The Sun.
London, England, 1855-05-29 00:00:00

lusion to suppose that any man, old or young, could attempt
such a task with advantage to the public. At the forma-
tion of the Government, I proposed to Palmerston to take
the Admiralty, but he preferred the Home-office ; and as
he told me himself that the Foreign-office had become too
much for him, I am sure that he would never think of un-
dertaking the busipess of the two offices iu question.
On the whole, then, believing that any change like that
proposed would be of doubtful advantage to the public ;
feeling very strongly that it would be an act of unfairness
and injustice towards a colleague ; and thinking also that
all such changes, unless absolutely necessary, only tend to
weaken a Government, 1 must repeat that I could not
honestly recommend it to the Quecn.—l am, my dear Lord
John, very truly yours,

ABERDEEN.

(Letter from Lord 3. Russell to Lord Aberdeen.)
Pembroke-ledge, Dec. 3, 1851.
My dear Lord Aberdeen,—l have not seen Lord Palmer.
ston, nor heard from him ; but, after your last letter, I
have no hesitation in saying that I revert to my original
opinion, and must propose to the Cabinet that the office of
Minister of War should absorb that of Seuetary at War
and that the oMee should, for the present at least,
be held by a member of the House of Commons.—l re-
main, yours truly,

THE AIVGLO-RUSSIAN MINISTERS.

(From the Morning Herald.)

The indignation of the country at the course pursued
by Mr. Gladstone and his Peelite associates needs no

argument of ours to excite it. The speech of the mem-
ber for the University of Oxford upon Thursday last
was the apology and defence of Russia. His immediate

accomplices, Mr. Sidney Herbert and Sir J. Graham,
have yet to state fully their sentiments ; hut in the few
cords which they had the opportunity of addressing to
the Hotve of Commons on the morning of Saturday they
avowed themselves, plainly and unequivocally, the abet-
tors of Mr. Gladstone. Enough for us to say, that
neither Mr. Bright nor Mr. Cobden could have exhibited
more thoroughly Russian predilections than have the
small knot of anti-English politic,ans who have assumed
and dishonoured the name of Sir Robert Peel.
There is, however, a light in which this matter has
not yet rec-ived the attention it deserves. It is, never-
theless, the gravest in which it can be viewed. It must
be recollected, that in January last, Mr. Gladstone, Sir
James Graham, and Mr. Herbert were all Cabinet Min-

istera ; they were so when the war a2ainst Russia was
most criminally postponed : they were so when it was
tardily declared and inefficiently prosecuted ; they were
so when the disastrous expedition to the Crimea was
planned. During ail these months of gloomy misman-
agement these men were in the councils of our Queen.
But more than this : we pointed out at the time, that

they had continued to fill with their own adherents
every one of the offices which controlled directly the
conduct of the war. Of that war the whole depart-
mental management was entrusted to members of this
feeble and conceited coterie. We now know that which
was then studiously concealed. Their opinions were
against the war. There wag in the Cabinet a Russian
party, that is, a party disposed to trust Russia, to make
peace with Russia upon terms inadequate to secure the
objects of the war. In other words, there were lead-
ing members of the Cabinet who did not enter into the
feelings of the nation with reference to the objects to be
attained by the war.
It is impossible, after reading Mr. Gladstone's speech
of Thursday night, to avoid a sensation of horror at the
recollection that he was a leading mernher of the Cabi-
net throughout the year 1854. What passed in the
Cabinet Councils of that year we do not know, and we
never will know ; but this mur,h recent revelations have
brought to light—that throughout all that year men sat
in the Cabinet who were opposed to the whole principle
and policy of a war with Russia, and that throughout
that year every movement that was undertaken resulted
in something favourable more or less to Russia.

We mu,t a,d,l to this, to complete the statement of
nndispoted farts, that these men left the Cabinet rather

than meet as Cabinet Ministers a parliamentary inquiry
into the causes of our Crimean disasters.

All the lessons that may be drawn from these facts we
do not now stop to enlarge on. But there is instruction
to he collected from the facts now at last disclosad to an
astonished nation.

Let us ask of any of our.readers to recall to his mind
the period of which we speak—she period when Mr.
Gladstonewasa memberof the Cabinet, when hisßussian
tendencies were not proclaimed, and when every sus-
picion that was uttered by any one of the sincerity of the
Cabinet was sure to he silenced by the mo,t convenient
of all generalities, the assurance that the Cabinet were
unanimous in the vigorous prosecution of the war.
Perhaps he will recollect that we then asserted that
_

there was a Russian party in the Cabinet ; and, further-
more, perhaps remember that this etatewont was de-
nounced by the ministerial journals ns a fiction. We
are content to be judged by the speech of Mr. Gladstone
on Thursday night as bearing, out all we asserted of the
div;sions in the Cabinet. Bait we have a higher pur-
pose now than any personal one. Triumphant as is the
vindication that speech affords of the statements we
we made a year ago, we do not pause to dwell noon it.
Bit we ask of every Englishman to r,flect seriously upon
!he fist, that tip to a very recent period Mr. Gladstone
and his associates, with the sentiments and opinions they
now avow. were influential, ray, leading, members of a
111inistry that professedly had adopted the policy of war.
. .

If we now knew that Mr. Gladstone was one of the
council who are to execute all the plans of the war—to
deliberate upon all questions affecting the terms of peace
—we need hardly say that the whole country would be
roused by the mere statement to demand his expulsion
as a traitor from the councils in which he could not
honestly concur. But, in truth and fact,, the case was
just the same a year ago. The only altsration is that he
has now avowed what he then kept secret. If the House
of Commons had never demanded an inquiry into the
cause of the Crinfean disasters Mr. Gladstone would be
at this moment a minister of the Crown, secretly, but
therefore more effectually, giving effect to those very
(minions which he has now proclaimed in opposition to
the policy of the war.
Let us ask what security have we that the Cabinet
does not at this moment contain men who hold the sen-
timents of Mr. Gladstone, and that to the presence in it
of such men we are to trace the ambiguity and uncer-
tainty of which the country, in spite of the vote of the
House of Commons, complains. We believe that there
are still such men in the Cabinet, just as we believed it
a year ago, which will be met denial exactly ss we were
met a year ago. For the grounds of our belief we refer
now, as we did then, to the conduct of Ministers—con-
duct utterly irreconcileable with the notion of a Cabinet
united upon the subject of the war.
We believe that there has not been one of the nume-
rous Cabinet Councils held within the last month at
which there has not been a serious division of opinion.
At more than one of them we believe the Ministry was
upon the point of being broken up. A denial will, per-
haps, be hazarded to this just as angry and positive as
vv-is given to similar statements last year. Is there an
intelligent person in England who is not convinced that
the deliberations of the Cabinet last year were a series of
hostile debates and angry divisions—divisions in which
the policy of war was only carried out by a majority so
narrow as frequently to entail the necessity of compro-
mises; which marred and interfered with the vigorous
execution of that policy
It is impossible for any one narrowly watching the
present progress of events to divest himself of the belief
that the very same process is still going on. We have
no more a united Cabinet now than we had last year ;
and it is because we have not a united Cabinet that we
have the same endeavours of Ministers to avoid anything
like a decided opinion on the part of the House of Com-
mons.

How long Ministers will be permitted to pursue this
Parliamentary policy we know not. The House of
Commons have seen fit to declare, by a large majority,
that they see no reason to be dissatisfied with the expli-
citness Of Ministers. We do not believe that of the 319
members who so voted the odd 19 would declare so as
an expression of individual opinion. Let us hope that
some means may be found of making the opinion of the
House of Commons accord with that of the members of
whom it is composed, and that some resolution of the
whole assembly may be come to which will not be in
direct contradiction of the individual opinions of nine-
tenths of its members.
In the meantime. we once more suggest, as matter
of reflection upon Mr. Gladstone's extraordinary speech,
that the speaker was a member of the Cabinet at the
very time when we were told that we had nothing to do
hut surrender our confidence unreservedly to the Go-
vernment, in the perfect assurance that there was no
difference of opinion to mar the unanimity of Ministers
in—" the vigorous prosecution of the war."

There are now three Colonelcies at the disposal of
Lord Hardinge—those of the 3d Light Dragoons, vacant
by the death of Lord Charles S. Manners ; the 23d
Fusiliers, by that of Sir George d'Aguilar ; and the 92d
HiA landers, by Sir Wm. Macbean's demise.
CHESTER AND ...T.TOLTHEAD.—A special meeting of the
proprietors was held yesterday at the offices at the
Euston-square terminus of the London and North-'
Western Railway. The Hon. Mr. Kinnalrd was in the
chair. The object of the meeting was to consider the
bill (as stated in the proceedings of the London and
North-Western Railway Cornpan)) to improve the
c.untrinnication between Holyhead and Dublin. As
at the London and North-Western meeting., there was
a.
dissentient shareholder, and the question went to a poll.
The result was as follows—viz., for the hill, present and
by proxy, votes representing 1,369,320/. stock ; against
the bill, 47,755/. The bill was, therefore, carried.
A SUBMARINE RAILWAY.—The Boulogne Ga:ette says :
—" There is once more a serious intent!on of uniting
France and England by a submarine railway. The latest
project is that of Dr. Payerne, who, with 40 subaqueous
boats, of which he is the inventor, 1,500 sailors and
navvies, 4,340,000 cubic yards of material, and
10,000,000/. sterling expenses, would undertake to con
struct a tunnel, by means of which the strait that sepa-
rates the two countries would be crossed in 33 minutes.
The position of this tunnel would be, no doubt, nearly
parallel with that of theelectric telegraph, and contiguous
to it, as being the narrowest part of the channel, as well
as that where the depth of water is the least."