The Sun.
London, England, 1863-07-03 00:00:00

LONDON, FRIDAY, JULY 3, 1863.

A more overwhelming, or a more ignominous
defeat than the one to which it was subjected
last night in the House of Commons the Govern-
ment has not experienced throughout the whole
of this session. Not that: the division which
took place shortly after midnight ought to be re-
garded in any way as a party division. The re-
sult can hardly be looked upon as a triumph for
the Opposition, when amongst the minority there
is to be found no less a personage tnan the right
hon. gentleman the leader of the Opposition. Yet,
for all that, it must in one sense be regarded as
an immense discomfiture for the Ministry in respect
to one of its most cherished designs, the purchas-
ing far national purposes, and the terrible
preservation and perpetuation as a public edifice,
of that most hideous of all architectural mons-
trosities--even in this age of architectural
monstrosities—the Great International Exhibition
Building of 1862, down at South Kensington ! Al-
though Mr. DISRAELI found it necessary, or advis-
able, or convenient, or however else it might be ex-
pressed, to walk into the same lobby, for once, with
a round dozen or so of the leading members of the
Coalition Government, secretaries and under secre-
taries, chiefs and subordinates—the majority by
which the Cabinet scheme was defeated so very
signally upon this most memorable division, com-
prised amongst them, saving and excepting the leader
of the Conservatives himself, the leading members of
her MAJESTY'S Opposition! For the vote (of
£105,000) proposed by the Government and sub-
mitted to the House last evening by the foremost
orator of the Cabinet, meaning of course the
Chancellor of Her MAJESTY'S Exchequer, there
were numbered up 121 —in opposition to an
overwhelming
majority of 287 (nearly three
to one) who voted dead against it ! The clear
majority, as the numbers show, was no less
than 166 in h
House, or rather a Committee, of
498. No wonder the announcement, when made
known, was greeted with loud and long
continued
cheering, principally from the side
of the
Opposition. For, if Ministers had had the
satisfaction of seeing Mr. DISRAELI stroll
out into the same lobby with themselves, their
exultant antagonists had had the still greater satis-
faction of finding their aggregate swelled and its
importance signalised by the fact of its comprising
in the list of the majority the names—not the name,
but the names—of Mr, HENLEY, Mr. WALPOLE,
Lord STANLEY, Lord JOHN MANNERS, and Sir JOHN
PAKINGTON. Perhaps the finest thing the name
lord the member for North Leicestershire has yet
done in the interests of the metropolis, if not with a
view to its adornment, at any rate to the end that it
might be spared at least the mostappalling of allthe
permanent disfigurements with which it has ever
vet been threatened, was the simple fact of hisvoting,
as he actually did vote, last evening. Perhaps the
drollest evidence yet afforded of that dry humour
g
for which the right hon. gentleman the member for
Oxfordshire is at all times so delightfully remark-
able, was, amidst shouts of laughter, afforded last
evening by Mr. HENLEY, when illustrating, by a
most apposite upologue, the force of a certain pre-
posterous remark made by a correspondent of the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, to the effect that this
detested and now (thank Heaven !) doomed build-
ing was " suseeptible"—" that I think was the word,"
said Mr. HENLEY with irresistible sarcasm (an-
swered by cheers and laughter), was "susceptible
of great ornamentation." Whereat, said the dry
old joker—the Apologuist, not the Apologist—" I
recollect once seeing a mountebank with a black
woman, who was susceptible of a great deal of
ornamentation. (Laughter.) He said, I can make
her white, x.
and I can make ht red ; but do what I
will, I can't make a handsome women of her.' (Great
laughter.) lam afraid," added Mr. HENLEY, with
twinkling eyes, but otherwise with an air of im-
perturbable gravity, " that Mr. SHIRKE, do what he
may to ornament the Exhibition Building must still
leave it like that unhappy black woman." (Laughter.)
As an anti-climax to which perfectly good-
humoured bat absolutely crushing remarks in oppo.
%hien to tho proposal for this monstrous vote—coolly
"Iced for by our courtly Ministry, nominally cona-
P"e'l Arch• Economists—there again rose to
itddre" the Rouse of Commons the chief ministerial