The Press. — London, England, 1858-05-15 00:00:00

I out to (Jude, and this agent picks up, and sends home, every fact and document he can meet with. In his last letter, published in the Times on the Thursday of last week, this Pro clamation of Lord CANNING'S figured as a main circumstance in the present state of Oude. The Proclamation was now an accomplished fact, and t h e publicity given to it was the publicity of the newspaPers• But the next step was inevitable. So startling a document could not be published in all the news papers without questions being immediately put to the Government in the House of Commons. A slow and cautious Government of the Liver pool and Castlereagh days would have been slow and cautious m its responses. But the various members of the present Administration have in most cases had little official training ; and when a question is asked of them, it seems the most natural thing in the world to give an answer. When, on Thursday, the inquiry was made, whether the Government had received a copy of such a Proclamation, and what steps it meant to take, the ancient and customary way of p a rrying such a question would have been, to have required that notice of the question should be given. Then, in the intervening four and twenty hours, the matter might have been consider ed and an answer deliberately agreed upon. In the present case, however, the Secretary of the Board of Control replied without delay or hesita tion, that the Proclamation had been received, and that a Despatch on the subject had been sent out. Now, there could be no doubt that with this information before it, the House of Commons would have pestered the Government with in quiries until it had obtained a sight of that Despatch. But then the House must have borne the responsibility. Lord ELLKNBOROUGH, in the present case, strong in his sense of right, and really desirous that all the facts of the case should be fully and promptly made known, at once promised to lay the Despatch on the table. Now this promptitude involved him and the Government in peril. It made them appear the assailants of Lord CANNING. All the friends of that noble man instantly set up a howl about the cruelty and injustice of condemning an absent man, without waiting to hear his explanations. Thus he who had been the cause of the whole mischief, he who had involved everything in peril, was made, all on a sudden, to appear as a martyr ; and pity was invoked for him whose pitiless Pro clamation was the one main feature in the case ! The result has been, in a measure, the punish ment of the innocent, instead of the guilty. Lord Eummououow, who simply performed a public duty in writing and sending out the Despatch ; and who considered it due to the public, that as soon as the Proclamation saw the light, the Despatch should immediately follow it,—Lord ELLENBOROUGU finds it expedient to resign, radio' than to involve the whole Government in a vote, turning upon a mere indiscretion of an individual. He withdraws, and by his with drawal the whole ground for the threatened Par liamentary censure is taken away. For how stands the whole question ? Surely, thus We have marched into Lucknow, and have planted a small military force in the kingdom of Onde. But we have possession of no more ground than we stand upon ; while our title to the sove reignty, except by conquest, is at least very ques tionable. This being the case, every conceivable motive, whether of justice or of policy, would point to a line of conduct of the most temperate and conci liatory kind. Instead of which, the Governor-General issues a Proclamation of unprecedented severity; de creeing the confiscation of the land of the whole kingdom, with the exception of six estates ! The Home Government had previously sent out the plainest injunctions to adopt a course of clemency and moderation. On receiving this decree of confiscation, Lord ELLENBOROUGH sent a despatch, enjoining just that moderate and conciliatory line of conduct which the Times itself before this party strife arose, so plainly recommended. Up to this point the Government was not only in the right, but it was unassailable. But, in reply to questions in the House of Commons, the THE PRESS, MAY 15, 1858. nature of this Despatch was stated, and a copy of it promised. This placed the Government in the position of lowering the authority of a Governor. General whom it had not seen fit to recal. This questionable point has been fastened on, and through this loophole a fire is directed against the Government as to the whole transac tion. But, except Lord CANNLVG'S Proclama tion is defended—and nobody defends it—and Lord ELLENBOROUGH'S Despatch censured—and nobody proposes to censure it—there remains nothing to quarrel with except what is termed "the premature publication of a despatch." Now, surely it may be asked, whether an instance is on record of the change of a whole Government on such a gr ound as this ? In rt sho, whether it is possib le to view the Resolu tions now discussing in Parliament in any other light than that of mere pretexts—ingenious devices, whereby, without any care for their truth or reasonableness—the real object of restoring the Whigs to Downing-street may, it is hoped, be attained ? PARLIAMENT AND PARTIES IN 1858. FOREIGNERS must be amazingly puzzled by the aspect presented by our Parliament, and by the various phases of organization through which our Parties and sections of Parties have of late been successively passing. They have been as nume rous, as diverse, and as inscrutable to the ordi nary observer as the changes in a kaleidoscope ; and even the most scientific mind, aided by the most practised eye, can scarcely tell what con clusion to come to with respect to the present, or what anticipations to form as regards the future. At the commencement of the session of the present year Lord PALMERSTON sat on the Trea sury Bench, Prime Minister of England, and, backed in appearance and in more than one divi sion by two-thirds of the House of Commons, floated easily on the onward stream, borne up buoyantly by the inflation which his dextrous catching of the popular feeling of the moment upon the question of Indian administration had procured for him. His friends proclaimed that Party to be his own, and designated him as the most powerful Minister of the nineteenth cen tury. He had himself evidently come to the same conclusion, and believed that in the last decennary of his political career he had formed what had been wanting in the other four,—a Palmerston Party large enough in numbers and united enough in purpose to command the Court and to dictate to Parliament. From a Section within that seeming Party suddenly was aimed a blow which in the second month of the year in which he had seemed so powerful, subverted the Minister who deemed he held Crown, Lords, Commons, and the Country in the hollow of his hand. Lord DERBY'S Party, consisting of two-fifths of the House of Commons, assumed the vacated places, and Lord PALMERSTON, attended by the other three-fifths--a formidable looking array—passed over to the benches of the Opposition. Unchanged in numbers and appearance, that array had, however, in the passage materially altered in cha racter and in organization. The gangway that, passing up the middle of each side the House, divides each into two distinct parts is a gulf; on one side of which sat Lord PALMERSTON with a collection of politicians reluctant to desert, yet not quite resolved to support him ; and on the other sat Lord JOHN RussELL—during Lord PAL MERSTON'S Administration a member sitting in isolation on the back benches, in the new state of thingq occupying the first seat below the gang way—the Leader of a large Party whom Lord PALMERSTON had looked upon as his own. But even that Party is subject to subdivision, and a hundred and twenty men among them are as sheep having no shepherd. Recent events have waked in time a perception that they are regarded by Lord JOHN RUSSELL as they were treated by Lord PALMERSTON, simply as instruments of strategy, of which the Parliamentary manceuvrer can disembarrass himself as soon as his purpose is served and his ascendancy secured. This was a curious state of things. Lord DERBY became by its instrumentality capable of holding his position against a mass of opponents who at any time could have beaten him numeri cally, if they could have agreed among themselves when to do it, and upon what questions. His strength has hitherto depended upon their dis organization, or rather upon their incapacity, from diversity of policy, to co-operate. Lord JOHN RUSSELL and Lord PALMERSTON, mis taking singularly the bent of the mind of the House, believed that matters might be arranged as they had often been before, and that un attached sections might be managed as the Irish Brass Band was accustomed to be in former days. They hit upon the terms of a motion which both could agree in without either being committed by it to any future course or policy; and Mr. CARDWELL, a Palmerstonian, with the aroma of dying-out Peelism still hanging about him suffi ciently, as was supposed, to attract a few of his old friends to his side, was selected as the man to set it going. It was cleverly and delicately de vised, this net, that was to inclose so many fishes of all kinds, and to bring into companionship for the occasion so many strange bedfellows. So dainty a construction, indeed, was it, that we can almost find it in our hearts to regret that the straightforwardness of Lord ELLENBOROUGH has broken through it and knocked it so utterly to pieces. Lord PALMEESTON and Lord JOHN RUSSELL may learn a lesson from the occurrence, if old habits of narrow per ception will permit them to see things as they are. The disorganization of the House of Commons is evidently in a great measure the result of a desperate struggle being made to eliminate the old Whig Party, to get rid of the alternation of family cliques, and to rescue the Liberal Party from being used simply as levers for the occasion to crush this or put in that re presentative of the cliques of Brookes's or of the Confederation of Cambridge-house. We suer well of the future from the determination which has been shown not to permit great questions of policy to be practically decided by indirect and shuffling motions founded on purely personal considerations • and we do not despair, if not in this Parlia ment, at all events in the next, of seeing the House of Commons once more divided into two great parties—com posed, on the one side, of the existing Conserva tive party, enlarged by the accession of many men who, however desirous of progress, and however earnest for reforms, are content that in conducting them the fundamental principles of our institutions should govern their appli cation ; and, upon the other, of those men of extreme democratic opinions who wish to destroy the entire growth of centuries, and to create everything afresh upon ma thematical principles and after symmetrical forms. We believe this will be ultimately the result, if the House has the patience and the jus tice to let Lord DERBY have a fair opportunity of exhibiting and working out his policy ; and we shall then, we trust, not be subjected to a repeti tion of such exhibitions of Parliamentary vacil lation and party strategy as we have wit nessed within the last few days, and shall be able to show to Europe a House of Commons aiding some Government or other by a positive majo rity, with some unity of action and some distinc tiveness of policy. NEW VIEWS ON MAYNOOTH. IT is pleasant to know that the zeal and religious enthusiasm of large masses of the English people have not been thrown away upon the question of Maynooth. The Tablet of last Saturday comes out with an intimation that the authorities of the Church of Rome would favourably entertain the proposal of buying up the vested interest (such as it is) in the seminary near Dublin, where priests are educated for Rome at the expense of the British State. We