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    lected they would fill several libraries . You cannot remember a sentence , not a saying , not a thought of those speeches ; but that consideration does not lessen our astonishment at , and our admiration of , the work . Our political constitution might be improved , and our electoral machinery might be improved , but no system could turn up a better workman , a more splendid administrator , than Sir James Graham ; and such a reflection may influence us when we reach next session and the Reform Bill . And our admiration of the athlete is enhanced in observing , that thirty years of work have not made the slightest change in mind or body . The thirty years have been a perfect circle .

    That giant frame is as fresh , and that copious countenance as complacent , as when first in 1826 the Knight of Netherby went in for the British Lion I And , singular completeness of a felicitous career , he is now sitting for that Carlisle which first wooed and won him ; and he holds at sixty-one precisely the office which was given him—his first—about thirty years ago ! The young Tories who think that they are serving the cause by representing that the Conservative leaders of ' 41— ' 46 were all rogues or fools , are partial to the depicting of one of the shallowest of men as a Talleyrand ; and they may take the hint to suggest the Chaldean serpent for the Netherby crest , if only as the symbol of—nothing .

    For a great clerk—otherwise a great administratoris always a great clerk : experience only diminishes the clerk ' s chance of being more than a clerk . In a nation of settled society and established principles , Sir James Graham would have been a statesman ; but in England , which is a nation where class eternally wars against class , —which is a pity , but a fact , —a Sir James Graham inevitably becomes confused , and , if

    he aims at statesmanship , assuredly makes a mess of it . Sir James Graham ' s career , as a statesman , is one of the most marvellous messes even of modern British politics ; and it is a painful proof of the paucity of genius in the Governing Classes , and of the ignorance of the g overned classes , that this eminent and worthy gentleman is still in high office , and still supposed , by many , to be a reliable leader of a great people .

    Sir James Graham has lived through the long war between the middle class and the landed class , and he is a complete failure at last , because , attempting to finesse between the two , he has lost the confidence of both . A cleverer man might have failed in such an attempt , but Sir James Graham ' s failure has been ludicrous , for nature never fitted him to be an intriguer . He attempted to reconcile the theory witli the practice

    of the Constitution , and that was a hopeless undertaking . A Liberal-Conservative is a possible politician only to the man who is Liberal one year , and Conservative another year ; but the danger is that , in the third year of the transformation , both sides find him out . And Sir James Graham , has passed his life in getting found out—in candidly inviting discovery . The honest man solicited the notice of Diogenes : wherefore Diogenes passed him by .

    You can , in England , serve t wo masters , Crown and Parliament , like Lord John Russell . But you cannot serve Crown , Parliamont , and people . You can bo a Conservative Minister and talk Whiggery to Mr . Speaker . But you cannot bo a Conservative Minister and talk Democracy to the mob at a hustings . Sir James Graham has tried thin , and has not succeeded : is hated by the land , not trusted by Manchcttter , anil not known to tho people . This is becaiiHe Sir James Graham always lives bo completely in tho present . Hit ) political past is laat week , his

    political future , next week—at furthest , next besHion : ho looks , therefore , noithor backwa rds nor forwards , is , wiiHoquently , always vehement , and in generally , Miorcforo , foolish . Perhaps , on tho whole , ho ifl the hxliHcrisotoHt man who overlived ; ho ia always burning Iuh ships behind him , and always escaping in a coclcliont . To give ono among a thousand illuHtrationn ; i ' or hiHtanco , kin sillier explanations of his silly luist-• iigH speech , against Louis Napoleon . Ho is always

    billing to plesmo , but as to whom ho pleases , who < - (> inon first , or who speaks loudest . Ho goon down l >« foro a league ; but ho ifl very resolute until tho loaguo coincR up . Ho takes euro of to-day , and brunts to to-morrow to take care of itself—in legislation . Ho hopes tho Constitution will last his time , but , if not , and ho in proved to lend a hand , why ho will work luwd at its demolition . As in tho Admiralty , tho Duke of Wellington ia an incomparable Screw , while

    her superior is on the stocks , so , in the House , everything is perfect , until the time has come for a change . That is Sir James's phrase- —" The period has now arrived , Sir . " No revolution takes him unawares . If the Day of Judgment were to arrive during his term of office , he would be prepared to suggest " the exigencies of the occasion , Sir . " Hence , though he is supposed to be a Talleyrand , he is always simple and sincere * He defended the Corn-Laws with sincerity , — with pathos : and he attacked them with as good faith —still with plentiful pathos . He grew red in the face

    with hearty British indignation when he assaulted Louis Napoleon : and he opened Mazzini ' s letters , to oblige Austria , with unflinching complacency . He insisted that the paupers of Andover got on capitally on bone-dust ; and he wept when Peel , in his resignatory oration , talked of the bread that was to be eaten by the poor man , " unleavened , &c . He has unsaid everything he ever said , and indeed everything he ever ( Jidj—and remains an honest squire , still- —being only a dull man , not a dishonest one—an ambitious man , not

    a tricky man . It is not his fault that he has an animal head , only , and not an intellectual head . If he had principles , he'd be glad of ' em : but he hasn ' t ; so he works : and when a difficulty turns up gets over it as well as he can : talks gently at the House , and leers at the nation—and doesn't regret his choice of a profession , particularly not when in office . He'd feel pleased to be considered a Talleyrand ; but there ' s an awful fear at his heart that men are just , and only suppose him to be stupid .

    What Sir James Graham s future is to be—for he'll stick to the House ten years more—it is easy to delineate ; it will be like Sir James Graham ' s past—athletical dodging between perplexities , as they present themselves , That he does not comprehend his time or his country is very clear ; and now he is not so well placed as he was in ' 41- ' 6 , behind Peel ; he is in a Coalition which has no chief—and there is great danger when Sir James has to take an . independent course . Perhaps in a career of consternations , Sir James was never so puzzled as at this moment : for at this moment he is not only without a chief to command , but he

    is in presence of a country without a cry . Yet Sir James is pledged to Reform : he bid as high as Lord John , on the spur of the moment , one evening in the House of Commons ; and very likely he will continue to pass the same word to the Peelites which he passed from ' 46 to ' 51 , " always top Lord John "Lord John to propose , and Sir James to dispose . But 'what statesmanship ! Our public heroes must be tested in that way . Let any Great Briton of good memory sit down and endeavour to realize his vague impressions about his crack statesmen . " For instance—what are Sir James Graham ' s principles , his policy , his convictions , his intentions ? Sir James Graham stands sit this

    moment unpledged to everything but cutting down salaries at tho Admiralty , and Parliamentary Reform ; and hia pledge on Parliamentary Reform amounts to this : —that be would extend the suffrage , but only in such a way as would bo " consistent with the conservation of all our institutions . Aro there not a few other questions of the day for a great people ? Sir Jamos hopes that thero aro ; lie likes work ; and has no weak shame about inconsistency ; but he is not going to answer them until he can hoar thorn distinctly when sitting in his bureau . No man will ho nioro frank or moro onorgotic , when ho is spared tho trouble of thinking 1 by an explicit national ordor to act . Even

    if tho ordor bo directed against any ono of tho institutions ho now considers ought to bo conserved . Did ho over refuse to obey the popular will 1 He has been tho tool of tho middle class since 1830 ; and now that tho niiddlo class have got all that thoy want , and are turning conservative-, why Sir James wil l bo tho tool of tho working olaHH , when they're ready . Mr . Crowo in that brilliant political novel , "Charles Dolmor " makes tho profound observation that henceforth tho democracy of England has to play tho middle class against the aristocratic clans , and to see which will bid most for tho popular support : in such tactics would not Sir ¦ James bo an excellent democratic loader ? Non-Emcotoh .

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    RUSSIAN SERFDOM . [ bBOONP AttTIOlK . ] Thb rustic labourer ( jn-otetairc ) is not , gonorally speaking , a revolutionist , like tho operatives of groat viticn . In those douse liivcn of monopolized industry , in those huge Pandomonia of luxury and starvation , of beggary

    and debauch , of famished ignorance and UasS corruption , of squalid pauperism and insolent gold , of colossal financiers and blazoned Macaires , of whirling wealth , and maddening want , and cruel contrasts , —in great cities , no doubt , the working man becomes a revolutionist ; not so in the solitude of the fields . It requires long centuries of suffering and a religious struggle to create a war of the peasants , as in the sixteenth century . Talk of dissolving the Russian commune ! I should like to know whether the few Russians who propose such a measure have ever seriously reflected on the

    scheme . What would remain , I ask , if we tore out this vital nerve of our national existence ? The Russian people has endured every loss , and has only preserved the commune . Is it at a time when it occurs to so many of the thinkers of Western Europe to deplore the excessive subdivision of the soil , that we should , with a blind levity , root up an institution which we have only to conserve passively , foritmaintains itself spontaneously in the people and by the people , attached to it by interest and by tradition , as to the one sole right which rapacity and oppression have not yet wrung from their hands .

    The commune is , I am aware , accused of being incompatible with individual liberty . Was this liberty wanting before the abolition of the day of Youri ( St . George )? Did it not create , beside the permanent village , the moving commune , the voluntary association of Artel ( artisans ) and that other purely martial commune of the Cossacks ? That fixed rural commune left to individual liberty and initiative a part quite large enough , since it never ceased to provide for and to nourish its twin legitimate offspring—one the mounted and moving rampart of the country ; the other , hatchet in hand , transporting himself wherever work invited him .

    True , the members of the Cossack communes were not individually absorbed or effaced by them . Even those who may have read Gogol ' s novel , Tar asBoulba , have little idea that a similar story occurred in the time of Alexander I . An aged Cossack , who refused to submit to the ferocious disci pline of the military colonies , after receiving himself a few thousand blows with a stick , witnessed in silence the barbarous punishment inflicted on his eldest son , and only opened his lips to inquire how it was that his younger son was spared . When he learned that the latter bad purchased impunity by submission , the old father embraced his eldest son , cursed the son who had recoiled before the punishment , covered himself up in his casaquine , and perished on the spot .

    Cossackry { la Cosacqucrie ) is a palpable proof that the popular life in Russia contained in itself the complement of the peaceable existence of the rural commune . Cossackry , in fact , threw open an escape for all reckless and impatient spirits thirsting for adventure , hungry after excitement , panting for dangerous exploits , and a wild independence . It corresponded perfectly with that principle of unrestrained turbulence which we express by the word oudal , and which ia one of the characteristic features of the Sclavonic race .

    Tho Cossacks , indefatigable sentinels at the moat exposed frontiers of their country , founded at these perilous outposts military , republican , and democratic communities , which were still in existence at the beginning of tho eighteenth century . Theirs is a brilliant history . The Zua porogucs were tho knighterrants of the democratic commonalty . Unyielding , indomitable brigands , rather than . subjects of any authority whatsoever , they seemed to inherit those vague .

    presentiments , those prophetic instincts which distinguished the Norman races . Under Ivan IV ., a band of Cossacks conquered Siberia . Their chief ; Yimrnli , not content with having penetrated as for : m Tobolsk , reared with a dying hand his standard at Jrlcounk . After him , another Cossack pushed on across icy wastes , as if lie were drawn by nomo magnotic influence , to tho Pacific Ocean : perhaps by a proHcntimenfc of the immenso significance of Russia advancing her bounds to tho very frontiers of America .

    Nothing but tho imbecility of the German Government at frt . Petersburg could have failed to comprehend nuoh an institution as thnt of tho Ooosaeks . Peter tho Great was tho firnt to oppress them , too happy to bo furniflheri with a pretext by Mazoppa . Catharine reduced millions of thorn to slavery . Nicholas destroyed their democratic organisation by making nobles of their elected officers , and ho tried even to corrupt their popular balladn . Such an institution wan , of course-, Honrcoly reconcilable with the military code of RuHHia . It w / ih thought far wiser to crcaf . 0 out of brutal violence thono al > Hiir < l military colonies than to permit hoiuo developments to a flourishing .-u » l profoundly popular institution .

    It io not to ho disputed that the communal life of tho RuHHinri villages and tho republicanism of tho Cossack camps would ill satisfy the aspirations' later European theorists . All whh embryonic in thoir constitution . Individual liberty was everywhere sacrificed to a democratic and patriarchal brothorliood . But who pulls down an unfinished house in tho idea of rebuilding it on tho name plan ' ( It is no merit of ours to have proHorvod with an . immutable quietism that communal institution which tho German peoples had long loot amidst tho vioinnifcudoB of thoir hiutory . But

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    November 12 , 1853 ] THE LEADEB , 1093 —————— —¦ ii ¦ m «¦ ¦ ii ¦ ' — i " ' ' ' : _ . — ^—________ —_—_———______ _______________ . ^ ________~~~~—^^»^»^ w^—i^^—»——w ^ w —««—^ w ^——*»^^~—

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 12, 1853, page 1093, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2012/page/13/