The Sun.
London, England, 1868-11-10 00:00:00

LONDON, TUESDAY, NOV. 10, 1868.

Mr. DISRAELI never wants pluck. He seems never
to feel discouraged under the most adverse circum-
stances. And of all qualities noticeable in a public
man, this is precisely the one that the most readily
appeals to, and instantaneously captivates, the popu-
lar imagination. Of his resplendent possession of
it, last evening afforded the latest, and beyond all
comparison the most signal illustration. A con-
queror going forth to victory at the head
of a serried phalanx of fighting men armed
every one of them to the teeth with Snider,
Needle-gun, or Chassepot, against irregular hordes
of painted savages sounding gongs and brandish-
ing daggers of lath, is the illustration, suggested
by himself, of his own position at this mo-
ment, when he and his party are upon the very
eve of that General Election in which they are
to measure strength with their political anta-
gonists. In pugilistic phraseology the Cham-
pion certainly must be allowed to " come up
smiling" to the encounter. His cheerfulness, under
the most discouraging circumstances, dispels for the
moment the bitterest antagonism. Mr. GLADSTO.NE,
himself, might (for once) have listened to the Prime
Minister's oration last night in the ancient Guildhall
of the City of London, with a sense of com-
plancy. The good humour of it was some-
thing exhilirating. As for the Premier's imper-
turbable temper—even under the most gall-
ing taunts and during the most irritating discussions
—that has long since been recognized, far and wide,
among friends and foes indiscriminately. And it
has been so recognized perhaps all the more readily
because of its contrasting so very conspicuously with
the morbid sensitiveness to attack, whether direct or
indirect, manifested at all times by Mr. DISRAELI'S
principal rival, of whom it must even be added that
he is also Mr. DISRAELI'S principal vituperator.
Good humour and good temper, however, were
not the only- agreeable characteristics of the First
Lord of the Treasury's manner yesterday, when re-
turning thanks for himself and his colleagues at the
Lord Mayor's banquet upon that old immemorial feast
of the ninth of November. Even in his reciprocation
of conventional compliments and courtesies there
became manifest more than once while he was speak-
ing that delightful blending of insinuated persiflage
and half - suggested badinage, which, in his
double capacity as Leader of the House of
Commons and Prime Minister of England, constitutes
Mr. DISRAELI the worthy successor, in those com-
bined positions, of Lord PALMERSTON. Only there
is added to all this, in the now Premier's manner
of address and Ministerial position as facile princeps
among the ablest of his colleagues in the Cabinet,
an audacity to which Lord PALMERSTON never had
any pretension, and in the display of which, at
great political crises like the present, Mr. DISRAELI
has never been approached, and, we cannot but think
also, is simply unapproachable. If conclusive evi-
dence of this were required, what could come to us
more aptly by way of illustration than that passage
occurring in the very middle of the Prime Minister's
speech last evening, where he said --" And I hope
that when this day next year I have the honour of
responding to the toast of her MAJESTY'S Govern-
ment" a sentence interrupted at once by great
laughter and a burst of cheering I Had Mr. GLAD-
STONE•
been present, among the loudest of the laughers
no doubt would have been the Leader of the oppo-
sition. And yet —time was, and that not so very long
ago either, when similar laughter would as certainly
have ben awakened by the bare suggestion, from any
one's lips, of the notion that Mr. DISRAELI would ever
have responded at that board or anywhere else, for
her MAJESTY'S Government, in the supreme position of
First Minister of the Crown. Besides which, in re-
gard to Mr. DISRAELI'S hypothetical forecast, there
is that old world phrase about—many a true word
being spoken in jest. While in reference to the
laughter it awakened, there is that other old world
phrase about— laughing on the wrong side of the
mouth. Nay, the Premier himself reverted a little
later on, when his speech was drawing towards its