TOPICS OF THE DAY.
TILE GENTLEMAN IN PARLIAMENT.
IT is not by the tactics of the whipper-in that credit and success are to be attained in the Parliamentary session now opening. Even party advantages will not be secured by party diligence, since the only success possible is that which does not belong to party, but to'the public of this great country. The remark applies to all divisions of Parliament. We have no doubt that there will be shortcomings, which will expose the weakness of this or that coterie, and will thus offer a temptation difficult for the half-wise politician to resist. But success itself in such an opportunity would be failure, as derogatory to the victor as if he were to seize the opportunity in good society of parading a vulgar bon-mot. A band of gentlemen may be humiliated, but the victor will stand confessed as the man who has restored paltry faction, and, preventing the union of parties, has defeated the chance of a national policy and a national Administration. If it is a man on the Conservative side who thus offends, he will indelibly mark his party as being actuated by the purely factious motives of which it is accused. If it is a man on the' iberal side, he will prove himself incompetent to understand the necessity of the union in which he has pretended to acquiesce; and though he might possibly succeed in using the forms, the weaknesses, or the corruptions of Parliament, as a means of raising a barricade against the progress of the Ministry, he would by that success establish his own inability to rise above the level of the old party contests, or low class interests and pursuits. Available thus only for hinderane.e, the mere tactics of the whipperin should sink to a minor rank during the session, if they should not be totally superseded. Where the party leader and the whipper-in fail, success will at- tend the exertions of a totally different order of men. Politieal knowledge, experience, and practice in discerning the motives of other men, must always avail in the conduct of public assemblies ; but where the experience of a corrupt system has succeeded in drag- ging down the mind of the leader to a low level—where he has become skilled in leading others through their lower motives—his allurements are turned to sources of weakness. There are, how- ever, times when the most perverted of communities are once more amenable to the influence of their higher motives, their more na- tural instincts. Henry Mayhew found the experienced pickpocket faithfully returning the change for the sovereign that he might have "boned"; and the pickpocket community around would have rewarded with disgrace any inopportune profes- sional success of the ordinary kind. Parliament is at pre- sent somewhat in such reformed mood ; or if not, the pub- lic is so, and Parliament at least knows that it is on its own good behaviour. That man, then, will best succeed, who, forgetting his mere party acquirements, can best improve the actual spirit of the day. It would be a happy adversity if he had gone through some political fever, like that of Peter SohIeraihl, which had thinned his hair, and rendered it perchance somewhat greyer, and at the same time had taken away his Memory for those questionable attainments, and had stripped him of the shadow of party-conscience, leaving him still his own proper faculties and his knowledge of human nature at large. A man thus purified would be the best calculated for Parliamentary success at the present juncture. He mast be prepared to call forth the better feelings of those around him by the light and force of his own sympathies. In short, he must be a gentleman, and must be prepared to act as if those around him were also gentlemen. It it were his desire to revive, by the meretricious allurements of a hacknied profession, the depraved tastes and propensities belonging to the reckless and fast days of political gentism, it would be easy work—to fail ; and to fail in company. That s cies of success has become a drug; and what is more, it is the drag that is not wanted now. The political republic is hie a re- formed drunkard, who hates the very atmosphere of a dram, and despises the professional cant of the " jolly" Boniface beyond all other shams detected. By the very act of forming an Administra- tion in which parties are not coalesced but neutralized, the leading men of Parliament have shown the desire to work by the strength of their better feelings. They are men who represent not only con- stituencies, but the majority of Parliament, and there must be a responsive feeling even among the adverse minority. The re- elections show that the oonstituenoies are with them; the lan- guage of the press, the whole tone of society, corroborate the same aspiration. In such a time, then, the lower skill of a pushing party-man is lamely to be despised, even amongst those who may be unable to resist the old temptation.
The embarrassing " question,' showing that the questioner knows where to hit the Ministry in a weak part, may elicit the cheers of the clique habitually backing the forward Member; but as ho sits down, the dying cheers will jar against the sense of shame at the ease with which a once corrupted assembly may be made to slide back into its old ways. " Notices of motion" may crowd the paper ; but the public is really watching for something more important than show divisions- on motions made for effect. " Amendments " may prove that the practised cleverness of parti- sans has not departed; but the public is looking fbr a collective endeavour to get on with public business, and not for smart ob- structions or idle sallies frittering away public time. The public, in short, is reawakening to be a nation: there is not only " the Queen's Government to be carried on," but the safety, the welfare,
and greatness of the country, to be sustained ; and in the con- duct of public affairs it will need a higher spirit than that of the clever factionist. The servants of party, in short—unless the whole class are to be dismissed as " a bad lot "—are to be super- seded by the servants of the nation ; and the true servants of a nation should be gentlemen.
Previous page
