The Sun.
London, England, 1852-12-31 00:00:00

LONDON, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1852.

Wonderfully strong though the ABERDEEN
Cabinet undoubtedly is in administrative ability,
it contains within it, nevertheless, those germs
of weakness which must, we fancy, ripen into a
very speedy dissolution. Among the numerous
obstacles to its consolidation into a stable Go-
vernment, two are, to our mind, very glaringly
paramount. It has already been remarked in
these columns that the new Ministry has too
many Leaders. In addition to this really de-
plorable fault, it must now be observed that
scarcely one of the various appointments made by
the Noble Earl the PRIME MINISTER of England,
is calculated to redound to the credit of his sa-
gacity as the organiser of an Administration.
Hardly one of his Ministerial nominations ap-
pears to be judicious in the distribution of All
the Talents placed at his disposal. Analyse the
ABERDEEN Cabinet, and the fact here referred to
will be at once transparent. Look at its principal
members and see with what egregious blundering
they are placed each one at the head of a wrong
department—each at the head ofa department where
his capacities are the least likely to shine to the
best advantage. Beginning with the Earl of
ABERDEEN himself, we may be permitted to doubt,
from his rather well-known antecedents, whether
he will not make a very indifferent First Lord of
the Treasury—whereas he might have occupied
the position of President of the Council, in a man-
ner that would have reflected honour upon his re-
putation, and have materially facilitated the ope-
rations of a Coalition Government. Again, every
fact recorded in the political life of Lord PALMER-
STON sufficiently indicates that his powers qualify
him to undertake, perhaps, no other duties less
meritoriously than those connected with the Home-
office—while the whole character of his mind, his
diplomatic skill, his matured experience, his Euro-
pean celebrity, his genius, and his patriot-
ism, all point him out as the candidate
for the Foreign Secretaryship. Of the emi-
nent capabilities of Lord JOHN RUSSELL to
fulfil the labours of an Administrator, there can-
not assuredly by this time be any question what-
ever. We may complain, and we do complain,
that he cannot preside over the destinies of this
country in any way to the popular satisfaction,
but that he can direct the machinery of the State
With the hand of a practised statesman, it would
he preposterous to deny in regard to one who,
during five or six consecutive years—in the midst
of famine, and pestilence, and revolution—main-
tained Iliposition as the Leader of the British Go-
verninle,4t. Yet, admitting all this, we are bold
to °eel", that there is possibly no ministerial
post in the Sift of the SOVEREIGN which the Noble
Lord is less` calculated for than the very one to
which hehaN
within the last fdw days, been
absurdly "Inina.ted--we mean, of course, the
Post of her MAatsTv's Chief Secretary of State
in the Foreign Department. As Home Se-
cretary, Lord JOHN might have been spared
those blunders which are almost inevitable now
that he has been chosen to
preside over the
Foreign Relations of the United Kingdom.
What, again, can be more ridiculous than the
placing of Sir JAMES GRAHAM at the head of the
Board of Admiralty, where no civilian, however
gifted, ought again to have been installed, instead
of entrusting to his rare administrative capacities
and experience the responsible toils of Chancellor
of the Exchequer ! Mr. GLADSTONB might then
have been named to an office, for the creditable
discharge of the duties of which he is eminently
qualified by his abilities, namely, the office of
Colonial Secretary—by which means his financial
crochets (and if his intellect has any flaw it has
that undeniably of being egregiously and preter-
naturally crochetty) need not have been dreaded
as conducing to the unsettlement of our adroitly
balanced system of receipts and expenditure !
Briefly, than, we have protested, and we must
protest again and again, that the ABERDEEN 1
Cabinet is weak—in spite of all its grand array
of talents—weak, not merely from the circum-

stance of having too many Leaders, but from the
fact of its principal statesmen being so blunder-
ingly distributed among the different offices of
the Government. Perhaps the best portion of
the ministerial catalogue is that relating to the
minor appointments. Nothing could be in better
taste than the tardy recognition of the services
rendered to the country by the Hon. CHARLES
VILLIERS—in his nomination to the place formerly
occupied by poor CHARLES BULLER, that of
Judge-Advocate-General. There is tact, more-
over, in the selection of WILLIAM KEOGH, as the
Irish Solicitor-General in that of BERNAL
OSBORNE as Secretary to the Admiralty —as
well as in the choice for Under- Secretaryships
of such men as ROBERT LowE and AUSTIN
LAYARD, the Learned Member for Ayles-
bury and the astute Representative of Kiddermin-
ster. Occasionally, too, there has been mani-
fested by Lord ABERDEEN a laudable sense of
hitherto unrequited ability, in the elevation of
one or two " outsiders" to the higher departments
of Administration. Such, we take it, is the merit
of his nomination of Sir WILLIAM MOLESWORTH
to the Chief Commissionership of the Woods and
Forests—a nomination which, we 'trust, may be
justified by the Hon. Baronet the Member for
the borough of Southwark, by his advocacy in
office of such popular questions as that of Vote by
Ballot. But—saving these well-selected names,
" few and far between "—the New Ministry dis-
plays little more than talent of the very highest
order erroneously applied, without any other
apparent purpose than that of unsettling
still more an already sufficiently distracted and
heterogeneous Government. It was said of
MACHIAVELLI that his greatest crime was that he
dared to write what the Princes of his time did
not fear to do. It may be said, however, still
more of the Earl of ABERDEEN, that his greatest
political fault—(and we say this in the face of
his whole foreign policy, of his subserviency to
M. GUIZOT, of his truckling to King Louis
PHILIPPE, and of his share in the Spanish Mar-
riages)—the greatest political fault of this
" dear " and " excellent " ABERDEEN is, that
he has dared to do what the Statesmen of his
time had not ventured to contemplate. He
has constructed a Cabinet which we have not been
extravagant in christening the Happy Family !
He has joined together in a single Ministry men
diametrically opposed to each other in principles !
And, not satisfied with this, he has contrived to
scatter yet further confusion among their ranks,
by distributing the principal Members of his Ad-
ministration as mistakenly as possible among the
different offices of her MAJESTY'S Government !

Every sincere Fiscal Reformer will consider it
an imperative duty to exhibit an extraordinary
degree of zeal and energy at the present crisis.
It is certain that the Property and Income Tax
must be renewed in some form, before the conclu-
sion of the financial year. And it is essential
that the great work should be accomplished, in
accordance with " the principles of Equity and
Justice." The significant hint given by the new
Premier in his Ministerial Statement, and to
which we directed public attention on Wednesday
night, maybe accepted as an implied pledge that the
distinction between permanent and precarious in-
come would at length be recognised ; but with a
Cabinet in which GLADSTONE presides over the
financial department, and Lord JOHN RUSSELL
and Sir CHARLLS WOOD are prominent Members,
it is well to make assurance doubly sure, and to
prevent the advocates of the present iniquitous
system from asserting that the people are
indifferent or lukewarm on the subject. If
they remain apathetic until the Government are
firmly committed to the future Budget, they will
only have themselves to blame for the result, how-
ever unpalatable it may prove. This is, indeed, a
golden opportunity, which should not be wasted or
misapplied. A similar one may not again occur
for a long series of years. The Right Honoura-
ble and Noble Gentlemen, who, by their accep-
tance of office, have vacated their seats, are com-
pelled to solicit a renewal of confidence from their
respecti-re constituents. That renewal should not,
in:, any case, be granted until they have been
closely interrogated, and returned clear, explicit,
and satisfactory answers on the point. We do
not, of course, desire that they should be called
upon to give the details of the forthcoming
Budget but they should be unequivo-
cally pledged to the principle that a dis-
tinction must be recognised, for fiscal pur-
poses, between income arising, more or less,
from intellectual or physical labour, and from
accumulated and realised property.
The citizens of London, and the electors of
Halifax, and of the University of Oxford, should
more especially impress their own views on the
candidates for their suffrages. The opinions so
earnestly enunciated by Mr. GLADSTONE during
the late financial discussion, show that he con-
siders the question not merely one of expediency.
He placed it on a very different foundation in-
deed, declaring that the national honour, and the
maintenance of public faith with the public creditor,
were involved in the result. His feelings on the
point were so strong that he could not remain
silent for even a few days until the debate on the
financial scheme afforded him a fitting opportu-
nity for expressing his sentiments. Not a mo-
ment could be lost ; and, therefore, at the
very next meeting of the House, after the delivery
of the Budget, he rather irregularly, but very
emphatically, announced his invincible repugnance,
his inextinguishable hostility to that portion of
Mr. DISRAELI'S proposition, relying on the sup-

posed authority of WILLIAM PITT in corroboration

of his arguments. Now, we have ever believed,
and still believe, the Right Honourable Gentleman
to be a strictly conscientious and high-minded
man ; and we are convinced that he would not
sacrifice what he believed to be a matter of duty,
of honour, of national faith, for any benefit to
himself personally, or the party to which he has
allied himself. He might be content to record his
vote against the principle without withdrawing
his assistance from those by whom it was sus-
tained and carried yielding to the decisive
and overwhelming majority of his colleagues with-
in the Cabinet, and generally of the popular Re-
presentatives in the Commons House of Parlia-
ment. But how could he be directly instrumen-
tal in carrying into execution that which he
believed to be not merely erroneous, but radically
wrong ? It is but an act of common justice to
the Right Honourable Gentleman to declare our
belief, that he would be and is incapable of such
conduct.

Now, it must not be forgotten that from Mr.
GLADSTONE'S position, the arduous and important
duty will devolve upon him of bringing forward
the financial scheme of the New Cabinet. The
most interesting portion thereof—that, indeed, on
which the remainder must altogether depend, will
be the renewal of the Income Tax, either in its
present shape, or with some modifications. Can
we, then, suppose that he will so totally
forget his former opinions as to propose a satisfac-
tory measure in accordance with what Fiscal Re-
formers believe to be "the principles of Equity and
Justice ?" We fear not ! It seems to us that
greater reliance is to be placed on the energetic
and unequivocal denunciation of the comparatively
trifling distinction proposed by Mr. DISRAELI
than on the rather vague expression of Lord
ABERDEEN. How can we know what may be
considered " the principles of Equity and Justice"
by the Noble Earl ? We know that Mr. GLAD-
STONE considers those principles involved in the
maintenance of the present system, and it is im-

possible to say by what crotchets his Ministeria]

colleagues may be actuated. The great majority
have hitherto opposed what we believe to be the
principles of Justice and Equity ; and it is,
therefore, peculiarly desirable that we should
ascertain, at the earliest opportunity, what
the people have indeed to expect on this
point, that they may be prepared for the emer-
gency. This should be obtained from the best
authority—the very fountain head—Mr. GLAD-
STONE himself.

Lord JOHN RUSSELL and Sir CHARLES WOOD
have, on previous occasions, expressed themselves
strongly on the same point. But they are con-
fessedly made of " squeezable materials." They
are, long since, but.too.painfully aware of the fact

that, to their unyielding obstinacy on this matter,
they owe the dissolution of the Ministry of which
one- was the Chief, and the other a prominent
Member.. They may now be "wiser," as they
are assuredly much " sadder," men ; but if so—
if they have, indeed, repented of their former
error—they should say so at once.
The approaching elections—more especially that
for Halifax—will afford a suitable opportunity for
exhibiting the required interrogatories ; and, as
we have already stated, it should not be neglected
or misapplied.

Who of all the cliques and classes, parties
and politicians of the day, should look forward
so cheerily as the MANCHESTER SCHOOL to a happy
New Year? Let no lurking ungenial imp
whisper in their ears—" Neither your COBDEN nor
your BRIGHT, nor even your MI-Lx= GrnsoN, are in
the New Cabinet." The schoolmaster's pride is
to train men for Cabinets—not to enter there
himself. It is in his scholars that he glories.
Look, then, at the group composing the ABERDEEN
Government,--why, almost to a man, they are the
choice pupils of the Manchester School. That
celebrated Academy was founded to teach
Free-trade principles to the millions both
of town and country yet ignorant of them, and
to teach their practicability and advantages
to those superior minds who, indeed, admired
ADAM Sm-Int's doctrines, but were almost as hope-
less as himself of their ever becoming the creed of
an overpowering majority of the British nation.
These gentlemen, then, begin a New Year with a
Cabinet which is even a more splendid evidence
of their success than the minority of 53 in the
House of Commons. The leaders of the League
are not assuredly the men to despise all but the
aristocracy whether of rank or of genius, to be
satisfied with a small audience for their speeches,
or to be very nice about the taste and style in
which the ten-pound householders celebrate
their deeds. Had they, however, the pride of
the most fastidious of our exclusives they
would now have all that heart could wish.
They might turn from the " vilest rabble
ever seen," shouting the praises of the big
loaf, till the polished taste of Sir FREDERIC
THESIGER wished it " stuck in their throats," and
say, pointing to the ABERBEEN list,--
" Satis est equitem mihi plaudere,
Plotius, et Varius, Maecenas, Virgiliusque,
Valqms, et probet haec Octavius Optimus, et quo
Fuscus ; et haec retinam Viscorum laudet uterque."
Nor would any but prosodians object, if for one
name they substituted Victoria Optima, so harmo-
nious would the alteration be with fact and the feel-
ings of every auditor. What, then, can they wish for
more ? They begin a New Year, not only with a
nation on their side, not only with Protection
buried for ever, although conducted to the place
of execution with funeral honours by its friends—
not only with Protection, moreover, formally
abandoned by the powerful and numerous party
which, for years had, used it as their rallying cry,
but with a Ministry composed, by universal ac-
knowledgment, of the ablest men in the House of
Commons ; a Government comprising more ability
than the celebrated All-Talents Ministry, and
nearly each one of these a pupil, more or less, of
the Manchester School ! Oh ! how bright the change
from the time when VILLIERS was voted down by
" overwhelming majorities ;" when Lord Joan
RUSSELL snubbed them ; and Lord MELBOURNE
declared that, "of all mad things the maddest was
to propose repealing the Corn Laws ;" verily, the
times are changed," and verily, we may add,
on behalf of all but the unchangeable 53,
"we are changed with them." Indeed all the
53 are not quite hopeless, for even Mr. E.
BALL himself declared "we are all good Free-
traders now." A happy New Year, then, to our
prosperous tutors ; who knows whether, before
many years roll over us, the Lord CHANCELLOR,
unless " fused" down to a common Law Judge, may
not sit upon a bale of cotton instead of a wool-
sack.

How cheery, too, does everything look which
borders on their Free-trade Goshen ; our Exche-
quer never fuller, and that, too, despite the re-
peal since 1842, of eleven miljions of taxes ; our
Customs and Excise all but as productive as ever,
notwithstanding the immense remissions of duties ;
our Imports and Exports increasing rapidly every
year ; our
.shipbuilders and merchants not only
surviving the repeal of the Navigation Laws, but
expressing their satisfaction with the change ;
Jamaica, to be sure, sending home some melan-
choly strains. Only we have been so accustomed to
them from our editorial boyhood, that we have
hardly noticed them ; sending us, however, as
Mr. DISRAELI assured us, much more Sugar also,
which somewhat soothes us the consumers thereof ;
then, employment is everywhere so much better
than in the years of monopoly. Indeed, Free
Trade only begins to quake, lest emigration, in
connection with it, should make the labour-market
too good for the labourer ; a fear which Mr. Ms-
RAELI, somewhat too mirthfully, according to Mr.
GLADSTONE, described as quite groundless. We
think with the former, however, that population
would soon overtake almost any demand.
Money, again, is so abundant ; and not only did
the predicted deluge not follow the retirement
of Lord DERBY, but the symptoms continue rather
of our being overwhelmed with money than of
sinking with our failing credit. It is astonishing
how little Consols have fluctuated with the
changes of Cabinets, since those who deal in them
have been assured that Free-trade principles must
hereafter govern the English Exchequer, and since
the country has become too enlightened to refuse
any amount of taxation needful to pay the na-
tional creditor. Even the operatives are becom-
ing capitalists ; the town of Birmingham alone
records, for 1851, an increase of more than a
thousand depositors in its savings-banks, and an
increase of more than 20,0001. in its deposits; the
total of deposits in its banks amounting to
400,000/. ! Then as to foreign nations we con-
tinue, as her MAJESTY says, to receive assurances of
amity and good-will from all Foreign Powers. Mono-
poly duties abroad, too, are beginning evidently
to quake. Europe must soon follow the example
of England, or see its trade thriftless and stunted
beside our all-prosperous and absorbing commerce.
America has not only chosen its Free-trade Pre-
sident by an unheard-of majority, but even before
the sound of FILLMORE'S Protectionist elegiacs had
well died away, Congress was preparing to con-
sider, with a view to reduction, the Protectionist
duties on imports. Everything betokens a vigor-
ous state of trade for another year. It were folly
to prophesy, folly even to hope, that no overtrad-
ing, no ebbs as well as flows, will not soon occur ;
yet one thing is clear, that never have we had
such an abundance of money for so long
a time; with so little tendency to merely spe-
culative or jobbing undertakings. We have not yet
forgotten the railroad panic—possibly that may
have a very beneficial influence ; but, whatever be
the cause, the immensely increased business of
the country is, it is universally agreed, carried on
to supply an actual demand. Why, even the
Crystal Palace is a Free-trade monument. It
would never have come into existence under the
old jealous system of restricted competition----of
timid and selfish monopoly. It was the generous
spirit of Manchester principles which invited all
the world to come and see what we could do, and
which asked the nations also to come and show us
what they could do. The toiling artizan, if Ju-
daising bigotry will let him, will refresh and ele-
vate his wearied faculties amid the instructive
beauties of Sydenham, and will be thankful tha

Free Trade has provided him a palace more
splendid than Royalty itself can boast, and at the
same time the pecuniary means to pay for his ad-

mission.

And now our strictly rural friends, with equally
hopeful expectations, we wish them also a happy
New Year. They now begin a wholly new course;
they now know the worst—every thought of pro-
tection, or compensation, or relief from unknown
special burdens—all, all isgone. They will now put
their hands to the plough without one dangerous
glance backwards ; the work before them will be
pushed with the vigour and sturdiness of English
yeomen ; long leases, fair rents, increased produc-
tion, extirpated vermin (yclept game), taxation
lightened from industry and increased on property,
in such things will rest the hopes of the sons of