THE DIGNITY OF THE PEERAGE.
THE proceedings in the House of Lords on Monday evening could scarcely have been improved had Mr. Planche been expressly en- gaged for the occasion to frame one of his polished burlesques on the serio-comic course of conduct pursued by the House of Com- mons on Mr. Villiers's motion. The stomachs of the Protectionist Peers are, it seems, more squeamish than those of their political friends in the Lower House; or, not having the fear of con- stituencies before their eyes, they can afford to consult their squeamishness. Be the reason what it may, Lord Derby and his noble adherents refused the draught their non-privileged com- rades swallowed, with wry faces indeed, but with open and loudly- expressed satisfaction that it was not made more nauseous. My Lord Derby is one of those highminded men who do not like to be despised, and who steadily refuse any but the lowest amount of humiliation which will secure them the objects of their interest or ambition. Within this limit they are not so nice. Accordingly, the resolutions which the Protectionist Commoners were only too happy to bolt, the chivalrous Earl turned up his nose at. More than that, he would not even be content with the very words which his own Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed to the Commons ; thereby proving at once the sincerity of the ac- ceptance of Free-trade by the party generally, and his own Chivalrous and disinterested regard for the dignity and honour of that party,! It 'would be difficult to imagine a more convincing proof of the stubbornness with which _the party clings in its innermost convictions and hopes to the openly-dis- avowed intention of reversing or modifying " recent legislation," should ever their opportunity arrive ; and impossible to invent a more striking instance of 'the disregard of the feelings 'of his itd, herenta by a party chief. There is besides an audacious meanness in the act, that would cover with shame any political party still capable of that last lingering virtue. For is it to be supposed for a moment that the Free-trade majority of the House of Commons would have accepted the capitulation of Ministers on the easy terms proposed by the mediating Palmerston, had they not held Lord Derby and his colleagues in the House of Lords to be an implied party to the negotiation ? Is it to be imagined for a mo- ment that that majority would have hesitated to insist upon the wisdom, justice, and beneficence of Sir Robert Peel's repeal of the Corn-laws, but for the understanding—binding upon any man or set of men who do not manage to substitute sensibility to reproach for a real. manly honour—that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was empowered to speak in the name of the Ministry, and that his concession carried with it theirs also ? How must Lord Derby's career have blunted and dulled his natural instincts, when he could argue that because Lord Palmerston's motion was accepted as a compromise, therefore it could be thrown overboard by those members of the Protectionist Ministry who could get better terms for themselves ! Lord Derby can only escape the odium of three of the worst vices that a statesman can be guilty of—insincerity, Want of consideration for his friends, and bad faith towards his opponents—by taking refuge in a superabundant excess of a quality he is known not to be deficient in, petulance. And it is perhaps morejust to him, looking to the absurdity of any design now or hereafter to restore in any shape a system of protective duties, to suppose that the motive for this strange conduct was not deliberate dishonesty, but simply an excess of petulance—but such an excess that it led him to forget all that was due to the country, to his political friends in the Lower House, and to his political opponents in both Houses, and simply for the pleasure of showing as much wilfulness and ill-temper at submitting to what was inevitable, as ever fretful child showed at the dose of medicine that was to be taken, cry and kick as he might. If, however, on the one side was political baseness, or a personal petulance that led to equally disgraceful results, on the other was
disunion, want of earnest purpose, and of the firmness which fol- lows it, fully sufficient to account for the weakness that paralyzes the efforts of the Liberal opposition, and checks any hearty desire on the part of the country to oust the present " organized hypo- crisy " from office. The Marquis of Clanricarde, not unnaturally supposing that there could be no objection among the Protectionist converts in the House of Peers to confirm the resolution adopted by their party in the Commons, proposed to move the resolution in the same words. He meets Lord Derby in the lobby, and finds.to his astonishment that the Premier refuses to ratify the formal capitulation of his colleagues. Anxious to conciliate, the Marquis then is willing to move Mr. Disraeli's original form of adhesion to Free-trade : but even this is too decided for the Premier, caring only for his own pride, and nothing for the contumely heis heap- i on his " gentlemen of England" in thus proclaiming the com- pulsory nature of their new profession of faith, or at least of their resolution to abide by a new course of action ; and finally Lord Clanricarde is weak enough to adopt a form Of words framed by Lord Derby, in which as much contempt is thrown on the Free- trade policy as is 'safe with the determination of the noble-Eirl to cling to office with the tenacity of a rock-limpet, while the re- cent prosperity of the country is attributed to " Providence " with the same Unaffected sincerity and single-minded piety as there was decency and respect in the allusion to the "wisdom of Par- liament," which formed an ornament of her Majesty's Minis- ters' Speech at the opening of the - session. The result is recorded in the debate of Monday; a debate which quite equalled that in the Commons, for the revelation it made of an utter went of con- cert and previous understanding among the leaders of the various sections of Free-traders, and which was curiously enough termi- nated by a subdued imitation of the mediating amendment of the Commons. There is no reason, however, to suppose that Lord Har- rowby acted from any previous arrangement; and his amendment was in the reverse direction to Lord Palmerston's, as tending to remove what was at least asserted by implication in Lord Derby's motion, that Free-trade has had no influence in producing that prosperity of the country for which " Providence " was so enig- matically- thanked. The only pleasant incidents of the debate were the speeches of Lord Aberdeen and the Duke of . Newcastle.- 'The frankness of Lord Aberdeen's reference to Sir Robert Peel, his cor- dial and genuine emotion, and the Duke of Newcastle's clear and spirited exposure of the oft-repeated parallel between the pre- sent position of the Protectionist chiefs and .that of Sir Robert Peel and his colleagues on his accession to office after the Reform Bill, contrasted most favourably with the suspicious self-regard of Lord Derby and the vacillation and weak courtesy of the noble- man who elected himself to be the spokesman of the defunct Whig Ministry on this occasion. One comfort is, that the last act of this miserable drama is now over, and that Free-trade is now the ac- knowledged policy of her Majesty's Government and of both Houses of Parliament.
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