The Sun.
London, England, 1851-03-31 00:00:00

lu-bvning

LONDON, MONDAY, MARCH 31, 1851.

Great expectations are beginning to stimulate the
ambition of the Protectionists. Under Lord STANLEY
they are in hopes of securing to themselves the per-
quisites of place and the prerogatives of power—
simply, because the formation of any other Cabinet
appears to be impracticable in consequence of the di-
vision of political parties in the Legislature. Pre-
cisely for the same reasons, the Whig section of the
Parliament were sanguine of measuring out red-tape
in Downing-street, towards the close of Sir ROBERT
PEEL'S administration. The weakness of their anta-
gonists gave the aspirants an opportunity, such as
must otherwise have been denied to their unassisted
incompetence. In either instance it promised to be
only a modern illustration of the two men fighting
for the jackass, the prize being purloined by a third
party during the disturbance. Happily for the Whigs
they were enabled to realize their dreams of office to
their entire satisfaction, aided throughout by two most
advantageous circumstances. The magnanimous
assistance afforded them by the illustrious statesman
they had succeeded imparted strength to a Cabinet
which was moreover based upon public confidence in
regard to its maintenance of free-trade principles.
Unluckily for the Protectionists, they can enter upon
the labours of administration under no such
propitious and sustaining auspices. They are
about as unlikely to meet with magnanimity,
from their predecessors as support from the mul-
titude. Stung into a state of morbid irritation and
fretful susceptibility by the derision cast upon them
prior to their unlamented downfall, the ex-Ministers
will be little inclined to deal leniently with the
measures introduced by their conquerors. Upon this
point there can be little cause for uncertainty.
Equally secure may we feel that no influence can
induce the vast mass of the population to submit
tranquilly to the re-imposition of even a moderate
impost upon provisions.
Nevertheless, in spite of these very manifest con-
siderations the Country Party are beginning to cal-
culate pretty confidently upon the seizure of the red
boxes, and not only upon this, but upon their reten-
tion. They are accustoming themselves to meditate
so continually upon the probability of an accession to
power that, like the beadle of Lansmere, they are
becoming daily more and more " bumptious."
Paeans are already being chaunted by the organs
of the Coming Government. Maga itself leads off
the charms very appropriately in its number for the
first of April. Others will, no doubt, emulate the fervour
of its exultation and waft the new Ministry into place
upon the breathings of this most sweet applause.
Certainly very little need be accomplished by the
next holders of office, in order to demonstrate their
superiority as administrators over the members of the
departed Cabinet. For assuredly their can never
have been witnessed before now such a beggarly dis-
play of empty projects in the way of improvement as
those chronicled in the history of the Whig Adminis-
tration. From the first moment of its entrance into
authority its system appears to have been that of per-
petual procrastination. A grandiloquent programme
of reforms has been announced with all ceremony at
the commencement of each session by the First Lord
of the Treasury—promises innumerable have been
made to the various aspirants for legislative improve-
ment throughout the United Kingdom—but invari-
ably, towards the close of the annual toils of Parlia-
ment, it has been discovered that scarcely anything
whatever has been accomplished in the desired direc-
tion—the majority of the national hopes being de-
layed until the next year for their realization.
Session after session, we say, this has proved
the case with the most lamentable regularity. Ses-
sion after session the expectations of the community
have been baulked. Each long looked-for innovation
has melted away time after time like a Ministerial
mirage in the midst of a Parliamentary wilderness.
Scarcely a solitary concession of any value has been

made Co the wishes of the population. Scarcely a
Bill of any real importance has passed through the
Legislature at the instigation of the Government,
if we except, perhaps, the one relating to the
encumbered estates in Ireland. This, with the Act
conferring the right of the constitution upon our
principal colonies; another granting an extension of
the franchise in the sister island ; another regulating
the laws relative to navigation ; another affecting the
interests of the mercantile marine ; another gradually
remitting the duties upon certain descriptions of
sugar ; another referring to the health of towns ;
another to metropolitan interments, and one
or two minor measures of no especial inter-
est, or perceptible necessity—have been the meagre
and paltry advantages conferred upon the country by
the Whigs during the four years and a half in which

they have held in their grasp the reins of the Go-
vernment. After remaining in power for so long a '
time upon little better than sufferance, they will at
length be driven over to the benches of Opposition.
Nor can their downfall be matter of regret to any
beyond the range of their own immediate partizans, if
we only take into consideration the conduct pursued
by the Cabinet during the course of the present session
ever since the 4th of February. Easter is rapidly
drawing near, the Whitsuntide holidays will follow
not long afterwards, and as yet absolutely nothing
whatever has been effected in the way of legislation !
Nothing ! Even the Bill introduced by the Earl of
CARLISLE in reference to the restriction of the sale of
arsenic has only passed as yet through one of the
Houses of Parliament. The Budget continues to
the present moment in nubibus. The various esti-
mates are being bungled through at intervals in a
way more slovenly than can be agreeable to the
aspirants for retrenchment. Measures of all sorts and
sizes are undergoing the process of transformation into
enactments—some half through, some a quarter, some
only a sixth, mere fceti or embryoes, that may turn
out, for all that we can guess just now, the veriest
abortions imaginable. And this is the position of
affairs in the Legislature at a moment singularly and
even lamentably inopportune, immediately before the
opening of the Great Exhibition, when observant
crowds from all quarters of the globe will be congre-
gating in our metropolis. Added to all which, ill-
feelings have been excited on all hands by the incom-
petence or perverseness of a certain section of the
Cabinet, so that when the actual period of its declen-
sion has closed with their retirement, they will quit
their seats with scarcely a semblance of commisera-
tion. Let not the Protectionists, however, exult over
much on the prospects of power opening before them,
but remember that its pleasures are now more than
ever accompanied by a sense of terrible and almost
overwhelming responsibilities.

There is a story recorded in the classic pages of
JOE MILLER respecting three Irishmen, who finding
at a late hour of the evening that they had still fifteen
miles of their journey unperformed, comforted them-
selves with the assurance " that it was only five
miles a piece." The moral appears to have sunk
deeply into the mind of Lord Joins RUSSELL, and to
have formed the foundation of the measure of pseudo-
Chancery reform which, after so long preparation
and so many sonorous flourishes, was at length intro-
duced on Thursday evening.

The measure was announced last year, and
although the details were not revealed, in
order to give ample time for the mature
and attentive consideration which the vast
importance of the subject so eminently merited,
there were sufficient indications, however, that the
Premier then contemplated the separation of the ju-
dicial and political functions of the office, and that one
permanent judge,
at least, would be appointed to
over the C b fb •
our 0 Equity, being probable
that another would be selected us chief
of the appellate jurisdiction of the House
preside
of Lords, so a,,s, to remove the anomaly of
an appeal not Iroua PRILir drunk to PuiLir,
,
sober," but from the Lord Chancellor in the Court of
Chanceryso2g.e in toth
ethe sameearned and distinguished per-
n if the magic influ-
ence of the latter position was quite sufficient to
disperse any errors that might have arisen in the