From The Economist. MR. BRIGHT'S RETIREMENT. THE retirement of Mr. Bright from the Cabinet, owing to failing health, will give all the older readers of the Economist a peculiar feeling of sadness. A new generation is attaining life and vigour to whom the "Anti-Corn Law League" is a matter of history. If yon chance to speak of it as "the League," as we always used to speak of it, they ask "what League?" But the great majority of active men still remember the details of that great agitation, the triumphs of Drury Lane and Covent Garden" meetings, and how Mr. Bright's voice rung full and penetrating, second in power only to one, if second to any, over those great open stages. That Mr. Bright has to abandon active administration will come home to many as an unwelcome hint that it is time for them to give up themselves. credit for that which he has to leave out in order to speak effectually. They fancy that there is nothing in him but the sort of things which he says, especially if he is continually saying them; but an orator of finer genius feels much which he never says, much which under the inevitable conditions of his art he could not say. It is the pursuing penalty of every great orator that he is, in a sense, misknown everywhere, for he is compelled to diffuse among mankind a picture of himself drawn in a deceiving light, with some traits aggravated, with other traits diminished like him of course in many respects, yet to those who have real knowledge, in nearly as many utterly unreal and unlike. Mr. Bright has had his full share of such misconceptions. In the agricultural districts he is even yet looked upon as an excessively pacific person, who cared little for the honour of England, and who would sacrifice that or anything else for peace at any price; but as Lord Granville said"There are not many persons who have more of the popular John Bull' character" than Mr. Bright, and among the many ingredients of that character, a certain pugnacity is not the one for which he is the least remarkable. If, as has been said, "it is a proud thing to have millions of opponents and no enemy," Mr. Bright has a full right to be proud. Persons at a distance who disapprove of his principles, and who only think of him as an incarnation of them, undoubtedly hate him with a strong political hatred; but no one brought close to him does so. There is an evident sincerity and bluff bona fides about him, which goes Again Mr. Bright is often imagined to straight to the hearts of Englishmen. We be a wild incendiary, who would be glad have been often amused to see how much, to pull down every present institution, in the depths of Troy districts where "John Bright" was bitterly execrated, the regular residents were puzzled because their own M. P.'s and the most conservative people who went to London always mentioned him with geniality and toleration, and if young, would say, in the modern dialect-"Well, after all, he is a great institution." and who would not much care to inquire with what substitutes these institutions were to be replaced. But in the present Cabinet, unless consistent rumour speaks false, his voice has more usually been a Conservative voice than the contrary. And in fact, though Mr. Bright has wanted much to change many things, and still may want to change them, he is much too characteristic an Englishman to like change for change's sake, or not to have a full share of the Conservative instiuct which if possible clings to the "tried," and will not without plain and clear reason consent to migrate to the unknown and inexperienced. Perhaps great orators, more than any other men, are liable to be utterly misconceived. Their power- -more penetrative at the moment than any literaturebrings home to thousands and thousands some notion, but it can never be a true notion. An orator works under severe conditions. He can only express the sort If Mr. Bright has been somewhat misof thoughts an audience will hear, and the conceived in his own time, he will probably sort of feelings they will apprehend; and have the compensation of being we may every orator of finer nature has much risk a prophecy of all our own consentiment which is too subtle for the mul- temporary politicians the best known to titude, and many conclusions which will posterity. His speeches are very amusing not suit public meetings. There are many reading, and, as a rule, those are best things, too, which can only be said in a known to posterity who can amuse posstill, small voice, and not in the stentorian terity. Nothing can in general be more tones which alone public meetings can fleeting than the fame of an orator. A take in. No audience, still less any dis- great Budget speech is heard with the tant hearer of a speech, gives an orator most eager attention, and criticised at the time with vehement interest. But ficient end. But after Lord Palmerston who cares for it a few years afterwards? left the Foreign Office, we cannot be said Who but a very few economical inquirers to have really had a foreign policy at has the slightest remembrance of the all. Our Foreign Ministers have exerted financial speeches of Pitt or Peel? But themselves with more or less success, or there is a certain mixture of racy fun and sentiment in Bright's speeches which make them capital reading even now reading which you can read when you are tired, but which yet has something in it; and this is the sort of literature which travels farthest and lives longest. We are not now reviewing Mr. Bright's career. It is not yet closed. Though we trust he will never again attempt administrative labours, we hope that his powerful tones may often be heard again in the great assemblages of his countrymen. If we had to sketch his life, there would be something to blame as well as much to praise. But we need not go into that now. We have only to express our regret at his retirement, and to wonder at the strange dispensations of Providence, which mixed a fine, and to some extent incapacitating, thread of nervous delicacy in a mind so healthy, so vigorous, and on most points so emphatically robust. From The Spectator. POPULAR ideas have done much for England; but for one of our departments of State they have produced nothing but disorganization of the ancient traditions, which might be good, without replacing those ancient traditions by any constructive principle consistent with the new motives of our government. English foreign policy has for a long time been almost a name without a meaning. It has been a curious mixture of old precedents and new fears, of old customs and new cautions. Under Lord Palmerston,-i.e., when Lord Palmerston was last at the Foreign Office, -it was still in its old stage, that is, it was directed by the will of one strong and clear, though rather narrow mind, and was pretty much what that mind made it; though Lord Palmerston understood pretty clearly what all the shrewder guides of English foreign policy have understood from the earliest Tudor period down to the present day, that the English resources for enforcing any particular foreign policy are very limited, and must be frugally used, though the insulation of England is so great a strength to her, that she can afford on great occasions to venture much for a suf more or less failure, for a few popular objects, with most success for the Italian revolution, with most failure for the cause of Denmark and the Polish revolution, but except on points on which the public mind happened to take a keen interest, we cannot be said to have had a foreign policy at all. We have just gone on and let things drift. We have not attempted to define our ends or to husband our resources for the attainment of tho e ends; till now at last we find ourselves, as Earl Russell intimated in his letter to last Wednesday's Times, the objects of formidable envy, of popular antipathies, of convergent dislikes, without a single active ally, and at last threatened with a coalition of powerful foes. And this is the result of years of no-policy. We broke with France after her annexation of Savoy, proclaimed aloud that henceforth we must rather look to Germany for an ally, rejected the Emperor's proposal for a Congress; and then were surprised that, when Germany, who did not set much store by the offer of English friendship, attacked Denmark, and we invited the assistance of France in protecting her, we were ourselves repulsed, much as France had been repulsed before. Thus it happened that England became more and more isolated at the very time when America, grown into a great war power, took offence at our conduct during the war, and we found ourselves with an enemy on the other side of the Atlantic rather more formidable than any of our estranged friends on this. Still no Foreign Minister took the alarm. Actual war, except perhaps with America, never seemed imminent. It was unpleasant to us to sacrifice anything for a better understanding with any power. To meet each difficulty in detail was all the care of our Foreign Secretaries. Nay, the most cold and cautious of our Foreign Ministers, the very one who, of all others, most nearly represented the views of the Manchester School,- Lord Stanley,- saddled us with a new and onerous obligation in 1867, cynically remarking that our conscience need not be very much troubled if we did not observe it. But though he gave us a new and onerous obligation, he gave us no new element of strength. Minister after Minister succeeded to the Foreign Office, and no one seemed to think of anything but meeting the im nediate difficulties of the moment with hand-to-mouth expedients. No one looked to the future and asked himself what objects in her foreign policy England might still legitimately aim at, and what might or might not be done with the view of securing foreign help for these objects. No one thought of making a particular sacrifice to avoid a dangerous isolation and secure a warm co-operation for common ends. 66 like America, that it is contrary to her State policy to enter into them at all. The United States do not say this because their Government is popular, but because their distance from Europe is great, and they think they have enough to do on their own vast continent. There is no idea really less popular than "every nation for itself." The great popular heroes of EuThe great war came, and England was rope have already pronounced for the more isolated than ever. She is bound in "solidarity" of republics, and their actions honour to defend the independence of Bel- have followed their words. No political gium, and both the great Powers against enthusiasm ever yet preached that it ought which her aid would be most likely to be to be hermetically sealed up in its own invoked, look upon her with sore and an- national receiver. Had not Mr. Bright gry hearts. She is bound by treaty to de- grown up into a world of restricted ecofend the neutrality of Luxemburg, and one nomic ideas, no such delusion could ever of those great Powers has already threat- have seized upon him as that the true popened Luxemburg without a word to Eng- ular policy of England or any other counland on the matter. She is bound to try could take as its motto, Perish Sadefend the independence of Turkey, and voy, rather than England should be Russia has announced publicly that the embroiled!" A new recast of our foreign treaty by which Russia and England have policy would not only receive popular apbound themselves weighs not a feather in proval, but receive popular support, if we the balance against Russian interests. So only poured the new wine into the new low has English pride fallen, that after bottles, and relied on the new constituenthat announcement England has quietly cies to support as steadily as ever, and as consented, at the invitation of armed Ger- prudently as ever, but still strenously, many, to discuss with Russia the contract and where it was necessary boldly and at which Russia has declared her fixed inten- some risk, the cause of political freedom tion to break. German diplomatists re- abroad. It would be useless now, indeed, mark to each other, with a smile and a to stick to the old idea of permanently shrug, that when you agree to argue the backing Turkey against Russia. case with one who has torn up a contract, you have virtually condoned that violent act. In a word, English foreign influence is at its lowest ebb. Our guarantee is held as cheap as a bankrupt's endorsement. Whether our own statesmen hold it to be much more valuable is not certain. The country has no clear view either as to our foreign obligations or the mode of meeting them. Our statesmen have no longer any clear view which is not urgently backed by popular opinion. And all this confusion and paralysis comes of the condition of transition from the epoch of individual foreign policy and individual traditions, to the new era when our statesmen are aware that there are many of the old traditions for which public opinion will no longer tolerate that England shall incur serious risks and sacrifices, but are not yet distinctly aware for what sort of objects they may still legitimately demand national support, and even when it is necessary, national sacrifices. For we do not for an instant believe that Mr. Bright was right in supposing that England, under a true popular Government, would stand aside from all European discussions and conflicts, and plead, Our statesmen should have seen long ago that the first place, we should have withdrawn | traditional policy, and not gained any hold gradually but firmly from our extensive of a new popular policy. The new Forengagements to Turkey, and done our eign Office should be as frugal and pertinabest to check Russia rather by strengthen- cious for the new popular ends as the old ing Austria on the Danube, than Turkey Foreign Office was for the old dynastic at Constantinople. In the next place, we ends. We want the new ideas with the should never have fallen into the blunder old steadiness and willingness to sacrifice of alienating the United States by the much in their service. We want Ministers hostile attitude so many of our statesmen who will concede much to gain more, only assumed during the civil war, or if that the much conceded must not be a concession had been unavoidable, and neutrals have of popular liberty, and the more gained always a hard time of it, we should have must be a gain of popular liberty. This Alfelt so strongly that a chronic quarrel with abama question would have been settled by the United States is a sheer loss of power a truly popular Minister long ago, — perto the cause of popular government in haps at the cost of some little humiliation Europe, that we should have strained a to our national pride, though not half as point to satisfy the United States rather much as France made when she gave up than cripple our power in Europe. To pay the purchase of Luxemburg, or Germany for the depredations of the Alabama might when she consented to stop her victorious have been a bitter pill to a foreign Secre- advance and sign the Treaty of Prague. tary of purely aristocratic views; but it But this is just what the people of England would have been no mortification at all to have to learn -that a popular foreign a Foreign Secretary who felt keenly how policy, to be continuous and successful, ingreat a blow at popular government the volves sacrifices of pride; and that sacriSouthern rebellion really was, and how fices of pride to avert a real waste of force great a danger to the cause of freedom in by the supporters of true national liberty Europe it is to allow this sore feeling with and self-government, are wise and patriAmerica to run on into chronic animosity otic. Our present system is not a foreign and bitterness. A Tudor king, or an policy. It is a foreign impolicy, or noeighteenth-century Foreign Minister, or policy. The sooner the need of new and even Mr. Canning or Lord Palmerston, would have thought nothing of making such a sacrifice of national dignity for the sake of "a strong diplomatic combination." Nor ought the Foreign Minister of a popular Government, for the sake of a real gain to the popular cause. We have been falling lately between the two stools. We have lost the hold of our continuous ideas of foreign policy, in harmony with the new popular influences at work for the regeneration of both Ireland and England, is discerned by our statesmen, the sooner we shall emerge from our present helpless confusion of mind, and our purposeless mesh of widely divergent, and even discordant, international obligations. corpuscular theory of light, and until he could be assured that the new contrivance did not contradict that theory, he would not see anything in it. Under the circumstances, the wonder is that the stereoscope ever got fairly into France. A RECENT number of the American Journal | tried, but Biot was an earnest advocate of the of Chemistry contained the following story of the first introduction of the stereoscope to the savants of France. The Abbé Moigno took the instrument to Arago, and tried to interest him in it; but Arago unluckily had a defect of vision which made him see double, so that on looking into the stereoscope he saw only a medley of four pictures. The Abbé then went to Savart, but he was quite incapable of appreciating the thing, for he had but one eye. Becquerel was next visited, but he was nearly blind, and consequently cared little for the new optical toy. The Abbé, not discouraged, called next upon Puillet, of the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers. He was a good deal interested in the description of the apparatus, but unfortunately he squinted, and therefore could see nothing in it but a blurred mixture of images. Lastly, Biot was A NEW mansion erected for the Maharajah Dhuleep Singh, at Elveden, near Thetford, Norfolk, is nearly completed, It is in the Indian style of architecture, and the decorations of the interior, the ceilings, &c., are very elaborate and costly. The entrance, also Oriental in its character, is magnificent. NUMBERS OF THE LIVING AGE WANTED. The publishers are in want of Nos. 1179 and 1180 (dated respectively Jan. 5th and Jan. 12th, 1867) of THE LIVING AGE. To subscribers, or others, who will do us the favor to send us either or both of those numbers, we will return an equivalent, either in our publications or in cash, until our wants are supplied. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LITTELL & GAY, BOSTON. FOR EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually for warded for a year, free of postage. But we do not prepay postage on less than a year, nor where we have to pay commission for forwarding the money. Price of the First Series, in Cloth, 36 volumes, 90 dollars. Second 20 50 Any Volume Bound, 3 dollars; Unbound, 2 dollars. The sets, or volumes, will be sent at the expense of the publishers. PREMIUMS FOR CLUBS. For 5 new subscribers ($40.), a sixth copy; or a set of HORNE'S INTRODUCTION TO THE BIBLE. unabridged, in 4 large volumes, cloth, price $10; or any 5 of the back volumes of the LIVING AGE, in numbers, price $10. |