Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated - "Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: From Rome to the End"

John Wood Campbell - "Invaders from the Infinite"

Anna Benneson McMahan - "Shakespeare's Christmas Gift to Queen Bess"

Various - "The Spinner's Book of Fiction"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Coningsby

B >> Benjamin Disraeli >> Coningsby




If we survey the tenor of the policy of the Liverpool Cabinet during the
latter moiety of its continuance, we shall find its characteristic to be a
partial recurrence to those frank principles of government which Mr. Pitt
had revived during the latter part of the last century from precedents
that had been set us, either in practice or in dogma, during its earlier
period, by statesmen who then not only bore the title, but professed the
opinions, of Tories. Exclusive principles in the constitution, and
restrictive principles in commerce, have grown up together; and have
really nothing in common with the ancient character of our political
settlement, or the manners and customs of the English people. Confidence
in the loyalty of the nation, testified by munificent grants of rights and
franchises, and favour to an expansive system of traffic, were distinctive
qualities of the English sovereignty, until the House of Commons usurped
the better portion of its prerogatives. A widening of our electoral
scheme, great facilities to commerce, and the rescue of our Roman Catholic
fellow-subjects from the Puritanic yoke, from fetters which have been
fastened on them by English Parliaments in spite of the protests and
exertions of English Sovereigns; these were the three great elements and
fundamental truths of the real Pitt system, a system founded on the
traditions of our monarchy, and caught from the writings, the speeches,
the councils of those who, for the sake of these and analogous benefits,
had ever been anxious that the Sovereign of England should never be
degraded into the position of a Venetian Doge.

It is in the plunder of the Church that we must seek for the primary cause
of our political exclusion, and our commercial restraint. That unhallowed
booty created a factitious aristocracy, ever fearful that they might be
called upon to regorge their sacrilegious spoil. To prevent this they took
refuge in political religionism, and paltering with the disturbed
consciences, or the pious fantasies, of a portion of the people, they
organised them into religious sects. These became the unconscious
Praetorians of their ill-gotten domains. At the head of these
religionists, they have continued ever since to govern, or powerfully to
influence this country. They have in that time pulled down thrones and
churches, changed dynasties, abrogated and remodelled parliaments; they
have disfranchised Scotland and confiscated Ireland. One may admire the
vigour and consistency of the Whig party, and recognise in their career
that unity of purpose that can only spring from a great principle; but the
Whigs introduced sectarian religion, sectarian religion led to political
exclusion, and political exclusion was soon accompanied by commercial
restraint.

It would be fanciful to assume that the Liverpool Cabinet, in their
ameliorating career, was directed by any desire to recur to the primordial
tenets of the Tory party. That was not an epoch when statesmen cared to
prosecute the investigation of principles. It was a period of happy and
enlightened practice. A profounder policy is the offspring of a time like
the present, when the original postulates of institutions are called in
question. The Liverpool Cabinet unconsciously approximated to these
opinions, because from careful experiment they were convinced of their
beneficial tendency, and they thus bore an unintentional and impartial
testimony to their truth. Like many men, who think they are inventors,
they were only reproducing ancient wisdom.

But one must ever deplore that this ministry, with all their talents and
generous ardour, did not advance to principles. It is always perilous to
adopt expediency as a guide; but the choice may be sometimes imperative.
These statesmen, however, took expediency for their director, when
principle would have given them all that expediency ensured, and much
more.

This ministry, strong in the confidence of the sovereign, the parliament,
and the people, might, by the courageous promulgation of great historical
truths, have gradually formed a public opinion, that would have permitted
them to organise the Tory party on a broad, a permanent, and national
basis. They might have nobly effected a complete settlement of Ireland,
which a shattered section of this very cabinet was forced a few years
after to do partially, and in an equivocating and equivocal manner. They
might have concluded a satisfactory reconstruction of the third estate,
without producing that convulsion with which, from its violent
fabrication, our social system still vibrates. Lastly, they might have
adjusted the rights and properties of our national industries in a manner
which would have prevented that fierce and fatal rivalry that is now
disturbing every hearth of the United Kingdom.

We may, therefore, visit on the _laches_ of this ministry the introduction
of that new principle and power into our constitution which ultimately may
absorb all, AGITATION. This cabinet, then, with so much brilliancy on its
surface, is the real parent of the Roman Catholic Association, the
Political Unions, the Anti-Corn-Law League.

There is no influence at the same time so powerful and so singular as that
of individual character. It arises as often from the weakness of the
character as from its strength. The dispersion of this clever and showy
ministry is a fine illustration of this truth. One morning the Arch-
Mediocrity himself died. At the first blush, it would seem that little
difficulties could be experienced in finding his substitute. His long
occupation of the post proved, at any rate, that the qualification was not
excessive. But this cabinet, with its serene and blooming visage, had been
all this time charged with fierce and emulous ambitions. They waited the
signal, but they waited in grim repose. The death of the nominal leader,
whose formal superiority, wounding no vanity, and offending no pride,
secured in their councils equality among the able, was the tocsin of their
anarchy. There existed in this cabinet two men, who were resolved
immediately to be prime ministers; a third who was resolved eventually to
be prime minister, but would at any rate occupy no ministerial post
without the lead of a House of Parliament; and a fourth, who felt himself
capable of being prime minister, but despaired of the revolution which
could alone make him one; and who found an untimely end when that
revolution had arrived.

Had Mr. Secretary Canning remained leader of the House of Commons under
the Duke of Wellington, all that he would have gained by the death of Lord
Liverpool was a master. Had the Duke of Wellington become Secretary of
State under Mr. Canning he would have materially advanced his political
position, not only by holding the seals of a high department in which he
was calculated to excel, but by becoming leader of the House of Lords. But
his Grace was induced by certain court intriguers to believe that the King
would send for him, and he was also aware that Mr. Peel would no longer
serve under any ministry in the House of Commons. Under any circumstances
it would have been impossible to keep the Liverpool Cabinet together. The
struggle, therefore, between the Duke of Wellington and 'my dear Mr.
Canning' was internecine, and ended somewhat unexpectedly.

And here we must stop to do justice to our friend Mr. Rigby, whose conduct
on this occasion was distinguished by a bustling dexterity which was quite
charming. He had, as we have before intimated, on the credit of some
clever lampoons written during the Queen's trial, which were, in fact, the
effusions of Lucian Gay, wriggled himself into a sort of occasional
unworthy favour at the palace, where he was half butt and half buffoon.
Here, during the interregnum occasioned by the death, or rather inevitable
retirement, of Lord Liverpool, Mr. Rigby contrived to scrape up a
conviction that the Duke was the winning horse, and in consequence there
appeared a series of leading articles in a notorious evening newspaper, in
which it was, as Tadpole and Taper declared, most 'slashingly' shown, that
the son of an actress could never be tolerated as a Prime Minister of
England. Not content with this, and never doubting for a moment the
authentic basis of his persuasion, Mr. Rigby poured forth his coarse
volubility on the subject at several of the new clubs which he was getting
up in order to revenge himself for having been black-balled at White's.

What with arrangements about Lord Monmouth's boroughs, and the lucky
bottling of some claret which the Duke had imported on Mr. Rigby's
recommendation, this distinguished gentleman contrived to pay almost
hourly visits at Apsley House, and so bullied Tadpole and Taper that they
scarcely dared address him. About four-and-twenty hours before the result,
and when it was generally supposed that the Duke was in, Mr. Rigby, who
had gone down to Windsor to ask his Majesty the date of some obscure
historical incident, which Rigby, of course, very well knew, found that
audiences were impossible, that Majesty was agitated, and learned, from an
humble but secure authority, that in spite of all his slashing articles,
and Lucian Gay's parodies of the Irish melodies, Canning was to be Prime
Minister.

This would seem something of a predicament! To common minds; there are no
such things as scrapes for gentlemen with Mr. Rigby's talents for action.
He had indeed, in the world, the credit of being an adept in machinations,
and was supposed ever to be involved in profound and complicated
contrivances. This was quite a mistake. There was nothing profound about
Mr. Rigby; and his intellect was totally incapable of devising or
sustaining an intricate or continuous scheme. He was, in short, a man who
neither felt nor thought; but who possessed, in a very remarkable degree,
a restless instinct for adroit baseness. On the present occasion he got
into his carriage, and drove at the utmost speed from Windsor to the
Foreign Office. The Secretary of State was engaged when he arrived; but
Mr. Rigby would listen to no difficulties. He rushed upstairs, flung open
the door, and with agitated countenance, and eyes suffused with tears,
threw himself into the arms of the astonished Mr. Canning.

'All is right,' exclaimed the devoted Rigby, in broken tones; 'I have
convinced the King that the First Minister must be in the House of
Commons. No one knows it but myself; but it is certain.'

We have seen that at an early period of his career, Mr. Peel withdrew from
official life. His course had been one of unbroken prosperity; the hero of
the University had become the favourite of the House of Commons. His
retreat, therefore, was not prompted by chagrin. Nor need it have been
suggested by a calculating ambition, for the ordinary course of events was
fast bearing to him all to which man could aspire. One might rather
suppose, that he had already gained sufficient experience, perhaps in his
Irish Secretaryship, to make him pause in that career of superficial
success which education and custom had hitherto chalked out for him,
rather than the creative energies of his own mind. A thoughtful intellect
may have already detected elements in our social system which required a
finer observation, and a more unbroken study, than the gyves and trammels
of office would permit. He may have discovered that the representation of
the University, looked upon in those days as the blue ribbon of the House
of Commons, was a sufficient fetter without unnecessarily adding to its
restraint. He may have wished to reserve himself for a happier occasion,
and a more progressive period. He may have felt the strong necessity of
arresting himself in his rapid career of felicitous routine, to survey his
position in calmness, and to comprehend the stirring age that was
approaching.

For that, he could not but be conscious that the education which he had
consummated, however ornate and refined, was not sufficient. That age of
economical statesmanship which Lord Shelburne had predicted in 1787, when
he demolished, in the House of Lords, Bishop Watson and the Balance of
Trade, which Mr. Pitt had comprehended; and for which he was preparing the
nation when the French Revolution diverted the public mind into a stronger
and more turbulent current, was again impending, while the intervening
history of the country had been prolific in events which had aggravated
the necessity of investigating the sources of the wealth of nations. The
time had arrived when parliamentary preeminence could no longer be
achieved or maintained by gorgeous abstractions borrowed from Burke, or
shallow systems purloined from De Lolme, adorned with Horatian points, or
varied with Virgilian passages. It was to be an age of abstruse
disquisition, that required a compact and sinewy intellect, nurtured in a
class of learning not yet honoured in colleges, and which might arrive at
conclusions conflicting with predominant prejudices.

Adopting this view of the position of Mr. Peel, strengthened as it is by
his early withdrawal for a while from the direction of public affairs, it
may not only be a charitable but a true estimate of the motives which
influenced him in his conduct towards Mr. Canning, to conclude that he was
not guided in that transaction by the disingenuous rivalry usually imputed
to him. His statement in Parliament of the determining circumstances of
his conduct, coupled with his subsequent and almost immediate policy, may
perhaps always leave this a painful and ambiguous passage in his career;
but in passing judgment on public men, it behoves us ever to take large
and extended views of their conduct; and previous incidents will often
satisfactorily explain subsequent events, which, without their
illustrating aid, are involved in misapprehension or mystery.

It would seem, therefore, that Sir Robert Peel, from an early period,
meditated his emancipation from the political confederacy in which he was
implicated, and that he has been continually baffled in this project. He
broke loose from Lord Liverpool; he retired from Mr. Canning. Forced again
into becoming the subordinate leader of the weakest government in
parliamentary annals, he believed he had at length achieved his
emancipation, when he declared to his late colleagues, after the overthrow
of 1830, that he would never again accept a secondary position in office.
But the Duke of Wellington was too old a tactician to lose so valuable an
ally. So his Grace declared after the Reform Bill was passed, as its
inevitable result, that thenceforth the Prime Minister must be a member of
the House of Commons; and this aphorism, cited as usual by the Duke's
parasites as demonstration of his supreme sagacity, was a graceful mode of
resigning the preeminence which had been productive of such great party
disasters. It is remarkable that the party who devised and passed the
Reform Bill, and who, in consequence, governed the nation for ten years,
never once had their Prime Minister in the House of Commons: but that does
not signify; the Duke's maxim is still quoted as an oracle almost equal in
prescience to his famous query, 'How is the King's government to be
carried on?' a question to which his Grace by this time has contrived to
give a tolerably practical answer.

Sir Robert Peel, who had escaped from Lord Liverpool, escaped from Mr.
Canning, escaped even from the Duke of Wellington in 1832, was at length
caught in 1834; the victim of ceaseless intriguers, who neither
comprehended his position, nor that of their country.




CHAPTER II.


Beaumanoir was one of those Palladian palaces, vast and ornate, such as
the genius of Kent and Campbell delighted in at the beginning of the
eighteenth century. Placed on a noble elevation, yet screened from the
northern blast, its sumptuous front, connected with its far-spreading
wings by Corinthian colonnades, was the boast and pride of the midland
counties. The surrounding gardens, equalling in extent the size of
ordinary parks, were crowded with temples dedicated to abstract virtues
and to departed friends. Occasionally a triumphal arch celebrated a
general whom the family still esteemed a hero; and sometimes a votive
column commemorated the great statesman who had advanced the family a step
in the peerage. Beyond the limits of this pleasance the hart and hind
wandered in a wilderness abounding in ferny coverts and green and stately
trees.

The noble proprietor of this demesne had many of the virtues of his class;
a few of their failings. He had that public spirit which became his
station. He was not one of those who avoided the exertions and the
sacrifices which should be inseparable from high position, by the hollow
pretext of a taste for privacy, and a devotion to domestic joys. He was
munificent, tender, and bounteous to the poor, and loved a flowing
hospitality. A keen sportsman, he was not untinctured by letters, and had
indeed a cultivated taste for the fine arts. Though an ardent politician,
he was tolerant to adverse opinions, and full of amenity to his opponents.
A firm supporter of the corn-laws, he never refused a lease.
Notwithstanding there ran through his whole demeanour and the habit of his
mind, a vein of native simplicity that was full of charm, his manner was
finished. He never offended any one's self-love. His good breeding,
indeed, sprang from the only sure source of gentle manners, a kind heart.
To have pained others would have pained himself. Perhaps, too, this noble
sympathy may have been in some degree prompted by the ancient blood in his
veins, an accident of lineage rather rare with the English nobility. One
could hardly praise him for the strong affections that bound him to his
hearth, for fortune had given him the most pleasing family in the world;
but, above all, a peerless wife.

The Duchess was one of those women who are the delight of existence. She
was sprung from a house not inferior to that with which she had blended,
and was gifted with that rare beauty which time ever spares, so that she
seemed now only the elder sister of her own beautiful daughters. She, too,
was distinguished by that perfect good breeding which is the result of
nature and not of education: for it may be found in a cottage, and may be
missed in a palace. 'Tis a genial regard for the feelings of others that
springs from an absence of selfishness. The Duchess, indeed, was in every
sense a fine lady; her manners were refined and full of dignity; but
nothing in the world could have induced her to appear bored when another
was addressing or attempting to amuse her. She was not one of those vulgar
fine ladies who meet you one day with a vacant stare, as if unconscious of
your existence, and address you on another in a tone of impertinent
familiarity. Her temper, perhaps, was somewhat quick, which made this
consideration for the feelings of others still more admirable, for it was
the result of a strict moral discipline acting on a good heart. Although
the best of wives and mothers, she had some charity for her neighbours.
Needing herself no indulgence, she could be indulgent; and would by no
means favour that strait-laced morality that would constrain the innocent
play of the social body. She was accomplished, well read, and had a lively
fancy. Add to this that sunbeam of a happy home, a gay and cheerful spirit
in its mistress, and one might form some faint idea of this gracious
personage.

The eldest son of this house was now on the continent; of his two younger
brothers, one was with his regiment and the other was Coningsby's friend
at Eton, our Henry Sydney. The two eldest daughters had just married, on
the same day, and at the same altar; and the remaining one, Theresa, was
still a child.

The Duke had occupied a chief post in the Household under the late
administration, and his present guests chiefly consisted of his former
colleagues in office. There were several members of the late cabinet,
several members for his Grace's late boroughs, looking very much like
martyrs, full of suffering and of hope. Mr. Tadpole and Mr. Taper were
also there; they too had lost their seats since 1832; but being men of
business, and accustomed from early life to look about them, they had
already commenced the combinations which on a future occasion were to bear
them back to the assembly where they were so missed.

Taper had his eye on a small constituency which had escaped the fatal
schedules, and where he had what they called a 'connection;' that is to
say, a section of the suffrages who had a lively remembrance of Treasury
favours once bestowed by Mr. Taper, and who had not been so liberally
dealt with by the existing powers. This connection of Taper was in time to
leaven the whole mass of the constituent body, and make it rise in full
rebellion against its present liberal representative, who being one of a
majority of three hundred, could get nothing when he called at Whitehall
or Downing Street.

Tadpole, on the contrary, who was of a larger grasp of mind than Taper,
with more of imagination and device but not so safe a man, was coquetting
with a manufacturing town and a large constituency, where he was to
succeed by the aid of the Wesleyans, of which pious body he had suddenly
become a fervent admirer. The great Mr. Rigby, too, was a guest out of
Parliament, nor caring to be in; but hearing that his friends had some
hopes, he thought he would just come down to dash them.

The political grapes were sour for Mr. Rigby; a prophet of evil, he
preached only mortification and repentance and despair to his late
colleagues. It was the only satisfaction left Mr. Rigby, except assuring
the Duke that the finest pictures in his gallery were copies, and
recommending him to pull down Beaumanoir, and rebuild it on a design with
which Mr. Rigby would furnish him.

The battue and the banquet were over; the ladies had withdrawn; and the
butler placed fresh claret on the table.

'And you really think you could give us a majority, Tadpole?' said the
Duke.

Mr. Tadpole, with some ceremony, took a memorandum-book out of his pocket,
amid the smiles and the faint well-bred merriment of his friends.

'Tadpole is nothing without his book,' whispered Lord Fitz-Booby.

'It is here,' said Mr. Tadpole, emphatically patting his volume, 'a clear
working majority of twenty-two.'

'Near sailing that!' cried the Duke.

'A far better majority than the present Government have,' said Mr.
Tadpole.

'There is nothing like a good small majority,' said Mr. Taper, 'and a good
registration.'

'Ay! register, register, register!' said the Duke. 'Those were immortal
words.'

'I can tell your Grace three far better ones,' said Mr. Tadpole, with a
self-complacent air. 'Object, object, object!'

'You may register, and you may object,' said Mr. Rigby, 'but you will
never get rid of Schedule A and Schedule B.'

'But who could have supposed two years ago that affairs would be in their
present position?' said Mr. Taper, deferentially.

'I foretold it,' said Mr. Rigby. 'Every one knows that no government now
can last twelve months.'

'We may make fresh boroughs,' said Taper. 'We have reduced Shabbyton at
the last registration under three hundred.'

'And the Wesleyans!' said Tadpole. 'We never counted on the Wesleyans!'

'I am told these Wesleyans are really a respectable body,' said Lord Fitz-
Booby. 'I believe there is no material difference between their tenets and
those of the Establishment. I never heard of them much till lately. We
have too long confounded them with the mass of Dissenters, but their
conduct at several of the later elections proves that they are far from
being unreasonable and disloyal individuals. When we come in, something
should be done for the Wesleyans, eh, Rigby?'

'All that your Lordship can do for the Wesleyans is what they will very
shortly do for themselves, appropriate a portion of the Church Revenues to
their own use.'

'Nay, nay,' said Mr. Tadpole with a chuckle, 'I don't think we shall find
the Church attacked again in a hurry. I only wish they would try! A good
Church cry before a registration,' he continued, rubbing his hands; 'eh,
my Lord, I think that would do.'

'But how are we to turn them out?' said the Duke.

'Ah!' said Mr. Taper, 'that is a great question.'

'What do you think of a repeal of the Malt Tax?' said Lord Fitz-Booby.
'They have been trying it on in ----shire, and I am told it goes down very
well.'

'No repeal of any tax,' said Taper, sincerely shocked, and shaking his
head; 'and the Malt Tax of all others. I am all against that.'

'It is a very good cry though, if there be no other,' said Tadpole.

'I am all for a religious cry,' said Taper. 'It means nothing, and, if
successful, does not interfere with business when we are in.'

'You will have religious cries enough in a short time,' said Mr. Rigby,
rather wearied of any one speaking but himself, and thereat he commenced a
discourse, which was, in fact, one of his 'slashing' articles in petto on
Church Reform, and which abounded in parallels between the present affairs
and those of the reign of Charles I. Tadpole, who did not pretend to know
anything but the state of the registration, and Taper, whose political
reading was confined to an intimate acquaintance with the Red Book and
Beatson's Political Index, which he could repeat backwards, were silenced.
The Duke, who was well instructed and liked to be talked to, sipped his
claret, and was rather amused by Rigby's lecture, particularly by one or
two statements characterised by Rigby's happy audacity, but which the Duke
was too indolent to question. Lord Fitz-Booby listened with his mouth
open, but rather bored. At length, when there was a momentary pause, he
said:

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