Lists (None yet)

Login to create lists

Tagged (None yet)

Add Tags

Comments (None yet)

Add New Comment

5 corrections, most recently by anonymous - Show corrections

ROBERT LOWE.

i "^-i-g" ??>-r j

(From the Spectator, July 7.)    

Mr LOWE is the great reputation of the session in the   House of Commons. No stranger now goes there with- out first looking for the white gleam, or rather flash, of his striking head, or listening anxiously for the cold sardonic ring of his loud voice, which vibrates like a glass bell through the House, penetrating it with a shiver of half mocking intelligence. There has always been a glamour of mischief about his manner, a certain air of luxury in his mode of administering intellectual " punishment' to weaker opponents, and an isolation of his position,—that of a man of brilliant capacities who had disembarrassed himself of most of the ordinary political traditions, and laughed privately at them all,—which, taken together, have up to tho pre- sent session robbed him of the opportunity for a first rate success. Indeed, no one can gain a great political success in England by virtue of mere individual power, without also representing, by accident, if not from any deeper cause, a wide-spread and deeply ingrained feeling. Only this session, since the Reform Rill became a serious question, have the sheen and shimmer of mischievous intellectual scorn with which Mr Lowe knows so well how to invest equally a traditional Tory sentiment and a sanguine popular enthusiasm, been concentrated   by a great party exigency into a scathing and destruc-     tive lightning in the well directed forked flashes of which the Tories have rejoiced, though keen eyed spectators have seen that even these proceeded more from a negative tone of mind, an electric repulsion for the temper they struck at, than from any living  

flame of faith in the cause they defended. Mr Lowe,   in the jarring sarcasm with which he ever brings his audience back to the test of immediate utilities and " payment by results," in the warmth of his eulogies   on the triumphs of our material civilisation, on the clear and visible advantage of accumulated capital, enlarged manufactures,and unfettered trade and most of all, in the clear, carefully disciplined, theoretic intellect with which he scoffs at intellectual theory,   ridicules intuitive beliefs, and a priori principles of   justice, and appeals to the more tangible and coarser

fruits of experience, sometimes seems a sort of Parlia-     mentary Mephistopheles, tempting his raw pupil,

with the Mephistophelain assurance that, after all,  

intellect is naught, except so far as it leads to enjoy- ment of sense, or, as Mephistopheles in Faust's pro-   fessional gown says to the poor scholar—

" Grau, theurer Freund ist alle Theorie,  

Und grun des Lebens goldner Baum "  

" Theory, dear friend is poor and grey, you see,  

And green the foliage of life's golden tree. '    

Mr Lowe's ability is no new discovery to tho House. The new point is, as we said, the accident (in some sense) that has enabled him to use that ability in defence of a great, and united, and compact constitutional party in the side of which he had pre- viously been a festering thorn, and this without even   the least infidelity to his own sceptical and material- istic principle. The Revised Education Code was his   great battle-ground with the very party of which he is now the trusted independent adviser, and yet tho     Revised Education Code proceeded on the very prin-   ciple which he is now striving to apply in resisting Reform. The certificated schoolmasters, the country clergy, and as much as any tho Conservative squires who drove him from office, assailed him, when he first announced the educational principle of "payment by results," as a cruel, des- tructively utilitarian Radical, who never hesitated to strike at either privileges or rights in tho interest of what he called "common sense," and who was willing to trample out all the tender, delicate growths of that refined culture which tells on education in directly, socially, and almost invisibly, and which  

cannot be gauged by the size of schools or the success   of pupils. And they were right in their conception of him, though wrong in withstanding him on that

particular measure. But the time came when Mr.      

Lowe, without deviating a hairsbreadth from the   principle on which he fought the education reform,— the pure utilitarian principle of " payment by results,"   —has enlisted from the very ranks which then fought most furiousy against him an enthusiastic follow- ing, by making the very same principle tell, or seem to tell, in favour of Conservatism, in favour of the representative system as it is, and against all change. Nor has the consistency been only apparent.

On all great questions alike Mr Lowe has been and is   guided by the same idea, by calculations of tangible and material prosperity as the test of political truth, and has shown himself anxious to keep all the power he   can in the hands of the most calculating classes,— the classes most alive and susceptible and tangible, most indifferent and obtuse to spiritual and ideal, conse- quences. Of course there are, there always must be, plenty of like minded men in the House, but what has made Mr. Lowe remarkable is the swift intellectual   insight, the varied attainments, the sarcastic wit, the theoretic understanding, the imaginative vacacity, which he has placed at the service of the principle which he adopts, and which those who possess them almost always use rather to depre- ciate than to magnify materialistic and utili- tarian progress. It is the curious flashes of high intellectual power on behalf of so common place, and even so vulgar a principle, the exquisite temper of the blade which springs from so coarse a handle, the highly disciplined intellect which makes light of high intellectual discipline, that give the unique character to Mr Lowe's position. For it   is not in Mr Lowe's misanthropic cynicism striking   a blow in disgust at its own heart, which induces him to praise wealth, and property, and all that is tangible in civilisation, while he makes sport of tradition, and   sentiment, and popular enthusiasm, and all that is ideal in politics. As far as we can see, his conviction is genuine and is not due to the mere restlessness of intellectual disappointment with higher things. He     has spoken with as much power against the aspirations of Irish tenant farmers, in favour of the landlords and the influence of landed property in Ireland, as he has in England against the working class and in favour of the middle class. And why? Because he regards the landlords of Ireland as a more shrewd, calculating prosperous class, possessed of a far keener sense of the material value of property than Irish, tenant farmers. What is the true secret of his evidently keen aversion to tho working class in England? That he regards them as likely to be in-   fluenced by sentiments, ideas, enthusiasms, God   knows what, anything but obvious utilitarian calcula- tion. " It is not the educated and reflective," he said, in the most remarkable passage of his recent speeches, "who are influenced by ideas, but the half   educated and the unreflective; and if you show to the ignorant, and poor, and half educated, wrong,       injustice, and wickedness anywhere, their generous   instincts rise within them, and nothing is easier   than to get up a cry for the redress of these grievances. We feel the injustice too; but we   look not mercy at the injustice itself, we look before and after at the collateral circumstances, at what must happen to trade, revenue, and our own position in the world, and we look also to what must happen to the very poor persons themselves before we commit our selves to a decided course. Persons, also, who have something to lose are less anxious to lose it than those   who have little at stake often, even though these last may by the loss be reduced to absolute poverty." In   other words, Mr Lowe is in favour of the class which   calculates most, and calculates by preference its   material interests,—or, as he elsewhere calls it, the middle class, which stands between tho very highest in whom riches, pride, and high blood often subdue the sensitiveness for material consequence, and tho poorest, in whom the sense of the value of pro- perty is but half developed, and unable to fight with advantage against popular sentiments and ideal enthusiasms. Mr Lowe showed the same strong bias in a still more remarkable form in his curious eulogy about two months ago on the Civil Engineers, and his high comparative estimate of the applied sciences and practical arts which engineers are obliged to master, as compared with the classical and logical or purely   scientific and intellectual culture of the Universities. Of the study of ancient languages he spoke con- temptuously as ''a minute analysis of the forms of expression and the modes of thought which were used by people many thousand years ago, and con- cerning which there was much controversy, and no certainty could be arrived at,"—while "the studies of civil engineers were not only as wide as the domain of nature, but their area was continuaiy increasing with a rapidity no one could gauge. The civil engineers were the heirs of all the ages, and the field of their investigation was boundless." " He hoped if ever the day arrived when tho Universities, rising to the true level which they should occupy, became really na- tional establishments, the science of engineering would   be admitted to at least a perfect equality with every other branch of knowledge. " The tubular bridges, electric telegraphs, express trains, monster steamships deserve, Mr Lowe tells us, to rank as the high-tide   marks of human progress; the sciences which enable us to make them, to be thought of as the noblest departments of human culture ; and the political constitution which most actively promotes them—the political constitution which gives tho greatest impulse to physical prosperity and enter- prise,—to be cherished as the highest achievement

of human sagacity in the department of political

wisdom.

No one, however, who thinks of Mr Lowe's principles as having their roots in a rather low utilitarian system of politics, can fail to be struck by the striking contrast between his political creed and that of Mr. J. S. Mill, the great champion of the utilitarian system of ethics on which Mr Lowe   builds, tho most deadly antagonist of those principles of intuitive morality and natural justice against which Mr Lowe inveighs, the most eminent exponent of that     science of political economy by which Mr Lowe loves to test the worth of political classes. Both have great powers of sarcasm, yet Mr Lowe's sarcasm is the inversion, as it were, of Mr Mill's sarcasm. The one mocks at failure, the other at that which falsely calls itself success. Mr. Lowe scoffs like a man of the world at the poorer classes, under various forms, now asking if the principles of the Reform party would not warrant a Beast Parliament such as we hear of in Reineke Fuchs, now, again, re- minding them that the poor would be kept better aware of their own power than " Curran's fleas, who, if they had been unanimous, would have pushed him out of the bed." Mr. Mill, on the other hand, strikes   upwards in the social scale with his sarcasms, explain- ing gravely, for instance, that he never said " that al- most all Conservatives were stupid, but only that al- most all stupid people were Conservatives," and that this, so far from being a reflection upon them, is a great tribute to the enormous power of the party ;— or remarking on another occasion,   that though the working classes made up 26 per cent

of the borough registers and "had all this power of shaking our institutions, they so obstinately persisted in not doing it, that honourable gentlemen are quite alarmed, and recoil in terror from the abyss into which they have not fallen." There is the same contrast in   the tone of the two men on their favourite common science, political economy. Mr. Lowe never raises   an opportunity of making it enforce the principle of the "devil take the hindmost," Mr Mill never misses an opportunity of making it enforce the prin- ciple that competition is not, though it may be necessary to, progress ; and that the highest state of society is very probably the stationary state, in which so much is gained for true moral leisure and generous humanities that wealth ceases to accumulate and different sections of society to "higgle " for its divi- sion. The true difference between the two men as

thinkers is that Mr Lowe, plunging deeply into the   selflsh struggles of the world, and clambering with

hardy aim and physical strength, as it were, above it,   has come out with a shrewd contempt for what he has seen, and falls back on the physical strengths of tho     universe, in eluding of course physical science as tho     most potent part of physical strength, as laying the   foundation of all things —while Mr Mill, who has   lived the life of a student, and risen to tho surface of political life by virtue of the generous admiration with   which many of his thoughts have filled the minds even of those who do not concur in his philosophy, has kept his faith in humanity fresh, in spite of a theory which traces back its best elements to rather poor and pale beginnings. Thus Mr Lowe's sarcasm     is produced by tho friction of a highly disciplined     intellect drawn swiftly and closely over the superficial facts of life, and bring- ing out that half musical, half shrill and   discordant sort of sound, thrilling to tho very blood, which you draw with a wet finger from the edge of a finger glass,—Mr Mill's by the warm friction of a   delicate, sensitive, moral temperament, with the same surface, producing a multitude of bright electric sparks and no dissonances,—his fine intellect serving after all more to account for, or at most modify, his creed and prepossessions, or rather faith, than to de-

termine them.

Mr Lowe is really far the more dangerous man of the two, even to Conservatives, though the quiet country rector did decide with so much sur- prise, on reading one of his late speeches,   that " Property, then, has nothing to fear from him," while many scores of pages could   be quoted from Mr Mill's works showing that " pro     perty has something to fear from Mr Mill. For though on the whole Mr Lowe's respect for physical     power, success, and prosperity has thrown his influ- ence into the scale of wealth as against poverty, yet   the very same feeling induces him to make light of all   idealities, sentiments, and obligations, and so to dis-     solve the very moral cement of society, while Mr. Mill, who loosens stones in the structure here and there, and now and then removes mortar which is   sound and binding enough, yet uses his whole influ-   ence to rebuild and recement the structure he attacks, and so greatly deepens the general sense of disinter- ested social duties. Thus Mr Lowe defends the   citadel of the Constitution with an engine the mere   vibration of which threatens its foundations more dangerously than ten of Mr Mill's assaulting parties,   which would at most only effect breaches in the walls,   and afterwards multiply greatly the number of those anxious to repair and to defend them.

Du ISOKMAN MACLPO» ON TUB UVOIIIK«,-At tv suite, held in connection with "st Col tuna s (Gaelic) Lhuich, tiksjow, on lucsdaj evening, a piper made lu» nppiuruncu on the plalfoim, und played Mvcril nu s, to the evident delight of the audience Dr. Mai lied nturvvurds addrtsscd the meeting, and ia the couru of his remarks spoke as fillowí -"Iden't know what it is that s about this Highland mus.c, but I have 1er a numbei of jean, been hearing music of the boBt kint-1 niulplajcil hv the worlds best per- formers, and 1 can listen and enjoj it with all my heart, but thi moment I hear that nula bagpipe, >t tnk s me bj the throat (I tughtcr ind applause ) If ev ir YOU find ii Highlander that d»es nut care about the bagpipe, take care to got a receipt fr i n lura when jou pnj hmi nu account (Hours if laughter ) II he las no uusicul eat dont bl une the poor fellow, but pitj hun (renewed laue,hti r) , but if he hos a musical ear, nnd don t like the pipes, take-v ou care of that ohnp (Laughter) lhere HU great deal of talk just now nbumt ore, ins, but I think there is a great advantage in nn nutr uneut which m not filled with wm4 bv the handle m « bellows, but bj the strong heart j brtatn of nn out and out High lundman (Great )ku_,httr) Did jim e\er hear oí an organ being plij ed in alvin oof i n r'iment going up in the Lilaree »t-ain-.! th» Irene i« VVInt wojld organs have done in L,» pt «mil ut W i rloo ' (Laugh- ter ) M hv a singlo «h it vu ni 1 have Itstroyed them. "What tould thev htm done in the (» ii vi) bolt with n heavv breeze blowing in i e,rtii<l Iii hliuid glen, or on ino top ol our nun m mis ( VppI lusc ) lhero is no music in the wotld lu be conjured with the buepipi (Renewed aj pi m t ) I s ) it seriously. "lou cannot unpnive th b i^mpc it is the bett of its kind (*nMilei its a sociutions

People who dont know nu a--» > t mons dont uiiiUtsttiid them, anti the unies the pity (laughter) \\ hen j ou und I heal the b itfpipc, it is not men 1) hearing the sound', th it iona Irom its drone, it ia moro than tint, for we ilr^im if tho old {.len and tha Id hrtsuli Whenever j iu hear it thiouL,hout the wt rid-undi have heird it in many plaiib-it al«ii)s sets a Highl udor dreiming He bigina to du ¡un of the old li u e in tile jld glen, and he sets in it his father, his mother, au i his kins nen , he thean s of the old kirk, mid ho SILO the people m it, of the church) ard, and he thmkb f those who are hing in it-all cuni» up to his i ua^iiu'ton at the call of the bagpipes (Loud opplinse ) It is very dithcult, to (leone what this music is There i«¡ music in nr.

ture th it jou cannot set down for the pianoforte It le in the roaring of the wind», in the moaning of tho waves, and ni the crv of the wild bird-aad all this jou hear m the bagpipes It is the music that the Highlanders understand best and though a High- lander maj live till he l» fourscore j ears of n^e, and hear all the music that was ever composed, yet there is something m the bagpipes that will stir him when nothing else can (Great cheering )

litt AOE PI ONE HUVDUFD \LAUS-Theree^ist, I beheve, a school of sutibticiuns which maintains) that there is no credible evidence of any human being having tv cr attained the age ot 100)ears If they are right, most wonderful and inexplicable forgorieo of registers trust baie bein committed, for tne French, papers, among their New \cai s news, publish, with names, dates, and full particulars, a list, ti quarter of a column long, of ccntenanuns deceased m 18(35 alone, many of whom lived not merilj to be 100 but to tho ages of 107, 113, and many ligures ascenduig to 120 Die Moniteur of this morning contain* an Impend! decree conferring the rank ol a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour upon a priest who u tit tins moment per- forming mass, and the distinction is obviously granted for no other reason than that the recipient of it ia 100 jenrs old The name of the new member of the coveted I rench order of chiTilry is Olhvier-no re- lation, as far as I know, of the democratic deputy, now suppôt ed to bo a candidate for Imperial favour. The Abbe Ollivier was bom in 1760, ordained in 1789, and does not pretend to any other claim to distinction -and this is one (whatever the 'value of it) which very few indeed can boast of-than that of having, in the humblest rank of tilt clergy diligently said moss for 77 years without interruption -l'art) Corre- spondent of the Express

A Ft, MCI SPEECH -The Wisconsin Legislature) had formally considered a proposition to abolish all

law« for the collection of debts The mover of tba bdl, Mr Llmore, is a great wag, as evinced by the following extract from his speech on that subject. "The i-pesker proceeded to review the present system, of collecting debts It was all a humbug and a cheat, a matter of technicalities and legal shuffling Law- yers gave advice in order to obtain fees and eneourogo litigation Judges made blunders and mistake! He

had ft îlul.Ç ci|ençace In law, and that was rich. (Laughter) lie would give a history of it. The speakti then related how he had purchased a yoke of oxen ubont tifieen years ago-pud fifty dollars for them A few dajs alter, the son of the man of whom he bought the o\en cuino to lum, and said the o\en weie his Ile insisted on hiving poy over Benin, and commenced a suit bi fore »justice "lhejuiy didn t agree ïmallj, through the Bass wood justice of the Peate the case went against hun He appealed to the Circuit Court in Milwuukee There I lort »gain, and taid to my lavvjer I wdl give you ten dollars to quote Pennsvlviuiia law to Judge Müler, and got a new trial ordered (great laughter). Ho took the ten dollare and peiforracd his duty A new trial w as then granted, and the v enue changed to "Wal worth county Judge Irwin was then the Judge. Any mun who wanted to gain u cause in his Court had Hther to go hunting with lum and let the Judge c'aim all the game that was shot, or else p it his dog. I patted his dog (laughter) I fed that dog crackers (renewed laughter) lhc case was decided in my favour "N hen I heard the dccuion, I thought the dog had ftllovvcd itic about long-I turned around and eave lum n kick (1 uighti r ) The jelp of the dog lind hnrdly subsided ero I heard the Judge bBj, "Mr Clerk, this judgment is nt aside »Hil u new triul grunted (Great laughter ) Mr Speaker, that kuk cost me 200 dollars (Con- vulsive laughter) \ ou have, no doubt, seen a suit in u Justice 6 Court m the countrj s lhere is time tpent bj jurors and hangers on, besides other costs,at least oO dollars, besides the ill icclings and dissensions inubedbjit It is all a cheat Ihe litigants had better sit down and play a game ot old sledge to decide the case It would be more sure to settle ti e dispute j ustlj.

A II PEÍ III. DEBTOR -In Connecticut a justice was called to the gaol to liberate a worthless debtor by receiving his oath that he was not worth twenty dol- lars " Well, Johnny, cm you Bwear that you are not worth twentv dollars and never wdl be "> " " Why,'

answered the debtor, " lean swear that I am not worfh twcnty dollars at present " ' Well, I cansive .>? to »lie rest, so go along," said the justice.

f EM BDITIOUS NBwsivit.it I'IUSTINQ ~Siturday,

April 28, will long be remembered b) London Nevrs pnpcr Printers aa» a memorable da), and by the " innes " stall more especially Troin the late hour atwJiuh the House (f Commons dmied on the Reform Bill (Mr Gladstone not concluding hu speech until after I o'clock) it was ncirl) 1 before the last "lunts " reporter could start for the prmttng oflice with Ins notes Nothing but the most strenuous efforts md the unlunitid resources of un immense establishment could hav e enabled a new spaper on that morning to give the last of Mi üladstonc s speech in full, the numbers and names on the division, anda linder on the result of the night's proceedings Some of the London dad) |ourntls were content to give a ?picre suinmarv of Mr («ladstonc's speech, returning to it on the Monda) following , but the manner io which thc"liniib' give the protcodings of that night's important debato is said to have exceeded anything winch that journal had ever before at'empted It waa ver) fortunute that the House of Lords was up at 5 o clock that evening, which enabled the whole ol the TI porteis to nttcnil to the House ot C mimons after that time, so that alter the tirst turn, the) only took notes for 10 minutes each B) tht time a member had finished Ins speech the principal portion of it wasmt)pc Hie last side of cop) was given to the E rutters tit 10 inimités after 1 o clock, and this had to

e composed, read, corrected, and four stereot)pe costs-taken of the last page before going to press, and

jttttt 5 o'clock the " innes" was being loaded into

the news agents' nins fur transmission to the v irmua railways, to be di-tiibuted throughout the country

"Webclieve hove Gi, 000 copies were in the hands of the nowsmtn bef ire half past (> o'clotk a m Business in co noctmn with the night s debate having take i us to the" Innes othes on that eventful morning, we were about to sturt homeward to our rest lust as the last tart wasleiving Printing-housc Ktjuarc, f« r the Cortil western Luina) II*ving a Fpeakïng acquaintance with thednver, we ascertained from lum that lie had iust 11 minutes left to tatch the tram. As ho spoke, he jumped on to lus perch on one of those blood-red carts w Inch are seen (sometimes fl)mg round the south side ot St Pauls Church)ard, while its clock is striking G p m , to enable on anxious-looking individual whon riding on it to hurl a sack of newspapers, winch he is cou vulsivc1) grasping, in at the post-olhec window at the risk of upsetting the mob surrounding it, and nlso at the peni of the lives and limbs of the offici ils w ho st uid inside well knowing what is coming, and looking for its reception as muller) men in a fort do the entrance ol a bomb shell through a cue nate loophole Promising the tab-driver extra fare if he kept the red carim view, away we both sped over the stones of the sun-lighted quiet streets and narrow windings lending towards the desired spot Holb irn, Red lion Btrect, llrunsw itk square, and the Non road, were passed through like a tomct At ever) turn- ing policemen b iwlid out to caution us fir furious driving , but before their hist words were uttered we weroout of sight All that cubD) could do, and he did his biBt, w is to keep the red cart in view in the distance, for the 17 hands of thorough-bred horseflesh, which ilew along with it left us no chance of coming up to it When we did reach the North-western platform it was to s«e the eirl) newspaper train just tailing in the distance as itnearedthc Citnden-station, and to hear the station master B i) to the driver ot the newe cart, ")ou vc kept in waiting 5 minutes , but now the ' Time» ' are till up, the rest must go on b) the next train " A\ e could not leave the sp it without a word at parting with our friend the news ctrt driver, who was iust then busilv engaged in wiping down his peispinng 17 hands , and after co npli noiit in0* him on the cxtniordinary expedition he h id used, was assured in reply, " L'hat it was not very often he put his mare alone in that style, but she had reached the Great Western in lo minutes from the ' limes,' which is a distance «f 3, miles, as the short cuts take you" By 9 o'clock the "rimes' had reached Birmingham , by 11 o'clock it was at Man- chester, at 12 o'clock it was being perused m the liverpool Exchange, and bj the evening it had been read by all the anxious politicians in Uublin, Edin- burgh, and Glasgow " So much for newspaper print- ing, publishing, und transmission m the present di).

Digitisation generously supported by
Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation
Digitisation generously supported by

Zoom

plus
thumb
minus
left
thumb
right
up
thumb
down