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

SPIRIT OF Tll4 PUB [JO JOURNALS,

" THE SATURDAY REVIEW" ON FOREIGN IN-
FLUENCE.-- File constitutional question which was
raised by Lord Ellenborough let week, in the
House of Lords, tratmeends in interest for this coun-
try even the exciting discussions that have arisen
out of the banish war. In a few shottyeers it will
poenbly be a matter of comparatively little mOtttetit,
' to England at leest, whether a certain stria of land
on the Citubric pew:nettle is ruled from Copenhagen
or from Itehois: Pat thn telatidriti hetai/befi the
Crown and those members of Parliament who are
its advisers will be of vital importance so long us
the English constitution lasts. Tne political ma-
chine to which we owe cur 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 emetrol. 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. 'The Queen
needed no defence. The only person to be defended
was Lord Russell. If, indeed, it happened that a
sovereign had parted from advisers who would not
give effsct to his opinions, and if he were unable to
find any other statesmen who would do so and at the
Qame 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 CAB moment no such case has arisen.
No Minister has proved, by resigning his pest, 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 the present, it
there is anything constitutionally wrontir, it is only
he 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 aesurned 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 cffiee
liter their official and responsible advice had been
rejected. Tae reel 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 ? 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 less 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 of 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 cone
atant and very sensible influence upon public affairs; '
but the wachitmery by which this power could be
exercised has always, as fur as possible, been wisely
wept out of sight. _Discussion is both more and less
perilous if the influence of the Sovereign is practi-
cally, as well es 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 ll:mist:if.
TnE "SPECTATOR" ON MR. GLADSTONE'e
PAMPHLET.—Mr. Gladstone's affix to his speech on
the ?suffrage, which he calls a preface, will not do
nitn 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
he had expressed a moral conviction in favour of
universal suffrage, the thinking Liberals because he
tied not guarded his just principle from democratic
misconception. He answers the Tories fairly
enough. The expression objected to must, he says,
be taken with its context; that context excluthd Lit
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, cr through virtual monopoly of
a single class. That is ail the Tories can
power by
say with any appearance of fairness. They have never
ventured to eay, and we do them the justice to admit
they probably do not think, that exclusion is for
its own make a positive good, or even a harmless
element in an otherwise good constitution. Al:
they ask is that no change shall be made which
tviil impair the "equilibrium" which as they con-
ceive exists, or throw all power into the hands of a
emits which they said Mr. Baines's bill would do.
I If neither consequence is to follow, then of course
. _ etataly content, end only ask why for the
e fly
ceanges revise what needs no
rake of inapt._ * - objection raised by educated
revision ? But tu,. though it may read like
Liberals is not this at an, _ • enswer is most un-
it, any to them Mr. Gladstonens -ea which all
satisfactory. They say the equilibriu—
sane politicians desire does not exist, the ' -
class whenever excited possessing a clear monopoly
bath of legislative and executive power. From a •
mixture of lsziness, flue lneyietn, and real confidence, •
it yields habitually to a corrective force, that of the
aristocracy, but it possesses the ultimate power, and
on Rome questions, such as the relations of labour
and capital, compulsory education, sectarian die.
putes, 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 misericordiam, a demand
that no importance shall be attached to words •
which have gone all over England stirring up the
fears of the few and time hopes of the millions, mak-
ing all polities more real and all politicians more
earnest, defining new party liner, and wiping out
feuds which for years have impelled men who think
alike into actually hostile camps. It is in form an
apology for ntteriog 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, an 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
Times said, a full and clear rctractation, we should
despair of Mr, Gladstone as a leader for any party
whatever. Apart altogether from the drift ofs
speech, great party leaders are not permitted
o
male great oratorical blunders, We cannot hay©
Premiers tolling the peasantry in " announceentvissie
'
not "studied or deliberate," that they are tom 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
modify
made any such blunder, had realiy offered to modity

the constitution radically " as a course of argument
drawn forth by opponents," there would be an end
of his following among educated Liberals. Consti-
tutional government tempered by oratorical points
is not their ideal at all. But we do not believe that
be intended to make any such appeal, to recede in
any degree from the firm and visible conviction,
contained in the original speech more fully than in
the speech plus preface. The apologetic form of
the preface is, we believe, adopted for a very dif-
ferent end—is not an explanation to political oppo-
nents, but an !assurance to political friends that the
Chancellor of 014 Exchequer was not intriguing. The
talk all over town on the day which followed the
speech was that Mr Gladstone "intended to run his
own horse ;" that in the combinations which must
follow Lord Palmerstoa's retirement from toil he
designed to be a leadar with the nation behind him
insteed of a personal following. Mr Gladstone, who
though ambitious is not an intriguer—if he were he
would have the " following " which is his greatest
want—therefore assures the doubters that his speech
was not " deliberate and studied," meaning not that
he failf d to express his own political ideas, but that
he had not planned by expressing them to jockey
more timid rivals. He rejects the idea that his
speech was a personal manifesto, and reaffirms that
it wax a political speech, saying more or less suc-
cessfully that which he wanted to say. This is, so
far es we can comprehend an intellect which like
the Tor Stone is immovable but always rocking,
very nearly the same idea as that of most educated
Liberals, namely, to introduce into the constitution

workmen as will secure that class their
as many -ech, in fact, as they can have
share of power, es lu-
~donate shares of the
withont impairing the propu..
g'
-
'be nation of its
remaining classes and so stripping,
cuss to
right to rule itself in ordet to enable oe,'
impose its rule instead. The plan for accompie.•e ts.
ing thle end, which floats as it were through she
speech, and is not repudiated in the pamphlet, is
one for including the 'whole population in the con-
stitution while still leaving the nation intact—the
exast end the Liberals who are not Democrate have
for years pet before them as their constitutional
ideal. While, howelsr, we entirely exonerate Mr
Gladstone from the charge of retrogression, we re-
peat that this"preface will do him no good. Apart
altogether from the truth that those who aspire to be
leadersof men should never do their thinkingaloud,
the preface has in It a tone of hesitation which Mr
Gladstone's admirers did not expect. There is one
sentence in it which smacks es strong;y of political
falsehood as the conduct cf the Whigs in this matter
throughout the whole of this Parliament—Mr.
Gladstone, whose first point in the speech is that
promises have not been kept, now affirming that
" the discussion is little likely to become practical
except for another generation." That is just what
Lord Palmerston says, and Mr. Disraeli eays, and
every false friend of reform would say if he °lily
dared, and if that is what Mr. Gladstone means he
had better have held his tongue. We trust that he
does not mean it, that he really sees his way to in-
troduce as well as support a plan of reform which
shall fulfil his ideal, and be for the benefit of us who
pvy taxes, and suffer, and strive, and not only for
that of our children, who may do none of those
things. But it is vexatious when all through
England educated Liberals are in want of a leader
who can represent them, as well as some of their
ideas, to find that leader not only giving forth an
uncertain sound, but actually stuffing sand in his
trumpet lest its note should perchance be too clear.
This intellectual see-sawing, this determination to
define, and hopeful trust in hypothesis, is not Mr.
Gladstone's merit, but his greatest disqualification.
M'n hoped he was getting rid of it, learning to
express strong convictions in overt acts, to construct
his building as well as explain the theory of archi-
tecture ; but the old habit is powerful still, and the
intellect which could best lead England is delibe-
rately hound by its owner in a net of fine distinc-
tions.

THE "LONDON REVIEW" ON MR. GLADSTONE'S
APOLOGY FOR HIS ULTRA-DEMOCRATIC SPEECH.—
Mr. Gladstone has found it necessary to explain
away the obvious in!erpretation of his recent speech
on parliamentary reform. But, although we are
willing to believe that he has arrived at the conclu-
sion that his sudden move in the direction of demo-
cracy was premature, it is not so easy for us to con-
vince ourselves that that move was never made;
nor can we reconcile Mr. Giadstone's present state-
ment, that the remarkable and elaborate oration in
question was a mere impromptu, with his promise
made some weeks previously to a deputation of
trades unionists, that he should shortly have some-
thing to say upon the franchise, which they would
find eminently satisfactory. No doubt we were
quite wrong in coupling the two things together,
but the mistake was certainly a natural one, seeing
that the performance was so complete a fulfilment
of the promise. We cannot, however, admit with
equal readiness that we placed a wrong construc-
tion upon the words of the right hon. gentleman,
as they were spoken and reported. After every
explanation:which can be given of them, the fact
remains, that be did, and apparently does still,
maintain the abstract moral right of every man to
the franchise. He did, and apparently does, still
hold the opinion, that it is for those who stand by
the present law to make out a case for exclusion,
and not for those who seek to ex tend the franchise
to make out a case for admissior. It is clear
enough that if the argument be rested on such a
b 'sis, and the onus prcbandi be thrown upon the
defenders instead of toe opponents of the existing
system, the latter are placed in a position
far more advantageous than that which
most practical and tolerably Conservative
Englishmen would assign them. They would, in
fact, gain exactly the position which the democratic
party have always contended for; and their ad-
versaries would labour under all the difficulty which
must ever attend the attempt to restrict the exercise
of an admitted mural right. It is not wonderful
that the public should have given so accomplished
a dialectician credit for intending a result which his
speech was plainly calculated to produce. And al-
though Mr, Gladstone contends that the qualifica-
tions by which he accompanied his broad proposition
really deprived it of anything like an alarming cha-
racter, we must be permitted to observe that he has
stated one of those qualifications in hie preface far
more strongly and explicitly than be did in his
speech. We are told, in the first instance, that men
might be excluded from the franchise on the ground
of moral and intellectual unfitness, or of political
danger; but no explanation was given as to wha'
was meant by " political danger." There was no
hint that under that vague and general expression
the right hon. gentleman intended to refer to the
risk which we might run " through the disturbance
of the equilibrium of the constituent body, or through
virtual monopoly of power in a single class." We
ere happy to hear that Mr. Gladstone is not pre-
pared to swamp every other class by an indefinite
extension of the franchise to working men ; but it
certainly does not increase our confidence in him as
a statesman, that he should, according to his own
account, have got up on the spur of the moment,
and delivered a long and elcquent speech, which left
every one—both friends and foes—under a directly
opposite impression. Nor can we accept it as an
excuse for words, which, if they have any effect,
must have that of reviving a mischievous agita-
tion, that they are but the echo of a strain,
with which five years ago we were too familiar.
Having then discovered that no one really wanted
reform—and having had no reason since to change
• opinion—we do not regard it as a rectenrnende-
our new political utterance, that it is only the
t ion Of a - old political hypocrisy.
revival of en
'" ON THE SEIZURE OF THE
THE " AMINE Bourbon Government of
EX..
CHINCHA h4LANDS,—Th.
its title to be recog-
Spain is certainly making on, ,
aim was put
si
nised as a first-rate Power. h
in during the Paris Conference of 1b.26, and sup-
ported by Imperial France; but it wan poohe
poohed generally as unwarrantable, or at ast
premature. To be acknowledged one of the prise.-
leged class of States, a kingdom must prove itself
able to bully with impunity, and to have a real love
of violence and spoliation. That is the true test of
greatness according to diplomatic haut ton. Your
quiet, forbearing, reasonable communities that pay
their way, ask only for their own, and do unto
others as they would be done by, are naturally re-
garded as shabby and snaeking, low-born and low-
bred, inspired with no grandeur of national soul,
and no capacity for tyrannising over the rest of
mankind. No State can be accounted of first rank
nowadays that cannot point to so many quarterings
(upon unoffending neighbours), and that cannot
produce a respectable amount of plunder, in proof of
its quality. While Spain was merely occupied in
recruiting her domestic strength, and having ani-
mation restored to her long paralysed limbs, her
pretensions were treated as superciliously as those
of Holland, Switzerland, or Sweden. Who would
admit into the order of Imperial buccaneers
an associate that seemed to be devoid of
spirit of rapine, and to be devoted solely
to the peaceful improvement of domestic concerns?
If the rulers of Spain would regain her place among
the anointed nuisances of Christendom, they must
once more take to the road. Expeditions against
lasff pirates, and bombardments of Moorish huts like
those of Tetuan, witn whatever cruelty inflicted and
whatever exactions followed, could not be regarded
as sufficient proofs of the true domineering temper.
Christian provinces must be laid hold of in a politely
perfidious way, and retained with a firm grasp in
slavery, or ravished End left for dead. Poland,
Silesia, Finland, Venice, Savoy, Mexico, Slesvig-
Holstein—there are precedents enough for all who
would follow them ; and where there is a will there
is never wanting a way. Spain has taken the hint,
and shown herself really anxious to revive the tradi-
tions of Piz.srro and of Cortes. By o combination
of treachery and violence, of which PrUSSitit herself

might be proud, she lately seized on one half of San
Domingo, overturned its local liberties, and reduced
its inhabitants to abject depemdeney on ber imperi-
ous will. And now we have tidings of a new out•
rage which, though utterly indefensible on any
principle of public morality or public law, will, we
have no doubt, be held at Vienna, Berlin, Sr. Peters-
burg, and Paris to be (mite selon la regle. For some
time past various small controversies have been
ingeniously kept alive by the Government of Madrid
with that of Lima. Their insignificance is sufficiently
indicated by the fact- that no telescope of English
journalism has yet been able to render them visible
to the naked eye of impartiality in this country. But
be the pretence what they may, we now understand
the motives which suggested th em. Peru has never
been formally recognised as an independent State
by Spain, and M. Mezarredo, who was sent with
an ultimatum to the Govern meat of the Republic,
significantly bore the old title of Royal Commis-
sioner appointed by Queen Itia.bella 11. instead of
that of Envoy. The Peruvians took exception to
this sinister deviation from int ernational courtesy,
accompanied, as it was, with the offensive observa-
tion that the independence of the South American
commonwealth had never been formally recognised
by its former European suzerain. Yet so averse was
the Cabinet of Lima to the beginning of quarrel,
that it waived at once any objectio n of form, and
sent an answer which, though firm in re-asserted of
right, was coneid4rate in tone, and characterised by
no indisposition to accommodate the trifling mat.
ters in dispute. Without further notice the
Spanish admiral, who had accompanied M. Ma"
zarredo, proceeded to take forcible possession
of the Chincha Islands as a material guarantee for
the enforcement of his demands. The enormity
of the act, perpetrated as it was without any (Witt'
ration of war, can hardly be exagvrated.