MR. STANLEY IN DANGER.
AT a public dinner in Liverpeol last week, where Mr. Secretary STANLEY was a guest, a person attempted to force an entrance, for the purpose, as he said, of presenting a memorial to Mr. STANLEY, with a view to obtain redress for some alleged wrong which he had sustained from Government : but as lie was armed with pis- tols and knives, it was presumed that his intentions were san- guinary, and he was very properly taken into custody. Again, in the present week, Mr. STANLEY was under the necessity of claiming the protection of the Police Magistrates against the threatened violence of another individual, who conceived himself to have been ill-treated at the Colonial Office, and determined to revenge himself on the Secretary. Now Mr. STANLEY, in all probability, is surprised that he should be singled out of the whole Cabinet as the object of' attack by these—madmen, shall we call them, or ruffians ? But if lie is, we are not. It is impossible that any man, who has distinguished himself, as Mr. STANLEY has, in his per- formance of his Parliamentary duties, by extreme exacerba- tion of tone and manner, should not have rendered himself more hated than other Ministers by all who are opposed to him both in and out of Parliament. In Parliament, the conse- quences of his pugnacious bearing are visible, in the bitter feel- ing of personal dislike and hostility which this young statesman has provoked to a greater degree than any other public speaker within our memory. Divisions are called for, points are debated, opposition is got up night after night against the Ministry, which would never have been thought of except as the means of
annoying Mr. STANLEY; who seems to take all opposition to Mi- nisters as a personal affront to himself. As a statesman, and as a
man, he has lost more by his violent and irritating mode of per- forming his part in the debates, than can ever be restored to him by the thundering cheers of his partisans on the Treasury benches. But Mr. STANLEY'S speeches are reported and read out of doors. He is looked upon as the most prominent man among the Ministry in the house of Commons. He is put forward upon all occasions, especially whose a hard battle is to be fought and an unpopular measure defended; and it is observed, that whatever ground he has to take, he defends it with unflinching hardihood; and though
he maintains his position, yet, in consequence of the mode of war- fare he adopts, those who are forced to. yield to him hate him worse
than ever. Ile never conciliates an opponent, or renders an un- popular measure less so by his manner of discussing it. On the contrary, he gives people the impression that he is the author of and mainly responsible fur proceedings, with which he has no
more to do than the other members of the Cabinet. Thus it is, that whenever any violent, muddle-brained fellow out of doors has, or
thinks that he has, cause of complaint against the Ministry in gene- ral, he never thinks of shooting Lord GREY, or Lord Bao cell AM, or Lord A isrn OR P, but directs all his vengeance against the pugnacious
Mr. STA ' LEY, whom he believes to be at the bottom of all the mischief done by the Ministry, since, whenever any of their mis- doines come to light, he always defends them with such parental zeal and peculiar fervour. To argue with such a foul—to prove that his mode of reasoning is absurd, and that the actions they lead hint to are wicked in the extreme—would of course be labour Lst.
The two circumst epees which gave rise to these remarks ought not to be disregarded by Mr. STANLEY. They remind him that he has contrived to arouse a bitter feeling against him in the country, from which his colleagues have nothing to fear. As a rising young statesman, he cannot be insensible to the disadvantage of early unpopularity ; and we wish he may in future assume a more con- ciliatory bearing.
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