Mr. Newdegate pronouncel a funeral oration over Lord Pal- merston
as "the Tory head of a Radical Administration" last Wednesday, at a dinner at Sutton-Coldfield. Mr. Newdegate's manner is always a little lugubrious, so that it was quite in keeping with his theme, but scarcely with his occasion,—a feast of con- gratulation to the North Warwickshire members on their victory. Of this Mr. Newdegate was aware, and threw the responsibility of being cheerful on Mr. Bromley, whose return alone had becu endangered. For himself, he was so full of woe that he contrived even to cloud Lord Palmerston's cheerful career by comparing him to the Austrian Field-Marshal Radetzky, who at an age not much
et of Lord Palmerston's contrived to fight the battle which ended the hopes of Italy in 1849. Mr. Newdegate conveniently forgot that Lord Palmerston in 1860 did much to repair the calamity which Radetzky had achieved in 1849, by fighting diplo- matically against Austria in the same field. Mr. Newdegate insisted much on Lord Palmerston's great service in recognizing early his own industry and merit. It appears that Mr. Newdegate prepared and published an account of the Tariffs of Foreign Nations, and suggested the form in which the changes of these tariffs might be communicated to the House of Commons, and that Lord Palmerston highly approved of this diversion of his energies into a practical channel from brooding on imaginary Jesuits. "From the hour in which I brought this subject under his notice Lord Palmerston's manner towards me changed," and thenceforth Mr. Newdegate received all the encouragement which "a young poli- tician, a rising politician, should require." No wonder Mr. New- degate feels that "the loss of such a man is rather a gloomy sub- ject." It is ;—and none the brighter for his having failed to rescue Mr. Newdegate from his favourite and saturnine sport of Jesuit- hunting. At such a moment Mr. Newdegate should not have added one to the short catalogue of Lord Palmerston's social failures.
