The Express.
London, England, 1855-02-23 00:00:00

WITHOUT A GOVERNMENT.

THE country is still virtually without a Govern-
ment; for although, in the course of yesterday
afternoon. a Cabinet Council was held, and subse-
quently at the sitting of the House of Commons
several of the occupants of office re-appeared upon the
Treasury Bench, it was on all hands felt that the
Ministerial Crisis had not poised, and that the
Government, ostensibly headed by Lord PALMERSTON,
could only be deemed provisional, until it should be
known how the vacant offices were to be filled up. A
Chancellor of the Exchequer, a First Lord of the
Admiralty, a Secretary for the Colonies, a Secretary
for Ireland, two Under-Secretaryships of State, the

Clerkship of the Ordnasoe, a Lordship of the Tres-
sou, and a Secretaryship of the Board of Con- I
trol these, were there no other offices to be I
filled up, constitute no inconsiderable proportion I
of the working whole of an Administration. '
Yet all of these, as far as the public were
aware, continued to be vacant up to yesterday even-
ing. Hence the feeling of uncertainty and doubt
regarding the passible future which =Aimed to
overhang the political world; and hence the irre•
strainsble expression of disappointment in the Howe
of Commons when Lord PALMERSTON announced
briefly the fact that three of the principal members of '
the Cabinet had retired, unaccompanied es that an-
nouncement was with any intimation that their suo-
censors had yet been found. The three gentlemen in
question had not, of course, attended the Cabinet
Council, nor did they appear in the Hones sem-
goodly ; but Lord PAinurrox stated on their
behalf that they purposed being present la their
places on Friday, and that they would then 'kaftan
Nem which hd messed *am is purs-

tee iks course they had adopted. Pena's('
suck aaplinstions it is unnecessary to hazard
any iionjeatate as to the cams of secession I
which these accomplished masters of rhetorical
fenee may think proper to assign. Nobody, perhaps,
expects that we shall be told the whole truth just
now regarding their quarrel with their Whig asso-
ciates. We should not, indeed, be at all surprised if
Mr. GLAD STONE undertook to prove that quarrel
there was none—only a decided difference of opinion
as to what was best to be done under existing cir-
cumstances, and what he and his friends understood
Lord PALMERSTON had bargained with them to do.

We remember to have heard that when Mr.

GLADSTONE quitted Sir ROBERT PEEL'S Government
in 1845, upon the Maynooth Question, his explana-
tory speech in the House was so inexplicable that
his illustrious chief observed to one who sat near
him—" I thought I understood his reasons before,
but now I protest I do not know what they are." We
hope upon this occasion that the ex-Chancellor of the
Exchequer will be more perspicuous. Impatient as the
public are of delay in the final formation of a
working Government, they have an interest in
knowing whether it is tree that the condition
upon which the Aberdeenites agreed to re-enter
the Cabinet ander Lord PALMERSTON was, that he
should undertake to talk the House of Commons
out of the appointment of a committee of inquiry.
The country has a right to know whether the men
who but yesterday asked for its unlimited confi-
dence could really have been so blind to the state
of things around them as to imagine that such a
compact, if made, could be kept. Nobody will care
fo question the feeling of mistaken honour which
may have rendered Mr. GLADSTONE and his friends
unwilling to adopt the proceeding of censure against
Lord ABERDEEN and the Duke of NEWCASTLE which
they had vainly resisted a month ago; and if
Lord PALMERSTON actually gave such an under-
taking as is alleged, he has only too faithfully
acted up to its spirit by his unfortunate attempt
to bully or cajole the House on Friday last.
Bat what are the people to think of the vaunted
wisdom of statesmen par excellence, when they find
them covenanting among themselves, in order to
gratify personal feelings, that, come what may, the
preponderant opinion of the House of Commons and
the overwhelming conviction of the country should
be resisted and defied ? And what must the esoteric
estimate of these statesmen be of the stuff of which
the House of Commons is composed when, under any
circumstances, they could deliberately calculate upon
being able at will to turn it politically inside out ?
How often must they have found it abjectly pliant
in their hands, to have speculated thus confidently
upon the elasticity of its conscience? How little
security should we have had against the success of
' the practices meditated in the present instance, but for
the accidental pressure from without which our recent
disasters have caused ? It were well that the
people should ponder these things; it were well that
, they should remember, after the existing crisis has
passed, how intense a contempt for a majority of
the House of Commons the men who know that

assembly best entertained for it; and how ♦ain
must be the hope, generally speaking, that a ma-
jority, constituted as it now is, will really bold in
check the unnational and irrational schemes of
oligarchic cabals.

We should be almost ashamed to give an hour's
currency to the miserable projects that find favour
at the clubs for re-constituting the Administration.
The Red Book seems to have been rummaged to find
faded and forgotten notabilities wherewith to stop
the many leaks in the ship. From among the

supernumerary tapitts of quality, and ambi-
tious triflers, it is in our mind wholly im-
material which half-dozen may be chosen.
If Lord PALMERSTON'S choice is to be confined to this
impostor class, it signifies little or nothing who the
individuals may be. His Ministry will in such case
be short-lived and abortive ; it will end as it began, in
confusion and in gloom. Nor will the reproach of
exclusiveness and of usurpation be lessened in the
mind of the public, when they become aware o•
attempts that are said to have been made to buy off
independent criticism and salutary censure, such as
that beneath which the Coalition has at length
fallen, by the offer of two or three dumbicaiterships,

to the more prominent of the "gentlemen who sit
below the gangway." We have heard, with feelings
we had rather not describe, that Mr. LAYAIID has
been offered the Clerkship of Ordnance—a post
recently vacated by the sagacious Mr. MONSELL, when
be discovered that it was in contemplation speedily
to abolish it altogether. Under any circumstances,
the office is one in which abilities such as those
which the member forAylesbury has displayed would
be in a great degree, if not altogether, thrown away.
But this is part of the old trick of government by caste;
Dever, if possible, to allow an intruder to compete
fairly in the race of office; but, while treatieg him
as a prot4E, to stow him snugly away into some
dark corner, so that, when be emerges at a
general election, the public will hardly be able to
recognise him. It was in this spirit that when the
Whig Cabinet was formed in 1846 the silent sinecure
of the Vios-Presidency of the Board of Trade was
offered to Mr. COBDEN. But as the one was
refused by the Honourable Member for the
West Riding then, so the other has been, we trust
and believe, rejected by Mr. LATARD now. Other
proposals of a similar description have, we are in-
formed, been made to certain other members of the
popular party in Parliament ; we should be sorry to
learn with a different result. In times like the pre-
sent, and with a view to those which we are mani-
festly approaching, public men who rely upon public
sympathy for sustainment cannot be too careful how
they guard the honour of the great and growing
cause of administrative equality which may be vin-
dicated or compromised in their persons. It was not
to be gagged or logged that they were sent into
Parliament. It was to assert the rights and interests
of the great body of the community without invi-
dious or unfair distinction; and this, the people under-
stand full well, may either be done out of office or in
office—nay, it may be often done more effectually
is the latter, provided in the act of entering it a man
does not stoop or demean himself, and that when
there he is not cushioned, or his characteristic abili-
ties lost to the service of the State. If every office in
which there is any possibility of honourable distinc-
tion be engrossed by the old privileged clue of
bureaucrats, no good purpose will be gained by prof-
fering standing room near the door to some few men
whose place, if they are to have any, ought to be
mmompanied with responsibility and power.—Daily
Z(iws.