THE YOUNG MEN, THIS SESSION.
ALL Parliamentary personages, and especially the leading men in the House of Commons, have been influenced during the past Session by the lassitude of the times. Nothing is so difficult as to speak well to an indifferent audience, and no man in either House has this year risen higher through his eloquence or persuasiveness. Mr. Bright has made one striking speech, which, with Sir Robert Phillimore's recent judgment, will probably carry the Burials Bill ; Mr. Gladstone's summary of the arguments against the Army Exchanges Bill was a re- markable specimen of close reasoning power ; and Mr. Disraeli has made a good many sufficient, if not very powerful, replies ; but no man of Cabinet rank on either side can be said to have advanced his reputation as an orator. Lord Camarvon in the Peers has advanced decidedly in public estimation through his management of West-African, South-African, Feejeean, and Mauritius affairs; Sir Stafford Northcote has acquired new 'confidence in himself, either from experience or from a new conviction of his weight with his colleagues, and is alto- gether a bigger person than he was last year ; and Mr. Assheton Cross has succeeded in fixing his own posi- tion in the official ranks of his party. He has shown enough administrative capacity, firmness, and decision to make it certain that he till for life remain either an actual or a potential Secretary of State, and this is a great triumph for a new man to have achieved in two years. If he succeeds as well in leading the House during some interregnum as he has in managing the business of his office, he may yet rise higher, though he still lacks the power of making himself felt by the country at large. Sir Michael Hicks Beach, too, has increased his reputation for capacity, chiefly by a certain decisiveness and dearness in his judgment ; but with these four exceptions, the Session can hardly be said to have been beneficial to any established man, and has brought forward but one low one. No leader of Opposition can be said to have advanced, no Junior Minister in Opposition has accomplished anything—for Mr. Trevelyan, who, like Mr. Gladstone, speaks best when he has digested masses of detail, did not achieve such a success on County Franchise as lie did on Purchase—and no Mem- ber except Mr. Sullivan is nearer to recognition as a statesman. We do not like Mr. Sullivan, whose political line in Ireland seems to us injured by popularity-hunting, and whose ideas as to the best future for his country strike us as wild, but it is undeniable that he has exhibited quite unex- pected powers. He has won not only the ear, but the respect of the House. An Irishman and a Nationalist, a Catholic and an Ultramontane, an orator with a taste for rhetoric and a politician with a proclivity towards extremes, he has had everything against him, and has made rapid headway against everything. He extorted admiration from very preju- diced Englishmen by his speech against the tendency to plead yeland's prosperity as satisfaction of Ireland's wants ; he alone in the whole House knew exactly what he wanted in the odd quarrel between the House and the Reporters, hi i energetic adroitness on one occasion quite paralyaing Mr. Disraeli ; and his
nised with instinctive quickness how thoroughly the rhetorician understood the inner temper of the assembly. if the leader- ship of Ireland were possible, Mr. Sullivan, cooled and drilled by a little more experience, might lead Ireland vet, or, but that he is a Catholic, assume a still vacant place,—the guidance of the extreme Left in the House of Commons, a position which Sir Charles Dilke might have occupied, but for a certain ina- bility to comprehend how Reds can be also Philistines. • That curious amalgam, we admit, is strictly insular, and very nearly unintelligible, but it exists, and when the householders know their strength, will have to be comprehended. No other free-lance in the House of Commons deserves much men- tion, for Mr. Waddy's attack on Dr. Kenealv, though it showed power and a true appreciation of the house, which was hungering at that moment for that precise speech, was an exceptional and, as it were, accidental effort ; while in the House of Lords no young man has risen even to notice. That would mean rising to prominence, for it is as difficult for a young man to rise in the Lords as for a frog to be heard under a flag-stone. The system there is to sneer down any youngster who tries to speak between 5 and 8 p.m. as an impertinent interrupter of "business," and to leave him, if he tries to speak after that time, with nobody, not even reporters, to hear what he says. It takes nerve to fight both fogyism and the dinner- bell, and nobody has displayed it.
The young officials in the Lords have done least of all. It is nearly impossible to remember their names, and we very much question if, out of a dozen ordinary politicians, two will be found to state offhand what post Lord Pembroke filled and Lord Cadogan fills. The latter, indeed, is the only one who fills a subordinate but representative post, Mr. Disraeli being of opinion that the more subordinate offices he gives to Commoners the more steady votes he will have, and that while Commoners want official training, Peers can ad- minister by light of nature. Five great departments, there- fore—the Treasury, the Home Office, the Admiralty, the Local Government Board, and the Board of Trade—are unrepre- sented in the Peers, vho, in fact, have only one apprentice- ship among them. The remainder were given to Commoners, who may all be pronounced fairly useful men, but no one of whom has as yet achieved a separate ppsition. Mr. Bourke, the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, is, perhaps, the best, and he did make one speech on Central-Asian affairs important enough to attract Russian attention, but he has had very little chance. An Under-Secretaryship for Foreign Affairs seldom offers occasion for coups of the Contarini Fleming kind —the best and most natural incident Mr. Disraeli ever devised, if indeed it did not actually occur—the whole duty of such an official in England being summed up in the word "caution," and an Under-Secretary under Lord Derby must feel more than any other of mankind that if speech is silver, silence is golden. He must always wish he could answer an interpellation with a wink, explain a despatch with a shrug, and assent to the pub- lication of papers with a nod, and so perform all duties yet escape criticism alike from the Embassies, from the country, and from his Chief. Mr. Bourke, though so Milesian in blood, probably sympathises with a policy of caution, but how Can- ning in his position would have longed to startle the decorum of the House by damning some Ambassador aloud! Lord George Hamilton is a little better situated, and only a little better. He has an annual speech to make, and has to answer Mr. Fawcett, which, in a Parliamentary sense, is "work," and he does both very well, with aplomb and confidence, but this Under-Secretaryship trains no one except to highly special work. Reading Indian reports, getting up Indian "cases," and listening in silence to the secret Parliament in the India Office may make a man quick, and will certainly make him patient—Lord Salisbury in the Lords has sometimes a look in his face which could have been developed in that perfection only in the India Offiee—but it will not help a man to grow to a Cabinet Minister. As yet, all that can be said of Lord George Hamilton is that lie can be taught, while we should say of Viscount Sandon that he has been taught. He represents his department in the House as well as an unoriginal Evangelical could do, much better than Mr. C. S. Read, who has all the Session been suppressed by his own disgust at the Agricultural Holdings Bill ; or than Mr. James Lowther, who always leaves the impression that he is apologising for his department for being successful ; or than unhappy Sir C. Adderley, who has had the heaviest -work of the Session, has been snubbed, and rebuked, and thrown over, has been scourged. by Mr. Plimsoll and his leader together,
a schoolboy who has just escaped alive from running the gauntlet of knotted handkerchiefs; or above all, than the Honour- able Algernon Fulke Egerton, who is,—can anybody alive not in the House of Commons tell us what he is ? We suppose Mr. Ward Hunt and the Admirals are satisfied, or he would not be Secretary to the Admiralty, but the public are unaware of his official existence. It has been a melancholy Session of Parlia- ment, ftnd most melancholy, perhaps, in this,—that with so many careers open, and so little to keep down any one, the only man who has achieved an end has been Mr. Plimsoll, and he did it by allowing hysterical excitement to overcome his reason in a sentimental, though thoroughly worthy cause.
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