The Sun.
London, England, 1868-12-04 00:00:00

spina OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

The • Times observes that if Mr. Disraeli were to close
his political career to-day, it could not be said, and he
certainly would not himself think, that he had been an
unsuccessful man. He has attained his highest ambition,
and how few men can boast as much ! No hostile majori-
ties to the very end of his life can prevent him from having
been Prime Minister of England. He has been sent for by
his sovereign ; he has formed an Administration ; he has
witnessed the envy of his friends and the still more
delightful animosity of his foes ; ho has established
confidential relations with Itoyalty, he has snubbed
a Lord Chancellor, he has created a duke and an arch-
bishop—in short, he has concentrated into a few months
all that is most exquisite in human greatness. Nor are
his more solid political achievements inconsiderable. It is
enough to say that the reform of the representation will
always be associated with his name. His rival may deserve
the honour, but Disraeli has gained it. His two years
and a half of office, and especially his Premiership, which
occupied the latest part of this term, are rich in its incidents.
He has had a great career ; he has been bold, brilliant,
successful, and if he were to be absorbed at once into the
peerage, and to be heard of again only as a competitor at
the agricultural shows of Buckinghamshire, he would still
be a man of high mark in the reign of Queen Victoria.
But unless we are very much mistaken, Mr. Disraeli is
only about to begin afresh. For the first time in his
career, he is in an independent position. Before
1866 he was the spokesman of the Conservatives in
the House of Commons, but not the leader of the party.
The diminished following of Mr. Disraeli cannot present a
more discouraging appearance next week than the Tories
of 1833 did, when Sir Robert Peel first reviewed their thin
and disconsolate bands. The Conservatives have lost in
the present election—the verdict of the country has been
against them on the question on which they staked power
and reputation. But they have, at least as much as their
opponents, the advantage of union, and the knowledge that
each man will obey all legitimate commands. The Times
calls upon them to accept the verdict of the country, and
acquiesce in the passing of certain necessary measure&

The Herald says : With one significant exception the
daily organs of the Liberal party have been unanimous in
acknowledging that Mr. Disraeli's acquiescence in the
declared will of the country, as indicated in the numerical
majority awarded to Mr. Gladstone, has been conspicu-
ously marked by dignity, good sense, and a generous con-
sideration fur the difficulties of the statesman who has
successfully conspired against him. He has been
courageous enough to disregard modern precedents. He
has consulted the interests of the country and the
necessities of public business, by accepting, with hardly
a day's delay, the consequences of the vote of the electoral
body. The Herald holds that he and his colleagues would
have been false at once to the country, to their principles,
and to their party, if they had resigned a moment sooner.
Interested detractors may prate about the allurements of
power and " the sweets of office," but we do not hesitate
to say that nothing but the highest sense of duty could
have availed to induce the Conservative Ministers to
retain their places in the painful and embarrassing pre-
dicament which circumstances, and not their own acts,
had created.

The Post remarks : There has been felt among the more
impartial observers of Mr. Disraeli—there has even been
extorted from his most uncompromising foes—a tribute of
admiration at the handsome manner in which he has
acknowledged himself beaten and has accepted his defeat.
This frankness has come, too, very opportunely to relieve
him at last from the odium which the imputation of
dealing habitually in a directly opposite manner has
brought upon him ; for, with the last act of his
Ministry standing out as an utterly unforced display
of even more candour than is commonly shewn by
the most candid statesmen, he cannot conveniently
be twitted with the " trickery," " shiftiness," and so forth,
which have hitherto been so freely laid to his charge; and
as with the former discredit, so the present credit won by
the late Premier is shared by the whole party under his
leadership, the members of which will now be aLle to claim
a higher position than at any time since their " education"
first began. They will point to the fact that they have
shewn no desperate clinging to office, that they have even
foregone the common sharing of rewards customary with
an outgoing party, and in every way they will command
more respect both for themselves and for their principles.
The Standard is angry with the Times for its criticisms
upon Mr. Disraeli's resignation. That it is an " extraor-
dinary" step is a fact which it is needless to deny or
to excuse. The circumstances are altogether extraor-
dinary, and even if there were no precedent for
such a case, Mr. Disraeli would have been
amply justified in making one. All the talk about
" throwing up the cards" is simple insolence and
vulgar abuse. Had Mr. Disraeli resolved to pursue
the opposite course and to have clung to office as long as
possible, it is certain that we should have had many
invectives, borrowed out of the same vocabulary, levelled
at him by the same writers for his unscrupulousness and
his greediness. What cm Mr. Disraeli do to please the
censors? Is he not justified in believing that nothing he
can do can by any chance be agreeable to some of his
detractors ? To accuse the head of the Government of
pursuing a course which is "a feeble supplementtoa gallant
career," is to subject an English statesman to certain rules
of conduct which, to say the least, are novel in our national
practice. It has never been deemed hitherto that the first
duty of a Minister is to take care that his career is con-
sistently a " gallant" one ; that he should manage his office
as though he were the captain of a cruiser on a hostile
coast. Beyond all obligations to be " gallant," Mr.
Disraeli owes a duty, first to the Queen, next to his
country, and lastly to his party. That which might appear
a " feeble supplement" to the life of a freebooter or a bandit
chief, is possibly true patriotism and a high sense of duty
~n the part of an English statesman.
The Daily News remarks that when Lord Derby resigned
;nice in 1859, the somewhat invidious task devolved upon
the Queen of deciding between the pretensions of Lord
Palmerston and Lord John Russell. Both of these eminent
statesmen were at that time in the House of
Commons ; both had led that assembly ; both had filled
the office of Prime Minister. To avoid the appearance
of being swayed by personal feelings in the exercise
of a public duty, her Majesty, with rare discretion and
wisdom, sent, in the first instance, for Lord Granville,
under whose titular Premiership it was hoped that the
rival pretensions and the real ascendancy of both of the
elder two statesmen might be reconciled. The incon-
venience, however, of separating the substance from
the show of power was felt to exceed the advantages
of a personal compromise. The projected chieftain.
ship of Lord Granville was abandoned, and her
Majesty entrusted the formation of a Ministry
to Lord Palmerston, whose Premiership was more recent
than that of Lord John Russell, and who then actually
filled the office of leader of the Liberal party in the
House of Commons. The Queen has exhibited now an
equal discretion in circumstances less doubtful. There
was no embarrassing alternative. Mr. Gladstone was
designated by the situation itself, by his relation to the
chief public question at issue, by his parliamentary posi-
tion, and by the votes of the nation.
The Star notices that there has been throughout Mr.
Disraeli's proceedings in the present crisis a wise recog-
nition of accomplished facts, and, to do him justice, a wish-
fulness to hand the reins over handsomely to the statesman
who, in all human certainty, must be his successor. Earl
Russell had so frankly conceded to Mr. Gladstone
the position which he himself had twice held with honour,
that there was no want of consideration for that eminent
leader of the Liberal party in communicating directly
with the statesman upon whom the responsibility of the
Premiership was about to rest. Her Majesty never fails
acknowledge very graciously the services of her
long-tried counsellors, and her subjects will unite with her
in the feelings of high respect and confidence with
which she relinquishes the relations she has been
accustomed more or less throughout her reign to
hold with Earl Russell as the presiding mind of the
Liberal party. Matters of present statesmanship do not
permit of similar manifestations of personal feeling; but
the Queen's people will perceive all the sound and benefi-
cent significance of a succession which substitutes for the
great Whig chief, not because he has fallen behind the
times—for Earl Russell is abreast of the advanced party
but because younger energies are needed for the great
work of the hour, a statesman so sagacious and powerful,
so loyal and so fearless, as Mr. Gladstone.

UNDER SECRETARY FOR IRELAND.—The Dublin
Gazette contains the official announcement of the appoint-
ment of Colonel Sir Edward E. Wetherall, C. 8.,
K.C.S.I.

MEDICAL M.P.'s.—The strength of the medical
profession in the House of Commons is increased in the
new Parliament by the addition of Dr. Brewer (Colchester),
Dr. Lush (Salisbury), and Mr. Dalrymple (Bath). The
f.)rmer medical members—Dr. Brady, Mr. Clements, Sir
John Gray, M.D., and Mr. Vanderbyl—retain their
seats. It is probable that a county seat will be found for
Sir Dominic Corrigan, who unsuccessfully contested
Dublin at the recent election.—Bri!idt Medical Times.
Mu. BRIGHT AND THE RoMAN CATHOLICS.—
" Meraor" writes to the Herald: "In his speech at Bir-
mingham Mr. Bright said, ' I do not know that in all my
life I have met with more than one or two Nonconformist*
who have left the Church of their fathers and gone over
to Rome.' Now, one of the ablest and most distinguished
of the converts to Romanism in this generation was a near
connection of Mr. Bright's—Mr. Frederick Lucas, of the
Tablet—who was followed by his wife and two of his
brothers, all Quakers, into the Church of Rome. This
would make at least four such conversions within Mr.
Bright's immediate linewledge.”,

THE PRINCE AND TITE PRINCESS OF

WALES IN DENMARK.

The correspondent of the Post writes as follows from
Copenhagen, by date November 30 :—" We yesterday
liad the pleasure of seeing here the Prince and Princes:
of Wales, though only for a few minutes, but time enough
was nevertheless given to the citizens to receive their
Royal ITiglancsses with a hearty and cheering welcome
on alighting from the railway carriage at the station,
with their three charming children, who all looked
lively and happy. The Princess Alexandra, as the
Danes still oall her Royal Highness, has always been
a great favourite here, and it was with great joy they saw
her looking so well after her late illness. The royal party
arrived from Lubeck in the Danish steamer Freya,
Captain M`Dougall, having left that port on Saturday, at
two p.m., and reached Korsoer at eleven o'clock the same
evening. The Princess suffered a good deal from sea-sick-
ness, but recovered as soon as the steamer reached the
harbour. At Lubeck no preparations were made for the
reception of the royal travellers, and even the sweeping
of the quays had to be attended to by the crew of the
Danish vessel, on board of which dinner was served, of
which Admiral Irminger and others who were in attend-
ance partook. As soon as day broke on Sunday morning
the Dannebrog was hoisted all over the town and harbour
of Korsoer, where there were also displayed many
English, Russian, Greek, Swedish, and Norwegian
colours. Shortly after the arrival of the Freya the
Prince and Princess, with the royal children, appeared on
deck, attended by General Sir William Knollys, Colonel
Keppel, Dr. Minter, &c., and kept up a conversation with
the Danish officers who were on duty on the occasion.
At nine o'clock the Crown Prince Frederick
arrived from Copenhagen, and most affectionately
greeted his sister and royal brother•in-law. A
large multitude, who had assembled on the shore,
cheered lustily until the train left the station for Copen-
hagen. Their Royal Highnesses walked from the ship to
the railway, and appeared to be much pleased with their re-
ception on landing on Danish ground. The Princess wore a
dark dress, and bad in her hair a magnificent bouquet
of roses and violets, which had been presented to herby the
Empress of the French at Compiegne. The train arrived
at Copenhagen at 11.35, when the King and the young
Prince Waldemar received their Royal Highnesses, the
cordial greetings bestowed at Korsoer being then
repeated. A new engine was attached to the train, which
almost immediately started, and at 12.40 the Queen and
the young Princess Thyra embraced their royal relatives
at Fredensborg. The King took the youngest child in his
arms, and presented it to the Queen, who was deeply
moved. To-morrow there is to be a grand dinner at the
Fredensborg Palace, but nothing is yet said of the future
•)lane of proceeding.

THE ELECTIONOF THEREPRESENTATIVE

SCOTCH PEERS.

The ceremony of electing the representative Scotch
peers took place at Holyrood House, Edinburgh, on
Thursday. The peers present were :—The Duke of
Cuccleuch, the Duke of Montrose, the Earls of Bute,
Cassilis, Home, Strathmore, ICellie, Haddington, Lauder-
dale, Selkirk, Southesk, Viscount Strathallan, Lords Rollo,
Kinnaird, Forbes, Saltoun, Sinclair, and Elphinstone.
The Lord Clerk Register (Mr. William Gibson-Graig),
long with the principal clerics of the Court of Session,
conducted the election. The proclamation having been
read, the Union Roll of Peers was called, the title of his
Royal Highness the Duko of Rothesay being first on
the list.—Mr. Blair, advocate, gave in a protest on
ehalf of the Earl of Mar (Mr. Goodeve Erskine)
against an earl being called in precedence to him. The
nrotest was ordered to be recorded.--After the reading of

-.le roll, the Lord Clerk Registrar said it had been the
practice heretofore to administer the oath of allegiance to
ihe peers, but owing to recent Acts regarding oaths, there
were doubts as to whether any oath ought now to be
•aken. He left it with the peers to say whether they
would take the oath or not.—The Duke of Buccleuch said
fter reading the Acts lie was of opinion it would be mere
rurplusage if they were to take the oath.—Lord Kinnaird
moved that the taking of the oath be dispensed with, which
was seconded by the Earl of Haddington.—The Earl of
Kellie moved, seconded by Lord Saltoun, that the oath
be taken as formerly.—The peers ultimately agreed to
take the oath without coming to a division, and it was
accordingly administered, leaving the question to be
adjudicated upon by the House of Lords. The peers
then each read a list of those whom they proposed for
election, and proxies and signed lists were intimated from
absent peers.—The Earl of Kellie protested against the Earl
of Mar being permitted to vote.—Mr. Blair, advocate, gave
;n reasons against the protest. On the votes being summed
up the result was as follows the Marquis of Tweed-
•lale, 43 ; Earl of Lauderdale, 42 ; Earl of Leven and Mel-
ville, 41; Earl of Home, 41; Earl of Morton, 40; Lord Blan-
tyre, 40 ; Earl of Airlie, 38 ; Earl of Selkirk, 38 ; Viscount
Strathalian, 37 ; Lord Elphinstone, 37 ; Earl of Hadding-
ton, 3G ; Lord Colville of Culross, 36 ; Lord Saltoun, 35;

Earl of Orkney, 34; Lord Sinclair, 34; Earl of Kellie, 22;
Lord Rollo, 22. Seven voted for the Earl of Strathmore,
and two for the Earl of Perth. The first fifteen peers
were declared duly elected. The que;tion arising out of
the equality of votes for the Earl of Kellie and Lord Rollo
will be decided by the House of Lords.