The Sun.
London, England, 1853-09-12 00:00:00

LONDON, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1853.

Another of the mysterious despatches of the
ABERDEEN Cabinet in reference to the Turkish
difficulty has suddenly been published. Unac-
countably kept hitherto from the public gaze, it
has at length no less unaccountably made its
appearance. Everything, indeed, is of a piece in
these clumsy and bungling negotiations. Every-
thing in them is consonant with the confusion of
our hesitating and heterogeneous Government. It
is a melancholy spectacle enough we admit, from
first to last, this pusillanimous foreign policy
of the Coalition Administration. Neverthe-
less it is one which peculiarly demands the
scrutinising gaze of the community, and
one, moreover, the examination of which cannot
fail, we believe, to be eminently instructive. In-
structive as to the consequences certain to accrue
from the formation of a Ministry based upon no
definite principles whatever—rather, we should
say, a Ministry constructed upon an understand-
ing that every known political principle of any
importance should either be altogether abandoned,
or subordinated, at least, to the generally recog-
nised necessity of retaining, at all cost, the reins
of the Imperial Government. Formerly, under
the Whigs, we found only too much reason to
complain of the national interests being rendered
systematically subservient to the advancement of
the interests of a particular Family—reported,
among certain classes, to be invested with the
prerogative of hereditary administrators. The
multitude at length became so dissatisfied with
the nepotism encouraged among their rulers, that
they suddenly and most effectually broke up
the family compact. It was a rupture of domes-
tic felicity in high
places quite as decisive,
though scarcely picturesque, as that
which destroyed so
ins the bosom of the OR-
ANS home, in 18
day-dream of 48, the Citizen King's
the downfall of the
1848, the
After
hd, for the time
Cabinet, in 1852, it was
confidently expected that
we
andg
oof that
ottohhtdae Rri riddance
sof? the
GREYS, at any rate, obtained a
and
GREYS, and the ELLIOTTS,
of the rest of the offspring
wonderful old
lady the ex-Premier's great grandmother
it is true, have we been wholly disappoint:l
these anticipations. We have escaped 4.. n
the
domestic compact implied by the GREY-ELLIoTT-
RUSSELL Administration. But—let it not be
forgotten, we have only escaped from one Family
,
to fall into the clutches of another .
that other—the Happy Family ! The Happy
Family in which all the instincts implanted by
nature seem to have been almost miraculously set
at nought---the political Happy Family, in which
Conservatives and Liberals, Whigs and Tories,
Radicals and Retrograders, repose together in
comfortable tranquillity—having for a while at
least arranged amongst themselves to swallow
their mutual hatreds and forget their long-
cherished differences. The result of all which is
of course precisely what the dispassionate observer
from the first Instant of the new compact antici-
pated.. Unity of action has proved impracticable.
Consistency of purpose has been entirely out of
the question. We have had only change after
change both in our foreign and domestic policy—
hesitation upon hesitation " confusion worse
confounded." In almost every department of
Administration these unhappy consequences have
been repeatedly made apparent. In none
more flagrantly, however, than in the de-
partment presided over by the Foreign
Secretary. It is lamentable to reflect that it
should have been so precisely at the very juncture
when the arrogant and daring ambition of the
AUTOCRAT rendered more than ever requisite on
our part the display of vigour, promptitude, con-
sistency,
and determination. Nevertheless such,
has actually been the result
unhappilY, of the
Coalition—a circumstance not at all matter of
surprise when it is remembered that at the same