The Sun.
London, England, 1863-09-02 00:00:00

T

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 2, 1863.

-~.

One solitary little cocoon will yield you an as-
tonishing length of silk, however scantily the silk-
worm may have been fattened upon mulberry
leaves. Not one jot less remarkable in its way, that
is as an instance of facile expansion, or rather, it
should be said, prolongation, is the manner in
which the thread of his discourse has been spun out
this month by the most conspicuous contributor to
the New Review (Political, Philosophical, and
Literary), a periodical which, although it has not
yet completed its first half year, has already as-
sumed a high place among its contemporaries as the
organ of the more advanced Conservatives. "The
Session of 1863" is the title of his paper, the theme
of his high argument. It is a short text enough,
and not apparently— to a superficial obser-
ver, at least—so very suggestive ! Yet it is
from this atom of a germ that has here, in the
first quarter-of-a-hundred pages of the opening
article in the .117eto Review for September,
grown forth the ablest resume yet published of
the doings (such as they were) of the two Houses
during the last session—by reason of the debilitat-
ing, relaxing, soporific influence of the regime,
nominally of the Whigs, but actually of the Tories
under Lord PALMERSTON ! The " situation," as
our neighbours have it, in the closing paragraph
of this clever and caustic survey is thus hap-
pily epitomised, where it is said that—
" A popular Premier :at the head of an incapable
and divided Ministry, and supported by a gross
majority of from five to ten votes ; a Liberal
Cabinet which came into power upon one
understanding and retains it on another;
a Whig Party which owes its tenure of
power exclusively to the aid of the Tories.
and. a Radical party which discovers in its official
leaders the humble servants of the Conservatives,
make altogether a wholly exceptional, abnormal,
and. unnatural palit'ca,l tableau." Not one
single phrase, epithet, adjective in all which,
can, we take it, for one instant be seriously
con trocertecl. The Miniatry is—precisely as it is
them described. That it is incapable and divided
is proved to the recognition of everyone, by the
flagrant fact of its doing just absolutely nothing.
Its foreign policy is a nullity. Its home policy has
lon ; since fairly become comatose. When it has
attempted to interfere even in some minor detail, as
in reference to the City Police, it has floundered into
a succession of mistakes, and has been compelled
eventually and ignominiously to withdraw from its
ill-aalvised venture at innovation. The incapability
and the division of the Ministry are as undeniable in
effsct (that is to say, literally in their effects), as is the
on a isolated merit of the Cabinet, the one exceptional
source of its vitality, the personal popularity of the
First Lord of the Treasury. That it (and he) came
into power upon one understanding, while it (and
he) retain that same power upon another, who shall
venture to gainsay ? It is admitted even frankly
enough by Ministers themselves—by Lord PAL-
MERSTON as their chief, with a good-humoured
combination of slyness and satisfaction, that must
be to the very last degree irritating to the few inde

pendent Liberals (Liberals at heart and not merely
by name) below the gangway, or sparsely scattered
ab3ut the back benches. Nothing in its way could
be more felicitous than the application by the
reviewer to our veteran Premier (p. 5) of those melo-

dious lines applied by LUCAS to the delineation of
PompEy, beginning " Famceepte petieor multa dare
in vuig„,,,_and more especially of that majestic
comparison to the giant of the forest, " Qualis
frugifero quercus snblimis in agro"—a passage
kindred in excellency to a congenial simile in one
of the opening pages of 'Sir WALTER RALEIGH'S
noble %story of the World.
Scattered though the well-tempered but at
intervals the
hardly less than scathing survey,
here taken
in the _Yew Review, of the session
of 1863, aro ether phrases, and, indeed, at
times whole passages, far more satirical than
complimentary, "It is the -Whigs," we are
comically reminded at one moment, " who wag
their political pigtails over the dangers of a Tory
Government, and resemble nothing 20 much as the
old gentleman whom WASRINGTOrt IttviNG saw at
Stratford, who still seemed to think himself hale and
vigorous, with the trifling exception that for some
years past he had quite lost the use of his legs.' "
At another moment we are called upon to
know
how it has come to pass that this Mosaic Atinistry
sits powerless in the House of Commons, and atterly
abashed in the House of Lords. Only occasionally
is it, that the bite of the satirist is little less than a

mere mumble with a toothless gum—as where he

slys with a bpitefut but irIiIeCUMIS acrimony thst
" 6ir GEORGE GREY 18 a weak ard obFAlnate

man, and very much a clerk, nig) certeinly does

I:tithing towards compensating for *le blunders of
Lord llvssur.." The two new inducted into the
Government—it is erroneous :here said into the ranks

of the Cabinet—are more accurately described the
Marquis of 11ARTINCTON as the Ascanius of the.
Whigs,. and Mr. :TI:TANSF.ELD as one holdir,g the
same position among: the Radicals as a "promis-
ing junior" bolds
at the Briti,',l bar. Refs r•
ring to Mr. bisuAELV memorable con-
trast on the 26th, of last June, his
contrast between the Conservative and Liberal
creeds, without doubt very admirable of its kind,
but here described rather estravagantly as one
" which for terseness, clearness, pregnancy will t„ar
comparison with the Style of D.cmosTa.r..NEs
the 217::•zo Bellew obsrvtfoa at4l.- quoting a passsg,