The Sun.
London, England, 1852-03-20 00:00:00

did not concur, they should, as soon as public business would
permit, advise her Majesty to dissolve the present Parlia-
ment, and 'submit to a new Parliament the measures they
thought conducive to the public interest.-(Hear, hear.)
Sir, to that course, if they had taken it, not one word of ob-
jection could have been said. I, for my part, should have
been satisfied to wait until their measures had been pro-
posed, and would then have considered whether they were
good, and inch as ought to be adopted. Bat, instead of
following either of these modes of proceeding, they have
taken a course that I venture to say has no precedent in the
history of the country since the Constitution has been eats-
blished-(Loud cheers from the Opposition benches)-and
for which no justification whatever can be found in the
maxims and rules of the Constitution.-(Cries of " Oh, oh !"
from the Ministerial benches.) lion. Gentlemen may dis-
c ent, but am I to be permitted to state the argument or
not?-(Cheers.) The Right Hon. Gentleman the Secretary
of State for the Home Department stated the question very
fairly the other night. He said that the prwedent of 1784
was not applicable to this case. If he means by that that
the precedent is totally inapplicable to the present case, I
agree with him. Mr. Fox and his party were dismissed
from office by the Crown. They said that the Minister of
the Crown ought to have the confidence of the House of
Commons, and that so long as they were in a minority the
Ministry had no constitutional position in this House--
(Hear, hear.) They said further, that the existing House
of Commons ought to be maintained, and there they fell
into an error, for Mr. Pitt, while he did not deny that it
was necessary that the Ministry should have the confi-
dence of the House of Commons, urged this plea :-He
said that the Crown was not bound to refuse to dissolve
the Parliament, and that the Crown ought not to be pre-
cluded from using the prerogative of a dissolution, and from
calling upon the people to elect a new House of ommons.
Mr. Fox was perfectly right in the first part of the argu-
ment, and Mr. Pitt was justified in the second, and the prece-
dent thus established has become the rule of the Constitu-
tion tip to the present time.-(Hear.) But that has not the
smallest bearing on the present question. It is not con-
tended, on the one side, that the Crown has no right to dis-
solve Parliament, and it is not contended, on the other side,
that the Ministers must not possess the confidence of the
House of Commons.- (Hear.) In 1835 it is perfectly true
that Sir Peel maintained his situation, although he was
repeated minorities in this House ; but he felt strongly
that this was not a situation that could be long maintained,.
that it was at variance with the rules of the Constitution,
and that, as he had already advised his Majesty to use his.
prerogative of a dissolution, it was incumbent upon him to-
retire from office, and not again to recommend his Majesty to,
dissolve the Parliament. But what is the situation of the.
present Ministers ? They will do neither one nor the other.
-(Hear, hear.) They are neither going to the House of
Commons, submilting their measures to them, as Earl Grey
did in 1831,-and as I did in 1846; nor will they advise her
Majesty to dissolve Parliament as soon as the state of public
business will permit.-(Hear, hear.) The proposal was-
and I read it with astonishment in the speech of the Earl of
Derby in another House-(Hear, hear)-that the whole-
session was to go on upon the assumption that Government
were in a minority, and that some time hence, in the course
of six or eight months-it might be the month of November.
or December, Parliament was to be dissolved, and that a Go-
vernment without the confidence of the House of Commons
should meet the House of Commons in February, 11 months,
after that Government had taken office.-(Cheers.) Sir, I
hold that position to be perfectly unconstitutional.- (Con-
tinued cheering from the Opposition.) That there must be
a delay of some weeks, that some time must elapse when a.
new Government takes office before a dissolution can take
place, is perfectly true; but there is no precedent that can be
found that a Government which is, upon its own avowal and
which was stated by the Right Hon. Gentleman the Secretary
for the Home Department the other night, as an acknow-
ledged fact, to be in a minority in this House, that they
should yet continue in office for eleven months-for nearly
a whole year- without ascertaining whether they possess.
the confidence of the country.-(Cheers.) Why, that was
the position I objected to. Every person to whom I spoke,
said, This is a position perfectly new. What is to be
done we know not ; but the Constitution is set at defiance,
and it is clear that the Ministers do not regard either
precedents or those rules to which former Ministers have
submitted." Sir, that being the view taken by my friends.
I had to consider the course I should pursue. Had no ex-
traordinary course been taken by the new Ministry, I should
have been perfectly ready to wait for the measures of the
Government. One of the first things that happened after
they came into office was, that my Hon. Friend the Member
for Wolverhampton (Mr. Villiers) came to me to consult.
with me with respect to a motion that he had prepared. T
dissuaded him from brineing on that motion, thinking it nn
advisable to interfere wi.h the Ministers of the Crown before
we saw what t hey were going to do -( Hear, hear.) But it
is made a great crime with me, v, ho am after all an inhabit-
ant of a free country-(Cheers from the Opposition)-that I
asked to coma to my house those political friends with
whom I have been in the habit of acting.-(Cheering from
the same quarter.) This is most extraordinary, because
these accusations come from the Earl of Derby himself..
Now, I have been in the habit of seeing in past years, and
indeed in the course of the present session, notices in the
newspapers that "yesterday about 100 gentlemen of
the House of Commons assembled at the house of the
Earl of Derby," and that they heard there an eloquent
speech from the Noble Earl. And one of the last things I
saw was that he had assembled a large number of Members
at his house, that he had entered upon a statement of his
own political opinions, and that he, a Peer of the realm,
had prescribed to them the course which they ought to take
as representatives of the people.-(Loud cheers.) Perhaps
that was rather extraordinary-perhaps it never quite hap-
pened before that a Peer of Parliament should venture upon
such a conrse.-(Hear, hear.) Sir, lam for all kinds of
free discussion upon political matters, and I should never
have dreamt of complaining of that course on the part of the
Earl of Derby. But it seems it was a great crime in me. I
am charged with having entered into a misalliance and a
cerapact, because I received in my own house those political
friends who have been accustomed to act with me. - (Iro-
nical cheering from the Ministerial benches.) During the
last live years these gentlemen were in the habit
of coming to Downing-street to consult with me
when I had any communication to make them.-(Hear.) I
asked the gentleman who summoned them whether there were
any Members of this House among them who had not been
summoned to Downing-street ever since the general election of
1847 ? And he told me that there was not a single person
summoned to that meeting who had not been summoned on
previous occasions.- ( sear.) Therefore it was a political
meeting of those with whom I have been accustomed to act
which has been called by the name of an alliance. There
was but one person who had never been summoned to pre-
vious meetings of the kind to which I have referred, and
that was my Right Hon. Friend the Member for Ripon
(Sir J. Graham), whom I think I was perfectly justified in
consulting.-(Cheers.) What has been the case with re-
spect to that Hon. Gentleman ? Upon the misfortune oc-
curring to the Government of the death of Lord Auckland,
I asked my Right Hon. Friend to accept the post of First
Lord of the Admiralty. He declined, for reasons that it
is not necessary to enter upon now, at the same time ac-
companying his refusal with many expressions of personal
regard to me, and a general expression of agreement with
respect to our commercial policy. More than once I asked
him to join the Government of which I was the head. He
certainly declined to join us, but with renewed expres-
sions of the same kind. I may likewise say that
I have upon matters of public importance communicated
to my Right Hon. Friend the course I proposed to take with
respect to many political proceedings, so that it was natural
I should wish to consult him with respect to the great ques-
tion of commercial policy upon which he, as a colleague of
Sir R. Peel, had taken a great part.- ( Hear, hear.) It was
most natural that I should so consult him, and it was not
dishonourable either to him or to me that I should do so.-
(Cheers.) At that meeting those gentlemen took a part
who had been most prominent in discussions upon the corn-
laws and upon free trade, and they gave their opinion as to
the course that ought to be pursued. I consider that I was
not only justified in convening that meeting, but that it was
incumbent upon me to call such a meeting, to consider whe-
ther, upon the one hand, the rules of the Constitution should
be suspended or set aside, and on the other, whether the
,°43n sequences of that suspension would not be that the coun-
try would be for seven or eight months quite uncertainabout
the mune of commercial policy that would be pursued.
As to th4'grvands upon which this extraordinary political
position has been taken, the case has been very simple. The
former Ministers had resigned,' and the present Ministry ac-
cepted office. But that was not enough. They were not
satisfied with that position, but. they proposed an extraordi-
nary forbearance
part of the House of Commons, and,
making an extraordinary assumption on the part of Mi.
nisters, they put forward new pretences to justify it.-
(Hear, hear.) It was
had
greatest surprise to me to hear
them the
to fill eclare the offices that ad
been called upon unexpectedly
we had abandoned-that they had
taken no part in the destructioathoefstohe Ministry-and that
nothing but the pain of seeing
to accept
left without a
Government had induced themTpositioaccept office.-(Loud
cheers and laughter from the
that this pretence is a false one.- (Continntd Sir, I
must
say
cheering from
the same quarter.) Last year they brought
House several motions which, if successful,forward in this
must have put
an end to the Government. Last session the Chancel-
lorroposed a
rwciihtailcohp:leaensisf
scheme, of the Exchequer p
have
aanitderewdoutlhde
hwahvoele
adopted, would
of the Government,
sary for the Government to retire from office.-(Cheers.
There were also motions regarding the income-tax, the
window-tax, the government of Ceylon, and others, and,
throughout the session, they were forward in pushing on the
consideraticn of motions which, if carried, must have been
destructive of the Government.-(Cheers.) I do not say
that they were not motions which they were justified la
bringing forward, but I only say that such a course was to.
tally inconsistent with the pretexts that are now put for-
ward.- (Cheers.) At the end of the last session the Chan-
cellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. Christopher) at-
tended a Protectionist meeting at Edinburgh, at which he
said that, although Lord Derby had declined office, yet that
he was then perfectly ready, and that if any e'er were
made to hint to form an Administration he was ready to
accept it.-(Cheers.) This was the tone of the
Right Honourable Gentleman. But, as was said of
Demosthenes, "Si ipsUm audivissetis."-(A laugh)-I have
no doubt his langua was most expressive and eloquent.
At the commeecemeet ef the present session the first thing
I heard was, that their list was ready, that the new
Ministry were prepared to take office, and one nomi-
nation T heard of was, that the Right Hon. Gentleman (Mr.
Walpole) was ready to quit the Chancery bar, of which he
was an ornament, and accept the office of Secretary of State
for the Home Department. That was in the very first
days of February, and yet at the end of February these
Gentlemen are quite surprised and astonished that they
found themselves in officel-(Much cheering and laughter.)
I have mentioned the discreditable motion relative to the
Earl of Clarendon, a motion of which the most Hon. Members
of Parliament connected with Hon. Gentlemen opposite were
so ashamed that they left the House without voting, and
thereby gave us a considerable majority against so unfair
an a
d o unworthy a proposal.-(Cries of " No, no," from the
Ministenal
sine, and cheers from the Opposition.) So con-
firmed is he In that belief, that the Noble Lord who brought
forward that motion • is, very properly, anxious to wipe away
the reproach of having been its author, and declares that
nothing but the exigencies and
desires
of party could have
induced him to bring it forward. - (Oh • from the Ministerial
benches, and cheers from the 0 'ti ppos on.) A case occurred
last year which showed], so far from being anxious to avoid
office, how ready that party were to accept office.
During
the discussion on the Ecclesia • stical 'fides Bill an Hon.
Gentleman who does not usually carryally
him, gave notice of a motion. had
dnot tnany
given muchatten-
tion with
to the matter, but one day, about 3 orao'clock
the
afternoon, I saw it announced in a second edition of a morning
paper that all the leaders of the Protectionist party had
agreed to act in concert with the gentlemen who were the
opponents of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, and it was as-
serted in this newspaper that the Government would be out
next day. Well, though it was late, I desired that all the
friends of • the Government SI. old be summoned for this
discussion, and the amendment was rejected. But this is
evident proof how ready Hon. Gentlemen opposite were
to join with any party to defeat the Government and coin-
Pel them- to resign.- ( Haar, hear.) It appears now that
the success of the motion of the Noble Lord the Mem-
ber for Tiverton was quite unexpected by those gentle-
men, that they had no. share in it, and that it was entirely
carried by Rom Gentlemen who were friends of the Noble