The Sun.
London, England, 1839-03-30 00:00:00

THE MINISTRY.

We cannot too often, or too earnestly impress on
Ministers that their fate as an Administration has
now reached a crisis, and that the events of the
next three weeks will be decisive of the question as
to whether they are to continue to preside over the
destinies of the country, or to resign forthwith the
reigns of Government into other hands.
There is only one way by which they can avert the
utter and immediate destruction with which they are
threatened. To that way we adverted yesterday ;to
that way we must advert again, in order to preclude
all possibility of Ministers labouring under any mis-
conception on the point, or having a pretext to urge
at an after period, that they were kept in a state
of ignorance as to the real condition of matters.
We say, then, in the plainest terms which the
English language can supply, that if the Melbourne
Administration are to be rescued at all from the
perilous position in which they are now placed,
ther salvation is only to be effected by throwing
themselves into the arms of the people. The people
restored them triumphantly to power when, on a
former occasion, they were unceremoniously bundled,
neck and heeels, out of Downing-street. And
what was the return which Ministers made them ?
Not merely ingratitude, and a contemptuous treat-
ment of their demands for a popular course of
policy, but a series of declarations and mea-
sures in direct hostility to the principles which
they professed when out of office, and on the faith
of their acting on which, when in office, the people
restored them to power. Witness Lord John
Russell's repeated and decided declarations against
all further reforms ; witness Lord Melbourne's hos-
tility to the abolition of the Corn-laws; witness
the various measures of a decidedly Tory complexion
which Ministers have brought forward within the
last three years ; and, last of all, witness the purely
and unredeemably despotic Rural and City Police
Bill, which was introduced a few weeks since into
Parliament.

If, therefore, with all these unpopular sayings
and doings of Ministers fresh in their recol-
lection, Lord Melbourne or Lord John Russell
imagines that the people will lend them a help-
ing hand in their present . emergency, without
some security for a different course of policy for
the future, they are practising a gross deception
on themselves. The people will not make the
slightest advances to Ministers : all the advances
must be made by Ministers to the people. The people.
have openly proclaimed the conditions on which
they are willing to rescue the Melbourne Adminis-
tration from Tory clutches. Those conditions are
an extension of the suffrage, triennial Parlia-
ments, and the vote by ballot. From these condi-
tions the people will not depart one iota : it is for
them (the Ministers) to say whether they are to
accept the conditions or not ; whether they are to
be saved on the terms proposed, or to submit to the
only alternative of being hurled over the precipice
on the brink of which they are now standing.
Whatever choice Ministers may make, must be
made immediately. There is no time for doubt or
hesitation. Let them only, before coming to a
final decision on the matter, remember this—
that if they are once ejected from office again,
their exclusion from it will be eternal. It is
not within the compass of human contingencies
that a Ministry thrust out of power under the
circumstances which will characterise their ejection
from Downing-street, can ever be reinstated in it
again. When they go, they go once for all : they go
never to return ; and to affgravate the calamity—ca-
lamity, we mean to themselves—they will go unre-
gretted by a single individual—always excepting
their hungry dependants—out of the twenty-four
millions which constitute the population of this
country.—Morning Advertiser.