e other day when Lord Robert Cecil was playing the
same freaks that Lord Randolph Churchill is playing now. Our friend
Fluellen would perhaps say, "the situations, look you, is both alike."
Either of the noble names would pass for the other if they were written
with initials and dashes in eighteenth century style. In those days the
late Lord Derby was the Conservative chief, and Mr. Disraeli led the
Opposition in the Commons as his lieutenant. This arrangement nettled
the young blood of the Conservative _noblesse_. Lord Robert Cecil's
outlook in the world was not then what it afterwards became. He was a
younger son with a career to make for himself. Ambition can supply
spurs, so can prudence, so can necessity, and so can all three combined.
The younger son of a great house enters upon political life at an
enormous advantage over humbler rivals. If there is any brilliancy about
him his fortune is made. Lord Robert Cecil's influence was sufficient to
produce a succession of small insurrectionary earthquakes on the
Opposition benches. Old members from the shires nudged each other in
their bucolic way and asked what was the matter, learning with puzzled
amusement that there were some who did not think it quite right for the
gentlemen of England to be led by a Semitic adventurer. But the Semitic
adventurer had the gifts of his race. He was primed to the throat with
contempt and scorn, too cold and measured withal for the slightest show
of insolence. As each hurly-burly ended and the dust settled, he was
found sitting where he always meant to sit, just as if nothing had
happened, with the same impassive look and the same indomitable calm. He
had one great advantage external to himself. He knew that he could place
unbounded confidence in the loyalty of his chief in the Upper House, and
so long as Lord Derby stood by him the insurgent school-boys on the
back-benches could do him no harm. Perhaps Sir Stafford Northcote
cannot count upon the same support, but then his own resources are
greater, if he did but know it.

The truth is that Sir Stafford Northcote represents the only type of
Conservatism that can survive in the present state of political thought
in England. It is not a brilliant type, but that is the fault of
history. Enough that it may be a useful one. Toryism has undergone a
process of inverse development which resembles decay, but which is
merely an accommodation to the existing conditions of life and health.
The fi