heard a mile off. The most ingenious of entomologists, Kirby, has calculated that if the powers of the human voice increased in the ratio of the size of the body, it would be heard all over the world! And if this be so with the ordinary five-feet-nine, what would it be with six-feet-six ? Think of Mr. Carus Wilson in the little island of Jersey! It would become one enormous bell, with the iron tongue rebellowing in frightful iteration. Or, most terrible of all, imagine the world one vast reflection of the Conciliation Hall; the voice of Mr. O'Connell omnipresent; and the Repeal of the Union in every family! Then, indeed, the designation of "The Agitator" would be properly bestowed. Hermetically-sealed apartments would be advertised in The Times; the Royal Society would bestow a medal upon the easiest method of promoting deafness; Mesmerists, like postmen, would be under

the direction of government; every round would be anxiously watched; and there would be a competition to pay "extra" for an early delivery!

We talk of the delicacy of the eye, but the ear exceeds it in quick sympathy and sensitiveness. The annoyances endured by the sense of vision, if transferred to that of hearing, would either benumb or destroy it. Lord Bacon mentions (Nat. Hist. 128) an instance of this kind of suffering endured by himself, when, "standing near one that lured loud and shrill," he had suddenly an offence, as if somewhat had been broken and dislocated in his ear: he adds, "and immediately after a loud ringing, not an ordinary singing or hissing, but far louder and differing, so as I feared some deafness; but, after some half-quarter of an hour, it vanished." Wonderful power of little things! Tremendous agency of straws!

WHATEVER may be suggested to the contrary by personal or political antipathy, it will be very generally admitted by men of all parties, who are conversant with the subject, that Sir James Graham stands next to Sir Robert Peel and Lord John Russell in the degree of influence he exercises over the debates in the House of Commons. It is not as an orator, more than respectable though his pretensions be, that he ranks thus high; for there are many, even among his inferiors as statesmen, who in eloquence far transcend him. Nor is it because he has, in the course of his long and chequered career, developed those higher qualities, either of character or of intellect, which lead men in the aggregate to wait upon the judgment of the individual, yielding themselves to his guidance; for the public life of Sir James Graham has been singularly unpropitious to the accomplishment of that glorious distinction. Nor is it that his reputation has grown with the growth or identified itself with the successes of any great national party, whose gratitude would have given him a following, and that following an audience prepossessed in his favour; for there is scarcely a public man of the day who has been so deeply and irrecoverably inconstant to political alliances, or the virulence of whose temporary opposition may with more precision be guaged by the fervency of his former support. On none of the received grounds, in fact, can his influence-popularity it cannot be called-with the House of Commons be accounted for. Such as it is, it depends on himself alone. It is anomalous, like his position.

The solitary, self-created, almost undisputed sway wielded by Sir Robert Peel, one can understand. He has been the foremost man of his time. Always the leader of, even in adversity, the most powerful party of his countrymen, he has never,

except, perhaps, in the single instance of the Reform question, run counter to the feelings of the nation.

There are principles and sentiments which, even in the hour of the uttermost estrangement, he held in common with his opponents; there was always some neutral ground for reconciliation. If events proved that his advocacy could not always have been sincere, no one could point to habitual virulence and acrimony assumed to give the colour of earnestness. He soothed, flattered, cajoled, played off parties and opinions against each other with delicate finesse, but never directly outraged deep-rooted prejudices or long-established opinions. And so, indeed, it is with him in the present hour. While ruling his political contemporaries with a power so absolute as to be almost without parallel in representative assemblies, and, at the same time, so well masked as to require all the envenomed ingenuity of a disappointed partisan ere it could be discovered, much less believed in, Sir Robert Peel has contrived to avoid exhibiting most of the harsher symbols of his sway. His despotism has not been obtrusive, or his tyranny odious. He has made men enslave each other, without himself standing forth as the confessed cause of the general degradation. If he has no natural or personal followers, so also he has no organised opponents,—at least their organisation melts away at his approach; they are valiant only behind his back.

The more genial, mild, and natural influence of Lord John Russell with his followers is also to be accounted for; nor is it at all surprising that he should be a favourite as a speaker with the House generally. Of the Whig party, first the protégé, then the pupil, and now the leader, he has always been the firm and consistent supporter. Of one side of the House he possesses

the favour by every right of political service, and party is not slow to be grateful, however wanting it may be in other political virtues. To his opponents and the House generally, he has always exhibited a deference and respectful consideration, which, if it sprang from policy, was wise in the extreme, for it has secured a degree of prepossession on personal grounds which is not enjoyed even by Sir Robert Peel himself, and often acts as a counter-balancing makeweight for mental and physical shortcomings in his oratory.

Sir James Graham's influence in the representative branch of the legislature is not to be attributed to any of the causes which have secured its favours for these two distinguished men. Like Sir Robert Peel, he has constantly been in antagonism with parties and opinions to which he has at some other time, before or since, given his most hearty support. But his changes of opinion and of policy have been made under very different circumstances, and the tone and character of his advocacy and opposition have been of a very different nature. Sir Robert Peel's first great act of inconsistency, however it may have exasperated his followers at the time, still bore the stamp of statesmanship; inasmuch as it was the application of a great and, in some respects, a desperate remedy to a state of things to which the history of the constitution afforded no parallel. It carried with it, also, to most minds the justification of an overpowering necessity. His subsequent deviations from the line of policy professed by him in early life, and while still the leader of the old Tory party, have, in like manner, been to a great extent the result of circumstances which he could not control. Many compromises of principle are forgiven in the regenerator of a great party. And Sir Robert Peel, too, has always kept his motives so free from suspicions. His ambition is, at least, of an ennobling and exalting character. He has never been the mere partisan, or allowed politics to become a passion with him, but has preserved his dignity amidst all the heats of party strife. Personal motives are seldom assigned to him when he sees fit to change his policy. He has preserved in an eminent degree the

respect both of parliament and the public.

Not so Sir James Graham; and the fact affects his position with the House of Commons, or it would not be so broadly stated in this paper, which, with the others of the series, treats of public men with reference to their personal position and their influence as speakers, and not with any political bias. Upon the same principle that high praise has been given to Lord John Russell or to Mr. Macaulay, although Whigs, because they are fairly entitled to it, the faults in the character of Sir James Graham, and the flaws in his position, will be dealt with without reserve, notwithstanding that he is so distinguished and so useful a member of a Conservative government. Sir James, we repeat, has not, amidst his many changes of opinion and party, preserved the same high character, the same freedom from the imputation of partisanship, the same presumption of stainless motive, that have upheld Sir Robert Peel, and retained for him the personal favour of the House of Commons, even in the most critical and dangerous periods of his fortunes. Still less has he observed that steady devotion to early received and professed opinions, that tolerant and liberal appreciation of principles and views entertained and professed by opponents, that gently repulsive retirement from stage to stage of party defence in the face of the advancing enemy, which, together with many personal qualities of an amiable character, have secured for Lord John Russell so much of the regard of foes as well as of friends. Sir James Graham has acted on wholly opposite tactics. There has been more (so to speak) of brigandage, more of the loose policy of the Free Lance, in his political life. His attacks have always been fierce and virulent in inverse proportion to what has proved to be the depth of his convictions, and to the apparent necessity of the case; his defences have always been distinguished by a blind and passionate obstinacy; his compromises and abandonments of professed opinions have always been sudden. These are great defects of character in the eyes of Englishmen, and they react upon Sir James Graham,

and lessen his consequence as a statesman, to this hour, in spite of his commanding talents and great position.

Sir James Graham has made enemies of almost every party in the legislature. It has not been because he has opposed them from time to time, for other men who are much more popular have for many years done so more effectually. But it has been on account of the extreme virulence of his opposition. His fighting has always been à l'outrance. He has been too prone to disdain the courtesies of political warfare; fictions though they be, yet agreeable ones and humanising. He has always appeared to import his passions into party conflicts, as though he were not merely fighting the battle of opinions, but also maintaining his own personal quarrel. And yet he has never succeeded in impressing one with the idea of his being in earnest. That would have rendered pardonable, language otherwise too severe. His harangues while in opposition, and indeed all his party speeches, rather scem the elaborate efforts of one having little real sympathy with the themes he is discussing or the views he is urging, but who has worked himself up to a state of fictitious enthusiasm or moral indignation, in order the more effectually to gratify political vindictiveness, or advance personal ambition, by obtaining the applause of audiences willing to be misled under cover of those high-sounding pretences. But, whether simulated or real, some of the speeches here more particularly referred to and to which, it must be added, no one could listen without being struck with admiration at their boldness, skill, and sustained energy -were scarcely reconcilable with that liberal and charitable interpretation of the motives of opponents, which is one of the first duties of public men to each other. Nor has Sir James Graham, while conducting his combats in this spirit, been at all choice in the weapons he used. Any missive that came to hand was hurled indiscriminately at the foe. No epithet, however heavy its imputation (always, of course, saving that it is parliamentary); no taunt, however bitter or exasperating, whether to individuals, to parties, to opinions, or even to

whole nations; no general charge, however grave as against the policy of a party, or however damnatory of the motives of his opponents in their councils or their conduct; and, finally, no manœuvre that could by any stretch of license be accounted not inconsistent with parliamentary honour, even to the extent of partial statements of opponents' opinions, or partial quotations or withholdings of justificatory matter; not one such expedient, however little to be approved in fair and free public discussion, by which a temporary triumph could be won, or a rival for the hour put down, was ever rejected by Sir James Graham from any delicacy of temperament; or from any high and fastidious sense of honour, such as restrains some men from grasping the victory which is theirs on such conditions; or even from that constitutional love of fair play and open, stand-up fighting which is the Englishman's boast, and which is covertly the guiding principle in all the debates in parliament.

It will be observed that blame is imputed to Sir James Graham, not merely because in the course of a long and very stormy political life he has changed his opinions. Men have always been held at liberty to do that; and of late it is becoming quite a fashion. It is on account of the extreme virulence and unscrupulousness with which he has from time to time advocated the opinion or the party object of the hour, and the suddenness with which he has changed those opinions and objects, that he has failed to secure his fair share of the respect of his contemporaries, at least for more than his great talent. A very cursory glance at his speeches will fully confirm the view here put forward. Look at his earlier political career, when as "the Cumberland Baronet," he frighted the isle from its propriety, by the violent and unconstitutional tendency of his writings and speeches. Who could have suspected that a man whose sentiments breathed so much of the very spirit of license, would in comparatively few years stand before the world one of the favoured leaders of the party he was then denouncing so violently, and as the most arbitrary home-secretary the country

had known for many years? Again, his attacks upon the landed interest in the earlier part of his career were so harsh and virulent, that one can scarcely believe, though the fact stares one in the face, that the same man has been, for twelve or fourteen years, one of the chief counsellors and leaders of those whom he then treated as the pests and enemies of their country. Furthermore, let us look at the zealous partisanship with which, when he was a meinber of the Whig government, he attacked on the one hand the Radicals, of whom at least, in opinion, he might once have been accounted a leader; and on the other the Conservatives, in whose ranks he was so soon to hold one of the most distinguished posts. Nor can it be forgotten how when in power as a Conservative minister, he has stood out in marked relief from his colleagues, in the virulence of his attacks on those with whom he had so lately held office, and towards whom he at least, and Lord Stanley, should have been restrained in resorting to the more envenomed hostilities of party. It cannot be attributing too much importance to the effects of this constant antagonism on his part to the convictions or the self-love of his contemporaries, when we say, that they detract very materially from the estimation in which he is held, and preclude the possibility of his being popular in the House of Commons, however much his eloquence, his debating powers, or his extraordinary aptitude for business, may cause him to be admired, and render him valuable as a minister and a statesman.

It has been in the face of all these self-created obstacles, in spite of drawbacks and disadvantages which would have long since consigned an ordinary man to oblivion, that Sir James Graham, after having deserted his post in the van of one party-the party with whom his early political life was spent, and to whom he was indebted for his position-has forced his way to the very leadership of another; of a party distinguished for the possession of talent, legitimately occupying its ranks and not at all dependent upon chance recruits for the figure it makes before the country. Without a following, after hav:

ing violently discarded the political friendships of his youth and manhood, and in spite of an habitual, almost a studied avoidance of all the ordinary arts of popularity, which at times has almost gone the length of courting public odium, we find Sir James Graham the right hand and confidential counsellor of the most powerful minister this country has known since Pitt; the absolute dictator of all the internal administration, and of much of the internal policy, and the originator, or at all events the arbiter, of the internal legislation, of this great kingdom. More than of any other living statesman it may be said of him that he has made his own position. It was probably the object of his early ambition; yet, if we look at his career, how unpropitious was its commencement for such a close! So much the more merit, then, in an intellectual point of view, is due to him who could thus compel circumstances to his purposes. It is to his talents alone that he is indebted for the high post he holds, and the distinguished position he enjoys among his contemporaries. He has literally fought his way up; and a hard fight he has had. If he has multiplied the natural obstacles of such a career, so much the greater is the talent and the determination of purpose by which they have been overcome. What Mr. Macaulay has won by his eloquence and capacity for statesmanship, Sir James Graham has attained by the same spirit of selfdependence, working out its mission in the more active and stormy scenes of political excitement, by more bold and dangerous ventures, and more skilful and daring pilotage.

Sir James Graham has always been equal to his position. Various as have been the parts he has played in the political drama of his time, he has always glided naturally into them, and distinguished himself as one of the first actors, rising naturally to the top. His speeches from time to time afforded an accurate barometer of his political position. On whichever side of politics they were made, they have always been marked by great aptitude, readiness, tact, vigour, and power. Except Lord Brougham and O'Connell, he has been, perhaps, the most actively