Hence, though about the most acute, vigorous, and honest intellect among our public men, he is perhaps the least statesmanlike of them all; because width and mellowness of mind, as well as consistency and force, are needed to consti tute a statesman. and with perfect truth, that their political ability never attains, and seldom approaches, to the height of statesmanship, without pausing to inquire whether, under a parliamentary system of government, there is any scope or field for the development of statesmanship, The fact is undeniable: whether we properly so-called. In comparing the look to other countries or to other ministers and politicians of constitutiontimes, whether we compare France with al England with those of despotic England, ancient with modern days, the France, Austria, and Russia-as in comreign of Victoria with the reign of paring the ministers and politicians of Elizabeth, the race of statesmen seems the England of Queen Victoria with to have died out among us, and we those of the England of Queen Elizahave seldom been more painfully re- beth-we lose sight of the consideraminded of it than of late. "There were tion that the conditions, and therefore giants in those days," there are none the possibilities, of the several ages and now. Not only can we find no Pericles countries are altogether dissimilar. We in this age; not only do we see no one lament over the fancied dwarfing and like Ximenes or Alberoni, who governed degeneracy of our statesmen-the fact Spain so long, or like Richelieu or Sully, being, not perhaps that the dwarfing who ruled France for half a lifetime, and degeneracy alleged are not in a and through her ruled Europe, or like measure true, but that they are the nat Barnevelt or De Witt, who for years ural growth, the inevitable outcome of contrived to govern and make great that constitutional régime, of the reality even their turbulent republic; but we of that self-government, of that increase see no analogies to Cecil and Walsing- of the popular ingredient in our.comham, who held power through a whole plicated system, for which we have been reign, under a most capricious and un- constantly contending, and on which we worthy mistress. Our modern history especially felicitate and pride ourselves. can offer no rivals to such men as Napo- It is true, and may readily be conceded, león I. or Frederick the Great, scarcely that we no longer produce statesmen even to such men as Metternich or Nes-like those feared and venerated names selrode or Cavour or Napoleon III. The only ministers who could pretend to the name of statesmen in recent days in England, were Walpole, Pitt, and Canning, and the last, the feeblest of the three, died upwards of a generation since. Granted, however, the fact, two questions at once suggest themselves for consideration: why we have now no such statesmen as those of other countries and of former days; and how far their absence is to be deplored. Now, in reference to the first point, a little reflection will serve to show that the current ideas on the subject are of a nature to render us habitually, though unconsciously, unjust to the public men of England: not that we under-estimate their actual capacity and merits, but that, in mentally measuring them with the Richelieus, Cecils, De Witts, and Napoleons, we are trying them by a standard which it is simply impossible they should ever reach. We complain, we have enumerated a page or two since; but it is because we should not know what to do with them if we had them, because they would find no fitting place among us, because they would disturb our polity, and we should hamper their action and paralyze their genius. The position of a statesman in a free country is altogether different from that which he occupies in a despotic one; the conditions of his tenure and the character of his functions are not the same; the ability required from him is of a different order; the power which he wields is different, the means he must make use of for gaining his influence and obtaining his ends are different. Under a despot he has to govern the nation; he has sometimes to govern the despot: he may sometimes be the despot. He has to think and act for a whole people; he is therefore under an awful obligation to think and act soundly; and we all know how rapidly and enormous ly such responsibility ripens and strength- | for him or for his sovereign, to decide. ens an intellect which it does not para- what the policy of the state shall be lyze. He can do what he wishes; he is invested with real power; he may often retain that power for a whole generation or for half a lifetime. It is worth his while to lay deep and selfconsistent plans, for he may feel confident that he will be suffered to work them out. It is worth his while to trust to the future and to prepare for the future, for he is not necessarily the mere transient creature of an hour. It is worth his while to sow slow-growing seeds of good and grandeur, for it is not irrational to hope, certainly, that they will be allowed to ripen, and possibly that he may himself last long enough to reap the harvest. He has only to consider two things: first, whether his views of policy are feasible, beneficent, and wise; secondly, whether he can induce his sovereign to adopt them and to confide in him. In a free state, with parliamentary institutions, where the people, or a section and selection of the people, really guide and govern the political machine -as in England, Italy, America, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, and some other lands-the case is widely different. Here, a minister may have great influence, but he can scarcely flatter himself that he has any power. He can do much in diffusing correct information, in disseminating sound views, in upholding great principles and fertile maxims of wise policy-in appointing right men, in exercising a sound strategic instinct as to when to fight and when to yield, in resigning his post when needful rather than surrender too much or compromise too far-but he can do little more. It is seldom worth his while to be at the labor of elaborating any grand or consistent scheme of national action; for he may be quite certain that he will not be allowed to carry it out in its integrity, and he must be very doubtful whether he will remain long enough in office to carry it out at all. In fact it is not for him to say what shall or shall not be done, what principles shall prevail, what objects shall be perseveringly followed up. It is for the aggregate mind of the nation, for the popular voice, for the slowly maturing and often vacillating public opinion of the country, and not both at home and abroad. He can never direct or command. He can only persuade; and he has to persuade an assembly singularly complex in its structure, often varying in its composition, deplorably incapable of rising to the height of a great principle, and rootedly intolerant of philosophical and far-reaching views. He has to persuade, moreover, or to indoctrinate a people peculiarly fitful in its action, now waywardly torpid, now waywardly emotional, often instinctively sagacious, usually correct in feeling, but incurably illogical to the very core, and ignorantly suspicious of everything that bears the appearance of scientific consistency or system. On all occasions he has to feel the pulse of the country; and he must not only be sure that he interprets its beating aright, but that he can form a sagacious guess as to what its beatings will be a few months ahead. He can only be certain of two conclusions: first, that in order to pass any measure however great, however essential, however salutary, he will have to consent to let it be so cobbled, emasculated, adulterated, and delayed, that all its grandeur and most of its value are sure to have evaporated in the process. Secondly, that even if he can induce the country to commit itself to some important and characteristic line of action abroad, the time is sure to come when his antagonist will succeed to office, and will induce the country to neutralize, or to paralyze, his inaugurated policy. Everything with us is in truth --everything in a parliamentary nation must be-compromise; and compromise is not a soil in which the higher qualities of statesmanship can take root, or flourish. It was not always so. It was not so in Pitt's days; it was not so to anything like the same extent even in the days of Wellington and Canning, or in the earlier days of Peel. Before the great year of change, 1832, so long as a minister was a favorite with his sovereign, moderately popular with the na tion at large, and the recognized leader of his party, he really did possess a considerable amount of positive power, and that power could fairly count upon a reasonable term of duration. The sovereign might to a certain extent be capricious and unreliable; but princely instability and perfidy are political dangers to be guarded against in despotic as well as in limited monarchies. The party would, of course, have in some ineasure to be managed and consulted, and its wishes and susceptibilities to be humored; but a minister who really belonged to it and represented its views was certain of zealous, unswerving, and almost unquestioning and blind support. Popular feeling, if very passionate and strong, needed then as now to be watched and guided, and if unanimous and overpowering, to be yielded to for a time; but this is more or less the case in all polities, and in the early part of this century the electing power was centred in so few hands, and those hands were subjected to such potent influences, that the mere popular voice had little weight except in periods of rare and exceptional excitement. The Tories had so large and steady a majority in both Houses; the preponderance of all political and social influences lay so clearly with them, that Pitt or Liverpool or Peel, unless they had attempted something desperately unwise, or unpopular, or premature, or had mortally offended their habitual supporters, were pretty sure of carrying any measures on which they were resolutely bent. They had to defeat the adversaries in their front; but they could always do this with ease and certainty in a pitched battle; and this done they had no reserve of enemies to encounter, no ulterior opposition to overcome. But it is since the Reform Bill that the combination of political conditions which renders statesmanship so hopeless, has arisen, or at least has attained its complete development. In fact it belongs to, and springs from, and ripens with, the growing preponderance of the popular or democratic element in the state. The degree in which a minister can hope to carry out his own measures, to lay down and adhere to a special, distinct, and consistent line of policythe degree, that is, in which he can approximate to statesmanship-depends on three conditions: the balance of parties, the degree to which the question interests the masses, and the line taken by the press. Before the Reform Bill there may be said to have been only two political parties, and from 1790 till 1825 or perhaps later, one of them was so un questionably predominant in both Houses of Parliament, and in the support and sympathy of the crown, that it was under no necessity of making any great concessions to its opponents, nor had it much reason to cower before the possi ble action of the people or the press. Since the Reform Bill, not only have the relative weight and numbers of the two great parties in the state been far more equally balanced than of yore, so that only on rare occasions could either hope to force a measure down the throats of its antagonists, if their opposition were sufficiently desperate and determined, but a third party has arisen and attained a distinct and most formidable position, numerous and energetic enough in most cases to turn the scale of victory between the two great rivals, and independent enough to make it impossible to count upon their assistance either confidently, steadily, or long beforehand. This third party, moreover, is not a compact and unvarying body having a common interest, and a common policy, and a calculable line of tactics; it comprises several sections who agree only in belonging to neither of the principal armies, and in impartially and alternately embarrassing and paralyzing both. They all sit below the gangway, though they sit on both sides of the House, and are alike erratic and unaccountable. But whether they be Irish members who require to be kept in the ranks by jobs at home or by concessions to ultramontane predilections, or advanced liberals who have their own special aims and creeds to which they will never be unfaithful, and which they will never compromise or postpone, their existence in their actual strength is alike fatal to the growth of all persistent or forecasting statesmanship. Nay, more; they are, in a manner, false and hostile to one of their own recognized doctrines. They hold that the majority ought to govern, or at least that the will of the majority should prevail; but by their singularly arthritic position and the singularly skilful, and sometimes unscru pulous use they make of it, they are, day after day, practically enabling a minority, and a small one, to have its way, by taking advantage of the emer gencies and bargaining with the necessities of the mightier contending factions. The periodical press was always a great power; but in recent years it has grown to be incomparably greater than of yore, as well as far prompter in its operation. It is, in fact, the organ through which the more highly educated classes-who are strong neither in property nor rank, and who are often too indolent to take much part in ordinary party and electioneering struggles-assert their right to political influence, and make that influence felt. It is also the organ through which that public opinion, which speaks by general elections once in every four or five years, contrives to speak from day to day. It is a power which no minister, however strong or self-reliant, can afford to ignore or to pass by with conscientious and supercilious indifference. It is, moreover, a power in the face of which it is especially difficult for any minister to lay farsighted plans, to sow seeds for distant harvests, to adopt a line of policy of which the cost and the drawbacks are obvious and immediate, and the advantages below the surface and remote-of which the price must be paid down at once, and the return must be claimed (however certainly) hereafter. For it insists upon estimating every measure or course of action in its inchoate and imperfect stage, in sitting in judgment on it from day to day, when perhaps only a little of it can be seen, and when that little is far the least prepossessing portion. It insists, too, upon "the reason why," with an imperious wilfulness particularly embarrassing and disadvanta geous to the authors of political schemes, to which the strongest motives, of which the most invaluable consequences, for which the most convincing arguments, are precisely those which cannot be alleged in public without risking the success or the achievement aimed at. The statesman, in fact, has both to concoct and to defend his plans in the face of an audience which is too half-trained to think profoundly, which is too impatient to wait long, which is too shallow to look deep or far-which, as a rule, to use the phrase of Dr. Johnson, is not sufficiently "raised in the dignity of thinking beings to allow the past, the distant, or the future, to predominate over the present." The extent to which the press puts an extinguisher upon everything like wide-eyed statesmanship is fully known to those only who have ventured on faint and timid efforts after that great gift, and have been cruelly maltreated for the venture. The masses-the great body of the English people-again, take far more interest than formerly in political questions, and they take an interest in a greater number and a different class of questions. A generation or two since they were for the most content to leave all matters in the hands of the representatives whom they had chosen, the aristocracy whom they worshipped, and the ministers whom these combined to install. They did not even care for or discuss the majority of subjects. They snatched at the reins, or put their finger in the pie, only on those rare occasions when their personal, or class, or material concerns were directly involved, or when that honest and strange religious fanaticism which lies so close to the core of most English natures was roused by something which looked like Papal encroachments on the one side or liberal theology on the other. On reform, on corn-laws, on Catholic emancipation, they would wake up and speak out and threaten intervention. But in most home, and in nearly all external, matters they were content to be passive. We all know till how very recently our foreign policy was left almost unchecked and unwatched to our foreign secretary. A few senators criticised and assailed him; but the public without listened in apathy or did not listen at all, and used to avow their ignorance and indifference with almost a chuckle of satisfaction. Now, especially since nation after nation has risen up to assert or to strive for its native liberties and rights, our populace feel more interest in foreign than in domestic questions. They are felt to be, and they really are, more "interesting." They give rise to more public meetings, to more exciting language, to more vehement denunciations. Sometimes, as in a late deplorable example, the people are so clear and decided in their views as completely to override the cabinet and compel it to alter its course and its language in a manner and at a moment which exposes it to bitter and not wholly undeserved reproaches. alter for the better-no man can become Premier, or can even obtain high office and an influential position, scarcely even expect a seat in the cabinet, till he has reached middle life. If he belong to the class of habitual politicians, and come of that rank out of which ministers are made, he will have been long subjected to all the influences of a public and senatorial career; he will have had to work his way up through subordinate offices, during which he will have been under the necessity of carrying out and defending, and therefore almost unavoidably imbibing, the views of his principals, and of suppressing or modifying his own- if he had any individual ones-as impedi It is accordingly in foreign affairs that the disadvantages under which a British minister-especially one who has ever dreamed of becoming a British statesman-must ever labor. His free action is hampered at every turn. He can scarcely venture to engage with other states for any particular line of conduct, for he can never feel confident to what extent his countrymen will endorse his policy, or to what extent his successors and rivals may reverse it. One party in the state sympathizes with "liberty" abroad; the other party sympathizes with "order." One set of politicians are enthusiastic for Italian freedom and consolidation; another set "stand upon the old way," and are above all things anx-ments to his advancement and success; ious to preserve the Austrian empire and the Austrian alliance. One section is for upholding the "due and beneficent influence" of England in all questions and in every part of the world; another is all for peace, economy, and non-intervention. No party can have all its own way, or can have it always. Each party gets something of its own way, and gets it sometimes. As one set of ministers suc 'ceed their rivals, they do not indeed act in a wholly different fashion-for there is always some decorum observed in the volto-subito-but they are languid, lukewarm, or dilatory where their predecessors were zealous, active, and peremptory; and this is enough virtually to produce the effect of a change of policy, more or less complete. Under these circumstances it is not easy to see how a statesman could grow up. If he were passionately in earnest his heart would be broken in a session. If he be a man of real genius, he becomes dwarfed or bent to the calibre of a tactician, a strategist, a manager, an intriguer. A minister, who is and must be, by the necessity of his position, the servant of an untrained, varying, meddling, many-headed master, may be an admirable administrator or a sound political thinker for the hour, but he can never be a Richelieu, and could not easily now become a Pitt. The mention of this last name reminds us of another reason why we can never hope in our age and country to breed real statesmen, or at least to see such raised to power. Under our present parliamentary system-a system which, in this respect at least, is scarcely likely to so that by the time he reaches a position where originality and energy would show and tell, originality will have been effectually crushed out of him, and whatever commanding and penetrating energy he may have started with, will have been exchanged for that flexibility and skill in navigation which goes further and lasts longer with us than resolute and imperious volition. If, on the contrary, he comes into public life from the outside, by force of genius or eloquence or popular sympathy, like Mr. Bright and Mr. Cobden for example, he must equally be a man of mature years; and although in this case he escapes the ice-house and the flattening-iron of subordinate office and administrative routine, he has gone through the other narrowing processes with which professional and mercantile life alike abound; and unless he be a man exceptionally fortunate, both in social position and intellectual gifts, he is certain to be more or less borné and onesided in his culture or his views: the more certain, because in England such an "outside" man, who does not belong to the class who are politicians by profession and by birth, can scarcely have become the idol or the tribune of the people sufficiently to be forced into power by their strength and as their champion and spokesman, except he has either made himself mighty by being the eloquent and amended embodiment of their views (which, often right in the main, err always from incompleteness, exclusiveness, or excess), or has mounted on the pinnacle and been borne forward on the wave of some one great dogma, em |