The Sun.
London, England, 1864-03-31 00:00:00

Ministerial Indiscretions,

The season for Ministerial indiscretions has set in
rather early this year. It usually comes a little
later, with the nightingales and the green peas.
What is the cause of the unusual forwardness of this
interesting crop is a question upon which a variety
of hypotheses may be sustained. If Mr. Gladstone
only were concerned, we might suppose that he felt
it his duty to bcw to the order of the ecclesiastical
year. He would no doubt instinctively feel, as a
dutiful sou of the Church, that as all the other fes-
tivals were falling early, it was his business to take
care that the feast of personal explanations—a
feast observed with much devotion by the House of
Commons—should fall early, too. But as Mr. Stans-
feld cannot be accused of any ecclesiastical lean-
ings, this hypothesis must be laid aside. Still
it must not be forgotten that there is a wide dis-
tinction between the two performers who have ad-
ministered so much aid and comfort to the Oppo-
sition during the last fortnight. Mr. Gladstone
was a deliberate felo de se of his reputation ; Mr.
Stansfeld only presented a singularly awkward and
blundering case of accidental death. His suicide is
only comparable to that of a deaf old woman who
is suddenly aroused from her meditations by shouts
from an approaching 'bus, and in her agonised
efforts to save herself runs shrieking straight under
the wheels; while Mr. Gladstone resembles more
the scientific suicide who lays down his neck before
the advancing train exactly on the place where the
flange of the engine-wheel will cut it off. Both
'- Ministers of the. Crown have unquestionably found
their way into the mud. MF.—
into it backwards, while he was medita-

ting, not over the regeneration of Italy,
but only over the regeneration of the
dockyards ; and it was only in consequence of his
clumsy efforts to pull himself out he ultimately get
soused all over. Mr. Gladstone, on the other hand,
finding himself on fine dry ground, with no dirt
anywhere near, deliberately dug a pit before his
own footsteps, carted a vast quantity of mud from
a distance to put into it, and then, having made
these preparations, calmly executed a plunge into
the middle.
Another view which may be plausibly maintained
is that exhibitions of this kind are a species of
homage which the various membess of the Adminis-
tration, taking the duty by turns, pay to their distin-
guished chief ; and that they hurried the observance
of this ceremony forward on this occasion, because
from the appearance of the political horizon, there
were obvious reasons for doubting whether he would
be in a position to receive it at a later period. This
view is unquestionably borne out by the fact that,
during the course of Lord Palmerston's tenure of
office, the duty of tumbling into the mire in order
that he might have the credit of picking them cut
again has been shared very equally by the various
members of the Government. Few of them have
appeared twice upon the stage. Lord Clarence
Paget and his runaway Admiral have exhibited but
once for the public amusement. Mr. William
Cowper has never been discovered a second time
clandestinely egging on influential writers to bully
a Committee of which he was chairman. Neither
Mr. Gladstone nor Mr. Stansfeld have taken a pro-
minent part in a personal explanation, since they held
their present offices, till a fortnight ago. Their duty
is done when they have once given their chief the op-
portunity of coming forward to help them out, and of
uttering that mysterious assurance that " he is
ready to take all responsibility upon himself"—
which, as it means nothing in particular, has a
marvellous virtue in tranquillising the House of
Commons. The only exception to this rule cppears
to be Mr. Lowe, who has been in a mess ever since
he has been in office. But then he must be looked
upon as a devotee in this kind of cults—a sort of
St. Simeon Stylites, who is willing to live a life of
perpetnal mortification in order that Palmerston
may be glorified.
It can hardly be said, however, that the indiE•cre-
tions of the present year, like those of former years,
have contributed much to the credit of the Prime
Minister, or have tended to increase the stability of
his Government. They did not show him off to
advantage. In helping Mr. Gladstone out, he dis-
played, at least by the help of such a foil, some-
thing of his ancient tact; but his speech in defence
of Mr. Stansfeld was one of the worst he ever made.
It was the wild hitting of a man who knew that he
was expected to do something effective, but did not
feel in himself the force to do it. The effect of the
two indiscretions in themselves has also been very
different. Mr. Gladstone's error has simply re-
suited in making him one deadly enemy the more;
but that will hardly be an appreciable addition to
a band which already is sufficiently large. He has
also given occasion to every one to repeat once more
the trite remark that " Mr. Gladstone can never
"lead the House of Commons." But that observa-
tion has been made so frequently that it fails to
produce any impression on those who hear it.
Already his incapacity for leading is becoming so
commonplace a topic that it is beginning to provoke
the resistance of that considerable class of men who
are born dissenters—who cannot hear of anything
that is generally received without racking their
brains to detect a flaw in it. The people, on the
other hand, are coming to acquiesce so completely
in the fact of Mr Gladstone's want of tact, that if by
accident he diverges into courtesy, or on any occa-
sion contrives to avoid giving offence where it was
possible for him to do so, it is looked upon as a mar-
vellous exhibition of good-humour and self-control.
It is always a great advantage to a man to have got
to the bottom of his character. Mr. Gladstone's repu-
tation for the power of leading a party hassunk so low
that it cannot possibly sink lower, and therefore,
as nothing ever remains stationary, it must of neces-
sity mend.
The other indiscretion has been a good deal more
serious in its results. It has brought out very
strongly the fact that the chasm which separates
the Whigs from the Radicals is no accident or pre-
judice, and cannot be bridged over by a judicious
division of offices. The admission of Mr. Stansfeld
to the Treasury Bench was, as it were, the seal and
symbol of their supposed perfect union. He is the
and sincere Radical that sits upon
only thorough
that bench. The very first difficult question that
has arisen shows, in his person, the flimsiness of
the bond that ties the two together. The Radicals
sympathised heartily with Mr. Stansfeld. They
saw nothing strange in his position, and could
not comprehend the necessity of an apology.
The proofs that were advanced to show
that Mazzini at no distant period believed
in the lawfulness of tyrannicide fell without
effect on them. They could not understand why a
statesman should hesitate to associate with a re-
fugee, or to become an instrument for helping in
the execution of his plots, because that refugee had
incited others to commit political assassinations. It
is very probable that this want of sympathy with
the current morality of his age disabled Mr. Stans-
feld himself from seeing the drift of the questions that
were addressed to him, and caused him to make
answers that to other minds seemed not very unlike
intentional prevarications. The Whig members,
on the other hand, as represented by Lord Harry
Vane, felt as most educated Englishmen feel
upon the subject. They looked upon Maz-
zini and his plots with unfeigned horror,
and thought that for a servant of the Crown
to undertake blindly to transmit the correspondence
that might pass between Mazzini and the band
of desperadoes he employs was derogatory to the
honour of the nation. The difference which sepa-
rates the two sets of , opinions has shown itself in
this, the first serious matter that has arisen, to be
far too deep to be permanently concealed by any
fictitious community of political appellations. Re-
volutionary and moderate opinions can no more be
mingled than water can be mixed with oil ; and no
amount of external pressure will effect ft genuine
combination.—Saturday Zeta-vet,