The Press.
London, England, 1855-02-03 00:00:00

THE MINISTERIAL CRISIS.

The only additional fact that has transpired
respecting the pending Ministerial arrangements
since our first edition went to press is, that shortly
after four o'clock yesterday afternoon Lord John
Russell proceeded to Buekingham Palace, where he
had an audience of her Majesty, which lasted more
than an hour.
The Morning Chronicle is informed that her Ma-
jesty commanded the attendance of the Earl of
Clarendon at Buckingham Palace yesterday after-
noon' and suggests the inference that the noble earl
had been intrusted with the task of forming an
Administration.
This morning's Times hazards no positive state-
ment as to final arrangements, but writes as follows
touching the progress of the Cabinet crisis
The active and disinterested exertions of the Marquis of
Lansdowne in the present emergency are understood not
to be directed to the formation of a Cabinet under his own
authority, but rather to the reconstruction and readjust-
ment of the Queen's Government, with the omission of
some names and the addition of others. Lord Derby
having failed to form an Administration, and a pure
Whig Administration being obviously impossible, we
anticipate no change in the policy of the Government,
and at most a partial change in some of the offices.
It would he an evil of the utmost consequence to
the public service to displace Lord Clarendon fruiu
the Foreign-office, where his judgment and perse-
verance have gradually called into existence a system
of foreign alliances which are essential to the sueseas
of our policy. It would be not less mischievous
to remove Mr. Gladstone from the Chancellorship of the
Exchequer, and from the position which his eloquence and
his integrity have given him in the House of Commons.
Among the younger members of the Government, Lord
Granville, Sir William Molesworth, Mr. Baines, and Mr.
('ardwell are evidently qualified for the more active Cabinet
offices, and to these might be added Lord Elgin, who is
now in this country unemployed, and Lot d Dalhousie on
his return from India. We still presume the most pro-
bable bead of the new Cabinet to be Lord Palmerston,
and in that position his vast experience and reputation will
be of great advantage to the' Government ; but the country
is mistaken if it allows its enthualastic conception of Lord
Palmerston's abilities to magnify his powers or diminish
his years. The most essential service that he or Lord
Lansdowne, or any other Prime Minister, can render the
country, is gradually to place the direction of affairs, and
especially the laborious administrative and military de-
partments, in younger bands, arid not to rely upon their

107

contemporaries as if they were endowed with perennia
youth.

If Lord John Russell had not resigned exactly when he
did, and virtually dissolved the late Administration before
the vote on Mr. Roebuck's motion, it is probable that he
would still have occupied the must prominent position in
the country ; and, even if that motion had been carried,
no ostensible reason would have existed for excluding him
from the Government. His conduct has, therefore, not
only been ungenerous but impolitic, not only captious but
suicidal, and be has deprived himself of the Premiership
by the very means he took to secure it. His position in
this country strikingly resembles on a smaller scale that of
the King of Prussia in the general affairs of Europe—aim-
ing at the post of grand arbitrator, and ending in isolation
—unfaithful to his allies, and distrusted even by his
friends, until he is reduced to seek in the mischievous

M