The Sun.
London, England, 1867-03-13 00:00:00

WHAT WILL LORD DERBY DO 1

TO TILE EDITOR OF THE SUN.

Sin,-1 have yet many things to say to you on
the above-named most important subject. Perhaps
I may be allowed just to trace the rise and fall of
the Whig party during their well-nigh off and on
37 years tenure of office. It is well known to all
readers of history that this party was banished
from office during nearly the whole of the reigns of
George 111. and IV., until they came in by a
sheer piece of good luck, owing to the Duke of
Wellington's Tory Government having in the
month of November, 1830, fallen into a minority
on the new Civil List, which it became necessary
to enact on the decease of George IV. and the
accession of William IV. I will here take the
trouble to note down the progress of the Whigs
since their complete and apparently permanent
settlement in power by the first election under the
Reform Bill. The years 1831 and 1832 were-
years of transition. After the ever-memorable
election in the spring of 1831 the Whigs had,
indeed, a temporary ascendancy, but they were
well aware that their ground was not secure.
Their majority was only gained by a popular ex-
citement, and might be expected by the ebb of that
feeling to dwindle away. The old Reform Bill of
1832, therefore, became their great stock in trade,
it was the one great point at which they aimed ;
and they kept that point in view until complete
success bad crowned their exertions. By the
secession of their opponents in the House of
Lords, the Whigs were enabled to carry their own
plan of representation in talk. To use the slang
expressions of those good old days, they carried
" The Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill."
They thus secured themselves a House of Commons,
planned and secured by themselves. The first elec-
tion at the close of 1832 fully answered all expecta-
tion. It formed a House of Cornmone in which only
about 150 Conservatives were found; 500 of its mem-
bers professedly supported the " Reform Ministry,"
and of these fully 400 were staunch and obsequious
adherents. When had any Administration Eng-
land or the world ever saw commenced its career
under circumstances so favourable? " We shall be
too strong, we shall be too strong," was Lord
Brougham's well-known exclamation in those good
old times ; strong indeed for useful action in every
requisite that Administration was. The King wassaid
to be heartily with the Cabinet ; the people had just
shown their confidence by their electoral returns ;
the house was theirs by a majority altogether over-
whelming; the Peers cowered and waited, not in
friendship, but almost in fear. What became of
this state of things? Will the most exultant sup-
porter of the Administration of the late Lord Pal-
merston, or of that of Lord Russell, when he was
in office a year ago, venture to deny that the 35
years have made a woeful change, or that few things
could offer a more striking contrast than the paling
state of Whiggism in 1831, 1832, 1833, and 1834,
when, be it observed, as I have now in the course of
my correspondence shown to you, our present learned
Prime Minister was an eminent member of the then
Whig Government, headed by the late Earl Grey
(the very individual who in his youthful days, in
1793, when Mr. Grey, had so highly offended the
ultra-Tory party by going down to the House of
Commons in a blue coat and yellow breeches, when
Louis XVI. of France and nearly all England went
into deep mourning). As I have already said, few
things can offer a more striking contrast than the
palmy state of Whiggism in those days than its despair-
ing plight in 1861, 1862, 1863, 1864, 1865, and 1866.
About 14 years ago the late Mr. Cobden published
some letters, headed "France, 1793-1853," showing
the relative difference between the two periods.
Any one might do the same thing regarding 1833
and 1863. 1 will, however, descend from gene-
ralities to particulars, and observe the gradual pro-
gress of this decline, which brought Whiggism to
be the crawling, expiring, clinging, supplicating,
and manoeuvring thing it was this time last year,
when it brought in its last Reform Bill, which
caused its death in June last. As I have already
said in 1833 the \V hig Ministry enjoyed a complete
ascendancy in Parliament, The OW diYisiQfl in

that year were :—On the Irish Church Bill, for
317; against, 78. On the vote of confidence—affairs
of Portugal, for 361 ; against, 93. On the Irish
Church Bill, for 274 ; against, 94. In each of

these three discussions the late Sir R. Peel voted

and spoke, yet he had not so many asloo followers
in either of them. Strong, indeeJ, must have been
that Government which could baffle the wonderful

talent and eloquence of this gigantic genius. The
working majority of the Ministry in that session

may be safely put down as at least 300. The fol-
lowing year, 1834, the appropriation clause began
to show itself, and curious enough in the month of
May, in that last-named year, our present Premier,
then Mr. Secretary Stanley, and the late Sir James
Graham seceded from that Whig Government of
which for three years and a half they had been such
useful and eminent members ; and from this time
I can begin to trace the beginning of declension in
strength as well as in principle. The only two
great divisions of this year were :-Admission of
Dissenters to the Universities, for 321 ; against,
147. Irish Tithe Bill, for 235 ; against 171.
The opening of the Ministerial majority at the
beginning of this session was about 200. This was
when Lord Derby was a member of it ; before the
close, when Lord Derby and Sir James Graham had
quitted it, it had fallen to 150. The year 1835-
Bright and Cobden's model year-opened with a
new Parliament; the old one, which was the first
elected under the Reform Bill, having been dis-
solved by the late Sir It. Peel on his accession to
office at the close of the previous year, and now it
began to be seen how wofully the Whigs had already
lost the confidence of the people. Their majority
was almost gone. With difficulty they defeated the
late Sir R. Peel by a majority of 33 ; and, even with
the added influence of Government, they scarcely
reached a majority of 50. The great divisions of
1835 were :-On the Irish Church Appropriation
Clause-for, 322 ; against, 288. On the Irish
Church Bill Appropriation Clause-for, 307 ;
against, 243. On the Irish Corporation Bill-for,
267 ; against, 176. On the Irish Corporation Bill
-for, 262 ; against, 234. In 1836 they opened
with more confidence and courage ; continuance in
office had added somewhat to their strength. On
the Address-for, 234 ; against, 243. On the
Irish Corporation Bill-for, 307.; against, 243. On
the Irish Corporation Bill-for, 260 ; against, 199.
On the Irish Tithe Bill-for, 300 ; against, 261.
Their average majority seemed now to have risen to
something above 50. In 1837 the session began in
a still more promising manner, but it declined to-
wards its close. The great divisions were these :-
On the Irish Corporation Bill-for, 322 ; against,
250. On the Church Rates Bill-for, 273 ; against,
250. On the Irish Corporation Bill-for, 300 ; against,
247. On the Order in Council-for, 278; against, 247.
On the Church Rate Bill-for, 287 ; against, 282.
On the Commission of Church Leases-for, 319 ;
against, 236. Thus twice the majority had risen
as high as 80, but once it had fallen as low as 5.
This brings us to the period when her present Most
Gracious Majesty ascended the throne in 1838 ; the
Whigs had, in consequence of the demise of the
Crown in 1837, again a Parliament of their own, a
House elected under Whig influence, but their
strength was rapidly fading away. The chief divi-
sions of the Session were :-On Foreign Policy-
for, 316 ; against, 287. Lord Sandon on Church
Leases--for, 277 ; against, 244. On Church In-
struction-for, 265 ; against, 254. On the Irish
Tithe Bill-for, 217 ; against, 298. On the Irish
Corporation Bill-for, 286 ; against, 266. Thus it
became manifest that the standing majority for
Ministers had fallen to about 30 votes. In 1839,
the year of the Bedchamber Plot, and the melan-
choly death of poor Lady Flora Hastings, which
last named event had a most serious effect upon the
Ministerial and political events of that year ; matters
became still worse. The divisions of this Session
were as follows :-On the Irish Policy--for, 319 ;
against, 296. On the Jamaica Bill-for, 294 ;
against, 289. On the Jamaica Bill-for, 267 ;
against, 257. On National Education-for, 280 ;
against, 275. On National Education-for, 275 ;
against, 273. The Ministerial majority, then, for
all practical purposes seemed to have fallen down to
about 5, 10, or 15 votes. They were not, however,
left in a minority on any important question, with
the exception of their defeat and temporary resig-
nation in May, 1839, on the Jamaica question.
Moat elderly and middle-aged people can remember
their return to office, and the famous bed-
chamber plot of the above named year.
The Session of 1840 opened with an evident increase
of power and courage on the part of the Conserva-
tives, and a proportionate falling off in the strength
of the Whigs. The strongest proceeding of all, a
vote of want of confidence, was at once proposed.
This measure, seldom indeed ventured upon, and
which Lord Russell himself, in 1835, even at an
ascertained majority, did not dare to direct against
the late Sir R. Peel, this proposition was barely
defeated by a majority of 21. On their Chinese
Policy Ministers had only the smaller majority of
10. In almost every other encounter they were
defeated. The chief contests of the session were
these (reckoning the vote on the late Prince Con-
sort's pension as nothing unusual or strange, as it
may appear at this distance of time), Radicals and
Conservatives were mingled in that majority : -
On Sir J. Yarde Buller's motion, 308 for, 287
against; on Mr. Herrie's motion, 172 for, 182
against ; on Mr. Liddle's motion, 212 for, 240
against ; on Sir J. Graham's motion, 277 for, 261
against ; on the Ludlow Writ, 215 for, 226 against;
on Lord Stanley's Bill, 234 for, 250 against ; on
Lord Stanley's Bill, 298 for, 301 against ; on Lord
Stanley's Bill, 195 for, 206 against ; on Lord Stan-
ley's Bill, 296 for, 289 against ; on Lord Stanley's
Bill, 271 for, 275 against. So that on these 10 great
divisions the Whig Ministers could muster only
2,472 votes, or 247 in each on an average. Can
anything be more plain than that during those
seven years above named the Whig majority be-
came annihilated. There is, however, one view
of the question which cannot be forgotten. It is
that their progress downward was unceasing after
our present Premier quitted the aforesaid Whig
Government in 1834. Thus stood the account :-
1833 majority, 300 ; 1834 majority, 150 ;
1835, majority, 50 ; 1836, majority, 50 ; 1837,
majority, 30 ; 1838, majority 30 ;
1839, majority, 30 ; 1840, majority,
All middle aged men are full welt able to remember
the excitement of the country in 1841, and the
general election which gave the late Sir R. Peel his
overwhelming majority, and sent the Whigs, who
then held office, with the exception of a few short
months for 11 years to the bleak and dreary re-
gions of the Opposition for five years, during which
time we had the most powerful Government ever
known since the days of Pitt. In 1846 the lute Sir
R. Peel was defeated on the Irish Coercion Bill,
and the Whigs again took the reins of Government,
and until their defeat last summer had held office
ever since. But why were they permitted to remain
so long in office ? The answer is very obvious.
Merely because party spirit has been at such a low
ebb that it was not thought worth while to turn
them out. Their power is, however, as completely
gone as it was a quarter of a century ago ; and I
trust they are now banished to the bleak and dreary
regions of the Opposition not for five but for fifty
years. In 1859 they turned out the present Go-
vernment of Lord Derby on a very sensible reform
bill, because, according to their notion of things, it
did not go far enough ; and since then, until last
year, reform was in as hopeless and drooping a
plight as it was described to be in 1827 by the late
Earl Grey towards the close of the Georgian era.
However 1 think I have said enough, and more
than enough, to show that the sun of the Whigs is
set. I trust it has now become as completely a
thing of the past as the Georgian era, the Stuart
dynasty, or even the Heptarchy.-I remain, sir,
your obedient servant,
A LOVER OF HISTORICAL DATES AND FACTS.

THE EMPEROR NAPOLEON AND THE ARMY.—
On Sunday morning, at ten o'clock, the Emperor Napoleon
descended to the post of troops on guard, situated in the
courtyard of the Palace, and there, sitting down in the can-
teen, waited patiently until the cooking of the soldiers' soup
was terminated. His Majesty then tasted it, and declaring
it to be of good quality, had it distributed in the usual way
to the men. "Now, gentlemen," he said, in taking his de-
parture, "you can partake of it." This kind and simple
act of the Emperor produced the greatest enthusiasm
amongst the am,

LITERATURE.

Mackay's English Anthology.

A Thousand and One Gems of English Poetry.
Selected and arranged by Charles Mackay, LL.D.
One Vol. Pp. 602. George Routledge and Sons,

London and New York.

A charming volume, this is, with a most charming
title. It is far more than that, however. It is in
many respects the amplest and choicest collection of
English Poetry yet published, within our own know-
ledge at least, upon either side of the Atlantic. The
gems here brought together by the skilled lapidary
to whom has been entrusted the delicate task of
their selection are not all of them, of course, or
even the majority among them, of the purest watra.
They are not--as he himself expresses it in his In-
troduction—all of them of equal brilliancy. " The
diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and pearls of literature
are few," he writes, " but there are other gems
than these of inferior value, but still gemlike" : some
of which latter he thereupon enumerates as " agate,
cornelian, amethyst, turquoise, onyx"—and others the
names of which it were unnecessary to particularise.
Going in quest of them, Dr. Mackay has been, as
it were, wandering of late, hither and thither, as the
fancy prompted him, about a very Garden of Aladdin
—culling the more or less precious fruits clustered
there abundantly among the umbrage of familiar
leaves— sometimes in those same devious and dis-
cursive wanderings of his, striking upon pathways
such as those sung of by Sir Walter Raleigh in his
celebration of the Soul's Pilgrimage, where he ex-

" Then, those holy paths we'll travel,
Strewn with rubies thick as gravel."

Here they certainly are at intervals "thick as
gravel"—these glorious rubies strewn prodigally
before us as we advance—as (to content ourselves
with one solitary example as in itself all-sufficient)
in the instance of Lord Byron. Jewels—happily
for us—more than—

‘,. . . five words long,
That on the stretched forefinger of all Time

Sparkle for ever."—
Such, let us say, in the instance just now particu-
larised (that of Lord Byron) as—The Fall of
Sennacherib—The Isles. of Greece—The Ode to
Napoleon—The Apostrophe to the Ocean—The
Cataract of Velino—The Vision of Darkness—The
right before the Battle of Waterloo—with other
peerless effusions. A miscellanous collection of
Poetry such as this—a collection, that is to say which
undertakes to give the choisest specimens of the
different writers in any given language or literature
—can never, as a matter of course, as a matter of
absolute certainty, perfectly satisfy as a whole from
first to last the taste of any oue save the actual
collector himself. Quot hontines—" but the pro-

verb's somewhat musty." The whole of it is to a very
great extent purely a matter of personal preference
—a matter almost, one might say, of temperament
or of idiocyncracy. All that can reasonably be looked
for is that the reader's ideas and the compiler's
may in a very great measure approximate—as
to the judiciousness, that is, upon the whole, of
the selection made by the latter when his very
difficult, and, as we have just now said, most
delicate task of selection has been accomplished.
Altogether—judging of the selection here made as
a whole—this " Thousand and One Gems of Eng-
lish Poetry," collected together by Dr. Mackay,
appears to us to be not only such as will be found by
the majority of his readers to be worthy of very
high commendation indeed, but such as entitles
him, in his capacity as a wise and choice col-
lector, to gratitude as well as to admiration. The
Gems he has here clustered together were, in
many instances—to employ the alliterative phrase
used by Dr. Johnson in his Preface to Shakspere—
" mingled with a mass of meaner minerals," until,
having been picked thus afresh from among the
meaner minerals, they were set here in this (may we so
designate it without incurring the charge of affecta-
tion?) aigrette or torque for the brow or bosom of
Britannia. It cannot but be absolutely essential.
however, as we take it, for every one coming to
an examination of this volume as a very choice
collection—to our own notion as the very choicest
of all collections yet published—of English Poetry
—it cannot but be absolutely essential, we say, for
any one coming to the examination of a volume
like this (no matter how highly he may feel disposed
to commend it) to justify his commendation of it
as a collection, precisely as we do, by speak-
ing of it as, upon the whole, worthy of admi-
ration, or—as we have even gone so far as
to say—worthy of gratitude as well as of admiration.
For, to the eyes of any lettered reader examining
pages of this particular character, the contents of
those pages cannot possibly but be here and there
suggestive of regrets as to this or that having been
preferred, or, still more again, as to this or that espe-
cial and cherished favourite having been altogether
omitted—forgotten or overlooked. Unpremedi-
tatedly and quite haphazard, let us, then, by way
of argument, give here a very few illustrations of
what we are thus implying. Geoffery Chaucer, for
example, we, for our own part, should hardly have
thought, adequately represented without our having
included among the extracts from him his cele-
bration of the Daisy. Thomas Chatterton, we
should have preferred to represent by his Dirge,
or even by his rhythmical delineation of the
solar System (chiming as with the music of the
spheres) than by his brief though noble
stanzas "On Resignation." From Leigh Hunt,
again, we should have dearly liked to have taken
" Paganini," or "To Johnny," instead of " The
Glove and the Lions," or, as it is by an odd mis-
print given here in the index, " The Globe and the
Lions." From Thomas Hood we should yet more
dearly have welcomed " We watched her breathing
through the night," and " I smell the rose above
the would," and "Love thy mother, little one"—
Gems as exquisite in their way as the " Song of the
Shirt," or the " Bridge of Sighs." Just as surely
as we would have given with Edgar Poe's " Raven"
his " Bells," and—together with their harmonious
tiutinabulation— his ineffably I: eautiful apostrophe
(de profundis) "To Annie." Samuel Coleridge—
even though he is here, so to speak, rendered
audible to us by such matchless fragments as
—" Christabel" and the " Ancient Mariner"—seems
to lack one other fragmentary excerpt from the
former poem—namely, the passage there conveying
to us that most perfect portraiture of all that is
winning and winsome in Childhood—
" A little child, a limber elf,
Singing, dancing to itself ;
A fairy thing with red round cheeks,
That always finds and never seeks,
Makes such a joy unto the sight,
As fills a father's eyes with light."
Still more, even, than that minute Gem, which
might, as we think, with advantage have been ga-
thered from among the leaves of Coleridge by Dr.
Mackay, while that keen-eyed collector of jewels
was filling his casket in the Aladdin's Garden, as
we have called it, of our English Parnassus—still
more, even, than that one minute Gem do we re-
gret not to discover here what is certainly, in our
own estimation, Coleridge's pearl of price, or his
diamond of the purest water, his Koh-i-noor, or
his paragon-ruby—" Love," beginning—
" All thoughts, all passions, all delights,"
And ending with the wooing and the winning of
Genevieve ! In regard to Lord Houghton again
(Monckton Milnes that was) we regret to find any
other exemplar of his lyrical genius than what is
still to our mind the happiest and daintiest among
them all—" I wandered by the brookside." Among
the poets dead and gone, we look here in vain, by
the way, for the name of Robert Nicholl, whose
claim, nevertheless, to that glorious title of poet
might have been so very readily es well as nobly
justified by his celebration of the theme " God is
Everywhere "—a poem comprising within it stanzas
such as these (we quote them from memory) :
A trodden daisy from the sward
With tearful eye I took,
And on its ruined beauties I
With moving heart did look.
For crushed and broken though it was,
That little flower was fair,
And 0, I loved the drooping bud,
For God was there.

I stood upon the soabeat shoro,
The waves camo rushing on,
The tempest raged in giant wrath,
The light of day was gone,

The sailor, from his drowning bark,
Sent up his dying prayer ;
I looked amid the ruthless storm,
And God was there.

I trod a silent wilderness,
A desert, pathless wild,
Whore verdure grew not by the streams,
Where beauty never smiled.
I gazed upon the leafless scene,
The muirland lone and bare,
And awe upon my spirit crept,
For God was there.

And so on—among all the varied scenes of human
life—among the bridal maidens at a wedding, or
by the side of the young mother lamenting over
her dead infant, when—

I saw her kiss its fair, pale face,
And smooth its yellow hair,
And 0, I loved the mourner's grief—
For Go I was there.

From among— living Poets, again, we miss
with
regret all mention of William Allingham. And yet
there is no one, we feel perfectly certain of this,
who would more heartily admire than 1)r. Mackay
himself the young Irish Poet's ballad of " Mary
Donnelly," of whom, when she is dancing, he sings--
" . . . . her steps were so complete
The music nearly killed itself to listen to her feet."
And in celebration of whose beauty of face and
singing, we read—
" The fiddler cursed his blindness to hear her so much
praised,
But blessed himself he wasn't deaf when once hor voice
she raised."

And so forth. Better, to our fancy than Sydney
Dobell's "Tommy's Dead," would have been his
matchless little war song of the French Soldier,
beginning—

"0 a gallant sans pour,
Is the merry chasseur,
With his fanfarou horn, and his rifle ping-pang ;
And his grand havresack
Of gold, on his back,
And his pistol crick, crack,
And his sword cling, clang."
As commemorative of poor Robert Brough (a few
years back so prematurely deceased) who would not
have welcomed here his dainty little ditty (originally
published in household Words) about "Neighbour
Nelly ?" And so on—and so on—the carping list of
omissions or of preferences might be extended
indifferently, according to the especial whimsies
or predilections of each individual, taking
up in turn, and dipping into, and scrutinising the
contents of this beautiful volume. Comment upon
those contents, however—for exactly such as they
are—in the way of mere carping, we would here at
once distinctly and absolutely repudiate. The
suggestions which have been thrown out by us ill
the foregoing observations have been thus thrown
out, in the first instance, simply as attestations that
the welcome accorded by us to this charming volume
is that of no merely unthinking or inconsiderate
infatuation ; and in the next place, because in the
prospect, or rather, we would say, with the inev'
table certainty before such a book as this, of its
running through very many editions, we cling to
the hope that some among our missing favourites
may yet, happily, through Dr. Mackay's kindly re-
consideration of their claims, come to be even-
tually interpolated. Otherwise, than in this
kindlier spirit, to comment upon the labour
of love which has manifestly been expended
upon the filling up of this Casket of Gems by npe
who is himself at once a true Poet, a true Critic,
would have about it an aspect of ungracious-
ness but little short of pragmatical impertinence.
Not one is there among the living Poets of Eng;
land, Ireland, Scz-Aland, and America but must feel
proud to find his name enrolled among the radiant
catalogue of great names making up the bulk of the
list of those contributing to this exquisite volume-
To cavil seriously over any deficiency whatever
observable anywhere in its contents would bring
down upon any one so cavilling, one might reason-
ably enough conjecture, an echo of the Archbishop's
sardonically benevolent wish in Gil Blas—beaucoup
de bonheur et un peu plus de bon godt / Without a
qualm, for such precisely as it is, we can and do AC-
cept it very cordially not the archbishop's wish, be
it understood, but Dr. Mackay's new book of the
" Thousand and One Gems of English Poetry."
Purchaseable for a preposterously small amount,
the book is certain of—what it deserves—an im-
mense circulation. And no wonder, for it is the
gathering together in one pocket volume of the
gems of our whole poetic literature.

tourt
(gir

HER MAJESTY, &C•

WINDSOR CASTLE, March 12.
The Queen and Princess Louise drove out yester-
day afternoon.
Her Majesty walked and drove this morning, ac-
companied by Princess Christian.
Prince Leopold went out walking, attended by
Mr. Sahl.
The Queen, accompanied by Princess Louise, went
to London this afternoon, and visited the Prince
and Princess of Wales at Alarlborough-house.

ORIENTAL, INDIA, AND CHINA MAILS.

GIBRALTAR, marcu
The Nyanza, from Southampton on the 4th inst.,
arrived to-day at 9 a.m., and left at 2 p.m. for
Alexandria. Experienced two days' bad weather.