The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1866-07-03 00:00:00

NOTE OF THB WEEK

the brass, crumbled in pieces, because it
could no longer hold together. Rental as
we all know may be rendered as fanciful as
any franchise you please rating is a clear
and definite thing, and after the enormous
trouble and cost recently entailed on every
tnion and almost every parish in the country
for its adjustment, nothing could have been
more accurate or better ascertained as the
basis of a franchise, nor could any suffrage
have been simpler than the column in the
rate-book vrhfch Would simply indicate
whether the ratepayer was entitled to a vote
or not, and save the cost of a revising
barrister. But there was principle here to
none within the remaining four corners of
the Bill; and we cannot pretend otherwise
to account for the resignation of its authors
than by hazarding the supposition that they
were thereby frightened at this Frankenstein
of their own creation. At all events when the
Queen arrived at Windsor Castle, on Tuesday
mornieg, at ICI minutes to nine o'clock, and
Earl Russell and Mr. Gl^datone had had their
audiences in the afternoon, and a Cabinet
Council attended by the leading Cabinet
Ministers had been held on the following day,
it was found necessar, to swear in the per-
manent Secretary of State, Mr. Waddington
as a member of the Privy Council, by way
of placing the affairs of the nation we presume
under a Provisional Government. For
although Earl Derby had an immediate
audience of Her Majesty in his turn, it is
understood that only the qualified injunction
was given him to form if possible a Coalition
Ministry; and this being more essily said
than done, the tery attempt would seem td
have resulted in an interregnum of another
week, Lord Derby met his supporters on
Thursday and rather disconcerted them by
the explanation that both by suggestion
of Her Majesty and the necessities of
his position, he felt constrained to
offer high office to several members of
the Whig party, inclnding some of Earl
Russell's administration! Nov, if ire can
credit the inspiration of the Bones, Earl
Derby's overtures have not hitherto been
favourably responded to; and the noble Earl
has required till Thursday to mature his efforts
at Cabinet-making. There is no doubt a good
deal of pique entertained by the late Minis
term on the sore point of their defeat; and it
is possibly not a little aggravated by the
whisper that the Adullarnitee by whom that
defh.it *WI compassed, meditate, like the
Peelites of a former day, the construction of
a Cabinet of their own, whose brief, but
perhaps brilliant existence may be ste.tained
by playing off as before the united strength
of the Conservative party against the divided
ranks of the Liberals. There can be no
question that, what with the alleged royal in-
junAion to Lord Derby to construct a com-
posite Cabinet, what With the expectation
thus entertained by the Adullsmites of being
in limit turn called in, and what with the
manifest belief of the late administration
(fostered by the foolish and futile mobbing.
in the metropolis), that, their opponents.
falling betwixt two stools, they must again be
resorted to; the components of a strong, firm
administration, the thing most wanted at this
moment in England, are not yet visible. We
shall rejoice whenever a capable and com-
petent Cabinet is formed. Never in our
recollection wail there a period in our history
less opportune for a Governmental disorgani-
sation than the present. Nor can we help
thinking that but for labouring under the im-
pression that at such a crisis the country
could not afford to do without them, the late
Government would never have resigned; and
that their resignation was a rate, although a
desperate one, founded on the sunposition
that at this conjuncture they must inevitably
be recalled, and Dorchester, Bridport, and the
doomed South-Western boroughs be made to
swallow, nolene voles., the bitter pill of dis-
franchisement, and the country at large the
' soulless, the unprincipled bolus of their Bill.