The Sun.
London, England, 1847-12-25 00:00:00

7 IT ning

LONDON. SATURDAY. DECEMBER 25, 1847.

A better opportunity than the present could
scarely have occurred for taking a dispassionate view
of the state of the nation, and of the posture of the
political interests of Great Britain. The inaugura-
tion of a Liberal Cabinet under the premiership of
Lord JOHN RUSSELL, took place in the midst of such
unexampled confusion among parties, and was so
immediately anterior to the dissolution of a prolonged
Parliament, as to present but little room for deliberate
reflection. An observer must necessarily have been
baffled in his conjectures as to the future course of
the Legislature, at a time when the House of Com-
mons was the arena of the most turbulent discussions
ever recorded in the pages of Hansard. While the
disappointed minority of the Conservatives—the resi •
due or dross of Toryism, called, from the principle
in defending which they had been vanquished, Pro-
teetionists—were gratifying their spleen by their
vituperations, and their hatred by their calumnies,
there was little chance of obtaining anything like an
accurate idea of the actual position of the different
grades and classes of politicians. The downfal of the
structure of agricultural monopoly was too extraordi-
nary a catastrophe to transpire without some equally
extraordinary commotion. The citadel of Protec-
tion was not only stormed by the Anti-Corn-
law League, and captured by the irresistible force
of Public Opinion—it was overthrown ; not a stone
was left upon a stone ; it was destroyed and uprooted.
On the 22d of November, 1845, the structure was
undermined by the memorable letter addressed to hii
constituents by Lord JOHN RUSSELL, then the Leader
of the Opposition. On the 22d of January, 1846, it
was as though the fane of Monopoly had been blown
into the air, and Conservatism scattered to the winds
of heaven, by the celebrated speech delivered before
Parliament by Sir ROBERT PEEL, then the Prime
Minister:of England. That speech was the signal for
uproar and distraction. The announcement of the
conversion of the Administration to the Free Trade
doctrines was like the explosion of a bomb-shell. It
carried dismay and ruin into the hitherto impregnable
stronghold of C mservatism. It aroused a hubbub
among the refractory Members such as had not re-
sounded within the walls of St. Stephen's Chapel
since the agitation of Parliamentary Reform and
Catholic Emancipation. Animosities were suddenly
enkindled ; a yearning for retaliation grew into a
thirst for vengeance ; the sarcastic taunts of the
rhetorician were cast aside as insufficient weapons of
attack ; the First Lord of the Treasury was boldly
impeached as something little short of a murderer—
as the coldblooded destroyer of Mr. CANNING. The
Lower House became a Babel of politicians
;the very
topography, so to speak, of its benches was a thing
unknown and incomprehensible.
Since these circumstances occurred a very consider-
able interval has elapsed. 'flee smoke and dust of the
f
legislative conflict have subsided. Passions have, in
a great measure, been allayed by reflection,
andthe
confused bands of the belligerent senators have again
ranged thee.selves into something like the order of
their ancient .discipline. The Russell Cabinet has
already entered upon a second session, and a new
Parliament has been elected. A time of compara-
tive tranquillity has arrived, therefore, such as is best
calculated to afford an opportunity for estimating the
condition and prospects, the present and the future of
the empire. This opportunity has not been over-
looked by the Edinburgh Review. As the quarterly
organ of the Liberals, it adventures upon a pathway
of cautious indication—the juste milieu, we may call
it, between conjecture and prophecy. It does this,
moreover, while it acknowledges that "political par-
ties, broken up, thrown into confusion, and
almost pulverized by the events of 1846, have not
hardened again into a new and compact adhesion."
Before, however, he commences his labour of guess-