The Sun.
London, England, 1854-06-13 00:00:00

TIDE MINISTERIAL ARRANGEMENTS.

The vacation of his seat last night by Sir George Grey, in
consequence of his acceptance of the seals of the Colonial-
office, removed all doubts that may have existed as to the
correctness of the anticipations which we placed before our
readers with regard to the new arrangements in the Cabinet.
Not a single question was asked, not a single observation was
made, when Mr. Hayter moved the new writ, notwithstand-
ing the indications that have rendered it evident that there's
within the camp of the Government a very angry and bitter
personal as well as party struggle going on, and notwith-
standing, what is a still more important circumstance, the
patent proof which the public has before its eyes, that the
professions of Lord Aberdeen and his immediate followers
about administration reform are hollow as the men who made
them, and that the real requirements of the Public Service
has been made either a sacrifice or a cloak to political in-
trigues or party jealousies. We do not complain, except on
one point, to which we refer below, of Sir George Grey being
made Secretary of State for the Colonies in such a Cabinet as
the present. Sir George Grey is a public servant of high per-
sonal character, great experience, and tried ability; and,
speaking generally, we; should be inclined to describe him as
a Minister of a higher rather than a lower calibre than the
noble duke who preceded him, and we should have been quite
content to see him eliminate the Duke of Newcastle; but we
object most strenuously, now that we uriderstand how limited
the powers of the new Secretary of State for War are to be,
and how trifling his duties, to the retention of both, and to a
supplemental estimate for the maintenance of a Minister and
a Department, who is only to be, as he always has been, an
impediment.

We trust that, upon this occasion, the House of Commons
will pluck up a little heart of grace, and do somethinr, more
to the purpose than ask questions. They are always ready
enough to do that, and, indeed, half the public time is wasted
in putting questions which lead to nothing except full per-
mission to the catechised to do just as they please, even to
the length of adding another 5001. a-year to the Clerk of the
Council, convicted by his own lettere of already recei •
ng
2,0001. for doing nothing, and, in the teeth of their own re-
commendation, putting a new Commissioner into the Board
of Audit. These, however, are comparatively minor matters;
but if the House of Commons should allow so flagrant a piece
of mal-administration to be quietly carried into effect. as that
which Lord Aberdeen explained in his speech of Friday night
that he had decided upon, the House, we are sure will lnse,
and very deservedly lose, the confidence of the country. They
must do something more now, if they would keep it, than ask
puerile questions. They must force upon the Government
one of two alternatives—either that they should altogether
withdraw their proposition for a new and additional Secre-
tary of State ; or, that they shall present a complete and
bona fide scheme for the reorganisation of the civil service of
the army.
Why should we be encumbered with the Duke of New-
castle, with a new department attached to him, if he is only
to be still like the buoy-boat in a yacht race—a something
we are to go round before we- can attain our object l What
will be the use of him if our armies, hungry and thirsty, are
still to go for their commissariats supplies to the First Lords
of the Treasury, whose proper business is the control of pay-
ments, and not the issue of barrels of ale and porter—or if
every time any of the troops want new arms or fresh stable
pails, their colonel is still to have to move the Commander-
in-Chief to desire the Secretary-at-War to require the Secre-
tary of State to take the royal pleasure as to whether or no be
shall direct the Ordnance to issue them from the store-
keeper's department Z In the days of our youth, we remem-
ber to have thought the story of " The House that Jack
Built" a very complicated piece ; but what was that to this ?
Think of the extraordinary number of people who must be
put in movement, and of the complication of diverse offices
which must be brought into concurrent action before troops
can be moved, clothed, fed, shaved, or left unshaved, lighted
or bedded, and then you will find ample matter for wonder,
not that the French landed their soldiers better, quartered
them more comfortably, and clothed them more suitably than
ours, but that ours shduld have got to their destination at all
with or without the ale and porter which our letters of yes-
terday describe them as painfully waiting for, and with or
without the cotton night-caps which Lord Hardinge is think.
ing of making for their shakos.
It is very true that we have with that same organisation
of departments which we now have, and find fault with, con-
ducted great wars, and conducted them to a successful and
glorious issue : but it is in spite of them, and not by any aid
that they afforded, that those wars were so conducted. Not
a man engaged in them, from the private soldier to the Field
Marshal, or from the commissariat clerk to the Prime Minis-
ter, but felt and acknowledged that they were an impediment
to energy, and a bar to rapidity of action and movement.
The question is, Are we to. go on with these impeding compli-
cations as we have done before, and contriving, perhaps, as
we have done before, to get through our work pretty success-
fully, though with a good deal of wasteful expenditure of
men and money, or are we to apply the experiences we have
bought practically and get rid of them ?
When the Peelite party assumed to be the de facto Govern-
ment in a mixed Cabinet, they asked us to have patience—
they asked us not, at the outset of their career, to expect or
to press for political measures. It was a reasonable request.
Till "of more familiarity had come contempt" it was not
likely that a Government so peculiarly constructed could
frame harmoniously measures involving great political prin-
ciples. The public assented, exhibited the greatest patience,
and showed the greatest indulgence to an unusual combina-
tion of political men engaged iu a great experiment. The ptb-
lic were assured in return that they should have a much bet-
ter thing than political measures—they should have great ad.
tuinistrative reforms.. The Peelito party embraced, so them-
selves and their organs said, the ablest and most experienced
administrators in the kingdom, and in their hands public
departments would become so changed, that old worn-out
Whigs and Tories, and blundering Derbyites would not know
them again. Lord Aberdeen has been some time at the head
of affairs, aided by the Duke of Newcastle, Mr. Gladstone,
and Mr. Cardwell, and yet we see none of these reforms or
improvements in administration. Mr. Gladstone can't manage
the money market, Mr. Cardwell can't manage the railway
department of the Board of Trade, the Duke of Newcastle has
had his knuckles rapped by the House of Commons for mal-
administration of his patronage ; and the utmost that the
party united can think of, by way of making provision for
the vigorous and rapid conduct of a great war, is to create a
new Secretary of State, whose exclusive duty it is to be to
make memoranda of all the hitches that occur. Truly, if
Ithis be the administrative wisdom of the Peelites, we would
rather-go back to the folly of our ancestors.—Morning Post.

THE MINISTERIAL CHANGES AND THE CITY
OP LONDON ELECTION.

The Sheriff has fixed to-morrow (Wednesday) for the Elec-
tion in the City of London, when the Guildhall will doubtless
be well filled by those anxious to hear the harangues of Lord
John Russell and Mr. Urquhart. A meeting of Liberals has
taken place at which it was resolved to give the fullest sup-
port to the new President of the Council, who will, of course,
be elected. The Tory papers have been making the best they
can of Mr. Urquhart's eccentric opposition, but the journalists
who are left with no better Tory candidate than the gentle-
man who talks about Turkey, Sodom and Gomorrah, will
surely not find themselves supported by the Barings and the
Afastermans of London.

All doubts about who shall play the chief parts in the re-
arranged Ministry are at an end by the authorised announce-
ment of the Court newsman, who tells us that yesterday, at
the Council,
" The Duke of Newcastle had an audience of the Queen,
and resigned the seals as Secretary of State.
" At the Council her Majesty was pleased to declare the
Right Hon. Lord Johri Russell Lord President of her Most
Honourable Privy Council, and his Lordship took his place
at the Board accordingly.
" The Right Hon. Sir George Grey, Bart., Knight Grand
Cross of the Bath, having accepted the seals as one of her
Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State, was sworn in.
" The Most Noble Henry Duke of Newcastle having ac.-
cepted the seals as Fourth Secretary of State, was also sworn
in."

it will be noticed that the words " War Minister" are
not used.

Before parting with this subject we must say a word or two
about the gyrations of a contemporary and Sir George Grey.
It took the Times six months to perform the difficult feat
of turning its back upon itself iu the case of the war between
Russia and Turkey. During the same time it gave plenty of
employment to its organs of political digestion by swallowing its
own words to the very letter. What was difficult, however, in
the matter of the war, is comparatively easy in such a matter
as a change of Ministerial arrangements. Instead of six months
the Times only asks for three days to enable it to contradict /
itself in the most satisfactory manner. On Friday last the
readers of that paper were told that—" Amongst those mem- i
bers of the Whig party who were unavoidably left out when I
the present Administration was formed, Sir George Grey is
perhaps the most eminent, and although he has no peculiar
acquaintance with its duties, we entertain little doubt that
the seals of the Colonial-office will be offered to him. With-
out adding materially to the strength of the Government Sir
George Grey is deservedly regarded by men of all parties
with respect and esteem, and the House of Commons will
view with satisfaction his return to the front row of the Minis-
terial benches." The addle-headed old gentlemen who fur-
nish themselves with opinions for the day from the Times
committed themselves doubtless on Friday to the assertion
that the Colonial-office would be in good hands. " Perhaps
the most eminent of all the neglected Whigs"—" a man who
was deservedly regarded by men of all parties with respect
and esteem'r---" one whom the House of Commons would
view with satisfaction returning to the front row of the
Ministerial benches"—was to be entrusted with the seals of
the Colonial-office, and we might thank our stars that so
good an appointment was to be expected. While they were
thus trumpeting the praises of the supposed Colonial Minis-
ter they little thought that some changes were mysteri-
ously taking place in the currents which act upon the
Times' weather-cock, which would tend very materially
to necessitate a great qualification in their previous as-
sertions: Poor old gentlemen, they must have rubbed
their eyes on Saturday, when, with the recollection of
the laudation of the expected Ministerial changes the
day before full in their minds, they read . a captions
criticism of all the appointments—in which Lord John Russell
was sneered at, and in which the " perhaps most eminent of
the neglected Whigs" was spoken of as follows :
" With more than one member of the Government well
qualified to assume the direction of the Colonial Department,
that important office has been thrust upon a minister who is
understood to have had other objects of ambition,and who
has always'been less remarkable for his administrative abili-
ties than for the purity of his private character."
This a tolerable " let down" for the person " whom the
House of Commons would view with satisfaction returning to
the front row of the Ministerial benches.. What were the
bewildered old gentlemen to do on Saturday to retrieve their
however, had
character for political wisdom. The Tinges,
not done with them yet. On Monday morning the divinity
of Friday was smashed at 41 blow, a,n,d_.Sir George Grey was
left with not a leg to stand on. His whole experience of
the Colonies was gained under the disastrous Administration
of Lord Glonelg, and he is likely to be worked upon by influ-
ences and directed by counsels which tho remote portions of
the British empire deem most fatal to their interests and
most hostile to their prosperity." Here is a firebrand Colo-
nial Secretary for you. This is the respected and esteemed
of all parties—the man whom the House of Commons would
be charmed to see sitting on the front row of the Ministerial
benches. A pretty House of Commons we must have not to
know better how to distinguish chaff from wheat. But not
only is the choice intrinsically a bad one ; it is unpleasant in
its consequences. " His appointment must be regarded as a
slight to all members of the Government holding offices
infe-
rior to that of Secretary of State." The great majority of
members of the Government will be in a state of incipient
insurrection.

.
Leaving the old gentlemen to digest their grievance in tho
best manner they can, what is the public to think of a paper
which takes only three days to enunciate two utterly con-
tradictory assertions on the same subject—nay, deliberately
changes on Saturday the opinion which it held on Friday 7
Is it possible to avoid the conclusion that on Friday the
general changes, and the appointment of Sir G. Grey in parti-
cular, were made the subject of moderate praise because there
was really nothing objectionable in them, and because no
competing interest had expressed its dissatisfaction, while in
the interval between Friday and Saturday it was discovered
that the claims of certain parties had been neglected
whom it was desirable to conciliate 'I As the pu oo
l2ho ult:
not be intrusted with this seoret, the only plan le" . ..
Ulm, dizitriratar at tir OtOrg, Grey, 11.91:147 C. 61.-1- '''!'