NEWS OF THE WEEK.
R. DISRAELI'S first act as Premier has been to write a letter
to the newspapers in answer to Lord Russell's charge against his Edinburgh speech. This was a mistake of Mr. Disraeli's,—and seems to show that he scarcely yet realizes the dignity of his position. Any letter would have been a mistake, and Mr. Disraeli's actual letter was doubly a mistake, because he tried, while refuting Lord Russell, to soften down, incidentally as it were, the "frank arrogance," as it has been called, of his declaration that he had " educated " his party for seven years, and that it had been very hard work. Mr. Disraeli says in his letter, "I said that the Tory party, after the failure of their Bill of 1859, had been educatid for seven years on the subject of Parliamentary ref orm,"—but in his speech he did not use this impersonal passive, but a very personal active, "I had to prepare the mind of the country, and to educate,—if it be not arrogant to say so,—to educate our party. It is a large party, and requires its attention to be called to questions of this kind with some pressure." It was this frank sentence which Mr. Disraeli, in writing to Saturday's papers, tried to whittle away,—which looked like sudden panic, a very bad symptom for a leader. We should have thought Mr. Disraeli much too experienced in literature to explain himself in the papers. Lord Russell, more wise, did not rejoin.
