The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1896-05-17
Lord Salisbury.

III the NenCHuelan affair, ana Win every
other question that may arise, we shall still
have to deal. BISMARCK, in his Bismarckian
fashion, Is reported to have said of Lord
SALISBURY that he was n bulrush painted
to look like iron. This was hardly just.
Lord SALISBURY, If he is not so strong
rs iron, is stronger than a bulrush.
lie is n man Of genuine power, and
just now he has his country with him.
lie had the advantage of not being
born the eldest son. While his elder brother
was still living he had n quarrel with his
father, the Marquis, which threw him on
his own resources, and he obtained work
on the Saturday RcUiCW. Something Of
that journal still clings to him. In his
dispatches and speeches he is apt to be
epigrammatic. When he gets into trouble as
Prime Minister by his public utterances, rs
he sometimes does, it will be found that the
trouble arises not so much from the
thing he says, rs from the smart
way in which he says it, or from
some literary establishment of the kind
In which n lively journalist would indulge.
lie might have said without offence that
the same institutions woul not equally
suit all races; but he brought on n storm
of Irish wrath by adding, You would not
give the British Constitution to the Hot
tentots." CANNING, who, like Lord SAILS
BURY, had welded n smart and satiric pen,
was given to slips of the same kind. No
mistake in craftsmanship did him more
harm than his allitcrative gibe against the
"revered and r%uptured' OGDEN.
Lord SALISBURY. as a Tory of principle,
detested the INSCRIPTIONS opportunism
of DGsRAELI. He detested DIsRAELI him
self, and both spoke and wrote against him.
DGsRAELI, in return, dubbed Lord SAILS
BURY "a master OF houts, gibes, and
sneers." Lord SALISBURY showed that
he had some iron in his compost
ton by seeding from the Tory Gov
rnmen when Lord DERBY and Dis
RAEI1, after throwing out G~LADsroNE's
measure for the extension of the franchise,
turned round and themselves carried one
still more sweeping, for the purpose, rs Lord
DERBY recklessly avowed, of dishing the
Wings. But he aftcrward betrayed the
bulrush by ~succumbing to DIsRAELI, going
into his Cabinet, lending himself to Dis
RAELIs Eastern policy, aud putting his
hand with that of DGsRAELI to the Treaty
of Berlin. Jointly with DIsRAELI he is re-
sponsible for the tlashy acquisition of Cy-
prus, an island now acknowledged to be per-
fectly useless to England, as it is in a
dead angle of the Mediterranean with
out n harbor large enough for n
modern battle ship, and in case of war
would have to be abandoned at once. This
was the fee which he and DGsRAEL1 took for
pledging England to the defence of Turkish
1~,,;n;~, af,nin. p,,gpfn anI ~, n1,ytntr
reason for Lord SALIsBURY's refusal to in
~terfere with force in the Armenian question
Is that he would have first to liberate him
self from his engagement to Turkey by re-
turning the fee.
Lord SALISBURY is, above all things, an
aristocrat. He shows this by his predilec-
ton for the Foreign Office, which aristo-
cratic statesmen prefer because it brings
them into contact with sOvereigns, Minis
tiers of State, and othe" people of their own
rank and style. He shows it also by n GER
tain political dilettanteism, for it is pretty
evident that he has never taken the trouble
to make himself master of the political
questions of his age, He is understood to
spend his leisure hours not in solving politi-
cal problems but in chemistry, for which he
supposes himself to have n special genius, as
other statesmen have fancicd that they had
special genius for letters, and as Mr.. GLAD
STONE apparently fancics that he has a spe-
cial genius for theology and classical trans
lation. His one fixed political idea appa-
rently is the preservation Of an hereditary
House of Lords. For this he seems willing
to sacrifice everything, even the substantial
power of the House of Lords itself, so long
as he can maintain the existence of a patri-
clan order. He is not unwilling to daily
with socialism, If by so doing he can di-
vert reform from the House of Lords. Once
he offered a feeble and unsatisfactory com
promise, in the shape of the admission to
the House Of Lords of "A small number of
life peers; but he probably knew that
his offer would be rejected. MS it was.
To the State Church he also clings,
but it Is surmised rather with a po-
litical object, regarding the Church as an
outwork of aristocracy, than from religious
conviction; since the extreme high church.
manship for which he was once noted is
supposed in some measure to have yielded
to the influence of his scientific pursuits.
In this he il not swayed by mere
class selfishness or funkeyism, to both
of which he may fairly be deemed SUI
perior, but by an inbred and ingrained con-
victiou that hereditary aristocracy is the sal
walton of the political world.
A more fatal illusion the leader OF the Con-
sentative party in England at the present
day could not cherish, Every rational Con-
seryative sees that the reorganization of the
upper House in accordance with the ideas
and necessities OF the age, so rs TO make it,