conscientiousness, ability, or position and prestige ;—and it is not unreasonable to feel some doubt as to the wisdom and some misgiving as to the triumph of a course which such men desert and condemn. It becomes important, therefore, to appreciate as correctly as we can the character, the proceedings, and the motives of these politicians, in order that we may be in a position to estimate the weight to be attached to their opinions and the inference to be drawn from their manœuvres. It will be no effort to us to do this without malice or hostility: we shall endeavour to do it without favour also.

We incline to place Lord Grey in the very front rank of public men for honesty and talent. His merits are courage, originality, and inflexible uprightness. His faults are the excesses, the perversions, the distorted simulacra of his merits, viz., combativeness, or rather oppositiousness-a proneness to run into crotchets, and a stubborn adherence to them-and a somewhat harsh rigidity of character, or at least of action,for personally, we believe, he is a most amiable man. England has few statesmen of such pure and single-minded patriotism -few who study their duty so conscientiously, or pursue it so unswervingly-few who so easily or resolutely push aside all irrelevant or sinister influences. When in office, he was distinguished for the irreproachable character of his appointments. Acting not only under a deep feeling of responsibility, but from a high and almost religious sense of public duty, he carefully sought for the fittest men to fill every vacant post within his department; when he had found them, or thought he had found them, he appointed them, though often entire strangers, without any solicitation, and in defiance of any opposition; when he discovered them, or fancied them, to be incompetent or unsuitable, he superseded them without scruple or hesitation; sometimes, also, perhaps, without gentleness or due consideration. In the discharge of his administrative functions, he cared little whom he offended-too little whom he hurt. These characteristics, of course, made him unpopular with those who came into collision with him, and with many of those whom he governed; and this unpopularity was increased by the dogmatic stiffness with which he held his own opinions, and by something of the schoolmaster and lecturer in the manner in which he enforced them upon colonies and deputations. At the same time, he was always open to discussion, and sometimes to conviction; and though not easily shaken in his preconceived notions, nor quick in recognizing the weight of antagonistic representations, nor quite as pervious to logic as the logician might have wished; yet, when once persuaded of his error, no false pride ever withheld him from rescinding his decision.

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While at the head of the Colonial Office he had to forego or to modify many of the views which he had cherished when in opposition; and though sometimes wrong in the course which he pursued, and as willing as any one to admit this now, he never persisted in a discovered blunder. Those who watched his conduct there, and were able to compare it with that of preceding and subsequent ministers, place him, for conscientiousness and ability, quite at the head of all who have held the seals of that department; and though much that he did was severely criticized and blamed at the time, yet each succeeding year has raised his character as an administrator, by bringing to light, and giving time for the development of, the secondary and remoter effects of his administration. His volumes on Colonial policy, explaining what he had done and why he had done it and what consequences had flowed from it, did much to raise his reputation, and was a real addition to our scanty library of practical statesmanship.

From the beginning of his career, Lord Grey has been famous for his individuality. He has always thought for himself, and has never taken anything for granted. To every fresh subject that has come up, he has applied his mind as a conscientious and inquiring student-a mind vigorous and scrutinizing, if at times both prejudiced and paradoxical. On nearly every subject, therefore, he has thrown light; and, however entirely we may differ from him, however preposterous and eccentric may be the views he advocates, it is impossible to read or hear his speeches without gaining much sound information and many useful suggestions. But, en revanche, he is prone to approach each question with a prepossession against the popular opinion of the day; what is current and received becomes to him, ipso facto, doubtful and suspicious; that the hounds are in full cry affords to his mind a primâ facie probability that they are on the wrong scent. The consequence is, that he is often mischievous, and constantly provoking; no man adopts more crotchets, or more often takes up an isolated and ineffective position; few men work less smoothly or yieldingly with colleagues; few horses are more tedious or restless in a team. It is this disposition to look at matters from a different point of view to any one else, and to follow closely and exclusively his own line of thought, that more than anything else has led Lord Grey to take up his present deplorable and untenable position on the question of the war. Not being in the ministry, he was able to consider it unfettered by any antecedents; finding a prevalent and overwhelming opinion against Russia, his ingenious antagonism of spirit prompted him to discover excuses for her conduct, and to speak depreciatingly

of the dangers to be feared from her ambition; discerning much that was embarrassing and menacing in the complicated politics of the Eastern question, he set himself to expose and magnify these difficulties, without reflecting that difficulty furnishes no plea for shirking a clear duty or abandoning a righteous and sagacious policy. In fact, looking at the question as a critic, he looked only at one side, and found there, as he well might, dangers and perplexities that needed not exaggeration to persuade or alarm us into inaction, had inaction been possible or decent. In two points does Lord Grey, in his conduct during the past session, seem to us to have derogated from the course of a true and wise statesman,-first, in treating the question in an oppositious temper and seeing it only from a partial point of view; and secondly, in not perceiving that, as he stood nearly alone among his countrymen and his peers in his opposition to the war, his representations would not move them, but could only encourage the enemy,and therefore, ought, in common patriotism, to have been withheld. His speech, previous to the declaration of war last year, was, we think, deficient in wide and far-seeing statesmanship; but this is a point on which judgments may well differ. His speech on the Vienna Conferences, however, we cannot but regard as culpable and reckless, and bearing a painful analogy to the language and proceedings of the more wilful and factious Whigs of the previous generation, who, in their systematic opposition to the party in power, did not scruple to become the apologists and even eulogists of Napoleon, and the bitter assailants of their own generals and soldiers. On the whole, Lord Grey's course in the present conjuncture so obviously springs from those peculiarities of his character which we have endeavoured to delineate, that it does not create the slightest misgiving as to the soundness of our opposing opinions, though we heartily regret that he has, by that course, rendered it impossible for the country to avail itself of his stainless integrity and undisputed ability. Indeed he is just the man whom we would always rather see in office than in opposition. The former position ballasts him with all the weighty responsibilities of practical action; while the latter leaves him at the mercy of all those erratic and perverse idiosyncrasies which so sadly impair his usefulness, and obscure his fame.

Of Mr. Bright and Mr. Cobden, notwithstanding their vexatious and melancholy wanderings, it is impossible not to speak with respect. As efficient debaters, they have only one superior, and besides him scarcely any equal, in the House of Commons. They have both rendered signal services to their country, and services of a kind and magnitude which it will:

not be easy either for them to cancel or for the country to forget; and they are incomparably the best specimens of middleclass talent, sentiment, and character of mind that have been contributed to the aggregate of legislative wisdom. But within the last few years their relative position in public and Parliamentary estimation has been almost reversed. When they began that skilful and resolute course of agitation on the Corn-Law question, to which both owe their rise, Mr. Cobden was far ahead of his collaborateur; he was the keen logician, the subtle persuader, the man of convincing and arousing eloquence; Mr. Bright was little more than a stirring declaimer, eminently endowed with the vigour and fluency of language which is so effective on the hustings, but possessing few of the higher characteristics of the orator. Thus it continued till the great victory of 1846 was achieved.

At that moment Mr. Cobden stood higher than almost any public man. It was the turning point of his career: sound discretion, perfect singleness and unselfishness of purpose, that wisdom, in short, of which modesty and respect for others is a necessary ingredient, might have gradually led him to the pinnacle of power and fame. But he made a false step, and pride or temper forbade him to retrace it. Good taste, good sense, and good feeling seemed suddenly to desert him; and O'Connell's career, which ought to have been his warning, seemed, on the contrary, to be taken as his example. From that day he has lost ground, not only in position, but-we grieve to say it-in nearly all those qualities by which high position is merited and is won. Few men have been more deteriorated by a life of self-assertion and antagonism. We remember him well in earlier days, earnest, serious, and devoted; his whole soul engrossed by the sacred cause in which he was engaged; as pure as a child from any sinister motives or unworthy aims; vehement often from the intensity of his convictions, but always anxious for the truth; fair in argument, patient in exposition, and gentle with his interlocutors; and steering clear of the shoals and perils of the agitation of which he had the main direction, with wonderful steadiness and discretion. We find him now, after a lapse of years which should have enlarged and matured so fine a nature, with his faculties sharpened and stimulated indeed, but altogether of a rougher and coarser order: captious in argument, uncandid in discussion, unable to see or unwilling to admit the strong and sound points of an opponent's case, seeking rather to trip up an adversary than to convince a hearer or elucidate a truth. Where formerly he was only eager and earnest, he is now overbearing and ungentle, and he seems

to us to have exchanged the searching logic of the reasoner for the mere dialectic keenness of the unscrupulous and practised fencer. The House of Commons has proved a bad school for a temperament such as his; he has become careless in his statements, rash in his assertions, and reckless in his assaults. The truth is that Mr. Cobden's is a very sensitive and excitable organization. He needs sunshine; he needs the sympathy of others; he needs especially the approval of his own conscience. Opposition irritates him; the consciousness of having blundered or failed perturbs at once his temper and his judg ment. He is like a high-bred colt in a bog; his excitable temperament makes him flounder on deeper and deeper into the mire, when a more phlegmatic animal would stand still or turn round and recover himself. Thus, as long as Mr. Cobden had a cause which, though unpopular with men in power, he felt was sacred and invulnerable, as long as the sympathies of his own class and his own friends were with him, as long as he was gaining ground and was obviously on the winning side, though victory might be distant and the struggle might be desperate, so long he was serene in the consciousness of power and right, and could afford to be moderate, patient, and conciliatory. But no sooner had he blundered into a line in which the applause and suffrages of his former supporters deserted him, no sooner had he to swim against the stream, no sooner did the inability to carry with him the better class of his admirers throw him upon the sympathy of lower minds, than his temper became soured, his views more extravagant and unsound, and his language more unwarrantably violent and contemptuous;-and in proportion as public approbation is withdrawn from him does he seem inclined to set public opinion at defiance. Still so many of his native gifts yet remain to the fallen angel, that we cannot abandon the hope that he may still strike back into the right path. Occasionally, even now, flashes break forth which show what he might do and be, if he again became the interpreter of the earnest feeling of the nation, and the prophet to bear that feeling in words of power to the ears of the unworthy great. His speech on the occasion of Lord John's strange confession of an uncommitted crime and a non-existent cabinet dissension,-in which he denounced the discrepancy of the language held in the lobby and in the House, and the shock to public confidence which such insincerity had given,-might have indicated to him the direction in which his recovery of influence was to be sought.

While Mr. Cobden has been falling, Mr. Bright has been rising as rapidly and as surely, till he has now become indisputably one of the potentates of Parliament. He is a man