The Sun.
London, England, 1867-10-04 00:00:00

The Two Leaders.

(From the Saturday Review.)
Within the last few days the leaders of the two
great traditional parties who now serve under the
Radical junto have been doing emblematic things in
a typical manner. Mr. Disraeli has assisted at a
harvest feast, and Mr. Gladstone has helped to open
a dock. The one expatiated with genial ignorance
upon the brightness of the barley and the plentiful
ingathering of the oats ; while the other was deeply
moved and awfully impressive about iron and coal,
and the moral significance of big docks. The
Opposition leader spoke and felt at the foundation
of Barrow-in-Furness as the pious 2Eneas may have
done when he camp to Lavinium ; there was no
miraculous sow with 30 young ones, it is true, but
there were the Duke of Devonshire and the Marquis
of Hartiugton. Anyhow, his soul was inflamed
with prophetic fire, and his lips touched with a
sacred unction. The Minister chatted like a good-
humoured farmer over a pot of ale at the market-
town. Mr. Gladstone was penetrated as usual with
the high and holy profundity of all things, from
copper and cotton up to flesh and blood and his
fellow-Christians. He dwelt in his very best
funereal manner " upon the appearances of comfort,
and upon the good and Sound arrangements
apparently made for the health and advantage of
the population, showing that amid the pursuit of
wealth thine high and sacred purposes have not
been forgotten." Mr. Disraeli, on the other hand,
did not seem to know or to care much about high
and sacred. purposes. What he does know is that
the Buckinghamshire peasant loves three things—a
porch, an oven, and a tank ; and, so far as Mr.
Disraeli can do anything for him, a porch, an oven,
and a tank he shall have. There is something quite
characteristic in this difference between calling a

tank a tank, and calling it a sacred purpose. It is
because Mr. Disraeli knows men that he is where he

is, at the very top of the political tree, while his
rival is croaking horribly against him on the lower
branches. Ile knows that in Buckinghamshire
the smiling yokels like preachments very well
in their proper place, but that elsewhere
they dislike them exceedingly, while they
are intensely charmed to think that their great
politician knows what it is to have a tank or an
oven of your own. Mr. Gladstone has less discern-
ment. He never loses the fervour of a very young
and devout curate in his first parish. lie is always
ready for an exhortation. No occasion is too small
to be improved. We can never deplore enough
that it was not he, instead of Mr. Disraeli, who first
revealed to mankind the expediency of crossing a
Southdown with a Cotswold. What, in the hands
of the one, was a mere process of sheep-braeding,
would have assumed with the other nothing less
than the solemnity of a great religious observance.
We laughed at the one ; we should not have esc Ted
from the other without a wonderful deepening of
moral conviction. A mere agricultural innovation
with Mr. Disraeli would certainly have been satu-
rated with ethical or theological meaning by Mr.
Gladstone. And can we not imagine the disdain
with which the statesman who is chafing in the cold
shade would read his sunny rival's easy assurance
that he is not "up to politics" in September ? As
if there were any moment in life in which a man
ought not to be up to that great and difficult art
in which the happiness and advancement of so
many millions of fellow-creatures are wrapped up;
as if the accident of a month which the fri-
volous make a holiday could justify a Chancellor
of the Exchequer in declining to preach to his
neighbours little moral and political sermons.
Still, for all this, Mr. Disraeli makes very pleasant
and seasonable September reading.
If this were a less sceptical age, and metempsy-
chosis were in fashion, one might almost believe that
the soul of the late Lord Palmerston had passed into
Mr. Disraeli. In the management of the House of
Commons the Chancellor of the Exchequer has
shown that he can bend the bow of the departed
veteran, who knew the ways of many men and many
cities, with no unequal skill. The mantle of the
departed chief sits pretty easily on the shoulders of
his adroit successor. They are much of a figure.
Out of the house, too, there is a resemblance. Mr.
Disraeli at Hughenden and Lord Palmerston at a
Romney ploughing-match come to pretty nearly the
same thing. The proceedings at Hughenden the
other day suggest dreadful thoughts. Is it possible
that we have just entered, in spite of Reform Bills
and Trades' Unions and Fenians, upon a second
Palmerstonian epoch ? that we have to look forward
to a long gloomy era of joking and cajoling, of all
things being made pleasant to all men, of no
things being done for any man ? that in the Ses-
sion we are to be exasperated by a clever imitation
of activity, and in the vacation to be amused
by clever imitations of jocularity ? Is all this pos-
sible ? We are sure that, if it is, Mr. Disraeli is
competent to realise it. First of all, he enjoys
strategy of any sort, and has an inborn gift for
imitation. Imitation comes easier to him than
nature. It allows a greater freedom of play for the
wonderful variety of his acquired capacities. His
repertory is perhaps the most extensive of any
statesman's in Europe. Ile can play the philo-
sopher, generalising on history or human life, in a
way which might and does take in philosophers by
profession. As the playful or biting epigrammatist
he is matchless. As theologian he once persuaded
a whole crowd of Oxford parsons and tutors, and
particularly undergraduates, that he had for ever
extinguished the theological pretensionsof a Coleus°,
a Jowett, a Maurice, a Stanley, to say nothing of
the scientific pretensions of a Darwin. As practical
farmer, nobody would ever find out that he does
not know all about turnips and wurzal, about sheep
and wool, and barley and oats, about porches and
tanks. And, most marvellous of all, lie has shown
that he can beat Mr. Gladstone on his own funereal
ground. He infused a truer pathos and a higher
solemnity into the twenty lines he spoke about Mr.
Cobden than Mr. Gladstone ever reached in the
House or out of it. Thera is no limit to this as-
tounding versatility. Perhaps a worse thing than
Pahnerstonism would befall us if Mr. Disraeli took
very seriously to politics. Suppose he were to
become earnest about them. In the eventful session
which is just over there was sonic reason for sus-
pecting that he had allowed himself to grow really
earnest about Reform. And we know what he has
done, and what portentous difficulties he van-
quished. Somebody said of the thrice immortal
Wilkes that if he had only had a good character,
and George 111. a bad one, Wilkes would have
driven the King out of the country. Most likely
lie would, and the kingdom would not have been
much the worse if he had driven both him and his
eldest son out. Some future historian may say in
like manner, if Mr. Disraeli had had a good charac-
ter to fall back upon, he would have driven his rival
still deeper into the shade than he is now. Iu this
case the kingdom would decidedly be a good
deal the worse. To have skippo George IV.