The Press.
London, England, 1857-10-31 00:00:00

THE PRESS, OCTOBER 31,1857.

ring to the year 1852, on his first entry into Parlia-
ment, Mr. Du Cane remarked that we had then a
Ministry in power who, to judge from the legislative
results they left behind them, had recollected and
acted upon the maxim " Never postpone till to-
morrow that which you can perform to-day " :
We have now a Ministry in power who, if we are to
judge them by the legislative results that session after
session they leave behind them, appear to have ever before
their eyes the converse of the proposition, and delight in
" never performing to-day that which they can succeed in
postponing till the morrow." Five years ago, too, we Con-
servatives of Essex had leaders whom we could follow,
statesmen in whom we could place confidence ; we had
moreover broad and definite distinctions of party. We
are new told that party distinctions are at an end, that we
have no confidence in our leaders or our leaders in us, and
that one man, and one alone, is fit to preside over the desti-
nies of our country. But, though I trust I shall never lay
myself open to the charge of factious hostility to any Minis-
try that may be in power, though at a national crisis like the
present I shall ever be ready, heart and soul, to assist all
measures I conceive calculated to crush the foulest of
rebellions, and exact a signal justice for the outraged
honour of my country, I must confess that I do not feel
myself called upon utterly to abnegate all party ties, or
tender a blind and implicit allegiance to a Palmerstonian
dictatorship. (Loud cheers.)
In our anxiety for India, we must not entirely
lose sight of the progress of domestic legislation—
and here I must say, that if Lord Palmerston
has Conservative principles at heart, he is I fear
an adept in the somewhat jesuitical maxim " That
language was made to conceal thought"—for it is seldom
if ever that he has them on his lips. And I say this, that
the man who, with one set of principles at his heart and
another on his lips, attempts to guide the cause and
restrain the vagaries of a miscellaneous following for the
most part cf no principle at all, does so with the sword
of a Damocles suspended over his devoted head—that
man can only maintain his position by repeated conces-
sions on vital points of policy, a course damaging alike to
his own political reputation and to a public confidence in
public men. Look for instance at the progress of his
Church legislation. It was well said by Sydney Smith of
the late Lord Melbourne, " That he was quite satisfied
with the Church as it stood, but if the public had any
desire to alter it, why in God's name let them do so." I
say to you, " Ex uno disce omnes ;" as with one Whig
Premier so with another; the mantle of a Melbourne fits
well on the shoulders of a Palmerston. He can change
his front with the dexterity of a Protens, he can avoid a
pitched battle with the caution of a Fabius, by Conserva-
tive aid he can defy the ballot, and laugh to scorn any
sweeping wholesale measure of Reform ; but he will not
raise a huger to preserve the Christian character of our
legislative assembly; he can view with indifference the
slow but fatal process of Church spoliation. We have a
House of Lords, it is true, who have the spirit and the
courage to defend those interests we are nigh powerless to
guard, but as with Irish ministers' money this year, so
possibly it may with English church•rate next year, until
step by step, and stone by stole, the foundation is under-
mined, and the fabric crushes in ruin on our heads. (Loud
cheers.)
With reference to the revolt in India, Mr. Du Cane
congratulated his hearers upon the brighter news
dawning on us, but he protested against accordin g
an unlimited confidence in Government :

The man's heart must be cold indeed that does not re-
joice at the brighter nature of our last intelligence ; that
does not join a fervent hope that each succeeding mail may
bring us intelligence of a similar character, and that step
by step—slowly perhaps, but not the less surely—those
who have earned for themselves the appel:ation of fiends
in human shape, will be made to feel the stern and un-
compromising weight of an English justice. It is, in-
deed, a signal and terrible retribution that we must exact,
and while we deprecate the idea of an indiscriminate ven-
geance, let no one doubt for a moment that it will be
exacted to the utmost limit accordant with the justice of a
Christian and a civilised nation. But, in the. name of
justice also, do I deprecate the tone that has been assumed
by certain organs of the press as regards those whose con-
scientious scruples lead them in any way to differ in opi-
nion as to the course pursued from the first by her Ma-
jesty's Ministers.
We are told in the history of our country, that
in days long since past any one who ventured to
express the slightest disbelief in the existence of that
bloodstained romance, the Popish plot, was held up to
public odium as a " stiller of the plot," and denounced as
a traitor• to his king and country ; and so in these days,
any one who presumes for a moment to question the doc-
trine of " Palmerstouian infallibility " is denounced at
once as factious and unpatriotic, and as seeking to make
a national crisis the vehicle for a display of party feeling.
Now, that any man who would, nom mere motives of
faction, seek every opportunity to harass the Government
in a crisis like the present, who would oppose their mea-
sures for patty purposes, and endeavour to extract poli-
tical capital from their embarrassments—that such a man
would be most deservedly open to a charge of want of
patriotism, lam ready most fully to admit. But when
am told that it is the duty of every true patriot to accord
to the Ministry of Lord Palmerston not only an act of ob-
livion and of absolution as regards the past, but an act too
of unlimited indulgence as regards the future—when I am
told, too, that unless we subscribe an unhesitating assent
to all that issues from the mouth of the oracle, we are
seeking in the oracle's own somewhat memorable words
" to make the humiliation and degradation of our country
a stepping-stone to power," then say I, as a humble mem•