BERNAL OSBORNE.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR"1 SIR,—In your obliging notice of the paper on Mr. Bernal Osborne in the current number of the Fortnightly Review, you say, "The point to be explained is not why Mr. Osborne suc- ceeded but why he did not succeed more." It was certainly my intention to suggest an adequate explanation of this circumstance, and perhaps I ought to have been a little more explicit.
If (see p. 542 Fortnightly Review, October), instead of having been appointed to the Secretaryship of the Admiralty, at a time when the First Lord was in the House of Commons, or if, after baying held that office, he had been removed to one of
higher responsibility, it may be conjectured that Mr. Osborne would have received precisely the practice, and therefore the discipline, which his faculties required,—that, in fact, as the representative-in-chief of a Department, he would have dis- played in his answers to questions, and in his speeches, a con- sciousness of the gravity and obligation of his position. As it was, be never experienced the chastening sense of real power. He felt that he had purchased subordinate office at the cost of liberty. He was, it has been put, "gagged," and directly he became again a private Member, one saw the reaction against the bitterness of an ungenial restraint.
It is true that this explanation does not dispose of the obstacle which, as you say, idiosyncracies of temperament and race may have interposed in his path. But I venture to think there may be something in it.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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