The Sun.
London, England, 1867-04-23 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

" THE SPECTATOR" ON MR. GLADSTONE AND
MR. DIsitAELL—Mr. Gladstone's great defeat this
day week, and Mr. Disrach's very remarkable and
unexpectedly decisive victory, illustrate very curi-
ously what observing politicians had begun to, notice
for two or three weeks previously—that the leader
of Opposition, whose tact, moderation, and firm-
ness had gained him a chorus of admiring praise in
the first six weeks of the session, has been steadily
losing ground of late in the House, while the Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer, on the other hand, has,
since the disruption of his Ministry and his fresh
start on the present plan of Reform, been as steadily
gaining ground with the. House, and is now, for
the present at least, master of the situation. What
is the reason of this singular phenomena? It is not
merely that Mr. Disraeli has luid the audacity to
propose, as a Conservative measure, a scheme of
Reform promising to be, in the end at least, far
wider than that which be denounced as democratic
last session ; for bad Mr. Gladstone advocated the
same scheme by way of outbidding a really Con-
servative proposal of the present Government's,
every one knows that he would havebeen condemned
and abandoned by half his party, and scolded
at from the other side of the House till the
country would have really believed that he had done
something wicked. Air. Disraeli has met nothing
like the difficulty in trampling under foot his party'-8
principles, which Mr. Gladstone would have met
with, even in an attempt to modify and enlarge the
views of his patty. This may be due in some small
degree to the nature of the two parties. Individual
judgment and opinion are infinitely more active and
discriminating among Liberals than amongst the
Conservatives. There are still a great many left of
such old Tory squires as Mr. Kendall, the member
for East Cornwall, who candidly admitted to the
house that he had told his constituents how ho was
utterly opposed to all Reform, but how, if the Go-
vernment, who know so much better than be could
do, the state of feeling in the country, decided upon
a Reform Bill, they would find him certainly voting ,
for it. This sort of utter renunciation of individual

judgment is very much rarer on the Liberal side of
tile house. The Tory p Lay- has still something of
'lie compact nature of as avalanche about it,
which " moveth altogether, if it move at all." The
Tory " Cave," in spite of the spirit and weight of
those who led it, was an utter failure ; Lord Gran-
borne was the leafier of a bind of only six. Almost.
11 the rest stuck to their party and voted en masse.
['he advantage of having a mind, when your followers
do not, as a rule, profess one, is evidently much
greater than the advantage of having a mind when
your followers do profess was and this Mr. Disraeli
now feels. But pasta, reasons are not the only ones
at the bottom of this remarkable ebb of Mr. Glad-
stone's tide and flow of Mr. Di-raeli's tide sinse the
crisis in the Ministry. To some extent we believe
that personal causes in relation to the tone and tem-
per of the house at large have limited Mr. Glad-
stone's influence over his own party, and lent Mr.
Disraeli a sort of adventitious aid duo to the strong
contrast of moral and intellectual qualities in which
he stands—in general very much to his own disad-
vantage—with his opponent. There is something
strict about Mr. Gladstone, • something of the
"righteous and devout!' man who lives " in all good
conscience before God," scrupulously serving the
nation and his party, but never unscrupulous or au-
dacious, and prompt to rebuke the slightest levity,
so far as he discerns it, in the political conversation
of those around him. Indeed, he imparts moral
scrupulosity and Moral indignation of tone into his
most purely political arguments. Instead of using
the regular party arguments, instead of speak-
ing merely of mischief to the country, unfair
partiality to this or that class, politic .1 disaster,
and personal inconsistency, as connected with the
course his opponents pursue, Mr. Gladstone in-
sinuates, and in' nide ales out of ten not without
sufficient reason, a shade of moral disgust, into his
manner, which, while in a Christian point of view it
is often infinitely gentler than the regular party
artillery, yet conveys a certain effect of moral cen-
sorship, and gives the impression of a holier politi-
cal nature than that of the House at large- -which
the House is apt to regard as a sort of hitting below
the waist. Mr. Disraeli once spoke of Mr. Glad-
stone's official oratory as " the sanctimonious elo-
quence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer," and as
•it is certain that Mr. Gladstone's moral calibre has
always been really higher and more scrupulous than
that of the House of Commons, so it is certain that
the House has always been sensitively alive to this
difference, and conscious of the indications of this
difference in Mr. Gladstone's own tone and man-
ner. Members have something of the feeling to-
wards him which the Athenians had towards Aris-
tides the Just. Far from being really dictatorial,
Mr. Gladstone has recently, in more cases than one,
consulted the wishes of his followers too much ;
but in spite of this, there has been about his
speeches the dictation, not of imperious will,
but of sctupulous obedience to a more rigid
code of 'distinctions, of stricter political piety,
of more accurate observance of the whole
law of political righteousness. This is what
Mr. Disraeli alluded to when in the debate on
the second reading of the Reform Bill he accused
Mr. Gladstone of putting him " to the question,"
and addressing him " with the tone and air of a
familiar of the Inquisition ;" adding, iu order to
complete the caricature, " that really he had con-
gratulated himself on having a solid piece of furni-
ture between them." Now, no doubt, the strong
apparent repulsion there is to this tone about Mr.
Gladstone is due in large measure not to the self-
righteousness of the great Liberal statesman, but to
the political unrightcousness of the present House
of Commons, whose virtue may fairly and truly be
said, without theological explanations, to be rather
of the nature of filthy rags. We could have no better
example of the kind of manner in which Mr. Glad-
stone's sincere,—and only relatively rigid—political
conscience has convicted the house of sin to its own
great discomfort, than the debate on the motion for
removing Mr. Churchwarl from the Commission of
the Peace in Dover, when four Liberal members of
the House of Commons were included within the
terms of the proposed penalty by Mr. Bentinck's
amendment. It will be remembered that in answer to
a sardonic question from Mr. Bogge, at the begin-
ning of the discussion, as to whether the four gentle-
men convicted of bribery of four specified elections,
were the gentlemen of those names now members of
the house of Commons, Mr. Disraeli had replied,
with reprobate jocularity, that nothing had struck
hirs as so startling as the frti vent cases of mistaken
identity ; that the highly liberal tone of the gentle-
men in question in .condemning anything like Tory
corruption was prima facie evilence that they could
not be the same persons, and that it would be well
to have a select committee to inquire. Mr. Glad-
stone was naturally shocked at the leader of the
house thus openly assuming a cynical air, and turn-
ing the corruptness of the country into a joke. Ho
withstood Mr. Disraeli td his face ; and the house,
who secretly felt grateful to Mr. Disraeli for making
light of their sins, fidgeted uneasily under the light
but grave rebuke of Mr. Gladstone. "I do not
sympathize," said Mr. Gladstone, with some solem-
nity, " with the Chancellor of the Exchequer's prac-
tice in attempting to get rid of these subjects as if
they were matters of great levity." And he re-
peated afterwards, amidst a scene of great excite-
ment, that " this house should take care as to the
impression it creates out of doors with regard
to the seriousness of its intention of strik-
ing at acts of bribery in high places."
Now, the "seriousness" of the house's intentions
on this subject is of a very questionable kind in-
deed, and it is apt to feel uncomfortable when Mr.
Gladstone or any other prophet reasons before it of
" righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come."
It feels just as Felix felt when Paul indulged lore-
marks on these unpleasant subjects—fidgetty—and
that prophets are jarring to the nerves. It prefers
secretly Mr. Disraeli's bold heathenism.
TILE " SATURDAY REVIEW" 0:4 MR. GLADSTONE'S
RECENT DOINGS.—We must look to Mr. Gladstone
for an account of the present state of things. And it
will be found in his own remarkable character. In
its littleness and greatness it is hardly appreciated.
He is a man of the closet, not of the flea
Demosthenes did not make much of it
with his harness on. Nothing could be
better than the fine patriotie ideal which Mr. Glad-
stone prescribed to himself at the
beginning of the
la
id
aside Party and party tactics were to be
aside ; on the common altar of the. country all
self-
seekingn was to be abandoned.
Everybody had
ample reason to bury the dead past ; it was on all
sides a dreary retrospect of failures, inconsistencies,.-
but friendly •crr
and vain professions. A vigilant
deism on details it was the duty of the Opposition
to urge, but in a patriotic spirit. No ungenerous
use was to be made of the weakness of the Govern-
ment. If Ministers could anyhosy reconcile it to
their own sense of personal honour to bring in and
pass a Reform Bill, it was not for Reformers, who
themselves had failed often enough, to hinder or
taunt them. Even if Mr. Gladstone despised the
worms, it was not magnanimous to trample on
them. Brave words—pious sentiments—amiable
resolutions. Only they were nothing more than
words, sentiments, and resolutions. When it came
to practice his good purposes, Mr. Gladstone found
that his way of displaying these virtues was not
quite what was expected of him or them. He did
not mean to be obstructive, only vigilant ; and his
notion of practical vigilance was to suspect every-
thing and condemn everything by anticipa-
tion. He did not intend to be other than con-
ciliatory ; but he always took care to announce
that his notion of conciliation was that every-
body should do as he told them. He was quite
ready to give and take, but he must do all the giv-
ing and taking himself. And, to do them only
justice, the Ministry scarcely winced at even this
indignity. Night after night Mr. Gladstone rose
with his questions, his suggestions, his announce-
ments, his instructions,.his ultimata, and the Trea-
sury Benchblandly smiled. It was not here that
Mr. Gladstone failed. He got on well enough with
the Government; he was provoking, they
were long suffering. It was the Liberals whom
he was alienating all the time. They could
see well enough that their leader had pledged him-
self to a policy which he was intellectually, perhaps
physically, incapable of carrying out. That policy
toa to
spirith m
s; physical torment
was a policy of self-restraint, and Mr. Gladstone is
incapable of self-restraint. Silence is an impossibi-
lityot°excwitltbulhe ewfiasirtgeistic. If he cannot
take counsel with the gods, he must exchange con-
fidences, compliments—talk anyhow—with even
.Beales and Bradlatigh. And so, carried away by a
noble irretention of speech, for six or seven weeks Mr.
Gladstone did nothing but interpose, iuterpellate,
interfere, announce, dictate, and prescribe to every-
body about everything on every possible—and now
and then, as with Beales, impossible—occasion. If
it had only vexed his opponents we might have de-
murred to the taste and judgment of all this. But
it told upon his own party more than on the Minis-
ters. Unable to appreciate the relations of time
and occasion and persons, Mr. Gladstone showed
himself equally lacking in the power to appreciate
the relative importance of things. With so very
earnest and sincere a person particles became* as
important ae the structure of the epic. To Ef. very

keen but microscopic eye a drop of water is as the
Kostnos itself. It is as necessary to take your stand
on the tall of a rubric as on the creed itself. The
tnheixnt. g wilciecheaisn fsoeretihte,
and
instantail
ibtesfocorensAlnr:ieB
la:1s. tobitile
t
is fraught with the interests of this world and the
i this ils half-hundred
t a
eine edtr o r
roast
t danger,w e
fence t
he can see nothing else. Who keows but that, if by
some accident the whole density of the earth were
(t;oli i
bt.esitl(t)cnreeatsneudsbt
gYtar ain'tild
g tai
nnsatl i
wi sho ri
uld all be chaos within ve minutes 9 11
,tei his
lt positionisa
i existingagainst
this
g
dear? danger
in
r
danger, -it is an extant dart-
is a danger which is actually ready to crush us now
this very moment. The more he looks at anything
the more it rises, swells, expands, and stretches• in
size and grandeur. And so he is always vehement, al-
ways in a towering fit of e trnestness and vigour. He
selects, as we have been reminded, the compound house-
holder. As soon azMr. Gladstone realised th ecom pound
householder, all human destinies and duties centred
themselves in the compound householder. On the
compound householder he took his stand. Here he
would give battle. On this point he would hear of
no compromise; he just admitted the possible sin-
cerity of those who demurred to the stupendous mag-
nitude of the last notion which had suggested itself to
Mr. Gladstone. With a mild and half-centemptuaus
scorn he could understand Mr. Locke and Mr. Clay
but listen to them, no never. He had drawn up his
instruction, and he must force it down the craven
throats Of his and all human kind's enemies. Only
in delivering the assault he fell on his back. And
now Mr. Gladstone is at the other end of the pole.
From the heights of dictuion lie is floundering in
the tags of despair. He confides his sorrows to the
Guildford Reform Association. Who Mr. Brooks
may be, and of whom the Guildford Reform Asso-
ciation consists, Mr. Gladstone, we suppose, knows
as little as we do. The only rural branch of the
League that we happen to be acquainted with has a
jobbing tailor for Secretary. Mr. Brooks of Guild-
ford is, we dare say, a very distinguished politician.
Anyhow he is goo I enough and great enough for
Mr. Gladstone to spend his Sunday letters upon.
And Mr. Gladstone writes to Mr. Brooks in a ter-
ribly wounded and depressed spirit. He is all amort.
He is like Hamlet ; he has the task of setting all
wrong things right, and he finds out his own weak-
ness and impotence. He is hurt; he is downcast;
he has suffered. One would think that he was
going to turn Trappist, and to condemn himself to
perpetual silence. He is now, he finds, small and of
no reputation. He has piped, and the children have
not danced; nay, even his friends have forsaken him.
He can hardly promise anything ; he is not sure that
he can do anything, say anything, undertake any-
thing. His faith in himself, which never yet de-
serted him, is shaking and trembling. He is ready,
it would almost seem, to sacrifice that leadership
which. has only led his army to defeat. And all this
the great leader of the great party confides to Mr.
Brooks of Guildford. He who dictated to 240 a
week ago, and at least reduced them to silence, now
pours his sorrows into the heart of Brooks of Guild-
ford. To a man in this frame of mind the Easter
holidays must do good. Jaded, disappointed, ener-
vated, Mr. Gladstone is very sore, and unfortunately
shows how very sore he is. But let him take
courage. There is plenty of work in him, and plenty
of work to do. It only wants more temper and less
talk, for the rest of the session.
THE " WESTMINSTER GAZETTE " ON EMANUEL
SWEDENBORG, THE VISIONARY OF EGYPT.—It is ex-
traordinary how much interest heresiarchs excite.
The world makes heroes of them ; so does Mr.
Carlyle. He glorifies Luther, and raises Knox to
the stars. But Luther and Knox were sober men
compared with Swedenborg. A wilder visionary
never dreamed, and he has recorded his interviews
with not fewer than sixty-seven personages in the
spiritual world. Among them we find Popes, Em-
perors, Apostles, philosophers, and poets ; and, as
a good deal of history is blended with Sweden-
borg's narrations, we may truly say that he
relied on his memory for his dreams and on his
imagination for his facts. About five years ago,
M. Matter, in an elaborate life of him, brought
his works under a sort of transcendental criticism,
which, being that of a French Protestant, was
scarcely less vague than that of the visionary
whom he was criticizing. He looked upon Swed-
enborg as " the supernatural in the presence of the
sceptic, the great'st -reconciliation ever attempted
between the natural and the-supernatural, ale ra-
tional and the marvellous." For ourselves, we
look in vain in Swedenborg for any such harmoni-
ous adjustment, and we think it worse than vain to
seek it elsewhere than in the Catholic Church.
Mr. White has given' in the volumes before us,
a still more detailed account of the seer • of
Stockholm than M; Matter. The home of his
boyhood, his first essays in authorship, his
travels, his poems, fables, and scientific projects
are all brought vividly before us. We see him
appointed assessor of mines by the King of
Sweden, engaged in engineering, and writing
on tin-plate. We dip into his geological and
chemical writings, and mark at every turn his
rage for novelty, his daring speculation, and his
tendency to build intellectual theories on a mate-
rial basis. He studies anatomy to discover the
soul, and resolves to prove at the same time
" that the soul is perfectly mechanical, and that
it is immortal." He visits Rome in 1739, but is
blind to the light of the Sacred City, and ob-
tains no blessing from the venerable and aged
Clement XII. Some years later, when his visions
were in rapid progress, he was more fortunate than
when he visited the Vatican. He saw Clement
XII. (Corsini) in the other world. The Pontiff
had for some time " presided over the Papists"
there, but had " abdicated of his own accord,
and passed over to the reformed Christians,"
among whom "he enjoyed a blessed life !" lie
informed Swedenborg that the invocation
saints is vain and ridiculous, and that he had
been very anxious to reform the Church
during his
popedom, but had found it impossible. The wise
and devout Benedict XIV. (Lamberti *) had mnot
been dead three weeks before he honoured
Swedenborg with an audience. He listened to
him with great politeness while he discoursed
on
the New Jerusalem, but soon returned to the
cavern, where he persisted in keeping company
with cunning and malicious devils. He confessed
that while on earth he held the Bible in con-
tempt, and thought his own speeches in the Con-
sistory very superior. He loved the Jesuits, and
when they were shown to be devils he still clung
to them. He met one day in hell the most
cunning of all the Popes who had died before
him, and, wishing to put his own craftiness to
the test, found that they were equals. Sixtus
V. (the faueous Felix Ferretti) likewise favoured
Swedenborg with many communications equally
important. He assured him that the vicarship of the
Popes was a human invention, and that, unlike
Benedict XIV., he held the Scriptures to be divine
and more holy than Papal edicts. St. Francis
Xavier had become " quite idiotic " when Sweden-
borg met him in the world of spirits ; St. Ignatius
Loyola was looking down with horror. on his own
'followers, and, like • all the other Catholic saints,
was highly offended at being invoked. It is incon-
ceivable how such drivelling nonsense, such paltry
and perverted imitation of Dante's poetic visions,
could ever have been accepted by any men, or
women either as the voice of wisdom and in-
us that
in-
spiration. Yet his biographer assures _
" Swedenborg's true glory consists in a new defini-
tion of the relations between the Creator and the
creature," and that " his other world experiences
arc altogether subsidiary to the illustration of
these relations." That the poor man was demented
there cannot be a doubt, and if we are to judge
by the New Jerusalem Magazine and the New Jer-
usalem Messenger, published respectively in Boston
and New York, we must pronounce the same
judgment on those who still honour him as the
founder of their sect. Every one who has read
Molder's " Symbolism " knows what his doctrines
were, and what view the " Pillar and Ground of
the Truth " takes of them. He maintained a
Trinity of principles, not of persons ; that the
Holy Spirit "is not a person separate from the
Lord ;" and that Christ is in Himself the Di-
vine Trinity. He was constantly battling with
the Lutherans on the one hand, and with Catho-
lics on the other. He consigned both to perdition
if they adhered to their standard. He contended
for justification by works and not by faith, but he
accepted baptism and the Lord's Supper as signs
only, devoid of any spiritual efficacy. In his
" Apocalypsis Revelata " (or "Revelation Re-
vealed"), and also in his " Vera Christiana Re-
ligio," he says, " With regard to Purgatory, I can
aver that it is a pure Babylonish fiction, invented
for the sake of gain, and that no such place does or
can exist." In short, this crazy dreamer, in his accept-
ance and rejection of Catholic doctrine, appears to
have been actuated by no fixed principle, and to
have yielded his judgment entirely to the guid-
ance of his fancy. His rhapsodies about the plan-
ets which he visited remind one of the Koran and
the Book of Mormon. The only excuse we can
make for him is that he had never been instructed
in the Catholic faith. He was a sectarian, sprung

from a sect, and being a layman, he had not even
that scanty measure of theological learning which
a Swedish pastor may be supposed to possess.
Never since the world began was there a man
less fitted to guide the consciences of others. lle
carried the Protestant principle of private judg-
ment,. to its utmost extent, and affirmed his own
fancies and visions as divine revelations. While
he protested against Papal infallibility, he main-
tained Swedenborgian. He alone was appointed
by Heaven to explain the inner sense of Scripture,
and he tossed about the moral commandmehts of
the New Law as wildly as its articles of faith.
Thus he taught both by example and precept that
chastity is not necessary, and certainly not to be
expected in all cases. His praise of marriage rose
no higher than this, that it is better than un-
married contracts. He was never married himself,
but there were two persons at least who at different
times stood in the place of a wife to him. Mr.
White does not hold with this part of his reli-
gious system, if system it can be called. He ob-
jects to it very properly as involving the degradation
of woman, but Catholics repudiate it on higher
grounds.

As there are still many persons who, like Mr.
White and M. Matter, in spite of Swedenborg's
absurdities, try to invest him with the attributes
of a Christian philosopher, it may be worth while
to show to what extent his ignorance and fatuity
sometimes reached. He pretended, or fancied,
that he saw and conversed with Louis XIV. in
the other world, "about 8 o'clock p.m.,
December
13th, 1759. His Majesty appeared descending by
ladders (of the Jacob build, no doubt), and seemed
to himself to be again at Versailles." Tie was
silent for half an hour—rather a ion.- patTA- even
for Louis Quatorze—and then, condescending tt)
give utterance to his regal sentiments, declared
" that he had spoken with the King of France
(Louis XV), his grandson, concerning the Bull
Unigenitus, advising him to desist from his former
design, and not to accept it, because it was detri-
mental to the French nation." Now Louis XV. was
not the grand-son of Louis XIV., but his great
grandson. This is blunder the first. The Bull Uni-
genitus, which condemned the doctrines of Janse-
nius, was promulgated in Louis XlV.'s own reign.
It was issued by Clement XI. in 1713 ; Louis
XIV. died in 1715. It was published by the Holy
Father at the request of the French bishops.
Benedict XIII. confirmed it in Council in 1725, and
issued another Bull called Pretiosus to explain the
former document. Cardinal de Noailles, Arch
bishop of Paris, gave currency to the Unigenitus in
France (1725). The five propositions of Janse-
nius had been formally condemned by Innocent X.
in 1653, and Alexander VII. renewed the condem-
nation in 1665. To this last act the French eccle-
siastics one and all adhered, and Louis XIV.
allowed no one, under heavy penalties, to resist the
adhesion. Thus the Bull, which, according to
Swedenborg, Louis XV. was " advised" by his
(great) grandfather " not to accept " in France,
had been accepted there in fact during forty-six
years, and in principle during a much longer pe-
riod. This is Swedenborg's blunder the second in
one vision only. Mr. White may well say "he
seems to be in a maze here." Ile was in a maze
everywhere and at all times. History fares' o
better than theology in his hands, and his bio-
grapher allows that " he dealt with such matters
as an amateur ; his theological reading was practi-
cally nil." Mr. White accepts his mission with
some reserve. He believes, indeed, that Sweden-
borg " entered into acquaintance with angels,
spirits, and devils, and that the Lord within vivi-
fied his new experience into wisdom," yet he, "by
no means accepts all Swedenborg has to relate
concerning the spiritual world as true." He has
" no confidence whatever that any spirit he testi-
fies he saw was the real person." "He disliked
David and he disliked Paul." "I do not," he
says, " accuse him of any conscious humbug in
these stories (about Elizabeth of Russia, Louis
XIV., and our own George H.) ; I only adduce
them to prove that he was liable to see what he
wished to see." _ .

We cannot congratulate Mr. White on having
added much to the stock of 'useful literature by
the present volumes. That there are several dra-
matic and interesting passages in Swedenborg's
career, we do not deny, nor that two or three of
the phenomena which his history presints are
curious, and deserve to be examined.; but we
think it clear that he led those Protestants who
were deluded enough to follow him further away
from the truth than they were before, and that his
pretensions to be regarded as a prophet and a seer
are worthy of no more serious answer than such
as may be found in a copy of satirical verses. It
is a pity that Canning auji Frere did not take
Swedenborg in hand, and do by him as they did by
Darwin in their " Loves of the Triangles." It is
but fair to say that Mr. White's composition is that
of a man of cultivated mind, and that the passages
which he places by the side of his extracts from
Swedenborg are, in general, very apposite.