LORD SALISBURY'S WRATH. L ORD SALISBURY is evidently of Luther's mind,
that wrath and passion are his best allies. "If I want to compose," said Luther, "to write, to pray, to preach, I must be wrathful, then my whole blood is freshened, my understanding is made keener, and all my miserable thoughts and tempta- tions give place." Lord Salisbury is of the same opinion, only he means, we think, something different from the old Reformer, by the wrath he so elaborately invokes. Wrath is the inspiration of his public career, but it is not the wrath which repre- sents a rush of fiery indignation, like Luther's, but wrath bred by scorn and caste, the almost impotent rage which chafes at the evidence of a popular power that Lord Salis- bury can neither vanquish nor even venture to defy. The wrath of which Luther spoke was that burning indigna- tion against evil, or what looks like evil, which purifies the atmosphere of the mind, even though in its heat it misses its true aim. The wrath which seems always to be kindling in Lord Salisbury's political mind is a saturnine and smouldering fire, which never burns up bright and free, but makes Lord Salisbury, as his old chief and colleague himself said of him, "a master of jibes and sneers." His last speech in the House of Lords in the Session just closed, like most of his other speeches, was a speech of taunt- ing impotence. Of course, he had to give way to the Govern- ment with regard to his amendment on the Agricultural Holdings Bill, for even in the House of Lords be had passed it only by a majority of a single vote, and had been firmly opposed by the Duke of Richmond and a considerable number of his own followers. Under such circumstances, to have courted a new division would have been childish, and Lord Salisbury refrained ; but he could not keep silence even from bad words, and he liberated his soul in that unmeaning sneer at "the Janissaries of the Bedchamber,"—a very inapplicable phrase, whoever first used it, to the few Peers who stay in town to make a HOMO for the Government,—and that unworthy insinuation that the Government had intentionally made their measure ambiguous in order that Radicals might read it one way and Conservatives another, by which he relieved his spleen, but relieved it at the cost of his influence. Lord Salisbury is, indeed, proved by every new Session through which he lives to be the most unfit leader of his party that our century has produced. Compared with him, the late Lord Derby was prudence and amiability itself, and the Duke of Wellington an accomplished statesman. The former was glad enough, when he saw a chance, to "dish the Whigs," but at least he never indulged in impotent maledictions on them. The latter gave the word of command to retreat whenever he found a political position absolutely untenable, with the same homely good- humour with which he would have evacuated a fortress which it was impossible to defend. But Lord Salisbury skilfully provides occasions for dishing, not the Whigs, but the Con- servatives; and when he has done so, he never retreats unobtrusively, as he ought, but sits maliciously eyeing the Liberals, who pass him by unscathed, like the giant Pope in Banyan's fable, who is described, when the pilgrims pass him, as "grinning and biting his nails, because he cannot come at them."
We cannot imagine a worse mental attitude for the leader of the Conservatives than this irritable malice of Lord Salis- bury's. In the first place, it is not Conservative, for however cautious, timid, lugubrious, even alarmist, Conservatives may legitimately be, they should not snarl and maliciously impute bad motives to their opponents, as Lord Salisbury is always doing, if they wish to carry the safe and cautious men with them, as of course they do. No safe man ever snarls at what he cannot prevent, because, as he justly observes, that makes matters worse, and aggravates the quarrel, without bringing a single auxiliary to his side. No cautions man imputes ill motives to his opponents, because, as he cautiously reflects, no man can see or weigh the motives of his opponents ; more- over, cautious men are repelled and alienated by imputations of motive, and have their confidence in any leader who in- dulges in that useless display of temper seriously under- mined. A Conservative in Opposition may fairly bewail the past, and draw the most melancholy pictures of the future as it will be affected by Liberal reforms ; that is his legitimate function in life, and if he did not entertain these dismal feelings, he would hardly be a Conservative. But a true Conservative always strives to attenuate the mischief which he apprehends, and it is not attenuating the mischief you apprehend to indulge, as Lord Salisbury does, in spiteful effusions over the dishonest ambiguities of his opponents. Consider the political demeanour of the Duke of Richmond. There you have the model Conservative,—timid of innovation, anxious to attenuate necessary reforms, never defiant, deprecatory of threats, eager for compromise. Such is the statesman who, if he had Lord Salisbury's flow of effective speech, would bring all the timid party to his feet, and not a few even of the party which sincerely desires reform, but has a morbid fear of ardent reformers. But the Duke of Richmond is not an orator, and is too modest to displace Lord Salisbury who is ; and the consequence is that instead of one whose whole temperament expresses the feelings of the cautious party, the unfortunate Conservatives find themselves constantly misrepresented to the country by a mouthpiece who says on their behalf just what makes them shudder most. They hear those sweeping denunciations which they would be apt to attribute to the demagogue as specially appropriate to him, proceeding from the spokesman of a small and privileged caste, who has not even the strength of numbers behind him,— and what, they must ask themselves, can be more insolently rash than to combine the irritating arrogance that is safe in tribunes of the people, with the defence of exclusiveness and the apology for privilege ? We think we may safely predict that so long as Lord Salisbury continues to give character and colour te the policy of the Conservative party, even timid politicians will regard the administration of the country as safer in the hands of Mr. Gladstone's Government, than in the hands of any Government in which Lord Salisbury would have a potential voice.
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