The Sun.
London, England, 1864-04-18 00:00:00

and unfounded report that the Conservative leader has been
deposed, and that Mr. Walpole, or Mr. Whiteside, or
General Peel, is the chief of the Opposition, vice Disraeli,
superseded. More Malignant animosity, more unscrupulous
personal spite, is not displayed even in America towards
political adversaries. Those practices are congenial to our
Transatlantic cousins, but they are wholl:v unworthy of a
profession whose members claim the rank of gentlemen.
These attacks on an individual—this persevering attempt
to hunt from the confidenee of his party; from power,
and Ptoti life,i the leader of the gentlemen
of England, are altogether contrary to the laws of honour
and fair play—are not merely ungenerous, but ungentle-
manly. To write down an individual adversary is not poli-
tical warfare, but political assassination:
A fot.‘eigher who should read the attacks of the Liberal
press on Mr. Disraeli would form an extraordinary miscon-
ception of the present condition of parties and the character
of public men. He would first imagine that party spirit
must be at least as fierce as in the time of Walpole ; but a
short experience in English society would disabuse him of
that error. He would then conceive that the Opposition,
headed by a Chief so singled out for scorn and insult, must
consist of political adventurers and low-minded men, con-
tent to be led by a congenial mind ; he would find that they
were the very flower of the English gentry, with a sense of
honour almost chivalrous, and peculiarly free from all sel-
fish or dishonest ambition, and would understand that per-
sonal hatred, and not truth or public spirit, animated the
attacks made on the chosen leader of such a party. He
would finally settle down in the conviction that Mr.
Disraeli must be one of those men who lack some conciliat-
ing quality, and make enemies of all who approach them,
simply by that deficiency; that he was, like Sir James
Graham, prone to dubious arts, or like Mr. Gladstone,
gifted with a temper extravagantly aggressive, and a
tongue indiscriminately and indiscreetly bitter. No idea
of Mr. Disraeli's character could be more unjust than
this. He never committed an act of treason against
an individual or against his party ; he never opened
letters, he never garbled dispatches ; he never belied in Par-
liament the vote he had given abroad ; he never selected an
obscure victim for the display of his gladiatorial talents;
never amused himself by gibbeting the auditor of an un-
lucky insurance office, or vented his spleen for Parliamen-
tary defeats on a hapless inspector. His antagonists have
always been men of position equal to his own, and the
quarrel has always been of their seeking, not of his. To
the press he certainly never gave any personal offence. To
what are we to ascribe the virulent hostility with which he
has been slandered, maligned, persecuted ? Is it to the
fact that he is not merely the leader and the champion,but
in a peculiar sense the reconstructor of the Constitutional
party ? Is it because he took the guidance of that party
in the depth of discouragement and dismay, deserted by its
leaders, disorganised, almost destroyed, and because he has
now brought it to the verge of triumph—that he is so bit-
terly hated ? Is it because but for him there might have
been no Conservative opposition, and because through him
we are likely ere long to have a strong and lasting Censer-
' vative Government ? Is it because the Conservative gen-
tlemen refused to dismiss their tried and trusted chief in
order to place themselves once more under the guidance of
those who deserted them in 1816 ? Is it to the disappointed
ambition of the Peelites we are to ascribe the bitter and
venomoes animosity of Saturday Review) Or is it to that
servile and snobbish feeling, to that meanest and vilest form
of envy which hates the man who rises by merit because his
merit seems to reproach those who have failed to rise—is
it to jealousy of a too successful brother that we must attri-
bute the unsparing persecution by the press of the only
man of letters who by talent alone, without favour or for-
tune, has in this generation raised himself to greatness ?
To whatever cause it be ascribable, the malice of the Libe-
ral journals towards Mr. Disraeli—their covert insinuations
of unfounded charges ; their unscrupulous imputations,
their itscessant whispers of Conservative disaffection and
impendirg revolt—is a disgrace to the English press. It
cannot injure its intended victim; he is strong to fear and
too wise to feel it; but it reflects infinite dishonour on his
assailants, and through them on the profession to which
they belong.