The Sun.
London, England, 1854-06-12 00:00:00

THE NEW PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL.

Lord John Russell's appointment to the office of
President of the Council is gall and wormwood to
pseudo-Liberals and re-actionary Tories. The invete-
rate malignity displayed in the newspaper organs of
these cliques on Saturday, though melancholy as
tendi❑g to lower one's opinion of human nature, has
also its ludicrous side—its toothless mumbling, its
combined eagerness and incapacity to bite. There is
also something provocative of mirth in the exact
coincidence in the cavils of the professing friends of
freedom, who hold a brief from Russia, and the blatant
adherents of oligarchical corruption, who have been
making Lord Aberdeen's Russian sympathies their great
card to play against him. These two factions
have been scratching and calling each other names
for months past ; but their common fear of Lord John
Russell now makes them rail against him in har-
monious concert. Their tirades are real compliments
to the new President of the Council. Nothing could
have inspired them but the consciousness that though
earnest Reformers may often quarrel with Lori John
Russell, yet on the whole there is no living statesman
who, taking him altogether, enjoys to such an extent
the confidence of sincere Liberals of all shades of opinion
—confidence earned by a loyal and consistent adherence
to principle, unhappily too rare in the House of Com-
mons. Of course the cause of their spleen is carefully
concealed by the Peelites, the Tories, and pseudo-liberals
who do Tory work ; the pretexts they have been obliged
to invent, in order to assign a reason for their snarling,
are sufficiently amusing.
A Conservative print, worthy of notice, since it so
faithfully mirrors the feelings of its party, is indignant
at Lord John Russell's appointment, not because he has
carried one Reform measure and attempted another ;
but because that staunch Whig, Mr. Strutt, has been
shelved amid the various transposals in office which that
appointment has led to. We have no reason to believe
that the arrangement complained of has been made
without first informing Mr. Strutt and obtaining his as•
sent, or that he is in any way annoyed at it ; but be this
as it may, there can be no doubt that he thoroughly un-
derstands and justly appreciates the sincere and disin-
terested sympathy of the Conservative worthies who are
raising a kind of Irish death-howl over his official prat.
pects.

- The Coryphseus of the malcontents, however, is that
ultra-Russian champion the Times. Every cavil that
has been urged against the appointment of Lord John to
preside over the Council, by the host of Tapers and Tad-
poles, is caught up, and repeated with exaggerated em-
phasis, by this consistent and liberal journal. The first ob-
jection of the Times rests upon a question of etiquette wor-
thy of a gentlernan-usher. The office has hitherto been cus-
to manly filled by a peer, and " such departures from
ancient constitutional usage are not to be recommended
unless they are justified by obvious public utility ; and
Lord John Russell should be the last man to break
through these traditions, when no case of public utility
can be said to require it." If the office has been usually
or uniformly filled by a peer, the reason has not beea
that there was any greater fitness or utility in placing
it in a member of the Upper House than a member of
the Lower. The truth is, that from the time of the
Revolution until very recently (when the President of
the Council was declared ex officio chairman of some im-
portant Ministerial committees) the office was more
one of form than real work, and therefore better
adapted for some peer of more social influence than
talent, than for the practical statesmen trained in the
rough contests of the Commons. The reason why Lord
John has been appointed to it is, that its almost en-
tire exemption from departmental labours leaves him
more free for his onerous duties of Parliamentary Leader,
and that it at the same time gives him a more definite
ministerial character than a mere seat in the Cabinet
without even a nominal department. Perhaps some
persons may entertain a notion that the dignity of the
office is lowered by conferring it upon a commoner, but
these worshippers of the peerage may console themselves
with the reflection that even a cadet of the house of Bed-
ford is a more aristocratic personage than the wearer of
many a mushroom coronet. But the piety of the Time
has been even more outraged than its delicate sense of
courtly etiquette by the Presidency of Lord John Rus-
sell. The Times is shocked to see the department of
public education entrusted to a Minister " who is to this
day the head of the Dissenters' Education Society."
In the columns of a "Church and State" newspaper
such an appeal to sectarian influence, whatever its
character in other respects, would probably have been
an honest expression of sincere bigotry ; but who can
attribute such a character to it when found in the
column of the Times? There is not one educated gen-
tleman among our High Churchmen but must feel out-
raged by the vulgar hypocrisy of this canting utterance
of language whice would have been sincere if used by
himself. This low and mean appeal to sectarian preju•
dice, with a view to injure Lord John Russell, will, it
be predicted, prove a total failure.
may safely
The carpings of Lord John's enemies,—coming whence
they do have a natural tendency to strengthen the
confidence reposed in him by Liberals, and from the
indirect glimpses with these attacks afford of what is
passing
in the minds of the writers, Liberals may
be inclined to attach more importance to his new ap•
paint:tient than they have hitherto done. Though
the office of President of the Council has little of
onerous departmental duty attached to it, part of that
duty is the presidency of the standing committee of the
council on education. It is gratifying to see this impor-
tant charge devolve upon a tried Liberal deeply imbued
with a taste for intellectual pursuits. Again, it has been
customary in selecting a candidate for the office of Pre-
sident of the Council, to have regard chiefly to his qua-
lifications for preserving harmony and concert among
his colleagues. Since the Premiership has come to be
regarded as attached to the office of First Lord of the
Treasury, the President of the Council has generally been
de facto, though not ostensibl • a kind of deputy et
Vice-Premier. Here is the true'source of the rancour
which Lord John Russell's appointment to the office has
elicited. His Tory and
pseudo-Liberal ill-willers look
upon the conjunction of the Presidency of the Council
with the Leadership in the Commons
as placing their
holder, in respect of influence in the Cabinet, nearly,
if not altogether, on a footing with the First Lord
of the Treasury ; or as, at all events, giving
the him a
prior claim to the reversion of that office atfirst
vacancy that occurs. It is natural that
g ss should
all
the
enemies of popular principle and pr
be irritated by this strengthening ofre
Lord John
Russell's position in the Cabinet. But this very
consi-
deration ought to teach Liberals to see in his recent p•
a
pointnent a counteraction to a certain tendency to lapse
more and more into obstructive Conservatism, of which
various Ministerial movements have of late been alarm-
inely symptomatic. In short, the Peelite section of the
Cabinet and their friends in the Press arc disgusted to
find the mnore Liberal half of the Coalition getting addi-
tional power.
This consideration cannot be without its weight amen
the City Reformers. True it was scarcely needed,—for
the Tories, instead of mustering an opposition to Lord
John seem entirely engrossed with the labour of invent-
ing plausible excuses for not contesting the eloctiop.
There is every appearance that his return will bs unani-
mous and unopposed ; for even though it should enter
• the wayward brain of some semi-lunatic or conceit*
separatist to have himself put in nomination, such cater-
ing to the amusement of the electors assembled in Guild-
hall scarcely comes under the category of what can with
1 strict propriety be called opposition.—. Daily News.