Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/305

1885.] other. Wherever we look, we find a remarkable and monotonous uniformity of failure, such as can have no other effect than to lower the prestige and reputation of Great Britain, discredit her diplomacy, weaken her power, and bring down to zero her influence among the nations of the world. Let any unprejudiced observer contrast the position and influence of our country when Lord Beaconsfield left office with that which she now occupies and possesses, and fairly ask himself whether congratulation or commiseration is the more appropriate feeling. There might, indeed, be found persons who would be entirely comforted if, with diminished influence and degraded position, we could point to peace, plenty, and reduced taxation as counterbalancing advantages conferred by Mr Gladstone's Government. Alas! this comfort is denied to us. Our relations with European Powers, if peaceful, are certainly more strained and less cordial than in 1880; whilst in Egypt and South Africa we are engaged in operations which even the Prime Minister must confess to be very nearly akin to a state of warfare, and which are certainly not consistent with a peaceful condition of affairs. Plenty, alas! but mocks us with its presence; for the causes which have diminished the price of the labourer's loaf have operated to deprive him of the means of obtaining it, and our agricultural population was never in a more depressed and precarious condition – injuriously affecting, as must of necessity be the case, every other class of the community. As to taxation, the promises of a lightening of the burdens of the people are so far from having been fulfilled, that we have at this moment an increased income-tax, to supplement a declining revenue and to enable the men who came into office upon a cry of peace to carry on with sufficient vigour the wars into which their halting and feeble policy have plunged their country.

Whilst, however, we condemn the Cabinet as a whole for conduct so inconsistent with their duty to their Sovereign and their country, it is right that we should point more directly to those two Ministers who, each in his separate department, are personally responsible for much of the evil which we have to deplore. For had the seals of the Foreign Office been in the hands of a strong man instead of in those of Lord Granville, and had the Colonial Office been administered by a statesman less infirm of purpose and with more backbone than Lord Derby, it is impossible that matters could have drifted into their present condition. Lord Granville is the most courteous, most gentle, most charming of men; and in quiet and uneventful times, when everything is smooth and easy, and a namby-pamby policy can do nobody any harm, nobody can regulate such a policy more pleasantly than Lord Granville. But the moment that something more is required than courtly manners, soft phrases, and diplomatic nothings, the man is not strong enough for the place. No one can read the recently-published correspondence between the German Foreign Office and our own, without becoming conscious that Lord Granville displayed a conspicuously painful inferiority throughout, and so managed, or rather mismanaged, matters, that his country was made to occupy a position which would really be ludicrous, if the issues involved were