WHERE ARE OUR STATESMEN? [From the "Times," March 5.]

New Zealander, Volume 7, Issue 550, 23 July 1851, Page 4

WHERE ARE OUR STATESMEN? [From the "Times," March 5.]

The crisis, it appears, has its moral. There is one point in which all parties are wonderfully agreed, and that is the very small number of men at all lit, or likely, for power. We remember when it was stated as rather a striking fact, that there wore only forty men in the empire, of Mi- i nistcrial rank and capacity — men whose admission to a Cabinet would not be regarded as a blunder. That seemed rather a paradox, but nevertheless, we now boast little more than half that number. The school is declining, and it be- j gins to be a serious question whether the race of j Statesmen may not soon be extinct, and the Sovereign be forced, will or nil, to dispense with advisers. In these days of free trade it certainly j rather singular that the highest employment ' in the country, and that most essential to the : public well being, should have fallen into the hands of monopoly. Why don't the Manchester gentlemen bet up a league for free trade in office ! The Ministerial guild should be thrown open to competition, like the Indian trade, the Municipal franchise, and the corn market. According to i present appearances, a statesman like a poet, iiatscitur, non fit, excepting that he may sometimes become one by marriage. That the fact is so, is established by the consent of all the authorities, and as those authorities can give effect to their opinion, it amounts to an actual determination to chut the door against upstarts. A man, of course, ?iiayhave a hand in government,- he may make speeches, move the masses, work the press, get up associations, and make justice at last a political necessity ; but then it must be all out of doors, or in that ambiguous region — within doors or out of doors — that perpetual twilight of power, the British House of Commons, if a man will content to do his work in rather a scrubby fashion, to be a Sparticus, and lead a servile war, or to be a literary nightman, and write for the papers, he may perhaps serve the State, notorious or unknown ; but that is not the way to office. It leads in the other direction. The first authority we shall cite on this point is the Marquis of Lansdowne. On Friday evening, sfter deprecating the attempt to carry on the public business of the country, without sufficient pledges of support, he proceeded : — " Such a state of things, in my opinion, if prolonged, can never fail to be detrimental to the honour of the Ciown, injurious to the best interests of the country, and profitable only to those,— not the most respectable class of politicians — who in such circumstances find a consequence which does not naturally belong to them, and which they would not otherwise possess." We will not do his Lordship the injustice of supposing, that in these words he intended a personal insult to the half dozen gentlemen whom the difficulties of his Cabinet have brought within bight of power for the first time in their lives. Such is not the language used by British statesmen towards those who are for the nonce their actual rivals, whatever their intrinsic claims to that position. The only decent construction of these words is an avowed and wholesale disparagement of that entire second class of politicians, ■whose prospect of power is founded on the failure of the first class. His Lordship is so honestly persuaded that orthodox statecraft is vested in a vf y small clique, that he is convinced it would be a, national calamity to let in new hands. His h a wholesome jealousy, and depreciation of outsiders. Kis the old quarrel between "the trade" and interlopers, between fully qualified artisans, and independent workmen. There is not an eou

' ploy men t in the country, from the monycrs of the Mint to the colliers on the Tyne, nay, even to the gangs of Irish " navvies," where those who are in do not combine to exclude those who are out, in ilie full conviction that there is not work for all. The 'Whigs constitute thus a Political Union, which, no other unions being strong enough, has a right to the public work of the nation, and won't hcai of intruders. Lord Stanley's testimony is still wore important, because the result of a close and friendly examination, lie has seen the nakedness of the land with liis own eyes, and reports the result with dispassionate fidelity. His party, in his own words, "comprises men of talent, but unfortunately contains hardly more than one individual of political experience, and versed in the transactions of public life ;" and his Lordship's inference | is, that .without that intimate experience they are I unlit for office. He subsequently recalls even this ■ niggard allowance, this one competent Protection- ' ist. "There were few, if any men, possessed of sufficient experience or habits of public business" in his party ; and this, from a man whose standard of official application is notoriously indulgent! But how is this difficulty ever to be removed ? If a. boy is not to go into the water till he can swim, how is he ever to acquire the faculty ? Franklin, indeed, says he learnt to swim by sprawling on a table, with a frog in a basin to direct his movements; but Disraeli and his friends might sit for ever looking at the gentlemen on the Treasury Bench, without learning the trick of office front their operations. But before we reply to these discouraging views on the dearth, or rather the impending extinction of statesmen, we will add another testimony, unfortunately to much the same purpo&e. Lord John Russell, on the same evening, treated the subject rather differently, but with the same end. All that he had to do was to make a simple statement, which he did ; but that he wound it up , with a very pretentious homily on the text " Evil communications corrupt good manners," the only ! conceivable apropos of which was, that there was an immediate danger of the government falling into very bad hands ; iv fact, that something like a political swell mob was hustling him with a view I to that booty. It is not at all usual for gentlemen of honest intentions and unaiFected deportment, to deliver lectures on the cardinal virtues or the j first maxims of duty to one another, at least few but the Jenkinsons of society do so. Lord John llussell might just as well have maundered off into a discourse on sincerity, or patriotism, or forbearance ; and it would have amounted to inuendo that some of his hearers were particularly ' deficient in some of those respects. Then, why preach about good company on this occasion? His great comfort, he says, throughout the long struggle and final triumph of Parliamentary Keform, was " that he was acting with men in whom he had the utmost confidence, on whose judgment he could rely, and in whose integrity he felt the most perfect faith." Very well ; but is he in any danger of being dragged into bad company? Whom does he mean? Sir James Graham? Lord Aberdeen ? Mr. Gladstone ? the Duke of Newcastle? Mr. Sidney Herbert? Mr. Locke King ? Mr. Cobden ? Mr. Disraeli ? Some person or some actual class must be alluded to in these words, or they are a mere platitude. His quotations from Burke ought to be received with the practical comment that the writer of those words did break the trammels of party, and did find virtue elsewhere than in a clique. Going then into detail, Lord John recites the virtues of I his early advisers, and his later as well as his present colleagues; not obscurely insinuating that he and they were all equally "patriotic," incorruptible," "disinterested," "wise," "virtuous," and so on. Now, we must say, that this is a case of enormous puffery, and, what is worse, of malicious puffing, for Lord John Russell is pufling himself and his friends avowedly at the expense , of some persons or other supposed to be aspiring to power, not without a reasonable expectation of it. We might have a little hesitation in awarding these eulogies of Lord John and his friends, absolutely and without prejudice to others; but we do hesitate to bay, that all the Whigs, for the last hundred years, have exhibited a greater hatred of jobs, a greater indifference to the elevation of their families and connexions, a greater contempt of titles, orders, honours, and emoluments than any other school of statesmen. Comparisons are always invidious, but never more so than when they are made in favour of the speaker and his party. Either the peroration of ; Lord John Russell's speech was an exclusive as- j sumption of extraordinary merit in behalf of himself and his colleagues, or it meant to convey the impression that most of the other names then "on the cards" were much below the average. Common sense itself suggests a reply to this whole strain of observation. It is an insult to a free people and a constitutional State to allege that the faculty of government is confined among us just to a score or two hands. What becomes of all our numerous institutions for self-govern-ment, our local magistracy, our hereditary legislators, and our 606 representatives in the Lower llou&e, with the ordeal of committee business they are made to undergo, if, with all this apparatus of political training, the sacred gift of government is, after all, an heirloom in two or three families! Surely there is no lack of business habits in this country ; surely we have method enough, and can stick to our desks if occasion require. The mere natural faculty of government must be common enough; as well as a sufficient aptitude for routine. Sociates said, and proved satisfactorily, that a man who can conduct dramatic entertainments, or public games, well, has all the qualities required for the service of the commonwealth ; and an aposfJe intimates, that a man who manages his own household well, is, so far, qualified for a bishopric. The most fatal blunders of statesmen, — those that lead to war or rebellion, that alienate colonies and disgust the people, that shackle commerce, or ensnare the conscience, are offences against common sense and common humanity, not against the esoteric rules of office, or any secret of state-craft. It has always been the boast of the British people that they can adapt themselves to any useful employment, possessing great versatility together with stz'ong principle and judgment. How easily our youngsters govern India, and how quickly have ; our kinsmen across the Atlantic become a great Empire I Are, then, the British people to be supposed generally incapable of governing, and l dependent on the precarious boon of one or two families, of heaven sent statesmen ! Some fallacy, not to say fraud, may morally be suspected when so monstrous an absurdity is palmed upon us. For the honour of the country we will not believe it, but will rather conclude that they who tell us this arc themselves under some serious mistake as to the nature of true government.