The Sun.
London, England, 1853-12-16 00:00:00

LONDON, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1853.

RESIGNATION OF LORD

PALMERSTON.

ViSCAllit PALMERSTON has once more, by an
abrupt resignation, threatened the disruption of a
Government. The intelligence of his withdrawal
from the Coalition came upon the public mind
this morning with the startling effect of a thunder-
bolt. It instinctively reminded every one at
once of the memorable circumstance which fol-
lowed hard upon a similar proceeding, when the
breaking up of the RUSSELL Cabinet rapidly super-
vened upon the then Foreign Secretary's retire-
ment from that most effete, used-up, and unpopu-
lar Administration. It could not but be instantly
remembered, moreover, that precisely about this
time last year occurred the downfall and dispersion
of the DERBY Government. So that twelve months
have scarcely elapsed before this country is
hurriedly called upon to witness the falling to
pieces of that elaborately-constructed Cabinet,
which was held together solely by the bonds
of expediency, and was built up on that
most unstable of all foundations for a Minis-
try—the shifting sands of every imaginable
opinion, and of every unimaginable dereliction of
principle. Everything in the shape of a political
difficulty was to be dissipated by the Coalition.
That almost fabulous concentration into a single
focus of all the lights of All the Talents of all
the statesmen of our generation was to scatter
away the mists of anxiety which had, during seve-
ral years previously, been gathering over the
nation at large from all points of the political hori-
zon. Thanks to the magnanimity of the different
personages of note who consented, with such sur-
prising alacrity, to act together under the Earl of
ABERDEEN'S chieftainship the citizens of the
British Empire were to exult in the possession of
a powerful, energetic, sagacious, and beneficent
Government. It mattered nothing that that re-
markable group of public men, making up by the
union of their authority the fasces of the Execu-
tive, comprised individuals who had been opposed
to each other in contentions distinguished at the
time by an apparently implacable bitterness—it
signified little that the Premier of the Emergency
summoned around him to the same council-board
statesmen whose minds were coloured by every
shade of party-principle, Whigs,
Tories, Radicals,
Peelites, Catiningites, innovators, retrograders,
Co user vative-Liberals, and
Liberal-Conservatives
—an universal and dominant
sense of patriotism
was to evoke order out of the chaos, concord
out of the dissonance, unity out of the
confusion. A state miracle was to be per-
formed. Lord ABERDEEN was going to conjure
in some mysterious manlier with the green-box of
office, and the seals, and the red-tape. England
was to be ruled by a hocus pocits. The watch-
word of the presiding power was to be a sort of
Abracadabra. Well—the country, since then, has
been waiting six, eight, ten, twelve months in
eager expectation. And now, after all these
delays, after all these fair promises, after all these
confident assurances that there has been a perfect
accord, where impartial observers could only be-
lieve there were disunions the moat complete and
differences the in,;st irrecf-Alcilcable--cilles the