LORD BEACONSFIELD IN BUCKS.
IFa good man struggling with adversity is a noble and encouraging sight, what shall be said of the spectacle of a great man rising superior to adversity ? This is the char- acter in which the Prime Minister appeared on Thursday at Aylesbury. We cease to wonder at Lord Beaconsfield's success, when we note the superb courage which enabled him to make a great speech, within a fortnight of receiving the news of the slaughter of the British Envoy at Cabul, and within twenty- four hours of receiving the news of the capture of the Zulu King, and yet to make no reference to either circumstance. He knew what was expected of him. He knew that alike in England and in India, alike in the Cabinets of Europe and by far camp-fires in Central Asia, his words would be eagerly scrutinised, to see if a hint of the policy he proposes to pursue in Afghanistan could be gleaned from them, and yet he was silent. Smaller men might have imitated his reserve, but they would have been at the pains to explain it. Lord Beaconsfield alone could have risen with that magnificent impassiveness, and congratulated the cottagers of Aylesbury on the evidence afforded by the "fanciful creations of their horticulture" that they are not insensible to the charms of nature. Smaller men would have been tempted to say something by way of self- congratulation at the apparent success of the Ministerial policy in South Africa, but Lord Beaconsfield knew that if he touched upon Cetewayo's capture the spell would be broken, and he would no longer be hold excused from touching upon the affairs of another continent, in which the Ministerial policy is under a cloud.
Courage in one particular begets courage in another. Lord Beaconsfield had risen so high in the way of negative daring, that if he wished to be equal to himself, he had no choice but to do something startling in the way of positive daring. It is really hard to say whether the audacity of his silence or the audacity of his speech was the most striking. Who but Lord Beaconsfield would have ventured, in proposing the toast of "Her Majesty's Forces," to remind his hearers that "the duty of the British Army is, at twenty-four hours' notice, to repair to any part of the habitable globe ?" The statement, no doubt, is strictly and literally true. To repair to any part of the habitable globe at twenty-four hours' notice is the duty of the British Army, but unfortunately it is a duty — we may almost say, the one duty — which the British Army is never by any chance able to perform. To be willing and eager to go to any quarter of the globe whore its services are needed ; to fight, and fight well, in any quarter of the globe, when it gets there,—these are duties which the British Army does perform. But at twenty-four hours' notice the British Army, if the fate of the Empire hung on its movements, would still be struggling to get out of barracks. Except in romance, a soldier needs something more than his own legs—something more even than his good steed —to carry him to any part of the habitable world except the part he is actually in at the moment ; and it is this something more that is invariably absent. We do not know whether the British Army wants more than other armies, but it certainly possesses very much less. Consequently, the twenty-four hours' notice which, in Lord Beaconsfield's imagination, stands for the interval the close of which is to see the British Army already going, "with white sails flowing, the seas beyond," really sees only the Bret imperfect list made out of deficiencies in men, equipment, and means of transport, which must be set right before a single regiment can move.
Even this, however, is not the greatest proof of daring afforded by Lord Beaconsfield's appearance at Aylesbury. He actually reproduced his theory that "there must be what is now familiarly termed three profits obtained from the land." The phrase" familiarly termed" in Lord Beaconsfield's mouth aston- ished even us. It is quite true that the three profits has become a familiar term, because the whole conception of Lord Beaconsfield's Mansion House !speech was so remarkable, so characteristic in its disregard of facts and in its catching at words, that the words which most shortly and conveniently recall it have un- doubtedly become familiar. But it is not the kind of familiarity which Lord Beaconsfield could have been ex- pected to rejoice in, especially as be slips in a little addi- tion to the phrase which makes it altogether valueless for the purpose for which it was originally invented. Lord Beaconsfield originally wanted to prove that something answering to landlords, farmers, and labourers was part of the eternal order of agricultural things. Impious persons had hinted that the cause of agricultural depression was to be looked for in the fact that three profits were required from the soil, and Lord Beaconsfield rose with his most oracular manner at the Mansion House to say,—" There. are always and everywhere three profits required from the soil." There was nothing to show at that time that he recog- nised any difference between three profits reaped by one and the same man, and three profits reaped by three different men. At Aylesbury, however, he remarks in- cidentally that under the system " which prevails in some Continental countries," only "one individual takes the three profits." After this, it must have required all Lord Beaconsfield's impassiveness to say, as though it were of the essence of the question, "Still, the three profits must be claimed ;" or, as he said a little later, "Whatever may be your tenure, the same results will occur. Three profits, in all circumstances, must be obtained from the land."' Whether a man gets three incomes or one, "the same results will occur"! Oh, blessed doctrine, would that we all lived in a world in which you were true.
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