The Sun.
London, England, 1863-01-28 00:00:00

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 28, 1863.

The strength of the PALMERSTON Government,
it is seriously to be feared, has within the last few
months become its weakness. That most gifted of
our administrators, Earl RUSSELL—stiII familiarly
known to this generation by Lord DERBY'S humor-
ous sobriquet as " JOHNNY, who upset the coach"—
has been at it again. Though promoted, like his
brother Earl his well-tempered satirist and once
upon a time his colleague (in Lord GREY'S
administration), "to the prim benches of the upper
school," Lord RUSSELL has during this last recess
or long vacation very notably indicated his
time-honoured reputation as a fabrication of
diplomatic imbroglios. As Secretary of State for
Foreign Affairs he was, as we all remember, with a
still lively sense of exultation, a very tower of
strength to the Cabinet—a Cabinet of which he
was, as he could hardly fail to be in regard to any
Cabinet, under any conceivable conjunction of cir-
cumstances, one of the foremost members, one of the
most powerful and distinguished among its Leaders.
That he is still, almost as a matter of course. But,
while he is so, while he is yet among the first and
foremost, among the most powerful and the most
distinguished of our administrators, he has again
abruptly (thanks to his own exceeding wilfulness !)
become one of the most perillous and unreliable. As
if incited by some eccentric Demon of Mischief, the
noble earl the Foreign Secretary has, quite
wantonly and wilfully, as it would seem,
carried confusion right and left into some
of the most delicate and difficult of the great
diplomatic queitions yet agitating, more or less
directly, the chief powers of Christendom. With
such singular perversity, in some instances, has this
startling transformation been accomplished, that
what was order before the close of last session
under Earl RUSSELL'S auspices, has, before the
coming session could commence, become utter con-
fusion, and, in some instances, threatens every day to
become even more and more distressingly confusion
worse confounded. It is only necessary to glance
for a moment, in almost any direction, to realise
upon the instant the odd and astounding manner in
which this wonderfully strange result has been
arrived at. _ _

Here, for example, just to begin with—is the
lick to the Crown of these realms about to espouse,
in the early spring-time of this very year, one of
the fair young Princesses of Denmark, the Princess
ALEXANDRA. His Royal Highness the
Prince of WALES was recently upon the
very eve of his betrothal. The negotiation
of these nuptials was actually preparing between
the Courts of St. James's and Copenhagen. When,
as though animated by some perverse solicitude to
cause heartburnings and embarrassments—if not in
any way whatever (that being in truth, we believe,
just absolutely impossible under the circumstances)
between the two august families, then being
drawn more and more closely together by the bonds
of a most intimate alliance, at any rate between their
respective Goveinments—Earl RUSSELL, all of a
sudden, at about the unlikeliest of all imaginable
moments, flagrantly outrages the long wounded
pride of Denaiark in regard to a difficulty of the
most delicate and entangled character : the noto-
rious to Schleswig Hol-
stein difficulty, that is, relating
stein! Earl RUSSELL contrives, moreover, thus
flagrantly to outrage the susceptible pride of Den-.
mark, on this matter, by falsifying the whole of
England's policy on the Schleswig-Holstein ques-
tion—opposing Denmark and coinciding with
Prussia! That, we repeat,
just to begin with. As
if, however, his unfortunate despatch in respect to
the ScWeswig-Holstein difficulty was in no way
adequate,
as a wholly unlooked-for embarrass-
nes in anticipation cf tha• ment to his colleagues
went—Earl RUSSELL, greatly'

of P.