The Express.
London, England, 1852-12-22 00:00:00

THE NEW MINISTRY.

Amid the suspense in which the formation of the
new administration still hangs, attention is inevita-
bly attracted to rumours wearing the semblance of
authmtielty, which at any other time would be die-
reses/6d as altogether groundless, or intrinsically
inereallis. Men's ideis are apt to become confused,
is WI whirl of vacillations and renunciations of old
party ties incident to a state of things at once ano-
malous and unusual. In the ordinary fluctuations
d may, public curiosity is limited to the inquiry
Aides all who were officials before will return with
Asir leaders to office again. But the perplexities of the
pnwecat situat ion, as our French neighbours would term
e more diversified and entangled. Anew cabinet
it is said, is to be formed, not out of say we party or
even out of any two sections of poll'' 's% but, if we
am to believe certain of our who
id to have peculiar inspirations Ms Vases.
km three distinct and separate psalm 111.11 d
which has hitherto prided itself upon its sevenity
from both the other two. The Premier and *s
Finance Minister, we are told, will be taken from Ile
Peelites ; the leader of the House of Comma eni
the Home Secretary are to be Whigs; and ere Mew
cellars of England and of Ireland, we are aseurei,
are to be Derbyites! We give the rumour as It
runs : that is our duty ; and, however ludierewe ae
lamentable it ma sound in our readers' ears, we
should be ins were we to ignore it.
For, in point el het, the real plight to which we
are politically reansed, without a government, or the
eertainty that we shall have any other than that
which parliament Slid the nation generally have just
hooted off the administration stage,—is more forcibly
illustrated by the scandalous surmise above alluded
to than by any sober statement probably we could
name. Time-serving and tergiversation in high
places have done their work. All loyalty to leaders,
and, what is worse, all faith in professions, is shaken.
Peclism, which is just now the pink of the bureau-
cratic mode, may be deflned to be a party conundrum
to which the propersnswer has never yet been guessed
by the uninitiated, or given by those who set the
Whigism has oftentimes been subject to
doubts as to its identity; but hitherto the ready test
has ever been at hand of coincidence of opinion with
certain distinguished chiefs, aid a disposition often-
times too rigid to exclude from confidence all who
dwelt, h'swever sloe-, upon its borders. And so in
like manner with Toryism. But the needle of con-
sistency no longer points true. Whigs and Peelites
not eely meet together, but Derbyites and their
destroyers are ready to sit beside each other.
This may call itself the sublime of charity, or it n ay
be called the abjectness of cunning. We shall con-
tent ourselves with designating it the worst calumny
that can be flung upon the judgment and the
honour of public men; foe we shall never
believe, until we read the announcement
in the Gazette, that men like Lord Joint

Russzu. would mace to play ths part of a mum-
mer in such a masquerade as a Cabinet most be
oonstituttd of the splinters and spars of to o Tory
governments which 'in suocessios he has himself
overthrown.

Itejeetieg this disreputable idea, and assuming
that the willingness of Lord ABISEDLEN and Sir
JAMES GRAHAM to enter into cordial union with the
Whig leaders for the purpose of forming au adminis-
tration rests upon, and will be avowed to rest upon,
some positive and unmistakeable programme of
policy, the question forces itself upon the mind of
every thinking man—What is that policy to be? Is
it to be stationery or progressive P Is it to be
addressed to the sympathies of the living, or a
superstitious incantatim of the spirit of the dead ?
Are we to spend another year chaunting the glories
of what has been accomplished—or will the trumpet
cell go forth rousing all wise and good men to ac-
tion, and bidding them in this happy day of affluence
and peace to Fut the constitution in thorough repair,
• hile there is time, and the hour of trial and disaster
is apparently not nigh at hand? The late govern- I
ment have prepared for dangers from without; it
will be the duty of the government now about to be
formed to prepare against dangers from within. Indus- I
try and intelligence, without rights or franchises in •
country where discussion is free end the daily bread
of millions may suddenly be suspended by the blight
of a single crop in a foreign land, or the disruption
of peace among the nations of the continent—this is
a grave and so to speak a very pressing matter; one
that requires s strong administration in point of
vigour, and a trustworthy administration in point ut
character.