THE MILITIA FRANCHISE MYSTERY.
"A roam of Lord Derby" is the turn given by some people to that peculiar idea of a military franchise which Mr. Walpole flashed upon the House of Commons on Friday night—" an after-dinner joke of Lord Derby." Others question the explanation. No doubt, the scintillation had the effect of a practical joke, not unlike that which is played by mischievous boys with a mirror, when they dash the reflected brilliancy of the sun across the astonished eyes of unconscious bystanders. But rough as Lord Derby is, he is not in the habit of throwing off ideas so far out of the common way, nor is he to be suspected of subverting our constitutional routine.
Another explanation of the phtenomenon is, that the idea is a relic of Whig invention, found among the rubbish which every family may chance to leave behind it on moving, as not being suited to the new house. According to this story, Mr. Walpole must have found the military franchise among the rough ideas, the self-rejected measures, the ebauches of the late Cabinet ; and finding it, as a child might do with a pistol thus discovered, he runs with it into company, quite unconscious that it will go off and make the old ladies scream.
But these two stories lack one element of verisimilitude. Mr. Walpole is not exactly the man to rush from the dinner-table to the House, mistaking a joke of his chief for a measure ; nor is he the man to take a pistol for a popgun. No man of his calibre makes such mistakes alone. Two heads, they say, are better than one—sometimes ; but incorporate aggregation sometimes damages the intellect as well as the heart, by reducing it to an average, and to an irresponsible average. In antiquarian exercitations, it re- quires several learned and acute men together to cultivate each one into a Cockletop. If there is such a mistake ascribable to Mr. Walpole, although he magnanimously takes the whole upon himself, we will venture to say that he has not been alone in the blunder, but that there have been others besides himself to make a treasured wonderment of the Whig pistol.
We cannot account for the mystery any better than the reader can do it for himself. We are not in the secrete of the Cabinet, and cannot explain how it comes to pass that a Conservative Min- istry, whose profession is to stand upon the old ways, should have adopted this new way, this improved but miniature soldier suffrage, which looks as if it were imitated from Louis Napoleon, the elected of the Army. Did Lord Derby contemplate a military despotism in this country ? It could not be on behalf of his most constitu- tional Royal Mistress. Nor on behalf of Prince Albert, although the Prince is a Field-Marshal ? No; avaunt the thought ! Could it be then that Derby himself?—.&h ha!—a British Louis Na- poleon ? Hush ! Listen ! We tremble ! And yet—oh, horror !— is not our present Foreign Seoretary the intimate friend and affec- tionate correspondent of his Imperial Highness the Prince Presi- dent of the French Republic ?
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