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

DECEASE OF THE COALITION.

As the Coalition has fallen, it is only right
that its parliamentary obsequies should have
been discharged by its chief undertaker, the
Earl of ABERDEEN. We shall endeavour to
trace the cause of its decease with as much
delicacy as possible, influenced more by scien-
tific than sentimental considerations.

Debility, causing want of political stamina,
was the main disease of the late Cabinet. It
was so organised as that it could not possibly
he strong. It was from the first a Ministry of
suspended opinions and smothered antipa-
thies. Enmity assumed the air of friendship,
and there was merely the resemblance, with-
out the inward reality, of sympathy between
the colleagues. Rivalries and petty jealousies
are to be found in all Cabinets, but weakness,
we repeat, was the fatal malady of the Aber-
deen-Russell Ministry. Superficial thinkers
might suppose that such a fault could not be
possibly imputed to a junction in which the
varied knowledge of Lord JOHN lU:realm., the
versatile accomplishments of the vivacious
Lord PALMERSTON, were assisted by the in
genious sophistry and fluent declarations of
Mr. GLADSTONE, and the practised abilities of
Sir JAMES GRAHAM. But there was no
development of collective political power in
their anomalous union, and a total deficiency
in executive energy was the result. The
Ministers met together, but their minds
did not unite. It was a Coalition in name,
and a hollow combination in reality.

99

The radical weakness of the Cabinet can
now be seen more clearly after the revelations
made by the Duke of NEWCASTLE to the House
of Lords in his speech on Thursday. His
Grace gave most important evidence against
the weakness of the Earl of ABERDEEN. It is
evident that Lord ABERDEEN dreaded dis-
pleasing the Duke of NEWCASTLE, or offend-
ing his Grace by taking any steps for giving
more efficiency to the War-office. Why so ?
Why did not the Prime Minister act more
boldly? Why did he not take the Noble Duke
at his word, when he offered to resign the
seals of Minister for War? The answer to
those questions is not at first obvious, but
with a little attention to the state of the facts
the reason of Lord ABERDEEN'S wretched
vacillation will be easily apparent. Lord
ABERDEEN had no parliamentary following of
his own, and was indebted to the vicarious
aid of the Duke of NEWCASTLE for his position
as a Prime Minister. The lesson taught
by such facts is the utter folly of trying to
make a Cabinet unless the nominal Prime
Minister be the real chief of his Ministry ;
and that he never can be unless his imme-
diate personal following, and the number of
members of the Legislature who serve under
his banner, give him a decided personal pre-
dominance.

Of course Lord JOHN Realm'. cannot be re-
leased from the responsibility of having even
acquiesced in the arrangements of the late
Cabinet. His place in it from the first is now
known to have been a galling one, and he is
not of a temperament fit for enduring
penance in a white sheet. He acquiesced in
the fatal arrangements which gave the whole
offices of the war into the hands of the Peel-
ites, and he now suffers accordingly. He
made the Whigs pass under the Caudine
forks of the Coalition : in doing so he dis-
armed himself, and degraded his followers.
He ignored all the grand traditions of what
was once " the great Whig party," and he suc-
cumbed to a clique of the growth of yesterday.
With faltering steps and half-frightened air
he crept into the Coalition. He has rushed
out of it in a frenzy of not ungenerous rage.
He must now recollect Mr. DISRAKLI'S pro-
phecy as to " the loss of character " certain to
result from a junction of renegade Tories
pretending to be " Liberals," and recalcitrant
Whigs describing themselves as " Conserva-
tives." The Noble Lord must feel small com-
fort in reflecting on the fact that Mr. MACAU-
LAY advised him to join Lord ABERDEEN.
Nor probably will Mr. MACAULAY find much
gratification in witnessing how little of the
oracular there was in his advice. Lord JOHN,
probably, will not again refer to a gentleman
without any official or statesmanlike responsi-
bilities as an augur in parliamentary affairs.
The retrospective, and not the future, should
be the mission of Mr. MACAULAY.

Nor was the ability of Mr. GLADSTONE of any
use to the Coalition. The Whigs studiously
avoided him, and never gave him their confi-
dence. They admired his talents (as who
does not ?), but they never applauded him.
They disliked seeing the financial department
taken out of their party, and would have pre-
ferred that a block of inutile lignum of their
own cutting had been put into the Exchequer.
Mr. GLADSTONE has power over an audience,
but he has not that commanding energy of
nature which masters and moulds a party.
He can give brilliant support rather than
vigorously sway. A dominating ascendancy of
spirit was not assigned to him by nature. He
wants that fire of genius and robust hardihood
of soul requisite for wielding other men. He
never could grapple night after night in
debate with a passionate and powerful orator
in the signal style with which Mr. STANLEY
(Lord DERBY) confuted O'CONNELL. Mr.
GLADSTONE illustrates the truth that a collec-
tion of great talents does not necessarily form
a great man. He will often captivate his
hearers, but he can never command a British
Senate.

Weakness, therefore, it is obvious, was the
fatal malady of the unhappy Coalition, and at
such a time as this there can be no greater
fault. A weak Cabinet must necessarily be a
wavering one; and at this crisis, when our
army is rotting, it is not too much to say that
wavering is wickedness.

THE TURKISH FLEET.
Ir was not Without reason that the Turks of
Constantinople beheld with dismay the arrival
of the noble regiments of France and England
in their capital, and that, regarding their

numbers, equipments, and martial bearing,

. .
they exclaimed, with a presentiment of coming
calamity, "Who shall deliver us from our
" deliverers?"
Since the allies have taken an active part in

the war the forces of Turkey have wofully sunk
in reputation. It should have been the policy of
the allied commanders to have encouraged by

every means the spirit of the Turkish army
and marine. Their troops and ships, if not
incorporated with the allied forces, should
have been treated on equal terms, should
have been placed in honourable positions,
and, when efficiently supported, should have
been encouraged to act against the enemy.
Unhappily, I directly opposite policy has been
pursued : the poor Turks have been treated
by their allies merely as "hewers of wood and
" drawers of Water," or, worse, as beasts of
burthen. It is impossible to read without
indignation of the unworthy treatment to
which they have been subjected at Balaklava
and in the carol). It is not by such a course
that the Turkish empire is to be saved, or
the spirit of its native defenders animated.
The direct result must be to depress the
Government and the people, and to deprive
both of self-respect and energy.
In the treatment of the Turkish fleet the
impolley of our commanders has been even
more conspicuous than in the treatment of the
land forces. We pledge ourselves to the
liter9l accuracy of the facts stated in the fol-
lowing narrative ; and we conceive they este)),
lish so strong a case against Admiral Di UNDAB
as to call for a parliamentary inquiry into his
conduct. To whatever cause it may be attri-
buted, he has done his best to degrade the

Turkish navy:
When the French and English fleets first
appeared in Turkish waters, in the autumn of
1853, they were received by the Captain Pacha
with every niark of distinction and honour.
They were given the best anchorage at Beycos,
with the finest watering-place in the Bospho-
rus ; they had the unrestricted use of the
Imperial dockyard, and their convenience was
in every possible Way consulted in the estab-
lishment of hospitals, slaughter-houses, and
other necessary buildings on shore. On the
Turkish fleet lying at Buyukdere devolved the
duty of guarding the entrance of the Bospho-
rus at night with steamers and boats ; and
this fatiguing service, continued through the
winter, seriously impaired the health of the
men.
While every honour was thus shown to their
gallant allies, what was the return made to
the Turkish fleet when the moment of action
arrived, and hostilities were about to commence
against the common enemy ? In dealing with
this part of the case, it must be remembered
that the Turks were the principals in the quar-
rel with Russia, and had therefore the right to
demand to have accorded to them the post of
danger and of honour in the coming struggle.
That every attempt was made to secure for
them that post by the Gallant Officer who
directed their operations, is well known to all
who were in the waters of the Black Sea on
that occasion ; but it was all in vain, and
Admiral Dux DAs, acting, we take it for granted,
under orders from home (for we will not sup-
pose him to have been actuated by any paltry
professional jealousy of the possible successes
of the Turkish fleet or its commander), con-
signed the whole Turkish navy to the deep
humiliation of almost total inaction during
the whole of the naval operations in the Black
• Sea, and thus lost to the cause the inestimable
.advantage of resuscitating those feelings of
sympathy and dependence which formerly
bound the Circassians and Crim Tartars
to the Ottoman empire. Few of our readers
require to be reminded of what vital import
ance it is to the success of an invasion to
have the sympathyand co-operation of the in-
fluential inhabitants of the country about to be