The Sun.
London, England, 1852-10-13 00:00:00

LORD DERBY.
The Mv;or of Liverpool and his Conservative

friends have had a very great treat, but they have had
it all to themselves. The Premier has unbosomed

himself to them after dinner, and the etiquette of their
Town-hall, which is as the laws of the Medes and the
Persians, forbids the least disclosure. Nothing leaves
the walls of that genial inquisition. Those chartered
libertines the gentlemen of the press range free as air
over all that pertains to the public. Liverpool alone,
which fifty yt ars ego, was the stronghold of the slave
trade, and has since that sent many a pretty
craft to the slave coast—Liverpool, the capital
of Protection in every possible form, shuts its
doors to those quiet representatives of the people.
The guests themselves drink a cup of Lethe before
they leave the walls. Norte of them can report a
single word of the man who has the next turn to
speak in the greatest of modern political controver-
sies. They remember the brilliancy of the flash, and
they believe they were very much affected, but the
particular impression has passed off with the mo-
mentary stimulus of his worship's champagne.
Perhaps the very excitement that expanded their
intellect and melted their hearts to the reception
of Lord Derby's splendid sentences at the time,
has since helped to t_ trice them from the memory,
for it is proverbial that " soon learnt is soon for-
got." However that may be, the Prime Minister
of England might as well have addressed a hundred
boarding school misses, or as rrany coal whippers,
for any good the people at large are likely to get
by it. When a maniac, as sometimes is .the case,
gets returned to the House of Commons, and moves
the exclusion of strangers, it invariably happens
that not only one, but several Members present
report the proceedings, valueless as they are,
and enable us to supply the gap in our Parliamentary
intelligence. At Liverpool, it appears, there was no
one who could do this, no one who could carry away
ten ideas of a speech he had just heard, or who,
having them in his head, had also the smallest wish
to communicate them. In fact all seem to have
thought that the bast thing to do with the
speech was to suppress it. So Lord Derby buzzed
for that evening like a bee in a bottle. He made
a dinner table wild with delight, set the glasses
jingling and the waiters staring. He even kept
awake, or at least in a mesmeric wakefulness, some
score gentlemen who would otherwise have been
dozing round the embers of their own dining-room
fires; but there the effect ends. He sparkled like a
diamond in a mine. Bands that the rod of empires
not only might have swayed, but actually do sway,
were buried for that evening where at least they were
quite powerless. " Little or nothing transpired of
a political nature," says the local press, " nothing in
the slightest degree indicative of any Ministerial in-
tentions, and nothing to show that the First Minister
of the Crown and the leader of a powerful
party was present. It is true that the noble
Earl delivered an extremely brilliant and in
one part a most affecting speech—when did Lord
Derby acquit himself otherwise ?—but his Lord-
ship most carefully avoided any allusion to that
line of :policy which the nation is awaiting
and discussing with intense interest." We don't believe
it. When did Lord Derby speak without declaring
himself ? So fluent a tongue must always speak out
of the abundance of the heart. Is it conceivable that a
man whose own opinions are so finely distinguished
and so strong that he has saved their integrity at the
cost of two Administrations, and who has quarrelled
with literally every statesman in the country for
concealing his real sentiments, can have spoken at a
political banquet, long, eloquently, and affectingly,
and yet left his hearers not one whit the wiser. No.
He did speak out. The merchants of Liverpool
know a good ship when they see it; they know a
good bill of exchange, and a good man that is
a solvent customer when they see him ; but
they are not quite up to that nice employment
of words which indicates this or that policy ;
they want things broadly stated, with even a little
exaggeration; but Lord Derby was too Parlia-
mentary to be understood. At the very lowest sup-
position, this was what our neighbours would call a
" grave silence ;" that is as to matter, for there was no
lack of words. But when a man holds his tongue to all
practical purposes we usually supply a significance.
It is taken for granted that he thinks "Least said
soonest mended ;" and, considering the remorse-
less vigour with which Lord Derby has not hesi-
tated to lash his former colleagues when he has
found or fancied himself misled by their professions,
it is not surprising that he should profess as little as
possible just now, when there is nothing to be got by
professions. In truth, why need Lord Derby say any-
thing, or why need he do anything, till the exigen-
cies of Government compel some positive measures ?
The Conservatives will be only too happy to see
their friends in power, and will wait for relief, or
whatever they call it, as long as it may suit the
Ministerial convenience. Nay, the matter most
immediately pressing—the funeral of the Duke—
can be deferred fur months ; and it is stated, in
fact, that no orders have been given, or are to be
given till the meeting of Parliament. In this
and most other matters the less done, as well es
the less said, the better, and a grave inactivity
as well as a grave silence is the highest wisdom.
The instant Lord Derby has committed himself
to any definite proposal he stands pledged to its
soundness, and must abide the result of a dicuss
sion upon it. So long as Mr. Disraeli's line lay
in attack he made way every day. It was only when
the impatience of the agriculturists and the curiosity
of the public forced him to say what ought to be done
that he exposed himself to ridicule. There are par-
ties, as there are races, whose strength is the want of
position. So long as Bedouins have no city or strong
hold and move freely on the face of the desert, they
are invincible; as soon as they have houses and pro-
perty that they cannot pack up on their camels'
backs, and defences that they cannot carry on their
saddles, they have given hostages to fortune, and are
assailable by the slow and heavy warfare of civilized
States. Tnis, then, very possibly, is the position, or
want of position, which our political Bedouins mean
to take up. Next month they will have to state some
sort of a case to the country. They will have to
say what they are and who they are, and why they
are to govern instead of the retiring Ministers.
Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli are both
sufficiently masters of language to make a good deal
out of nothing, and dupe the country into the belief
that they have announced a policy when they have
said nothing at all. Perhaps the speech at Liverpool
the other day was an exercitation with this view—
viz., to obtain all the results of a good speech and
say actually nothing, as when a man obtains posses-
sion of a good horse by the exhibition of a flash note.
We are prepared to see this course tried, possibly
with some degree of success, next month. The spec-
tacle will not be creditable to the nation ; but we
beg to warn the Conservatives that they will be the
only people taken in, as Lord Derby, once in power,
will soon find he can only hold power by a Liberal
policy, and such a policy he, therefore, will adopt
without much ado.—Times.

IMPORT DUTY ON FOREIGN RABBITS.
When the late Sir Robert Peel reformed the tariff
so as to free the people's food from those particular
duties which during a long period of protectionist
rule had made it systematically dear, the item
" rabbits" was omitted. The import duty on dead
meat was abolished ; poultry and game were ad-
mitted at a certain ad valorem duty, but rabbits,
dead or alive, in which there had hitherto been no
trade, were not thought of sufficient importance to be
specifically excluded by a high duty, or to be ad-
mitted by a specific mention of them as one of the
articles of food on which in future no import duty
was to be charged. This omission has given
rise to much doubt and inconvenience to a new
branch of trade which the reformed tariff has created.
The small two and three .acre farmers of Belgium—
who are probably amongst the most enterprising an i
indefatigable of the farming race—the moment
our restrictions on foreign imports were removed
commenced the breeding of rabbits to a large extent,
and have produced those immense supplies which our
poulterers' shops have been of late years displaying on
Saturday nights for the behoof of the working-
classes, under the name of Ostend Rabbits. But a
question has arisen with the Custom-house authori-
ties as to what is the precise description under
which this new description of foreign food
shall come in, and Customhouse zoology has decided
that dead rabbits are poultry, and as such are
subject to five per cent. ad valorem duty. This de-
cision has occasioned much inconvenience to the sales-
men engaged in this trade, and has tended to restrict
the supply, not so much on account of the duty as the
Custom-house regulations, which often pre-
vent the introduction of the animals until
they are unfit for human food. To memorialise the
Board of Trade on the subject, a meeting of the im-
porters and salesmen connected
last, with Leadenlaall-
at which,e tmarket was held in September
appointing, a" dpu cer-
taina-
resolutions were passed,
tion to confer with the General
.S.team Navigation
Company, to induce them to facilitate the convey-
ance of the article, and to consider the propriety of
applying to the Board of Trade to remove the duty
levied on rabbits, meat being free. And on Mon-
day night a supplementary meeting took place at
the Rose
and Crown, Leadenhall-market, to re-
ceive their report. The chair was taken by
Mr. G. Brooke, common-councilman for the ward,
who; stated that so important had the trade in Ostend
rabbits become that, whereas, 15 years ago, the article
was hardly saleable in London, now there were from
fifty to a hundred tons a week itnia.red, affording;
animal food for 100 000 people at the rate of Vb. each.
The great market was of course Saturday, but in con-
sequence of the Cus oms regulations, the rabbits were
frequently not delivered till 9, 10, and sometimes 11
o'clock at night, and the consequence was that they
were pima rendered unfit fQr human feed Wore