The Sun.
London, England, 1846-05-13 00:00:00

LEADER ?

" We want a 'leader,' an uncommon want,
When every day and year brings forth a new one.
Till having filled all the gazettes with 'rant,'
The ' clique' discover he is not the true one."

We feel for Stafford O'Brien ; and we doubt not
his constituents deeply sympathise with him. In truth
the painfulness of his position is enough to melt the
heart of a bullock, to say nothing of a Northampton-
shire grazier.
The political monopolists, at the commencement, of
the present session, were in great straits for want of an
effective leader. The act of defending monopoly had
convinced every public man of note in the protectionist
party that monopoly was indefensible. It had been
thoroughly exposed in all its naked deformity through-
out the length and breadth of the land. One could
not get into a railway-carriage or an omnibus without
hearing disquisitions on the laws governing the ex-
change of commodities, which, ten years ago, would
have done no discredit to professors of political economy.
Monopoly, which is vice in one of its most noxious
forms, had been seen by the British public, and of ne-
cessity it had become thoroughly detested. Then there
was the failure of the potato crop, a failure which the
monopolists, notwithstanding their asseverations that
th -.re was none, well knew to be
But the dominant landocracy of the realm had no
disposition to abandon their monopoly, because it had
been demonstrated to he mischievous to the public, in.
furious to the operative, and. above all, ruinous to the
farmer. They knew, or at all events, had a supicion, of
all that before. Monopoly is not loved by the snonopo-
-I,st aristocracy, on account of the things about wnich
they have talked, tat for its effects, of which
they say nothing in public. It was not merely
for the sake of liigh rents that they hugged
the corn-law with such desperate energy, as to
peril their social position and constitutional power
in its defence ; for rents may be, and where the farmer
can make a fair bargain, will be, as high, or higher,
under free-trade than under monopoly. But they wanted
the high rents of the present times and the feudal power
of bygone ages. They wished to receive the high rents
from a dependent, servile, cap-in-hand tenantry, who
would march to the poll at the command of the land-
lord's steward, and fare) according to the capricious will
of the landlord's game-keeper.
Our agricultural readers will well nndersand for what
it was the monopolist landlords wanted to preserve mo-
nopoly, though perhaps the inhabitants of towns will
scarcely comprehend its full extent. Landlordism
should be seen on its own ground to be under-
stood. They who have not seen landlordism at
petty sessions, in the poachers' wing of the county
gaol, in its dealings with the tenantry and so forth,
know nothing about it. Nevertheless, these things
are grievous, cruel realitie3; and such things were to be
maintained. Hence, though the brains of the monopolist
party had been knocked out, monopoly did not die. Then
came the question of leadership. Disraeli might be retain-
ed as a sharpshooter, and would appear to the greater
advantage from being the only man amongst the party
who can pretend to sharpness. But Disraeli, the ex-
" sedition" loving candidate for Marylebone, who may be
taken as an examplar of lack-land political adventurers,
would not do to lead the squirearchy. They wanted
some one of more weight. The dull Bramston had tried
his hand at " lard and grease," and made a sad mess of it.
The duller Miles had not been very successful in his
opposition to the " invasion" of foreign cattle ; while
Bankes, the dullest, had been saved from conspicuous
failure by his very dulness. Nobody could ever see
that he had any object or purpose, and his speeches were
commonly supposed to relate to the objects he had
in view. He is one of those who make a dark subject
darker by talking about it.
At this period of monopolist despair, the commence-
ment of the present session, Mr. Stafford O'Brien chi-
valrously undertook the post of monopolist leader in the
House of Commons, and by his first speech in that cha-
racter proved himself to be a person of
some dexterity and adroitness. But his very
talent proved his ruin as a monopolist leader. He
had been through the last three or four sears of
the corn-law discussion, and he attempted to make a
plausible defence for monopoly, after all, and with the
knowledge of all, that has been proved and admitted
against it. Moreover, his own speech proved that he
was undergoing
that process of conversion to free trade
which every man of average intellect, and ordinary
political honesty,
who has seriouslyattempted to defend
monopoly, has invariably undergone.
The very measure of his success in that speech,
him to be no genuine monopolist. This would provod
tdo
for his party. He was too clever, too plausible, toc
solicitous of finding reasons—albeit not very good ones
—for monopoly., Monopolists don't want reasons. They
therefore, bethought themselves of starting some man
as their leader, who would not attempt to reason,
who knew nothing of the subject ' • to whom all
that had been said or written for the last seven years,
for and against monopoly, was as if it had not been said
or written. They wanted the freshness of profound ig-
norance.

--21 iover, they wanted some one with recklessness
recklessness
enough to say all the exploded saying ;o
all the prejudices, without the responsieility
of one with
owning. Brainst.,n, \ides, Bankes, O'Brien, were mlan.
ed
of large possessions ; they had a certain status insociety ; if they had the power, they had not the wilt
to fling themselves into the breach made in the fortres.
of landlordism with the daring of one who would stake,
ail upon a desperate chance. Seeing, then, the qualities,
positive and negative, wanted in their leader by the
monopolists, they could not look in a more likely place
than the racing. stable. There they sought, and there
they found what they wanted. Lord George Bentinck
now leads the monop-list host, much to the satisfaction
of the genuine monopolists.
But, farmers, is he your leader? Does he represent
your opinions? Are you content to be represented
iti
Parliament by the unflinching and unscrupulous defende-
of the garne-laws? Ask any of the farnier-uitnesses
examined before the Game-law Committee what they
think of Lord George Bentinck? whether they like the
courtesy, the fairness, or the accuracy of this new
"farmers' friend?"
Let farmers, too, read his speeches—if they can, for
truly 'tis a heavy task—" your true no meaning puzzles
more than sense"—and see whether the description Sir
Robert Peel gave of the speech of the new and fast
leader of the monopolists on Irish scarcity, when he
said " the multiplication of letters from parts of the
country where disease does not prevail, forms no contra-
diction to the fact that there does exist in other parts
that country disease arising from scarcity of food."
Rut this bpi always been the game of the naonopo•

lists ; they are ever looking beside the mark ; and being
unable to avow their real objects in maintaining mono•
poly, talk wildly about something else. Farmers are
now becoming aware of this, and the new leader, from
Newmarket, of the monopolists will help to make it still
clearer.—The League.