TOPICS OF THE DAY.
PREPARATIONS FOR HISTORY.
THE commonest, and, if not the greatest, yet one of the greatest flaws in the character of any Minister, is what may be called self-
reference—that is, the shaping of all actions and proceedings with a certain reference to individual position, whereby the best present construction may be given to the idealitics of consistency and poli- tical principle, and a certain plausible future character be got ready for history. This is a blemish from which only the most magna- nimous of public men can be expected to be free—men who are content to march right on to great objects without looking to the
right or left for encouragement or applause, or for any tiller incen- tive than their own plain conviction of the expediency of the course
taken—men who, postponing themselves to the public interest, will
rather incur the taunts and reproaches of the time, if necessary, the pain of an unjust suspicion, or the injury of misapprehension, than be deterred front the prosecution of any measure they know to be right. This is that supreme test of greatness which places a onto in the foremost rank, not of statesmen alone, but of mankind.
It is a certain portion of this virtue, amongst other conspiring
causes, which has given to the Duke of WELLINGTON the extraordi- nary moral weight which he possesses in the country. It may best be
estimated by reflecting how many great men we have numbered as Ministers who have yet fallen short of this high mark. With rare exceptions, one description will apply to every Minister of State. Throughout his whole political life he is employed in dressing up a
certain picture of himself, which he means to present, at his death, to the gallery of history. Never for a moment is his eye away from the looking-glass, never for a moment is the paint-brush out of his hand. Every thing he does -or says has reference to present ap- plause and future effect ; and the lairs of the nation and the acts of government are regarded solely as colours, to be combined in a certain manner—to be wrought into the great portrait. If this species of selfishness is disgusting in any Minister, how especially so in one whose real character affbrds no sort of excuse for nursing and cockering ? When a high ground of principle is taken from the first, and we find that any reasonable endeavour is made to maintain it with consistency, we can allow something for human vanity ; we can admit that the selfishness which is set on the pre- servation and aggrandizement of personal reputation—though this,. perhaps, should be of the most conventional and hollow description —has at least some respectability about it ; that it is a bar to enormous apostasy—in proportion to the difficulty of successful prevarication in the reconcilement of opposite courses of conduct; and that it even makes good no small part of that claim to the dignity of public virtue which it sets up. Some such a claim was- Lord GREY'S. This nobleman—the last of the line of Whig Ministers who kept up any credit for his party—had realized in Later life that moral and intellectual inoffensireness, which may be considered as the ne plus ultra and natural climax of " pure" Whig greatness. But he, too, belonged to this school of historical por- trait-paintinga most assiduous dauber of himself—a most self-. referring, glass-consulting, attitude-studying, posthumous-admi- ration-providing Minister. It always came first to the lips—" How will the Lord Grey of history look for this ?" " how will this affect my Lord Grey hereafter ?" It was second in thought—" What will the country profit or suffer by this policy 2" Nevertheless, as we have already acknowledged, this sort of self-reference—this littleness in greatness—was pardonable, if in any man, in Lord GREY, for the reason that there was a certain portion of real nobility in his cha- racter, which offered some plea and foundation for it. And if he chose to invest this in personal pride, instead of spending it worthily on the national welfitre, by some bold and manly course of policy suited to the conjuncture he was placed in, we must regret the Hulse economy, but the punishment is his, who now, despite of all his preparations for a handsome descent to posterity, will as suredly take very secondary honours in history.
Justice must be done even to Whigs. However much the Minis- ter we have mentioned may be reproached for his shortcomings or backslidings, let it never be forgotten—he resigned!
There is now no Whig statesman left who has even a right to abuse the custody of his character on the ground of having any. A man who has decent clothes on his back may play the coxcomb, and still we endure him ; but what should we say it' we saw a beggar, with scarce a rag to cover his nakedness, lolling exquisitely before a dressing-table, and jauntily arranging two or three filthy tatters in a mirror ? Could any sight be at once so laughable and SO humiliating? Yes !—Joiaxxir Russimi. patching up his " con- sistency," (in the Mirror of Parliament,) and poor old MELBOURNE talking of " principles."
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