The Press.
London, England, 1855-12-15 00:00:00

1182

there was no ground for concluding that his
influence was destined to suffer a complete
collapse. Those, however, who have watched
the political history of the last three years,
will find that, instead of consolidaing his posi-
tion and maturing his authority, he has
th
con-
tinuously
retrograde 4 in public esitimatEnh,
and now wields only e ii:imnaittis ori broken
sceptre.
The reaction* it4isiwhich Pig tradnahlt
overwhelmed Mtn I.)iVin to set % when liit
stooped to become a member of Lord ABER-
DEEN'S Cabinet. With his antecedents, with
the principles he professed, and the party he
commanded, to be a subordinate in such a
Council was not condescension—it was dis-
honour. Of the blunder he had committed
he himself became sensible, when subse-
quently, in the act of severance from his new
confederates, he declared that in consenting
to unite with them he had exhibited a self=
abnegating magnanimity. Varied as were his
positions in the Government, he reaped credit
in none.
The historian who writes the chronicles of
hie administration as Foreign Secretary will
have this only to record of him, that, having
accepted the office without thought and
relinquished it without dignity, he enlight
ened the Eastern question with the notable
discovery that the Russian protectorate of the
Christian subjects of the Porte was " prescribed
" by law and sanctioned by treaty."
As Leader of the House of Commons with-
out a department, he failed to confer any
strength upon the Ministry, then first con-
vulsed with those rival counsels and low
intrigues which preluded the catastrophe of
its disastrous career. The manner in which—
having taken occasion to repeat the senti-
ments which his " Durham Letter " avowed
and his Ecclesiastical Titles Bill did not
embody—he permitted Lord ABERDEEN to dis-
claim all sympathy with his opinions, pre-
sented him in an attitude than which it would
be difficult to find anything more mean and
unmanly iu modern annals.
The Protean Minister, however, appears in
another shape. He became President of the
Council. The episodes which marked his
tenure of that post are fresh in the indignant
recollections of the country. The first of the
Cabinet to realise the calamitous conse-
quences which had resulted from the Duke
of NEWCASTLE'S unhappy administration of
the war, he had neither the courage nor the
honesty to give effect to his convictions.
But he contented himself with feeble pro-
tests and petulant complaints, the record of
which serve only to demonstrate that the
sufferings of a noble army concerned him
only so far as they affected the stability or
endangered the popularity of the Government,
and that he was ready to gratify his ambition
by the sacrifice of his integrity. But if he
continued in the Coalition without credit, he
quitted it without honour. It was when the
ship was about to founder on the surrounding
breakers that he left it to a fate which was the
result of counsels in which he was associated,

and blundering in which he had shared.
But the conduct of the Noble Lord when
accredited to Vienna as Plenipotentiary of the
British Government appears to us the most
flagitious act of a flagitious career. The
relative merits of the rival systems of limita
tion and counterpoise it is idle now to discuss.
That he should have giN en his assent to con-
ditions he had himself pronounced to be
unsatisfactory and illusory, was certainly
discreditable to his judgment and fatal to his
consistency. But, having accorded his sanc-
tion to the Austrian proposals, that he should
not only have concealed the fact from Parlia-
ment until the confession was wrung from
him, but endeavoured to deceive the country
by making bellicose orations, and invoking
popular odium on the peace party, was an
offence against political virtue and an outrage
upon public morality. Such it was unmis-
takeably declared to be by the Legislature.
What has followed ? The character of the war
is unaltered. Experience has profited him
nothing. He acts upon the same rule, and is
animated by the same motives. Still, as for
merly, he works warily. He is not the
unvisored egotist whose objects are patent
and understood ; but he is the masked self-