The Sun.
London, England, 1855-05-24 00:00:00

Mr. Disraeli has fairly committed himself to the fortune
o f d debate,
fatoer,
hisand he e
party cannot, nanvooti,d
tli withee oa null ad tu he e as respectch al? er him-
selfnged
dr
ea
snugl et rtooutshiet
hwi
go
hu
-1
wd
rhoauvgeh btbeen
to Thharveeeamnotinctiphastaegdo;uhcohwa
pectations of the public! At that epoch, Lord Palmerston
was still at the height of his popularity, and was looked
up to by the nation as the man who would carry into
effect a vigorous policy. Every allowance was made for
his peculiar position. It was admitted, that his having
been a member of the previous Administration rends red
him responsible for engagements which had been entered
into by his colleagues, not without the assent of the pub-
lic.
Even had he come into power without any of those
personal obligations, he would to a certain extent have
been bound by the acts of his predecessor in the
Premiership, because a common interest has led
States to render their foreign policy permanent,
whatever may be the changes in their domestic
Goveinment. Much time was, therefore, given to Lord
Palmerston to make his arrangements, and considerable
latitude was allowed to him in his interpretation of his
ministerial duties. If ever a minister had the full confi-
dence of the great mass of the nation, it was Lord Pal-
merston. Indeed, since the time of the younger Pitt, no
statesman has been gratified with so complete a surren-
der of powers usually guarded with jealousy, except the
late Sir Robert Peel.
An extraordinary mismanagement alone could have
brought abOut the state of things we now witness. Our
recent history affords no precedent of a collapse of popu-
larity so sudden and complete as that which has befallen
Lord Palmerston. When Sir Robert Peel took office
towards the close of the year 1841, an outcry was r tised
against him by many persons, because, at an inconve-
nient period, and without the time for preparation, he
did not immediately come forward with a scheme of Go-
vernment. Reflective men saw the unreasonableness of
thus pressing a minister new in office under very peculiar
circumstances ; and the clamour came to nothing. Any
attempt that may be made to institute a parallel between
the earlier months of Sir Robert Peel's dictatorship and
1 the disastrous commencement of Lord Palmerston's weak
imitation thereof must fail, in face of the different cir-
cumstances of the two cases. As to the course of policy
to be pursued by Sir Robert Peel at the period in ques-
tion, there might have been grave doubts in the minds
of the most patriotic men. No such hesitation is pos-
sible, in the case now about to be subjected to the ordeal
of a vote of the House of Commons. Sir Robert Peel
had valid grounds for delay, even for evasion. For Lord
Palmerston there is no such excuse, because this course
was clear from the hour when he first accepted the trust
confided to him by his Sovereign.
Still, it would not be wise to yield too much confi-
dence to the Tory champion. In the present' difficulty,
the nation has a right to demand guarantees. Lord
Palmerston was accepted on trust. His antecedents
had inspired a vague confidence. That he had conducted
the foreign policy of the country during so many years
was itself a recommendation. He had thwarted the
diplomacy of Russia, without too far committing his
country to political antagonism with her vast'and unde-
fined power. It was supposed—experience shows with
how little reason—that the realisation of dangers,
towards which all his prescient policy had pointed, would
have aroused all the fettered energies of his nature, and
that he would scarcely have awaited the dssll of his
countrymen, to raise the standard against they enemy of
Europe. We now see how lamentably all these expec-
tations have been disappointed. If the prestige of Eng-
land was believed to have been endangered, under an
Administration which honestly and consistently endea-
voured to avert the evils of war, that risk is; increased
immeasurably when a Minister, chosen exprofssly to re-
verse that policy, degrades it from a system Idown to a
mere gambling subserviency. :
Let us not, therefore, commit the same error a second
time. Let us know what we have to expect from those
who now aspire to wrest from the trembling hand of the
Minister the baton of command. The Tories boast that
they laid the foundation for the resistance offered by the
Western Powers to the ambition of Russia. Their organs
flattered Lord Palmerston with fulsome praise, at a time
when he was a silent member of the Aberdeen Administra-
tion,and when, therefore, to particularise him as the dumb
and fettered champion of a warlike policy was to suppose
him a kind of traitor to his colleagues. The claims of the
Tory Opposition state even farther back. It is their proud
pretension, that to them we owe a prescient preparation
for this war, long before even the cause of quarrel wasde-
claret,. They wish us to believe that they increased the
naval strength of the country, and that they laid the
foundation fur that army of reserve—the militia—from
which our future military forces must more or less be
drawn. Nor is this all. The Torries arrogate to them-
selves the merit of having initiated and consolidated the
alliance with France, on which the resistance of Western
Europe to the aggression of Russia so largely rests.
Experience teaches us to be suspicions of these retro-
spective demands on our confidence. If Lord Palmer-
ston has disappointed expectations, justly indulged after
a foreign policy conducted or influenced by him during
nearly a quarter of a century, what better prospect have
we from those who only conferred upon us benefits of a
fitful and evanescent character, which might have re-
sulted quite as much from accident as from wise design?
During these last few months, what have the chiefs cf
the opposition done, in either House of Parliament,
towaids correcting the evils created or permitted by a
Temporising Minister or a Divided Cabinet ? Are they
only p'aying for office, or have they deliberately resolved
on a system of policy, domestic and foreign, which will
really " reanimate the national heart," by restoring
bonszty and virtue to our Administrative system{ unity
to our Councils' and vigour to our Arms? These are
the questions which ought really to occupy the attention
of the House of Commons this evening, that the repre-
sentatives of the people may not be cajoled into serving
the purposes of a party, when their real desire is to save
the nation from disaster and disgrace.

(Front the Daily News of this clay.)
The country; we believe, is marvellously indifferent
as to what may be the decisioii of the Hone cf
Commons in the great case of Disraeli v. Barirg,
which comes on for hearing this evening. Whether
Roderigo do kill Cassio, or Cassio Roderigo, or each do
kill the other, is to the public at large a matter of little
interest. Mr. Disraeli's motion and Sir Francis Baring's
amendment consist, each of them, of a pledge and a pre-
fatory declaration. The former gentleman declare, that
the house of Commons is dissatisfied with the ambiguous
language and uncertain conduct of Ministers ; the latter
that the house sees with regret that the negotiations at
Vienna have not led to a termination of hostilities. Mr.
Disraeli's preface is decidedly preferable to that of Sir
Francis. The house ought to feel dissatisfied with the
ambiguous language and uncertain conduct of Ministers ;
and the house ought not to regret that a peace has not
been concluded on such unsatisfactory terms as were pro-
pounded in the Vienna Conferences. As regards the
pledge which both motion and amendment proposes for
the adoption of the house, it is eminently unsatisfactory.
It binds the house to nothing more than to support Go-
vernment in the prosecution cf the war until " a safe and
honourable peace" shall have been obtained. The phrase
" a safe and honourable peace" may mean anything or
nothing. Government might conclude a peace upon any
terms, and then set itelf to prove that they were "just
and honourable ;" and a house of Commons like the pre-
sent might easily be persuaded to profess its belief that
they were so, however dangerous and degrading they
might he. In a pledge that the house would support Go-
vernment until the great objects for which the war was
undertaken had been attained there would have been
some meaning ; but to prate about the indefinite and un-
definable thing "a safe and honourable peace" is to use
language quite as ambiguous as that of Ministers. it is
true that in Mr. Disraeli's motion the vagueness of the
phrase is somewhat diminished by the prefatory censure
of the ambiguous language and uncertain conduct of
Ministers.

These are consideratians to be weighed by the
public in general, and the electors in particular,
against the advent of a general election. To urge
them on the members of the House of Commons would
be sheer waste of time and words. The parts to be acted
by the various interlocutors in to-night's debate are al-
ready cast ; the result of the contest is already arranged.
The tact of Sir Francis Baring has saved his official
friends. Honourable members who are not prepared for
uch a decided move as a censure of Ministers will be
right glad to escape popular reproach by adopting a
p!edge which might be interpreted into one for carrying
on the war with vigour, and yet ties them to nothing de-
finite. And Ministers will be equally glad to swallow
the pill of a seemingly warlike declaration, gilded as it
is by a preliminary declaration of something very like
a wish that peace had been accepted on the terms pro-
pounded at Vienna. The whole affair is already settled
between the " whips" of the contending parties ; Mr.
Disraeli will be allowed to muster a respectable mino-
rity, and will take good care that 'it is not a majority.
The Speaker will listen patiently to the orators on both,
or all sides, and will ultimately declare that the Ministe-
rial amendment is carried with as much gravity{ as if he
had been uncertain what was to bo the result up to the
moment when the tellers gave in their returns.
Such "hedges" and "crosses" may suit the books of
the political gamblers in Parliament, but they, do not
suit the book of the country. In less than a month mid-
summer will be upon us, and the campaign in the Black
Sea has not yet begun. The circular of the Russian
Government to its diplomatic agents proclaims aloud
that the successful defence of Sebastopol has dope more
for it than the most skilfully conducted neg9tiations
could, and yet nothing is being done on our part to de-
prive
it of this advantage. The battering of the walls of
Sebastopol has hitherto been as pure a matter of form
as to-night's debate in the House of Commons will be.
The expedition, ostensibly directed against Kertch, has
been embarked only to take a short sea passage, and be
set ashore again at the place whence it started. The re-
sult of the Kertch expedition pretty closely resembles
that of John's Gilpin's, who stopped not till

--"where he' first got up

He did again get down."
Our troops are huddled together on the platform above
Sebastopol, and there for aught that appears to the con-
trary, they will be kept inactive till something comes
out of the deliberations at Vienna. Before that some-
thing can come micl.umrner will have brought on the
fever season in the Crimea. The favourable weather is
passing away without being turned to account. One
army has been decimated by the snows, fogs, and chilly
damps of winter, another may be equally reduced by
the calentures and fevers of a hot summer. The har-
stru:iner
rowing tale of our army's winter sufferings roused the
People to indignation ; if a tale equally harrowing of
put. off by whispers Pufferings is to follow, it will goad them to
frenzy, In such an event it will' not be mere vote:; of
Icensure that will satisfy the public rage. The nation
dwilifilicnuolitieb:
or by the sacrifice of'
originating in the waywardness and in, i n uoaftoi ounrsAail;
ineisi,t
a.gEneral or two. They will de-
on forign
Gportheipa's,
their own Governnientv
mand justice on the
agents ;
Governments they have no hold, but 1
of Ifsa. within their reach. Impeach-
ion for the last half t 1
:the:
~,
._ gene
j 0!".,.,... not on the subordicate,
I monto have
..cen ury,