The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1855-12-18 00:00:00

crown.

While military clubs have been agitated by the subject
above mooted, and the matters collaterally arising out of it,
the political clubs of the Metropolis have been the arenas of
an activity unusual at this season of the year. Everybody
supposes that during the few days of December, which pre-
cede the advent of Christmas, legislators, forgetting their
senatorial anxieties, are busied in preparation for duly cele-
brating the festivities of our great annual holiday time, and
everybody believes that they are, at present, doing so. In
this conjecture, 5eary.1.104.ra54&4144-unfrequently the -case, is
grievously mistaken. True, here and there we find a rural
M.P. presiding over the annual bucolic celebration of his dis-
trict, stimulating the patriotism, and sympathising in the con-
tentment and rejoicing of his hearers ; but this is no faithful
index to the real state of affairs. For some time past the
political clubs of London have had an unusual attendance of
members. What adds to the seeming importance of this
unseasonable congregation of political somebodies, is the won-
derful fact that each seems surprised at the presence of his
fellow, as if all had secret missions of their own to fulfil, and
believed that no one else even dreamed of a probable coadjutor.
From this state of matters the knowing ones profess to draw
very conflicting inferences. By one set the conclusion is held
to be obvious that a dissolution of Parliament is imminent ;
another, and these are looked upon as the better informed
upon the subject, infer a " staggering state" of the minis-
terial omnibus. Theoretical and practical disagreements
on many points of vital :policy are known to exist among
the members of the recently patched up cabinet. The posi-
tion and prospects of the war are fertile themes for anything
but friendly discussion. The PREMIER and Lord CLARENDON
are said -to have agreed to differ on some very important
affairs of foreign policy. Other members of the Cabinet are
likewise known to entertain views on the question of peace
very different from those expressed by Lord PALMERSTON.
Since it was first jumbled together, many screws have become
loose in the Cabinet, and fair reason exists for believing that,
in even the most -recent accessions to the Ministry, round
men, to use tbe,..._airaile of__Mr.- DRUMMOND, have got into
square holes, and feel most undeniably that they are not
" the right meu id the right places." These and other
" coming events" throw the shadows of a ministerial break-up
strongly before the eyes of a sorely puzzled people. Ministers
and their abbettors maintain that the PALMERSTON Cabinet
is a "strong government," yet, singularly enough, it seems
completely paralyzed whenever it attempts to move ;—they
represent it as united in purpose and combined in operation,
yet, at every tiin—if Ts threatened with dismemberment—
every indicated 'action becomes the signal for revolt among
some of its members. Numerous individuals, deeply versed
in the science of political straw-throwing, maintain that the
"signs of the times" are portentous in their indications of a
ministerial break-up before the re-assembling of Parliament.
The commotion about peace, which still agitates the public
mind, is held by many to be a mere device for directing at-
tention from the ministerial squabbles; while others, with a
greater show of. probability on their side, maintain that these
rumours are in reality stock-jobbing artifices, concocted with
as much skill and as little foundation in truth as the late
alleged scarcity of sugar in the British market had its origin
in the fortuitous amount of the sugar imports. Both affairs,
-these parties affirm, had their origin in a fertile imagination,
and an unscrupulous appreciation of individual profit. On
this particular subject, the game is still pertinaciously main-
tained by the Morning Chronicle, the hazy oracle of the
GLADSTONIA.N This astute political organ, only a
day or two no, drawing _on the authority of that
Mrs. GAmr with which it is in correspondence in the
says From Vienna we receive as.
Austrian capital,
surances that the prospects of peace grow brighter every
day, and were never so sure as now. The value of any
guarantee held outby so mythical a diplomat as the author
Vienna
valeat ; but any reference correspondence,to will, of course, be
of the Chronicle's
taken by the initiated quantum
that journal, and its ,
morning" foreign news, impels
a reminiscence-of the re'efg"entcondulcDtsioof
s That gentleman,it:. political idol, the
Right. Hon. WILLIAM EIVA.RT aja
it will be remembered, having possessedliimesfeltfhoef
good
dcsibenipt
courage to assist iu tying up the redder
Britannia till she " drifted" into alsow a r
He w
the further bravery to undertake the prosecution
to
on the ready-money principle. a war
witshecuntniasnsiao'fbtaldie
taxation defray the cost of each year's
aemake each year's
hostilities, and indig-
mangy repudiated the idea of a loan. H
doing so, the financial ruler of the war ;
andreverse of safe
He
was,
in however, in
that capacity
he adventured upon a project denounced as the