessary display of his knowledge; but that
knowledge was not merely useful, for the habit
of mind formed in acquiring it enabled him
better to perform the duties with which he was
charged. The leading quality of hie mind was
a thirst after truth. He was not impatient
of contradiction or of opposition; his aim was by
comparing his ideas with those of others, whether
living or dead, to get at the truth. In his private
relations there was a warmth of heart, a steadiness
of affection, a total unselfishness of feeling which
rendered him dear to his friends and invaluable to
his family." In this graphic and interesting sketch
we recognise the lineaments of the statesman we
have lost. The only thing which the words fail to
convey is, that in a picture possessing so much light
there Is really no shade. Most man redeem their
shining qualities by detects equally marked, but the
judicial calmness and balance of the character of
Sir George Lewis protected him from the faults
corresponding to his many merits. Ha was, in truth,
the personification of calm and unimpassioned
reason, with feelings and affections strong enough
to conciliate the regard of all who approached him,
and the friendship of those who intimately associ•
ated with him, but not powerful enough to disturb
the balance of his judgment or warp the clew('
prompting of his will. He has obtained what he
never sought, or perhaps even desired—the unani-
mous applause of is countrymen ; end his most
fitting epitaph will he found in tee words of the
statesman who first introduced him to high office,
and regeroe with no uoreasonaDie pride the boon

which he conferred upon his country when he gave
it the services of such a Minister.
POST.—M. Barocbe, the French Minister of Jus-
tice, has just followed in the wake of the Duc de
Persigny. His " extra-parliamentary utterances,"
however, as we term them on this side of the
Channel., have taken a different course, and con-
tented themselves with a narrower scope. While
the one is abstract the other is purely practical.
M. Baroche deals with the simpler, though hard)),
less important, question of internal reform in tho
working of the machinery of government. He is
well knawn as one of the leading advocates of ad.-
ministrative decentralisation in his own country—
a policy, however, which the Emperor is under-
stood to have not less heartily accepted than him-
self. It may seem strange in these centralising
days to hear of a movement in the contrary direc-
tion. It would have been thought at first sight
that railways and telegraphs would ensure the pro-
gress of centralisation ; but the fact of an opposite
movement, in spite of the increasing facilities for
central government, may be taken as an evidence
of the truth that the mania for "everything from
Paris" had been allowed to extend a great deal too
far. For the system of administrative centralisa-
tion that now prevails we must go back some years
anterior even to the great Revolution—that is to
say, so far as concerns its essential characteristics..
No one showed more clearly than M. de Tocque.
ville that the centralising system commonly ascribed
to the Revolution was really the work of Louis
XVI. and his Ministers. They reduced government
to such a level of uniformity that, all feudal or other
local jurisdictions being set aside, the whole adminis-
tration of public affairs was carried on in Paris
through 30 Intendants of the provinces, who sub-
mitted all questions to Paris, and received their
_ _

orders in return from Paris. The Cabinet of Louis

XVI., in fact, governed France in respect of every-
thing through the 30 Intendants. Nearly all that
the Revolution appears to have effected in this re-
spect was to abolish the provinces and create 96 de-
partments in their places, So that there are now 96
Prefects instead of 30 Intendants. Strangely
enough, this sort of government was found practic-
able before railway or telegraphic communication
was known. But, on the other hand, the cares of
Government, as arising if only from the increased
population and greatly augmented wealth o f the
country, have become heavier. But the present
Imperial Government desire to part with a great
deel of this useless and impolitie burden; and M.
Baroche has just come forward, at a banquet
given by the Prefect of the Department of Seine
and Oise, to expound their views. He desires,
in a word, to throw all local government
and all local responsibility on the Council-
General of each department. " The Emperor,"
he says, " wishes to give to there bodies more ex.
tonsive attributions and greater liberty, in orde r to
obtain from them all the good which they can
effect, to utilise all their strength, and to m eke
them the most effectual instruments of administ re-
live decentralisation." M. Baroche adds that this
is at the moment the most important question of
reform now pending in France, and that a meeumre
involving such a change is about to be submitted, to
the Senate and the Corps Legislatif. A projected
reform of this sort may be contemplated from t
different points of view. We may regard it in rela•
ticn to its effect on the actual transaction and a. ia
ministration of public bu-iness ; and we may look
upon it also in the hardly less important light of
its tendency to increase political conservatism, a) id
to promote the stability of the Imperial Governme) at.
So far as concerns its immediate and everyday eff, )ct
upon the public business of the country, there can
be very little doubt that French centralisation bias
gone a great deal too far. There are an infini to
variety of local interests on which the Prefect an d
Council-General of the department must be muc h
better judges than the Imperial Government, wh o
must at last rely on the reports and opinions of th e
Councils General. This being so, it seems simpler
that the Councils-Gcneral should govern in fact as
well as in name. Besides, the spirit of public eta, sr•
prise will be greatly freed if some representati TO
liberty of action, with the popular responsibility tt Lat
belongs to it, is conferred upon these bodies. It is
better that the departments should act for the ma
selves than to continue to lose the sense of fl •ee
action and responsibility in the imperial surveillat ice
over everything. The departments, in a word, want
to be treated as men, and not es children unable to
take care of themselves. Moreover, the concentra-
tion of all public business on the Ministry of "Jae
Interior involves a labour that no single adminis-
trator can discharge; and the questio❑ at last is,
in very many cases, whether the Councils-Gen eral
or the clerks in the Minister's bureau are the best
judges of the wants and necessities of the nimety-
six departments. But the measure of reform now
intended by the French Government has a wider
signification, in regard to the gradual Conservative
tendencies that it appears to possess. Since The
fall of the Bourbons in Franco many schemes of
government have been tried in turn, and hitherto
they have all failed. The reason teems to be that
there has been no basis on the breadth and surface
of the nation on which government could be built
up. Paris has been not only the centre, but the
source of government. Centralisation, in fact, does
not explain the polity of France for the last
seventy or eighty years. It has been the govern-
ment of the country by the capital. While this
has been the case Paris has made Sovereigns
and unmade them. Napoleon I. confessed him
self dethroned the moment that the allies took the
capital. Charles X. and Louis Phillippe took the
sentence of the capital as the verdict of the nation,
and abdicated without inquiring what the rest of
the country thought of the matter. While the
provinces are deprived of their legitimate influence
in public affairs this must always be more or less
the case ; though the degree in which it may be so
will vary with circumstances. The Emperor of the
French apparently wishes that Paris should be the
caapital and the only capital. And probably, if an
effectual change is introduced in this respect, it will
have for one of its results to check the immoderate
desire of all classes to abandon the provinces and
to migrate to Paris. But, however this may be, it
is clear that it will tend very directly to raise the
dignity of local government in France. It is one
of many measures which appear to indicate that
the imperial dynasty is desirous of lessening the
extreme and impolitic influences that have been
handed down by the Revolution, and of asserting
for the provinces some of the importance and rev
sponsibility to which they are entitled.