TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. DISRAELI AND MR. GLADSTONE THIS SESSION.
ON a review of the perplexing and on the whole discreditable Session of Parliament which has now closed, it is im- possible to avoid seeing that Mr. Disraeli and Mr. Gladstone have considerably altered their relative positions as Parlia- mentary leaders in the eyes of those of the public who are not too heated by party feelings to form an independent judgment. And we should say that the relative change has been some- thing to this effect :—Mr. Disraeli has failed miserably,- flagrantly,—in his larger statesmanship, which has during this Session been not merely manceuvring and hand-to-mouth (for that is its characteristic always), but has even plainly assumed for electioneering purposes a cant of Protestant fear and panic for which he himself cherishes in hisheart a sincere and profound contempt ; moreover, weakened by the irritating necessity of assuming this cant, he has shown, even in manipulating the details of the Mali and Scotch Reform Bills and of the Boun- dary Bill, a pettier, feebler, and poorer species of that peculiar tact and nonchalance for which he gained so much credit last year. On the other hand, however, by his good temper, address, and apparently, too, his sincerity in pushing through the Corrupt Practices' Bill, he has earned for himself a new sort of regard, rarely indeed accorded to him, and even produced the impression that, for whatever reason, he sin- cerely dislikes corruption, and would put an end to it if he could,—an impression which cannot but do a good deal to relieve the poorest estimate we could otherwise form of him. On the whole, though Mr. Disraeli has shown nothing like the cleverness and command of the House which he showed last session, perhaps because he has lowered the whole tone of the House by his ostentatious "management," and though on the great subject of the Session he has displayed an unscrupulous solemnity of Protestant zeal which has rendered him even nauseous, yet with all this he has struck a series of patient, skilful, and, so far as they go, successful blows at political cor- ruption, which impress us as earning for him almost his very first true honour in political life. Mr. Gladstone, on the other hand, has been singularly sagacious as well as earnest in his larger statesmanship ; he has restored sincerity to one of the hollow and traditional professions of his party, hitherto mere idle words ; he has taken a great step towards convincing the Irish nation that there are English statesmen who sincerely wish to look at the political wants of Ireland with Irish rather than English spectacles ; he has prosecuted this most delicate and difficult task with a gentleness, a temper, a practical mastery of his subject, and an earnest simplicity of treatment, which have taken all the sting out of his policy to those who have had the wisdom and capacity to judge it fairly ; he has been patient and playful in brushing away the political mosquitoes which have as usual attacked him in clouds ; in a word, on all matters of the first weight he has grown as rapidly as his rival has dwindled ; but, not- withstanding, on smaller matters he has not been free from error of a vexatious kind. On the Corrupt Practices' Bill and on the Telegraph Bill, on both of which the admitted bias of his own judgment was cordially with the substance of the Government proposals, he has yielded too much to the half- sincere objections of his own supporters,—to whom he is usually charged with being far too indifferent, —and so he has unfor- tunately given that impression of captiousness which, on all greater matters, he has so successfully avoided. Again, in one or two political "asides,"—the affair with Mr. Rearden, and the deputation of Mr. Finlen and his friends,—he has shown that want of knowledge of "the world" in the small sense, which fierce and malignant opponents who think of nothing but the world, regard as an unpardonable crime, but which, prac- tically, the English people find of indefinitely little importance as compared with the high principle, scientific political know- ledge, and laborious genius, which the worldly world, intent on its smaller passions and supercilious habits, holds so cheap.
The Session, as a whole, has, then, done a good deal to show that the dexterous political craft of Mr. Disraeli is quite incom- petent to deal with the greater questions of the day in spite of his success last year on Reform, — that the earnest- ness and thoroughness of Mr. Gladstone will leave the present Prime Minister nowhere when he comes to try and play public passions for which he has himself a positive contempt against his great popular rival as the only method of redeeming the battle. The great lesson of this Session, as far as Mr. Disraeli is concerned, seems to us to be that the new stimulus he has applied to the management. of affairs, the stimulus of amusement and surprise, very rapidly loses its force, and loses it in this way, that it sets a whole pack of poorer intellects imitating, until we have a House of Com- mons full of politicians trying to make " hits " and throwing everything into anarchy by their small stratagems and cunning.- There is a physical principle called "the degradation of energy," on which modern philosophers much insist ; they tell us that the best representative of "superior" energy is mechanical effort and heat of high temperature ; that the best representative of inferior or degraded energy, which it is almost impossible to re-transform into that superior energy ow which all our great scientific causes depend, is low-tempera- ture heat widely diffused and spread about, by means. of which "nothing of value can be accomplished."' Now, the lesson of this Session seems to us to be that Mr. Disraeli's energy is of this rapidly degrading kind. It rapidly becomes in its influence on the House of Commons a widely diffused, worthless, low-temperature stimulus, by means of which nothing good can be accomplished. We have given him_ great credit, for he seems to us to have deserved great credit, for his perseverance and ability in carrying the Corrupt. Practices' Bill. But even on this point, on which his own_ mind must, we imagine, have been really higher and better than that of the House of Commons at large, he has failed to impart any stimulus or energy of the higher kind to his party and the House. He has scarcely once appealed to the nobler- class of feelings by which such a measure should be supported. Indeed, he has carefully avoided this, in virtue of the contempt for moral earnestness which his worldly tact and insight give' him. He has taken the line of a man of the world who assumes that what the House so constantly professes, it must really wish, and without further ado has pressed a little harder here, and relaxed his pressure a little there, till he has at last carried, not indeed by any means the best, but a very respect- able measure, for remedying the flagrant corruption of the past. Still, even in this success, and much more in all his- petty and unfortunate strategy with relation to the supple- mentary Reform measures, Mr. Disraeli's Ministerial energy has shown itself to be of a type which very rapidly degrades in efficiency when it is used for any length of time with the House of Commons. Last year it was a novelty, and produced for a time a wonderful effect. This year it has more or less ' educated' the House, and the effect of the education is. portentous. Its tendency is to make every man feel that he- fights, not for a cause, but for himself,—that if he can win himself a conspicuous place by a dexterous amendment or an annoying question, there is no reason on earth why he should abstain. "Every man for himself" has certainly been the principle of this Session, and it is in a great degree due to the contagion of the political self-seeking which Mr. Disraeli has suffered from all his life, and at last fairly given_ to the House under his guidance. It is, however, a good thing to know that Mr. Disraeli's ' method ' as a Minister succeeds less and less, as its novelty wears off. Soon it will be quite impossible to manage the House at all by it, and then we may fairly hope that Mr. Disraeli's reign must cease. With regard to Mr. Gladstone, the lesson of the Session seems to us to be how certainly a high and strenuous purpose and thorough knowledge will grow in political power and influence even with the worst materials on which to act. No materials could be worse than those of the present House of Commons. In their hearts a great number of the Members agree with what is probably the sincere opinion of the writer of the disgraceful article which discredited the last number of the SaturdayReview on the reception given by Mr. Gladstone to a cer- tain deputation a fortnight ago, that a statesman who does not. know all the gossip that the world knows concerning the repu- tation of the persons with whom he has to deal, is far more dis- graced by that want of savoir-faire, than by any want of prin- ciple. Yet, with a House of Commons in this utterly demo- ralized state, Mr. Gladstone has carried through a most difficult measure by large majorities, and compelled the House to be in earnest against its will. Nothing could exceed the self-restraint, and the judicious repression of anything like heat against his opponents, with which he has accomplished this. Last session the cry was perpetual of his " overbearing " temper. This session, though the Tory papers and one or two malignant writers elsewhere have occa- sionally tried to raise the cry again, the whole country has borne witness to his gentleness and kindliness towards the Irish Church which he appeared to be persecuting, and towards his personal opponents who support it. The Session has, therefore, surely taught us, if it has taught us anything, that, while Mr. Disraeli's Ministerial energy is of the kind which deteriorates the more rapidly in its influence the longer it is applied to poli- tical affairs, and the more widely it is diffused, Mr. Gladstone's is of that higher sort which dominates lower purposes, con- strains them into unity against their will, and which will wear far better and win a far more permanent success in the House of Commons than Mr. Disraeli's strategic tact and angler-like delicacy of play.
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