Delaware Journal

PARLIAMENTARY CHARACTERS.—The new Lord Chancellor is a person of a very striking figure and countenance. He seems exceedingly at his ease on the woolsack. I heard him on one occasion retort on Lord Ellenborough with as much asperity of tone and manner as I have ever witnessed on a trifling occasion.

The Duke of Wellington is a fidgety and talkative person while their lordships are in deliberation.—He is perpetually shifting his position, and whispering to the person who happens to sit next him.

Lord Goderich is a person whose speech is better to the sight, or on paper, than to the ear. The reverse, probably, may be said of Lords Dudley and Ward; there is great precision, smoothness and force, in what he delivers. Lord Lansdown, however, appears to be the best speaker in the upper house. He is one of the best sentence makers I ever heard; and what he does in this way is done with amazing facility. A writer, who is particular about his periods, and fastidious in the collocation of words especially when the ideas to be expressed have a good deal of complexity, knows well the utility of a pause, and an opportunity for emendation.

The greatest niceties of phrase, and felicities of arrangement, are exhibited by him off hand, and without the least show of hesitation or effort. When I say 'in the upper house,' I mean, of course in the active discharge of its duties. I refer only to the members whose voices are familiar to the ears of those who hear its debates. I can scarcely yet regard Lord Plunket as of the band of the 'Lords Temporal.' He is as yet a non-entity in their sphere but when he thinks proper to exercise his energies, his station, as a master of elocution, will, of course, be what it was in the region from which he has ascended—that is, it will place him above all competition and rivalry.

Peel looks yet very young; but increased fullness of person and gravity of countenance, mark in some measure the progress of time. I should suppose he is now about 40, for he made his maiden speech in favor of the Walcheren expedition in 1809, and he must have been 21 at that time. His appearance now is that of a smooth, self satisfied man of 40, who has husbanded his health, and with whom the world in general has thriven. He is said to be fond of the relaxation and quiet of domestic life, and that he does not make an empty boast when he says that he has rather fled from than been the pursuer of office. It would not probably be easy to estimate how much he owes of the character he has for disinterestedness and integrity to his tendency of his feelings and habits. He is indifferent to office probably because he is careful of his health, or is fond of his wife, or is rich, or has no poor relations to provide for, or has got a great deal of station and some fame by accident, and does not wish to hazard the loss of any portion of them in official squabbles or from any other cause equally detrimental to self. Probably his predilections are to be traced to success more strongly marking the magnanimity of his character; but be this as it may, it is shrewdly suspected that, with the colleagues he had, he never would have been able to introduce even the little innovation he has attempted in the criminal laws, if he was not ready at all times to say, that he did not want office, and that he would be thankful to be relieved from its solicitude. There is certainly something very imposing in an apparent contempt of authority and pelf, in contention for which, the world is kept in such agitation and turmoil. Would that all public men shared in the sentiment, or could successfully affect to do so! I could lay my finger upon one great man who, by the mere show of the disinterestedness of which the entire Peel family are so boasted, could, in all human likelihood, on more occasions than one, have given freedom to a whole people! As for the ex secretary's reputation for capacity, it is, I think, manifestly on the decline in the House. Fortune intended a high destiny for him—nature a very humble one. Probably the fickle goddess has now abandoned him to his own energies and these, as I think is already evident, cannot, after the lapse of very little time, keep him above the level of the fourth or fifth class even of the mere debaters—New York Times.