TWO POINTS IN THIS SESSION.
TWO very significant facts seem to us to come out strongly in the history of this Session, both of which are more worthy of study than those dreary epitaphs with which most of our contemporaries, under some strong but mistaken sense of duty, will presently weary their readers. The first of them is the direction in which, after Mr. Gladstone had returned to office, political power has seemed to gravitate. Before 1832 almost anyone would have said that with a weakened and discredited Ministry power would be certain to gravitate to the Throne, and indeed Mr. Disraeli has pointed out this as one sure result of the feebleness of parties. Between 1860 and 1867 it would have been calculated that the power lost by the Ministry must pass to a clique, whether Ultramontane, or Red, or Whig, or anything else ; and this indeed did happen in 1867. But after 1867 the conclusion of most men—certainly of all Continental observers—would have been that it must fall into the street, that the demands of the Ultras must be the demands which political men would concede. It was not so, however. Mr. Gladstone was, no doubt, beaten once, by a ridiculous resolution in favour of peace, carried by a knot of crotchet- teers, aided by some Tories who enjoyed the joke ; but the resolution was so ridiculous that it was, though in courteous phrase, treated as too nonsensical for serious treatment, and it became evident that actual power, the power which could move or stop things, had passed to the House of
Lords. From the day of Mr. Gladstone's return that House has felt independent, and has done as it liked, without fear of check from anyone. It rejected summarily a Bill for improving Church organisation which had passed the Commons without a division ; it compelled the Government to spoil the Judicature Bill by merely threatening to assert a privilege ; it squashed Mr. Stansfeld's Rating Bill almost without debate, to the great irritation of Mr. Bruce, who made it a topic of special reproof at the Lord Mayor's banquet ; and it has opened the road to the reintroduction of Purchase, which, it will be remembered, is still unprohibited by statute. It has negatived at least one great measure, the Landlord and Tenant Bill, without seeing it ; and has, we imagine, modified one other of the last importance by a mere threat. It has in fact become a potent estate of the Realm, and as far as we can perceive, nobody objects or cares. The Cabinet yields, nobody but an Old Whig or two protests, and the Electorate gives out no sound. Even the Scotch electors are silent, and though Mr. Fitzjames Stephen was " heckled " at Dundee—" heckle " is, we presume, the local word for carding-out jute—as the Mayor said, " as man was never heckled before," he was not asked any question as to his attitude towards the House of Lords. Their inde- pendence has been noticed, and except by a growl or two in the country papers, has been tacitly condoned. We have no wish to enter on an explanation of a fact which, our recent history being considered, is most curious. It is probably 'ewing to a concatenation of circumstances which may never occur again, but it certainly gives warranty to this idea,—that Englishmen when afflicted, as they periodically must be, with weak Governments, do not seek strength in the street, but rather rely on the established methods to keep everything in movement till the General Election comes round again. That quiet submission to the Lords by a democratic constituency because the Commons had evidently got out of hand, is the most significant fact within our recent memory, and inclines us to believe that if the Lords would only attend, and work, and take trouble to state their views, they might still have a place in English internal history.
The second point, and it is equally curious, is that while the prestige of Government has been steadily dying away, while a reaction has set in which may swamp the party, and while the Commons have become unbearably cantankerous and unman- ageable, the personal prestige of most individual Ministers has not in the least declined. Only one can be said to have lost heavily. Mr. Lowe has fought stoutly for himself, but his astounding fiasco in the Bank-notes Bill, which died of 'unanimous dislike, the annoyance he gave by his rasping speech about the Civil Service, his carelessness in the Zanzibar Contract matter, his reckless attacks on the right of Parliament to supervise him, and his absolute refusal to accept responsibility in the Post-Office Scandal, or to defend either his own colleague, Mr. Mansell, or his own subordinate in the department, Mr. Scudamore, have distinctly lowered him in men's eyes, and in some small part justified the popular dislike of him,—caused, we believe, rather by his Tory eloquence in 1867, than by anything he has attempted since. The City does not like the Chancellor, and neither do the Departments directly under him, even Mr. Ayrton seeming, from his recent speech about the estimate for enlarging the Thames Embankment, unable to bear with an intellect so like in its 'vitriolic power, yet so far grander than his own. Mr. Gladstone must also be held to have declined slightly, but only because the failure of a Government always in some way discredits its -chief, as he has led for the Session with unusual tact and carefulness ; and for the rest, their position in the eyes of the world has been very little changed. Can anybody point to any man in the Cabinet, unless it be Mr. Lowe, whom the party, after the experience of this Session, would unhesitatingly rule cut ? The Dissenters are very angry still with Mr. Forster, very unjustifiably angry, as we think, for on one great point he would have worked with them, but was overruled by the Cabinet ; but they do not hate him worse than they did, and he would still have a plebiscite of two-thirds. Mr. Bruce is where he was, or rather, as Government is weak, has become by contrast just a little stronger. Mr. Goschen has distinctly risen, partly because he has acquired a new faculty of reply in the House, till there is evidently some hesitation to tackle him, partly, it may be, for no better reason than that he managed the Naval reception of the Shah so well. Lord Kimberley stands where he did—always provided Cape Coast Castle stands too—or perhaps a little better, for the English people like conquest, Mr. Richard notwithstand-
ing ; and he has added two great provinces to Her Majesty's dominions, and may by Christmas add a third. The Duke of Argyle has lost nothing, for the secrets of the India House do not spread—there is an impression there, we believe, that India does not interest him sufficiently—and it is mainly due to an Indian diplomatist and Indian resolutions, prompted by orders from the Duke, that the expedition to Zanzibar turned out a success, of which the Ministry, in its low spirits, has made too little. Lord Granville has had little to do which has been very public, but the old impression that he would strike hard if needful remains, and whether well founded or not, nothing has occurred to take him out of the list of the Papabili, or conceivable Liberal Premiers of England. Perhaps he has been a little less successful in his manage- ment of the Lords than in previous Sessions, but what is one to do with an obstinate majority accidentally master of the situation ? He makes too little work for the Lords, till their teeth grow for want of gnawing, and he is too careless about bringing forward young Peers ; but of what leader in the Lords, Whig or Tory, may we not say the same ? The bore of leading the minority there is so terrible, that it is almost a shame to ask a man to increase his own opportunities of humiliation. If the Duke of Richmond does not like the proposal, be it what it may, what help is there from man ? Mr. Stansfeld has not gained, for his Bill has been overthrown ; but he has not lost, for he is trusted as much as ever, and observant men only regret that he did not take the Duchy of Lancaster, in which post his health would not have impaired his great usefulness in council and debate, and leave broad-chested Mr. Childers to stand up to the phalanx of loud-voiced squires who rise and rush at any ques- tion of taxing underwood. The party would scarcely change the Cabinet if it could—for how replace Mr. Lowe ?—and yet that Cabinet is dying, without many tears, even from its own side.
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