The Sun.
London, England, 1866-04-02 00:00:00

SPIRIT OP THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

THE " SPECTATOR" ON MR. GLADSTONE'S CON-
CESSION.—" Remember you? Certainly. With
pleasure, my man," said Marryat's Peter Simple,
when the coachman asked in customary phrase for
his douceur, and could not imagine why the coach-
man, whose wish had been complied with, looked so
savage. Mr. Gladstone, we dare say, equally fails
to comprehend why Lord Grosvenor did not accept
his concession of Friday night. The earl, speaking
for all, whether crypto-Tories, like Lord Elcho, or
since Liberals, like ourselves, who desire to see the
Reform Bill made complete, had given notice of a
resolution pledging the house to accept no imperfect
measure, and the Government felt itself in danger.
It was perceived in a moment out of doors as well
as inside that the member for Chester spoke for the
Whig territorialists, and without their aid a compo-
site Cabinet like the present is, on a bill such as it
produced, certain to be defeated. It was necessary
to bend, and Mr. Gladstone in a towering rage—he
has a good deal of Peel's feeling about aristocratic
dictation—offered the House a compromise almost
as imbecile as Peter Simple's promise of cash. He
would have a bill drawn up expressing the Govern-
ment view on the subject of redistribution, and after
the great division would lay it on the table, not to
be debated or even discussed, but to be looked at
and talked about in lobbies. He would not consider
his bill even as a promise, but simply as a " view,"
as the sort of thing which, if everything went
straight, and no war broke out, and no leading
minister died, and no other topic came up, and
public opinion remained firm, and the position of
parties remained unchanged, the Government, if it
could find time, might at some future period ask
Parliament to accept. And the journals which are
trying so hard to pump up enthusiasm, which exultin
meetings that are only half filled, and sing pwans about
the power of the masses who are scarcely interested,
call that a concession. What does Mr. Gladstone
imagine to be the virtue of a bill which is not to be
passed, which will be three times less clear than one
of his own sentences, and which is no more a pro-
mise than a draft on the Bank of Elegance is a
negotiable instrument ? The bill will teach some
forty members or more that it is intended to ask
them to commit suicide for the benefit of the coun-
try, and will justify them in the eyes of their consti-
tuents in voting against any reform whatever. But
what else will it do ? It will not avoid the absur-
dity of voting in one year for the enfranchisement
of men whom it is resolved to disfranchise in the
next, but actually increase-it ,by all -the difference
between a Ministerial wish and a Ministerial plan.
It will not remove the doubt as to the effect of the
Franchise Bill in transferring power, for it conveys
no guarantee stronger than a Ministerial speech
might do. Suppose the schedule contains the names
of twenty boroughs to be suppressed and twenty
constituencies to be enfranchised. Where is the
proof that Mr. Bright will not want sixty disfran-
chisements ? or that the Tories may not plead with
effect the claims of populous counties ? or that the
country, suddenly aroused, may not demand some
larger, or smaller, or totally different scheme ?
Where is the provision against those accidents which
are always recurring? Between this session and the
next Napoleon may be dead, and Reform mean man-
hood suffrage ; or we may be at war, and reform
mean a philosophic dream of the past ; or some new
question may have arisen, before which Reform
will have lost even the little interest it now excites.
Mr.:Gladstone would certainly not accept a bill at
twelve months' sight on a firm which may not be in
existence as sufficient payment of taxes, yet that is
what he is asking his opponents to accept. Indeed
he demands cash down before he signs his bill, for
everybody is to vote the second reading of the Re-
form Bill, that is, to " affirm the principle" of a blank
reduction of the franchise before the Government Bill
is produced. The Cabinet seem to calculate
that Liberals will hesitate to oppose a proposition to
which they stand so deeply pledged. Like astute
usurers, they call on the creditor to admit his lia-
bility for disputed interest, and then they discuss in
a friendly way the possibility of arrangement. There
is acuteness in that idea, but it is not the sort of
acuteness which prevails with the House of Com-
mons. The Ministry, if it does not take care, will
rouse the pluck of that body, and that feat once
accomplished, they and their bill will disappear
together. There are no doubt members whose con-
stituencies would judge them exclusively by their
vote on such a division, but then these men are secure
supporters of Government already. It is the really
independent class, the men whose electors will not,
and indeed cannot, dismiss them without grave
reason, whom the Government want to secure, and
they certainly will not be secured by any device so
childish. Their constituents will see as clearly as
themselves that a bill expressing a Ministerial
" view" is not the same thing as a schedule added to
the franchise act, that the concession proposed by
Mr. Gladstone does not secure a final settlement of
the embarrassing question, and that above all there
is no guarantee against a dissolution between the
carrying of one bill and of the other, that is, no
guarantee against the transfer of redistribution from
the hands of the present Parliament into the hands
of one a third more democratic. Indeed this last
danger is not only probable, but nearly certain.
Suppose the Franchise Bill passed, and the Redis-
tribution Bill brought in. It will have against it,
in addition to the natural opponents of any improve-
ment, some forty or more menaced members, and
will be thrown out. Government must then dis-
solve, and Mr. Bright's end will be at once secured.
Redistribution will be entrusted to a house elected
by a very low franchise, and elected for the especial
purpose of making the bill sufficiently wide. Is that
what the constituencies want? If it is, the Ministerial
offer is a clever one, for members must on such mat-
ters obey, more or less, the impulse given them from
below. But we deny that they want it. Webelieve
that they dread it, and that any member who
has the courage to show distinctly and clearly from
the hustings that the Government proposal hands
over redistribution to a new constituency, will be
supported in rejecting it. We are told that mem-
bers will quail, that the hundred or so of extreme
votes in every borough will be thrown against any
man who votes for Earl Grosvenor's motion. We
doubt it, for men are never heartily earnest to di-
minish their own power; but be it so, and for every
vote so lost the member will recover two from the
sensible section of the Tories, who see what the
point at issue really is. It is simply this. Unless
the bill is complete
willomp vleteottwe a
transfer two consequences
of powerencesa re
certain—
Parliament without
knowing bow much it transfers, and the redistribu•
tion entrusted to the seven-pound householders,
instead of being settled by the ten-pounders. We
are marching through Coventry, we know, with a
frightfully ragged lot, but that has nothing to do
with the really imperial question at stake. It will
doubtless be as annoying to many Liberals to find
themselves acting with men who, like Mr. Lowe,
hate the workmen, or like Mr. Horsman, believe
that insult and epigram are identical, or like Lord
Elcho, fling cigars to a crowd as arguments good
enough for non-electors, as it is to us, but in war
time men who are fighting a good cause must put
up with ragged recruits. The fault of such com-
pany is not theft's; but that of the Government,
which by its half prepared bill has placed them in
such a dilemma that they must choose between
annoying a party and betraying a future of the
country. The Cave of Adullam was a nasty
place, no doubt, with very indifferent company,
but still one must not forget quite so completely
as Mr. Bright did that after all the future of
Israel was protected in that cave. The
Government is trying to pass this bill, as if it
were a bankruptcy Act, but it is no light thing to
define the class to which for one generation at least
the rule over the British Fmpire—over, that is, one-
fourth of the human race—is to be entrusted. It is
no light thing to-change even the tone and bias of
a constituency which could in a day decree that
China should be conquered, or Poland liberated, or
the advance of the world be arrested by a needless
defiance to America. It is no light thing to risk
the authority and the stability of the solitary popu-
lar Assembly now existing wiiich is at once old, and
sovereigns and free. The future of an imperial race
depends on the structure of the House of Commons,
and to risk its deterioration, or rather to lose a great
opportunity of improving its character for the sake
of a few votes in petty boroughs, is something worse
than folly. The admission of working men to their
share of power will, we believe, greatly improve the
tone and invigorate the spirit-of the assembly which
rules the British Empire. I The transfer of all power
to them by ,a succession of blank reductions, will
lower the' tone and impair the spirit of the same
Assembly. That is the issue at stake, and members
who think with us that the Government Bill must
at no distant date ensure the second result, while it
is not only possible but easy to secure the first, are
bound to face their constituencies as clearly as we
face ours, confident that as the world is made and
Englishmen are constituted, it is never the frank
who are ultimately misjudged. With the future of
an empire, at stake, they may well risk a few hostile
votes, to be hopelessly outnumbered by those they
will conciliate, and even encounter placidly the
political opprobrium of being called Lord Elcho's
friends.

THE " SUNDAY TIMES" ON MR. -DISRAELI AS
LEADER OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONSIII recent
years the leadership of the House of Commons has
been held alternately by two distinguished states-
men—Lord Palmerston and Mr. Disraeli, each of
whom held it twice. Probably, Lord Palmerston
was the most successful leader of the House of Com-
mons of the century, not excepting even the late Sir
Robert Peel. He had all natural qualifications for
it— tact, readiness, resource, lucidity of speech,
quickness of perception, a perfect exemption from

.1,..‘,-•

all political bigotries, and, above all, unfailing geni-
ality. Besides this, however, his experience of the
ways, customs, institutes, regulations, and orders of
the house was prodigious ; and he had just enough
sense of the absurdity and undignity of mere offici-
ousness to keep him from impetuous judgment, ner-
vous apprehension, and premature interference. The
high esteem in which, for these qualities, Lord Pal-
merston was held, made him virtual master, apart
from the position of leader ; and, even when on the
Opposition benches, his presence in the house formed
a restraint upon all those motive forces to irregula-
rity which it is well nigh impossible altogether to
extirpate from any assembly more or less popular
in its character. It is a curious fact that the Liberal
party, so rich in old servants of the crown, had no
successor to Lord Palmerston in the particulars now
spoken of. In the House of Commons there were
among his followers many who had shared with him
the honours and the responsibilities of official life
for a long series of years, but not one on whom the
mantle of his authority had fallen. If age and mi-
nisterial experience could secure the silent and spon-
taneous allegiance of the house, surely Sir George
Grey, or Sir Charles Wood, might have aspired to
the succession. But nobody ever thought of such
a thing. It is even more curious, however, to remem-
ber that Palmerston's actual successor was promoted
to the unofficial throne simply because he was more
necessary than anybody else to the administra-
tion, and not at all because he was felt to be more
than anybody else endowed with the attributes suit-
able to it. So far was this from being the case that "
everybody entertained a suppressed conviction that
Mr. Gladstone was peculiarly disqualified for the
post. He had no personal following. He was known
to have a temper too open to provocation, and sen.
sibilities too easily irritated and inflamed. His own
political whereabouts was undefined ; for Mr. Glad-
stone is one of the men who show how earnestness
of conviction may belong to mind in a perpetually
transitional state. He maintains his conviction with
the moral assumption of a doctrinaire, though he is
always shifting his ground. This may not prove lack
of virtue or feebleness of conscience, but it is pheno-
menal development, and not adapted, therefore, to
inspire quiet and implicit confidence in the breasts
of a miscellaneous association cf men like the House
of Commons. The leadership of that house, in fact,
is an office imposed upon the Chancelloil of the Ex-
quer, and to the luties of which he is striving by
severe self-discipline and self-restraint to accommo-
date himself as well as he possibly can ; and not one
into which he has been guided by the law of adap-
tation—the essential fitness of things—which I may
venture to denominate the providence of propriety.
It is rather unfortunate for Mr. Gladstone that the
Speaker should have fallen ill just when his own ca-
pacities as leader were being putto the test. It would
be exceedingly unbecomir g on my part to impute
any deficiencylo the Deputy Speaker.
,I have no
impulse to do so. £n the contrary, lam inclined
to praise the modesty which he has exemplified in a
positipn of considerable delicacy. He cannot as-
sume the airs, though he must sustain the responsi-
bilities of the chair. He must not obtrude the scep-
tre which he only vicariously wields. But the result
of this is that the discipline of the House is sensibly
relaxed. Now, Mr. Gladstone has, in two or three
instances of confusion which have arisen, maintained
a not masterly inaction. He has simply kept his
seat, growingly confounded by the growing con-
fusion. Mr. Deputy Speaker, bound, as he is,
to avoid the remotest appearance of arrogance,
has stood in need of moral encourage-
ment. That encouragement it was the especial
business of the Chancellor Of the Exchequer, as
leader of the house, to supply. But the embarrass-
ment that challenged the Deputy Speaker's modesty
seemed to paralyse Mr. Gladstone's sense of obliga-
tion. Mr. Disraeli, however, has opportunely in-
tervened, and saved the house from perplexity and
humiliation. Once, when two honourable members
were contending for the right to address the house,
when the contest was becoming unseenly, he, by a
sentence spoken exactly at the right moment, gave
the Deputy Speaker the opportunity of asserting
his official authority. The difficulty terminated in
a moment. Again, when a question of order arose,
one member accusing another of having made` use
of unparliamentary language, and angry'-feelings
were begining to exhibit themselves, the right horn
gentleman, by skilfully drawing_ a, very nice: dis-
tinction, set the whole rnatter.at rest, to the great
comfort of all concerned. —These are, in themselves,
comparatively slight-incidents ; but in their bearings
and involvements-their importance can hardly be
exaggerated. In relation to the parliamentary posi-
tion of `Mi. Disraeli, they are exceedingly interest-
ing, and should be, to those who are often found
sneering at the right hon. gentleman usefully in-
structive. There are a set of political, writers who
have acquired the habit of describing Mr. Disraeli as
the most transparent adventurer—universally recog-
nised as such— in modern political society ; as a
man whom nobody esteems. They say he leads
his party, not because his party like him, or have
any confidence in him, but simply because nobody
has the moral courage to disclaim his authority. A
more shallow'mistake was never made. Since Pal-
merston's death, Disraeli has been the only personal
power in the House of Commons. He is its best
member. That is, his judgment in any critical mo-
ment would be most generally looked for, and cer-
tainly most lenerally accepted- when given. The
house kno*s its own men : those men who most
clearly understand its customs ; who will most
quickly detect and most aptly avert its dangers ;
who will most promptly intervene to protect its
threatended dignity ; those who will at once most
zealously vindicate and most judiciously check its
license. And among all those to whom it can refer
for services thus momentous and 'thus delicate, Mr.
Disraeli, by common consent, stands at the very
head. His bitterest enemies admitted that when he
held the post of Ministerial leader of the house he
discharged its duties with exemplary discretion. He
knew• when to give way and when to resist ; when
to soothe and when to command He was never rude ;
and yet never 41 he betray any infirmity of pur-
pose, or what is still worse than that, any incapa-
bility of resolve. His decisions were instantly
formed ; but they were always courteously enforced.
He was, in the true sense of the word, a moderator
and a guide. In more trying times he has given
more emphatic indications of the, pates and at-
tributes which constitute a great Parliamentary
chieftain •, and, in this respect at least, I look for-
ward to the future with the firm assurance that he
will still more triumphantly distinguish himself.