The Sun.
London, England, 1861-10-26 00:00:00

carry with them the favour of the multitude. Yet,
if real ability and considerable weight in affairs of
State during the whole of a long Ministerial life give
a cnim to the name of statesman, it may be that
Sir James Graham will receive the posthumous
honour. But his fame must be the creation of a
painstaking historian. When the political history
of the past 30 years comes to be examined, when
private journals are published, and corespondence
with
na
ogte sees the
po ige
rhftu, maybety7sir sfaomu ne ds how
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yelloweg
aggreedatin thageeman
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the engaged
midst of important business, to have shared the
counsels of every leading statesman of his time, and
to have been listened to with deference by all, con-
stitute no mean reputation. On every subject and in
any office Sir James Graham was an able man. Like
the gladiator who, though excelled in each of the
exercises by some one or other of his fellows,
yet stood second in all of them, Sir James
Graham, though not of surpassing eminence in any
branch of politics, was yet a man who in any post
would only have been surpassed by a master mind.
To be the useful and iafluential politician who goes
through life with the confidence of all men,and closes
his career with a peerage and a kind of patriarchal
dignity in the political world, is the destiny which
one would have been inclined to foretell for
man of Sir James Graham's intellectual gifts. That
he failed in attaining this moral position among his
countrymen, and has been, if not undervalued, at
least postponed in public estimation to colleagues
no abler than himself, has been sometimes regretted,
though the causes are not difficult to discover.
Sir James, however, was probably but little
affected by this failure. He was by constitution
unfitted for the bold game of leading a party. A
strong, vivacious nature, and a geniality either real
or affected, they make a man great in this way ; or
he may attain to the chiefship by steady assertion
of some leading principles which recommend him to
the confidence of powerful classes or interests. But
Sir James Graham must have felt that he bad not
the faculties of a Palmerston or a Derby on the one
hand, or of a Peel or a Russell on the other. He
could neither be the favourite of a people nor the
champion of a cause. And as men, happily,
learn their shortcomings, and become reconciled

them, and fancy that what they can attain to is,
after all, the happiest lot, so Sir James Graham
came to place his ambition in being thefidus Achates
of a Ministerial Chief. In the appreciation of his
colleagues he found a compensation for the absence
of popular display. Even when, as in the case of
the Bandieras, he brought opprobrium and invec-
tive on himself, he might say that it was zeal for
the policy of the Government that instigated him,
and that he was only a too devoted colleague of
Lord Aberdeen.
The wonder is that such a man should not have
had greatness thrust upon him. Though an official
rather of the Continental type, and wanting the
warmth and impulse which make men great in
England, he might at any time have been raised to
the highest post, if not with the favour of the
public, yet witl. out any display of surprise. A
poli-
tician who was in the Whig Cabinet of Lord Grey
and in the Conservative Cabinet of Sir R. Peel, and.
who, again, formed the connecting link between the
two sections of Lord Aberdeen's Cabinet in 1852,
seems one who ought to have risen still higher.
No man, with the exception of Lord Palmerston,
had been brought into close intimacy with so many
public men, or was the depositary of so un-
broken a chain of political tradition. For thirty
years he has been the man whom " no Cabinet
ought to be without ;" so steady and sensible was
he, so acquainted with business, and so ready to
condescend to minor work, and to play a small part
in great affairs. That the possessor of these useful
gifts should have passed away from official and.
almost from political life with hardly any notice on
the part of his countrymen, and that his death
should now be important chiefly as making a va-
cancy in the representation of the last of the many
constituencies for which he sat, is a singular end of
an accomplished politician. It is to be accounted
for, we think, by the well-known habit of Sir
James's mind, bis instinctive timidity and. irresolu-
tion when grave decisions had to be taken. This
man, whom a portion of the public looked upon as
the ideal of a wily politician, was in truth a very
Hamlet when he had not some stronger nature to
guide and to say "This must be done." He was
more than once "master of the situation," and might
have grasped power, at least for a term : but when
the decisive moment came he seemed to lack courage
to act up to the part, and the opportunity passed
away. Even in administration this fault was appa-
rent, and it was the source of all the others with
which he is charged. He would always be so very
sure that he did nothing; or, as is often the case,
waited to the last moment, and then, all in a hurry

took the worst possible course. To blunder through
fear of making a mistake, and then to affect a cyni-
cal disregard of all censures in hopes that his
timidity might not be suspected, was a habit of
mind which lay at the root of S!r James Grahawa's
ill success.
But, notwithstanding these drawbacks, Sir Jar les
Graham belonged to an order of politicians which,
we trust, will never fail in this country. A man who
with the means of living in ease and self-indulgence,
braces his mind to encounter the toils of political life
and the responsibilities of office, and does so ence; an-
ter them during a long political life, must Lave
qualities not everywhere to be found. There are
many who begin the business of politics young,
as they enter the army; but the great number of
these, if possessed of .wealth and station, are but
amateurs in the pursuit, and shrink wearied after a
few years of regular exertion. Few work at all, and
hardly one works as Sir James Graham did. From
1818 to the day of his death, with the exception of
a few years, he has had a seat in Parliament, and
till lately his voice has been heard continually. That
during all that time he has been an able counsellor
of the State, often wrong, but always zealous and
painstaking, is enough to give him a place among
those entitled to public gratitude.

CARDINAL D'ANDREA'S LETTERS TO
CARDINAL ANTONELLL

No doubt now exists as to the discord at Rome.
A blow even more serious than that given by
Father Passaglia to the moral influence of the
Papacy amongst the members of the Catholic com-
munion itself has just been struck by one of the
members of the Sacred College. Under the title,
" The Roman Curia and the Jesuits," the publish-
ing
house of Barbera of Florence has just given to
the world two letters addressed to Cardinal Anto-
nelli by Cardinal d'Andrea, explaining the causes
the thatil Bishop
ei n p a
of theologicalßruges
and
postwh y the
as
second
of
Prefect found
thehimselfC
o n obliged t
i to n
g
g contro-
versy the
Index.
betweenlt appears
Professors of the University
of Louvaine,
the Congregation of the lndex, on the ques-
tion being referred to them, decided, by the votes of
all the 16 members present, in favour of the pro-
fessors. But two Jesuit
members refused to attend
the deliberations, and the Jesuits are all-powerful
at Rome. Contrary to the constitution of the Catholic
Church, Pope Pius overruled the decision of the 16
members present, and gave validity to that of the
two absent Jesuits. Cardinal d'Andrea, therefore,
in his official character of Prefect of the Congrega-
tion of the Index, wrote to Cardinal Antonelli to
express the impossibility of that body publishing
stigmatising doctrines, which the whole 16 of its
members present at the discussion approved of, and to
know whether the influence of the Jesuits wasaviers-
tually to overrule and override the laws athe Car-
of the effect that
dinal Secretary of State
was
she Jesuits. In con-
everything must give way to
si nod his post. The
sequence, Cardinal d'Andreaorrie g
of his so doing are
letters explaining the r
easthat the theological CM-
tantamount to a declaration
the name of the Congregation
surer promulgated in
guidance of the Catholic world
of the Index for the gu
of body, but,*
embody-the convictionsthat in
' somen° tcases, opinions which not one of the members
present at its deliberations hold. It would scarcely
he possible to deal a more severe blow to the belief
in Catholic infallibility than has here been given
by a member of the Sacred College. The
publica-
tion of the letters has created an ' immense sensation
amongst the Italian clergy.—.lll • ormng Pot.