HOW THE DERBYITES NURSE A CALAMITY. [From the Times, October 14]

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IX, Issue 796, 23 March 1853, Page 4

HOW THE DERBYITES NURSE A CALAMITY. [From the Times, October 14]

Lord Derby, it cannot be denied, is turning tbe Duke's death to a very good account. We b»d our misgivings, and we expressed them, when we first heard that the arrangements of the funeral were to wait the sanction of Parliament, but did not hear that Parliament was to meet at all earlier for rfae purpose. Our misgivings have now given way to a sad certainty. It is not more than a month since we lost our great man, and absolutely nothing has been done, except to fill up the vacant offices, and post sentries at Waimer. The Duke bad once the charge of a great funeral, and was more expeditious. He was present when the body of Tippoo Saib was found by torchlight, and tbe next morning he helped to lay him in tbe mausoleum of Hyder AH, with due military honours, tormented, or mocked shall we

say, by Heaven's own artillery. But after teeing the end of many great men aud the latt catastrophe of several empires, he baa himself died in quiet times, and is to be buried with all the te« diom solemnities of peace. The man who has the chief charge of bit obsequies is taking his time about it. Nobody can say that anything has been done. The numerous functionaries who expect to attend are as much in the dark as the rest. To all appearance everything will be left to Parliament, the result of which will be a double delay ; first, the delay of settling what is to be done, then the delay of doing if, and beginning from the beginning. Now, there is no doubt that every arrangement might be made provisionally. The Crown might order all the upholstery, carpentry, and other material preparations, which really appertain to the executive far more than to the legislature, and little need be left to the latter beyond the order of its own attendance at the funeral. Great as the occasion undoubtedly is, it is, after all, only a pageant, a matter for soldiers, great chamberlains, and heralds. That it might have been despatched, even by this time, may be reasonably inferred fiom the fact of nothing at all being done, for this delay can only be justified on the ground that nothing it lost by it. So far it seems too clear that Lord Derby has attempted a party gain out of a public loss. Ever since bis Government came, as they aver, unexpectedly to power, they bavt been feeding their courage and hopes from the chapter of accidents. Their feelings have been pretty much those of the schoolboy in the dieary middle of the half year, who is ever imagining some catastrophe that would hasten the holidays. What if the school were to be burnt down, or something else should happen to the master ? When a man's position is not itself a good one, or bis game rather questionable, he is apt to rest his hopes on calamities. Anything for a better hand. Under ordinary circumstances change is always to be deprecated and feared, as it is generally for the worse ; but there are those in every state to whom civil war, bankruptcy, ruin, confusion, and every disaster that can happen to nations, offer some chance, and their only chance, of extricating themselves from any embarrassing position. Not to ascribe any great depravity to Lord Derby's Government, its own friends can hardly dispute that it would have found just such a gain as we refer to in any national disaster— in an earthquake, conflagration, an invasion, or anything that would make it loyal to lean on the Executive. That possible accident, that deus c machina, came in the shape of the Duke's death. It was the something looming in the distance, foreseen by the " financial seer" of the Cabinet. The Irish famine settled the Whigs in their seats in '47; so the Protectionists hoped to get a respite, and eventually a reprieve, in the loss of England's greatest man. The object now is to nuTse this calamity and prolong the state of political suspension. As in the Critic, the clock is to be kept always striking. If Parliament would discuss the formalities of the funeral till next August, so much the better, better still if it would tben^nact a perpetual mourning, a continual procession of Lords and Commons all round and about London, and from city to city, and ap &nd_<JoFn,the provinces. Tbe pstition in Sacred Writ for leave to bury tbe dead, once granted, would have become the pretence of a perpetual exemption. The preseut untoward diLy has the same ill look. A concession has been made and the most is to be made of it. The bull's hide is to be cut into as many shreds as possible, and to compass in that way the largest possible area. This is not doing honor to the illustrious departed. When ministers hope to tide over a Ministerial crisis, and to fix themselves in their seats by the preparations aud distractions of a long-defer-red funeral, the dodge is on a level with that of contrabandists who smuggle spirits in hearses and lace in coffins. In ancient warfare we read that armies would occasionally uk to bury the dead in order to gain time for their advances ; and every schoolboy will remember how the charge of not doing due honours to tbe dead was once converted by a murderous faction into tbe pretence of an unparalleled atrocity. We shall be told, of cour.se, that nothing has yet occurred to justify tbe suspicion of wilful delay. Why, nothing has been done at all. The Austrian and Prussian Governments have already named the officers who are to represent their armies at the ceremony, but at this moment we are not aware that any officer in the British service | knows, except by his own knowledge of precedent and his own idea of propriety, whether he will have the honour of assisting. We already see in tbe city a slight sample of the interruptions this delay will unavoidably occasion. Tbe festivities at the inauguration of the Lord Mayor are no very indispensable matter certainly, and admit of postponement — not to say of entire abolition, if need be — but the -city wants them, and cannot have them this year at tbe usual timt. Odd as it may seem, because tbe Duke of Wellington died at Walmer, on September 14, there must not be a procession in the streets and a- dinner in the Guildhall of London on November 9, even though there are plenty of public dinners elsewhere, all over the kingdom, atteuded by rival Premiers, and other authoritative personagei. But, odd as it may seem, universal feeling justifies the scruple. The two processions have to traverse the saooffstreets, and impart their respective characters for the day to the same locality. The Duke's funeral will convert London into a city of mourning, and the Lord Mayor's show will make the city we need not say what. Now, a respectable city must not be supposed to pass from smiles to tears and tears to smiles with such suspicious facility. As the gingerbread coach and the other antique trumpery of the show totters and struggles along through the streets, every thoughtful spectator, not to say many a thoughtless one, will reflect that in a few days r. pageant of a very different sort will pass along that route, under that same cathedral, amid a population clad in mourning, and affected, as the mere solemnity of the scene must affect them, to tears. At all events, till tbe funeral is over, tbe streets of the city must be preserved from processions so nearly verging on the ridiculous. A Lord Mayor's show coming in the interval could only be described by the dreary image by which the unhappy Cowper pictured bis mental disorder — a funeral chamber, every now and then outraged by the irruption of a kulequin. We feel assured that tbe good sense of tLe city — which contains as much good sense as any other city — will see the propriety of postponing the show or omitting it for this year.

Thit awkwardness, howeter, serves to warn as of the much greater inconvenience to which we might be exposed by any unnecessary delay in the* arrangements for the Duke's funeral.