The Press. — London, England, 1855-02-10 00:00:00

'n3RuAßiy 10, 1855. rotting in arliamtnt. LORD JOHN RUSSELL. On Monday the late President of the Council replied to the statement of the Duke of Newcastle made last week in the Upper House. He com menced by remarking that the question had been made a personal one between himself and the noble duke, instead of being discussed upon the broad basis en which he intended place it. He considered that nothing but the vital importance of the war justified the late Ministry in retaining their places after the checks they received at the close of last session. The house, however, continued to give them its coati deuce on the war; and he had stated at the time that as long as the Ministry conducted the war with efficiency they would be authorised to remain at their posts. It was of the utmost importance to the issue of a war that it should be placed in the right hands. Un der Lord North we should not have conquered Canada; under Lord Chatham we should not have had t ) deplore Saratoga and Yorktown, and to be hold the fleet of an enemy riding triumphant in the Channel. Under such circumstances, it was natural that he, being the principal member of the Govern ment to answer in the house for the conduct of the war, should watch with the utmost care its prosecu tion. He then came to the particular statement of the Duke of Newcastle. The duke had stated, iu reply to the allegation of the "strong will" on his part to continue Secretary of State for the War Department, that he offered, on the division of the offices of War and the Colonies, to take " either or neither." That was certainly true ; yet the wish of the duke to retain the War Secretaryship was affirmed to him by various members of the Cabinet; and he considered it natural that after having fitted out an expedition with great despatch he should de sire to retain the control of that department during its operations. He read an extract from a letter of Lord Aberdeen, in which it was said that "when the Colonial-office was divided no objection was made to the choice of the War Department by the Duke of Newcastle." It was not said that "no objection was made to the choice of the Duke of Newcastle for the War Department," but " the choice by the Duke of Newcastle ;" and the words were, it appeared to him, exceedingly clear and definite. The noble duke had stated that he (Lord John Russell) had expressed a wish to hold the seals of the War Department Un doubtedly, had the Premier asked him to accept the office, he should have felt it his duty to accept it; but, so far from wishing it, it was one totally alien to his habits, and he should have accepted it with great reluctance. He then detailed his views as to the actual position of the Ministers in reference to this subject:— My opinion was—and I stated it to another colleague at the time—that when the Minister of War found any want of power he should have applied immediately to the Prime Minister, and that the detect should have been instantly supplied. In short, my clear impression was, not that the l)uke of Newcastle was until for the department that he had assumed, but, as I have stated, either that the Prune Minister should be constantly exerting himself to hurry on and hasten the preparations, or else that the War Minister should be a person endowed with extraordinary authority, power, and energy. I will state now tha: if the Prime Minister had been a man whose pursuits and disposition would lead him with eagerness to hasten preparations and dispositions of war, the Duke of Newcastle would have been found perfectly competent for the department that he held; and I believe also that if Lord Aberdeen had had as War Minister a person of extraordinary energy and autho• rity from the ottices which he had before held, the noble earl would have been a Prime Minister fit to conduct our affairs during this war. But I did not think from what happened that the combination of the two insured the efficiency of the public service. He explained that the expression in his letter to the Duke of Newcastle, "that he had done all he could," meant that he had been overruled by other departments, and that it did not depend on him to do more. He then came to a more important ques• Lion—namely, his alleged withdrawal of his proposi •tion on December 16. There were two questions in his letter to Lord Aberdeen of unequal importance, one as to the constitution of the department, whether the Secretaries for War and at War should 'be united, or a board appointed ; the other the personal question, as to the hands to whom the department should be intrusted. On the first of these he had consulted Lord Panmure, and the opinion of that nobleman was against the union of the two offices. But with respect to the personal question, it was his impression, and that impression had been confirmed by his noble friend, that he had never touched on that subject; in fact, he considered that while on the first he might ask the opinion of a person out of the Cabinet, the second was not a question proper for external discussion. What he stated on the 18th of December, then, had reference solely to the consolidation of the two offices. He then thus explained his conduct on the more per sonal matter THE PRESS. I ■nay have stated at that time to Lord Aberdeen that, after he had said that he could not honestly recommend to the Queen that the °Mee of Secretary of State for the War Department should be taken out of the hands of the Duke of Newcastle and placed in those of my noble friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department, it was not my intention to bring before the Cabinet that question, because, if that question was decided adversely to the Earl of Aberdeen; that would be equivalent to driving hint out of the Cabinet over which he presided ; and, therefore, in deference to him I left that question entirely iu the background, not changing my own opinion upon it, but, at the same time, declining the responsibility or incurring the risk of breaking up the Government upon that sub ject. Now, lam ready to admit that it is ♦e likely I was in error in that &termination ; it is very likely that, having formed the opinion which I had done, that it was for the welfare of the country that a change should take place, I ought to have pushed that question to a decision is the Cabinet, and that, if my colleagues had decided contrary to my opinion, t ought then and there to have resigned. I admit that it may be so. I own I was very averse to bringing the question to such a decision, and that I waited as long as possible, particularly with reference to the relations that I held towards Lord Aberdeen, and having told him that T would accept office under him, and wished to maintain his Administration to avoid the neces sity of going to that extent. He then proceeded to narrate his feelings at the time on the conduct of the war : I endeavoured to give my best assistance to Lord Aber deen, to the Duke of Newcastle, and to the Cabinet, with the view of improving the situation of our army, and pro viding for future success. I must say, at the same time, that with respect to some of those questions—with respect, for instance, to the question which was raised in this house by my honourable friend the member for Aylesbury dnring the short sitting in December, namely, the necessity for some provision, some consultation, for the next campaign -1 was not satisfied. My hon. friend the member for Ayles bury pointed out the damage that would be incurred if the Russian army was reinforced on the aide of Asia, and he spoke of the necessity of providing some force to meet any invasion of the Russians on that side. That was a most important subject. It occupied my mind very much ; but I could not say that I received from Lout Aberdeen that support which I had hoped on bringing this question nnder the consideration of the Cabinet. However, 1 still con tinued a member of the Cabinet. My noble friend the Secretary of State Fur the Home Department said the other evening, in answer to the statement which I had made, that I had lilt taken the right time or the right mode, and that I ought to have brought before the Cabinet, before Parliament met, the question of how the evils were to be encountered, and to have stated the difficulties which I still thought existed with respect to our military arrange ments. I think my noble friend was entirely in the right. I admit that I perceive an error which 1 have com mitted. I have no hesitation in saying that it was an error on my part not to have fully considered the position in which I should hare been if the motion for inquiry should be made after the opinion I expressed and the dissatisfaction I had certified. But be that as it may, having committed that error, 1 felt 1 should he guilty of a still greater error—that i should he guilty of an error in morality (and there can be no sound politics without sound morality )—if I stood up in this house and opposed inquiry, telling this house to be perfectly satisfied with the arrange ments then going on, while, at the same time, in my own mind 1 was not satisfied, and did not feel that I was likely soon to be. It has been said that the Government might have been defeated, that I might have stood by my col leagues, and that on the defeat of the Government I should have resigned office. I cannot say that that proposal is satisfactory to my mind, for it supposes I was to take the course which in conscience I could not take. But there is also the other alternative to consider. The event might have been different—a majority might have declared itself in favour of the Government, partly in consequence of my assurance, dissatisfied as I was with the conduct of the war, and having upon my mind the weight of having in duced the House of Commons to support the Government. Well, after all the obloquy which has been cast upon me I am very glad I did not incur that guilt. He then referred to the statement of the Duke of Newcastle, that he had resolved to resign his office if the Government escaped, and had even placed his resignation in the hands of Lord Aberdeen. He thought that such resignation should in fairness have been communicated to him, and that if his own resignation was hasty, Lord Aberdeen's advice to the Queen to accept it, without further communicating with him, was, under the circumstances, equally so. He I had been made the object of much obloquy, but he believed that his past life would relieve him from the charge of selfishness and treachery. It had been reported that the noble duke had said to the Premier, on the occasion of his first letter, "Do not give Lord John Russell an excuse for quitting the Ministry." Now, considering that after having been Prime Minister for five years, he had for two consented to serve in a subordinate office under Lord Aberdeen, he thought that such a sneer was somewhat misplaced. It did not seem to have occurred to the noble duke that it was possible there might have been some deficiencies in his manage ment of these mighty affairs, or that he (Lord John Russell) could have had any other than an indirect motive for desiring a change in the War Depart ment. Lord John then referred to the precedent of Lord Ripon, who, under Lord Grey's Government, though reluctantly, yet at once exchanged his post of Colonial Minister for the Privy Seal, to make 120 room for Lord Derby, believing the accession of that nobleman to be of advantage to the public service. Had Lord Aberdeen adopted his suggestion, and paced Lord Palmerston at the head of the War Department, the Ministers would have met the house with a much fairer chance of obtaining its confidence. Lord John Russell then stated that he had been . sent for by her Majesty to endeavour to form a M inistry, that he had so endeavoured, and that, as he had expected, he bad failed. He trusted that whoever was more sueceseful than himself would receive the support of the house in the present critical time. He then referred to the complaint of Sir De Lacy Evans that lee had omitted all mention of the second division in his Ministerial statement of the successes of the army. Full justice had been done to those noble men in the despatches of Lord Raglan. He was sorry he had omitted the name of the gallant general himself. He concluded by ex pressing a wish that, whoever might be Minister of the Crown, he might be able to propose a vote of thanks which would express the sympathy of the house with the distresses, constancy, and sufferings of our noble army. Mr. GLADSTONE remarked that, as a civilian , the noble lord did not pretend to the completeness of a military historian, and certainly could not be charged with indifference. With regard to the other matters to which he had alluded, he could not wonder that his noble friend had thought it right to bring the facts connected with his resignation fully before the public, even though he had introduced a partial dis cussion with respect to the late Government and its members, into which it would be impossible now fully to enter. lie alluded to the subject with a consciousness of the inconvenience of ( 16,eussions of this kind, continued from period to period, between persons of great eminence, who must reply to each other without the advantages which personal en counter undoubtedly confers. With regard to the appointment of the Duke of Newcastle, be would may say that it was made with the fall and unquali fied assent of his colleagues, and the whole Cabinet was equally responsible for it. He had just heard from his noble friend that if the appointment of War Minister had been offered to him, he should have felt it his duty to have accepted it. Such an appoint ment would, no doubt, have been satisfactory to the country, but it was only fair to the Duke of New castle to say that be had no means of knowing that such a willingness existed. The noble lord bad said that he did not think the combination of Lord Aberdeen as first Minister of the Crown with the Duke of Newcastle as Secretary for War, was a com bination adequate to the emergency. No doubt that is the opinion which his noble friend had made known on a former occasion to the house ; but, at the same time, it is to be remembered that the ques tion is material at what (late that opinion was made known. He did not think his noble friend intended it to be understood that he had made known that opinion to the First Lord of the Treasury or to the Secretary for War, or to the Cabinet at large, until the middle of the month of November [Lord Jobs Russell was understood to intimate assent]. If that is so, the matter stands quite clear. The purport of the let%er in which the noble lord stated to the Duke of Newcastle that "he had done all he could," seemed further explained by the concluding sen tence, " and lam sanguine of success." Mr. Glad. stone then came to the noble lord's change of opinion on the 16th of December. He admitted the distinction between the different parts of the original proposition of the noble lord, but said that he could not tell what was passing in his mind, and that hi• colleagues had no means of ascertaining that such a distinction existed. There was .an intimate connec tion between the two parts of the subject ; it was not an abstract question. The change of departments could not be kept separate from the change of men. He could state from the highest authority, that of Lord Aberdeen himself, that the distinction, as it existed in the noble lord's mind, was utterly unknown to the head of the Government. Matters of all de scriptions—military, civil, legislative, parliamentary— had been discussed in the Cabinet, and on none of them did the noble lord intimate hie intention of making any proposal, or that he desired any change in the persons intrusted with the War Department. Mr. Gladstone then defended Lord Aberdeen from the charge of having withheld all intimation of the intention of the Duke of Newcastle to resign his office. That resignation had not, as had been stated, been placed in the hands of the Prime Minister. The noble duke had merely stated his opinion confi dentially, and he thought his judgment was sound. To have made it more widely known would have placed both the duke and the Government in false position . Mr. Gladstone concluded by argu in g that the conduct of the Duke of Newcastle was yet more honourable than that of Lord Ripon, w hich had been brought forward fora somewhat invidions cem prea:idsoinnes. s toLorerdsigßniphonis hoiffidce,simallptllyougerunwresri his unwillingly when requested to do so; but the noble duke, nit. requested, bad offered to give up, or to take any •