The Press.
London, England, 1858-01-30 00:00:00

Lord PALMERSTON. So far from being con-
fined merely to " regulating the law of fran-
chise," the plan contemplates a disfranchise-
ment of boroughs upon a large scale. Instead
of the artificial impartiality which presided
over the ingenious and impossible scheme
of Reform propounded by Lord ASERDEEN,
and wept over by Lord Jong RusseLL, the new
measure is to aim a heavy blow and great
discouragement at the Conservative party.
The territorial interests, the whole system
of county representation, and the constitu-
tional reciprocity of the two great parties of
the State, will all be menaced and jeopardised
by the scheme of the present Cabinet. To
swamp the Conservative party at any risk, and
to support Liberalism at any price, will be the
whole purpose of the Pahnerston Reform
Bill.
It will at once be asked, What could have
induced a trimming and temporising ex-Tory
statesman to lend himself to a scheme, con-
ceived in virulence, and which can be carried
only by force ? Unhappily it is no longer
any secret in politics that the Premier is
resolved to crush Lord JOHN RUSSELL. For
twenty years Lord PALMERSTON was content to
sit under Lord JOHN RUSSELL, but the Premier
is now determined to allow no margin to the
late Leader of the Liberals. If the Cabinet
proposed a moderate measure, it is on the
cards that Lord JOHN RUSSELL, true to the
instincts described by SYDNEY SMITH, would
at once endeavour to seize the place of Par-
liamentary chief of the Liberals. Any such
attempt Lord PALMERSTON has determined to
make hopeless. The rivalry between political
aspirants at the same side is often worse than
the antagonism between avowed opponents.
The jealousy between BURKE and SHERIDAN
from 1783 to 1701 was far more bitter and invi-
dious than the contest for supremacy between
Fox and Pirr. Even in our own times
the struggles for superiority between
the late Earl GREY and Lord BROUGHAM are
known to all men ; and every person who has
the opportunities for observation can behold
with his own eyes the almost feminine rivalry
subsisting between the aged Premier and the
deposed favourite of Brookes's. The new
scheme will thus be anti-Conservative in its
provisions, and anti-Russell in its purposes
It is not unlikely that the personal object of
its most responsible author may, with the aid
of public opinion, strip the measure of much
of its Radical malignity of design.
But the scheme, unfortunately, will be the
Premier's own. Lord PALMERSTON always dis-
liked " Reform," and no Parliamentary chief
within the memory of living man has carried
so far the de /taut en bas style of personal de-
meanour towards the mere outsiders of his
own connection. After doubt and vacillation ,
and irritated by the questions being forced
upon him against his will, the Premier, after
the law that infallibly rules natures of his
peculiar type, has become utterly reckless.
He has succumbed under the influences of the
selfish and intriguing clique by which he is
surrounded. He is resolved to defy opinion,
and to scout the precedent of his own half-
century of conventional professions and com-
promising politics.
This determination that the new measure
should proceed on the basis of a large dis.
franchisement of boroughs has been reached
on no sudden suggestion. In point of fact,
the ultraism of the new scheme is the result
of two great differences in the Cabinet. At
first the quarrel was about certain boroughs,
and then the section of the Cabinet of which
Lord LANSDOWNE was the representative suc-
ceeded. But even then it gained only after
finesse and adjournment; and strong dissatis-
faction was expressed at the damping tone
assumed by the Premier towards Mr. Lome
Kino's motion for the deterioration of the
county franchise. Since then the Premier has
resolved to propose his sweeping measure,
which will in all its details be even more anti-
Conservative than the plan of Mr. LoexE
Kinn.
It will be the least consequence of this
scheme that the Reform Bill of 1832 will be
completely unsettled, and the compromise
then agreed upon utterly destroyed. The
snost serious consequence will be plunging
'moiety into internecine strife. Agitation will