The Sun.
London, England, 1851-12-25 00:00:00

LONDON,

the fears and the burdens and the alliances of 1808,
1809, and 1810 beck 'again, with the necessity of
raising 100 millions annually in lieu of 50, and those I
even not sufficing. We have, therefore, carefully to
look into what alliances and what policy we are going.
If the public be not alive and well-informed, the
country may drift into a very dangerous and
unnatural position. If Lord Palmerston was at
times the Quixote of liberalism, there are worse
Quixotes to be found. We do not say this
of Lord Granville, of whom the public know but
little—and that little chiefly in connexion with the
Great Exhibition. His appointment has apparently
originated with the Court. The circumstance of the
Foreign Minister being in the House of Lords will
probably make Lord John Russell the mouth-piece of
foreign policy in the House of Commons, no disad-
vantage in a great many respects. But the possi-
bility of Lord Palmerston, in opposition, and abetting
in the House of Commons Gallican friendship and
alliance, in contradistinction to an Austrian or Rus-
sian connexion—this every one mint see, would
weaken the Whig Ministry, and destroy the Whig
party, beyond all the slender talents of the Greys to
uphold them. Various modifications of the Whig
Cabinet may—and probably will—be the ultimate
result of Lord Palmerston's resignation. In all these
changes the people have a direct interest in demand-
ing that minor differences be overlooked for the pur-
pose of bringing into the public service the men most
likely to advance the public weal.
ADVERTISE R.—We prepared our readers, the
other day, for changes in the Ministry, but we must
own we did not anticipate the change which has oc-
curred. We were cognizant of the renewed feuds
between Lord Palmerston and Earl Grey, but had
been led to believe that, as the quarrel had proceeded
so far as to render inevitable the retirement of one of
the Noble Lords, the party withdrawing would be the
Colonial Secretary. That, we know, was the latter
Noble Lord's own opinion eight days ago; for he
then intimated to a confidential friend, that he was
wearied of the cares and responsibilities of office,
and wished to retire into private life. What has
since occurred to reverse the order of things, and to
nece*sitate the resignation of Lord Palmerston, has
not yet transpired. We are in utter ignorance
of the circumstances under which so important
and unexpected an event has taken place. The
history of the transaction remains to be told.
We shall be let into the secret in a day or two,
and then we shall know better how to express
ourselves. In the meantime the affair wears an ugly
aspect. Of all men in the Whig Cabinet Lord Pal-
merston is the last man we could afford to lose. To
have got rid of Lord Grey, and his shadow, Sir
Charles Wood, would, indeed, have been a relief to the
country. It would have been everywhere received
with thankfulness, and hailed with joy. It would have
been regarded as a blessing of the first magnitude by
men of all parties. But to see Lord Palmerston out,
and Lord Grey in—to see the Foreign Secretary
exiled from Downing-street, while the Colonial Secre-
tary continues one of the lords of that locality, is a
contingency for which the country were not prepared,
and in which it will not acquiesce, unless some better
reason can be assigned for so anomalous a state of
things than any with which we are acquainted. But
on that point we shall suspend our judgment for a day
or two until the particulars are before us. In the
mean time we cannot persuade ourselves that the ex-
clusion of Lord Palmerston from office is aught but
temporary. We expected, and so did the country,
that until illness, or the exclusion of his party from
power, terminated his official career, he would remain
where he has been, with a few bridinterruptions, for
nearly forty years. That expectation has turned out
to have been without foundation. Lord Palmerston
is no longer a member of her Majesty's Government.
He only holds the seals of office until a successor
has been appointed, or rather is formally installed, for
it is understood that Lord Granville has been ap-
pointed to succeed Lord Palmerston as Secretary for
Foreign Affairs. The exclusion of Lord Palmerston
from office, be the causes of it what they may, bodes
no good to the Russell Ministry. Their tenure of office
was not likely to be very prolonged, if what is said
of the miserable mockery which we are to have of a
Ministerial measure of reform, be correct; but with-
out Lord Palmerston, the Whig Cabinet is literally
ltttle better than a burlesque on a Government. He
was its life and soul. He was, for many months con-
secutively, in particular periods of its history, its only
prop and pillar. The masterly manner in which he
administered the foreign affairs of the country, con-
sidered in conjunction with the spirited and liberal
course which he invariably adopted whenever a
question arose between Continental liberty and Con-
tinental despotism, elicited universal admiration in
this country, and gladdened the hearts of the friends
of freedom abroad. Never were the power, the dig-
nity, and character of Great Britain so well upheld
by any Foreign Minister, as by the Noble Lord, of
whose services the country has been so, suddenly de-
prived. He made the name of England feared and re-
spected throughout the world. As he was thejoy and re-
joicing of the lovers of liberty in all lands, so he was
a terror to all the tyrants of the Continent. They
trembled at his name, and regarded his person with
mingled emotions of fear and execration. Never was
a public man so hated and abhorred as was Lord
Palmerston by the despots of the northern Courts.
And no wonder, for he was more than a match for
them all. Single-handed he fought and vanquished
the entire confederacy of royal despots in Europe. Not
satisfied with conspiring against the cause of Liberalism
wherever it existed in Europe, they plotted for years
together against him. But they plotted in vain. He
withstood them all. He saw one set of Continental Mi-
nisters after another rise and fall, but he remained
unmoved and unaffected amid the changes _which
were taking place around him. The Times, as the
Austrian organ, vilified and assailed him day 'after
day, for months, aye, even for years, together; but he
could afford at once to laugh to scorn the conspiracies
of foreign Courts, and the calumnies of the Haynau
journal in Printing House-square. The malice of the
former failed of its effect; the malevolent misrepre-
sentations and mendacities of the latter fell as pointless
as the shafts of Priam of old. When the time shall
come—though we trust it is far distant—when the
epitaph will have to be prepared for Lord Palmerston,
we know not that one more appropriate could be
penned, than the mention of the fact, that during the
long period he filled the office of Foreign Secretary—
though many years of his term of power were troublous
and stormy beyond precedent—he not only vindicated
everywhere the character, and maintained the dignity of
Great Britain, burpreserved it from becoming mixed
up with the quarrels and broils in which all the other
nations of Europe were more or less involved.
During a period of nearly forty years, peace between
Great Britain and other countries has been, under
Lord Palmerston, uninterrupted, even for one hour.
But we shall, before many days have elapsed, have
other opportunities of doing justice to the character of
the Noble Lord. We forbear to enter at any length
on the subject, until we have been made acquainted
with the circumstances under which he has ceased to
be a member of the Cabinet of Lord John Russell.
Suffice it, in the meantime, to say, that the news of
his exclusion from office will inspire unbounded joy in
every despotic Court in Europe. We know not that
a better tribute could be paid to the character of the
Noble Lord than will be found in that simple fact.
Of his successor, Lord Granville, we do not at
present feel disposed to speak. He is, we willingly
admit, a man of gentlemanly manners, of superior
intelligence, of excellent business habits, and of no
inconsiderable ability. But he is not the man for so
important and responsible an office as that of Foreign
Secretary. He would not be the proper person for
that situation even in the most tranquil times; but
in times like the present, when the crowned heads of
the continent have all notoriously leagued together to
promote the principles of despotism in all parts of the
world, Earl Granville is. not fit for the situation
of Foreign Secretary. He is a person of no grasp of
mind. He is not the man to gee things, as Lord
Palmerston did, as if by intuition. lie is, too, devoid
of the energy, the quickness of discernment, the afflu-
ence of resources, and the moral courage necessary,
for a man in his new situation. The cunning, un-
scrupulous Schwartzenberg, of Vienna, and other
despotic Courts, will overreach him at every step, and
the result will be that England will be dragged through
the mire. But besides, there are cogent reasons
arising out of domestic circumstances, why Lord Gran•
villa ought not to have been appointed to fill so im-
portant a, situation. His Lady is a Roman Catholic
and one, moreover, remarkable for her zealous at-
tachment to the Romish Church. She was a widow
of one of the most decided Romanists of his day. Now
we all know from history—especially from the his-
tory of the reigns of Louis the Fourteenth and Louis
the Fifteenth of France—how many important state
secrets have been wormed out of persons about courts
when at the confessional. As nearly all the conti-
nental powers are Roman Catholic, we hold that it is
most unsafe that any one should fill the office of
Foreign Secretary who sustains so close and tender a
relation to a Roman Catholic, as does the Noble Lord
who has been appointed successor to Lord Pal-
merston. But, we say again, that until we have
been made acquainted with the circumstances under
which Lord Palmerston has ceased to be a
enity,r of the Whig Cabinet, we refrain
from expressing ourselves as our feelings would
prompt. We cannot, however, divest our minds of
the suspicion that he is the victim of a profligate
conspiracy, the seat of which is Downing-street. On
the face of matters, he has either been betrayed, or
suffered to be victimised, by the cowardice of those
who ought to have stood by him to the last. In se-
qui, ECU g io his exile from office, Lord John Russell
has given the finishing stroke to his ricketty Ministry.
More than this. We will take any odds that, before
many months have elapsed, the Russell Cabinet will
not only have been scattered to the winds of Heaven,
) but Lord Palmerston be the head of a new Govern-
' meat—tt Government which will at once maintain the