The Press.
London, England, 1858-05-15 00:00:00

THE PRESS, MAY 15, 1858.

nature of this Despatch was stated, and a copy of
it promised. This placed the Government in the
position of lowering the authority of a Governor.
General whom it had not seen fit to recal.

This questionable point has been fastened on,
and through this loophole a fire is directed
against the Government as to the whole transac-
tion. But, except Lord CANNLVG'S Proclama-
tion is defended—and nobody defends it—and
Lord ELLENBOROUGH'S Despatch censured—and
nobody proposes to censure it—there remains
nothing to quarrel with except what is termed
"the premature publication of a despatch."
Now, surely it may be asked, whether an
instance is on record of the change of a whole
Government on such a ground as this ? In
rt sho, whether it is possible to view the Resolu-
tions now discussing in Parliament in any other
light than that of mere pretexts—ingenious devices,
whereby, without any care for their truth or
reasonableness—the real object of restoring the
Whigs to Downing-street may, it is hoped, be
attained ?

PARLIAMENT AND PARTIES IN 1858.
FOREIGNERS must be amazingly puzzled by the
aspect presented by our Parliament, and by the
various phases of organization through which our
Parties and sections of Parties have of late been
successively passing. They have been as nume-
rous, as diverse, and as inscrutable to the ordi-
nary observer as the changes in a kaleidoscope ;
and even the most scientific mind, aided by the
most practised eye, can scarcely tell what con-
clusion to come to with respect to the present, or
what anticipations to form as regards the
future.

At the commencement of the session of the
present year Lord PALMERSTON sat on the Trea-
sury Bench, Prime Minister of England, and,
backed in appearance and in more than one divi-
sion by two-thirds of the House of Commons,
floated easily on the onward stream, borne up
buoyantly by the inflation which his dextrous
catching of the popular feeling of the moment

upon the question of Indian administration had
procured for him. His friends proclaimed that
Party to be his own, and designated him as the
most powerful Minister of the nineteenth cen-
tury. He had himself evidently come to the
same conclusion, and believed that in the last
decennary of his political career he had formed
what had been wanting in the other four,—a
Palmerston Party large enough in numbers and
united enough in purpose to command the Court
and to dictate to Parliament. From a Section
within that seeming Party suddenly was aimed a
blow which in the second month of the year in
which he had seemed so powerful, subverted the
Minister who deemed he held Crown, Lords,
Commons, and the Country in the hollow of his
hand. Lord DERBY'S Party, consisting of
two-fifths of the House of Commons, assumed
the vacated places, and Lord PALMERSTON,
attended by the other three-fifths--a formidable-
looking array—passed over to the benches
of the Opposition. Unchanged in numbers
and appearance, that array had, however,
in the passage materially altered in cha-
racter and in organization. The gangway that,
passing up the middle of each side the House,
divides each into two distinct parts is a gulf; on
one side of which sat Lord PALMERSTON with a
collection of politicians reluctant to desert, yet
not quite resolved to support him ; and on the
other sat Lord JOHN RussELL—during Lord PAL-
MERSTON'S Administration a member sitting in

isolation on the back benches, in the new state
of thingq occupying the first seat below the gang-
way—the Leader of a large Party whom Lord
PALMERSTON had looked upon as his own. But
even that Party is subject to subdivision, and a

hundred and twenty men among them are as
sheep having no shepherd. Recent events have
waked in time a perception that they are regarded
by Lord JOHN RUSSELL as they were treated by
Lord PALMERSTON, simply as instruments of
strategy, of which the Parliamentary manceuvrer
can disembarrass himself as soon as his purpose is
served and his ascendancy secured.
This was a curious state of things. Lord
DERBY became by its instrumentality capable of
holding his position against a mass of opponents
who at any time could have beaten him numeri-
cally, if they could have agreed among themselves
when to do it, and upon what questions. His
strength has hitherto depended upon their dis-
organization, or rather upon their incapacity,
from diversity of policy, to co-operate. Lord
JOHN RUSSELL and Lord PALMERSTON, mis-
taking singularly the bent of the mind of the
House, believed that matters might be arranged
as they had often been before, and that un-
attached sections might be managed as the Irish
Brass Band was accustomed to be in former days.
They hit upon the terms of a motion which both
could agree in without either being committed
by it to any future course or policy; and Mr.
CARDWELL, a Palmerstonian, with the aroma of
dying-out Peelism still hanging about him suffi-
ciently, as was supposed, to attract a few of his
old friends to his side, was selected as the man to
set it going. It was cleverly and delicately de-
vised, this net, that was to inclose so many fishes
of all kinds, and to bring into companionship for
the occasion so many strange bedfellows. So
dainty a construction, indeed, was it, that we can
almost find it in our hearts to regret that the
straightforwardness of Lord ELLENBOROUGH
has broken through it and knocked it so
utterly to pieces. Lord PALMEESTON and
Lord JOHN RUSSELL may learn a lesson
from the occurrence, if old habits of narrow per-
ception will permit them to see things as they
are. The disorganization of the House of
Commons is evidently in a great measure the
result of a desperate struggle being made to
eliminate the old Whig Party, to get rid of the
alternation of family cliques, and to rescue the
Liberal Party from being used simply as levers
for the occasion to crush this or put in that re-
presentative of the cliques of Brookes's or of the
Confederation of Cambridge-house. We suer
well of the future from the determination which
has been shown not to permit great questions of
policy to be practically decided by indirect
and shuffling motions founded on purely
personal considerations • and we do not despair,
if not in this Parliament, at all events in
the next, of seeing the House of Commons
once more divided into two great parties—com-
posed, on the one side, of the existing Conserva-
tive party, enlarged by the accession of many
men who, however desirous of progress, and
however earnest for reforms, are content that in
conducting them the fundamental principles of
our institutions should govern their appli-
cation ; and, upon the other, of those men
of extreme democratic opinions who wish
to destroy the entire growth of centuries,
and to create everything afresh upon ma-
thematical principles and after symmetrical
forms. We believe this will be ultimately the
result, if the House has the patience and the jus-
tice to let Lord DERBY have a fair opportunity of
exhibiting and working out his policy ; and we
shall then, we trust, not be subjected to a repeti-
tion of such exhibitions of Parliamentary vacil-
lation and party strategy as we have wit-
nessed within the last few days, and shall be able
to show to Europe a House of Commons aiding
some Government or other by a positive majo-
rity, with some unity of action and some distinc-
tiveness of policy.