BEACONSFIELD THE MESME. RIST.

Samoa Times and South Sea Gazette, Issue 52, 28 September 1878, Page 4

BEACONSFIELD THE MESME. RIST.

'1 ha interest of the political melodrama intrciuscs, and the eulmating point in tho fortunes pi Lord Beaconsfield will :;oon be reached. It is difficult to find ■words which will fitly describe the splendours of the imposiug climax. The political history of at least four veal's of the last three decades of the century will 1.0 written in the simple phrase —the .Disraeli dispensation. No Tory statesman, unless it be Pitt, and perhaps Pitt hhould scarcely be excepted, ever won a personal triumph at all comparable with that achieved by the present Prime Minister. Ue lias identified his will with the Sovereign's ; he has identified it with the people's; ho has imposed it upon submissive Parliament; he has moulded a j;reat and plastic party to his own high design j he has established his born paramount ascendency in a Cabinet from which every stubborn or intractable element has been ejected. For the time Lord Beaconsfield is not only the head of the Government, he is the Government itsolf. He has been oompared, in a clever article in nn ably conducted review, to the nineteenth-century mayni<:mn opera-uouffe. A not less appropriate Bmile for him might be found in the T.erlorming mesmerist who operates upon a provincial audience, and who makes its most respectable member go through a series of grotesque and indecorous antics. First one staid and stanch Troy lm i:-.tonLshed us by his marvellous acquiescence in the dictates of the great manipu-l-.<,ji. £H*£iooij huvo tto tccjvcieil from our surprise when another, equally little addicted to wild and incomprehensible exhibitions, has writhed in some fantastic posture, or lies insisted upon breaking out into a comic dance. The man of peace has suddenly raised the warwhcop, struck a martial attitude, and then as suddenly has sunk into stupor. Individuals who have been friends from boyhood have in a moment discovered that the seeds of a mortal enmity are :;own between thorn, have alternately denounced, traduced, intrigued against each ether. Cautious Conservative gentlemen, "who are accustomed to weigh well their >vordj, have given each other tho lie direct in a violent impulse of passion, and next -with a cynical disregard of consistency have contradicted themselves. They have seen their old-fashioned notions of candour, sincerity, and fair play outraged, and they have smiled with approval. They have seen a new standard of political conduct erected, and they have thundered forth applause. Nothing like this has ever been witnessed iu the whole history of English politics. The two Pitts wore powerful Ministers, so was Peel, and so was Palnierston. But neither of the Pitts played fast and loose with their party ; and when Peel went further than his followers, he fell. Of him Lord Beaconsfield has written that be played upon the House of Commons as if it were an old fiddle; of Lord i >ua consfield himself it should b; writio . that he played upon Parliament 03 if it ■were a Jew's harp. Peel could never have made the Conservatives swallow the Reform Bill of 1807 ; it is quite certain that Lord Beaconsfield could have carried all his party with him in abojisiun 0 ino corn laws.

For the moment Lord Beaconsfield is not-merely tin; English Government: ho is England itself. In his capacity of supreme ruler and tutelary genius of England, he is about to stand forth before lEuvope and the world It may be that the curtain will soon fall, and rise upon another act of a very different character. But it will at least fall upon him in a more majestic attitude than an English Prime Minister has ever struck, and the dazzling radiance of the limelight will bring out a unique figure into an unpreoedentedly conspicious relief. At the forthcoming Congress Lord Beaconsfield, with Lord Salisbury—this itself is a combination which significantly symbolizes the personal triumph of the Premier —and Lord Odo Russell, will represent England. It is true that Lord Beaconsfield is so imperfeotly acquainted with the French lauguage that when M. Their's " History of the Consulate an Empire " appeared, he was c mpolled to wait for its perusal till a translation was published, and that ho would scarcely be able to follow a conversation in the diplomatic tongue. That matter not Lord Beaconsfield will bavo Lord Odo as expert and superior clerk in attendance, and his name will descend to posterity 83 one of the arbiters of Europe at a momentous crisis of affairs. Where nothing is ce - tain but the unforeseen, it is vain to pre diet what new revelations of policy he may have in reserve for the occasion. The sir is full of omens, and the peraading sentiment is that of the fateful anticipation which is the precursor of astounding events. For good or for evil, the roan who holds the immediate future of Llngland in the hollow of his hand has decided that we shall break with the policy of the present reign. He probably [egrets that nt her Majesty's accession the Crown of England was separated from that of Hanover. In the Palmeistoiii.ui period we wen' an island with an ompiro: henceforth we arc to become an empire with an island. England may be the head-quarters and habitat of the I'.nglish Monarchy, just ox Washington is the politital capital of the United •States. But the true England is (bo «m----(iire on which tin- win Mvcr sol-., of which India is as integral a part as "heat Britain, of which Asia is just as much the true continent as Europe, of which tho I>oily telegraph in its most ■ levated'moments is the inspired andnfHciul organ, A won, said the I'iimo Min

utter, iu tile oourxo 'if the debate no Um Imperial Titles Bill, is inemlwr far Melliourue one year and for London tlio next For the future the Mediterranean is to be tho Englishmen's washpot, while over India he is to cast forth his shoe. We arc vague rumours of negotiations in London and Paris for a Franco-English occupation of the Kingdom of the Khedi.'. A policy of English interests has given way to Imperial interests and European law. England is to be a European dictatress and an Asiatic empress. The jiolicy of the defenco of European law is closely allied, it teems, with the policy of equivalents. It is significantly hinted that Egypt will not bo enough. The ambitious vision expands itself, and the long vista of preliminary splendours loads up to the annexation of Jbyria and the protectorate ot Asia ilinor. In other words, the Eastern question is to be solved for tho present by virtually settling upon England the inheritance oi the purely Asiatic empire of the Turk. Such is tho conclusion to which the gossip of official circles and the hints thrown out, not ambiguously, by inspired newspapers point.

It is a magnificent prospect, but has it no malign possibilities, no inherent perils ? The first obvious comment upon it is that, whatever its glories and its virtues, it is entirely novel, utterly unlike anything whicn it has yet entered into the mind of English statesmanship tocenceivo. England has long held ft considerable portion of the gorgeous Eo.it in foe, but as yet there has never been any talk of orientalising England. For good or for evil we are now about to enter a new era of English history—English Imperialism fashioned as nearly as possible after the French pattern. At home wo have the earnest of this in the principle of the plebiscite which a Conservative Administration has thought fit to adopt. In India it is illustrated by the inauguration of an Indian order in precise keeping with the Napoleonic model, by a gagged Press, by recognizing as native princes petty Asiatic despots, who are in reality the chiefs of aboriginal robber-tribes.- The experient may succeed admirably, but it is an experiment. It is a clear vessel of the traditions and the practice of recent years. It would be an abuse of language to speak of it as an emphatic reassertion of tho Civis Romanus sum doctrine of Palmerston. It is the more or less theatrical declaration that England, being au Asiatic Power, has a voice in the settlement of all European affairs. Lord Beaconsfield attend- the Congress, and his presence there will be hailed as proclamation of the fact that the same individual may at any moment aspire to be Prime Minister of England and dictator of Europe. Wo are thus entering upon a vast pr iperty of responsibilities, whose weight has yet to be realized, and the only question is whether our existing administrative machinery is eq.ial to the new demand which will ba made upon it. Five years ago Lord Beaconsffeld in-* formed the students of .Glasgow that that when Caius Julius perceived that the colossal empire created by tho populace and senate of Rome could not be administered on the municipal institutions of a single city he understood the spirit of his ogo. Is Lord Beaconsfield about to give us a similar proof of his epoch, and may we expect soon to be told that the time has come wh'.m r-.o Asiatio empire cannot exist on the basis of a British monarchy Y A policy oi the heroic kind, like that of wuie:i we no hear, calls for new instruments. In what or in whom will they be found ? The World.