The Express.
London, England, 1848-11-27 00:00:00

tion 'a►ving been accomplished, a commercial mein-
Co..' required completion, whilst great social change
'du quietly working its way, and modifying the
principles and the mutual relations of parties and of
classes

The choice of Lord Muumuutin u its chief can
warmly, however, be considered the voluntary act
of the whig party. The sovereigns of England,
powerless as they are generally represented, have
seldom consented to allow a liberal party into power
without decapitating it, and seeking to soften
the harshness of liberal ascendancy by imposing
on it a weak and semi-liberal chief. Ozottoa IV.
would only take whig councils through the diluted
medium of Lord OoDnucn's premiership. WILLIAY
IV. would listen to the liberal opinions of his whit
ministers with respect to Ireland solely through the
medium of Lord MELBOURNE, who, though blunt.;
wu a courtier, and from both qualities was agreeable
to the sailor-King.
--• • •

His lordship indeed cannot have been considered
more than a Canningite in his early career. Mr. W.
LAMB may have been a whig from connexion, and
may have mus eyed in his youth as one of the adhe-
rents of Fox. But long even before he took officJ as
Secretary for Ireland in Mr. CANNING'S administra-
tion, he prefemd that statesman's policy to whig
opinion. When Lord ALTHORP propo•ed the repeal
of the Foreign Enlistment Bill, 1823, Mr. LAMB
opposed him. When the Alien Act was re-in-
troduced, and Slr JAMES MACINTOSH repudiated its
provisions, Mr. LAMB was the orator to reply. And
even when Lord JOHN RUSSELL brought in his cele-
brated motion for reform, in 1827, Lord -MELBOURNE
produced in answer all the old objections of Mr. CAN-
NING. It we., lea, as a reformer than as a noble
of whig connexion that Lord 1-lELBOURNE became the
colleague of Earl GREY in 1830.
In the great quarrel of 1834 Lord MELBOURNE
went, nevertheless, with the liberal side. The
question was whether, having established a free
and popular government in England, the role
and the policy should not be extended to
Ireland. The failure of the government to
carry this out is, we are confident, the chief cause of
all the evil' which have since assailed Ireleed, and
left it such an incurable burden and sore upon the
empire. Unfortunately, reform in England has
stopped short of its natural and full results. It had
shaken, irritated, and alarmed the aristocracy, with-
out really diminishing their power. Whatever pre-
dominance they were temporarily deprived of in the
lower house was fully compensated by their complete
suaremacy in the other ; their being left in undisputed
possession of the upper house enabled them, atter a
time, to recover their old possession of the lower, and
thus wash away every mark and furrow traced ordug by
the reform acts of 1832. The House of Lords was thus
enabled to put its veto upon the vote of the Coin
mons for the reform of the Irish church, and the
wbigs recollecting the long years they had been de-
prived of power for obstinate adherence to cathelsc
emancipation, bowed the head, accepted the final de-
cree pros ribing all idea of religious justice to Ire-
land, and sought to compensate by administrative
favours to the Irish catholics and their leaders for
that act of proscription and denial which the legisla-
ture had passed against them.
Lord Meneoeasv represented this policy, a well
meant and amiable policy, very like the character of
the Premier, but at the same time a miserable and
en unsuccessful one : for it did not concili tie tt e
catholic spirit in Ireland, whilst it alienated not
merely the protestant spirit in England, but the ad-
mirers of bold conduct and fair dealing. Even in the
following out of this policy, the whigs were as unfor-
tunate as in the conception, Lord NORM ANDY hav-
ing undertaken to govern Ireland on the prin,iple
of exaggerating, and pushing even to the ridiculous,
that conciliating policy, which was only tolerable
when wielded by the prudence of the statesman, not
distorted by the freaks of the partisan.
Their non.adhereire to the appropriation clause
was the first serious blow to the whirrs as a party; the
expenditure consequent on their foreign policy aggra-
vated it, and the total want of financial abilities or re-
solve ,to meet the crisis till it was too late again raised
the demand for practical statesmanship, and threw a
discredit upon the whole body and principles of libe-
ralism, from which they have not yet recovered. The
great act of commercial reform, too, the free importa-
tion of the first article of food, to this the whip bad
the misfortune of remaining total strangers. Origi-
nated, and swelled, and rendered universal and power-
ful in the popular mind,by a party extraneous to the
whits, it was taken up and carried by another party
equally remote from the whips in parliament. And
Lord .Nlecnoueet has put his special seal oo the
apathy of his party to the great commercial move-
ment of the day, by declaring the repeal of the
Tern law the e maddest thing he had ever heard of."
Fm having been thus shoved aside from the cur-
rent of popular opinion, and from having become es-
tranged to and ignorant of its sentiments, the while
had not a little to thank the leadership
of Lord MELBOURNE, who altogether (to
use a French expression) wanted the popular fibre.
He was a liberal courtier, a contented denizen of the
aristocracy, who was out of his depth the moment be
ventured to wade out of its shallow waters. An ex-
cellent leader, if the solo object of his party were to'
remain in office—conciliating the hostile, reconciling
the jealous, talking over the fretful. adjourning chffi-
collies or slurring them over, he was incapable of
either sympathising with, or appealing to, the large
and generous sentiments of the people, as Lord JOHN
RUASELL leas done on several occasions of his life.
Lord MELBOURNE'S merits lay altogether on the other
side, in his dealings with the court, and his manage-
ment of the aristocracy. These qualities are no
doubt necessary, and even Sir ROBERT PEEL has
suffered from imperfectly possessing them. They are
not, however, the qualities in a statesman of which
history takes count, or likes to dwell upon.
It would be unfair, perhaps, to judge of Lord Men-
Bol' Itt4E'S administration by what he did, and place
the great acts and reforms of other ministries by the
side of the small things which he attempted. But in
fact Lord MELBOURNE came into the life of politics,
as into the world, not to do but to exist—not to strive
but to enjoy. The Reform Bill had amassed for the
whig party a certain treasure in good works and good
intentions which Lord MELBOURNE had the good for-
tune to be called to spend, much as a prodigal heir
acquires the title to consume the fruits of his parent's
indoatry. Lord MELBOURNE was born in the admi-
nistrative purple ; and all that can be said of him is,
that he wore the mantle with grace, if he held the
sceptre with neither power, purpose, nor dignity.

Oa those who still doubt the efficacy of good
example in freedom of trade, as in all other
righteous ceases, the progress of sound commercial
principles in Mexico will, of course, be thrown away :
for their prejudices are so obstinate, and their blind-
ness is so vo.untary, that a special revelation would
.ail to enlighten them. To those, however, who have
never been sceptical as to the slow but sure and per-
manent advancement of that policy which is now ste-
reotyped in the British tariff, the adoption of these
views, even by the congress of a state co disorganised
and backward aaMexico, will be matter of no surprise,
though it is, of course, a subject of congratulation : for
that all nations will, sooner or later, find out they
gain nothing, but lose seriously, by excluding the
produce of other countries, is a prediction of which we
ourselves afford the most pregnant proof ; because in
no country has protection had more furious fanatics,
or monopoly had stronger interests to support it.
Mexico is then about to enter on a career of tree
trade. Her finances exhausted by the American war,
and her revenue endangered by the facilities which the
possession of New Mexico gives to the Americans tor
defeating her restrictive system—Mexico bad no alter-
native but either national insolvency or a revision of
her commercial system. Fcr the last twenty year,
that system had become more and more restrictive ;
until, at last, the peasantry of Mexico had lost the
most material benefit of independence. "My opinion
of the revolution," said a peasant of the Mexican
Cordillera to Capt. HALL, shortly after its accomplish-
ment, "is this : formerly I paid nine dollars for the
piece of cloth of which this shirt was made, now I
pay only two." And such was the feeling that
recruited the armies of the patriots that rescued
Mexico from Spain. Yet, gradually has this benefit
of the revolution been withdrawn from those
who achieved it, and just in proportion as
the spirit of monopoly,affecting the comforts and
subsistence of the multitude, re-established itself, has
that deep-seated discontent amongst the peasantry
been fostered, which needed but occasion and excite-
ment to overthrow one form of republican govern-
ment after another, and which, producing instability