SIR S. NORTHCOTE AS AGITATOR. [To THE EDITOR OF THE
"SPECTATOR."] SIR,—You would not, I am sure, intentionally do a wrong to, the amiable and unfortunate gentleman who has so recently been leading a forlorn hope in the North. Sir Stafford North- cote has, in all conscience, suffered enough during his Scottish campaign without having his speeches misquoted in such an influential organ as the Spectator. From what source you got the "sentence or two" of his harangue, which you quote as a fair sample of the oratorical staple of Sir Stafford's counterblast to Mr. Gladstone's Midlothian orations, I do not know, but cer- tainly from no trustworthy one. In the Scotsman, the report of that part of Sir Stafford's speech which you quote runs as follows :— " We cannot afford to sacrifice that which our fathers and our grandfathers have won for us with so much pains, with so much sacrifice, and with so much credit and honour to us. We cannot- afford to sacrifice that. We must remember the old French proverb, Noblesse oblige—that nobility lays obligations upon us ; that we are not of those who can say that we will or will not go into those ques- tions which are for the interests of humanity at large, but that it is our bounden duty—it is necessary for us to go into them—and that what we have to do is to maintain ourselves upon the lines of our old Constitution, to maintain ourselves upon the principles that won fame- and successes for our fathers, and maintain ourselves upon principles which we are not ashamed to own and which we are not ashamed to abide by."
This is really what Sir S. Northcote did say ; and although your description may still apply to this patriotic waving of the flag, it is not quite such a "melancholy piling-up of nerveless and pointless common-places" as your extract of last week. Let us be just, and add not one unnecessary pang to the sufferings of a genial gentleman whose misfortune it is to be at the head of a party which he does not lead.—I am, Sir, &c., ONE WHO WAS PRESENT.
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