The Sun.
London, England, 1851-03-06 00:00:00

MARCH 6, 1851.

MINISTERIAL CRISIS.

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SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
itt) NICLE.—L d Jana Ru-,ell appears to he
slowly arriving at certain sound conclusion, with
F spect to the aggression business. He is reported not
only to have informed the meeting ut his supporters on
Tuesday that he is opposed to unnecessary I. gislation,
but to ha e raised again t Lord Stanley's proposal tin-
welt-founded objection ;bat inquiry by a co,,,init,re
would only tend to prolong an agitation which it is on
all accounts desirable to terminate. It is true that he
nevertheless announced his intention to proceed with the
Ecclesiastical Titles Bill in a modified form; and, he
entreated his adherents to waive their objections to the
measure, in order to secure the country against a change
of Ministry, and a consequent return to Protection. The
Ecclesiastical Titles Bill must be considered on its own
demerits, whatever may be the form of vexatious tri-
viality which, from time to time, it may successively as-
-611,130. It is unfortunate that its author was not earlier
impressed with the evils of " unnecessary legislation."
The virtual repeal of the Charitable Donations Act in
Ireland, and the gratuitous persecution of the Scottish
Protestant bishops, can scarcely have formed part
of the vengeance which may have seemed neces-
sarily called forth by the blustering language of the
Pope and of Cardinal Wiseman. Almost the whole
force of the measure will fall upon persons entirely un-
connected with the recent aggression. A powerful body
in Ireland, and a harmless community in Scotland, will
bear the brunt of the "necessary legislation," to which
provocation has been given only as respects England. It
is true that the only necessity which originally occa-
sioned the introduction of the Bill still, in some degree,
compels the Minister to proceed with it. The party ne-
cessity of seeming to follow up the Durham letter, and
of humouring the late agitation, still forces Lord John
Russell to alienate Ireland, and to interrupt She business
of the Empire; but it is satisfactory to observe that the
Premier's enthusiasm has subsided into an unwilling as-
sent to some undefined minimum of persecution. As the
rapid subsidence of the recent popular agitation becomes
generally recognised, we do not despair of seeing the
evanescent zeal of the Premier dissipate itself into entire
forgetfulness of the whole subject. His'prudent protest
against a continuance of the contest implies a still more
rapid return to sobriety. The popular feeling—which was
correctly indicated in the Speech from the Throne as
the origin or excuse of an unstatesmanlike attempt at
legislation—has almost ceased to afford an apology for
the perpetuation of the blunder. The Durham letter has
collapsed into the Aggression Bill—the Attorney-Gene-
ral's statement of its provisions into the clauses as they
actually appear—and the printed terms of the Bill into
some unknown formula, constructed to suit the taste of
a Roman Catholic archbishcip without irritating the Bri

tish lion, who is becoming slightly ashamed of his re-
cent " alarm and indignation," The country at large
was indignant at finding that a measure which was
offered as a satisfaction to Protestant zeal was repre-
sented, however untruly, by its authors, as a contriv-
ance for the benefit of the Roman Catholic laity. Every
fresh oscillation in the conduct of the business has

tended still further to alienate general sympathy; and
we believe that the revolution in public opinion foretold
by Lord Aberdeen will be completed in a shorter interval
than that wbich be may probably have assigned for the
change. We have little curiosity as to the changes which
may be promised by Sir George Grey in his statement
tomorrow. The pretext that the Bill interferes with

the consecration of prelates or the ordination of priests
is too absurd to be repeated, after a week's conside-
ration of Lord John Russell's singular announcement to
that effect; but it may be presumed that, on some more
or less plausible ground, the provision of the third clause
will be virtually abandoned. The second clause, which
renders void proceedings which were never recognised by
law as valid, may be retained or omitted at pleasure.
The concluding provision for the discovery of illegal
trust deeds will probably be left in the Bill, when it has
been determined that there can be nothing to discover.
The false recital in the preamble, as to certain imaginary
" doubts," will no doubt be inserted as a congenial in-
troduction to the penal fictions which will fill up the
clauses. The 1001. penalty, to be sued for by the Attor-
ney-General whenever an existing Government may be
disposed to persecute either Roman Catholics or Scotch
Episcopalians, will no doubt figure in the foreground of
the Bill. Yet this silly and insincere farrago will give
the Government and Legislature as much trouble, and
will consume as much of the time of the country as
would a genuine and effective scheme of active persecu-
tion. The Irish opponents of the measure must be a
singular body of politicians if their resolution is weak-
ened by the marked success which has hitherto attended
their cause. The Aggression Bill has broken up the
Government, and has prevented the formation of s
stronger Ministry. With singular infelicity, the wishes
of a Roman Catholic prelate have been recognised as
the basis of legislation, without any serious attempt
to meet them. If Archbishop Murray's remonstrances
are entitled to any degree of attention, they extend to the
whole principle and to all the details of the Bill. There
is no excuse for any penal legislation whatever against
the Irish Hierarchy; and any modification of a measure
introduced for the purpose of committing this injustice
is only an admission of weakness and of error, without in

any way removing the objection. Lord John Russell
already stands convicted, by his own admission, of
having attempted " unnecessary legislation;" and,
in admitting that whatever is unnecessary is also
inexpedient, he condemns his own recent policy.
It is more than probable that, at the next check
in his career, the Minister will reel off into the
course so strenuously urged upon him by many of his
present or late supporters. The restriction of the Bill
to this country will get rid of some difficulties, and
will stave off others for a time. Yet even in this case
the final passing of the measure will remain as uncertain
as ever. The ultra Protestant feeling of the country
will scarcely assent to that virtual recognition of the
Pope's authority in Ireland which would be implied in
express restrictions imposed upon its :exercise in Eng-
land; nor could Lord Stanley, with any regard to con-
sistency, allow the establishment of a legislative distinc-
tion between the rights of the Crown on this side of
the Irish Channel and on the other. The Government
is involved in an inextricable labyrinth, and it can only
escape by retracing its steps. The applause of those
whose clamour induced it to enter the maze is every mo-
ment becoming fainter and fainter; and those who
warned it of the danger, while there was yet time to stop
short, will yet be found to have been its most prudent
friends, though they may probably meet with but little
gratitude.
ADVERTISER.—It has been the subject of great and
general regret for many years past, that England has no
poet. Byron was the last of the race, so far as his own
country is concerned. Nor do we know that other coun-
tries are in this respect much better off than our own.
Everywhere there is a dearth, if not an absolute destitu-
tion of rail poets. It is true, that there is no lack of
persons pretending to the name. If versifiers were
synonymous with poets, we should have the latter in
abundance. They would be plentiful as blackberries—a
fact which is abundantly testified by the " intolerable
quantity" of lines which every year ushers into exist-
ence. There is, we fear, an equal paucity of another
class of men, who for all practical purposes are much
more important than poets. The country is sadly in
want of Premiers. The race of real ones seems to be ex-
tinct. As true poetry died with Byron, so real Premier-
ship appears to have perished with Sir R. Peel. The
sorry figure which the present possessor of the office has
cut ever since he crossed its portals, must make the coun-
try feel more sensibly by contrast every succeeding day,
the magnitude of the loss which England sustained in
the death of the Right Hon. Gentleman. Had that

illustrious statesman been spared—to us, we should not
have been domed to witness the humiliating spectacle
which this great country has presented for the last fort-
night. The Queen and the country would have simul-
taneously turned to him, as the individual destined to
extricate the nation from its difficulties, and to restore
England, as if by magical agency, to the place she had
so long occupied as the greatest country on the face
of the earth. The adage is in everybody's mouth—that
we do not know the real worth of great and good men
until we lose them. Never did the saying apply with
greater force, than in reference to the death of Sir Robert
Peel. It is only now that the nation begins to realise
the loss of the Right Hon. Gentleman in its
full extent. But regrets are unavailing. He has been
snatched from us, and cannot be recalled. Though we
cannot help mourning his departure with, if possible, a
greater depth of sorrow than before, we know that we
must mourn in vain. We must now look to the living,
not to the dead—to those who are still among us, not to
those who have been wrested from us. But to what par-
ticular quarter shall we look for the man who can bring
the country safely through the perils of the present '
crisis? Not, certainly to the Whig Premier. He has been
tried and found wanting. It is he who has brought us
into all our difficulties, and it would therefore be unreason-
able to expect him to extricate us from them. He is
wholly unfit for his office. It is one to which he ought
never to have been called. It is one to which he never
would have been called, but from the lamentable paucity
of qualifications for the Premiership, to which we have
alluded. And yet there the Noble Lord is. He is the
First Minister of the Crown. The destinies of the
greatest empire on which the sun ever shone, during the
six thousand years he has run his course, are committed
to the hands of a man who is wholly incapable of pro-
perly guiding and controling them. This is a melan-
choly reflection. It is a lamentable fact. What is to
be done? No one can answer the question. No one
can point out a person, among all the men who make
pretensions to the character of statesmen, to whom ti.e
reins of government could be transferred with confidence.
They are in bad hands; and yet the universal conviction
is, that they might be in worse. This is certainly sorry
comfort; end yet we are compelled to consider it as com-
fort in its way. In ell the great conjunctures which we read
of in the history of other countries, and in all we have
witnessed in our own land, there has arisen some
master spirit suited to the emergency. With the hour
there has come the man. The storm has thrown up to
the surface men of great genius, who had been before
buried in the depths of obscurity. Not so in this in-
stance. We see no indications of a coming man—no
symptoms of the advent of some person of mighty mind,
fitted to take the helm of affairs—qualified to discharge
efficiently the functions of the Premiership. The coun-
try does, indeed, still cling to the hope that such a per-
son will suddenly burst, like a brilliant luminary, on our
benighted political world. The nation will not forego
the satisfaction of thinking, that the day of deliverance
from our troubles is near at hand. We would nor, if we
could, extinguish this hope. We would not li
wkoteossheear it
e
exchanged for despair. Rather, by far,would
it with our countrymen. But we hopecannot without
ground. And, certainly, there never, so faras we can
discern the signs of the times, w
hoping than there is at present—thata we are
on the eve of seeing some mightysless ground fur
g
genius sud-
denly start up, to bring us out of our troubles.
The crisis in which the country is placed has been
. greatly aggravated by tho infidelity to his principles of

. .
the Noble Lord-at-lbe her43-of---tha Goternment.__ f hqj
e...43.4E4ent biz iLenpacity _lot

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L ebittly t; Ehe b.A VN.ayai of the cause of hien he
C d cusce i!..: champion, and of his vlta!-
; IleBs to th,, intoreste he undertf,ok to defend end pro-
mote?, that we are to a crihe the difficulties into wrich
the e.,eittry has brute plunged. Unhappily, more inte-
grOf will n,,t extricate the country from its difficulties.
1: requires capacity, it needs genius to do that. - Lord
John Russell has neither. Nature never meant him for
the Premiership; and circumstances have not made up
for nature's niggardliness to him. As theta great mental
capacity, if not genius of a high order, is indispensable
towards extricating the country from its present per-
plexities, and as the Noble Lord at the bead of the Go-
vernment is confessedly wanting in capacity, the question
again recurs, whether we wilt or no, " What is to be
dune?" It will be inferred, from what we have already
said, that we see no appearance of the near advent of any
such master spirit as tne crisis requires. Consequently
we see no reason to expect that we are at once to tonne
triumphantly out of our great and manifold difficulties.
But we do discern some glimmering of hope. Though
no idividual mind be equal to the crisis, a combination
of men of fair capacity, acting honestly, and with energy
and in accord, may very greatly mitigate the evils of the
"situation." Such a combination, we can state, with con-
fidence, is in contemplation. But, at present, it would
be premature to enter into particulars. Suffice it tor the
moment to say, that there is a fair prospect of seeing,
before many weeks have elapsed, a new Government,
which, if nut remarkable for the brilliancy of its indi-
vidual or collective talents, will certainly be remarkable
for its business capabilities—a Government not only
pledged, head and heels, to a thoroughly free-trade
policy, but prepared to make concessions on the question
of Parliamentary reform, which, though not so large
as we and the country could desire, will still be worthy
of the people's acceptance, as an instalment of that
which they have a right to claim.