18 AUGUST 1877, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

THE PERSONAGES OF THE SESSION. THE personal gains of the Session have been few, but then the losses have not been many. No Tory has much advanced but then no Tory, unless it be Sir Stafford Northcote, can be said to have decidedly receded. The whole Ministry is slightly weaker, partly because it is older, partly because a suspicion of internal discord has been widely spread, and partly because it is felt that its policy, however wise or defensible, has not been great ; but its ascendancy in Parliament is still unbroken, and its majorities still sufficient to create abroad an impression of irresistible strength. Lord Beaconsfield, its head, remains also, in spite of the total defeat of his policy, very much where he was. He intended, no doubt, to fight for the Turks, and he has been unable to fight for the Turks, but so strange has been the condition of opinion, that he has not lost much by that. The inner feeling of his own party, or rather, let us say, of a majority among his own party, is that they ought to fight for the Turks, but that they had much rather not do it, — that Lord Beaconsfield is be- having very well in perpetually suggesting war, and that Providence and Lord Salisbury are behaving very well in per- petually maintaining peace. So singular is the paralysis of Tory feeling, that Lord Beaconsfield, even among his own people, loses nothing by failure, and contrives to inspire the Telegraph and yet refrain from action at the same time without exciting contempt. Indeed, he has perhaps just a little advanced in favour. There was an idea in the middle of the Session that he was worn out, that he had lost all his peculiar force, that he would never again be formidable in politics, either as Com- mander-in-Chief or as guerilla leader, but the Pigott incident dispersed many of those fancies. The cool, sardonic hardihood with which the Premier appointed the man he liked, suffered his Lieutenant when attacked to remain ignorant of all material facts as to the appointment, and then smashed up opposition with those facts, revived the old impression, which has so greatly assisted his career, that you " never can get the better of Dizzy," and with it the old and scarcely intelligible admiration which Englishmen feel for the Italian genius, so alien from their own. Lord Beaconsfield's enemies have said quite enough about his birth, and have, nevertheless, forgotten the most palpable fact about it,—that it is an Italian, not an Englishman, with whom they have to reckon, and whom they find it so hard either to resist or conquer. No other man in the Cabinet has advanced at all. Lord Derby has certainly not increased the belief of politicians that his cool and logical brain makes up for his political timidity, for his despatches and speeches this Session have been unusually wanting in logic and in coolness. There have been signs of irritation in them, as if Russia fretted him by conduct which he could neither approve nor resist, except by the weapon he has always depre- cated, an acrid and splenetic criticism. The immense services that Lord Salisbury and Lord Carnarvon are believed to have rendered to the true interest of the country are scarcely yet un- derstood—though Lord Carnarvon gains decidedly by the vigour of his South-African policy—and are half disliked by the very men on their own side who are most grateful that they have been performed. Neither Mr. Hardy nor Mr. Cross has had any fair chance, for Prison Reform only faintly interests the respec- tables, and the Retirement Warrant is not understood, and Sir Stafford Northcote is rather more doubted than he was at the beginning of the Session. It is seen that he is very safe, but then people knew that before. It is perceived that he does not blunder in finance, but then he has always been reckoned more or less of a Peelite by training, and Peelites by the consent of all mankind can count ; and it is acknowledged that as Leader of the House he does not oppress, but then nobody expected him to be oppressive. The doubt about him is whether there is " grit " enough in him for an assembly growing every year more unmanageable, whether he can make troublesome folk sufficiently afraid of him ; and if he had not won the battle with the Obstructives, the doubt would have been serious. As it is, politicians will wait till text Session, but they do not wait quite serenely, but rather anxiously and hopefully, and with an idea in their minds that if Mr. Brand would go to the Lords and Mr. Raikes to per- manent office, matters would go a good deal more smoothly for the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It is only a doubt as yet. No portion of his popularity has departed from Sir Stafford Northcote, he is perhaps more popular than ever, but there is a slight but perceptible diminution of the belief that if the House falls into anarchy, his hand will be strong enough to recall it to order. Next Session that belief may be, we honestly think will be, strengthened, but for the moment Sir Stafford Northcote must be pronounced to have slightly receded. So has the Duke of Richmond, who displayed in his plan for the settlement of the Burial Question a constitutional deficiency of imagination, and a total inability to comprehend the motives of adversaries, which have gravely diminished a wide-spread idea that he would make some day or other a very good and hard keystone in the Cabinet arch. As to the lesser Tories, they have done nothing. Sir M. Hicks-Beach has hardly come to the front in the Home-rule imbroglio, which was his business first of all ; Lord Bandon is where he was, a good but borne Minister of Educa- tion, a little more hampered than before by the accident of his father becoming mouth-piece of the Evangelical Peers ; and. from the juniors nobody expects or hopes anything. Mr. Lowther defended the South African Bill pretty well, but he forgets that the Colonial Office should either defend. or remove her Majesty's representatives in the Colonies. Mr. Bourke has made himself so little felt, except as a sensible man, that questioners avoid him to interpellate the Chancellor of the Exchequer ; Lord George Hamilton was as much a success last year as this, and has made one de- cided blunder ; and there is nobody else worth mention, for the Board of Trade has been quiescent, and the Local Government Board, having been routed, horse, foot, and artillery, by Mr. Clare Read, has withdrawn itself from public notice, and sits, let us hope, meditating plans which may restore it to self- respect, and even, if the Fates are propitious, to agricultural popularity. The selection of Mr. Stanley to be Secretary of the Treasury is not explained by his feats, though it is ap- proved by the public, because Englishmen like such Houses as Knowsley to have a preferential chance of power ; and the im- mense promotion of Mr. Smith benefits the Cabinet rather than himself. His nomination removes a defect in the Governing Committee, but it has still to be proved that it will greatly advance his own career.

On the Liberal side, again, we have but one pleasant fact to record. Lord Hartington has decidedly advanced. He is still a Marquis—that is, a man who will not work half hard enough, who carries into politics an inner feeling of indifference, and who would go to Goodwood if London were on fire,—but he has, nevertheless, advanced. He has induced the Whigs to reconcile themselves with the Radicals upon the important questions of the suffrage and the redistribution of electoral power, he has maintained a firm and dignified attitude about the Eastern Question, and he has succeeded in securing in a much greater degree than formerly not only the allegiance, but the obedience of his party. If he has abstained from divisions too much, as they seem to think in the North, he has done so consistently, and he has steadily im- proved the quality of his speeches,—that is, he has not made them specimens of oratory, for that is beyond his power, but he has infused into them a weight alike of meaning and of purpose which in a Commander-in-Chief is more valuable than attractiveness of speech. He might be a considerable Premier yet, if the shadow of the strawberry-Leaves did not sometimes diminish the keenness of his vision. Of his far greater colleague, Mr. Gladstone, what is there to say, except that he is still the most powerful single personage in England, and that he still remains under the conscientious delusion that a man has a right while life is in him to leave powers like his half-unused for the benefit of his fellow-menl He has made no step forward towards the resumption of his natural posi- tion ; that is all Liberals can say, and that all is not approval. Mr. Forster has accomplished little beyond showing in the Irish riot that he could lead the House, which was not doubted, and on the Eastern Question that he is hampered by a doubt of the righteousness of war, which Englishmen of his own opinions in the present crisis lament, but are ready to condone. Mr. Goschen has done nothing except accentuate the slight differ- ence between himself and other 'Liberals—whether to his ad- vantage or not, the future must decide—and Mr. Childers has only raised the House of Commons' opinion of him, by dis- playing a new aptitude for serious debate and for decisive action in the conduct of serious and annoying business. No. other Member of the late Cabinet has been noticeable, for Lord Granville has been deliberately reticent on Foreign Affairs so reticent as to create an unfounded suspicion that he was at heart pro-Turkish ; and we have little that is pleasant to ourselves to say of the juniors. Mr. Trevelyan has once more revealed, in his speech on the Promotion Warrant, his extraordinary power of mastering complicated details and weaving them into a great argument, and once more excited the permanent feeling that exists about him,— surprise that a man so able, so industrious, and so gifted should be so little of a recognised power in politics. Mr. Playfair, as a politician, has been invisible during the Session; and Mr. Fawcett gave his reputation a distinct, though momentary shock by ex- tending a sort of countenance—meant only to secure justice, but mistimed—to the Irish Obstructionists. Mr. Chamberlain, though he has lost nothing of his previous standing, has not quite ful- filled Birmingham hopes by taking an active part in the higher politics ; and Mr. Courtney, from whom so much was antici- pated, is for the moment lost. It is only for the moment, for the Member for Liskeard has stuff in him ; but his unlucky habit of scorn for Philistines has alienated the House, his courageous views upon land tenure have profoundly irritated the majority, and his hot resistance to the South Africa Bill raised even in Radicals a doubt whether on grave adminis- trative questions he is not liable to be carried away by crotchets. All this may be repaired, but for this Session Mr. Courtney has seriously receded ; while of men previously un- known, not one has come forward even one step to the front. It has been a ruinous Session for Parliamentary ability.