The Press. — London, England, 1858-04-17 00:00:00

gr" • 6/ ! 0 01; 00 09 . • \lll .;e • A • 'I \ " 4 l7"" N tk e •-t • ! •1 Ih.t , I • ~~ 4+ rpt No. 259.—V0L. VI. LONDON, SATURDAY, APRIL 17, 1858. STAMPED ....I UNSTAMPED.. (pit Vress. duced, moulded together, and made available, why is it not brought forward ? But whence is it to be obtained ? If we turn from the present Treasury benches, and survey the rest of the House of Commons, wo search in vain for a possible Ministry. Lord PALMERSTON has the largest body of supporters ; yet he was con signed to the Opposition benches, simply be cause his supporters were too few. He was outvoted; ho saw no way of cancelling or re scinding the vote ; and therefore he had no other course than to wait upon the Queen, and inform her Majesty that he had lost the con fidence of the House of Commons. On his resignation, no other leader of the Liberal party offered himself to unite and reorganize the broken phalanx. Lord JoHN Rassam, had not one hundred followers ; Mr. MILNER ChesoN had still fewer. Hence it is, that when the Liberal journals have exhausted all their weapons of scorn and contumely, we can turn round upon them, and tranquilly inquire, " If you have the majority of the House at " your back, why do you not expel the present " Ministry, and set up a Liberal Government "in its room?" To which they could give no other answer, with truth and honesty, than this, " We don't, because we .sawt." phalanx obeyed his command, and nearly 100 members who had voted against conces sion in 1828, voted for concession in 1829. Sir ROBERT PBxc had thus swept away" Romish disabilities," but with them he had swept away much more. The Duke of RICHMOND, and many other Protestant Tories, indignant at the conversion of so many members of the House of Commons, declared for " Reform.' The whole system of representation which had endured for many generations was destroyed by the popular indignation which followed the treachery of 1829. And of course the old state of things, once terminated, was terminated for ever. The close boroughs could no more be revived than we could restore the Corn Laws, or resuscitate the Druids. LONDON, SATURDAY, APRIL 17, 1858. THE DUKES QUESTION STILL UNANSWERED. WHAT a series of eventful years has passed over our heads, since the old Duke, with his sagacious mind and eagle glance, swept away a mass of rubbish and rhodomontade with the plain question, " But, my lords, what I want to " know, is, How the Queen's Government is to be " carried on!" Since that day various statesmen have tried, in vain, to find an answer; and the question nover appeared more pertinent, or needful to he answered, than it does now. But one result of their abolition has been, that instead of a settled !tate of things, we have had, ever since 1832, constantly recurring Let us take the view of the actual state of things presented in the Times, in its first three papers of the present week : a view, dis torted and exaggerated, it is true, but still one upon which we are entitled to found an argu ment. That journal, then, thus describes, with the natural spleen of an ejected placeman, what lit deems the present condition of affairs:— changes. The of Lord Luisa- root. lasted for about sixteen years, and had a life of the usual length been granted to its head, his Premiership might have continued for a second period of the same length. But, in the twenty-five years which have elapse d since the Reform Bill became imr, we have seen the Cabinets of Lord Gorr, of Lord MELBOURNE, of Sir RORIXT PEEL, of Lord JOHN RUSSELL, of Lord DERBY, of Lord ABER DEEN, of Lord PALMERSTON, and now of Lord DERBY again. Eight Ministries in five and twenty years give au average of about three years to each. But we have not quite stated all, the facts. Lord MELBOURNE'S resignation 1839, and Sir ROBERT PEEL'S in December,' 1845, are not included in the above list. These would raise the number of completed or com menced changes• to ten, in about twenty-give years ; giving an average duration of about two years and a half to each Government. The absolute loss of time for the pur poses of good legislation, which is in volved in this system of perpetual change, is evident. A Cabinet requires a year to adapt itself to its position ; in the second year it addresses itself seriously to the work of legislation ; and in the third or fourth year it is suddenly expelled. Does not the question very naturally occur to the mind, " How is the Queen's Government to be carried on " The majority has turned itself out, for its own sins and those of its leaders, and has put the minority to- reign in its stead. . . . The House of Commons, so recently elected to represent the feelings of the Liberals, has set the Tories to rule over them . . . When the people return a majority of members to Par liament they ought to be secure, and they have hitherto felt secure, that Government will be can•iod on in accordance with the ex pression of their will ; but if Government is to be carried on by minorities, what atarantee, we may ask, does our elective constitution afford us?" Such, then, is the practical working of that system, the weak point in which the Duke of WELLINGTON detected in a moment, when he asked, "How is the Queen's Government to he carried on?" Probably, to understand the real bearings of that question, the best way will be to take a rapid retrospect of the Minis terial changes which have taken place since the passing of the Reform Bill. The grand achievement of the Reform Bill —that which made the change so real and so important—was the abolition of that element of fixedness and permanency the close boroughs. From the days of PJrT to the time of the death of GEORGE IV., the close boroughs had been so systematically dealt with as to give any Conservative Ministry a considerable array of plelged voters in the House of Com mons. The Whigs had, it was true, many family boroughs under their control ; but still, on a balance of the account, the Tories could reckon on many more close-borough votes than the Whigs. And to begin with 100 firm votes, to be aided by a majority of the county representatives, and by nearly a moiety of the open-borough representatives, made any Ministry, guided by Lords LIVER POOL, SIDNOUTH, ELDON, and Sir R. Past, feel tolerably safe, from the death of Wrttraar Purr down to the close of the reign of GEORGE IV. That state of calm security was terminated by Sir ROBERT PEEL'S first deflection. Not convinced, he said, of any error, but yielding solely to circumstances, ho resolved in 1829 to concede those " Catholic claims" which he bad for twenty years resisted. His obedient " The House of Commons is hardly in a condition to follow the light of reason or of the Constitution. It is too conscious of having to thank itself in a great measure for the cha racter and position of the Administration, and is forced to connive at imbecility which it would be ashamed to recognize and punish." " The House in its present mood, no doubt, thinks a great deal ought to be sacrificed rather than incur another change of Ministry; but there are limits even to the spirit of toleration, and perhaps even the pleasure of being ruled by a Tory minority may be considered too dearly purchased if it is to cost us the over throw of our Parliamentary practice, and of that responsibility which lies at the very foun dation of Parliamentary Government itself." Such is the picture offered to us, in the Times, of the present position of affairs, and of the prospects of the Government. Let us add to it one mare feature, that we have now the beat Government that is possible at the present moment ; and surely we need add nothing more to throw the minds of men back upon the Duke's saga cious question. Another most important difference between the old system and the new is, that, before the passing of the Reform Bill, changes of Admi nistration generally arose from deaths or other changes, internal to the Cabinet itself. Mr. Paacavais Cabinet was broken up by his death; Lord LIVERPOOL'S, by his mortal ill ness. But every Cabinet since the passing of the Reform Bill has been cashiered by the House of Commons. Lord GREY, it is true, voluntarily retired, but he ascribed his retire ment to the inconvenient pressure of the We say that the present Government is the best that is possible; and surely it cannot be necessary to prove so self-evident a proposi tion. If a better Government can bs pro- House of Commons. Sir ROBERT PEEL'S Ministry of 1835 was defeated, and forced to - s ,f