how different is Christ's self-assertion, from the self-negation of every other good and holy man. Every other, in proportion as he is a good man and true, rejoices to make himself nothing, to divest himself of every glory and of every claim. The Baptist was great (we have an angel's word for it), but when his countrymen asked him, Who art thou? what sayest thou of thyself?' the utmost he would claim was, to be a voice crying in the wilderness;' he was, he proclaimed, of the earth, and being earthly, spake of the earth, and seemed to rejoice in words of self-disparagement.

'But while he and every other godly man thus abdicates every claim, puts back, at least before God, the honour which others would thrust upon him, while every other thus makes himself nothing, Christ, on the contrary, makes Himself everything. He puts Himself, I will not say into the foremost rank, for that would ill express the fact, but into a rank quite by Himself. And yet He who did so was, as we know, the meek and the lowly one, was clothed with humility, came seeking not his own glory, but the glory of his Father; while for all this no words are too large, no statements too magnificent, for Him to utter in respect of Himself. All the weary and heavy laden in this vast wilderness of woe are to come to Him; He has rest and refreshment for them all. He predominates over all human relations, the nearest and the holiest; to love father or mother better than Him, is not to be worthy of Him. He is the Bread of God, which men may eat of and not die-the Resurrection and the Life-the Way, the Truth and the Life-the True Vine-or, as here, the Light of the world.

'Surely this fact, this contrast between Christ's language about Himself, and other good men's language about themselves, may well give rise to profound meditations; the conclusions which we may deduce from it are of infinite importance. How many heresies which have torn the Church it ought to have rendered for ever impossible. For how impossible is it to reconcile these declarations of the Lord about Himself with any other view of the dignity of his person save that which the Catholic Church in all ages has held. He is either that which the Church teaches Him to be-or that which we may well decline to utter in an assembly of Christian men. There is no other alternative. If these declarations which Christ makes about Himself are true, then all temporizing middle positions, Arian, and Unitarian, are such as it is impossible to maintain. Men cannot rest in them for long; but must either rise higher, that is, to the faith of the Church in respect of her Lord; or else sink lower, and renounce the Lord of glory as a deceiver, or a deceived. For as many as accept the Evangelist's record of our Lord's words as perfectly representing what He did utter, unmodified, uncoloured by prejudices and prepossessions of the relater, every other position but one of these, is one merely of transition, is one logically untenable, and is sooner or later discovered to be so, and forsaken.'

The truth is, the Unitarianism of half a century since is pretty

India and the House of Commons.

199

well extinct. A philosophical mysticism has come into its place. Wardlaw on the Socinian Controversy shows clearly enough how the case stood forty years ago; but such books have lost nearly all adaptation to things as they are. The modern Unitarian believes a great deal more in the supernatural than his prede cessors, but he believes a great deal less in the Scriptures. He accounts himself a much wiser man than Isaiah or St. Paul, and has no thought of being bound by their authority.

ART. VIII. (1.) A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude in 184950, &c. By Major-General Sir W. H. SLEEMAN, K.C.B., Resident at the Court of Lucknow. London: Bentley. 1858. (2.) Speech of Mr. Disraeli at Slough. Times, May 26.

(3.) Speech of Viscount Palmerston in the House of Commons. Times, May 31.

(4.) Speech of Lord John Russell in the House of Commons. Times, May 28.

(5.) Speeches of the Earls of Clarendon and Derby in the House of Lords. Times, June 2.

WE purpose to glance in this article at the reconstruction of our Indian polity. We shall have to deal at once with the system of government which is to be established at home, with existing defects in the local administration of India, and with the policy pursued by Lord Canning in Oude. But it will first be necessary to glance at the condition of parties at home, which now arrogates the foreground in Indian politics, and at the unnatural posture of the legislative functions of the House of Commons, since the resignation of Lord Palmerston's Government in February last.

Lord Palmerston's India Bill (No. 1) was carried on its first discussion, by a majority of 145-Mr. Disraeli succeeding to the leadership of the House of Commons before it could proceed further, and assuming dissatisfaction with its provisions, introduced in its place an India Bill of his own (No. 2). The India Bill No. 2, to use the phraseology of the stage, was immediately ' damned;' and fourteen resolutions were supplied, as a basis of legislation, in its room. The discussion of these resolutions seemed likely to drag out a Septennial Parliament to the close of its natural existence. On the termination of this process, there now remains the India Bill No. 3. When this mode of legislation was originated by Lord John Russell, no one could have anticipated the course which it has since assumed. But

the experiment, in the hands of the Government, has since developed itself into a chimera; so much so as to make it doubtful whether the prospect of Indian reform would not be best served by the union of the whole Liberal party in support of a resumption of the India Bill No. 1.

Before the second of these resolutions had been affirmed, publication was given to a despatch of the Government to Viscount Canning, which criticized his policy without knowledge of its motives, and in terms which one public Minister has rarely addressed to another. A vote of want of confidence in the Ministry was thereon moved in either House of Parliament. The Earl of Ellenborough-the exclusive author of the publication, but of the publication only, of the despatch in question-resigned. The Earl of Shaftesbury's motion in the House of Lords was rejected by a narrow majority of nine; and that of Mr. Cardwell, under a complication of incidents, was withdrawn. The Ministry, imperilled by the Ellenborough despatch, was saved by the Outram letter, and by its altered tone towards Lord Canning, notwithstanding that letter. A vote of confidence in the Governor-General, passed by the Court of Directors, tended further to reassure his position.

The Whitsuntide recess followed; and Mr. Disraeli repaired to the electors of Bucks at Slough, where he delivered himself of a magniloquent tirade of self-gratulation, of a shower of invective against Lord Shaftesbury and Mr. Cardwell, and of a derisive compassion for the great Liberal party. The triumphal ovation seemed to recoil upon the orator, and suggested against Mr. Disraeli himself the sarcasm quoted by the Tory satirist of the age of Charles II. against the great Lord Shaftesbury :

'Per Graium populos mediæque per Elidis urbem
Ibat ovans, Divumque sibi poscebat honores!'

Indeed, with the exception of alternate vauntings and philippics -and of some glaring misconceptions in general history-the speech of Mr. Disracli at Slough was a cold réchauffé of the debate,

'Surpassing all that human dulness reaches,
Save only Mr. Hume's financial speeches.'

But we will deal first with the historical misconceptions, and next with the political allusions. Take one instance of these misconceptions as an example of the rest. Mr. Disraeli said at Slough,

"There exists at this moment that which really has not prevailed since the days of Charles II.; there is at this moment a cabal (hear, hear); a cabal which has no other object but to upset the Govern

Mr. Disraeli at Slough.

201

ment of the Queen, and to obtain its end in a manner the most reckless, but the most determined.'

First, let us glance at the objects of the alleged 'cabal,' and then at the cabal itself. Its aim,' says Mr. Disraeli, 'is to upset the Government of the Queen.' Any hearer might suppose that what the elated orator intended to describe was, not an attempt to remove Ministers by Constitutional means, but a direct and simultaneous assault on the Crown and the Constitution! To be sure, there is some excuse for, or at least there is some consistency in, this view. Mr. Disraeli once wrote an excellent political novel called Coningsby, in which he propounded a theory of a Sovereign of Downing Street.' He is, no doubt, that sovereign. Hence the attributive impiety of the attempt, to use his own pure Saxon phraseology, 'to loot the Treasury. Unless we are greatly mistaken, however, it was very much by this 'looting' of the Treasury, and by this caballing,' that Mr. Disraeli originally got into the Treasury. But of course a usurper, beyond all others, sets up for a legitimist.

Secondly, it happens, unfortunately for Mr. Disraeli's hypothesis, that the famous 'cabal' of the age of Charles II.' was not an Opposition, but a Ministry. The Chancellor of the Exchequer's allusions seem, therefore, once more to recoil on his own Cabinet. What is still more amusing is the innocent notion of the Slough orator, that the Cabal Ministry' of Charles II. was so termed on account of its factious policy. Surely even his rural audience might have told him that the 'Cabal Ministry' took this name from the fact that the initials of its leading members-Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, Lauderdale-together formed the obnoxious word.

What appears to us a yet worse symptom in Constitutional Government is the degrading readiness of a leader of the House of Commons to fortify his position by attempting to impeach the private honour of an opponent. Mr. Disraeli and his party attempted to justify their blind censure of Lord Canning on the ground that they were not possessed of information which Lord Canning had communicated to Mr. Vernon Smith; and they next attempted to show that Mr. Vernon Smith had withheld this information from Lord Ellenborough with a view of compromising the Ministry. When, however, this information was communicated by Mr. Vernon Smith and by Lord Palmerston to the House of Commons, it was found to consist simply of an apology, that the information required was not yet forthcoming!

The Third Indian Bill, which is now before the House of Commons, is an impracticable measure, relieved of the salient

eccentricities which characterized its predecessor. It first fixes the number of the Council at fifteen-a number quite unfit for the transaction of business which, at Calcutta itself, is conducted in all its details by a Council of four. It next degrades that Council by making one half of it self-elective. It finally confounds the functions of the President and of the Council, in a manner calculated to destroy the action of the whole system.

We have no desire to detract from the services of Lord Derby's Government, and we have no interest in any such detraction. We address ourselves, indeed, to a large social class entertaining liberal and intelligent views of government; but we are not pledged to any of the partizanship now so rife in the House of Commons. We readily concede the success with which the present Ministry have dealt with one or two questions of importance; but we cannot forget that their career has been free from many of the ordinary difficulties of public administration.

་

Mr. Disraeli, however, has the hardihood to repudiate this position. He claims credit for having preserved peace and the honour of England, when both, he asserts, were imminently imperilled! Let us glance at this hallucination, and at the three nights' debate in the two Houses which ensued thereon. The Chancellor of the Exchequer asserted at Slough-and he afterwards clung to the assertion in the House of Commons in equal defiance of reason and of fact-that when he acceded to power, 'The question of peace or war with France was a question not of days, or weeks, but of hours.' Lord Derby has since substantially re-asserted the same proposition. It is therefore presumptively the deliberate conviction of the Cabinet.

This statement is denied by Lord Palmerston, as being a pure fiction. How does Mr. Disraeli support in the House of Commons the position he recklessly maintained at Slough? defends it thus:

He

'The moment a Government came into power WHOSE FIRST DUTY IT WAS to declare to France that they were not prepared to recommend a change in the laws of England, the House will see in a moment that the issue of peace or war was imminent-that it did depend upon hours.'-Times, June 1.

This statement is absolutely untrue. We, of course, are bound to regard it as an error in recollection on the part of Mr. Disraeli; and we beg to say that we do not for a moment design to represent it in any other light. But it is amusing to observe a leader of the House of Commons complaining of Lord Palmerston's momentary forgetfulness of a casual incident, and