inscribed according to its pleasure – if only some Bill could be passed and made law. The offer had no favourable effect whatever. The House was in no humour for compromise: it had been violently angered by the Gagging Bill, and positively refused to have it in any form or at any price. It was thrown out. Mr Gladstone, according to custom, canted and whined about a still small voice; but he had to tender his resignation immediately, and it was only through the disinclination of the Opposition to take office that the Administration did not then come to an end. So the storm passed; without a vindictive effort it probably would not have passed away: yet why the country was so eager at that moment for sacrifice, no one to this day has been quite able to divine.
To see the British lion in these murderous humours, when he will quarrel on the ninth part of a hair, and rage till he has made havoc of something, and then again to see him as he is now, torpid, callous, indifferent to stabs or kicks, looking on unruffled, while his patrimony is being dissipated, his honour sullied, and his rights made away with, makes one suppose that he must be a hibernating animal, coming to his dangerous vigour periodically and for short periods, when it is well to beware of him, but passing most of his days in a dull condition, moved by no loss, alarmed by no danger, roused by no injury. His present lethargy, though exceptional, is not without parallel. Any one who may take the trouble to glance over the history of England, during the period when we were waging the war which was to end in the loss of our American colonies, may perceive something very like the insensibility and apathy which astonish observers to-day. Mismanagement could not have been greater than that which Lord North's Cabinet displayed. They employed incompetent generals, fomented the rage of the combatants, and yet starved the war. They kept back information, they concealed defeats and vaunted them as victories, they scandalously wasted the national resources: they were detected in doing these things, they were universally blamed, and yet the suffering country could not summon resolution to push these worthless rulers from their stools.
It was true that in those days incapable Ministers were upheld by influences which do not exist at present. The Court was very powerful, they could win votes through an immense patronage, and by making themselves friends of the Lords they could largely control the Commons.[1] Yet with all these things in their favour, they could not have excused their glaring misdoings, or retained the power of persisting in them, if the country had with any earnestness denounced their iniquities. Nothing vigorous was done. The people lay quite supine, knowing that great calamities were impend-
- ↑ The press has been greatly exercised of late by Members of Parliament who have not had the courage of their opinions – who have voted in opposition to their declared sentiments and convictions. These weak brethren have been spoken of as a modern species, the product of the caucuses. Any one who may choose to examine the Parliamentary proceedings in the days of Lord North's premiership (they may be found in brief in Walpole's 'Last Journals') will soon satisfy himself that the lâcheté at which we are so scandalised to-day is by no means without precedent. Political human nature is, one fears, always pretty much the same: there will be some high-minded men, but a crowd of mercenary satellites.
