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The Brisbane Courier (Qld. : 1864-1933), Tuesday 27 August 1889, page 7

National Library of Australia http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article3500492

POLITICAL WIT AND HUMOUR,

[Daily News.)

Under the title of "Political Wifc andHumour in our own Times," Mr. T. Wil-liams has gathered together into a

little

volume, published by Meassrs. Field andTuer, a number of wise and witty saying3

by eminent politicians. The collection basno pretence to bo exhaustive, nor can it bosaid to bo adequately représentative of thejocoso talents of English statesmen. Thelato Mr. Bernai Osborne, for example,might surely havo contributed some-

thing brighter and fresher than his

joko of likening Mr. Disraeli withliia reform Bill to a gipsy whohad "stolen a child nnd disfigured it tomnko it

passfor his own ;

"

or even the

comparison of the Palmerston administra-

tion to a"

muBOtim of curiosities." Tho

Wealburyana alsoaro disappointing, for

they fail to show that the ex-chancellorcould bo very witty as well as very rude.

And what aro wo to say of a compiler whocite3 Lord Rosebery's memorable referenceto

"

Mr. Gladstone's umbrella," but forgetsthat admirable bit of humorous satire thelikening of the effusive Liberal Unionistand his Conservative ally to two convivi.aliststit

asi root corner who poraiBt in vowing

friendship becauso thoy know that the mo-

ment, they ceaso to hands musttall lo the ground? No collection of

this sort, however, could wholly fail

to piovido amusement or to re-

vivo pleasant recollections of thopolitical "

word combats" of the past.

Hero tho reader will meet with some de-

lightful samples of Lord Palmerston's modoof turning tho tables

upon "his good friend

Mr. Eowclitr," the famous Radical butcher

of Tiverton. It isonly "chaff," as one

sturdy Tivertonito justly complained ; butit effectually disposed of Mr. Rowcliff'aopposition. The late Sir Robert Peelfigures chiefly in somo sharp and pointed

retails provoked by Mr. Disraeli's bitter

taunts. There ismoro of good-tem-

pered fun in his reply to FeargusO'Connor, tho Chartist leader, who

had pictured tho possibility of Beel-

zebub being sovereign. In that case,

Pool di Hy observed, "tbo honourable gentle-

man wouldcertainly enjoy the confidence of

the Crown." With equal wit and more goodhumour, Pool's old colleaguo, Sir James

Graham, having been compared during theCarlisle election to a weathercock, replied

he thought itvmy

likely thnt on the day 06

the election ho should show which way tbo

wind blew. Porbnps tho best &oji-?no£

attributed to tho lute Lord Derby is his

definition oE an independent politician as"

a politician who cannot bo doponded on."

The most prominent citations from LordBeaconsfield'.1* political utterances aro his

well-rcmomberod sarcastic references to

well-rcmomberod sarcastic references to

Mr. Beresford Hopo and Professor Goldwin

Smith, and his roply to Mr. Robert Lowe'sprophetic picture of tho coming suffering of

our troops from the attacks of tho

Abyssinian "pinkfly," that the right

honourable gonllemon wa3"

as vituperative

of tho insects of Abyssinia as ifthoy had

been British workmen." This reminds na

that thoepigrams from Lord Sherbrooko'sspeeches, which ave mostly in tho

Cassandra vein, do not not show

well in tho light of subsequenthistory. Lord Shorbrooko is probablystill, 111 his own estimation, a fairly goodpolitical prophet, na political prophets go

;

but his description of Earl Russell's abortive"

Seven Pound borough Franchise Bill"

as

an attempt "in tho surfoit of our too

exuberant prosperity, with our own rash

and inconsiderate bauds, to pluck down on

out- bends tbo venerable Temple of our

Liberty and our Glory," does certainly strike

one now ns atrillo ridiculous. Mr. Bright's

rcinai k in reference to that inveterate

uepotism which was perhaps tho plainest of all

" plainWhig principles," that the motto of

the Whigs seemed to bo"

a placo for everyman and every man in his place," has the

advantago of being less familiar than the

similo of tho Skye terrier, "which was so

covered with hairthatyoucouldnol tell which

was the bead and which the tail of it." The

samples of Lord Salisbury's utterances here

given include somo rather stingiug things

about Mr.

ton, but they aro not of the terse and epi-

grammatic complexion which lends itself toisolated quotations, A similar remark ap-plies to the sections devoted to Lord Ran-

dolph Churchill and Mr. Balfour, the formerbeing chiefly represented by a. humorousdescription of a popular gathering in the

ground« of Hawardon, and the latter by an

inholcnt allusion to Mr. Gladstone as "never

once deviating into accuracy" in the course

of his long speech at Bingley Hall. The

minor politicians fare ill at Mr. Williams

hands. Perhaps it will bo only grayheadedreaders of the debates who will miss the

natue of the late Mr. Henry Drummond,and wonder that no solitary jest or gibe of

that amusingly eccentric politician has foundits

wayinto this little volume.

A plan to connect the Siberian rivers bycanals is projoctcd by the Russian Government.

Tho Japanese Government has engaged twoGerman lawyers in Borun to proceod to Tokioand reframe the Japaneso Penal Code to con-

form to the German instead of the French code,

as now.

Bouovan, the winner . of tho Derby, hadalroady won for his

owner, in round numbers,£27,000 in less than two years.

A Munich firm has made a carriage propelled

by gus which itgenerates from ben.ine or

analogous material.

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material.