Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury,—the demigods of the present Government,
in which Sir Stafford Northeote, as the mere leader of the Commons, appears to hold a very subordinate place,—received on Tuesday, at the Foreign Office, an immense deputation, numbering, it is said, fifteen hundred members, from the Conservative Associations of England and Wales. About 350 of these Associations were represented, each of the deputations presenting an address and shaking hands with the two heroes,—a ceremony which occupied a full hour. Then Lord Beaconsfield delivered a little address on the value of party discipline, asserting that opinion "when organised loses nothing of its genuineness and sincerity," that "Nature is herself organised," and announcing a very remarkable and original truth,—that "if there were not a great directing power which controls and guides, and manages everything, you would have nothing but volcanoes, earthquakes, and deluges." From this we infer that, in Lord Beaconsfield's opinion, "volcanoes, earth- quakes, and deluges" are not outcomes of any "great directing power which controls, and guides, and manages everything," but are the expressions of some unorganised anarchy outside,—that we should have more volcanoes, for instance, with no laws of elastic fluids and superincumbent pressure, than we have with such laws ; more of earthquakes without those laws of expansion and com- pression which disturb the equilibrium of the earth's surface ; more of deluges without those laws of evaporation and condensation, which lead to our present floods. Lord Beaconefield, as a natural philosopher, bids fair to surpass even Lord Beaconsfield as a statesman and diplomatist.
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