The Sun.
London, England, 1855-04-10 00:00:00

LONDON, TUESDAY. EVENIVI APRIL 10. 1855.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

THE MINISTRY-AND THE CONFERENCE.
( Prom the Morning Herald of this day.)
"The right men in the right places" is the cry
which now -rings from one'end of England to the
other—and certainly Lord Palmerston has given
many au instance of how very little he regards the
voice of the sovereign people, by the mode in Which
he has filled up the situations in his Government.
We need hardly mention in illustration the gouty
lord, now at the crisis of affairs, teir days absent
from his duty at the War-office ; or the fact of the
presidency of the Admiralty being handed' over to
that heaven-born Chancellor of the Exchequer,
who has proved the apophthegm,. "non quOvis
ligno fit," to be very extensive indeed in its appli-
catio for here we have a Wood out of which you
can ntikke absolutely nothing, being -so dense that
we doubt if it would even burn as a yule log.
OuT intelligence from Paris of the 6th shows that
England has Rot. yet -fathomed the poiver- of the
Pretnier in making inappropriate appointments.
The cool self-complacency' of Lord John Russell
was well known since the day that Sydney Smith
declared him to be capable of attemPting to build
St. Paul's, perforth the operation for the stone,
or command the Channel fleet, without ever at-
tempting• to attain a vestige of knowledge in the
sciences of architecture, anatomy, or navigation.
But we doubt if even the facetious canon in question
would have seriously given him • credit for the as-
surance necessary to undertake the conduct of the
most comiilicatecl and important negotiation which
has occupied the attention of the world since the
,Congress of Vienna, and in competition with the
most astute and experienced diplomatists in Eu-
rope, without as much knowledge of the French
language as would qualify him for the post of nur-
sery governess to the little darlings he has taken to
Vienna to solace the hours which he can abstract
from his multifarious duties for the enjoyment of
domestic felicity.
If it were necessary to Lord Palmerston's de-
signs that his colleague and rival should be removed
from England for a time, and, what perhaps the
wily Premier con,idered of more importance, be
exposed and made ridiculous in the eyes of Europe
by the exhibition of gross incompetence and incapa-
city in the execution of the duties he had under-
taken, Lord John ought to have been too astute to
fall into F. obvious a trap. Nothing, • indeed, but
the overweening self-estimate of hinaseif, which
'seems to constitute what logicians call the " essen-
tial difference" of such minute specimens, f -hu-
manity, could so have blinded him—or, if he did
see the pit-fall, nothing -else could have prevented
him from taking some means to obviate the diffi-
culty. Surely the great plenipotentiary might have
taken " six easy lessons," perused " French with-
out a master," or even taken a few private lessons
from the afore alluded-to nursery governess. No
such thing ; Johnny was too proud ; and now we
have the hurried journey of M. Drouyn de Lhuys
explained.
.by the 'fact that the representative of
England could not speak French sufficiently well
to prevent his committing the most egregious
blunders and making the most dangerous conces-
sions. Every one knows that diplomacy is a science
of words, and that the turn of a negotiation may be
made to depend upon the misplacing of a comma or
an accent • and here we have our destiny as a "na-
tion depending upon the fact that my Lord John
Russell cannot understand French when he hears
it, or make himself comprehensible when he at-
tempts to speak it.
Now, the sending of this ignorant and presuming
person was by no means a necessity, for Lord
Clarendon as a linguist and a statesman is quite
sufficiently double-tongued to maintain a decent
reputation amongst 'even the batch of rus6 tricksters
and word-spinners now assembled at Vienna; while,
if a precedent were wanting, every one knows that
Lord Castlereagh was both Foreign Minister of
England and her representative at Vienna during
the greak congress.
" Nil habit infelix panpertas, duri, in se
Quam quod ridicules homines facet."
So says the mighty satirist Juvenal ; and cer-
tainly if we substitute incapacity and feebleness for
poverty, the sentiment may well be applied to Eng-
land at present, in the'position of measureless con-
tempt to which she has been reduced by the utter
incapacity and treasonable machinations of the
Aberdeen Coalition, and its ghastly revenant, the
Palmerston abortion.
In what light must England now
.appear in the
eyes of Europe, with a compromised and immove-
able army at Sebastopol, a dissolved constitutional
force at home, and an imbecile, ignorant, and fa-
tuous representative at Vienna ? •
Lord Palmerston reckons without his host if he
fancies that the People of England will either for-
get or forgive these things ; the " Palmerston de-
lusion" is fast coming to an end ; he will find that
both his connivance under the Coalition, and his
direct mal-administration as Premier, will be _re-
membered when the day of reckoning comes, and
not even his newly-born sympathy with the inde-
pendent-kingdom of Poland, whose national exist-
ence he twice sacrificed, will save him from the just
wrath which his delinquencies have excited. To
this question we must return. More serious than
all is the fact announced in our private letters, that
the public feeling in Paris is highly excited, nay,
exasperated, at the prospects of a dishonourable
peace ; and should such take place,' we, for the
hundredth time, warn our readers that " France
will not take her share in the disarace—that the
whole onus will be thrown upon England, and the
designs of- Russia advanced a century towards
their completion by the virtual dissolution of the
great Western alliance. This, terrible, but inevit-
able 'result will, without doubt, be a debt due to
the nation by Lord Palmerston and his speechless
Vienna plenipotentiary.

THE- OXFORD-MANCHESTER COALITION.
(. Front the Morning Chronicle of this day.)

The exclusixe right to manufacture political
" canards," which was supposed to be the special
privilege of 011 Q of our daily contemporaries, is now
being invaded by the Tory prints. The weekly
organ of the party, by some of his recent astound-
ing announcements, appears to have excited the
jealousy or the emulation of his morning rival, who
now seeks to transact a little 6f this business on his
own account. We congratulate him on the bold-
ness and even the originality of his hypothesis, as
also on his having avoided a certain wildness dis-
cernible in the mystic utterings of his juvenile and
presumptuous weekly friend—a tone scarcely digni-
fied enough for such an oracle.
Our inventive contemporary—towards whom
we feel all the respect due for his consistent and
earnest advocacy of " Tory" or " Conservative"
prignciplesunderthe most discouraging circumstances
—has discovered that a new political combination
is about to be formed, which, to him, appears pecu-
liarly shocking. It is nothing less than an
" Oxford-Manchester Coalition !" Mr. Bright
and Mr. Gladstone, it -seems, are about to
join their forces, and to ruin the country to-
(tether ! Our readers, we feel assured, will sympa-
thise with us in the horror which such an announce-
ment was calculated to produce in all well-regu-
lated minds, and they will moreover, we do not
doubt, cordially concur in the doubts expressed by
our contemporary as to the truth of his own story.
Now the great art of manufacturing these pieces
of political gossip is to conceal that art. It is in
this that the weekly organ of the Tories excels.
Out of ever so homeopathic a quantity of specific
truth he will vamp you up an awful revelation,
quite enough to make the hair of all the quid-
nuncs stand on end. But he hides the process,
and allows no one to know of how much actual
fact he is in possession. Not so his daily rival,
eager to appropriate his laurels. The origin of our
worthy contemporary's story is obvious enough ;
and, for the enlightenment of such of our readers
as may have met with it, we will dissect his hastily
woven fabric:
When Sir J. Graham, Mr. Gladstone, and Mr.
S. Herbert seceded from the Palmerston Ministry,
all men were curious to see what positions they
would assume in the House of Commons. On the
first night of their entering that assembly after
their resignation, they took their seats at the head
of the second bench below the gangway on the
Ministerial side. It happened, that one or two of
those seats thus assumed by the seceding Ministers
had previously been occupied by Messrs. Cobden,
Bright, Milner Gibson, or one or other of their po-
litical friends. The wise men—among whom may be
ranked our contemporary—at once came to the-con-
elusion that the gentlemen who had been spoken of
as "Peelites " had made up their minds to became
the leaders of what is often called the " Manches-
ter" party ! As we do not profess to be so deep in
political secrets as some people, we will not under-
take to say whether our contemporary at the mo-
ment was visited by one of those sudden inspira-
tions which are only vouchsafed to political genius
such as his, or that of his weekly rival ! But wa
remember a little incident which caused some mer-
riment at the moment, and which, we doubt not,
had its influence on our contemporary.
Messrs, Bright; Cobden3 and Milner Gibsou

turally ,shared: the surprise of the house at seeing
the three Right Hon. ex-Ministersthus come down
among them with such unostentatious complacency;
but Mr. Bright, being the boldest, perhaps, of the
three, ext4ndM..'his'hand to one of the new comers
—we think 'Mr. Sidney Herbert—and a general
laugh acknowledged the friendly greeting. it was
doubtless at this Moment that our contemporary
became inspired ! An instant afterwards, how-
ever, Mr. Bright—we doubt not in perfect uncon-
sciousness—deliberately wipsd, with his handker-
chief
_the hantl'lvhich had thus been grasped,
whereupon another titter ran round the house, of
the mep.ning, of which the gentlemen concerned ap7
peared,perfeetly unconscious. This piece of unin-
tentional pantothime must have at once de-
stroyed the vision of a Coalition, which had just
been conjured up in our contemporary's brain, or
we have no doubt that the revelation which he now
has made would have appeared in his columns on
the following morning.
We regret to have to add, that something which
has appeared in this journal has led to a revival of
the first impression, and to its having been pre-
duned as a veritable piece of political information.
While affecting to doubt the truth of his own story,
our contemporary says :—" There is one circum-
stance which gives a colour to this report. There
is a daily Journal which has devoted itself for the
last six or seven years to the advocacy of the claims
of the Peelites. This journal has undervalued
Lord John Russell, and bitterly assailed .Mr. Dis-
raeli • but Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Sidney Herbert,
the Duke of Newcastle, and -Cord', Aberdeen have
been constantly upheld as mirrors of Eiiiiiiih'siatetir
mauship. Common rumour has often ascribed this
loyal attachment to the smallest party in the House
of Commons to a peculiarly close connection—that
of proprietorship • but of this we know nothing,
and therefore diall assert nothing ; nor does it
materially affect the state of the case.
" Now this journal, the Morning Chronicle,
which has livpd for the last seven years with no
other apparent object than that of fighting the
battles of the Peelites—this journal has within the
last few days commenced a series of vehement and
spleenful attacks upon Lord Palmerston. During
the first three weeks of his Government, after Mr.
Gladstone had left his Cabinet, the Peelite organ
was hopeful and courteous towards the Ministry.
'But, on a sudden, and without assigning any
reason, it suddenly became a bitter opponent. That
bitter opposition has continued during the 'whole
of the last ten days ; and its commencement bears
date from the first circulation of the report that
Mr. Bright and Mr. Gladstone had come to
terms."

Our contemporary is prudent in not asserting
that which he does not know : he would have been
more delicate had he made n 6 allusion whatever
to a subject wholly beyond his province, and of
but little interest to the public. This is not all,
however. It appears that we are "artful tacti--
cians," who " adopt a line of argument in
order to prove that Lord Palmerston is destroying
. the old system of Government in England, and
making some kind of a revolution inevitable." We
have a tolerably clear recollection that something of
the kind has of late appeared in the not very revo-
lutionary columns of our contemporary, but, until
he told us of it, we certainly were not aware that
we were doing the political work of a new coalition !
All such speculations spring from a false view of
the true mission of journalism. Unless a newspaper
be independent, it is worthless as a public guide.
A journal set up, or maintained, to further. the
views of particular statesmen, loses general influ-
ence in proportion to this its particular devotion.
A public journal should have but one 'object—the
public good. It should deal with public men ac-
cording to their merits—in other words, according
to the extent to which they devote themselves to
advancing the interests of the public. Tory jour-
nals often praise Tory statesmen—do w 3 therefore
jump to the conclusion that their praise is not
voluntary and independent ? If in this journal the
abilities or the measures of different Ministers at
State have been noticed with approval, it was be-
cause its conductors believed that those statesmen
were worthy of such support. In like man-
ner, when Lord Palmerston was called, almost
by acclamation, to take the helm, full credit was
given to him in advance for a resolve to perform
the work demanded by the nation. He received
all the assistance from this journal to which he was
entitled from his past career. If we now share in
a feeling of universal disappointm,ent, that Lord
Palmerston should so have fallen short of the ex-
pectations formed on his advent to power, we give
expression to our feelings without any secret purr
poses whatsoever, and least of all in order to form
or to further an " Oxford-Manchester coalition."
As to the feasibility of such an arrangement, we
are disposed to concur thus far with the Ministerial
evening organ—that there would be no little diffi-
culty in amalgamating natures so opposite as those
of Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright. Beyond this
our Mission does not lead us. It will be time
enough to deal with such a "Coalition" when it is
attempted ; and, in the meantime—although every
hour may bring conclusive news from Vienna—we
would recommend the public to be on their guard,
as the quarter from which the evil may come may
not be exactly that whence it is apprehended.

THE VIENNA CONFERENCE.
(From the Times 'of this day.)

The point at which the Vienna Confer ences are
now stationary, and on which a reference for fur-
ther instructions has been made to St. Petersburg
and to the Cabinets of Western 'Europe, is known
to be that third condition of the proposed terms of
peace which is to limit the preponderance of Russia
in the Black Sea. A variety of statements have
been made, and a variety of schemes have been
devised, for the purpose of solving this difficulty,
but the reports of the proceedings of the Confer-
ence published by the foreign press are so contra-
dictory and inaccurate that'we can only caution
our readers against placing any reliance whatever
on intelligence of this nature. Even with refer-
ence to the visit of M. Drouyn de Lhuys to this
country, on his way to Vienna, the rumours cur-
rent in Paris are totally unfounded. The fact is,
that the French Minister, on his arrival here, ap-
pt
he
aa
nr e
thed d ilsepaodsiendg
mt o e
mtake s asomewhat
th
e B British
e h lower ton
Cabinete
conceive to be essential to the interests and the
dignity of the Western Powers ; but before he left
London M. Drouyn de Lhuys had expressed his
entire concurrence in the policy which Lord Pal-
merston and Lord Clarendon have uniformly pur
sued, and the Allied Governments are perfectly
agreed as to the terms on which alone the negotia-
tion can be carried on. The precise nature and
extent of these terms is, however, still the secret
of the Plenipotentiaries themselves, and we can
would impose on us a
cehtoS
olsi
only relate the different versions that have been
assigned to them.
One of these versions, and we think the nearest
to the truth, is a stipulation that Russia shall bind
herself by treaty not to maintain more than a
p y permanentr
e s andsion
buto_
of
f their
offor-
tificationsi
certain prescribed naval force in the Black Sea.
Another is, that Turkey and the Western Powers
shall create on the, shores of Asia Minoerroausnaval
establishment in the BlackreSfnoercahwtGohoacovtuetni:eineyrbalance
the ships and forts of Sebastopol ; but thisetpuertrmojbesecdat
can scarcely have been seriously entertained, as it
obli-
gation, and rather augment than remove the causes
this prots-faltogether weakening
e existenßceesdhependsontao
htf
efeun, t‘sutriemhostilities.
e neutralisationad n pt
adopted
of
aTt The French
planFE
Sea," by which all
the States having dominion over any paw
pofassaagceerotaf
apc
nooasdas tlds
would
disarming
oahruoml should
and
ndhgaa
vnTg toearuevtrehakele
ye
fft establishmentswhose
lacikhthe
the
en thestrength
possessionof the
power. All these suggestions are further amount P °orf 1 ILavnadl
compli-
cated by the important question h er
vv ether the '
prin-
ciple of the Convention of 1841 is to b e abrogated
or maintained—that is, whether the Dardanelles
and the Bosphorus are to be opened or closed against
the ships-of-war of all nations. On this
last point
the Russian Government appears to be
not only
willing to accede to the proposal for opening the
Straits, but anxious to promote this a
although in 1841 the Cabinet of St.rrPersangement,
showed an equal anxiety to bring about the
"n-
burg
trary result. We are not surprised at this change
in the language of the Russian Ministers, for
or it is
obvious that whatever advantage might '
the other Powers from the right of
sending accrue to
vessels-of-war into the Black Sea would be
their
he
more compensated to Russia by the power of
send-
ing her Black Sea fleet into the Mediterranean; and
that the passage of ships of the line under the walls
of the Sultan's Palace and the forts of the Bos-
phorus would be a fatal blots to the 'independence
of the Ottoman Government. The b
a rogation of
the old law of the empire, though acceded to by
the Russians, is therefore strenuously resisted by
-
the Turks, and we do not know on what grounds
the Allied Powers can, if they consider the
interest
of the Sultan, overrule that opinion. -
• The existence of a Russian fleet in the Black
Sea, is, as we showed in some detail ,a slior t t"
Mae

ago, a novelty, and a dangerous novelty, in Europe.
Till nearly the middle of the last century even the
trade of the Russian merchants of the south was
carried on in Turkish vessels, and, the waters of
the Euxine formed an undoubted portion of the
Ottoman empire. The conquests of ' Catherine
annexed the Crimea and a large extent of the
coast to the Russian empire ; but the Russian
fleets which fought the battles of Tchesme and
Navarino had both entered the Mediterranean by
the Strait of Gibraltar, and we believe that down
to the present hour no Russian squadron has ever
sailed through the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles.
The Black Sea fleet has been created exclusively
for the purpose of menacing and attacking Turkey.
Its sole achievement in history is the massacre of
Sinope, and, far from attempting to offer any naval
resistance to the.flags of England and France, the
next purpose to which it was devoted was to block
up the port of Sebastopol. In requiring from
Russia the limitation of this fleet we only require of
her the surrender of a weapon she has not long pos-
sessed, which she has never used for the purposes
of legitimate warfare, and which she herself thought
it prudent to sink at the first appearance of danger.
It will not be seriously contended that Russia re-
quires a fleet of
.line-of-battle ships to protect her
from the maritime power of the Turks ; but if cir-
cumstances lead to the entry into the Black Sea of
toe fleets of the great maritime States, the experi-
ence of this war has already demonstrated that not
a Russian pennant can keep afloat. Russia is, in
fact, safer without a fleet in the Black Sea, provided
she has the certainty that English and French
-squadrons will not pass the Straits, than: she can"
be with a fleet which is utterly unable to cope with
either of those Powers. If, on the contrary, the
Straits were thrown open .to all the naval. Powers,
she acquires a reasonable pretext for maintaining
the largest fleet she can form, since she may have
to resist their united force.

It may, however, be doubted whether the Rus
sian Plenipotentiaries will be instructed to treat at
all on this point, or, if so instructed, whether they
will have sufficient powers to settle it. In tran-
sactions of this nature, which are generally dis-
tasteful to one party in exactly the same proportion
as they may be advantageous and satisfactory to
the other, it must be borne in mind that we have,
after all, nothing more sacred or binding to depend
upon than the articles of the treaty itself. Those
articles may be broken, and war may again ensue ;
but war is the only positive sanction of treaties,
beyond the mere moral obligation of good faith,
and it is not easy to bind over a great'empire either
to fulfil its obligations or to keep the peace. We
may make it the interest of our adversary to avoid
a renewal of this contest ; we may render fresh
breaches of these covenants a violation of the pub-
lic law of Europe, which it may be dangerous and
inconvenient to commit ; but we must at last rely
on the faith of an engagement, unless we are pre-
pared permanently to watch over the entire fulfil-
ment of that engagement by naval and military
means, which may be as burdensome to the country
as war itself. The armies of occupation left in France
by the allied Powers for some years after 1815, and
the fortresses itrected on the Belgian frontier,
were guarantees of this last-mentioned character ;
but Europe was then in a condition absolutely to
dictate terms to its antagonist, which we are not at
present able to do to Russia ; and, after all, it may
be doubted whether these supposed securities were
worth the expense and irritation they caused.
With sincerity, a peace concluded on moderate

terms may be a- safe. and lasting one ; without sin-
cerity, all the conditions and covenants that diplo-
macy can frame will not bind a powerful Sovereign.
If the spirit of concord and of honest dealing has

once more returned to our adversaries, and if the
reverses and trials of the past year have been felt
by Russia as they deserve to be, there is nothing in
the intentions or demands of the allied Powers to

prevent the termination of this contest ; but, unless
the policy of the Russian empire has undergone a
change as well as a check, peace would only suspend
a struggle which must ere long be renewed under
circumstances less favourable to the general interests
of Europe.

THE ARISTOCRACY AND THE MIDDLE

CLASS.

(From the Daily liTPum of this day.)

The friends of the aristocracy need be under no
alarm. There is no revolutionary plot hatching
against the permanence of the "order." The popu-
lar demand to have administrative employment
thrown open to men who are neither connexions nor
dependents of the aristocracydoes not aim at the ex-
clusion of the aristocracy from the executivegovern-
ment. The people do not wish to see the aristo-
cracy superseded by men of the middle class, but as-
sociated with them in the discharge of official
duties. The people of England are attached to their
monarchical institutions, and believe that an aris-
tocracy is indispensable to the maintenance of the
Throne. But they believe, also, that even a mo-
narchical government is strengthened by a liberal
infusion of the popular element. They see that the
anxious nepotism of that section of the aristocracy
which devotes itself to politics as a profession, has
almcst succeeded in excludingplebeian competition.
They trace to this source the infirmity of purpose
and imbecility of action which have characterised
our Government throughout the Oriental struggle ;
and therefore, as the first step to administrative
reform, they ask to have the career of civil employ-
ment thrown open to general competition.
It is no answer to these complaints and demands
to tell us that ParliaMentary Reform, Municipal
Reform, the Emancipation of the Negroes, and the
Abolition of the Corn Laws, have been carried by
the influence of the middle classes, in despite of
the strenuous resistance of a -majority of the aristo-
cracy, That the middle classes should have been
able to carry these reforms, shows their strength ;
that the strongest section of the aristocracy should
have opposed them, shows its want of sound poli-
tical knowledge, and its imperfect notions of poli-
tical justice. We have had good legislative mea-
sures passed, because the voice of the middle classes
(when they choose to exert themselves) is powerful
in the Legislature ; we have imbecile administra-
tive Government, because the middle classes are
unrepresented in the executive councils of the
State.

We are told that popular or middle class policy
is left to be carried out by the aristocracy because
" we Britons have the weakness of ' loving a lord,'
and of contemning our noble selves ;" and we are
expected to accept this as a sufficient reason why
no change can or ought to be attempted. We
know that this weakness is the cause of the evils
complained of ; we know that the middle classes
have themselves to blame that their " order" is
utterly unrepresented in the executive councils of
the State ; and it is precisely for this reason that
we are labouring, in concert with other earnest re-
formers, to awaken the middle classes to a sense of
the injustice they are doing to themselves and the
nation at large. Their representatives are now ad-
mitted to the Legislature, and the consequence is
that legislation has been greatly improved. Their
representatives are still excluded from the execu-
tive councils of the State, and the consequence is
that the conduct of these councils is characterised
by anything rather than energy, wisdom, and
honesty. Our exclusively aristocratic Administra-
tions do not "carry out popular or middle-class'
policy ;" they systematically thwart and counter-
act while professing to enforce it.
An attempt is indeed made to prove that middle-
class statesmen are an impossibility. To this end
it is alleged that "men of the middle class, and
especially the most competent men of that class,
do not greatly devote themselves to public or Par-
liamentary life, just because it is expensive and ab-
sorbing, never profitable, and often thankless."
Middle-class politicians do not find public life
more " thankless" than aristocratical politicians.
Middle-class politicians, who have earned the pub-
lic gratitude by real and essential services, gene-
rally find that gratitude cling to them, even when
they try it sorely by their eccentricities. As to the
expensiveness of a political career, the middle
classes need net shrink from it on this account more
than they do from the legal profession. No man
will wisely devote himself to either, who has not from
some other source means sufficient to enable him to
" bide his time," to wait for the coming in of busi-
ness. But a large proportion of the middle classes
are as able to do this as the aristocracy. It is rarely
the elder sons—the wealthier members of the aris-
tocracy—who devote themselves earnestly to poli-
tics as a business ; it is the younger sons, the "lack
lands," who desire to earn the means of maintain-
ing themselves in the rank they were born in.
Lastly, as to the alleged unprofitableness of a poli-
tical career, do the aristocracy find it unprofitable ?
We suspect if it did not pay we should act find so
many of them engaged in it. To the middle classes
such a career is decidedly unprofitable—because all
the prizes are engrossed by the aristocracy. The
aristocracy are paid, and over-paid, for their public
services ; but every middle-class man who under-
takes to serve his country in a political capacity is
expected to do so without fee or reward. As long
as this system is upheld, it will 40104 be difficult