The Press.
London, England, 1855-07-21 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

CABAL OF THE SUBORDINATES.
:F the servants in a gentleman's house were

to dictate to tlieir muter a choice of friends
or associates, or if the ensigns in a regiment
were to itlt3truet the peneral of division nieen
the appointment f sad officers for the day,
we shoghl think that the world was about tq
be twined upside doeni, Yet, in the last feer
days, as strange promedtggs have been wit-
nessed amongst her Mnjeety's Ministers. The
subordinates jumped this time into the place
of Cabinet Ministers, and dictated to the Pre-
mier upon the ejectment of Lord JOliN RUSSELL
-from office. The circumstance is really so
extraordinary as to justify particular remark.
Let the Ministerialists disguise it as they
may, it is plain that their subordinates were
acting in the personal interest of the ember •
rassed Premier. It was under him that they
held their offices, and it was to him that they
looked for a continued enjoyment of pay and
patronage. The question, however, comes, as
to who incited their well-timed insurrection
against Lord JOHN RUSSELL? Who whispered
them their cue ? Who told them to take the
initiative? Their unanimity of action was
really wonderful, in the supposition that they
were as " independent" Liberals as they pro
fessed themselves to be. But after all it is
not a case for wonder. They were Palmers-
tonians all of them for the time, and, as Mr.
BRIGHT told them in trenchant terms, on
Thursday, " Here we have men who owe to
" the patronage and favour of the Noble Lord
" the Member for London their partial
" emergence from Parliamentary obscurity,
" and they have joined in this disreputable
" and contemptible cabal against him," and
the House vehemently cheered the whole of
that spirited passage in the effective address
of the Member for Manchester.
The meanness of the plot was of a double
kind. Certain persons in the Cabinet were
content to extricate Lord JOHN RUSSELL by
such underhand proceedings, and " Liberals"
were found ready to act the part of tools for
the occasion. No other term can be applied
to such conduct than that it was " a diere-
" potable and contemptible cabal." The Par-
liamentary system has come to a strange pass
when the minors take the places of the majors
in logical reasoning, and when rules official
are reversed in order to turn inferiors into
superiors, and make the underlings of Down-
ing-street the principal instruments of Ad-
miniAtration.
It is impossible that in a country like Eng-
land political power can long remain with a
Government that stoops to such miserable in-
trigues. Nothing can be solid or permanent
when intrigue becomes the leading principle
in a Ministry ; and the career of the chief of
the present Cabinet is a prolonged plot. One
time he conspires against a colleague, and at
another time he coquets with the lowest
Radicals He rises on the shoulders of the
Whig families only to trip them with perfi-
dious dexterity; to gain some low object he
would embrace his greatest foe ; and to achieve
some personal purpose he would desert his
oldest connections. His career shows that,
though Lord PALMERSTON wants the moral
power for a chief of a Cabinet, he has all the
requisites for the promotion of a cabal ; and
the finale of his political life will probably
show that the sources of his elevation will
yet be traced to the causes of his downfall.