day extend religious light and universal progress over the whole globe, and are destined to become its rulers. Is it not curious to see the Aryans of Europe, after a separation of 4,000 or 5,000 years, join again their unknown brothers in India, govern them by taking to them the elements of a superior civilization, and discover among them the ancient records of a common origin? These great movements are only accomplished at the cost of many hindrances, many bloody conflicts, and many fearful perturbations. Such is the necessary result of the conflicts of human liberty. But more and more these movements which continue in our day, are being conducted in a spirit of justice and tolerance. It is thus that the Aryan race, privileged above all the others, has been, and will be, the principal instrument of the designs of God in the destinies of man on the earth.

J. B. P.

ESPRIT DE CORPS.

MR. DISRAELI Owes much of his success to his own pluck, his sublime audacity, his impudent contempt even for the semblance of consistency; but he owes as much, if not more, to the chivalrous spirit with which the Tory minority of the House of Commons have maintained their loyalty to their leader and fidelity to the traditions of their party. Sir Henry Edwards, who complained the other night that Mr. Darby Griffith is a very unpleasant neighbour, solely because he is in the habit of applauding Liberal speakers when they enunciate sentiments in which he happens to agree, is a type of a very large class among them. No doubt the worthy baronet has an excessive amount of zeal. He owes his new-born dignity to the favour of the present Government, and his intense gratitude must find some way of manifesting itself. But in the determination to uphold everything Tory, to listen neither to rhyme nor reason if it proceed from the Liberal benches, to hoot, and even howl, when the interests of the party require it, to believe that Mr. Disraeli must be right even though they cannot quite see it, and therefore obey his call, and follow wherever he leads, are esteemed cardinal virtues on the ministerial benches, the which if a man have, he will be pardoned all sorts of indiscretion and weakness; the which if he have not, however eminent his talents or high his position, he will be voted a fool, a traitor, or a bore. Never, surely, were such virtues put to a more severe test, and yet

never have these distinctive qualities of the Tory school of politics been more apparent.

If the value of faithfulness to a leader be judged after Mark Tapley's way of estimating the virtue of jolliness, then certainly never was fidelity more to be commended than that which Mr. Disraeli has been able to secure. We happened to be in the House during the discussion of the extraordinary and monstrous proposition for the union of the Universities of London and Durham in one constituency, and witnessed an exhibition that ought to have been and, we would fain hope, was intensely humiliating to the party whom it compromised. The first division had shown a majority of only one for the Government; and when Sir George Bowyer rose, after the declaration of the numbers, to say that his vote had been given in faith that the electoral privileges of Durham would be given irrespective of creed altogether, and that he should be guided in the final division when he learnt the intentions of the Ministry on the point, it was evident that there was an opening for that clever management of which Mr. Disraeli and his subordinates are such masters. The same sort of trick which had been played on a previous occasion on the simple-minded Dillwyn and the credulous Hibbert, who for a few days believed himself, on the strength of the official or quasi-official representations, to be a really great man, destined to settle a very difficult question, was now to be attempted on the Roman Catholic baronet, and those who might sympathize with him. Unfortunately, there was no opportunity for lobbying, the game had to be played in a full and excited House, in the presence of keen and watchful opponents, and therefore the task of Mr. Mowbray was more difficult than that of Colonel Taylor, the operator on the previous occasion. Still he was fully equal to the occasion. He had, even previous to the former division, shown considerable power of quibbling, and his success in winning Sir George Bowyer's vote in the first instance doubtless emboldened him to hope for equal good fortune again. He rose, therefore, immediately from the seat which he was occupying next to his leader, and, in the most distinct and explicit terms, assured the House that the Government were quite prepared to meet the honourable baronet's views, and to give the votes to all graduates, and not restrict them to members of Convocation from whom some sort of subscription is required. Indeed he went further than was necessary, and assured the House that the authorities were most liberal in their views, and were prepared to abolish the test to which members of Convocations are at present subject. This brought up Mr. Gladstone, whose keen eye at once detected the weak point of his adversary's case. After first drawing from Mr. Mowbray a repudia

tion of any pledge as to a change in Convocation, he then went on to show the seriousness of the change which that gentleman had announced in relation to the constituency of the University, a change which must, of course, be applied to the older Universities also, and which certainly ought not to have been made in such a manner. Now was the time for Mr. Disraeli, had he cared for the reputation of a high-minded, honourable statesman, to have risen and acknowledged the mistake which his subordinate had made. But no-it was not yet clear that capital might not be made out of it, and therefore the leader of our English aristocracy and chivalry suffered the House to go on debating under an utter misconception, and not until the speech of Mr. Powell showed him that the game was a dangerous one did he announce that Mr. Mowbray had spoken unadvisedly with his lips, and that the Government had no such intention as that which he had announced. His humiliation was complete when Mr. Lowe rose, evidently under very strong excitement, and in one sentence, which was very brief, but which must have been stinging and pointed, denounced such a mode of conducting the Government of the country. Seldom, we might almost say never, of late years has such a scene been witnessed in the House of Commons. Yet the shameless trickery of the Government produced but little effect on the division. A few refused to obey the party call, and so the scale was turned; but the vast majority followed their leader as implicitly as though his honour were as bright and stainless as that of a Gladstone or a Bright.

It is the very opposite of all this that we see on the Liberal side of the House. A party commanding, even after all deductions have been made for timid and uncertain and undecided men, an undoubted majority of the House, with one of the ablest statesmen of modern times for its leader, and others of high eminence in its ranks, with the principles which it holds in the ascendant in the country, has the mortification of seeing its political rivals win the prizes to which it is fairly entitled. There are many reasons which might be given to explain its present unfortunate position. The heartlessness, not to say insincerity, of some of its members, the tact with which Mr. Disraeli has flattered the self-love, and humoured the prejudices of particular men and sections, the unscrupulous boldness with which he has been ready to use the threat of dissolution, the belief in the hollowness of the Conservative organization, and the willingness of its members to make large sacrifices of principle to secure office for their own friends, have all had much to do with it. But even more potent than any of these causes have been the want of mutual confidence, the predominance of all sorts of selfish feelings the influence of petty and unworthy

motives, which are concealed, under professions of a lofty superiority to party considerations, and, above all, the absence of a hearty and honourable fidelity to their leader.

The annals of our Parliamentary warfare contain few passages so discreditable as the story of Mr. Gladstone's treatment. Others have been assailed, often very unfairly and even cruelly, by their opponents. He has the special distinction of having been baited and worried by his professed friends. We say nothing of such attacks as that of Lord Derby on the second reading of the Reform Bill. It was low, it was coarse, it was ungenerous; but his Lordship, in condescending to the tactics of the thimble-rigging fraternity, may possibly think it wise to adopt their manners also. There is this allowance, also, to be made for him. He had really no other argument on which to base even a plausible apology for the immoralities and inconsistencies of his own Government. Nor are we disposed to say much of the Adullamites. Lord Elcho's speech proved that the secret feeling which has animated himself and the few who have acted with him throughout the Reform controversy was simply an unmitigated hostility to Mr. Gladstone. Nothing seemed more certain at the commencement of the session than that they would lend their aid to any proposition calculated to give a more moderate and conservative tone to any Reform Bill that might be brought forward. Events have shown that, however they were opposed to a reduction of the franchise, they were still more opposed to Mr. Gladstone, and that they would consent to any measure, however sweeping in its effect, if, by doing so, they could inflict humiliation upon one, their intense hatred of whom appears to approach to a mania. Still we do not specially complain of them. In what way Mr. Gladstone may have wounded the amour propre of Earl Grosvenor, or thwarted the ambition of the brilliant Elcho, or incurred the condemnation of the profound and philosophical Doulton, we do not care to inquire, and perhaps it would be unjust to blame, for being true to their own instincts and dealings, one whose sincerity and earnestness are themselves the strongest rebuke to their own political nambypambyism. We have our revenge, and the cause of truth and freedom has its revenge, in the miserable position of humiliation and contempt to which they are now reduced. Of all parties they are the most despicable, without even the respect of the political hucksters whose tools they have been. Without a leader, without a principle, without a shred of political honour and reputation left, they are but wanderers and vagabonds on the face of the earth, driven out, even, of that cave which furnished them a temporary shelter, and from which they hoped to issue to victory. They are the true authors of the miserable imbroglio

in which we now find ourselves; but, happily, there are none who will suffer more from the mischief they have done so much to bring out. They will exercise no influence on their own age, and their names will descend to posterity with that unenviable notoriety-we might almost say, infamy-which ever awaits the generation of trimmers.

Still these men boast, and always have boasted, that they were not followers of Mr. Gladstone. It is different with others who have played a singular part in this strangest of sessions. They profess to admire, to respect, and to follow the great Liberal leader, yet they have not hesitated to desert his banner at some critical moment, and even sometimes to treat him in the most insulting manner. There were the illustrious company of the tea-room, who fancied that the best way they could take to show their devotion to Liberal principles was to undermine the Parliamentary influence of their ablest and most earnest exponent. Then there were the distinguished members for Oldham, who hoped to emerge out of their native obscurity, and become stars in the political firmament, by wandering out of their proper sphere, and instead of being content to form part of the great Liberal constellation, to take an independent position of their own. Of course, it was much more flattering to the vanity of such gentlemen to feel themselves political potentates for the nonce, and to take a dignified place outside the House, instead of mingling with their friends in the division lobby; but possibly their constituents may fancy that the post they have thus voluntarily assumed is one that becomes them much better than that in which their conspiracies have placed them. Then there was the gentleman who actually canvassed against his own motion, as soon as he found that it was likely to succeed, and give Mr. Gladstone the position to which he is so justly entitled. If there be any possible way of conducting a party when its members assume that they understand its duties and requirements better than their chief, and betray him in the most unscrupulous manner, we must confess ourselves unable to discover it. We do not ask for a leader implicit deference; still less would we desire individual members to abandon their own independent judgment; but if a leader is to lead in anything but name he must be trusted, and there must be sufficient "esprit de corps" to induce the units of the party to adhere to it, except in cases where the gravity of the occasion justifies a separation from its course. These men may defend themselves by pointing to the character of the Bill as it stands, but their plea is utterly worthless. They voted in the original and crucial division for the Bill as it was, not as it is; and had it not been for the unselfish and highprincipled determination of Mr. Gladstone to have an honest