The Sun.
London, England, 1868-07-30 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

The Times says that Mr. Disraeli's speech on Wednesday
night at the Mansion House was another illustration of
that passion for strong and vivid, not to say crude, colour-
ing, which is one of the few constant characteristics of
his nature. Mr. Disraeli painted the world before
the Mansion House audience in reds and yellows
and blues. The sky was cloudless. The future is
golden with promise. The past is almost without a
spot to sully its perfection. Such drawbacks as
may be discoverable in the retrospect are due entirely to
the fact that the Conservative Administration have not
been allowed to have entirely their own way. It was
natural that Mr. Disraeli should allude with satisfaction
to foreign affairs, but that he should find in Ireland a
subject of the " utmost congratulation" astonishes the
Times.
- -

The Herald states that considering how largely the
majority in the House of Lords against the Suspen-
sory Bill was reinforced by the Liberal party, it
becomes rather a serious matter when every in-
divdual peer who ventures to declare before the world
that he dissents from the new policy of the Opposition is
to be subjected to the pelting of Mr. Gladstone's mud-
larks. On Monday it was the Duke of Portland who was
singled out for abuse. On Wednesday it was the turn of the
Marquis of Bute, the crime of each being his hateful and
unnatural antipathy to Mr. Gladstone's policy. It is
really melancholy to find the most earnest of the literary
exponents of the new Liberal creed supplying day after
day fresh illustrations of its narrowness and its bigotry.
It is a despotism, a mean, cowardly, grinding tyranny,
which they seek to erect in the place of those well-
understood principles and those honourable understand-
ings which once served to give unity and consen-
taneousness to the great Liberal party. It might have
been thought that as a mere matter of prudence silence
would have been the wiser policy, but the mot d'ordre
appears to have gone forth that the dirty linen of the
Liberal party is to be washed in public, and in deference
thereto, we presume, certain of its newspaper organs hold
themselves in readiness to load with obloquy every indi-
vidual member who shall dare to assert his own judgment,
or to hint a doubt as to the infallibility of Mr. Gladstone.
Alluding to the vituperation of the peers by the Liberal
press, and the threats dealt out, the Herald says that the
peers will not be deterred from exercising their legitimate
influence by the threat that they may be hastening
the discussion of the question, "how far the
laws which favour the accumulation of vast pro-
perties in a few hands are compatible with the free and
honest working of the representative system." No
questions of this sort were raised while the Duke of Port-
land and the Marquis of Bute took a right view of the
political situation, and exercised their influence in favour
of the Liberal party ; and, as our contemporaries know
perfectly well, such magnates of the Whig party as the
Dukes of Somerset, Devonshire, and Sutherland, and
Lords Zetland, Aveland, Fitzwilliam, Carlisle, De Grey,
Lansdowne, and others, could give very excellent reasons
why Mr. Gladstone should be very slow to raise a finger
to cripple the legitimate influence of themselves and their
brother peers.
The Star remarks that the representatives of the people
have loyally and assiduously perfected a bill for the repres-
sion of bribery, but an evil greater than bribery has been
allowed to pass unchecked. The representation is to be
made independent of plutocrats, but it is still to be depen-
dent on aristocrats. Railway and sugar and cotton
magnates may not buy boroughs ; but dukes, marquises,
and earls are froe to dispose of them as they list.
Alluding to the case of Cardiff, our contemporary con-
siders that there is a circumstance, indeed in the case
which renders the candidature of Mr. Giffard, which
,Lord Bute favours substantially, as official a candidature
as ever scandalised a French constituency. The minor
marquis has a guardian, and that guardian, Sir James
Fergusson, is a junior but ambitious member of
the present Government. And it is Sir James
Fergusson who has settled this question about
the borough. Ile is openly described by Mr. Boyle,
a trustee of the marquis, as practically the holder
of the marquis's conscience. So that we come
at this state of things : If the people of Cardiff think the
right to return a member is theirs they are very much
mistaken, for Lord Bute has a prior claim ; and if Lord
Bute thinks he has the right of returning the member he
too is mistaken, for Sir James Fergussun holds his lord-
ship's conscience—sacred charge !—and Mr. Disraeli holds
Sir James Fergusson's conscience, as was evident when he
turned right round and voted for Reform, of which he had
been a most hot-headed antagonist.

The Standard says that as the Times has been the most
unswerving advocate of the disestablishment and disen- t
dowment of the Irish Church, a peculiar value, derived ,1
from its obvious sincerity, attaches to its estimate of the
motives of Mr. Gladstone in adopting that line of policy.
Speaking of the rivalry between the right hon. gentleman
and the Premier, our contemporary says in its lea.ling
columns of Wednesday that Mr. Gladstone " immolates a
Church Establishment because in no other way can he get
the wind of his daring and unscrupulous antagonist." So I
frank an avowal might have been uncommonly damaging
to Mr. Gladstone at an earlier period of the session ; but
as we have always held a similar belief as to Mr. Glad-
stone's object in pressing forward his " convictions of a
life" at this particular period, we have much pleasure in
placing on record this tardy acknowledgment of the fair.
ness and accuracy of our judgment.
In commenting upon the approaching close of the session of
1868, the Telegraph sums up the departmental merits of the
present Government, and on this score returns a verdict in
their favour. Meanwhile, the " British Constitution "
which nobody can deny, because nobody has ever read it— has
of late been understood to exact that the Ministry of
the day must not only manage our State affairs, but
must successfully lead Parliament, especially in
directing any new legislation that may be under-
taken. In that branch of Ministerial work Mr.
Disraeli has broken down ; he has left undone one half of
the usual work of the Prime Minister of the time. He is
now in the attitude of a man employed to be " conductor
and composer " in an opera-house, who continues to
conduct the band, but is obliged to confess himself unable
to compose. The Telegraph condemns the conduct of the
Opposition in the matter of the Anti-Bribery Bill and the
Electric Telegraphs Bill, while on the Foreign Cattle
Market Bill the question in dispute was complicated, and
the blame of the failure must be divided between the
Ministry and the Opposition—with this difference, that
the Liberals made the best of a bad cause, and the Tories
the very worst of a good one. Mr. Ayrton exhibited
audacity, tact, resolution, cunning in opposing a
measure, good, at all events, in the object which it
sought to attain ; and the Ministry blundered and
broke down, with the very best intentions. A minor
crime—if minor it is—was the disgraceful opposition
of the Irish Liberals to Lord Mayo's proposal
to increase polling-places in Ireland ; an opposition that
had not the courage to avow the real motive—a desire to
continue the use of violence in deterring landlord-driven
tenants from reaching the poll. Against these mere acts
of antagonism we are happy to record three notable acts
of real progress achieved by the Opposition : compulsory
church rates, with all the local discord they so often
roused, are gone for ever ; public hanging is abolished ; and
flogging in the army, which had found so vigorous an oppo-
nent in Mr. Arthur Otway, is a brutality- of the past.
The Telegraph prophesies a large majority for Mr.
Gladstone in the Parliament of 1869, and says that no
Minister since Peel, in 1841, will have had anything like
his House of Commons power. But Peel was then
avowedly the leader of a well-organised faction : Mr.
Gladstone will be the choice of the people at large. Peel
was made Minister to keep bread dear, and to represent
Protestant ascendancy : Mr. Gladstone is made Prime
Minister that our union with Ireland may be not a treaty
on parchment, but a bond uniting hearts, and that reli-
gious discord may at length be driven out of that fair sister
island where it has so long maintained demoniac posses-
sion. No session is fruitless that gives us the pledge and
Promise of so great a work.

The Herald does not think it surprising that a Minister
should shrink from dealing in sculpture. Still, ought such
a life as Lord Brougham's be closed with a tale of
national neglect? True, as the Greek orator exclaimed,
" the whole earth is the monument of illustrious men."
Yet we ought to cherish their likenesses, to place
their counterfeits among those of others whom we
have hononred, and to render our gallery of glory
complete. Think ft 3 we may of Lord Brougham,
of his partisanship, of his advocacy, of his earlier or his
later years, still he was a countryman of whom we should
all be proud ; and, although we may not wish to disturb
his ashes where they lie, near his chosen home at Cannes,
we may, nevertheless, regret to miss, from among the
effigies of the men who were acclaimed as illustrious while
they lived, that of the men who filled so large a space in
his time, and was in turns feared, hated, and venerated by
his contemporaries—Henry Lord Brougham.

How TO UTILISE LEECHES. -- The German
(lectors have lately been playing their leeches a droll trick,
making one worm do the work of many. When the little
blood-sucker has taken his fill and is about to release his
bite, he is tapped ; a small incision is made in his side
that serves as an outlet for the blood, and he goes on
wicking, in happy ignorance of the cause of his abnormal
appetite, as long as the doctor pleases. Bdellatomy is the
name given to the practice, and it is urged that it is not
cruel, but contrariwise ; since it does the leech a good turn
by enabling him to enjoy his rich feast indefinitely. He
does not die under the operation, but with proper treat.
m.3-at is soon hcaleJ, and ma,y b 9 0ci,5944 OW *4 9TCX
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