The Sun.
London, England, 1864-06-06 00:00:00

silent roadways, filled by all the varieties of the family
circle, or remained drawn up together along the river banks
in the College grounds, or on any other spot which the pro-
gramme of the proceedings indicated as likely to be a point
of special attraction. An air of refined quiet, however, per-
vaded the life and movement of the scene. A large portion
of the general crowd seemed to consist of those who had but
recently severed their connection with the school, and who
still desired to keep up with it the ties of a direct personal
communication. But there were alsc, at Eton on Saturday
many persons who appeared to wander about recalling the
distant days when they too climbed those dark staircases,
or thronged those solemn corridors, or rowed in those tran-
quil waters. The Duke of Beaufort, the Duke of Bucking-
ham, the Duke of Marlborough, the Marquis of Bristol,
Lord Lyttelton, Lord Burleigh, Sir S. Northcote, Mr.
Walter, Mr. Mowbray, Mr. Vansittart, and many other
members of both houses were among the spectators, testify-
ing in their presence the strength of the associations which
bind generation after generation of Englishmen to the most
extensive and famous of all our early educational establish-
ments.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

" THE SATURDAY REVIEW" ON FOREIGN IN-
FLUENCE.—The constitutional question which was
raised by Lord Ellenborough last week, in the
Heese of Lords, transcends in interest for this coun-
try even the exciting discuseione that have arisen
out of the Danish war. In a few short years it will
possibly be a matter of comparatively little moment,
to England at least, whether a certain strip of land
on the Cimbric peninsula is ruled from Copenhagen
or from Itzehoe. Bat the relations between the
Crown and those members of Parliament who are
its advisers will be of vital importance so long as
the English constitution lasts. The political ma-
chine to which we owe our unequalled liberty is a
very complicated structure, and its intricacy is
nowhere so elaborate as at the point where the
action of an hereditary and feudal Sovereign is
subjected to popular control. On the one hand, the
Sovereign cannot be expected to be without views
and opinions of his own. It would imply a degree
of flexibility scarcely compatible with personal self-
respect for a monarch to submit to bear the semblance
of power, without any voice, even the faintest, in
the disposal of affairs. On the other hand, the
national will must necessarily be supreme in the
last resort, and, where it is clearly manifested, must
not be subjected to any other influence, however
high. The respective claims of the Sovereign and
the nation, indefinitely limiting each other, and
liable at any moment to be brought into conflict by
perversity or imprudence, are not always easy to
reconcile ; and it has been one of the most deli-
cate tasks imposed upon the states of each
succeeding generation to contrive how ele-
ments so diverse should work harmoniously. But
the whole responsibility for the attainment of
this result lies on the advisers of the Crown.
Lord Russell had made the cardinal mistake of ima-
gining that it was his business to defend the Queen
from Lord Ellenborough's charge. fhe Queen
needed no defence. Tee only person to be defended
was Lord Russell. If, indeed, it happened that a
sovereign had parted from advisers who would not
give effect to his opinions, end if he were unable to
find any other statesmen who would do so and at the
same time could command the confidence of the
House of Commons, in such a case he would bejustly
open to public comment if he still refused to give
way. But at this moment no such case has arisen.
No Minister has proved, by resigning his post, that
his counsels have been rejected ; and until such
proof is given, no case can arise for calling in ques-
tion the conduct of the Queen. We must presume,
in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that there
is no English statesman of our age so unworthy of
his position as to accept a policy which he disap-
proves, and to give effect, as if they were his own,
to views and measures to which he has declared
himself opposed. At all events, for tiro pr,:sent, if
there is anything constitutionally wrong', it is only
The Minister that can be blamed. Lord Russell
never touched the real gist of the question that had
been raised. No one could have deemed it necessary
to ask whether the Queen had acted upon the advice
which her cabinet had formally given her. It must
be assumed that she has done so, for the Cabinet has
rot resigned. It was wholly superfluous for Lord
Russell to dwell upon that point, for no one sus-
pected the Ministry of the baseness of holding office
after their official and responsible advice had been
rejected. Tne real question to be answered was—
How had the decisions of the Cabinet been framed?
How far had they been influenced, directly or
indirectly, by the Crown P Subserviency, if
there was subserviency, would naturally take an
informal shape. The Sovereign might accept
punctiliously the advice of her Ministers, but
the susceptibilities of the nation would not be
the leas wounded if there were reason to believe
that the counsels of those Ministers were governed,
not by their own conviction of what the interest
and honour cf the country required, but by the
personal predilections of the Monarch. The promi-
nence which questions of this nature assume varies
very much at various periods. There is little doubt
but that, under the veil of Ministerial responsibility,
an active and able Sovereign might exercise a con-
stant and very sensible influence upon public affairs;
but the machinery by which this power could be
exercised has always, as far as possible, been wisely
kept out of sight. Discussion is both more and less
perilous if the influence of the Sovereign is practi-
cally, as well as theoretically, ignored. And, on
ordinary occasions, the nation is far from being
jealous or suspicious. Every Englishman readily
concedes to his Sovereign the same right to exer-
cise an independent judgment on public affairs
which he claims for himself.
THE "SPECTATOR" ON MR. GLAD 5T ONE's
PAMFHLET.—Mr. Gladstone's affix to his speech on
the suffrage, which he calls a preface, will not do
him any good. It is badly written, dubious in
meaning, and apologetic in tone without really
containing a word which can be fairly construed
into apology. Those who attacked him attacked
him on two grounds,—the Tories because they said
ha had expressed a moral conviction in favour of
universal suffrage, the thinking Liberals because he
had not guarded his just principle from democratic
misconception. He answers the Tories fairly
enough. The expression objected to must, he says,
be taken wi:h its context; that context exciutitd ell
morally unfit, and all whose admission would or
might be attended with political danger; and he now
explains this last reserve as including any danger
through the disturbance of the equilibrium of the
constituent body, or through virtual monopoly of
power by a single class. That is all the Tories can
say with any appearance of fairness. They have never
ventured to say, and we do them the justice to admit
they probably do not think, that exclusion is for
its own sake a positive good, or even a harmless
element in an otherwise good constitution. Al:
they ask is that no change shall be made which
will impair the "equilibrium" which as they con-
ceive exists, or tier° a' all power into the hands of a
class which they said Mr. Baines's bill would do.
If neither consequence is to follow, then of course
they are simply content, and only ask why for the
sake of inappreciable changes revise what needs no
revision ? But the objection raised by educated
Liberals is not this at all, though it may read like
it, and to them Mr. Gladstone's answer is most un-
satisfactory. They say the equilibrium which all
sane politicians desire does not exist, the middle
class whenever excited possessing a clear monopoly
both of legislative and executive power. From a
mixture of laziness, flunkeyism, and real confidence,
it yields habitually to a corrective force, that of the
aristocracy, but it possesses the ultimate power, and
on some questions, such as the relations of labour
and capital, compulsory education, sectarian disk
pates, and a few points of foreign policy, it exer-
cises it unhesitatingly, without the faintest refer-
ence either to the upper ten thousand or the
working million. This monopoly, which has
always been an anomaly, and may at any time be-
come an injurious anomaly, these Liberals desire
to remove by admitting the workmen to their fair
share of power. Mr. Baines's bill, on behalf of
which Mr. Gladstone paired, did not give them
more than half their share; but its principle went
much further, and they asked how Mr. Gladstone
proposed to keep the train from slipping upon the
incline he was helping to construct ? There is no
answer in his preface to that query, only a limita-
tion which is a Conservative and not a Liberal
one, and a plea that his speech " was not a delibe-
rate and studied announcement." which is in
appearance a plea ad misericordiant, a demand
that no importance shall be attached to words
which have gene all over England stirring up the
fears of the few and the hopes of the millions, mak-
ing all politics more real and all politicians more
earnest, defining new party lines, and wiping out
feuds which for years have impelled men who think
'alike into actually hostile camps. It is in form an
apology for uttering words which gave to every
workman in England a new hope, a revived belief
that after all the public men who govern England
might be as honest, as truthful, and as aware of the
relation between word and act as any other Eng-
lishmen. If we believe this apology to be Mr.
Gladstone's real meaning, this preface to be, as the
Mmes said, a full and clear retractation, we should
despair of Mr, Gladstone as a leader for any party
whenever. Apart altogether from the drift of his
speech, great party leaders are not permitted to
make great oratorical blunders. We cannot have
Premiers telling the peasantry in'' announcements,"
not d studied or deliberate," that they are to divide
the land, or express off hand a belief that the Peers
ought to govern the country, or promising a million
or two of votes to the unenfranchised, in order to
lend new point to a discursive debate. Blunders
are crimes in politics, and if Mr. Gladstone had
made any such blunder, had reallyoffered to modify