The Sun.
London, England, 1860-06-06 00:00:00

TEE DEBATE ON THE .REFO.R3I BILL.

Lord John Russell introduced into the debate on
the Reform Bill' two topics which have seldom
heretofore formed the staple of discussion in the
House of Commons. He invited the Legislature te
consider the merits of an article in the Quarterly,
written, as he said, 13y "some obscure individual,"
whose bscurity, however, did not shelter hini from
censure, and he threw_ out a still more delicate
question for a leading member of the Government
to handle,--Who is at present the leader of the
Opposition? Lord John seemed to be in as• much
difficulty as an old-established Government in con-
tact with a country undergoing the fever of a revo-
lution, which knows not to whom to give a diplo-
matic recognition—whether to treat as the existing
power the old Sovereign or the young aspirant—
whether to offend the friends of the old order of
things by recognising revolution, or the friends of
the revolution by still adhering to the old order of
things. Lord John has a dim kind of consciousness
that all is not right within the Tory camp, that sedi-
tion is abroad, and that it is not the Liberals only
who have seen fit to change their leader. Though
Mr. Disraeli is not the only Parliamentary chit f
who has met with rough usage from the political
periodical of bis party, Lord John seems discomposed
by the phenomenon, and anxiously inquires upon
whom has devolved theleadership of the Tories,which.
passed by so strange a caprice of fortune from Sir R.
Peel to Mr. Disraeli. The question has remained
unanswered, except so far as Mr. Disraeli's modesty
permitted him to answer it in his own favour. The
party did not respond heartily to the challenge of
their opponents, and the question thus thrown out
still awaits its solution.

We have as little right to answer for the Con-
servative party, on a matter so peculiarly relating
to their own internal police, as Lord John Russell
himself, but we confess it would be to us a matter
• of the most profound astonishment were it possible
that the Conservative party should depose their
present leader, and put any new aspirant in his
place. Reminiscences are tedious, and comparisons ,
are odious, but before the Conservative party make
up their minds to discard Mr. Disraeli they would
do wisely to consider calmly whence they are come,
whither they are going, and what other leadership
is at their command. Let the Conservative party
never forget the hopeless Slough of Despond in
which they were wallowing when kind fortune
first sent them Mr. Disraeli for a leader. They
had undergone the heaviest misfortune that can
befall a political combination. They had grown
weary of a chief who was too liberal for their con-
tracted views of national policy, and avenged them-
selves upon him by an act of renunciation which
left them without leaders, and apparently at the •
mercy of their opponents. They were irretrievably
committed to a cause the very worst and most un-
popular to which a party ever sacrificed its honour
and its prospects. The Tory party, when Mr.
Disraeli first took the lead of them, were in a posi-
tion of the most marked and violent hostility to the
material interests of the whole country, and em-
barked on a career which seemed to tend to some-
thing little short of political annihilation. With
untiring patience Mr. Disraeli set himself to bring
order out of this chaos; he soothed their passions,
he deferred to their prejudices; he even conde-
scended to speak their language; he fought their
losing battle for them with heartiness enough to
conciliate their confiience, and dressed up the jar-
gon of an exploded financial creed with rhetoric,
metaphor, and epigram. It may be that these are
not the portions of his past life upon which Mr. Dis-
raali looks back with the greatest atisfaction ; but,
whatever the consistent advocates of Free Trade
among his contemporaries or the philosophical his-
-torian who shall sit down to weigh his conduct in
the balance of a rigid and impartial criticism may
think of him, it would be unjust, ungrateful, and
ungenerous in the party, which he has redeemed
from absolute disorganization; and made once more a
real and effective power in the State, to forget for a
single moment its signal obligations to him. Gra-
dually, almost imperceptibly, Mr. Disraeli has
weaned his party from their most flagrant errors.
He has taught them a lesson which they have been
slow indeed to learn, but at which they are profi-
cient indeed, compared with what they were in the
glorious days of Lord George Bentinck. He has
taught them to profess, at any rate, and probably
to feel, a sympathy for the great body of their
couLtrymen, and to recognize the necessity og
looking to opinion for support. When he found-
the Tory party, they were armed in impenetrable
Prejudice ; under him they have become no longer
an impediment, but competitors with the Liberals
in the career of progress. Twice has he led them
into office, and, if they were not or. either occasion
able to find good anchorage for their storm-tossed
vessel, the fault was not his, but rather that of his
colleagues, who seemed on both occasions indefati-
gable in proving their incapacity fur the manage-
ment of affairs of State. It is Mr. Disraeli's mis-
' fortune, and not a little also his fault, that he has
been acting ever since he became a party leader
with men whose mediocrity has been uo safeguard
against the most extravagant mistakes, and who
have uniformly contrived, by some gross and easily
detected job, to draw down upon themselves the
indignation of the country. But for Mr. Disraeli
himself it must be said that, having uniformly to
.fight an uphill battle, and to sustain a losing cause,
he has acquitted himself in a manner to gain the
sympathy of those most keenly opposed to his
policy, and to prove that he possesses talents which,
under happier circumstances, might have made
his Administration eminently creditable to him-
self and useful to the country. Although unable
to retain power, he has always retired from it .
with undiminished strength, and never shown
himself more powerful than at the moment when
he has sustained the heaviest and most mortifying
reverses; and all this he has done under every
possible disadvantage, without large possessions,
without aristocratic connexion nay, with the
burden of an extraction peculiarly odious,
as subsequent events have shown, to the party
of which he was the leader. Which of all the
county magnates whose broad acres have returned
them to the House of Commons possesses a surer
seat, and enjoys in a fuller degree the unhesitating
confidence of his constituents, than the member for
Buckinghamshire? Although peculiarly exposed
to contests from the vicinity of his county to the
metropolis, he has ever set all opposition at defiance,
nor has his repeatedly avowed change of opinion on
the subject of Protection, nor the general tendency
to Liberalism which has marked his conduct, ever
produced, so far as the public are aware, the slightest
coolness between him and his supporters.
We have never been slow to point out Mr. Dis-
raeli's errors, but if he be once deposed, who is there
that can be put in his place ? Is it Mr. Henley
whom the party would select to lead them back into
the miry pool of prejudice from which they have
just emerged? Will they find a Moses to conduct
them once more to the promised land of office in Sir
J. Yakington, Mr. Walpole, or the statesman and
orator when: they at present delight to honour
Mr. Bentinck ? The folly of such a choice would
not be long in making itself felt. Such men would
never have freed the Tories from their former diffi-
culties, nor would they maintain for a single month
the advanced position which the party now holds.
Let them remember that eight years ago they were
all " cannon balls," impenetrable on one subject, at
least, to the plainest and clearest argument. They
may chafe at the hand which leads them, but they
should never forget what they owe to the man who
has taught them to be legislators, if he could not
make them statesmen, and who has adorned their
cause with a wit and eloquence such as it never
merited, and which up to the present moment they
seem wholly unable to appreciate.—Brass.