The Press.
London, England, 1855-05-12 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

The verdict is hardly in accordance with the
facts of the Duke's economical and generally
prudent Administration. It would be more
correct to say that his Government fell because
it abandoned its principles, and weakened the
confidence of the country in the faith and
honour of public men.
The measure of Emancipation itself must,
like other measures, be judged by its own
merits ; but it is very possible to concede that
it was essentially just and beneficial, yet deny
that the Duke of Wellington's Government
was justified in urging it forward. It formed
a part of the scheme of Whig policy ; and
when the time arrived for carrying it, the task
should have been intrusted to Whig hands.
It is not only fatal to the reputation of a party,
but in the highest degree injurious to great
public interests, for any Government to a$ tempt
to maintain itself in power by adopting the
measures of its opponents. Had the Roman
Catholic Bill been carried by a Whig Adminis
tration, that principle of concession to out-of-
door agitation would never have been delibe-
rately sanctioned, which has since been fruit-
ful of mischief, and to which we may, perhaps,
in great part attribute the hasty, ill-judged
expedition to the Crimea.

The Duke of Wellington's " practical good
sense " in political affairs is on another occa-
sion praised with as little justice :
Still solicitous to avert, if possible, the dire alternative
of a creation of peers, the King, as a last resource,
requested his private secretary to write a circular letter
to the leading peers, requesting them to stay away from
the House of Peers and allow the bill to pass. This ex•
pedient had the desired effect. The practical good sense
of the Duke of Wellington at once saw that matters had
come to such a crisis that one or other of these evils must
be incurred, and he wisely adopted the least of the two.
Though feeling, as he himself said, that yielding to a threat
to create peers was as much a violation of the constitution
as such a creation itself, he bowed to necessity, and rose
and left the house, followed by above a hundred peers,
none of whom appeared there again till after the bill was
carried.

The policy of this expedient is open to
question. Would not the House of Lords have
occupied a higher position had they only
yielded to compulsion instead of yielding to a
threat? It is doubtful, after all, whether the
Whigs would have proceeded to extremities.
The Reform fever was rapidly subsiding, and
at the worst an addition to the peers would
have had no more injurious effect than to in
crease the influence and power of their house.
A brave and open course in political affairs is
in reality always the most expedient course.
On the conduct of the Whigs in taking advan-
tage of the July revolution to effect a total
change in our representative system, Sir A.
Alison remarks with much force 7

The faults committed by the Liberal party during the
progress of this great contest were still more glaring, and
they may be pronounced upon with more confidence than
those of their opponents, because, as they were victorious
in the strife, their measures were carried into execution,
and have thus been brought to the test of experience.
The first wrong step which they took, and which perhaps
drew after it all the rest, was bringing forward the retorm
question at all, at a time when the nation was convulsed
with the triumph of the Barricades, and all calm discus-
sion of the proposed change, vital as it was, had become
out of the question. Considered as a party advantage,
indeed, and as a stepping-stone by which they themselves
might ascend to power, and terminate the long and hated
dominion of the Tories, it was natural that the Whigs
should make the most of the French Revolution ; and no
one can with reason blame them for having done all they
could, by ordinary means, to turn it to the best advan
tags. They were fully entitled to do so. They did so:
they supplanted the Duke of Wellington's Administra•
tion, and seated themselves in power. But having done
this, they went a step further, and resolved upon a change
in the constitution so vast as should for ever prevent the
return of their opponents to power. What was this but
setting tire to the house in which they both dwelt, in order
to drive their rivals out of the wing which they still occu-
pied ? The danger was imminent that the whole edifice,
as had occurred in France, would be involved in the con-
flagration. Mr. Pitt had, at no distant period, given a
memorable example of what they should have done on
occasion of their triumph. In 1784, when be defeated
the coalition of Lord North and Mr. Fox, he terminated
the reign of the Whigs. which had lasted almostl without
interruption for a century, and the majority which he gained
in the Commons (136) was just the same as Lord Grey
acquired by his dissolution of Parliament in April 1831.
But Mr. Pitt made no change in the constitution, when the
enthusiasm in his favour, and the majority he had acquired,
enabled him to have done so with a certainty of success; he
made no attempt to extinguish the Whig boroughs nume-
rous and corrupt as they were : though a reformer at that
time, he abstained from reform when it might have im-
perilled the State. He had the strength of a giant, but
he did not use it like a giant. Thence half a centucy of
power to hie party, and the glories of the Revolutiopary

SATURDAY,

war, and unexampled extension and prosperity to his
country.

The see-saw style of the author's estimate of
the character of lending men is especially
observable in the notice of Lord Palmerston.
The latter part of the judgment is much nearer
the truth than the former:—

The great fault of this accomplished Minister—and it
is a very serious one, for it has more than once brought
his country to the brink of the most serious danger—
is, that he never calculates the means at his disposal
for effecting the projects which he has at heart, and
engages in designs which he has not the means of carry.
ing through, or stimulates movements in other countries
which he has not the means of supporting. Bred in the
school of Pitt, and essentially patriotic in his feelings and
ideas, he sometimes forgets the difference in the situation
and power of the country at different times, and has
often held as high language in diplomatic intercourse,
when a reformed House of Commons had not left twenty
thOusand disposable men in the country, or ten ships-of.
the-line to form a Channel fleet, as when Lord Castle-
reagh wielded the power of one hundred and fifty thou.
and, and one hundred ships-of-the-line bore the royal
flag. A sincere Mend of freedom, he has sometimes
proved its worst enemy, by stimulating movements of the
liberal party among the excitable inhabitants of other
States, which the people of this country had neither the
means nor the inclination to support, and being forced, in
consequence, to leave them to be crushed by the military
force of despotic States. With admirable akil. he sr-
ranged all the other powers of Europe to check the am-
bition of France on the Eastern Question in 1840 ; and
it wrs owing to the influence of his diplomacy that the
cordial alliance of France and England was formed which
put such a bridle in the mouth of Russia in 1854. But
on other occasions his ill-timed assertions of British in-
fluence have been attended with the utmost hazard; for
they brought us to the verge of a war with France, and
once with France and Russia united, at a time when the
country was wholly unprepared to maintain a contest with
either the one or the other.

The best commentary on this passage is to
be found in the sad tale of the Polish rising.
When it first broke forth there seemed a rea-
sonable chance that the nationality of Poland
would be supported by a league of Austria,
France, and England .

The danger to Austria from the incorporation of the
kingdom of Poland with the Russian empire was so obvious
and pressing that it overcame all the terrors of the Cabinet
of Vienna as to a revolutionary state. The Austrian
Consul, accordingly, in the first instance, did not leave
Warsaw; and a secret negotiation was opened with the
Cabinet of Vienna, the result of which was, that Austria
would not object to the restoration of the nationality
of Poland, and even to contribute to it by the aban-
donment of Galicia, provided Poland would agree to
accept as King a prince of the house of Austria, and that
the whole arrangements were made with the concurrence
of the Cabinets of Paris and London. id. Walewaki, ac-
cordingly, was charged with a mission to sound these two
Cabinets on the subject. He met with a favorable re-
ception at the Tuileries, where he arrived in the beginning
of March; but M. Casimir !Wier, who had just suc-
ceeded to the lead in the French Government, said he
could do nothing without the concurrence of the Cabinet
of St. James's.

M. Walewski had, says Sir A. A:ison, several
conferences with Lord Palmerston, but—

The Polish Envoy was informed, with every expression of
regret, that England could not interfere; and Poland, for
the present at least, was left to its fate.

In a note the historian quotes the despatch
written by Lord Palmerston in answer to the
proposal of the French Government for an in-
tervention in favour of Poland :

The undersigned, in answer to the note presented to him
by the ambassador of France in order to engage the British
Government to interfere, in concert with France, in the
affairs of Poland, by a mediation which should have for
its object to arrest the effusion of blood, and preserve for
Poland a political and national existence, has the honour to
inform Ma Excellency Prince Talleyrand that, notwithstand-
ing the desire of the King of G reat Britain to concur with the
King of the French in every proceeding to consolidate the
peace of Europe, and above all in one which should have
or its object to put an end to the war of extermination of
fwhich Poland is this day the theatre, his Britannic Ma-
jesty is neverthertheless compelled to . . . decline the
proposition which Prince Talleyrand has transmitted to
him by his note of the 20th of June, judging that the time
has not yet come when he could undertake it with success
against the will of the sovereign whose rights are incon-
testable.

Yet the writer of this despatch has been
constantly held up by the Liberal party as the
friend of Poland. To his course on this occa-
sion we owe that predominance of Russian
power which has led to the existing contest.
To the masterly narrative of the Polish war
we can accord unreserved praise. Poland en-
gaged in the struggle with a population of
four millions and a revenue of 2,000,0001.
sterling, against Russia with a population of
fifty millions and a revenue of 16,000,000/.
Yet for a time victory inclined to the side of
the Poles, the Russian forces, as on
most occasious at the commenconellt of Iv"'

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