The Sun.
London, England, 1867-09-12 00:00:00

7ARL VANE AND HIS WELSH TENANTRY.

On Saturday Earl Vane returned to his Welsh
seat, Plas Edwards, near Machynlleth. His lord-
ship, accompanied by Countess Vane and Lord Sea-
ham, arrived by a special train on the Cambrian
Railway (of which company his lordship is chair-
man), and at Oswestry, Welshpool, and other sta-
tions, salutes were fired in honour of the event. On
the arrival of the train at Machynlleth his lordship
was met by the principal inhabitants of the neigh-
bourhood. The station was decorated with flags,
evergreens, &c., and loud cheers of welcome greeted
the Vane family on their return to their Welsh
estates. When the cheering had subsided the rector
of Machynlleth read the following address :—" To
the Right Hon Earl Vane.—We, the inhabitants of
the town and neighbourhood of Machynlleth, beg
to offer our hearty congratulations to your lordship
on your return from St. Petersburg, where you
had the distinguished honour of representing our
most gracious Sovereign Lady the Queen on a
mission of friendship and goodwill to his Majesty
the Emperor of Russia—a mission calculated to
strengthen and perpetuate the peaceable and friendly
relations now happily subsisting between the two
great countries. It is also a matter of felicitation,
apart from this gratifying proof of the confidence
reposed in your lordship by our beloved Sovereign,
that it has been your good fortune to win the esteem
and respect of the Emperor, which his Majesty has
deigned to mark by conferring on your lordship the
order of St. Alexander Nevsky, which is the highest
but one in the empire, and only given on rare occa-
sions. We cordially welcome your arrival this day
at your residence here, and pray that you and Lady
Vane may live long to enjoy the honours you have
received." Earl Vane said that on his arrival at his
maternal home in the north he had felt overpowered
by the reception he had met with there from those
with whom his earliest days were spent ; and if he
felt a difficulty then, how much more must he feel
it when he had to return thanks to those whom he
was not connected with by ties of birth, but by
those of a nearer and dearer character. The kind-
ness they had exhibited towards him should not be

forgotten, and in days yet to COlll3 he hoped to look
back with feelings of the :greatest pleasure to the
principality, associated as he was with Wales by
one who was nearest and dearest to him. He need
hardly tell them that it was a great pleasure to him
to be accompanied on his mission to Russia by his
wife and eldest son, and it was a curious coinci-
dence that he (Lord Vane) had in 1836 accom-
panied his father to St. Petersburg, when the same
age as Lord Seaham was now, and it was a plea-
sure for him in 1867 to be welcomed by some of
the familiar faces of 1836. His reception in Russia,
from the Emperor downwards, had been most gra-
tifying. It was true that they went at rather an
inopportune time, when most of the nobility were at
their country eetates, but many of the principal
families remained specially in St. Petersburg in
order to do honour to the mission sent by her Ma-
jesty, of whom he was the unworthy representative;
and he trusted that the entente cordiale now existing
between the two countries would never be dis-
turbed. (Loud cheers.) His lordship was then
escorted to his residence by the friendly societies
in procession.

MR. DISRAELL

o--

In the new number of the Revue des deux Mondes
M. Forcade pays the following tribute to Mr.
Disraeli and the Tory party, apropos of the pass-
ing of the Reform Bill. He says :
Mr. Disraeli displayed singular skill and courage
—the skill of being ever ready to avail himself of
the co-operation of the House in the manufacture
of the Bill—the courage of placing the electoral
franchise on a broad and simple basis, unmutilated
by arbitrary electoral qualifications, the damnatory
feature of all previous proposals of the Whig
Government and the Liberal party. Whoever
shall have resided in a borough for one year, and
paid the poor rates, shall have a vote. The Whigs,
in their projected additions to the constituencies,
were ever bent on dividing the electors into cate-
gories. They wanted, so to speak, to take the
cream of the working populations by a franchise
sufficiently high to show that the voter was an
industrious artizan, and comparatively well off.
More liberal than the Whigs, Mr. Disraeli rejected
this arbitrary classification, and by the generality of
his principle has established an equitable equality
among all voters Will the Reform Act pro-
duce any important changes in the Government of
? The most prudent shake their heads ;

,toid Derby, in the House of Peers, like the carica-
turist in Punch, spoke of taking " a leap in the
dark." The " dark " here is not so very dark ;
and the leap is not likely to be a dangerous
one. A few hundred thousand voters more or less
in a country which is in full enjoyment of all in-
dispensable liberties will not in any way modify
the national character. Mr. Disraeli encountered
in his own party a small number of refractory
members who have severely criticised him ; but
his influence has grown, and the circle of his
friends and admirers has increased. The tact and
urbanity with which he manages men make him
henceforth an unrivalled leader in the British Par-
liament. Last year, by heat of temper and im-
patience of manner, Mr. Gladstone allowed a
secession to take place in the Liberal majority.
Mr. Disraeli, on the other hand, has only been de-
serted by a few of his party, and has rallied to his
colours a large Liberal following. Mr. Disraeli has
been reproached with having reverted to the
Radical tendencies of his youth, and having de-
serted the Conservative cause. The accusation is
unjust, and, moreover, Mr. Disraeli never meant
to consign his party to that statue-like immobility
which the word Conservatism would seem to de-
note. Conservative is an awkward and unfortunate
designation for a political party ; in the first place,
because it repels those who have the consciousness
and feel the want of life and motion, and next
because it defeats its own object, and generates
destructives by appearing to consign the party it
covers to a condition of permanent superiority.
Mr. Disraeli has never been a Conservative in the
retrograde sense of the word. He has always de-
signated the party to which he belongs as the Tory
party ; the Toryism of Mr. Disraeli is the Toryism
of history—that of Bolingbroke, for instance, and
of Lord Shelburne, who introduced Pitt into the
Cabinet, and afterwards became the first Lord
Lansdowne. No doubt the eminent men of the
Whig aristocracy do not deserve the reproach of
not being Conservatives ; neither has Toryism
ever been inconsistentwith enlightened Liberalism.
The Tories have always shown themselves less
exclusive, more ready to admit men of talent than
the great patrician league of the Whigs. Men of
talent, without aristocratic connections, have
always found their natural level more easily with
the Tories than with the Whigs. The example of
Canning is there to prove that merit of the Tories,
and Mr. Disraeli's career confirms it. In the ranks
of the Whigs, Mr. Disraeli would never have been
Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the
House, and he has retained on the subject of
Toryism, allied with public interests, a youthful
ideal, which only a few days ago he did not hesi-
tate to set forth, amid loud cheers, at the Mansion
House banquet,