Sin—Though your hostility to the new Government is more strongly
pro- nounced than I had anticipated from the absence of party bias usually observ- able in the Spectator, the experience of twenty years, during which I have sub- scribed to your paper and frequently obtained admission into its columns, has proved to me that you never discard the golden rule of " audi alteram pastern." Under this conviction, I take the liberty of addressing to you a few remarks upon a letter in your last number which bears for signature "A Puzzled Con- servative "; and to which your reference in your leading article lends an im- portance which I am unable to deduce from its intrinsic merits. The letter F headed, "What is Lord Derby's Government without Protection ? " and its purport is to show, that that claim to public support withdrawn, it can- not possibly possess any other. There appears to me an entire want of can- dour and consistency in the means employed for the demonstration of this proproition.
.The author begins by reproaching Lord Derby with the "painful sus- Emma " he has thrown upon "his engagement to lose no time in dissolving rarliament,"—a reproach which, of course, implies that the earliest possible dissolution is incumbent upon him ; and then proceeds to prove the imbecility of the Administration in all its departments. Lord Derby himself he dis- misses with a sneer at his "showy speeches," and, a charge of "want of
fixedness of purpose and definiteness of aim," to which he considers him gene- rally liable. Mr. Disraeli is incapacitated by want of dignity, and by his "smartness and sarcastic powers." Lord St. Leonardo has "given no proof of legal statesmanship." He has not .yet dealt with the reform of Common Law, the Registration of Deeds, or the Law of Real Property. Sir John Pak- ington has not settled the great question of Transportation, announced the future police of our Cape Government, taken measures to prevent the recur- rence of Clare wars, nor given a constitution to New Zealand. "It is un- pardonable," says your correspondent, "that such a man should be Colonial Secretary." Sir, these gentlemen have been in office exactly one month, during which Parliament has been sitting every night, fully occupied, till about one o'clock a. ; and their accuser and contemner is indignant that all these mighty problems, legal and colonial, should not be solved before the dissolution ; of which any delay beyond what is indispensable would, in his opinion, be fatal to Lord Derby's honour ! Is it possible to be less reasonable and consistent ? Having disposed of the Premier and the heads of the Exchequer, the Colonies, and the Law, he thus, rather summarily, sweeps off their colleagues—" And so of all the rest; perhaps with the exception of Mr. Walpole." Now, as Mr. Walpole's position in the House of Commons did not well admit of so offhand a re- jection, L regret that I cannot-credit the exception with any large amount of candour. Neither do I discern that particular virtue in the assumption of the "Conservative" designation by one who, borrowing an unmeaning term from the lowest vocabulary of the hustings, denounces as " oligarchs " the country gentlemen of England. A few words more in reply to the question "What is Lord Derby's Go- vernment without Protection ? " Without Protection it is a possible with Protection an impossible Government. Whether it will be durable or ephe- mend, the result of the general election in the first instance, and subse- quently, if that primary test be not adverse, its conduct of public affairs, will decide. Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli have long seen (the fact is evidenced by the commentaries of the press upon their speeches for the last two years) that a return to Protection is utterly impnicticable. The party (in arrear of the leaders, as is generally the case) are rapidly opening their eyes to this patent truth—some cheerfully, some resignedly, some sullenly and with a resentful be- lief that their interests have been unduly sacrificed. This tardy admission of a great faetby a great party operates variously. Those who, above the.petty motives of faction, regarded the feud as a deplorable and dangerousdivision of classes, and an exclusion of valuable men irom the service of the state, of course re- joice that it is appeased and its cause removed. Those, on the contrary. whose personal or party interests were served by that exclusion, and whose passions revelled in those divisions, are angry, mortified, and disappointed, They will not allow Lord Derby to be cognizant of that which is apparent to everybody else. It was he who built the wall, and unless he knocks his head against it there is an end , of the honour of public men. I am much mistaken, Sir, if the public does not see through all this factitious indigna- tion; and I doubt very much whether they share the contempt so modestly expressed for the abilities of the Prime Minister and his Chancellor of the Exchequer, and whether (albeit Manchester has so ruled it) they yet look upon an English country gentleman as the logical synonym° of booby—" oligarch "—" any odious name."
A considerable section of the pres lit Ministry, it is quite true, is composed of men little known to the public ; but it is equally true that the public is by no means romantically attached to a considerable section of that tripartite Opposition with which it is better acquainted, and of the official doings of which it has had experience. Men must be tried before they are known. Perhaps those now on trial may be found wanting ; but I do not hitherto perceive from the Parliamentary reports that they make a worse figure, either as,men of talent or as men of business, than their predecessors. The "unexampled forbearance of the House of Commons " has hardly so much of magnanimity as the words would attribute to it : the House of Commons turned out Lord John Russell's Government in February ; and they fore- bore, being under no particular provocation, to turn out in March the Go- vernment which, as a necessary consequence of their own act, succeeded to it. "Honour to whom honour is due" ; but the ground of this praise, like that of your correspondent's dispraise of the new Ministers, is somewhat
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