The Sun.
London, England, 1868-02-29 00:00:00

spa,lT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

With the exception of Lord Cairns, the Saturday
Review remarks, Mr. Disraeli has been unable to procure
any addition of strength to his Government. If the
seceders of last year are omitted from the calculation, the
present occupants of office exhaust the capacity of the
party, and even encroach on the wider field of its adminis-
trative incompetence. Mr. Hunt has not yet attained the
Parliamentary position which has hitherto been ordinarily
supposed to be indispensable to a Chancellor of the Exche-
quer. A ready and industrious manipulator of figures,
and a useful assistant to a Minister, he has sometimes treated
serious business questions with ill-judged levity ; and it is
not known whether he has mastered the higher principles
of finance. The appointment of Sir Stafford Northcote,
who is the pupil and financial follower of Mr. Gladstone,
would have commanded greater confidence, but there is
no candidate ready for the India Office, except, perhaps,
the übiquitous Sir John Pakington ; and probably it might
be inconvenient, as Mr. Lincoln said, " to swap horses in
crossing " even the little Abyssinian rivulet. If the
rumour that Sir Stafford Northcote aspires to the Vice-
royalty of India is well founded, he may probably have
been unwilling to resign the Secretaryship of State in
which he is gaining experience to support his claim.
In the Tipper House Mr. Disraeli must rely almost ex-
clusively on Lord Cairns to defend the policy of the
Government on important occasions, but it will be
necessary to appoint another Ministeral representative, as
the Chancellor cannot properly conduct the ordinary
business of the House. Of the respectable peers who
belong to the Cabinet, the Duke of Richmond alone
possesses even the most elementary qualifications of
a Parliamentary leader. The Duke of Buckingham would
be more unpopular, and of course the Duke of Marl-
borough is out of the question ; while Lord Malmesbury,
who by the favour of Lord Derby has hitherto been occa-
sionally employed as his lieutenant, is more than
ordinarily deficient in the faculty of speech, and in Parlia-
mentary tact and judgment. It is impossible that Mr.
Disraeli can, even if Lord Malmesbury retains the Privy
Seal, use as the mouthpiece of the Government a nobleman
who, having to announce the change of Ministry, perpetrated
two or three awkward blunders in as many sentences.
Lord Malmesbury might have remembered that he had
not served, as he stated, long under Lord Derby in office,
because Lord Derby has only been Prime Minister for the
collective term of three or four years. It was a graver
mistake to announce that Mr. Disraeli, who was
practically chief of an almost unchanged Cabinet, was at
the moment " trying to form a Government, if possible."
Lord Malmesbury probably does injustice to himself in
Parliament, but his management of the Reform Bill
during Lord Derby's illness in the course of last summer
alone proves his incompetence to act as leader in the
House of Lords. The Duke of Richmond is not known to
have paid serious attention to politics, but he is a steady,
courteous, and accurate man of business, who may be
trusted to understand any matter which may require his
attention. When there is any appearance of a political
battle Lord Cairns must take the command of the
Ministerial forces.
The Imperial _Retina rather regrets that no arrangement
has been found practicable by which the debating power
of the Treasury Bench could be increased in the Com-
mons. That our new Premier is beyond any dispute the
first man in that assembly is, indeed, sufficiently apparent.
But throughout last session it was too frequently evident
that on great occasions he stood alone. Lord Stanley,
though an effective speaker, is notoriously disinclined to
take part in debates. Mr. Hardy has the ear of the
House, and has frequently distinguished himself in grand
parliamentary battles. But, if we except these, there is
no member of the Government who can pretend to cope
on anything like equal terms with such orators as Mr.
Gladstone, Mr. Bright, or Mr. Lowe. Nay, it would be
difficult to name any one who is a match for even the
second rank of the Opposition debaters, or can be consi-
dered a rival by such speakers as Mr. Forster, Mr. Stans-
feld, or Mr. Coleridge. It was much to be desired, there-
„fore, that some step should have been taken which might
have brought to the front some politician who should fill
the gap left in the Conservative ranks by the promotion of
Sir Hugh Cairns, Sir Bulwer Lytton, and Mr. Whiteside.
It would almost seem, however, that while the cold shade
of opposition is found the best atmosphere for developing
parliamentary eloquence, the possession of office tends to
blight the rising of a party. While the Whigs reigned in
Downing-street, the Tory Opposition never failed to carry
off the palm for eloquence, even if the Ministers could
command the more solid satisfaction of a majority. But
now, with the change of places a change in the oratorical
powers of the rival parties appears to have set in.
The new Chancellor of the Exchequer is known, indeed,
as a sensible man, and a most diligent and painstaking
public servant. No member of the Ministry has toiled so
hard in the discharge of his official duties ever since Lord
Derby formed his third Administration. And those who
thought his merits such as were scantly recognised by such
a post as that of Secretary to the Treasury, will be glad to
see them acknowledged at last, even if the promotion had
been sudden and unexpected. It cannot, however, be
alleged, that in the selection thus made by Mr. Disraeli
he has added to the debating power of his Cabinet. Mr.
Hunt will not, in all probability, care much fur the terrible
criticisms which his budgets will have to undergo from
such a censor as Mr. Gladstone. But others will regret
that the financial policy of the Government will not
possess a more eloquent expositor in such controversies.

- While the story of Mr. Speke is a strange one,
tne Spectator sees no reason for considering it in any
respects bad. So far from being a worse man than his
parishioners took him for, Mr. Speke seems to us to be
a better, though a feebler one, a man who will need looking
after perhaps for years, but who while master of himself is
decidedly a goodman, who wants tobecome abetter one. The
extraordinary outburst of public petulance against him is
perhaps natural, for what can be more annoying than to
find one has speculated for weeks on a natural event as if
it had been supernatural? But the feeling best expressed
by the Western Morning News, when it says that Mr.
Speke can hardly live in Somerset, is unreasonable, not
to say absurd. We do not know Mr Speke, or Mr. Mur-
doch, or any of his family ; but the story of his hallucina-
tion is, we have good authority for believing, correct, and
" the county" might as well be fractious because he had
broken his leg. Besides, setting aside all question of re-
sponsibility, what has he clone that the public should be
out of temper? His parishioners might be, though they
suffered no more than if he had had a sun-stroke, or his
fnmily,orhistenants, or Dr. Philpotts ; but in what way has
he wronged the public? Is it necessary to take a plebis-
chum before a man can change his mode of life ? Many a
man, hundreds of men even in France, have retreated o
the monastery of La Trappe, and said not a word to rela-
tive, or friend, or business connection until the noviciate
was over, and the step taken beyond the risk of preven-
tion. Such men are fools, it may be ;we shall not deny
their folly ; but theirs is not badness as the world under-
stands badness, nor was Mr. Spoke's. His conduct was
terribly hard upon numberless people,—upon his family,
his friends, and upon us, who spent time and wasted
thought in useless speculations as to his fate ; but if his
primary business was, as all Catholics think, and as he
seems to have thought, to put his own soul into better re-
lations with its Maker, what was the objection to inflict-
ing those hardships? Priests have honestly burned people
for a great deal less, and the priests had no excuse in
hypochondriac melancholy.
The John Bull supposes that in Mr. Bright's opinion
we were ungenerous towards the North by our very
neutrality, and by accepting the South upon the footing
of belligerents, and not as rebels against the United
States. This was masked at St. ames's Hall, but what
can he said when, as proved James s and
admitted by Lord Hobart, the North had previously
laid down the position of the South as belligerents,
though now Mr. Seward, in the face of his own letters.
tries to turn the tables upon us for having done so ?
Lord Hobart speaks of Mr. Seward's having been caught
tripping here, but is a man to profit by his own ladies,
and, after having first called another "black," to attack
and seek recompense from some one else, who, fob
lowing his example, styles the person after the same
colour? This is one of the numerous instances of the
Birmingham member's habit to practise the substitutio
false by the suppressio Teri : he omits the basis on which
the whole matter rests, and builds up on fallacious
assumption a very fine creation of imaginary right and
wrong. We give all the St. James's speakers full credit
for their good wishes to preserve peace ; for their appre-
ciation of Lord Stanley's powers and conduct ; but when
wefind their recommendations to an English public, how
to behave, founded on a complete ignoring of the fact that.
America has stultified herself by endeavouring to pit
England in a false position, we are forcibly reminded of
the hypocritical footpad who demanded the traveller's
money or his life, and then recommended him to accept
his misfortunes perfectly like a Christian.
The London Review has .an article on the Promissory
u
atlis Bill. Our weekly contemporary is alto,-ether dis-
satisfied with the religious oaths of theoi,t7i.sent iyhat
it wants or wishes is a secular a
changes, the safeguards of society must change. Ifsociety
a re-
lieieus pledge has no hold upon certain persons, let there
be instituted a secular pledge which shall bind every one.
it ought to be revolting to all our modern ideas ofiustic
and toleration for us to turn round and say aa'
men
like Mr. Bradlaugh—" You do not believe as wer
and therefore we shall not admit your evidence."
We have no hesitation in saying that it is the firm
conviction of many o':herwise worthy penons ; and
that, if it came to an open struggle, there would not be
wanting advocates in the press and in the pulpit of such
a piece of petty intolerance. The fault does not lie
with the person who disbelieves in the efficacy of
the oath, but in the oath itself. The inapplicability
of a test is the blunder of those who invented the
t 0.17, not of the thing to be tested. It is required, there•
f; 1.,5, that: the oath or shall be binding upon all
that is. ti,iA no p:2rson will be ab!e to escape tile pen
breaking'Co find such a pielge ought not o
difilcult as it might appear. There may be perston
do not believe in the next world ; there are none who
not believe in this ; and the penalty of breaking a secula
oath must be inflicted by secular means. it is true that a
secular penalty already exists in a certain sense. If a man
resolves to brave the religious terrors of breaking an oath,
he is further liable to be laid hold of by the civil law,
found guilty of a misdemeanour, and punished accordingly.
But this is a cumbrous and incomplete arrangement.
practically admits the inutility of the religious terrors, in
making sure that the offender, if he should eseape in the
next world, shall not escape here ; while it altogether fails
to provide for the case of those who cannot at the outset
swear upon the Bible, because they do not believe in the

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