TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF THE SESSION. THE Session has not developed a new man. Many reputa- tions have been increased, and many more have waned, but no previously unknown member has come forward to the front, except, indeed, Mr. Hodgkinson, who, having never been heard of before, incidentally proposed a revolution, carried it, and has never been heard of since. On the Tory side, new appearances were scarcely to be expected, as no young politician could tell precisely how far Mr. Disraeli intended to advance, whether it was prudent to be strictly Conservative or safe to be something of a Chartist. As a body, the young Tories trusted their leader entirely, and held their tongues with diligence, and the few who broke through the rule left no mark upon the Session. Mr. Disraeli, though kindly to young men, never seems to care heartily for their aid, and this year he was probably more afraid of their generous impru- dences than grateful for their eager support. His work was that of the diplomatist rather than the statesman, and diplomatists in a crisis are not fond of amateur aid, or of the zeal which attache's are apt to throw into their unpaid labour. Upon the other side, however, there was a splendid chance, and nobody came forward to take it up. There was not even an eldest son to enunciate Old Whig doctrine, and hold up the banner older men were compelled to lay aside. The embarrassment of the Liberal chiefs in a situation which, from the moment the Compounder was buried, was almost cruel, infected their followers, and we had not from Whigs or Radicals a single noteworthy speech. The Old "Whigs "- Greys, Villiers, Cavendishes, Russells—were strangely quiet, quiet and powerless as Adullamites ; and, indeed, on our side of the House no reputation can be said to have been greatly increased. Mr. Gladstone has decidedly lost ground as a leader, and as an orator has had but one opportunity, the third reading, which he decided to let pass. The Budget was a bit of his own, and scarcely called for comment, and his most important speeches have been upon Compounding, a subject fatal to a man whose single oratorical temptation is over-minute detail. Not even Mr. Gladstone could make the Compounder anything but a nuisance. He helped greatly to kill him, but it was as much by wearying the country as by convincing its judgment. .Mr.- Bright has, no doubt, advanced this Session, having removed the main obstacle between himself and office, and one or two of his speeches have been magnificent ; but Mr. Bright's reputation as an orator can hardly be increased, and in his one distinctive effort, the opposition to the limited vote, he decidedly failed, displaying a kind of aristocratic inability to take in a new idea. Mr Mill has also advanced ; the notion that he is a " mere philosopher " dying away, as it is seen that some of his ideas, bad or good, will at any rate work. The " wildest" of them all obtained 73 votes, his " crotchet" representing minorities has been embodied in the Constitution, his plan for the municipal government of London has met with uni- versal acceptance, and his speech on the agreement of Paris delighted men who had been accustomed to believe that a philosopher must be indifferent to physical force as an element in human affairs. Mr. Goschen has been almost quiescent through the Session, and though Mr. Forster's standing in the House is decidedly higher than it was last year, the rise is due rather to an increasing confidence in his character and capacity, than to any special act he has performed this Session. Of all men in the House, on the Liberal side, Mr. Ayrton has, perhaps, made the most decided progress. It is difficult to comprehend, and still more difficult to justify, all his conduct with regard to the Bill, notably his vote on the representation of great cities, but his extraordinary control of details, his faculty for parliamentary business, and a cer- tain acrid strength, as of a man who could act if he ever got the opportunity, secure him singularly atten- tive audiences. Last year the notion of Mr. Ayrton in office would have been derided, next year it may be a doubt whether a Liberal Ministry could afford to decline his aid. His speech on Indian affairs at the end of the Session showed more breadth, more of the largeness of view required from a statesman, than any he has yet delivered, and largeness is the quality in which he has hitherto been held to be most deficient. A Householder Parliament is sure to appreciate, it may be to over appreciate, men like Mr. Ayrton, and-no one who has watched him this Session would wonder if 1870 found him a personage in the House. On the other side of the House four men at least have very decidedly risen in parliamentary esteem, and two have as decidedly declined. Mr. Disraeli has at last made his mark- in English history, and henceforward must take rank, if not among the foremost statesmen of England, at least among the greatest masters of parliamentary strategy. Whatever men may think of the morality of his conduct, and we, for example, think the worst of it, it is folly to deny the mar- vellous tact, temper, and subtlety of insight which he has: displayed in managing the House this Session. He has been almost alone. The only colleague who could have materially aided him has obstinately refused to open his lips, and the great help he has derived from Mr. Henley has not been of the oratorical kind. Lord Cranborne resigned and attacked him, Mr. Walpole alienated some of his strongest supporteri, Sir John Pakington made all England laugh at the Cabinet,. and Mr. Hardy twice imperilled the Bill by the reck- lessness of his personal pledges. For the immediate purpose- Mr. Disraeli was more lonely than if he had stood alone, and in his loneliness there was ever and anon something of that- grandeur which must always attach to the man who dares, in any supreme moment, to pit his own mind against a host. ifr..
Disraeli did dare, beguiled his own party, pulverized his opponent's, gently led on the Tories, defied the Whigs, placed the Radicals in a situation in which their strongest men scarcely dared to move, carried his Bill, and now stands, before the country a man distrusted or disliked, but inevitable leader of his party, and possible dictator of the immediate future. The times are such that unscrupulousness has be- come a source of strength, and the country has learnt this. Session that it has no scruples to fear in Mr. Disraeli ; that his end once clear, he will break any party ties, expel any ancient colleagues, break with his past as freely as if Toryism_ and Jacobinism were identical creeds. He has contrived to create an impression that he is ready to make great changes, to pursue in Ireland, for instance, an almost revolutionary. policy, and until this impression is falsified by his conduct or' by events, the vague expectancy of the public will help to keep him in power. Mr. Disraeli, like Napoleon, has suc ceeded in an enterprise in which success is its own great justification, and for good or for evil is twice the man he. was at the beginning of the Session. No man, however bitterly opposed to him, now doubts that he has the instinct. of the House, that he can master colleagues, or that he can; carry through with imperturbable patience a really great design. Vivian Grey has no longer need of any Marquis oU Carabas. But one man has advanced beyond him, and that is the colleague who, indignant alike with his policy and his project, quitted office to retain his conscience, and thereby. rose at once to a level scarcely as yet occupied by any rival:. It is a good sign for the future of England that when Lord Cranborne announces himself more Conservative than a Conservative Ministry, Liberals are found to give hearty honour to his patriotism and his consistency. Jost long enough is office to show that he would have been an admirable adminis- trator, Lord Cranborne in quitting it made his position in the finally secure. Unfortunately forhim, he is an eldest sop, like Lord Stanley, who also has greatly advanced. He has, it is true, taken up no position on the Reform Bill, and he allowed himself somewhat hastily to pledge his party against democratic reforms ; but he has neither acted nor spoken against the mea- sure, and in his own department he has been singularly suc- cessful. His negotiation with Spain was a triumph of the kind Englishmen most appreciate, he postponed a European war by a guarantee which, wise or unwise, Parliament heartily approved, and in the Abyssinian affair he is displaying a calm though somewhat slow strength, a willingness to risk men and spend money, if either should be needful to vindicate British position, which is in exact accordance with the highest English sentiment. An idea has grown up during the Session,. not yet quite warranted by the facts, but quite consistent with them, that in the Foreign Office Lord Stanley has found the true work of his life ; that he is what Englishmen want their Foreign Secretary to be,—a man at once strong and safe, not afraid either of responsibility or expense, but slightly con- temptuous of glory, hostile to the policy of isolation, but determined not to intervene except with effect. Unless it were understood that the Conference should be acted upon, Lord Stanley would hold no conference. The Foreign Secretary whom the people prefer must in England always hold a great position, and it is to that position Lord Stanley has now risen. His path as a statesman has been smoothed by the incapacity of some of his ducal colleagues, and should Lord Derby retire from active life, by no means an impossibility,- he is the ;inevitable leader of his party in the Upper House. Mr. Hardy has risen much less than his colleagues, but still he 'has risen. His Bill to amend the Poor Law Administration of the metropolis was a wise and moderate measure, he has been a sensible Home Secretary, and his partial failure with the Parks' Bill will not injure him within the House, where the causes of that fiasco are thoroughly understood. He is not, and never will be, a great statesman, but the country is ready to accept him as a well-meaning and, with certain drawbacks of temperament and temper, as shown in his attack 'on Mr. Peter Taylor, a competent official.
On the other hand, Sir J. Pakington has declined, and Mr. Walpole, as the Americans say, has politically "gone under." At -the Admiralty Sir J. Pakington was a considerable man, because nobody outside the Navy knows anything about it, and because he is not afraid to spend money, as most Ministers are. They never can be persuaded that the House of Commons is a collection of Englishmen, and that Englishmen will never adopt or endure a consistent policy of frugality. But as Secretary at War, Sir J. Pakington is visible, and, being visible, his fussy weakness has become at once patent to the House. His absurd blunder in revealing the secret history of the Ten Minutes' Bill destroyed all confidence in his official -discretion, and his own defence for the proposal to make • Militiamen liable to penal servitude in the ranks stamped him as a mere instrument in the hands of a department. There was some little remaining doubt about him in the begin- ming of the year, but there is none now, and in a reconstructed Ministry he would probably be relegated to some equally ?honourable but less vitally important function than the ulti- mate control of the British Army. As to poor Mr. Walpole, -what is there to be said ? He is what he always was, the =an among Englishmen best fitted to be Archbishop of Can- terbury, or Speaker of the House of Commons, but no Govern- ment will again commit the mistake of making him a Secre- tary of State. For his blunders in the War of the League Lord Derby is as responsible as himself ; but the vacillating obsti- nacy he displayed as Appellate Judiciary was entirely his own, and amounted, on at least two occasions, to a positive dis- -qualification for high secular office. It is a great pity he cannot be mitred, but as that may not be, he must be con- tent, after this Session, to rank as a sensitively upright, over- -cultivated, but weak English gentleman.
On the whole, the personal results of the Session in the House of Commons have not been altogether satisfactory. Of the four politicians who have risen most decidedly, two must be taken away from the Commons just when their usefulness begins to be most apparent ; the third has succeeded by virtue Of his contempt for political morals ; and the fourth is be- ooming strong, mainly because he represents so perfectly the Philistine side of the British elector's mind.
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