light to wrap themselves and their hearers in the past, as if the world were going to stand still henceforth and devote itself to the study of their history-the noblest study of mankind, according to the new version. It would be a waste of words, and rather a cruelty, to show to the complacent talkers the picture of themselves as we see them; at the same time, every section of the community ought to be warned against accepting these senile hallucinations as sober history. To their audience, if not to them, somebody ought to exhibit them in their real colours, as Falstaff portrayed Shallow, and we care not if we become the limners.

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We do remember these crowing Ministers when, five years ago, they were going up and down the country begging for office, and telling the people of the great things they would do for them. Benefits innumerable, and dirt cheap, may be said to have been the burden of their song. Flattering promises were, however, no novelty to the British public, and simply to be profuse of promises would not take candidates for office very far with the electors. It was seen to be necessary that the mises should be uncommonly plausible, and that the people should be persuaded of both the will and the ability of the aspirants to make good their professions. And this was done cleverly, if not creditably. The impression was industriously and widely given, that the promises now submitted were entirely unlike anything of the kind that had been offered before; they were the sacred engagements of men who were far above worldly considerations, noble, unselfish, devoted. The men also represented all the ability of the country, but this was a secondary consideration, for what was principally wanted was integrity. Government was a simple art

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enough, if only honest men could be got to exercise it. If we had had disappointments in that line, it was because we had put the affairs of the commonwealth into the hands of rogues and fools. now, if we only chose to employ a batch of functionaries such as were never before within the reach of any country, wise as serpents and harmless as doves, we should soon see on what easy terms we might be rich, powerful, respected, peaceful, and happy. The device was marvellously successful; our people bit hard, and was hooked.

It is necessary to look back carefully, and to take especial note of the pretension to exceptional virtue made by the Ministry in its early days, if we would understand its career, because, somehow or other, as time has worn on, the virtue has been clean forgotten, and become as a thing out of mind. Experience, truly, has shown our rulers to be not as other men are, but it is principally in the articles of courage, capacity, respect for the laws, and regard for the honour of the country, that they differ from other men. However, the virtue, whether a truth or a fiction, was undoubtedly a power. It was preached, chanted, and believed in; it was the sure anchor of temperate and patient men, and among enthusiasts it excited a positive furore: they believed that the millennium, or something very like it, was in the gift of the coming Cabinet. Any one who will take the trouble to look back to the autumn of 1868 may remember how intensely men were affected,-we dont mean weak or visionary men only, but some of the profoundest thinkers and calmest reasoners of the day. The late Mr J. S. Mill, for instance, seemed to lose his equilibrium altogether at thought of the glorious dispensation that was dawning.

As if old things were passing away, and all things becoming new, he cast aside regard for custom, good manners, and fair dealing, and began to interfere with elections, and dictate to constituencies, as if the whole land had been as demented as himself, and saw in him the appointed evangelist of the good things that were at hand. While he was so solicitous about the filling of other seats he lost his own. He was alive then, and there were many who scrupled not to say that he made a fool of himself; nobody will say that now, but it is at any rate certain that he did not, by his conduct at that period, add to his great reputation. We have selected Mr Mill as an eminent example, but of course there were thousands of smaller minds misled when a mind like his could lose its balance. This assumption of superior virtue certainly did work wonders among the people. It served its purpose admirably at the elections; but it contained within it, as it were, the seeds of disgrace, probably of ruin, to the men who used it. The nation has not forgotten, and will not forget, that it believed and accepted the promises made in 1868 on the ground that they were promises made by men of unswerving virtue promises therefore which were sure to be fulfilled. Now for a long time the omen has been observable that the virtue has been eliminated altogether by the people from the attributes of the Ministry in other words, the security which made the promises pass current has been found to be a delusion. Ministers appear not to understand this, for after painting up their achievements, and putting them in all sorts of lights and combinations, to their own delight and ecstasy, as if they were beads in a kaleidoscope, they turn round and demand of the people why they are

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so ungrateful as not to admire and laud them too. They do not perceive how they overdid their work when the only object was to get votes. They cannot discern that, the virtue being the foundation of the favour which they found, when that was seen to be moonshine, trust in them must have failed, even if their acts had not been so worthless as they have. is anything but pleasant to men to be reminded how they have been imposed upon; and a little meditation on this truth may, to some extent, explain why no hurrah greets the reference to 1868. The virtue, which was an aid at the beginning, has been a hindrance and an incubus ever since. How many times Ministers must have wished that they had taken the field at first as only moderately honest people!

Having thus begged attention to the virtue, which we take to have been the keystone of the Radical fabric, let us briefly note some of the benefits which we were taught to expect. At the head of the list was a contented and happy Ireland

desired by England more than much fine gold, perhaps the dearest wish of her heart. Then we were to have great diminution of the public expenditure-a rather favourite idea of England, too, provided it means anything more than starving her services, and making her simply go without what is necessary to her safety and dignity; and what it meant in this case was made abundantly clear to us.

We were to be better served than ever, although at far less cost. Efficiency and economy were to go hand in hand. Moreover, we were to have the blessing of peace. Wars, we were given to understand, were simply the blunders of arrogant, blustering, unscrupulous statesmen. Only let the reins get into virtuous hands, and it would soon be seen how, by perse

vering in an inoffensive, moderate, unpretending course, regarding our neighbours' rights as well as our own, we should not only avoid contention, but gain from the love of foreign nations ten times more than we could have extorted from their fears. Besides these grand results were to come smaller blessings, their necessary concomitants, as a reformed army and navy, perfected domestic legislation, and so on; but the three promises we first mentioned -viz., Reconciled Ireland, Economy with Efficiency, and Honourable Peace, may be called the cardinal points of the covenant. Whatever the means were to be, these were to be the ends; and a loud and lengthy chorus we heard about these ends, so that we are not likely to forget them. But it happens now that when the talented and virtuous rulers are raking up their mighty deeds and challenging our applause, they quite forget to say anything about the ends, while they are stunningly eloquent about the means. We have passed such and such measures; we have enacted so many laws;-as if to grind off statutes by machinery, as it were, were meritorious; as if legislation were to be measured by its quantity, not its quality. But there is a silence, not difficult to understand, about the effects of those statutes those grand results, so often predicted. No Minister dares to say, We have regained the heart of Ireland, or We have diminished the expenditure of the country, or We have maintained an honourable peace. What marvel, then, if, when they pause in their windy orations for the people's cheers, they are answered at the best with laughter, but more frequently with expressions of indignation!

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But these Ministers, so thirsty for applause, have not simply failed to bring about the blessings which

they promised: they have literally produced their opposites. They have made Ireland more turbulent, more disaffected, than ever she was; they have increased, instead of diminished, the public expenditure; while they kept peace, they did so at the expense of honour: but now they no longer keep peace at all, but have launched us in an ignominious war. A more complete, a more palpable failure, it is impossible to conceive!

We have so frequently had to comment upon the particular mistakes, and the character of them, that we need enter into no detail now, more especially as the whole series was lately taken to pieces and exposed by a master's hand at Glasgow. Let the reader but reflect on the state of anxiety in which every man now lives who may have an interest in the Church, or in Church property, or in the Army or Navy, or any of the public services, or whom any national or other endowment may concern, and he will comprehend why no bonnet is thrown up, and the silence is broken only by groans when Ministers demand applause.

It was said several

months ago by a weekly contemporary (The Spectator'), which made a philosophical examination of the cause of the head of the Government being hated, that a good deal of the hatred (if hatred be the right term) is attributable to fear; but we would qualify this by adding that it is fear of a particular kind, such fear as people living near a powdermagazine might feel if they saw a boy with a lighted torch in his hand rushing about among the barrels. It is a kind of fear which provokes anxiety rather than hatred; but whatever be its nature, a perusal of that exposition, written by a friendly hand, might have convinced the unhappy setters of clap

traps that they had no applause to expect.

While we say this, we are conscious how refreshing a little popular commendation would have been in this dreary autumn, when the Cabinet, notwithstanding the glory of its retrospective visions, would seem to have been in a very bad way indeed. The outward signs can be accounted for only by imagining an interior so diseased that dissolution was imminent. The remedies, sometimes feeble and inexplicable to outsiders, at others desperate, have been announced with such frequency and continuance that one must suppose the crisis not to have ended yet, and that the patient's state is anything but hopeful. Most people would have thought the shuffling of the cards which took place just after Parliament rose was enough to change the luck, if shuffling could do it. A very random shuffle it seemed to be; but we know that in shuffling cards generally we do not seek to pack them according to any order of our own, but leave fortune to arrange them. In the curious resetting of all the gems, that talisman of diplomacy, Ripon of Washington, had no place found for him; but the others all showed again with altered framings. This "changing rounds," as they call it at artillery drill, did not produce a Cabinet of sufficient vigour to be able to face the trials of government. Some startling move was necessary; and this was discovered in the re-installation of Mr Bright in a Cabinet office, Mr Childers making way for him.

After a long and a very serious illness, Mr Bright once more appeared at Birmingham as a Minister. In his written address to his constituents, he explained that it had been necessary to assign to him an office whose duties were extremely light; and, in a subsequent com

munication, he was said to have expressed a doubt whether the state of his nervous system would admit of his making a public address, or whether his physician would sanction such a proceeding. Now from this it is manifest that there was some extreme pressure on the Cabinet generally, and on Mr Bright. Invalids with their infirmities still distressing them do not generally for pleasure, or out of wanton folly, seek employments which are sure to tax their strength much, and may tax it to a perilous extent. ordinary circumstances, or even under a moderate pressure of circumstances, Mr Bright, we may feel sure, would not have appeared upon a platform till his health was reestablished. There was, without doubt, some dignus vindice nodus,

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some internal disorder of the Cabinet most likely-which obliged Mr Bright to leave his couch, throw off his gown and slippers, and, regardless of consequences, to offer himself, still unhappily in broken health, to the rubs, bruises, and smarts of official life. Some of our contemporaries were not slow in discovering what they thought a sufficient reason for his reappearance. A new dispensation, so they said, was to be preached. None so fitly as Mr Bright could be its prophet. Gladstone and Dissenters reconciled was its glad tidings. But we take leave to doubt whether the proclamation of atonement at all required Mr Bright to come prematurely off the sick-list. The subsequent moves were not in harmony with this idea. Internal derangement of the most threatening character can alone account for the inconvenience and risk to which the Right Honourable Chancellor of the Duchy was subjected. It is true that, once on the platform as of old and facing the accustomed audience, he roused him

self like an old war-horse at the sound of the trumpet, and spoke with his accustomed fluency and force. But the fibre of ancient days was not there; the effort was exhausting; and the position, unfortunately, was somewhat less independent than of yore. Indeed it was clear from the apologies and repudiations which he made, that Mr Bright found himself embarrassed in announcing the step which he had just taken and naturally so. If in old days a used-up Tory had emerged from his sick-room to fill a sinecure place and draw a round salary, can we doubt whose tongue would have been loudest in railing at himloudest in denouncing the whole Government and system of Government of the country, and in charging everybody with corruption who did not rise to put down the damning scandal? Any one who can answer this question will understand the pang which Mr Bright must have felt on presenting himself before an audience in whom he had always endeavoured to cultivate liberal and patriotic sentiments, as the acceptor of an office for the imperfect execution of the duties of which he had, by reason of his physical condition, to pray every one's indulgence. We say nothing of the iniquity of preferring an invalid to a post whose duties, the public expects, will be performed with promptness, regularity, and vigour. It is quite useless to make remarks on the gross abuses of patronage that we are compelled to witness : only the action of the people can deliver us from that. But, as we were saying, Mr Bright himself must have suffered severely at finding himself in such a position; and, unfortunately, it was not long before other punishment, besides his own sense of humiliation, overtook him. Writers in the public prints set on him directly, questioning the accu

racy of his statements, denying his accounts and conclusions, demanding to know the real meaning of his revisiting the glimpses of politics, and we know not what besides. Soothing treatment this for a man with weakened nerves and enfeebled body!

Independently of his bodily condition, there were strong reasons why Mr Bright should have kept himself aloof from ministerial responsibilities. Since he left the Cabinet, it had committed itself to sundry things which were in direct contravention of his well-known opinions and maxims. He told us himself that his late colleagues had passed the worst Liberal measure since 1832, meaning the Education Act; and we know, without his telling us, that they have raised the public expenditure to a figure which he said would deprive any Ministry of his confidence, and that they have gone to war. Now Mr Bright was entirely quit for all these things. as long as he remained a private member of Parliament; but he assumed responsibility for them all as soon as he again joined the Cabinet. He felt this himself; for he made about the Education Act excuses, which some troublesome people have since shown to be not strictly reconcilable with facts : he endeavoured, in a written statement, to shift the blame of the great expenditure on to the shoulders of the people; and, as the war was a stubborn fact which could not be gainsaid, he proposed to withdraw by-and-by altogether from the Gold Coast-which seemed like drawing on the future for a handsome douceur, on condition that the patriots of Birmingham winked hard at present inconsistency. Yes, Mr Bright certainly felt his position to be an awkward one, and therefore we are convinced that he did not willingly seek it. It was mat