The Sun.
London, England, 1851-02-28 00:00:00

MINISTERIAL CRISIS.

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SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
1 IMES.—We are disposed to leave to other pans the
more appropriate task of celebrating the daring enter-
prise and unrewarded toil which made yesterday event-
ful in the Protectionist annals, and thretieened at one
moment to make it still more eventful in the annals of
the country. For we do not aspire to record the pro-
ceedings cf the conclave in St. James's square, and we
are satisfied without nearer evidence that Lord Stanley
did for his party all that could be effected by the spirit
and vigour of a leader unsupported by a single man of
trit d p aitical character or recognized political ability.
From an early hour till sundown the struggle lasted
—not indeed with any visible adversaries, but with
the more incurable obstacles of a vacant and dis-
satisfied party, reduced to forsake its own principle
of action at the very moment it affected to assume
the direction of the State. At the Carlto❑ the vain
efforts of a deluded enthusiasm were unsupported
by the evidence of a single positive accession to
the projected Administration. On the contrary, all that
could be learned in the outer world of the prospects of
the new Government were the names of the eminent
persons who had refused to join it; and the boldest
flights of conjecture never reached beyond Mr. Berries,
Mr. Disraeli, and Mr. Henley, as the chief organs of the
Administration in the House of Commons. Towards
evening, however, it was thought that enough had been
done to retreat with honour, and the intelligence circu-
lated that Lord Stanley had once more resolved to re-
sign his commission for the formation of a Government
into the hands of her Majesty. A Noble Earl, well
known i❑ fashionable life, made the announcement at
White's, and Lord Stanley himself proceeded to the
Palace to report the termination of his efforts.
Our anticipations of yesterday are thus verified,
and with the results we had already ascribed to
this transaction. The Protectionists, separated from
almost all that is posserful or trustworthy in
the Conservative party, have been for forty-eight hours
masters of the Government of Britain. The failure of
their opponents and the voluntary abnegation of their
rivals left them a wide field for the display of all their
policy and all their resources. The urgent want of an
Administration to conduct the business of the country
was never more strongly felt. All the powers which
the Constitution places in the hands of a Minister on his
accession to office were in their possession. Even their
own followers had begun liberally to discard the encum-
brances of their creed. All was in vain. The bigotted
adherents of the Protestionists to a lost cause has reduced
them to the fraction of a party, and Lord Stanley arrived
by the exhaustion process at the demonstration that no
Tory Government can now be linseed out of the mate-
rials he possesses, or upon the principle of commercial pro-
tection. It now, therefore, becomes imperatively neces-
sary to terminate the present crisis by a return to the
most practicable of the combinations already attempted,
and to make whatever sacrifices or concessions are re-
quired to give the utmost possible strength and effect to
that combination. This is not a moment at which any
sort of personal recrimination would be in place. The
Embarrassments of the past week have been too great,
the stoppage of the whole business of Parliament at the
outset of the session is too deplorable, the duties of the
immediate future, especially iu the present year, are
too pressing, for us to stoop for a moment to the grati-
fication of any personal predilections. The only ques-
tion worth asking, since we hare now completed the
round of all the known combinations of party is, " How
is the Queen's Government to be most efficiently carried
on?" This is not a time at which any accession of
strength can with impunity be thrown away. It is
understood that the members of the Whig Administra-
tion will meet this morning in the iii" private capacity at
Lansdowne-house, to consider the course that it be-
comes them to pursue, since they are thus thrown back
to office by the failure of all competitors. But we
trust that it will be admitted by those who are most
anxious to promote the stability of the Government,
that a mere repetition of the performances which ter-
minated last week will be hailed with no satisfaction by
the country. It will leave the abrupt resignation of the
Milne Minister wholly unaccounted for, it, within eight
days, he is to resume his place in the House of Com-
mons, as if his Government had suffered no defeat,
or had become insensible to what it suffered. Too
much sensitiveness then would only be followed by
too much indifference now; and the transaction
would pass with the world for little more than
a piece of legerdemain. To remove these impres-
sions another vigorous effort should be made to obtain
for the Administration that increase of strength which
it requires. In political life nothing is so hopeless as to
attempt a return to the past. That ever-shifting sphere
effaces in a few hours the traces of what has ceased to
be, and the seat which is once left vacant has already
crumbled away. Not an address, not a meeting, scarcely
a journal, has signified the faintest desire to revive the
identical Administration which expired last week; and
if this crisis has destroyed the last illusions of the Pro-
tectionists, it has more clearly demonstrated the neces-
sity of uniting the great divisions of their successful op-
ponents.

During the interregnum which must intervene
between the dissolution of one Government and the con-
struction of another, while both Houses of Parliament
are buried in compulsory silence and the constitutional
functions of the Exectuive Government are in
abeyance, a duty devolves on the Press per-
hap' the most important which it can be called upon
to fulfil. It is only through the columns
of the newspapers that opinions as to the
qualifications of public men, the c embinations of parties,
and the probable good or ill success which awaits them,
can meet the eyes of the immediate advisers of that
august personage wLo presides over the exciting struggle
for place and power. Then, if ever, is the time for the
press to deal candidly and straightforwardly with the
characters and conduct of public men, and to discharge
without fear or favour the trust which has devolved upon
it of representing the public. This duty we have endea-
voured, to the utmost of our ability, to perform during
the present crisis, and in the course Of it we have been
obliged to point out the obvious difficulty which was
thrown in the way of a successful coalition by placing
the power of negotiating it in the hands of
Lord John Russell, who is most undountedly
more nearly connected with and more responsible for
the rec,nt abandonment of the Ministry by the ma-
jority of the House of Commons than any other mem-
ber of the Cabinet. It, has been our misfortune,
by making these observations, to incur the censure
—and that expressed in no mitigated terms—of a por-
tion of the press, which appears disposed to fill up the
present blank in political affairs by fixing upon us a per-
sonal and degrading quarrel. We are told that Lord
John Russell was our patron; that we followed his for-
tune steadily when prosperous; and we are now charged
with turning upon him when in adversity. It is really
time for these who expire to direct and enlighten public
opinion to lay aside a slang so childish and so meaning-
less. We, of course, can only answer for ourselves.
Whether our indignant cotemporaries may have chosen
for themselves some patron whose steps they steadily
follow and whose principles they eternally repeat, we do
not presume to conjecture; but, for ourselves, we can say
with the most perfect confidence, that the only patron
whom we acknowledge is the great and liberal British
people, and the only steps which we steadily follow are
those of enlightened and progressive opinion. The paltry
motivce which may occasion the rise and fall of rival
fsetions. the adherence to men in office, or the abandon-
ment of them when out, the breaking up of a family
clique or the fall of a Minister—all these are matters
of perfect indifference to us, except so far as they re-
late to that which is the one and sole object of our
political labours—the advancing the progress and des
fending, while we seek to ameliorate, the institutions of
the nation. Responsibility is not limited to Ministers
or to Cabinets. We also have our responsibility, the
weight of which is in exact proportion to the favour
with which the public have been pleased to honour us.
It is indeed a mean and inadequate notion cf the mis-
sion which we are endeavouring to fulfil to suppose ad-
herence to tlse fortunes of a Ministerial patron, through
good and ilt report, through success and failere, to be its
appropriate object. What are Ministers and Cabinets to
us? A few months, or at most a few years, and they
pass away, to be remembered or forgotten with the Mi-
ni,ters ent Cabinets that have gone before them. This
journal has survived innumerable political men and po-
litical reputations, and we see no reason to suppose that
it is approaching the end of its career. We gave our sup-
port to the Whig Government because we believed
its existence to be conducive to the welfare of the coun-
try, aua we are ready to support any Government of
which we may entertain a similar opinion. To have
been invested with the titles of " the Ministerial jour-
nal," or " the organ of Government," is a misfortune
for which wo are indebted to those who are unable to
view the press in any other light than as the organ of
parties or Cabinets; nor do we care to vindicate our-
selves from a charge of inconsistency which rests upon
no better foundation than that chimerical position which
has been so gratuitously assigned to us. As for the
charge of having done injustice to Lord John Russell
in our recent remarks, we may dismiss it very summa-
rily, since our censors themselves seem to have arrived
at a conclusion not very widely differing from our own,
except in greater circuity and indirectness of expression;
nor shall we be very careful to guard ourselves against
the accusation of entering into a political intrigue to
galvanise" Sir Charles Wood, or to hand over the Go-
vernment of the country to a clique of Greys, Russells,
and Elliots. The charge of having condescended to
make these columns the medium of personal invective
against a fallen Minister we must refer to the memory
of our readers, not doubting but they will do us that
justice which our indignant contemporaries aro of course
bound to deny us. We are also accused of inconsistency
in stating that Lord John Russell's letter to the Bishop
of Durham " gave intensity and political importance to
the anti-Papal agitation " and bred dissension between
the Ministry and its Roman Catholic supporters. Be-
' fore we answer the charge of inconsistency, let us ask
' if this statement is not literally and exactly true, and
whether, in the opinion of the stern moralists who cen-
sure us, it was our ditty to put forward a falsehood or
to suppress the truth, in order to conceal a past error in
judgment, if any such had been committed ? But where
is the inconsistency? Did we ever say that the letter of
Lord John Russell would not give intensity and political
importance to the anti-Papal agitation, or that it
would not breed dissension between the Ministry
and their Roman Catholic supporters ? We com-
mended the letter of Lord John Russell then as we
commend it now, for containing a pledge on behalf of
her Majesty's Government that the gross insult offered
to this nation by the Pope should not go unredreesed;
and we awarded this praise under the conviction, which
we shared in common with every
reasonable person in
this country, that it would " add intensity " to the anti-
Papal agitation. There is, then, no inconsistency in as.
serting that which we had all along foreseen, and never
in any way denied or deprecated. Still less have we
fallen into any inconsistency in asserting that the letter
Imid alienated from the Government its Roman Catholic