TOPICS OF THE DAY.
LORD JOHN AT GREENOCK.
WHATEVER may be the reason, Lord John Russell never appears to so much advantage as when he places himself before the coun- try on Scottish ground. Whether it is the effect of leisure, which releases an active mind, too often seen by the country under the pressure of over much work,—or of the more bracing atmosphere in that Northern section of the island,—there is always a more healthy tone, a more hearty utterance, a more direct purpose in all that he says upon public affairs, when he is in the North. It may be that here his mind recovers some of the freshness of youthful days, when he imbibed the lessons of philosophy and virtue under Playfair, and those literary tastes that Moore tells us almost di- verted him from politics to the library and the Edinburgh Review. But it is not only those early associations which connect Lord Sohn with Scotland. If one of his most excellent achievements was to accomplish the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts as applied more particularly to England, there is no doubt that in the whole progress towards that reform he enjoyed a lively sympathy from a people who have ever felt a peculiarly keen interest in practi- cal Protestantism. And besides these associations, there is the still more recent and not less dear association of a marriage which connects him with the families and the very soil of Scot- land. These unquestionably are enough of reasons why he should have at once the impulse and the confidence which give heart and energy to speech. He may feel in exercising his faculties as the mountaineer feels in his lower limbs when once more amongst his native crags ; he may feel that whatever doubts exist in Eng- land, there some part of his work will find its full appretiation. And if, as is more than probable, thoughts of affection occasionally steal near his heart when he is standing before his countrymen, it ' is not probable that his utterance will suffer from those deeper- seated emotions. We may not wonder, therefore, that Lord John speaks well in Scotland ; and if we express a wish that his action. in London could come up to the standard of his words in Greenock or Perth, we mean rather to mark our sense of the value of what he says than to disparage what he does. Some bantering words have passed because Lord John Russell, in a very rapid and indeed a parenthetical glance at what has been done since 1833, viewed the achievements of a Reformed Parlia- ment with paternal favour and exaggeration. But there was just ground for gratulatory retrospect. This journal has taken some share in the discussion of the measures that have been accom- plished since 1833; we have not unfrequently given free expression to a sense that less was done than opportunity permitted ; yet, when we look back on that lapse of twenty years—when we re- member that, however urged by those who thought with us, Lord John Russell was held back by those who thought the very oppo- site—we cannot honestly deny, that whatever may have been the wish that more should be done, enough has been done to enable him to repose, after so busy a life upon a sense of duty ful- filled. With a stronger will, or rather, we should say, with a will inclining more to action than to the balancing of moot questions, Lord John might have got more out of his opportunities; but if all men had got as much, we for our part should never have had the opportunity to complain. The tone of Lord John's speculation upon the future is characteris- tic. However much has been done in the twenty years, he seems to say, far more work remains in store for the future. There are ques- tions of material arrangement for promoting the health of his countrymen in their homes and in their towns ; questions as to the training of his countrymen from infancy to an educated maturity— as to the adjustment of the relations between secular and religions instruction ; and these, Lord Sohn says, are questions to be "con- sidered by the Legislature." He has not yet, apparently, arrived at the stage of doing. He says, the very increase of civilization impedes US; crowding upon us industry, numbers, buildings, faster than we can well set in order. Our very freedom prevents that prompt adjustment, by the direction of a head and the execution of a
police, which in a despotic country secures these blessings—but at what a price? He balances these grave questions ; leaves them for the "consideration of legislators and statesmen"; and "only prays to God that they may be resolved in a manner befitting the intelligence, befitting the dignity, and befitting the spirit of an intelligent and Christian people." Lord John speaks as if he "may
but for a short time take any further part in the deliberations of Parliament " : we hope it may not be for "a short time "—we trust that he may be reserved to us for that position of an in- dependent adviser, released from official trammels, to which Sir Robert Peel had appointed himself, and from which he was pre- maturely snatched by an accident. The reflective turn which has sometimes hindered Lord John in action will still serve us in council, and serve us all the better because released for greater energy of its own, in not being tied to the responsibilities of a less congenial activity. Not that the most distinguished living son of
the house of Russell is wanting in spirit. Although an intellectual over-refinement may incline him to question when the stage of question has passed, no age, we believe, will abate the fire of that inherited spirit which makes him recognize as "the sacred duty of England," the duty of resisting oppression, of maintaining the in- dependence of weak states, and of preserving to the family of na- tions the freedom of which others would deprive them.
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