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 14, 1860.]

“ health of the Statesman!” some may say.

“Well: the health of public men is of importance, certainly; but they constitute a scarcely appreciable element in the mortality of the country.”

Estimated by mere number—by the list of dead statesmen within any fixed term of years—this is true. But the lives of other men are bound up in those of rulers, for safety or destruction. Not only may one minister cause the loss of thousands of men by war, and another save tens of thousands by domestic improvements; but the lot and life of a multitude of citizens depend on the length or shortness of the rule of a great minister,—that is to say on his living or dying. Not only, therefore, is it very interesting to study the chances and liabilities of the health of public men, but it is also highly important. So few statesmen who have long wielded power die exactly like other men, or might not have been expected to live longer than they do, or to die differently that they are certainly not a class to be omitted in any sanitary studies, however small their numbers may be.

Our study must be of British statesmen, to answer any practical purpose. On the continent, hitherto, the work and the anxieties of rulers have been of a different kind from anything seen or understood in England. In despotic politics, the ministers are simply the servants of their sovereigns, charged with definite business of a certain kind and amount; and outside that business, having only to obey orders, and to bear all consequences of their acts in their own persons, in favour or disgrace at court. If they are the masters of their sovereigns, they become virtually sovereigns, and subject to the liabilities of that function.

In revolutionary government the administrators have abundance of anxiety and responsibility; but their term of office is short, and their course of action so empirical and precarious that their occupation is rather an accident in their lives than its main pursuit. The constitutional governments of the continent are too recent to afford types of statesmen under that régime.

In the United States, again, all political offices are held for a short time. Men may and do devote themselves to politics for life; but no man is in office for many years together except in the legislature; and the parliamentary function occupies much less of time and thought where the legislature has jurisdiction over only five subjects, than in England, where the whole political structure and its workings are under the charge of parliament.

In America each sovereign State manages its own affairs, in so easy a style that there is hardly room for statesmanship; and the Government at Washington is concerned only with the few interests which belong to the States in federal union. Thus, though we may find there some illustrations of the effects of political life, we cannot reason from them to the effects of political life in England, where the conditions are essentially different.

The conditions have changed very much in England, in course of centuries, and half and quarter centuries. When English Statesmen were responsible to the king or nobody, they lived a different life from their successors who had a parliament to manage, and from those more modern successors who are responsible to parliament in a fuller sense than at any former time. Ancient statesmen had an easier life of it—in all respects, perhaps, but that of dependence on the favour of the monarch. Modern statesmen have more wear and tear to endure, with less showy and more rare rewards, but not less substantial and heart-felt satisfactions. The anxieties to which they are subject are different from those of old times; and so are their maladies and modes of living and dying. It may, indeed be doubted whether the life of the British statesman of the nineteenth century has ever been lived in any former time or other country. The vocation is as peculiar as the character and function of the English aristocracy which usually furnishes the supply of statesmen.

Our public men who have risen to high office, being derived hitherto from the aristocracy, have had a classical education more or less thorough. They have passed through some one of our great schools, or perhaps from the training of a private tutor, to the University. Men of their quality of mind are sure to have done a great deal at college; for the idlers and mere pleasure seekers are not the stuff of which statesmen are made. Their studies are, to the real great men, a store of health, as well as capacity, laid by unconsciously to meet future needs, and ward off future dangers. In fostering and gratifying their love of classical lore, they were unawares obtaining that breadth of view, that depth of insight into human nature and affairs, that robustness of spirit which grows out of large experience of other than familiar modes of thought, and that serenity of intellect and temper which go far to secure a sound mind in a sound body. It is of immense importance to the orator to know the best oratory of other nations and ages: it gives an inexpressible charm to the utterance of a scholar that the philosophy and poetry of all times are breathing through his thought and speech: but there are richer blessings than these in high literary training. The ripe scholar, who is familiar with the life and thought of remote ages, and has nourished his mind upon the choice remains of their best men and best times, is too strong to be moved by transient influences which alarm and disconcert men who know nothing beyond their own time and circumstances. The superficially-educated public man, of whose quality much was seen in the successive revolutions in France, and a good deal is constantly seen in the United States, is easily agitated,—is always either suspicious or liable to surprise, and fluctuates in his views and purposes, unless he find a stand-point for some particular question on some clear ethical principle. He has no support beyond the men and the incidents immediately about him. On the other hand, the scholar is familiar with the principles of liberty in all their forms; he knows the inevitable