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    able than usual , a practical public will doubtless be gratified . It is from a consciousness that the country is gratified , albeit not amused , that Mr . Cayley , oddly proffering the project from the Tory side , considers he is entitled to propose , on the understanding that Lord John Russell is to do nothing , that that noble commoner shall bo well paid for his trouble . Some drolls suggest that the great question of the day is the precise question which nobody dares to put , viz , what it all

    means , this foreign office resignation of" Lord John Russell , and accession of Lord Clarendon ? The Government must feel oddly confident of" its strength while making such changes , and not taking the trouble to tell Parliament anything about them ; for , though perhaps Lord John indulges in some such anticipation , Lord Aberdeen , basking in Ministerial sunshine and fair weather , is likely to prefer Belgravia to Nice , at least until August next , when our brief respite from north winds is over again .

    But the question of the week has been that question which Mr . Napier put so pertinently in the feeble debate on the Jewish Disabilities . " Is Christianity to be an open question ? " That is putting the matter in a strong way . Mr . Napier thought that the interrogatory was an overwhelming sarcasm which the latitndinarians who dine with Lionel . Rothschild would find it impossible to stand up against . Yet it is exactly the right question to face in a week devoted , with slight variation , to the consideration whether Roman Catholics and Hebrews are to be incapacitated by their creeds from becoming good citizens . Not that there is

    any doubt in the enlightened House of Commons , which is by no means a rigidly religious assembly , that confession and circumcision are not altogether inconsistent with the avoidance of transportation or the treadmill ; but that it is not yet the fashion to fling away the affectations of prejudices still cultivated by the powerful tea-table interest in this country . The English House of Commons does admit the Jews ( this is the third year in which the affirmative has been voted ) to Parliament , and that is very illogical in gentlemen who are ex officio ( as English M . P . ' s ) Christians ; and that intelligent Senate , having already endowed Maynooth ,

    would endow the whole Irish Roman Catholic Church if political expediency could be pleaded in favour of such pecuniary extravagance . That House of Commons , made up of men of business and men of the world , would endow a Mormon College , if there were one , on good political reasons being shown , and would make a Ghehir Prime Minister , if he had got in , and were the fittest mp . n , just as they made Benjamin Disraeli , passionate champion of the pure Sephardim , the practical governor of the British Empire . That House

    of Commons was elected , and got elected , to look after the nation ' s and its own interests in this world , and it only begins to think about the next , as of a notice of motion , after the orders of the day are disposed of ! When wo see the man who is the favourite of the House—leader of the par excellence Protestant Church party—a man who owes his literary fame to a dashing Judaic theory , which among other things includes a compliment to Cuiaphas for the crucifixion—for , asks Mr . Disraeli , we should never have been redeemed had not the Redeemer been put in a position to die for us ?

    —it is difficult to realize the notion that the British representation is Christian in the theological sense . But what is quite certain—what no one will deny if ho leaves oil" generalisation , and remembers Jones '* , the member for Hero ' s , and Smith ' s , the member for There ' s , individual talk about churches and chapels , is this , that tho House of Commons is perfectly representative in respect to reflecting impartially all the phases of faith of the British Empire , and that it is intensely anti-sectarian ? To such threats as those of Mr . Napier

    on Thursday night , that tho vengeance of God would iifllict Mr . Speaker and Lord J . Russell , if they allowed the money-changing Rothschild to enter the temple of puro Christianity , namely , tho Ilouso of Commons , which is elected by the most conspicuous national demoralization and Heoundrelism illustrated , ( see committed rooms ) in the very lobbies through which Mr . Napier walked to deliver his Jeremiad—houio gentlemen are profoundly indifferent ; and if tho lollers on the back benches did urouso themselves , tho clareted

    Jehoinkiin . s , to think at all about the warning , delivered with that denunciatory HimfHe in which Irish Orangemen excel , it was to consider whether , when tKe bend of tho . Rothschilds does take his Boat , Mr . Napier will flee to tho salubrious and irresponsible atmosphere of tho Chiltorn Hundreds . Is not that tho test ? Elijah , when nobody attended to him , went into the wilderness : but , though tho Houso of Commons did twice vote for the admission of tho Jews , and thorefore invited thai-providential vindictiveness which the member forjDublin Trinity specifies , for of course a just God is not technical , and does not wait until tho two Houbch lmvo agreed—wo found Mr . Nnpior snugly in office

    last year , and enjoying himself as heartily as a deaf statesman possibly could . In the same way , applying the same tests , the House does not even compliment Mr . Spooner , or Mr . James Macgregor , Mr . Spooner ' s seconder in the Maynooth matter , upon fanaticism . The men of the world who are the majority , and who know that Spooner ( " der beriishrute Spooney , " as a Cologne paper recently called him ) would allow Beelzebub to bank with him , and who are satisfied that the chosen of the Eastern Counties Railway—one of Louis Napoleon ' s pet English friends—is one of the most rational and clever of mankind , will insist , and vote accordingly ,

    that these hyperperfect Protestant persons are only playing the game , and that a clumsy one , of a party which plays bigotry , having revoked on protection , as its last card . You cannot expect that Jones , who is a Protestant because he has three church-livings in his gift , and who has dined to-day with Smith , a Roman Catholic , and a Papist because he was born one , but would , nevertheless , as soon confess to Dr . Me Hale as to you , will tumble into the House after Cnracoa at eleven , and vote that the teaching of Maynooth is inimical to the order of the realm . Spooner , who seems to have found out some ecclesiastical Holywell

    Street , where naughty Latin books are sold , may quote to him worse things than Casanova ever suggested , aud the inference , as to the possible consequences on youthful and pious Irish minds , maybe awful . But Jones wont believe a word of it . He has smoked with G . H . Moore for years—been attentive to the mots of Duffy all through the session , and he and Keogh have been together nights and nights at a stretch ; he knows that these are the Pope ' s brass band—the crack catholics—and he refuses to be frightened by Spooner ; and when be gets Macgregor info the dining-room , he nudges him in the ribs , leers knowingly , and asks him

    if he knows what are Forbes Mackenzie ' s calculations as to the votes all this piety will bring . If the bigotry succeeds , well and good—Jones respects it ; but if it fails , as it has failed this week , he laughs at it . As we said ( having read Mrs . Tyler ' s letter ) last week , we cannot interfere for humanity and liberty , " that sort of thing , " abroad , until we have put matters straight at home ; and this week you could see he was gradually coming to the conclusion that the Protestantism and the Christianity appealed to against the claims of Catholics and Jews , could not be very well worth giving a monopoly

    to , seeing that when parliament is traced , in a committee-room to its source , it would appear that theological anxieties but slightly influence its characteristic vitality . So , analyzing tke votes of this week , it is clear , Mr . Napier , that Christianity is made an open question . A few years more , and we shall have some great Hindii merchant settling in London , affecting the citizens , giving good dinners , and at last getting in ; and then the question of the day will be , why should not tho Juggernfit interest be represented ? Why not ?

    Mr . Disraeli , Pitting through it all on Thursday , sublimely cynical , could have suggested to Rothschild that seats are attainable to Hebrews with less pother , by doing what " Tancred" describes gentlemen doing at Jerusalem—accepting conversion to Christianity from tho English bishop , and when the missionary supplies from the tea-table interest fall short , striking for wages . Mr . Disraeli takes the oath on the faith of a Christian , like a sensible man , and yet writes " Coningsby , " and draws " Sidonin , " whose ancestors defied by eluding the Spanish Inquisition . Not heroic , no doubt ; and yet the practical classes think Disraeli wiser than

    Rothschild ; or , at any rate , the creator of hidoma , and the writer of the celebrated Jew-Pontius-Pilato paragraph in tho " Political Biography , " heads the party whose mot d ' ordre is Church and State and the Protestant Constitution . Only one condition is apparently made by the party with their leader—that though he will not be with them against the Jews , ho shall not be against them ; tlmt if ho votes with Lord John ( should not tho Tory leader talk always gently at the Whig statesman who makes Jews freemen ?) he shall not speak with Lord John . And this year , n . s in tho year before hist , Disraeli fulfils the pactby giving hin vote for his race ( as to their creed , he is

    as devoted to it as—no mutter what other statesmanto the details of the Christian dis ]) on . siition ) , but giving it a silent vot ,. o ; sitting among his party and enduring in sullen fameness nil the insults which red- ; faced and respectable saints like Inglis , and moustnehed muscadins like Sir Robert Peel , poured down on Thursday , on the Caucasian nristocrney of Immunity . From Disraeli ' s side rose Napier—who bad served under Disraeli—to give notice about God ' s vengeance . At Disraeli ' s side stood Inglis , who had followed Disraeli into every lobby for nix years , when that high-minded niuu was proving from Holy Writ that a Jew in Parliament would carry destruction to tho British constitutionalthough he did not moke it appnrent that Holy Writ

    was dedicated to the proposers of Magna Charta . Over Disraeli ' s head thundered the impetuous Sir Robert Peel—than whom no man has a better right to think ill of the Jews , since who has suffered more from them ?—when that ingenuous youth ( having ascertained that his brother was booked to vote for Rothschild ) demonstrated , without mentioning that Lola Montes was his authority , that the Jews were the enemies of freedom ( is not Mr . Sloman , of Chancery-lane , a Jew ?) and that the house of the Rothschilds constituted the principal support of the despotic emperors of Austria , France , and Russia . It might have

    been remembered by the fiery Sir Robert that the Cabinet of Disraeli , per Malmesbury , was the firm , not to say the affectionate , ally of those potentates ; and that the unfilial owner of Tamworth , who never saw so much in his father as other people did , and who , for his part , thinks Disraeli a " doosed good" fellow , &c . &c , was an inveterate supporter of that Cabinet . Mr . Disraeli may have detected the perverse logic—Mr . Disraeli saw * and felt all the absurdities of his own situation , and of his friends' argumentation—for it was not difficult to perceive by the changeful shrinking and smiliiiff of his demeanour that he was not a very proud

    or a peculiarly happy man on this occasion , when he was sitting as t he frightful examp le of an Inglis's preaching . But Mr . Disraeli threw the heroism and the work and the honour on Lord John Russell ; and perhaps be assisted Lord John thus far , that he manoeuvred his friend Mr . Walpole—leader pro hoc viceinto keeping quiet , into suppressing all the respectable elocutionists of the party—therefore in leaving the opposition to a Sibthorpe ( who—the dirtiest old man in Christendom—objected that Hebrews don ' t wash ) and to an Inglis , the ' traditioual obstructives of the Conservative classes , and accordingly in making the whole fuss ludicrous . After all there was as much avoidance

    of oratory on the other side . Lord John was eminently an ' d curtly dull ; and it is a consequence of a Government of " all the talents" that debating , which cannot be all on one side , must be tepid . The debate on the Maynooth question , on Tuesday and Wednesday , was only more interesting that it provoked into action one or two individualities about whom there has been considerable interest among that extensive section of the community who , in these days of political acquiescence in everything , regard Parliament merely as a public amusement , and are given to gossip about the -actors , in the usual pit way . The talk of the

    week , active about a new House full of latent celebrities , chronicles a success and a failure among the new men . The success is that of Mr . Gavan Duffy , the most brilliant of Irish journalists ; and the failure is that of Mr . Edward Miall , not the flfost brilliant of English journalists , but a gentleman who is high in his profession as a journalist , who is a trusted leader of the best of the Nonconformists , and who is known tolerably through the country as an individual entitled to a seat in the ' House of Commons—and to a hearing , if he can get it . So far , he has not got thnt preliminary to Parliamentary triumphs ; and ifc is worth ascertaining

    why , —tho reasons for his defeat suggesting all the reasons for tho hit which Mr . Duffy nmde . Tlic first remark you make about Mr . Miall as he passes by you to the House , is , thnt he is a sinnll headed man ; and you guess at once that he will lind ifc difficult to tempt or intimidate the always impatient Hou . se into attention to his accurate and elegant but , you may be sure , feeble and unimpressive syllogisms . On Tuesday there was noise , bustle , sneers flying about—Protestant insults and Catholic repartees—general sense of being bored , and general longing for u good speech to lift the House out of its littlenesses into vigorous generalities . A

    speaker concluded —• the slight Mr . Miall rose up like a note of exclamation on tho decadent orator—lie had caught the Speaker ' s eye , and was in for un ordeal the most severe anil telling ever invented—a maiden speech in the House of Commons . There was silence at oneo —the Houho is always looking out , and always ready to welcome capability—and Mr . Miall plunged into his oration . Alas ! the prim voice , the slightly conventicle gesture , or no gesture , the elaborated style , tho obvious pri'pnrethu'SH , the utter absence of a conception of what would tell—thnt is to say , of what was wanted—told , in a few minutes , that hem was a blunder -a closet

    speech ning-uontfe « I t <> a House in n hurry . Mr . Miall clearly had arranged to lecture the House—was bent upon a great dlort to produce a great impression ; und he was at onco found out and put down . How ? They left offquiet liegan to bray— -said pooh , pooh—oh . ohsatirically " henr . lieuml . " The Cobden class of men , who need Hrights to kick them into energy , would have been obliged for all this ; they would have fuced it—put it down ; but they aro the huge-headed class . The gentlemanly , scholarly , amiable Mr . Miall gave way before tho impertinence ho mot with ; he stuttered—grew pale—grow red—got tremulous . —\ w \ , his way—ro-

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    February 26 , 1853 . ] T H E LEADE R . 207

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 26, 1853, page 207, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1975/page/15/