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    May 5,1855.] T H E X E A T> E R. 425

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    "The Stranger" In Parliament [The Respon...

    that the House of Commons of 1855 had a right to expect as much Ministerial civility as was extended to the House of Commons of 1796 . Lord Palmerston , vociferous , mysterious , and bullying , put Mr . Disraeli down : and so ended the national efforts of this week to find out what the nation is being done with by the Oligarchy . " Yet , though Mr . Disraeli was put down , we did get at some sort of fact : —that that " real Englishman , " Lord Palmerston , has still some hopes that by the blessing of Providence we may yet succeed in obtaining a dishonourable peace .

    When Mr . Canning was asked , during his Premiership time , why he did not " put up" that handsome Irish Peer sitting beside him who had such a tremendous social reputation for dash and wit—" Put up J ' almcrston , " replied Canning , — " Good God , put up a big voice ! " The young big voice is now an old big voice , —and still nothing else . This is rather the big voice Ministry : and Palmerston is carrying on merely by force of lungs , roaring down clamour . Any one in or about the lobbies of the House at about half-past six to seven last Monday night would have been greatly struck by a loud and

    longsustained solitary yell , given forth from the neighbourhood of the Speaker ' s chair . Rushing up-stairs to ascertain the cause of this , one was further struck by a succession of sounds , seemingly proceeding from a sledge-hammer smashing the table , and so accompanying the yell , in hideous cadence . One got in . An easy , buzzy , careless , waiting-for-dinner , full House : and Palmerston , not listened to , roaring , at the very top of his miraculously capacious and Irish lungs , roaring till he was red in the face , till he had to stumble on to the tops of his toes to get out the higher notes , and pitching into the green

    box , with both fists , as if he had got his " noble friend" Lord John comfortably into a private chancery . The subject was the new 1 , 000 , 000 / . a year sinking fund : a plain , matter-of-fact subject : no earnestness about it : merely a make-believe division impending : —and Lord Palmerston , knowing nothing whatever about it , and only having caught the clap-trap commonplaces he was now shrieking as the discussion had gone on . It was ludicrous ; and , as violence is a good test of weakness , the actual position of the Government , as well as the real character of Lord Palmerston , were thus excellently

    illustrated . Altogether the Government does not succeed in appearances . The sight of the Ministry in the House of Lords on Thursday night was painful and grotesque . Lord Panmure , a beflannelle d Mars , had been hobbled out to talk his chalky sentences of twaddle about what he was doing , and going to do , with the army , only speaking for ten minutes , and yet having managed to say silliness enough to sugge st a national howl if the Speaker were not a Peer—as , for instance , in arguing that it wasn't right to prefer tried officers from India to untried officers from Pall-Ma 11 , for how could we know ,

    that if the men from Pall-Mali were tried , they wouldn ' t turn out as well as the men from India?—a sound senility which all the Whigs cheered . Then came Lord Clarendon ; the feeble eyes , and irresolute mouth , very anxious , very abashed , very worn out ; and the voice to match—most refined , most gentlemanly , and most mindless . He had something to say : steadying into seats : great attention . He understood that the other evening Lord Derby had asked a question about the Vienna negotiations , and the noble lord was angry that he ( Clarendon ) had not been in his place to answer it . Now , he was

    very sorry—very . The fact was that ho happened to have had a good deal of work to do at the office , and he had just stepped over , and had a cigar over a protocol or two , having calculated that if anybody asked any question his noble friend ( Lansdowne ) would have given any answer they pleased . Only think of a Minister dealing this way with a House of Parliament ; and yet ( saving the suppression of the fact about the tobacco ) that is literally what Lord Clarendon said . Then ho went on , now to

    answer Lord Derby ' s question . This was the position of matters . Lord John had gone to Vienna and had come back . Whilo Lord John was there , France , England , Austria , and Turkey , had niado certain propositions , which Russia had rejected ; and then tho Conferences wore broken up , anil Lord Johncamc home ; but nevertheless the Conferences were going on , Ruaaia having madu new propositions , and Austria having made now propositions , so that thero was as much negotiation as ever : and he

    hoped all would come well . Meanwhile the protocols , & c ., would be laid on the table : they would refer to the negotiations up to the moment of Lord John leaving Vienna , and they would of course tell a good deal ; but as to the negotiations since , at present , or now in prbspect , he had nothing to say—sense of public duty , & c . Then came an analysis , at the instance of Lord Malmesbury , of what England and France had proffered—Lord Clarendon having consequently to confess that our Peace offered would be after all but a sham Peace and a disgraceful Peace , and amounting on the part to a confession that we had failed in the Crimea . It was a silly Ministerial position defined

    by a feeble-minded man : the facts outrage the common sense of the country ; the position is one no rational ordinary Englishman would consent to share . But Lord Clarendon , though nervous and rather afraid of Lord Derby , was complacent : and the Peers were not much shocked . To be sure Lord Derby spoke out , with singular boldness and precision , to express personally his disgust , disappointment , and contempt ; and his clear , ringing tones spoke for once , I think , the popular voice . Even he , however , did not look from the right point of view at the humorous antics of these amazing Whig Ministers : —nobody was properly hilarious when Lord Lansdowne , to conclude the discussion , was helped on his h

    legs by Lord Panmure , and in a shaky sort of cougy whisper assured their Lordships that the continuance of negotiations ( and he didn't agree with Lord Derby that the negotiations were affectations ) would not prevent the Government carrying on the war with vigour—vigour , my lords ; and , as he came to the word "vigour , " you would have thought that the old gentleman was at his last gasp . Not that these absurdities , of presence and talk , are confined to the Peers . It is grand to hear Sir C . ' Wood , now actually the second acting Minister on the Commons Treasury bench , putting a couple of hundred w ' s into his evening sentence about the telegraphic message from Balaklava . Nobody can understand ,

    everybody laughs at him ; and it is all very well to say that the House disgraces itself by grinning on the subject of the war , but who could help laughing at that ridiculous Wood—and his frightened but still conceited incapacity whenever he is asked a question ? The whole of that Treasury Bench looks a sham . From Vernon Smith , who sits sedately ornamental , in yellow gloves , never speaking , never spoken to , and James Wilson , who , plebeian , acute , and busy , is obviously uncomfortable among all those brainless nobles , to Sir Robert Peel , who keeps at a respectable distance from his brother Frederick , and who , having nothing whatever to occupy him , and being ashamed , in his

    new dignity , to go to the smoking-room like a man , hems and brandishes his stick every ten minutes , — the whole thing appears horribly unlikely to last . There is no air of business about it : —even Frederick Peel , who is always up to meet questions of which he knows nothing , cannot believe that a government is being carried on . As to Palmerston himself , he leaves Louis Napoleon to carry on the war , and Prince Albert to carry on Diplomacy , and when he hasn ' t to roar he goes to sleep . Of course he knows that Lord John is intriguing again , and perhaps leaves the countermining to Lady Palmerston . He

    probably feels that a man who can roar as he can , cannot be dispensed with if there is to be any real national movement against this exhausted aristocracy—that bold , reckless , big-voiced man , such as he is , must be preferred in a revolutionary age to small pedants of the Russell genus . Or , it may be , he is all this while playing the popular game in making the English aristocracy more hated and more despised than they have ever yet been . Or , most probable of all suppositions , Lord Palmerston is now doing what he has always been doing—amusing himself , without the least apprehension or care of the

    -morrow . The absurd Ministry—carrying on negotiations which nobody believes in—sieges which they foreknow they must raise—with no appreciation of the temper of the country , with no preparation for the future of the war—is , nevertheless , not altogether unworthy of tho House of Commons . A middleclass conviction growing up that the aristocracy might be dono without is accompanied by a populur conviction that Parliament could bo dispensed with .

    The House of Commons is at present a most disorganised crowd ; obtaining no policy from without , having no men within its own body to lead it with confidence , und getting no sort of information from the Government which has no information to give , Hon . gentlemen , very earnest in their complaints , sick of Palmerston , suspicious of Disraeli , contemptuous of Lord John , allow themselves to drift , and appear to expect , without haying tho energy to avert , a grand catastrophe of political chaos at home , and national humiliation abroad .

    They collect down in Westminster from four to six ; it is tho right place , at that hour , to sou people , to heat news , to tease Charles Wood about the telegraph , und , generally , to amuue themselves . They return about

    twelve , again having nothing else to do elsewhere , and being sure of some sort of amusement again there being either a row between Irish members—ae on Thursday night , when Keogh and Whiteside were reciprocating suggestions to the effect that they were both qualified for the treadmill , —or there being a division , and it still is desirable , per division-list , to keep one ' s name before the public . But a week of the House of Commons now is just as resultless on human affairs as a week of the Coger ' s Hall—the institution of the Parliament is suspended . Take the dismal incidents of this week . Spdoner , on Tuesday , engaged in arguing that the Roman Catholic religion was a bad religion . Lord

    Robert Grosvenor , on Thursday , for a long time-, occupied in showing that the back street shops ought to be shut on Sunday . And on Wednesday , the once precious six hours allotted to the two solidly most stupid men in England—Pakington and Henley —in quarrelling as to the best method of educating the people . A nation , whose senate is thus employed , by such drivellers , cannot hope to win in a great war ; its intellect must have died out . Abase the human race to the lowest point of physical incompleteness and mental decrepitude , and you could not produce a more perfect barbaric being of funny fanaticism than Mr . Spooner . Lord Robert Grosvenor is supremely the most accomplished

    unindividuality of the period . Sir John Pakington and Mr . Henley are kindred specimens of that melancholy race of priggish narrow-mindedness—the country Justices of an English province ; they are men whose opinion no one would take on anything but cases of affiliation and Mangold-wurzel ; they are men whom even this degraded and dull House of Commons declines to listen to , though both of them , victorious in days of congenial mediocrity , when the Big Voice that Canning kept down is by seniority , uppermost , have obtained first-class party places . If Representative Government exposes a people to the humiliation of such personages presuming to the attitudes of statesmen , who wouldn ' t vote for getting rid of

    Representative Government ? The very worst of the matter is that nobody is astonished or shocked . On Tuesday Maynooth on , the Peers' galleries were crammed with white-neckclothed creatures , of red faces and receding foreheads , from the country towns : the crack bigots of the provincial pulpits : and an evening was sacrificed in order that the M . P . pets of those disastrous shepherds might blate their rampant idiotcies . Spooner we are used to : by practice , we can stan d Spooner . But think of an orator turning up from the church of Hugh M'Neile , in the person of Mr . Horsfall , of Liverpool , who , dropping his H ' s as if the letter were a papal one , and mispronouncing with

    Protestant fervour , inflicted upon us a lpng abstract argument that Popery ought to be put down . The honourable gentleman is a very worthy gentleman , and really , apart from his provincialisms , speaks very well , and greatly pleased , and was greatly applauded by , his party , among whom , even as an orator , he is superior . But is it because the English , people are defeated in war by their aristocracy and the Russians that they are to undergo these Parliamentary presentations of the parochial insanity , thus represented , and thus attempting to convert the House of Commons into a country council-chamber ? The House of Commons thinks it is bound to submit to cant . At least two-thirds of the

    House of Commons , like two-thirds of the English nation , are utterly heterodox , and , as " men of the world , " know that Popery and Protestantism are tolerably equal absurdities , in their organised ecclesiastical condition : and it is difficult to say which the average M . P . has most horror of—Spooner , on one side , or Bowyer , of the Roman party . But he feels himself bound to be grave , when Maynooth is on : and accordingly Spooner has his fling . So with Education . The House of Commons doesn ' t believe in education ; and the discussion about Education Bills is so unreal , that not even the Bowyer thinks it necessary to get up and say —• " How is it , if your reformed religion lias , during two centuries , left your people the moat ignorant , ruffian , drunken , and criminal in Europe—as you all confess—you are so sensitive about the couple of

    hundred stupid young priests in Maynooth ? " Its one of the Parliamentary conventionalities to affect a faith in Education nieasures , particularly if they propose tho daily reading of that Bible which honourable members don ' t even read on Sundays , and therefore no one openly laughs when Henley , in a couple of hours' argumentation , demonstrates that his conscience compels him to think that 1 ' akington is not a sage , So , with Sunday trading . We have had that subject for years , and no one is honest enough to destroy tho cant on the spot . A bill to abolish Sunday trading lias now passed a second reading : tho liousu is going to respect the injunction that " thou shalt do no work on tho Sabbathday ; " and on tho Gih of this May honourable gentlemen will discuss the probable fato of tho measure over their elaborate entrees and exquisite coitee . u SXUANQEH . ' * Saturday Morning .

    May 5,1855.] T H E X E A T> E R. 425

    May 5 , 1855 . ] T H E X E A T > E R . 425

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), May 5, 1855, page 17, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_05051855/page/17/