Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament. John Morrison Davidson

days Mr. Cowen was in fact, I presume, what he now is only in theory, a stanch republican.

      With regard to Mr. Cowen's parliamentary career, it is hard to speak with impartiality. His fervid Jingoism has affected with profound regret his warmest admirers, myself among the rest. There have not even been wanting some base enough to attribute his support of the wicked and disastrous foreign policy of the Beaconsfield government to motives other than disinterested. The true explanation of his aberration is quite otherwise. He is still a Hungarian, a Polish insurgent. Nothing is changed. Russia is his mortal foe. Like a true Bourbon, he has neither learned nor forgotten. Any stick is good enough to beat the Muscovite dog with. He advocated the Crimean war in the hope that something might "turn up" for his exiled ​clients. Nothing came of it; but a fig for experience! Mr. Cowen is, lilie the great author and finisher of his faith, Mazzini, essentially an idealist, a poet with intense sympathy and vivid imagination. His sympathy and imagination have temporarily overwhelmed his reason: that is all—nothing better, nothing worse. If I were to have the making of two perfect Radical politicians, I should mix Dilke and Cowen together. The one is two-thirds reason and one-third imagination; the other, two-thirds imagination and one-third reason. Give C. one-third of D.'s reason, and D. one-third of C.'s sympathetic fancy, and then you would have a correct balance of powers.

      Bright's is the only powerful intellect in the House in which reason and imagination are blended ia just and equal proportions, the imagination acting as a stimulus to the reason, but never as a controlling power. I will illustrate what I mean by a passage from Mr. Cowen's magnificently unwise Jingo speech in the House on the occasion of the supposed Russian advance on Constantinople: "I ask English Liberals if they have ever seriously considered the political consequences of an imperial despotism bestriding Europe—reaching, indeed, from the waters of the Neva to those of the Amoor—of the head of the Greek Church, the Eastern Pope, the master of many legions, having one foot on the Baltic, planting another on the Bosphorus. When icebergs float into southern latitudes, they freeze the air for miles around. Will not this political iceberg, when it descends upon the genial shores of the Mediterranean, wither the young shoots of liberty that are springing up between the crevices of the worn-out fabrics of despotism?" Now, all this is very ​striking—nay, appalling; but John Bright, I am sure, knowing that icebergs have a habit of melting long before they reach the shores of the Mediterranean, would never have been guilty of bringing any berg of his so far south. As it is, the political iceberg from the north has liberated Bulgaria, while that from the south, pushed on by English Jingoes, has ineffectually striven to roll its icy mass over the young shoots of Roumelian liberty.

      Apart, however, from this deplorable Jingo infatuation, Mr. Cowen's parliamentary achievements have in no way belied the high hopes that his friends reposed in his great abilities and immense experience. His speeches on the Friendly Societies Bill, on the County Suffrage Bill, on Mr. Plimsoll's bill, on the County Courts Bill, the Licensing Boards Bill, and, above all, on the Royal Titles Bill, have given evidence of a varied capacity for legislative work which has not been equalled by any member of his own standing in the House.

      During the parliamentary contest in Newcastle, occasioned by the death of his father, Mr. Cowen delivered a series of speeches on political questions and public policy which justly arrested national attention. They have been collected, and will abundantly repay perusal. They are, without exception, as fine electioneering speeches as I ever read, and, if he had never opened his lips again, would have entitled him to no mean place among English orators and statesmen. On one point only did he show a disposition to lower the Radical flag—to be unfaithful to himself and his glorious antecedents. He was repeatedly taxed with being a republican; and his explanation was, that he ​held the republican form of government to be in theory the highest known to man, but that in practice he was devoted to the British monarchy. Now, to my mind, this is wholly illogical, and not altogether honest. Having discovered a true or best theory, it is the duty of every honest man to act on it, whether it be in the domain of politics or mathematics. If there is a better way, we have no right to fold our hands and content ourselves with the worse. "Ye cannot serve God and Mammon." To the sincere mind all compromise in such circumstances is impossible. It will not do to say, "Well, no doubt in theory the worship of God is the correct thing; but for all practical purposes the service of Mammon is preferable." Least of all living English politicians could I have conceived of Mr. Joseph Cowen appearing on a public platform with such an impotent formula in his mouth. In the case of others "thrift might follow fawning;" but with Mr. Cowen it was not, and is not so. That he should not have been able to say to this contemptible spirit of subterfuge, "Get thee behind me, Satan," is to me a mystery even unto this day.