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    perhaps 50 more when Sir C . Wood got on his inexpressible legs ; but they fled at the signal , and were off scattered through town far out of reach of that dreadful man ; comforting their consciences with the promise that they would read the newspaper summaries in the morning , and do what they could for the 150 , 000 , 000 fellow subjects . And more than 50 would have gone ; hardly a House of the mysterious 40 would have been kept , but for a personal interest , not concerning the 150 , 000 , 000 in any respect : —a rumour , almost a belief , that there was a " split" in the Cabinet on the business

    —that Sir Charles was talking only for the Whigsand not for the Peelites—and that there was a chance , this fact intimating that the ^ measure was a bad one , of a Government failure / a hostile division , a resignation , and so on . A' circumstance somewhat unusual confirmed the impression . No sooner was Sir Charles shot up for his oration than Mr . Gladstone was on his legs , too , hurrying away , up to the gallery , on to a bench , and in five minutes into a deep sleep . Colleagues

    don t do this ordinarily ; and the supposition was—he didn't care to hear a drone through a bill he had already repudiated , and would be glad of a decent opportunity to retire upon . Certainly , Mr . Disraeli , having received news from the city that the stock conversion scheme was a complete failure , owing to that odd rise in the bank ' s rates , had just given notice with a coolness unsurpassed even in Mr . Disraeli , that he should shortly call the attention of the House to " the state of the finances

    of this country , " a phrase which suggests that a coalition has brought us to bankruptcy ; and Mr . Gladstone , who could not be good tempered after the Ministerial events of the week , felt , doubtless , the fine irony of such a notice of motion . But the one cause would suffice for a retreat ; human nature , however well trained in Parliamentary tediousuess , must give way under Sir Charles Wood . Here is a Yorkshire squire , of the narrowest capacity for business , utterly unable to speak a sentence in English , with no conception of literary arrangement in statement , with a gulositous voice which renders him incomprehensible for twenty

    minutes out of every sixty minutes , put up to govern India—his 150 , 000 , 000—having been in the Indian department about six months , and before he entered the Indian department having , most likely , doubted whether Hindostan was on this or on the other side of the Persian Gulf . Why ? Because he is a Whig country gentleman of immense conceit , who married into the Greys , and whose property and family influence wan each- —that he could not be left out of a coalition the organizers of which did not look beyond the clique of a class which breeds not only hereditary legislators , but hereditary Secretaries of State .

    It is ludicrous to hear Sir C . Wood making a speech ; the man would be driven and hooted from any debating club of boys ; he would be a butt in a vestry ; he would he submerged at a railway meeting . As Chancellor of the Exchequer , he made a notorious fiasco in his measures , principally because no one could ever got at any comprehension , from him , of what the measures were ; and if ever they were passed , it was because his private secretary waited , upon the editors of newspapers to explain . But of finance , after several years' practice , and some knowledge of the account-books of his estate , ho knew something , and

    perhaps had a notion of what he ought to say . Of India he could know nothing ; and it is a fact , that if Mr . Robert Lowe had not been Hitting as prompter , —not being married into the Greys , he is made a subordinate to cram Wood—putting him rig ht every ten minutes , he would never have got to the end of Ins speech at nil . The exhibition was , therefore , pitiable ; but it was ollensive ; and how the House felt it was evidenced in the way it thinned after the first hour , was left thinned long after the dinner-hour , and filled only when Mr . Bright got up , and t hen cheered him on ull sidesbut one wdo clearly out of vexation with

    , ur i i j- t- .. ... > i ; ,. f ('<«• f . lini wfinried und bored Wood , nnd to get a relief for tho wearied mid bored heart . Sir Charles talked in n parenthesis of an hour an apology for his incompetence to deal with the " magnitude "— that , word nimo in iibout twico a minute—of tho subject ; and one thought and asked , Why , then , didn't you go buck to Yorkshire , and leave it to your Hub , who , you know , in a man of genius ? Yet , with nil his sense of incompetence , he talked from halfpast five to lmlf-pnHt ten — five mortal hours of a second rato Vorkshiro squiro on behalf of tho 150 , 000 , 000 . Plain purpose , symmetry , construction , thero wiih none in his speech ; nnd what , ho miid could

    have been said in an hour , could lmvo been written into ii column of n morning p . iper , instead of Immur reported into fifteen columns ; and after such an elaboration of chaos , it becomes a question of the day- why aro these pjmit Ministerial statements spoken- -why arc they not hurt on tho table like resolutions or bills ? Thoy nre only spoken , as lust night , to Houses of fifty bored senators , trying to keep up u decent appearance

    to the Stranger ' s Gallery—to be printed ; and the process involves excessive printing , and practically the non-reading by the public of what the public should familiarly know ; and why should not the ludicrous process be reversed ? the beginning begun at the beginning ? Mr . Gladstone was endurable—Mr . Disraeli was endurable—in their respective five hours budgets ; but when we get Sir C . Wood ' s performances , we are compelled to consider whether matters could not be arranged in a private interview with the reporter ' s gallery before dinner ? At any rate if we are to get pamphlets for speeches let them be good

    pamphletslet the Woods be edited by the Lowes . Sir Charles was sloppy , slovenly , and loose , with neither exordium nor peroration ; it was all middle . He started with a rush in medias res , and he floundered there all night—perorating in a jerk responsive to a twitch of the coat tails , which Lord John , as the clock was getting on to midnight , at last thought he was justified in—and was . It was a peroration about the progress of Christianity in India , and what Sir Charles would da to advance the cause of Christ . By what ?—by educating the natives . Sir Charleswho had talked fifteen columns , and not one sentence of

    English I Nearer religions have occupied attention during these last few days . Lord Derby—about to face an Oxford installation , and scrupulously bigoted up to the last moment—would have it that Lord Lyndhurst meant to let in the Jews by the Parliamentary Oaths Bill , and out the Bill has gone accordingly , with two consequences —one , Lord Lyndhurst ' s ire , almost persuading him to coalesce with the Coalition ; another , the last feather

    in breaking down the " austere intriguer ' s" * endurance of Lord Derby ; so that there is a prospect of debates in the Lords improving , when Lord Derby gets back to provoke the two angriest and two of the most able men in the empire . He revelled in spitefulness in regard to that Bill . Lord Derby is essentially , be it said with due regret , a little-minded man , of a peevish , vixenish nature—though , being an Earl , whenever he scratches , he ia said to be chivalrous—and Lord Lyndhurst ,

    however anxious to please his Semitic connexions , ought to have known that the occasion he has presented of hitting the Government through him would not be lost by the man who has no other amusement but debating and dividing . He threw the Bill out on an hypothesis , and that was ludicrous , in a " responsible" senate ; but it was as good a . reason as another , when his mind wa 3 made up to teaze the Coalition , whoin he can't forgive for having convinced mankind that he is an incapable , as little qualified for the consulship as his two-year-old animal , " Dervish . " A little thought should have convinced him—his son might have suggested to him—that

    public opinion generalizes , and that the nation , finding Lord Derby attempting to restrain the hidden Liberalism of Lord Lyndhurst , will come to a dismal conclusion as to the position of the former in respect to the " spirit of the age , " and that such a suspicion , just now , does not promote practical power , even in the Peers , whatever the readiness of tho Mesdames Harris of that assembly to invest in him their proxies . Tho public will generalize , and will not master all the facts and circumstances ; and after Lord Lyndhurst ' s speech , Lord Derby ' s vote will bo accepted as tho voto of a silly man , falling back from the Conservative party and tho

    into the ranks of the camp followers preachers—Winchelseas and Inglises . For half a century lias Lord Lyndhurst served that Conservative party , led by Lords who , as a rule only proved by exceptions , arc incapable men . The Conservative party is always importing- and bringing up champions—once it was Lyndhurst , then Peel , now Disraeli : and his reward is—he is repudiated when he is seeking to relieve it from n stigma stupidly attached to it , out of tho mere personal littleness and spitefulness of a man who never could distinguish between the characteristics of a party debate , and a cock-pit struggle . Lord Lyndhurst , however , got Im reward - for the first time , in bis restless career , ho has

    felt the muss of bis countrymen moving with him ; nnd that sensation must have been grateful when he talked over with Mr . Disraeli , Lord Derby ' s wrong-heudednoss , and when these two foreign gentlemen—the son of tho American , and the grandson of the Spaniard—shook their heads over the bigotry and Ijoobyimn of inane British nobility . Lord Lyndhurst has other compensations He had performed a parliamentary feat which is not likely ever to bo paralleled . Eighty-one years of ni ? c he walked down to tho House of . Lords , and made n speech of an hour ' s length , and in which no traces of age could bo detected : —no , not even m tho voice , which thoug h low and subdued , is still tempered into that telling modulation which used to make it a

    notorious musical luxury to see Lord Lyndhunt on his legs . He is not now , either , to be listened to as you listen to the Marquis of Lansdowne;—as a relic of the old style of Parliamentary oratory . Lord Lyndhurst never adopted the parliamentary style ; he aimed at fine elocution , and not at the knack of " the house ;" and he succeeded in being the finest speaker of his time—something to succeed in , seeing that in his time he has seen two generations of fine speakers , from Charles Fox to Benjamin Disraeli . An excitement would reproduce , even now , his old vigorous and desperate sarcasm—a sarcasm from Lord Lyndhurst is given in a Kean

    whisper , inexpressibly searching—and it would be a vast benefit to an unamused gallery , at present , if he could be got into a good passion with Lord Derby . And it would be a benefit to the Government : for , with all the " array of talent" talked of so loudly , when the Coalition was formed , they are actually browbeaten by Lord Derby . He is ready and impudent , and they only match him with men who are only impudent and not ready . The Duke of Newcastle always raises his voice , and tries to look contemptuous ; but he invariably breaks down . The Duke of Argyle , if he were youthful and natural , would be a fair antagonist : but

    he argues ; and Lord Derby should be laughed at , for Lord Derby , in a proper point of view , is ridiculous . Earl Grey says very savage things , and really feels the inspiring disdain ; but he is now sulky with the Government , and it is not his business to debate for them . Then Lord Aberdeen—he has no readiness , and is bidding for some of Lord Derby ' s proxies , and daren't talk out to the party , though , as we have seen lately , he can lose his temper , now and then . As for the Marquis of Lansdowne , he acts in the Lords , like Lord John Russell ( as Lord John fancies ) in the Commons , only as Veneer-Liberal , and doesn't talk . His

    buff and blue ( he dresses like a cover of the Edinburgh Whigs have lost all other distinctions ) is seen standing out from the reach of the Ministerial benches , merely to relieve the Austrian colours of Aberdeen , black on white , as , in fact , warranty of a Cabinet whose colours will wash . If Mr . Gladstone cannot get rid of Lord John , he should go up to the Lords himself , or send Osborne , or Cockburn . Without a debater , they'll never get Lord Derby ' s majority out of his hands . If some man of weight and tact would set to , and devote a session , to exposing the real nature and character of Lord Derby , that fiery Chief would

    gradually disappear in training stables . But there have been not only incidental , but direct religious feuds . The debate on Mr . G . H . Moore ' s motion , on Tuesday , raised the whole question of religious endowments ; and the division taken , as it has been , in conjunction with the division on the Nunneries Inspection motion , is likely very largely to affect the position of tho Government iu Ireland . Lord John Russell raised , with his usual

    tact , a special religious question , proving—« ager cheers waiting on his every word from the Opposition side of tho House—that the Catholic priests of Ireland were the enemies of liberty ( how Mr . Keogh must have quaked !) , and in showing that it would not do to endow them ( which was not the point ) because they would be inclined to oppose tho coalition—as if Mr . Keogh had not positively informed him that all the Bishops approved of his ( Mr . Keogh ' s ) acceptance of office . Lord John did not weaken his position in England by attacking tho Roman Catholics , though he probably should have found , in his Durham letter

    experience , that truths of tho kind be talked on luesday had better bo left to the professional Tories ; but tho recklessness of his lead in the matter was this , that ho could have resisted the motion , and got it defeated , and kept his Government together without repeating the Durham letter , and again estranging Ireland . Tuesday was a Durham letter debate scene—a packed House . Lord John with bis c 11 > owh in his hands ; dead silence on tho Ministerial benches alwve and below the gangway , and hurrahing cheers from the Opposition country party . While Lord John was lifting his treble to domonstrato that the Koman Catholic priests were

    the enemies of liberty , two gentlemen in front of him were conspicuously loud in their hear , hears ; and sight of them should hnvo been the comment on his logic . They wero Messrs . Napier and Whiteaido , 8 ]> okeHinen of the ' University of Dublin , and of " Orange" society in Dublin ; and perhaps , on tho whole , the moHt blatant and intonne Tories of their era . Lord John , rcmemboring that these gentleman had been in the Derby Minintry , might have asked himself whether it was quite clear that Protestantism , as a church , led more directly than Popery , as a church , to lilwrty ? But Lord John has given up thinking ; having no office he is out of practice ; and so on Tuesday , he quietly " sold" all the Peelite

    members of tho Coalition , destroyed their growing popularity in Ireland , and put tho Government in Ireland exactly whero tho Kunttell Government was . Mr . Gladstone *

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    * Uv tho way , this Iri ^ h-Tory epigram is an imported Onllic'ism ; it was applied to Guissot by tho journals of tho Opposition in tlio days of Jb ' ronch Parliamentary journalism .

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    June 4 , 1853 . ] THE LEAD E R . 543

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), June 4, 1853, page 543, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1989/page/15/