The Sun.
London, England, 1855-02-01 00:00:00

( From the Morning Herald of this day.)

It is becoming daily more apparent that Lord John
Russell, in his very clever move of Tuesday in last week,
deceived, not only himself, but several scores of his fol-
lowers. It' is, wa know, believbd by several of the late
Cabinet that his calculation was, that by disconnecting
himself from Lord Aberdeen's Ministry before its fall, he
would place himself in readiness to be " seat for,"
whenever that Ministry should give up the ghost. The
evident anger felt by more than one of his late colleagues
arises from a conviction that he meant to save himself by
letting them go down ; and the result is, that he is in
universal disgrace, and not likely to be usted or asso-
ciated with for some time to come.

But as he committed an error himself, so he seems to
have been the cause of error in others. More 4-,bah
Whigs took nie word itoebuok is motion
could not be reasonably opposed ' • and they accordingly
voted for that motion. Some of these may have voted
from their own convictions, without caring what Lord
John Russell thought or said about the matter ; but maay,
we believe, voted from their confidence in Lord John ;
their belief that "he knew what he was about;" and their
expectation that " matters would turn up right at last."
In no other way is it easy to understand how eighty Whigs
should sow rur taming out a .atuaistry the greater part of
which consisted of Whigs.
Their own newspapers also helped on the delusion.
They, one and all, represented that the real drift of the
motion was to get rid of the Peelites in the Cabinet, and
to reconstitute the Ministry on a more purely Whig prin-
ciple. In this supposition the Fitz williams, Gowers, Dun-
cans, Ebringtons, voted. They got rid of Lord Lans-
downe, and Lord Clarendon, and Sir George Grey, and
brought in Lord Derby Was this what they meant or
expected ?
Doubtless, the cry and the expectation was, in Reform
Club circles, "Get rid of Newcastle and Herbert, and let
Lord Palmerston manage the war." But they forgot, that
for any man to bo Premier it is necessary that he have a
large array of personal supporters in the House of Com-
mons. Now Lord John Russell, when on good terms with
his own party, may have 150 followers. Mr. Gladstone
and the Peelites may have 35. Lord Derby has more than
250. But Lard. Palmerston had not a dozen. His Pre-
miership, therefore, must have wholly depended on the
support of some other party—a support which might at
any moment have been withdrawn.
These Whig gentlemen, therefore, should have calcu-
lated better. They should have foreseen that whenever
that coalition of Whigs, Radicals, and Peelites, which gave
Lord Aberdeen 300 votes, was broken up, the obvious
course which the Sovereign would naturally adopt would
be to call for the services *f that leader who should have
the most numerous body of supporters in Parliament ; and
this would be, not Lord Palmerston, who, however popu-
lar, has no party of his own, but Lord Derby, the acknow-
ledged leader of the great Conservative party—the man
who had it more in his power than any other individual to
form that which the Queenirequired—a strong, and united,
and efficient Administration.
And in this way, perhaps -very unexpectedly, but very
naturally, the crime and the error of 1852 is avenged. By
a factious Coalition a good and strong Administration was
overthrown. That Coalition has not been expelled in its
turn by any similar manoeuvre. The Conservatives have
" bided their time." The Coalition has broken down from
sheer incompetency. Talent and experience of the highest
order constituted, they said, their title to office. They have
had a full and a fair trial, and have been dismissed most
ignominiously, as having exhibited the greatest want of
talent, and the most inconceivable amount of ignorance
and inexperience.