The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1855-08-14 00:00:00

FROM OUR LONDON CORRESPONDENT.

MONDAY MORNING.
THE last week of the present parliamentary session has been
expended in the prosecution of labours which form a worthy
sequel to the work in which honourable members have been
engaged, with few intervals of useful occupation, since the day
of its opening in January last—every bit of legislation has been
hurried and bungled as if the members were weary of their
work. The only labour which has been performed con amore
has been the creditable task of blackening the character of
ministers; and this has generally devolved upon themselves,
or been volunteered by one of their ex-colleagues. This dis-
reputable office was initiated by Lord JoRN RUSSELL, and it
has fallen to his lordship's lot appropriately to close the session
as he opened it, by the liberal distribution of abuse, and the
plentiful sowing of the seeds of dissension among his quondam
colleagues.

On Tuesday, in accordance with a hint which he had pre-
viously dropped, and to which he had made allusion on the
preceding day, Lord JOHN, taking advantage of the third
reading of the Consolidated Fund Bill, delivered himself of an
oration which admittedly eclipses all his former efforts at wan-
ton mischief, and stands unique in the annals of party warfare.
From the few first sentences which grace the opening of that
singular address, and even from the terms in which
he chose previously to allude to it, no one could very
clearly divine what exact object he had in view,
although all who were in any degree conversant with the
waspishness of his disposition augured from its very ambiguity
that he meant mischief. The few initiatory sentences; delivered
as they were, in a deprecatory tone, led to the conjecture that
he meant the effort, for an effort it evidently was, to end in a sort
of wind-up address, reviewing the proceedings of the session
with a view to re-establishing himself in the good, graces of
the House and of the country, which he obviously felt he had
forfeited. It is not unlikely that such was his real intention—
nay, more, it is far from improbable that he actually deceived
himself into a belief that by such a course he was again worm-
ing his way into popular favour. If such were-hisdesire; he
has lamentably mistaken his own position, and singularly un-
derrated public perspicacity. In the course of his protracted,
political life, Lord JOHN has indeed played many parts, not a
few of the least creditable being crowded into the antics-per-
formed by him during the session now closing. For many
years the world regarded the proceedings of Lord Jog. s Rus-
SELL as expository of the feelings of a largeseetion of the politi-
cal society of England. A little more self-command—a, little
more management on his part—would have maintained the de-
lusion, and enabled him to strut the remainder of his brief hour
upon the stage bedizened in the borrowed plumagewhichno one
deemed it worth his while to strip him of. By his own act he has
fallen from the place he laboured so hard and so unscrupu-
lously to attain. He has dropped from that high position, as
he had previously descended from others to which, greater
fame and prouder emoluments were attached. He.now stands
exposed a recreant Briton—a paltry marplot—a. worthy, be-
cause a craven, colleague of the peace-a&-any-price men, who
are repudiated and condemned by every class- of Englishmen..
In his last, and sincerely to be hoped it is politically his dying.
speech, he traversed every point of foreign policy on. which
he could expect to fix a greviance, or into which he could hope
to insert an internal machine, with any chance of creating.
au explosion. As the Times truly says, "there is slot- a sore
point in European politics, there is not a place where the fire
still glows under the treacherous ashes, that Lord. Jonas Run-
SELL does not stir up with the recklessness of a novice, or the
artifice of a less amiable character ; " and all wish the. single
and sole and obviously malicious intention of damaging his
quondam colleagues. Yet this man is a British senator, was
once the potent leader of a powerful party, was recently a Mi-
nister of state, the representative of his Sovereign at a European
Congress, and is still the sworn councillor of that betrayed and
insulted Sovereign! Lord JOHN was. one of those who counselled
the war; and, if we may credit his own assertion, he quar-
relled with and broke up one Cabinet of which he was a mem-
ber, because their conduct of the war was not sufficiently
energetic to meet the requirements of his burning zeal. "What,
then, does he mean by the dolorous reference he made to the
expense of that war which he at first approved of—which, till
within a few brief months, he was ready to go to combat with his
colleagues for the eager prosecution of—and which, but yes-
terday as it were, he told the wondering world he still ap-
proves of ? Having stumbled and fallen from his place of
pride, was he stooping his neck and courting the yoke of Catit-
DEN ? His lordship next directed his dimmed vision to thd
Baltic, and there he discovered that the state of our naval
armament is not such as to ensure speedy victory, against an
enemy we cannot reach, and who sedulously avoids approach-
ing us. Oh, shame, where was thy blush, when Lord Jons
RUSSELL uttered disapprobation founded on such a plea?
Was he not a member of that Cabinet which delayed or refused
to construct gun-boats which would have enabled our gallant
sailors to seek those foes who are afraid to meet them ? From
the forbearance he displayed towards the ABERDEEN Cabinet,
and from that he now exhibits towards the Ministry of Lord
PALMERSTON, are we to infer that he alone insisted on the
Baltic fleet being fitted and equipped in such a manner as to
confer efficiency of action on it ? Every act, every declara-
tion, every whisper he has made known, forbids the monstrous
supposition. The annals of party turpitude furnish no parallel
to, the effrontery and baseness combined in such a course as
that pursued by Lord JOHN RUSSELL, in reference to these
matters. He does not, however, confine himself to these, but,
stalking over the general policy of the two last Cabinets, he
reviews and reprobates each act and intention in succession.
He complains that the Foreign Enlistment Bill has failed in
its object ; but seemingly forgets that being a party to its en-
actment he must bear some share of its responsibility. He is
next querulous as to the great force sent by the allies to the
Crimea, and asserts with ill-concealed gratification that that
force will be speedily met by a "large Russian army, that
army being now augmented by troops sent from Poland
and from other frontiers of Russia bordering on the Aus-
trian empire, which are now set free owing to the present
policy of Austria ;" out of which comfortable state of matters
the patriotic plenipotentiary pleasantly foretels the vexed
ocean of party squabbles which awaits Ministers in the
next session of Parliament, and which without doubt will be
kept as hot and turbulent as he can make it, if he be permitted