Topics OF THE DAY.

WHAT IS LORI) DURHAM'S REAL CHARACTER?

Tit I., test i igence received from Canada or concerning it, is of

a.kind to augment the iliterest :ittaehed to Lord DURHAM.3 !MS.. stun. The. relations bet weeo this country asol the Unite(' States are .beeololo2; tepoo. del irate awl difficult to keep on a friendly footing. There are cireumstances of exasperation which it will regime diseretion and limbless Ili' no ordinary kind to manage, SO it. to prevent orn and avieved hostility. It is thus of legitl• mate awl not •mall interest to inquire, whether the persoit to wham the conduct of affiirs in Canada, and the maintellance of the national interests and honour generally in North America have been intrusted, possesses the statesmanlike qualities he will IS, ed so much.

Were it just to Lortl DURHAM to take his character from either Whigs go- Tories—professed friends or real enetnies—the conchs- stun would be that he is one of the last among the horde of aris- toerat c incapable.: to whom the duties he has undertaken ought to be,conlided. The Tories tepresent him as the uneasy victim 'Sr personal vanity; Is person who carries a sulgmr taste for finery and display to ail extent incompatible with real greatness. To make good this charge, they reso-t to his stable, kitchen, plate- elle.t, and wardrobe, and tell of the fine thin.es they may or may not find there. It is to be observed that the alleged proofs of Lord Dim H 4M'S magnificence are dragged forth by his foes, with a view to render him ridiculous or odious ; they are not ostentatiously displayed by himself. This difference is not unimportant. From the pertinacity. however, with which persons. shrewd though ma- I icuai s. and hut without opporni tilt ies of becoming acquainted with Lord Dneusses foibles, have eontinued to harp upon the mere decorations of his mission, it may be surmised that he sloes attach somewhat of undue consequence to such aceessories. And then, suspicion is strengthened by the mode of defence adopted by those who pretend to be his friends, and whose cue is to flatter him. It is LOP/ DI;Rli m's title to be misjudged and abused by allies and opponents. Both address themselves to the weaknesses of his character, as if they formed its essentials. Thus, the Whigs confer importance on the Tory attacks—clip the enemy's missiles in poison—by their clumsy Wil■R of making-believe that Lord Dean Are cares not fir them, and the sedulous court they pay to his presumed vanities. His talent, wisdom, penetration, every thing, is in a state of perfection : delicate compliments even to his persnnal beauty have been softly insinuated ! "His great mind is far beyond the reach of calumny : the Tories lose their labour-- he will to to Canada in spite of them. In all his preparations he has hit the mark exactly; having neither a secretary, a servant, a horse, or a piece of plate, more or less than is befitting a Go- vernor-General and Lord High Commissioner:" In all this, his sycophants betray a consciousness that the Tories have struck him on a sore place, which it is their business to smear with balm.

It has been assumed that the simple people of Lower Canada, whose confidence and esteem it is so important that Lord Dun- HAM should win, will be offended by the number of his retinue and the splendour of his equipages. In this view of the case, the needless display would become a political fault. But it is not certain that such will be the effect on the colonists. Their Repub- lican neighbours have ever been rather gratified by the splendour exhibited by foreign ambassadors. It is a common occurrence to Englishmen in America to bear members of Congress dwell with complacency on the magnificent entertainments of the British Minister at Washington to which they have been invited ; antis people more addicted to finery than that of the United States is not to be found. A portion of this half-civilized taste for pomp may lurk in the gentle bosom of Jean-Batiste; and it may be that the grandeur of Lord DitictiAm's establishment will rather tend to the success of his mission than otherwise. To our appre- hension, however, it seems that if Lord DURHAM had proceeded to Canada with a single secretary, or alone—invested with ample powers of final settlement—disdaining exterior appliances—rely- ing on his own force of character and the authority he could wield—the effect on the men who lead the great body of the Canadian people would have been far greater, than that to, be produced by the most numerous following, clothed in the gaudiest attire, and all the pomp, pride, and circuinstance of glorious vice- royalty. Irritability of temperament, as well as morbid vanity, is attri- buted to Lord DURil AM. How far the imputation is fair, we have DO means of knowing ; but the defect is so often allied to impa- tience of trickery, to firmness, to activity mental and physical, and other qualities of a similar stamp, invaluable to a public man, that we should by no means infer the unfitness of Lord DURHAM for the office he has undertaken from the circumstance of his being of a hasty temper. Still, it is in itself a fault, which may detract something from his useful qualities. But has this vain and atrabilious personage nothing but foibles and weaknesses in his composition ? Were it indeed so, he would never have attained the place which he holds—or which he held till lately, and may if he chooses recover—in the estimation of the people of England. The just estimate of Lord DURHAM must be founded on what he has himself publicly done and said.

* We are not quoting the words of soy one panegyric, but condensing tin import of many. Let the malignant carping of his Tory foes, and the fulsome flat- tery of the Ministerial totalies, be taken at their intrinsic worth—

bed, nauci, nibili, pill "—and let us look to his own conduct as a guide to the reui character of a man to whom so much is in- trusted for good or for evil.

His resolute bearing for many years in the House of Commons, at first, perhaps, too much as a Whig partisan, but mainly as the opponent of bad government, then administered by our Tory rulers as a system—his advoetter of Reform in the Representation, and of popular measures genera.—his visible love of justice, powers of application, and straightforward conduct—procured for him a high position in the country ; and of the persons called' upon to frame and carry the Reform Act, none were regarded with so much con- fklence and hope by the earnest Liberals as Lord DURHAM. His speech for the Metropolitan constituencies strengthened this favourable opinion. His secession from the GREY Ministry, when its course became hopelessly retrograde, was a severe blow to his eolleagues, but a step due to his own character. He was next ?wand at Edinburgh, at the GREY dinner. His speech on that oc- casion did far more than any one act of his previous life to justify the impression of his firm adherence to popular principles, and also of his ability and tact. Resolutely, but temperately, he re- buked the Whig spirit of mock Liberalism and real subserviency to the Oligarchy and the Court, which had then become manifest in the Cabinet, and of which Lord BROUGHAM for the time was the mouthpiece. Surrounded by many "mete Whigs," who had as- sembled to honour his relative Earl GREY, as well as by the thick ranks of BROUGHAM'S legal and personal adherents, it required courage to administer the rebuke, and skill to perform the ungra- cious duty in the least effensive way. In all these points Lord DURHAM was completely successful. The consequence of his Edinburgh speech was the invitation to the mighty gathering at Glasgow ; where he again displayed his popular sympathies with- out reserve ; stating clearly the principles on which lie acted, and convincing all who heard and read what he uttered, that he was prepared to go as far in action as his principles would fairly carry him. The chief charecteristics of Lord DURHAM'S public dis- plays in 1834, were scorn of humbug, perfect sincerity, and confi- dence in the good sense and honest intentions of his fellow citizens.

Ris Russian appointment took Lord DURHAM from the scene of home politics from the spring of 1835 to the summer of 1837. Almost immediately after his arrival in England, the fervour of " loyalty" being at full-moon, and the election-preparations in progress, he was induced—probably by insidious influence rather than his own unprompted judgment—to write the unlucky letter to Mr. RUSSELL BOWLIIY. This, undoubtedly, was a mon- slrous political blunder—at one "a fault," in Prince TALLEY■ RAND'S emphatic sense of the word, and an injustice. It alienated his real admirers : it gratified those who sought his exclusion from newer under the new as under the old reign. The extent of the error may be measured by its consequences. 114 on his return to England, believed to possess the most re. ipectable kind of Court favour in the highest degree, (for Lord MELBOURNE had not as yet supplanted him,) he had cultivated and improved his influence with the People,—following out his own lesson and example of 1834,—he would have been put at once at the head of a power before which all others must have speedily given way. Then the Liberals would have been encou- raged in the election contest with something better than the /ague "Queen and Constitution ;" a cry better. suited to Tory uses, associations, and organs of utterance, than to the Reforming. in fact, it was so used by the Tories ; while the address, though largely circulated by Whig-Radical committees, acted as a complete dumper to public-spirit. If in any man's power, it was in Lord DURHAM'S to have infused another mind into the elections, into the plans of Ministers, and into the state of politics generally, from the day of his arrival in England to the present hour. In arranging the Civil List, regard would have been shown not merely to present economy, but to the fu- ture consequences of prodigality on the Sovereign. There would have been no Anti-Reforming, Landed-interest manifesto, from the Ministerial leader in the Commons ; no scornful repudiation of Radical support by the Premier in the Lords; no shuttling on the Irish Church and Municipal Bills; no paltering with theScot- -fish Churchmen and Dissenters; no junction of the Governmeht with Tories against the Ballot ; no tricking and jobbing on the Pen- sionslist Committee; no bolstering-up of an incapable and tottering

Colonial Minister. In short, the entire system of the Government would have been different, and the dreaded advent of the Terns consequently postponed to a distant period. Even had Lord

DURHAM been silent, much of' evil that has occurred would have

been spared ; and he would still have been regarded as a power- ful reserve on the popular side. But he has now, in common with the Liberals generally, the sorrow and mortification of seeing the party he might have led to victory, or at any rate preserved entire and ready for action, dispirited and broken up; his Whig friends truckling to the most numerous minority ever assembled in the House of Commons; and the Tories only biding their time to resume office, with the prospect of long possession.

What rendered the BOWLRY letter particularly offensive, was the uncalled-for imputation of wild projects to men as little attached to "fanciful and untried principles" of government as limself. He complained, subsequently, that "tire DURHAM policy" bad been misrepresented : but we are not aware that opinions in-

consistent with his own declarations and conduct were attributed to him, or that he was expected to take a part, under the new stances, at variance with the principles be had previously

All that the real Reformers asked in 1837, as in 1839s sanctioned

eireusi.

as Lord DURHAM seemed to imagine, that organic Ch‘aarns—not, c. hanges of any kind, should be effected otherwise than vs, or influence of reason and growth of conviction; but that the py of the Government should, in compliance with the wishes of 'ch. majority of their supporters, and in agreement with what Lr DURHAM himself declared to be their true and wise course °br! unifornalyprogressive, instead of stand-still or back-pies e- wes no danger of too much haste in the path of Reform in I83r Compared with 1839, that year exhibited the Liberal party as stun7' gish, courtly, and willing to retrograde. There was no occasion for Lord DURHAM to help them to fall back—to cast his Weight into the descending scale. As for " Peerage Reform " on popular, it had gone almost out of mind; and the repudiatios°rt of it in the BOWLBY letter, was especially unnecessary, for Lord DURHAM had never been put forward as the special advocate of that change : it was at most inferred, that as he was in favour of improvements which the Lords obstructed, he would be ready to remove the obstacle, by making the House of Peers in some way amenable to public opinion, and passive if not useful, under the

tranquil and steady progress of rational reform, as the fruit f

0 real representation. We have hinted that this unhappy BOWLBY letter was probably the fruit of bad advice from interested parties. It has been Lord DURHAM'S chief political sin. It disappointed hopes—shook con. fidence—perhaps planted suspicions : it suggested a liability to be acted on by parasitical influence—it destroyed a prestige. It was a grievous fault, undoubtedly : but it may be repaired. Lord DURHAM is going where he may do much to wipe away the remembrance of it. He will come back with improved knowledge and experience, and, if he so wills it, with renewed claims on the regard and confidence of his old supporters. Success he canna command—especially with the Colonial Office in authority over him; but he may show that he laboured to deserve it. Unless he perform something that shall at least have this effect, the ridi. cube which is attempted to be thrown on his preparations willstick to him for the rest of his days. The mountain must not be con- tent with producing a mouse.

In fine, Lord DURHAM is not perfect. But the balance is greatly in favour of his goodness both of capacity and disposition: where can his equal be found, as a man of affairs and enlarged polities, in his class? In the estimate of his character, due allowance must be made for personal foibles and political faults: it remains to be seen what energies be will exert in his new sphere of action, and in his subsequent career, to eclipse the one and redeem the other.