The Press.
London, England, 1858-02-27 00:00:00

A RIGHTEOUS NEMESIS.

THERE is something remarkably appropriate I 1
in the occasion of Lord PALMERSTON'S fall. His
strange and calamitous career might have
terminated amid circumstances relatively in-
significant and comparatively inauspicious.
There are many questions which might have
caused his overthrow which would have failed
to place him in his real and distinctive chit.
rater before the country. Had he owed his
ejection to incapacity as a legislator upon any
of the dominant subjects of modern interest—
had he failed to deal, for example, with the
great topic of Indian administration as becomes
the difficulty, the importance, and the dignity
of the subject—or had he launched out into
the troubled waters of Reform and suffered
shipwreck from lack of wisdom or excess of
audacity, the lesson would have been absent,
the moral would have been wanting, which now
happily attaches to the catastrophe of hia
reign. With neither of these delicate pro-
blems was his name associated nor his repu-
tation identified. In no such field of labour
was his authority established or his fame
achieved. He would have been a prophet
more bold than prudent, who ventured to pre-
dict the principles or to speculate upon the
policy he would adopt when confronted with
the necessity of solving such questions as
these. Here we looked in vain to his ante-
cedents to learn his opinions or to conjecture
his intentions. All was dark, mysterious, in-
definite; and it may safely be said of this re-
markable man that, with all his ability, his
knowledge, and his experience, his forty years of
public life have passed away without connecting
him as a statesman in any marked or impressive
manner with any political creed or with any
national cause. There is but one exception that
can be taken to this declaration. Lord PALMERS-
TON had in one respect the credit of a distinctive
mission. He was the English Minister in a
sense that could be properly applied, as was
imagined, to no other living man. In this lay
his idiosyneracy. It was from this point of view
Lis friends delighted to regard him—to extol his
courage and to chaunt his triumphs. This
was the spirit by which his career had been
illustrated, and his influence attained. His
name was a very shibboleth of national
honour. Before him the tyrant trembled, and
the slave rejoiced. So the story ran But
alas ! for the Minister who has expended his
caergies in acquiring one claim alone to
public sympathy, and finds at the end that all
Lis labour has been in vain! Alas ! that the
Government in which he delighted to disport
himself should become a tattered rag, and that
his main pretension to the confidence and
gratitude of his countrymen should be pro-
claimed an imposture and a sham !
That Lord PALMERSTON should fall on the
motion of Mr. MILNER GIBSON was about as
complete a form of retributive justice as can
well be conceived. Here was one of the re-
doubtable champions of the Peace party—that
section of politicians whom ho had ever
treated with contemptuous scorn—whose
dogmas he had so keenly derided—whose
want of patriotism he had so often repobated
amid the acclamations of his followers—of
whose affections he had shown Manchester
was the centre and its mills the circum-
ference—here, we say, was one of the leaders
of the Peace party teaching Lord PALMERSTON
what was due to the honou: and demanded by
the independence of the country ! What a
picture was that! The very men whom,
according to Lord PALMERSTON, it might
have been thought would most applaud
his forbearance and appreciate his pusillani-
mity, place themselves in the attitude of
avengers of the affront and indignity to which
this vaunting Minister had tamely exposed
the nation. Mr. MILNER GIBBON and his
confederates were ejected from Parliament
at the general election because they re-
fused to sanction the Chinese war, which
Lord PALMERSTON found necessary to his
existence when peace had been concluded with
Russia. Other men as able, and members
of a more popular party, were made the tern-
Porary victims of the public hallucination