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y ^ sre Chartists—the Bishop using that sort of abuse , aa Dickens' shrew accuses her friend of being a turnedup-nose peacock—the Bishop no more believing that Lord Aberdeen is in correspondence with Cuffy than the lady in question admitted the possibility of the ornithological phenomenon she referred to , but the Bishop , like the old lady , being determined to generalize effectively an objection . The suspicion that Ministers were not iriends of the Church gratified themthe charge that they were Chartists flattered themand Lord Granville took notes of the . points , and doubtless made up his mind to make use of the accusations
for the purpose of keeping Molesworth in order at the very next Council . In the same way , and for analogous reasons , we Radicals are doing the work of the Coalition by hinting our suspicions that they are rather Austrian in their tendencies : abuse in the House of Lords for their liberalism sets them up in the Commons ; and abuse in the Commons for their Toryism keeps them a majority together in the Lords ; so that Buncombe is played against Derby , and Walrnsley against Malmesbury ; and matters go on agreeably and safely in Downing Street . The results are surprising : the old Protectionist Opposition
had been beaten up to last night ( in pitched battles ) , and both in Lords and Commons , five times : in the Lords on Monday , on the Canada Clergy Reserves Bill—the fight being a regular rout ; Rupert rushing as usual with his eyes shut into the midst of the enemy , and there being quietly cut down , finding that not a horseman had followed him , page Desart perhaps excepted : in the Commons this day week , Disraeli leading up the whole host in well-whipped array , on the commutation of the Debt resolutions : in the Commons again , on Tuesday , when Protest an Lism was challenged to persecution by Lord Derby ' s intimates—Mr . Napier ,
Mr . Hamilton , and Lord 2 saas : in the Commons a second time on Tuesday , when Sir John Pakington attempted to stop the way of the Debt resolutions ; and in the Commons again on Wednesday , when Sir Fitzroy Kelly , again with a good whip , attempted to spoil the same set of resolutions or , as they now stand , clauses of a finance bill . The beating , observe , was not only triumphant for numbers ; but because liberal principles , upheld by the Government , attacked by the Opposition , were involved : the Duke of Newcastle talking anti-State Churchism in the Lords against Lord Derby ' s small-minded feebllBfactiousness : and Sir JamesGraham ,
replying on Tuesdny to the Napiers , and Hamiltons , and the dominant bigots who hold the Castle of Dublin against the people of Ireland , speaking a speech that might have been prepared by Mr . Keogh—its text the right of the Catholics of Ireland to the first consideration in all State questions about the education of Ireland . Lord Derby gave the opportunity for these two tentative appeals to public opinion ; and Lord Derby so destroyed himself . Where are his " 310 " " undoubtedly the majority of the House of Commons " now ? Where is his " unquestionable majority" in the House of Lords ? His own position is the contemptible
one of an ally of a Bishop of Exeter on a colonial question , and of a Napier and a Whiteside ( crack representatives of the old race of malignant Orangoinen , for whose sake oolong Catholic It-eland was crushed by England ) on the question of Ireland . And Mr . Disraeli ' s position is little bettor than that of a querulous ex-Cliancellor of the Kxchoquer finding lidgetty fault with a financial schemo lie cannot alter . And the party ' s general position is ludicrously uneasy , digesting tho dirt eaten at Lord Derby ' s bidding , and trying to look easy while Mr . Mackenzie or Mr . Bateson assures it that Mr . Disraeli is up early and kite looking out for
a polity . Taking that gonoral view , I repeat , then , Ministers have got so much strength , that they can afford n little suspicion , and such mi air of liberalism , that a little dash of the reactionary Tory , at the hands of Lord Palmer-Hton , bowline indispensable to tho equilibrium in tho leginlature which it is tho function of a oalifcion to preserve . Tho leaven of Moloswortb in colonial , and of Keogh in Irish policy , and of O . sborne and Villiors in commercial policy , wort ) becoming too traceable in tho general mass of measures ; and a week or two of " Hound Conservatism ' ' becomes decidedly advisable . Otherwise we might get Mr . Miall or Mr . Lucas rising to ask Lord John Russell " whether , us tho Government
is ho strongly of opinion ( te . sto Canada Clergy Reserves ) that a church can have no corporate property , mid that tho majority of « people is entitled to deoido on the endowments of a church , it is tho intention of Her MaitMty ' H Ministers fco take the boiiso of Parliament on tho present Slate establishment of tho Anglican Church in England and 1 rolled ; and if not , whether it itj because Her Majesty ' s Ministers have not that confidence in the justice and eonsidenitenesn of the people of Great Britain , which they profess to havo in tho people of Canada . " Tho question would bo logical ; and the
House would laugh ; and Ministers would look se > rious . They must avoid such dilemmas . They must not allow publicists to forget that this is a coalition age , and that a Coalition Government must appreciate the age . Liberalism to-day , then : Toryism to-morrow : Radicalism when the Queen gives up commanding Sir Wm . Molesworth to dine with her—for how can a man talk Benthamism , and then face a Queen who will read all f jhe papers ? Couldn't be done . Sir ; and that's well understood in conscious tap-rooms in the Borough . The three nights discussion on the Budget has been not a debate , but a levee—a reception by Mr . Gladstone . About thirty or forty men have spoken , and not three havo condemned . Member after member
has gone up smiling to the august and complacent Chancellor of the Exchequer , oratorically kissed the hand which had gone so deep into the cornucopia which he keeps in his red box , and been rewarded with the nod which , when it comes from an official to an " independent" member , is proverbially sufficing . Lord John may not have liked all that homage to his right lion , friend : however rejoicing that the Government had made a hit , he would have liked—jealous of his dignity as undepartmented leader—a man with a mission not addressed and lying in Downing-street " till called for " —that the acknowledgments should have been general
to the Cabinet , and not so distinctly personal and grateful to an individual who , before his success , suspected that Lord John Russell , as amateur pilot , was de trop in a calm , among a crew coalesced on the comprehensive basis of administrative ability . Sir C . Wood may not have liked the overwhelming contrasts candidly thrust on his attention between this Budget and Ms beggars wallets . The Whigs , generally , are not pleased that the coup , on which all depended , should have been made by the Peelite portion of the Ministry , and that Mr . Gladstone himself should so prominently present the Cabinet as taking up the work of Sir Robert Peel , —a connexion , in following which the Whig element and interregnum between
Peel in 1842 , and Gladstone in 1853 , are likely to be overlooked . But Mr . Gladstone is revelling in bis own proper fame ; talks exultingly;—he treated poor Pakington , on Tuesday , as Pakington would have treated , say Chisholm Anstey—Gladstone , dazzling and happily fresh from a ball , and ready to begin the day ( half-past one o ' clock in the morning , and Pakington having been there since four ) , forgot that he had been insulted in the Carlton and laughingly snubbedactually snubbed;—the " steady keen hand" the Carlton ( which has been reading Disraeli ' s cheap reissues and begins to sneer ) is ready to swear by —; and , generally , is in such superb good humour , that be is half inclined to add a million or two of his private
fortune to swell the surplus , and , at any rate , is supposed to be ready to get rid of all the grumbling by altering tho licenses grievance , and by giving the Radicals what they want about tho newspaper taxes . That is the least concession be could make for so much complimenting as he has been the recipient of since tho beginning of this week ; and he will increase the amount of the-gift , by tho good grace with which he will confess an error . Apelles consented to alter the shoo of the Venus . In such a beauty of a Budget ,
little defects may bo allowed by u consummate artist . But a bad Budget gives good debates ; a good Budget hns entailed on a dull public unenlivening discussions . Tho monotonous admiration of the House has been like the invariable Oh—h—h ' s of the crowd , wondering at the Vauxhall pyrotechnic tableaux ; and Burkes dittoing one another , make tho strangers' galleries unexciting . Tho certain success of tho Budget was so accurately foreseen , that a heavy debate was made still heavier , by the absence of the chances of a struggle ; and , up l , i > this moment , no man of great mark has spoken . Hvcn among the small men , there wan little competition for
tho maltreating of the Speaker ' s eye ; and tho House ! bus consisted only of the said few small men , who would speak , and who were obliged to wait listening to one another , till their turns cuine round . This is an observablo Parliamentary maxim- when a Government is safe , tho smoking-room fills;—when a Hudgot lias only to be puffed , its details aro gone into over a cigar . The influonco of the House of Commons' smoking-room upon Uritish history , bun never been nufHeiently recognised , and must be discussed some day in this place . It is
the green room of tho Legislative stage ; and thiH week , its attractiveness , oh a limit for gossip , appcais to have kept the House empty . ( Constituonts should look to this , in Mr . Harry ' s bills—the smoking-room is tho m « s , t luxuriant in the whole building . ) Sir Kdwurd Lytton had an uudionco at the start of the debate , — getting a crowd for tho very reasons which filled Drurylario to sec Edmund Kcan , as harlequin ; for who is not curious to sco the artistic novelist iw the farmer's friend ? Ernest Multravera bringing himself down to tho Sir John Tyrrel level—Felkfun affecting the Henley ? But
Sir Edward does it well ; he is awfully dull , and proses so well that one really believes he was mistaken in that estimate of himself which he gave in the preface to " Arthur . " He makes some cad say to the brokendown roue , in the Cider-cellar ' s scene in " Pelham , "" Well , it ' s an odd history ; and I'd never have thought you'd been a gentleman . " On Monday , nobody would have thought Sir Edward had come from- the clever classes into tho country gentlemen set ; and you may , therefore , imagine his success . The Protectionists cheered him heartily , and began to wonder if he might not do nearly as well as Pakington for a leader . And ,
in its way , that was a House of Commons triumph , no doubt ; and you would have thoug ht it a great one , to see the air of Maltravers as he went up to the stenographers , anxiously hoping that they had heard him well ! Yet there was something wanting in the triumph ; for a good speec h for a farmer ' s friend is hardly a good speech for the author of JEngland and the English ; and the only tolerable matter was , at any rate , spoiled by the intolerable manner . Sir Edward appears to have no musical ear , and his sentences rise and fall iibout in an unmodulated way , that
teases and perplexes , all the more that he is so slow and straggling ; and what chiefly does not please in him , is that it is so evident the eye is turned inwards—that he is not addressing the House , but speaking a prepared speech , which he thinks wonderfully profound , and desires to make impressive : —a consideration which the collective House never appreciates . Listen to him they did , for they listen to most openers of a debate ; and there was curiosity to see a clever man in a new position ; but bow dead the real ikilure was may be inferred from the fact that Sir Edward gave no text or
tone to the debate , that be produced no impression out of doors , aud that when bis voice ceased his speech was dead , no reference of any con sequence being made to it in the rest of the discussion , and certainly no one specifically answering it . Sir Edward , of course , can become a leading man in the House of Commons , if he likes ; if he studies it , and consults its tastes and necessitiesas he did not when there ten years ago , and as he has not done since returned last—lie can command and
control it equally with other clever men with a capacity to understand mankind ; but the very freshest youth in the place has not more to learn , to fit himself for that assembly , than Sir Edward has to unlearn . First of all , the unreality of his point of view—talking talk which , however good , is not quite certain to tell ; and in the next place , the utter artificiality of bis manner . The House will not be spoken at : it will be talked to . There are men , however , who are unable , whatever their practice , to get the House of Commons knack
Read the speech of Mr . Cobdcn , who re-opened the debate on Thursday , and you will see how admirable is its matter and its arrangement ; one of those crystalclear speeches which are peculiar to himself ; and yet that speech did not tell on the House , and for tho simple reason that it was not addressed to tho House , but to the West Riding . Mr . Cobden is the agitator , even in presence of Mr . Speaker , and always looks and talks like a representative of the pressure from without ¦—the thin end of the celebrated wedge in bodily . Mr .
Cobden has spoken twenty tunes per ever 184 . 1 , and he has not yet . a notion how to catch tho ear of the audionco l > est worth having of all the audiences in the world . Beyond the walls he sees and hoars a middle-class meeting ; and be talks at that with a great earnestness and a vast command of his subject , which get the intermediary attention—but with a carelessness for the opinions and feelings he is in presence of that inakos him a decidedly unpopular man at Westminster . See bow he insulted the Irish Liberal members on Thursday—an insult which Serjeant Sheo forcibly retorted for Uieni—upon no provocation
whutover , and merely from a sensation that the " point would have told capitally in a Free-trade hall in England . Take , as a further comfort for Sir lOdward Bnlwer , Mr . Moore ' s speech last night . Mr . Moore , also , will not consult House of Commons peculiarities , and gets no runl position in consequence . A clovor man , full of thought and very fluent , ho will say what he thinks , in tho way it- caino on to the paper with which ho iircpunxl himself ; and the result is Hiniirt declamahave visible
tion in a harsh Mayo brogue , which can no (¦ fleet on mm or parties—which is uwrv mental enjoyment of the orator ' s — nnd to which nobody piiys any attention ; certainly not tho Knglish members , who fancy Moore is doing what Cobden docs , talking to out of doors ; whereas ( j . II . Mooro is ( iiiriu'stly , rapturously , and contentedly , talking to himself . Thou there is n third instance worth noticing , that of Kir Francis Baring , who inado a speech on Thursday which oxcitod grout tulk , consisting for the most part of angry condemnation . Sir Francis , u Whig of established crotcbettincaa , wua First Admiralty Lord under tho late Government , was
Untitled Article
Aprii-80 , 1853 . ] THE LEADER . 425
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Leader (1850-1860), April 30, 1853, page 425, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1984/page/17/
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