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May 26, 1855.] T HE LEADER 407 ¦ ' .. .....
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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" The Stranger" In Parliament. [The Resp...
elaboration of that idle orator , and were rather rewarded for the patience by a good quarter of an hour ' s set of sentences towards the end , yet the buttonheld sensation had been horribly protracted And what had he effected ? He had made Lord John ridiculous : but that is sheer waste of time . Why Mr . Disraeli is for ever affecting the profoundest respect for Lord John , and always talking the profoundest contempt for Lord John , nobody knows ; and one watched Mr . Disraeli ' s vicious sneers , and analysed the rage gleaming in Lord John ' s rat-like countenance with a bewilderment that did not in the least promote the business in hand . Lord John was in a great passion : he would speak to no one , not the
abjectest Whig about , as he passed through the lobby ( when Mr . Disraeli was at seltzer-water ) to go into the library , and arrange his reply ; his reply arranged , he got back with gloomy savageness to have it out ; he could not sit through Mr . Gladstone ' s speech calmly —he thought Mr . Gladstone had perorated when Mr . Gladstone had not half done , and was on his legs to burst out when he saw his blunder , was order-ordered and laughed back . All these were unusual symptoms in this most apathetic of mean men : and denoted the fearful perturbation of the small nature . When he was up , there was no mistake about it ; he would not pronounce one word right—not one : he held his chin as high up as it would go ; he kept his arms
laced , in the school-girl way , behind his back ; and he gave his historic snort—a loud Haw!—between all his sentences ; for it is Lord John ' s manner , when having finished one sentence , and not having settled the next , to make that imbecile expectoration to keep attention awake , and it is told that a young reporter once took notes of these snorts , Lord John ' s speech accordingly looking in type like a long continued oration by Job's warhorse . But though savage he could not be effective . He had simply to say that Mr . Disraeli had degraded a great question by being personal , as if you were not to make individuals responsible for being old simpletons while pretending to statesmanship ; and
his best hit was to make the most of lory discontent with Mr . Disraeli by suggesting with diabolical emphasis that the move would not increase the respectability or the glory of the party . As to his defence of himself , it is absurd . He did incite the nation to war : he did talk of material guarantees : he did try at Vienna to effect a paper peace ; and he is only carrying on war to reduce the number of Russia ' s ships in the Black Sea . The picture , as painted by himself , is the portrait of- a man of fussy intellect and feeble character ; incapable of comprehending the position ; unequal to guiding the position . The House has a weakness for Lord John ; but they cannot stand him now . When he rose , at least two hundred members left their places to go out and
talk over Mr . Gladstone : the buzz was so disdainfully loud that it took the Speaker at least three minutes to get a hearing for the " leading man of the age . " When he sat down , after his lumbering inanities about the Tory party , I think that the two hundred members who had got back after the lobby chat laughed at him . I am not sure , for at the moment I was listening to a lady in the cage overhead who had just come in from a party , and who was asking " who that dreadfully dirty little man was that was speaking ? " As the dreadfully dirty little man ' s female relatives , members of the 32 , are always plentiful in the cage on the nights when he feels jbleeged to say something as to the " posation auf A . anghmd , " there no doubt ensued a row—happily irowned in the break-up of the House .
The speech of Thursday was Mr . Gladstone ' s . Like all his elaborate efforts , it was finished in construction ( though spoiled by too much deference to ; he slip-slop , loose style of Parliament ) , brilliant , iloquent , masterly , —and delightful to listen to , it nercly as an elocutionary performance . It was a ipeech which you felt , as you heard it poured out Tom that master mind , would modify public > pinion , affect our passing history , be the ; ext of a controversy ; and the earnest man is usual met the earnest audience : — at times ; he still House , though at that hour crowded with estive costume , though looking grandly theatrical inder tho blaze of brilliant light , was as reverential n its touo as u cathedral congregation . A great
wrator had encountered tho happy conjunction of a jreat theme and a great audience : and that splendid ipeech , a state paper which is tho first of the many sontributcd on tho subject to define to Europj tho jxact position , and the complete argument , was a iriumph such as fow men ever have , and no man ) ften . It was a speech that places tho speaker among he recognised orators—alongside Chatham mid 3 urkc and Brougham . But , alaal it produced eolingH of pain among tho many who have if lute- years looked to Mr . Glads touo as tho Ittost Parliamentary leader of our time , tfor , in naking that impression as an orator , ho was iofltroying himself as a statesman . Mr . Gladstone laa been giving himself up to logic , and ia losing tho State . Tho man who will not consent occasionally ,
or even continuously , for the sake of power , to go with the majority , however wrong—to go with them in order to prevent them being more wrong —is very noble , very Christian , but he is not a statesman , and his business is not among politicians , —his business is in the closet , the press , books . When Mr . Gladstone , years ago , was arguing that Puseyism was logically good Anglicanism—when Mr . Gladstone was rendering Sir Robert Peel uncomfortable by the development of his doubts as to the consistency of the Maynpoth Grant—when
Mr . Gladstone was doing other things of that kind , the country was not vexed with the delicate bloom of his conscience—we calculated that it would wear off , and leave a serviceable surface , in good time . In the Railway Board , in the Colonial Office , at the Exchequer , in letters to Lord Aberdeen about a tortured Italian patriot , Mr . Gladstone seemed to indicate that he had set himself to the actual work of practical government , and that that massive understanding had ceased to perplex itself with scholastic refinements on plain matters .
But he is apparently relapsing into the delicate mental disease produced by an excess of logical faculty . His error in leaving the Palmerston Government because Palmerston assented to the Sebastopol Committee , arose from his exquisite conscientiousness and his preternaturally-pellucid logic ; but the gravity of the mistake in getting again into the background has since been observed , and Mr . Gladstone on Thursday proved as clearly as he proved anything that he ought to be agitating his views on the war in the Cabinet , and not in the House of Commons . In his declaration now , that the war has become sinful because it is carried on for purposes not originally specified when we
went to war , he strikes his countrymen with the conviction that he is admirably logical , but that he has imperfect notions of the science of governing-men . Mr . Gladstone is quite right , perhaps , that the war is not only sinful and illogical , but absurd . But Lord Palmerston is the better statesman in not confessing illogicality and in humouring the humorous British people . Mr . Gladstone , then , by that one speech , passes away from among our practical leaders and takes up his position next to Mr . Bright , below Mr . W . J . Fox , not far from Mr . Lawrence Heyworth , —as a crotcheteer . Let us trust that hu and Mr . Bright will reappear in the stations which their characters and intellects ,
alike first-rate , would command in peaceful circumstances ; and in the mean while their experience will suggest to them that though it is a fine thing to have the confidence and the affection of the pure-minded and logical Christian community , yet that community is not sufficiently large to obtain power even for the powerful : —and that it is the duty of the powerful , therefore , not to thrust away power . Mankind , particularly . English mankind , are very easily governed ; and the best men ought not to give up Government to the worst . Lord Palmerston last night suggested that Mr . Gladstone ought never to have sat in his ( Lord P . 's ) Government : and Lord Malmesbury , in the House
of Lords , said , amid the cheering of the few Peers present , that it was a good thing for England that the Peelites will now be regarded as combinations of the Jesuit and the Quaker . But Lord Palmeston ' s Government missed the Peelites in this debate . Lord Palmerston was , on the whole , more melancholy , feeble , and futile than his Colonial Minister . It was late when he had to speak , arid he had not got more than two hours' doze all night : and he was ludicrously interrupted by Black Rod , and found that the wretched joke on that interruption did not take , and altogether was upset by the laughing at Sir Augustus Clifford and himself . His speech was a concoction of formalities and commonplaces , badly
delivered , impatiently endured . He only said one good thing—that he would do the will of the people —that any Minister now must do tho will of the people—which , perhaps , is an appeal to pressure from without to put down some of his Cabinet and all the Court : but for that sagacious saying , in which he virtually undertakes a great war , free from negotiations , if England will stand by him , he got no credit . So that Mr . Disraeli's reply—done in Mr . Disraeli ' s old Peelic style , with a refreshing renewal of swift strength , with that audacious swagger and gladiatorial gesticulation which are not vulgar , but delightful , in Mr . Disraeli
—was very effective ; and the government , which has no better men to put forward than those two oldest old lords , got into its safe division decidedly damaged . Mr . Layard was effective against them , but not so effective as he would have been if ho had taken more pains and elaborated his excellent points ; lie was effective from his full knowledge ; and that that ample knowledge would give him parliamentary position if ho would but condescend to work for it lileo other men who take time , ho must sec in the circumstance that « , U through hie speech the generoussouuding chcora wore given from tho Tory benches—from tho very men with whoso class ho is
at war . Mr . Roundell Palmer was really eloquent in elaboration of Mr . Gladstone ' s view : but then Lord John and Lord Palmerston slumbered throug h , his speech , and the House was dining , so that We must regret Mr . Palmer spoke at all . Mr . Lowe had a still smaller audience , but he deserved a full house , which he will yet have , for his robust common sense and elegant plain speaking . Mr . White ^ side had a distinct parliamentary success : —that is-a fact , not an opinion—men of all sides were loud and
hearty in their declaration that he had at last justly fied the reputation with which he had entered the House . Lord Stanley was a failure , not for las speech , which I have no doubt was sound and excellent and pointed , but because he was only heard by the benches immediately in face of him . Lord Stanley is a man of first-rate powers , a born go-, vernor ; but he cannot speak , and never will be a speaker , —and , therefore , he ought to take to Mxi Carlyle ' s cant that oratory is a mischievous delusion , suited only to a barbaric period , and so on .
Poor Lord Grey suffered , last night , from the greater attraction at the other House . He had only half a dozen Peers to talk to , not more than the same number of Bishops , and Lord Redesdale seems so effectually to have frightened away the ladies , that the sex was represented by no more than Countess Grey ( of course ) and two or three daughters of very rural Deans . Nevertheless , Lord Grey honest crocheteer , had his say from five to eig h ^
and proved every one in the wrong to his entire satisfaction . He brought up the cleverest of the Bishops , the only clever Duke , and one Minister—but you can scarcely call the talk a debate . Yet the Lords had their revenge on the public inattention to them by sending in that awful Black Rod ( whose little ebony stick looks like a note of exclamation on the Constitution ) to flutter the Commons into consternation , and to make their leader look more ridiculous than he ever looked }
before . . ; , The miscellaneous Parliamentary incidents of this week are not numerous . Sir James Graham in atr tempting to put Mr . Layard down ,, put himself down : and on . Monday had to do what has so often been rgr quired of him—to confess that he was a hugfe blunderer in consequence of being so colossally craftyi That large old gentleman did not look noble in apologising that evening , and must have noticed that the respectful but cold , House did not believe a word of his explanations ! But it was as well , even at the expense of Sir James Graham being found out in a meanness , to have the question settled who killed Cock Robin ; and Mr . Layard , if he be patient , and
take such advice as has been offered in these columns , and as Mr . Disraeli gave him very kindly on Thursday , -will have a quiet time of it now . A more promising Peelite than Sir James is Mr . Gordon , Xord Aberdeen ' s son , who made a maiden speech on Tues * day on the Ballot- —speaking with vigour and heartir ness , and with due affectation of modesty required by elderly idiots from clever young men—and indicating that the young Whigs do not enjoy a monopoly of liberal principles . That painfully elderly Whig , Lord Seymour , illustrated , on the same night , what Whig principles amount to . Speaking in the fuU . confidenqe that as a nation of snobs we like to be despised , he said that the borough constituencies wanted the ballot because they were rogues : and he argued that they were rogues , because , he said , they are of the small shopkeeping class ; and even
tradesmenall tradesmen being in the habit of adulterating goods , and generally defrauding the public—are scoundrels . Thus , argues the lord , if you canaille adulterate your goods , why should we not adulterate the Government , and get our share of fraud in that fashion—an argument that the English people ought ; to loolc into , hanging Lord Seymour if it be unsound —or themselves , if it be well founded . Meanwhile , Lord Seymour ' s malignant candonr allows of ia pleasant peep into the mind ( so to speak ) of the aristocratic animal ; and considering tho pot-and-kettle controversy going on between Lord * and people , one begins to feel elate with ones own , one ' s native land . Mr . Henry Berkeley made his great annual joke , a proposal of the Ballot , witn his usual irresistible comicality;—model moral man as hft is . lie ia bent on purifying our public lite , & ir ;
and as long as it ' s quite sure not to bo enrrlea , no will keep tho ballot motion before our eyes , and give us pleasant speeches , in which , confident in ma pocLt borough , ho ably denounces the undue , ia r ttuonceof the aristocracy Not many of the de ££ mental sons of peers are able to amuse us ; butwhoh an Honourable , of some capacity lives to m « ldto aire lie is verv effective in bringing his knowledge of the ' workl to bear upon political affectations Avar d'etre Uommc polUUjiie , U faut ctrc homme l > l < isd ; and Imviutf passed forty years in making the most of his advantages in rendering private hlo pleasant , Mr . Henry Berkeley is sublime in undertaking 'to- pro J vide it machinery which ho guarantees to mako us " all publicly honetft . , ;
May 26, 1855.] T He Leader 407 ¦ ' .. .....
May 26 , 1855 . ] T HE LEADER 407 ¦ ' .. ..... L ____^ ^^ ¦——
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), May 26, 1855, page 17, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_26051855/page/17/
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