A NEW BUTT FOR LORD BROUGHAM.
IF Lord Stanley retired to the House of Lords in search of a quiet life, it is to be feared he will meet with a disappointment. Lord Brougham has set his eye upon him as a change of diet : he has dropped Lord Campbell for a time, to worry Lord Stanley. The noble Secretary of State for the Colonies came off but in- differently in the first rencontre. The occasion was a petition from the Legislative Assembly of Newfoundland, praying that the mail might be made to take St. John's in its way to Halifax. The petition is rather unreasonable : the route proposed by the peti- tioners is, in so far as the great bulk of the population of British North America are concerned, a circuitous one. The alteration prayed for would give the inhabitants of St. John's a slight ad- vantage, at the cost of a serious inconvenience to all the rest of the North American Colonies. Of this the Secretary for the Colonies was not aware. He first sought to escape from the dis- cussion by pleading want of notice. Finding his antagonist was not to be thus evaded,.—for he would withdraw the petition and reproduce it on another day,—Lord Stanley became desperate, and resolved to drink off at once the bitter cup he was not allowed to kiss and pass to the rest. Rather than bear the brunt of a second speech from Lord Brougham, he plunged into a question of which he was confessedly ignorant ; and, as will happen with ignorant men, lost the advantage of being on the right side for once, by not knowing it. His Office-cue was, that the petition' coming from a colony, ought of course to be opposed; and the first best reason for opposition that occurred to him was laid hold of. He objected the e petition on the ground that the harbour of St. Johns was not accessible at all seasons. Lord Brougham replied, "he did not see why it should be less open before the mail-bags were taken to Halifax than after they had been brought back again to New- foundland." Lord Brougham, apparently, spoke under the im- pression that the steamer from England touches at Newfound- land on her return, if not on her outward passage. A simple ex- planation that Newfoundland, as out of the direct route, is served by a branch-mail, would have averted his thrust. But of this Lord Stanley being ignorant, he sat silent under the rebuff—the most mortifying condition imaginable to so eager and vain a wrangler.
The two Lords are "well matched for a couple of quiet ones." The war of words, thus begun, is not likely to terminate here. Both have been trained in the gladiatorship of the House of Com- mons, but Brougham is immeasurably the more powerful : he possesses, moreover, a desire to turn victories to account ; while Stanley is contented with gaining them—when he can. The odds are against the Colonial Secretary.
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