The Sun.
London, England, 1852-02-06 00:00:00

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LONDON. FRIDAY. FEBRUARY 6, 1852.

Everything the country is likely to learn in re-
ference to the dismissal of Lord PALMERSTON has
now been brought under the consideration of Parlia-
ment. Anxious to pronounce no precipitate opinion
upon a matter of such extraordinary importance, we
have refrained from expressing our sentiments upon
the subject until the House of Commons had been
placed in possession of all the more remarkable facts
relating to it, through the medium of the various
Ministerial explanations. Such is actually now the
case; and we are, therefore, enabled to comment
upon the whole of the great question at issue after
having weighed it in the balance of a most scrupulous
and painful deliberation. It was manifest, we conceive,
throughout the principal part of the discussions of
Tuesday that the chief orators upon the occasion
spoke to the fullest extent of their ability, or at any
rate with all the force of rhetoric which was compatible
with the difficulties of their investigation. The
PRIME MINISTER, more especially, has seldom dis-
played his skill as a debater to more conspicuous ad-
vantage than upon this first night of the session, when
he had to account to the people of England, through
the medium of their representatives, for the most
rash and unpopular among all the many rash and un-
popular acts of his Administration. His position on
rising to address the House was, it must be acknow-
ledged, one of almost bewildering embarrassment. He
had to argue down, if possible, a feeling of extended
and profound indignation. He had to specify the
reasons which induced him to expel from the Cabinet ,
with unexampled abruptness, the very statesman who,
of all his colleagues, enjoyed, in the largest extent,
the confidence of the population. Aware that such
were the duties and such the responsibilities devolving
upon him under these peculiar circumstances, it was
but natural to observe the PREMIER concentrating
upon his speech of the 3d instant all those
rhetorical energies which had so often before
proved effective in the discomfiture of his
political adversaries. There was, nevertheless, appa-
rent in the very elaboration of Lord JOHN RussELL's
address, a consciousness on his own part of the in-
efficacy and insufficiency of the statement he had to
submit to the Legislature, otherwise we should most
assuredly have had from him a more homely and a
more succinct explanation, and not an explanation
branching off into a multiplicity of evasive and epi-
grammatic allusions to the different states of Christen-
dom, sprinkled with clap-trap couplets from the sen-
timental verse of \VALLEE, and closed with such a
highly exaggerated and exceedingly hyperbolical
peroration. It was not thus that Lord PALMERSTON
responded to the imputations cast upon his character
as an administrator, by the leader of her MAJESTY'S
Government. From first to last his speech was un-
impassioned and argumentative. Beginning with
the earliest intimation of the estrangement between
himself and the PRIME MINISTER, and concluding
with the resignation of his seals of office as Foreign
Secretary, Lord PALMERSTON explained with the
utmost lucidity, both of expression and of arrange-
ment, the various stages of the misunderstanding
which ultimately led to his dismissal—his sudden and
(in the manner of it) ignominious dismissal—from
the Cabinet of his SOVEREIGN. The country is by this
rime, therefore, acquainted with all the details it is
ever likely to obtain in referenee to these remarkable
and, until now, inexplicable transactions. . . •
Inexplicable, it must be added, they would still con-
tinue to be, but that it is impossible not to recognise
a vast deal more than is apparent on the surface either
of Lord JoHN RUSSELL'S elaborate statement, or of
the plain-spoken and straightforward explanation of
Lord PALMERSTON, or, in fact, of the whole sub-
stance of last Tuesday evening's discussion.
Ostensibly, Lord PALMERSTON was dismissed from
the Cabinet, because of the opinions expressed by
him on the 3d of December, in a conversation with
Count WALawsxr, the French Ambassador. In
reality, those opinions were only seized upon as a
pretext for the Noble Lord's removal from the Go-
vernment. That removal, we are persuaded, had
been resolved upon not fur a week, or a month, or a
year, but for four years prior to his conversation with
the French Ambassador. Sentiments of displeasure
were entertained towards him as far back as 1847,
and the only anxiety ever since has been to rid the
Ministry of one whose policy bad proved inconvenient
(or shall we say offensive ?), as the policy, not of a
Itussian Minister, or of an Austrian Minister, or of a
Portuguese Minister, but of an English Mi-
nister. But then, as Sir ROBERT PEEL had
said so truly and so memorably, we were and
are all " proud of him." There was the difficulty.
As the popular favourite, It might be hazardous to
dismiss Lord PALMERSTON without some show of reason
from the ranks of the Government. Still dismissed
from office he must and should be—that was resolved
upon, and resolved upon too by an authority that
brooks no opposition. It was impossible to tolerate
an administrator who showed himself so unaccountably
averse to uphold the compact of Germanic alliances
and the privileges of Germanic nepotism. The only
thing, therefore, was to discover some plea, to seize
upon the very earliest opportunity. During the
whole of the period intimated we are satis-
fied that Lord PALMERSTON has remained
under the ban of that cherished displeasure,
and that he has now suffered the consequences of one
falling under an implacable resentment. The late
Foreign Secretary has, in all this, to his own detri-
ment, sounded the depths of the most enigmatical of
all characters— Odia in longumjaciens gum reconderet,
auctaque promeret. The pretext fur his removal from
the Cabinet was at length discovered, and that pre-
text was—his conversation with the French Ambas-
sador. Now, as affording a reason f.or a step so ex-
traordinary as the overthrow of a great statesman
such as the late Foreign Secretary, no plea could be
more shallow, and, upon broad coostituional princi-
ples, we even add, more preposterous. True, it
had been resolved upon, as Lord JOHN RUSSELL re-
marked, by the members of the Administration col-
lectively on the occasion of one of the Cabinet
Councils, that the Government of this country should,
in regard to the internal affairs of France, altogether
abstain from interference. But, then, the opinions
,
expressed by Lord PALMERSTON to Count WALEWSRI
could by no
possibility be construed into anything at
served on Tuesday evening
sal approaching to interference - for, as the former ob-
ihe House of when addressing himself to
Commons, ,"
there is in diplomatic in-
tercourse a well-known and perfectly understood dis-
tinction between conversations official, by which Go-
vernments are bound,
and d which represent the
an
opinions of Governments, thosea unofficial e
conver-
sations, by which Governments
in which the speakers do not expri.sae not bound, and
the opinion of
Governments, but the opinions they ma
themselvest
Lord PALmEasToN expressed in the course of
for the moment entertain." Such an oprnion'
power of expressing an opinion every
hthisaptrivate conversation with the French Ambassador,
ar has been hitherto -
allowed,
Foreignand
otherwise the po3ition must have resolved itself into
idiotic and ridiculow. Nay, the
one both Secretary y
disclosures
the
puloasdsiebilibtyy Lofordalrl ALd:.elnEliiaSlTONthasth, in beyond the
this opinion to Count WALawsxr,
he Was
so far from exceeding the prerogatives granted
to him by his ministerial office, and so far, also,
from running counter to the views entertained upon
the matter iu question by the rest of the members of
the Administration, that upon the same day and to the
same individual, one or other of her MAJESTY'S ad

visers—not immediltely conn,cted with the Fe-
reign Department—bad declared themselves almost
in the same langu9ge as that employed by Viscount
PALMERSTON.
His Own uceounf of this rather un-
fortunate coincidence for the PRIME MINISTER is
al t toob"ltuOing and too unanswerable not
nperusal and reperusal, quo-
t gbeet h e
entitledr
quo-
tatioa and req"tati"' - Now I expreued thin