of favouritism, even of want of courage. Probably Grant's successes before Richmond, and the subsequent ruin of the secession cause, only saved Mr. Davis from deposition at the hands of those by whom he was long looked up to as a hero. North and the treacherous apathy of the said to the army in Georgia, " that the only Government, the distribution of Federal way to make spaniels civil is to whip them? military stores throughout the South. Then Unluckily for him, the whipping was done he brought forward a Bill making it com- the other way. As the prospects of the repulsory on the Central Government to up-bellion became more gloomy, Mr. Davis hold the rights of slaveholders in the terri- was savagely attacked by a large party in tories of the Union, and he enforced this the South. He was accused of improvidence, demand with the menace of that secession which had been predetermined. When the division between the Northern Democrats and the Slave Party secured the defeat of both Douglas and Breckinridge, and the triumph of the Republicans by Lincoln's return, Mr. Davis showed no hesitation in choosing his part. On the 20th of December, 1860, four months before Mr. Lincoln's inauguration, South Carolina passed her ordinance of secession; three weeks after, Mississippi, with the rest of the Gulf States, followed, and Mr. Davis immediately quitted his place in the Senate. On the 4th of February, 1861, the delegates of the seceding States met at Montgomery in the State of Alabama, and having framed a Constitution, proceeded to elect Jefferson Davis President of the new Confederation for a term of six years. On the 13th of April Fort Sumter was surrendered to Beauregard, and the greatest war of modern times began. The attempt made by some miserable informers and perjured sycophants to inculpate Mr. Davis with respect to that vile crime of Good Friday, 1865, which has fixed indelible disgrace on the slave-owning party, were happily little regarded by any respectable politicians in the North. President Johnson and some of his immediate advisers were anxious, we believe, to obtain a legal decision in the case of the Confederate leader for the purpose of settling the law of treason, just as some members of the Jamaica Committee urged the prosecution of Mr. Eyre for the same purpose. It seems, however, at once nobler and more consistent to make the amnesty extended to the South complete. The Mr. Davis's character as a statesman has example will not be lost to the world. If ever been the subject of much controversy. It rebellion deserved punishment as destructive cannot be disputed that for the single purpose and inexcusable, the revolt that was headed of awakening Southern enthusiasm and ex- by Mr. Davis should not have escaped. But citing European sympathy, the President of the tendency of modern progress has been the Confederation was hardly to be match- to deal lightly with political offences, to ed. An accomplished writer and speaker, punish rebels only so far as their impunihe in his messages and despatches did much ty may be dangerous, and, where their into veil the inherent vices and weaknesses of fluence has disappeared, to grant them libthe Secession cause. But it may fairly be erty and life. Already even the most doquestioned whether his confident professions cile Englishmen have begun to profit by the of success, his rigorous control of free opin- example of America. Without exciting many ion in the South, his misrepresentations of Tory fears, the Government of Lord Derby the resources of the North and of his own may surely go so far in the way of " Ameripeople, did not tend to prolong a fatal strug-canizing out institutions" as to imitate the gle that might have been better abandoned clemency of the Government of President early in 1863. At all events, there can be Johnson. but one opinion of the bitter animosity, the foolishly braggart language in which he indulged as the armies of the North closed round the doomed Confederacy. After Sherman's capture of Atlanta, the Southern President ordered thanksgiving services in the churches of Richmond- a proceeding which almost justifies the theory attributed to him in the" Biglow Papers,” "How winning the day Consists in triumphantly getting away." At this time his temper seems to have be- From the Spectator. DISRAELI-WORSHIP. MR. BERNAL OSBORNE said with his usual cleverness yesterday week, that "the Chancellor of the Exchequer had lugged that great omnibus. full of stupid heavy country gentlemen " up the hill of Reform with a spirit for which all true Radicals would return him their heartiest thanks. That was well said, and would make a cap a powerful, passionless political Sphynx. When he puts on his idiotic mask he is most dangerous of all. Then he is laying up in his high mind some slight to his divinity, and calculating the rate of compound interest at which he will repay it; or he is maturing some spell which shall make his adversaries mistake friends for foes, and fall hotly upon each other, instead of upon him; or he is meditating some fresh and potent charm, which shall prolong the servitude of such slaves of the lamp as Lord Stanley, Mr. Gathorne Hardy, and Sir Stafford Northcote, and make them see their former political thoughts as ghosts gibbering unmeaning reproaches, and hear their former words as dreamers hear the words of those around them. The old Greek Sphynx used to ask rather difficult riddles, but this modern political Sphynx answers them infallibly, even though they be of the highest degree of complexity. How to coax the Tory into Radicalism by giving him a number of false hopes and taking them away one by one; - how to utilize the accident of the irrepressible compounder so as to make the Tories think him a final and irresistable obstacle to household suffrage, until at last they are even more sick of the compounder than of household suffrage itself, and see the last wave of the wand which consigns him finally to the receptacle for obsolete machinery with a sigh of something like relief; how to resist and defeat the Liberals with a stern face and even ardent defiance, though the whole battle is to the mind of the leader purely formal, — fought only for the sake of showing the power to beat, and though he means after all to resign the ground for which he fights so hotly; tal illustration for Fun, but if Mr. Tenniel | from winning their hearts, indeed probawould again work out for us one of those bly turning their hearts more and more higher imaginative conceptions which im- away from the detestable worship in which press on some of his cartoons in Punch a they are engaged, still paralyzes their character of ideal power, ensuring them a will and renders opposition hopeless and life long beyond the momentary situation impotent. Mr. Disraeli is for the time more that suggests them, let him reverse the im- than an adversary; he is inscrutable, invulage, and draw Mr. Disraeli as the inscruta- nerable, ble Sphynx of Mr. Poynter's great picture, tugged along to be installed as one of the idols of the hour by the same stupid, heavy, country gentlemen, with many a drop of sweat and many a fierce gesticulation, while the wives and daughters of the enslaved squirearchy dance reluctantly before his triumphal path. Mr. Bernal Osborne himself, as one of the Radical leaders, might be stooping from the car curling his long lash at the reluctant team; and Mr. Lowe might appear as the scowling and gasping Israelite who had fallen out of his place, and was evidently launching deep curses at the head both of his taskmasters and their temporary god. For though no doubt in one sense Mr. Disraeli had hoisted up the country gentlemen to their present position, in another and more important sense, they have convoyed him, the inscrutable and enigmatic idol of the moment, to the altar on which he at present stands. The House of Commons, in spite of its thorough distrust of him, which is indeed the usual attitude of idolaters towards the divinities they cele brate and strive to conciliate, is lost in wonder at his great feats. The spirit of criticism is almost paralyzed by his miraculous success. Every taunt flies back like a boomerang at the head of him who launched it. The sword of every one of his opponents enters into his own breast, and the bow of the rash archer who aims at him snaps and lies broken in his hands. People go about on every side crying, "It is a god, it is a god!" Private warnings are given that it is no use attacking Disraeli; he will only cry tush! and suck thereout no small advantage. If you give him what would poison any one else, he thrives upon it. It is a sort of enchantment. Unless any one can get hold of the talisman that will break the spell, the stars in their courses will fight against his foes. Is not the marvel visible to the dullest eyes, Radicals and high Tories competing together to serve him, while both alike murmur ejaculations of distrust between their teeth? Such is the general talk, and whatever the charms by which Mr. Disraeli has worked hitherto, it is really true that he is now beginning to get that influence over the nerves and imaginations of all parties which, while it is very far indeed - these are the sort of riddles, hopeless_because they would never present themselves to ordinary politicians, which Mr. Disraeli has been solving syllable by syllable with consummate art, and with the enigmatic reticence of an oracle who loves both to bewilder and bewitch his devotees. We do not wonder at this reluctant Disraeli-worship, though we doubt whether a baser form of Parliamentary idolatry has ever been invented. No doubt there are qualites in the idol which are not, in themselves, ignoble, -a coolness and courage equal to any emergency, a self-confidence FOURTH SERIES. LIVING AGE. VOL. V. 154. -- that is almost above the possibility of irrita- | delivered last session, have been cheered to ble despondency, an impassiveness that nev- the echo. No doubt there was a visible fluter fails under attack, and a fertility of in- ter about their heart-strings, a twitching of vention worthy of a demon or a god. But their nerves, a yearning of the still unmasall these qualities, rare as they are, and, tered instincts of the past to burst into a apart from the purposes to which they are generous cheer as he sat down; but there turned, intellectually admirable as they are, sat the pallid enigma of the new idolatry, are by no means qualities which it is at all with cold, impassive face, silently teaching desirable to be always contemplating with the lesson of self-mastery to his fascinated wonder and awe. For the most part they followers, and the natural instinct was subare dexterities, even the abstract respect for dued in a moment, and died away with the which cannot be cultivated without a con- last accent of this last appeal. Disraelistant lessening of respect for great and lib- worship will not give tact and subtlety, and eral aims, since admiration for the studied craft and counsel to the "brute votes" of manners and wonderful address of a good the House of Commons, but it will work that manager must inevitably slide into admira- revolution of nature which is said to be due tion for those happy strokes of mere skill in only to grace - or its opposite. It will make which the object and purpose of the manoeu- it easy to throw off the ties of conviction, vre is entirely lost sight of. But when these amusing to desert the faith of a life-time, qualities are worshipped by no means in the pleasant to outwit opponents by fairly outabstract, but in the very concrete case of bidding them; it will make political dishonMr. Disraeli himself, who combines with esty seem a department of aesthetics, and them a perfect unscrupulousness as to polit-political thimble-rig a polite study; it will ical principle, a readiness to ring the chan- elevate the invention of political machinery ges on Radicalism and Toryism, on FreeTrade and Protection, on "the Semitic principle" and the-man-of-the-world practice, precisely as is most conducive to his own fortunes as a statesman, the DisraeliFetishism which is dominating the imagina tion of the House of Commons will be seen to foster one of the most degrading of political idolatries. The enigmatic and inscrutable calm of the idol's face, the half-witted expression with which he foils the curiosity of the House when he is pressed for an answer which he wants time to meditate, the practised hesitation with which he announces what he had long determined on, the adroitness with which he prepares for a concession by giving notice of what looks like an aggression but which turns out, to the great disappointment of his enemies, to be only the bold face which a concession should put all these are personal accomplishments which it is but too easy, and exceedingly humiliating, to imitate, but in which imitators are absolutely certain not to succeed. But in one thing the votaries of the new Disraeli-worship will undoubtedly succeed. They will be able, it is already obvious indeed how able they are, to rid themselves as completely as their divinity of the superstitions of old convictions and life-long faiths. Nothing could be more striking than the Disraelite self-control with which his Tory devotees only on Monday night refrained from betraying their not yet extinct sympathy with Mr. Lowe's Conservatism, which, expressed as it was in language of wonderful force and dignity, would, if on, - for breaking the fall of consciences into a From the Spectator. MR. LOWE'S LAST DELIVERANCE. ignorant of the mob, with wonderful pro- | milder assault. With his cardinal dogma ficiency in theatrical counterfeits and also that the suffrage is wide enough already, in amphitheatrical feats, such as riding with we have no sympathy whatever, in most of one foot on the back of each party, with, his vaticinations we have no confidence of no doubt, splendid coolness and courage, any sort, but even in an enemy we honour which no one can imitate,and for the high intellectual courage and personal disrest, made up of superficial and tricky clev- interestedness. Mr. Lowe's speech did not erness, which every one can imitate quite change a vote, his argument perhaps did sufficiently to humiliate himself. And such not deserve to change a vote, but he did is the idol which Parliament is every day one grand service to the House, he forced adoring with a deeper awe, and for which it to recognize the magnitude of the change, it deserts Mr. Gladstone, the highest-mind- which, partly from weariness, partly from ed statesman of this generation, if not of hopefulness, partly from sheer stupidity, it any generation since the Restoration. has at last resolved to accomplish. He showed the members the truth, which from a widely different point of view we have been so constantly reiterating, that with the adoption of Household Suffrage the sovereignty of the British Empire passes away from the hands of the middle class into that of one far below them. The new power may be wiser or less wise, stronger or weaker, less selfish or more corrupt, but it will be new as the power which in 1832 superseded the Peerage in the direct government of the country. The House of Commons is the final executive as well as legislative authority in the British Empire, in India as in London, for the conduct of foreign affairs as for the imposition of parochial taxes. If it orders the conquest of China, or the remission of the sugar duties, the order must be, more or less, heartily obeyed. The Borough members return a clear working majority of the House, and the power of appointing those members passes under the Tory Bill to the non-electors - men, that is, as Mr. Lowe clearly put it, whose politics statesmen do not know, whose ideas no man of all those who have voted for their enthronement even thinks himself able to understand. From the day the bill passes the working classes, skilled and unskilled equally, without selection, natural or other, are whenever they please to exert their authority our masters, ten times more absolute than the Peers ever were, for they lived in danger of revolt; five times as absolute as the middle-class, for they knew that in the last resort physical power lay elsewhere. Every decree will issue from the only class strong enough to resist oppression. If the Householders will to shut Hyde Park they can make short work of any Beales bold enough to threaten the railings. The House has changed by a vote, practically unanimous, the ultimate depositaries of power, changed them, as Mr. Lowe boldly told both parties, without wishing it, without designing it, without knowing aught of the new trustees. It intended, and right IF Mr. Lowe were always as much in earnest as he is when denouncing democracy, he would, with all his drawbacks, yet be a great Parliamentary chief. There was something of moral as well as intellectual greatness in his attitude on Monday night. He stood up in his place alone and hopeless, with no party and no seconder, no supports save the strength of his own conviction and the power of his own brain, to do battle against both parties in the House of Commons, to argue down an accomplished fact, or if that might not be, to tell an unwilling audience, which hardly gave him a cheer, what manner of fact it had accomplished. If there is one personal victory for which Mr. Lowe cares, it is to elicit that roar of assent which follows a speaker who has expressed the unspoken thought of a great party in the House of Commons, -an acknowledgement of power doubly valuable to one who does not see the faces of those whom he is moving, but in this instance he felt when he began and knew as he concluded that his sympathisers could not cheer. If there is one personal interest for which Mr. Lowe cares deeply it is the safety of his seat, and he had to render it questionable whether he should ever have a seat in the House of Commons again. He is not the man whom counties choose, and in every borough in England or Scotland he will be faced by a majority which he has declared unworthy of the privilege of electing him. Yet he stood up calmly, and for two hours poured out eloquent denunciations of the Revolution which a few minutes after he sat down was accepted in silence and without a division, by the men he had only last year led in a victorious defence against a far ly intended to give skilful labour a full share | body who takes life in defence, or fancied deof power, and it has given all power over fence, of property. He is much more likely to unskilled labour, withont knowing what unskilled labour wants. Mr. Lowe knows as little as the rest of us, and this was the weak point of an otherwise most effective and statesmanlike speech. His grand point is the impossibility of stating the political tendencies of the class below the skilled artizans, yet he immediately proceeded to state them as if he possessed the very knowledge he repudiated. Their tendency, he affirmed, would be under various forms to redistribute property, to upset "a state of society in which all evil things are given to them and all good things to others,' to realize the wise old Hindoo proverb which tells us that power and money are never separated long. The social facts, he argues, will be in oonflict with the political facts, and will certainly be brought into accord. As we put it less eloquently a fortnight since, the uncomfortable will rule the comfortable, and will strive to become comfortable too. There is no harm in that end, if it be wisely pursued, but Mr. Lowe believes that it will be pursued unwisely, under the guidance of mere desires instead of thoughts. With what eyes, he asks, will the new constituencies look upon the 26,000,000l. a year raised for a Debt they did not contract, and for which they consider themselves morally irresponsible? Will they not take off all duties from their own luxuries tea, and sugar, tobacco and liquors, and place them upon realized property, in the form of a property-tax, or a graduated income-tax, or both? Will they not, as in Qeensland, clamour for inconvertible currency, and, as in America, strive to raise wages by enormous protective duties? These detailed prophecies these Sybilline leaves, devoted to the future of finance, seem to us a little feeble.. It is quite clear the Householders will not do all these things together, for most of them are mutually destructive. They will not certainly repudiate the Debt, while putting it on the shoulders of the rich; they will not abolish indirect taxes, and put on a protective or prohibitory tariff. The Householders may be very silly, but they cannot be silly in two ways at once, and it is exceedingly doubtful if they will be silly in the direction of property rights at all. The very best representative of the new electors, indeed the only visible person who is like them at all, is the average British juryman, and in particular the juryman who sits on a coroner's inquest, and his tendency is towards a morbid appreciation of the sacredness of property. He will never convict any to enact savage laws against larceny, and grant extreme rights of self-defence, and pull down local taxation, as Mr. Hodskinson says the municipal voters of Stockport have done, than to make any attack upon property whatever. As to spirit duties, which Mr. Lowe says will be instantly abolished, our fear is that spirit-selling will be made, as in Massachusetts, a highly penal offence, as it certainly would be, in the great cities if the operatives had their own way. The danger is not that they will pillage anybody,they are quite as honest as the small tradesmen who now hold power, - but that they will in sheer ignorance demand "reforms" the effect of which will be to cripple industry; or expenditures in the shape of public works and relaxations of the Poor Law, the effect of which would be to compel the Haves to provide life annuities for the Havenots without any compensation. It is their ignorance which we dread, not their dishonesty, and in dreading it we have as few data as Mr. Lowe himself asserts any one else can boast. There, and not in any possible aberration about fiscal subjects, lies the solid and in our minds unanswerable objection to the adoption of household suffrage, unchecked and unchequered by new varieties of franchise. We are electing a new Cæsar, an absolute master, without knowing anything about him, except that if he chooses to be foolish wisdom must be silent in presence of irresistible physical force. Very likely he will not choose. If one thing was certain, a priori, in 1832, it was that the middleclass would be selfish in the matter of taxation, yet this is the thing in which its unselfishness has been most of all conspicuous, it having deliberately lifted the most painful of all burdens, the income-tax, on to its own shoulders. The history of England for ages shows that there exists somewhere in the national character, in its retentive though slow brain, which accumulates so much and initiates so little, in its heart, with its strong sympathies with all nobleness that it can understand, some antiseptic, some remedy against every form and degree of blundering. The national character is good, and in the long run the householders can only represent the nation, or be in their turn superceded by the nation itself advancing to the front. Leaders in England have almost always been wiser and better than the led, and there is no a priori reason why outside the petty boroughs the householders should be worse than the middle class, and in the last resort it is not in the petty boroughs that physical power |