The Sun.
London, England, 1851-02-27 00:00:00

who only judge him when he is seeking to divert the ennui
of security by incidental political digressions. After Agitat-
ing the country, and inflaming political animosity, Lord
Stanley would only find that a dissolution had left him more

hopelessly overpowered than ever. It will be wiser to be
content with Parliamentary defeats than to risk a final and
ruinous appeal to the country. Wisest of all will be the
course of admitting in time that the attempt to form an Ad-
ministration is hopeless. It is not improbable that Lord
Stanley will establish this negative claim to the gratitude of
the country. He has, thus far, not been greedy of office ; and
he may not be tenacious in keeping it.
DAILY NEWS.—The rumours yesterday were few re-
specting the formation of a Government. Hopeful excite-
ment has subsided, and a dolorous gloom pervaded political
circles, as if England was as incapable as France of finding
men to govern it. Lord Stanley, it was said, had required a
prolongation of the time, and was allowed till Friday to
soften and to weld his unpromising and unpliable materials.
Yet his Lordship was considered to have few hopes of either
inducing the country gentlemen to leave protection an "open
question," or to get any or many of the Peelites to embark
with him in so rough a sea, and for so little purpose. The
speculator in future Ministries was, therefore, compelled to look
once more along the scattered ranks of the Free-traders,where
in truth reigns aught but unanimity. With a great many the
-crisis seems narrowed to a mere question of persons. And
the difficulty seems to be not what course to follow out, what
principles and measures to insist on, but bow to pack the
crews of two vessels into one. Li order to begin fairly and
-calmly the first proposal is to fling the old captain overboard,
without, at the same time, acquainting us who is to be the
new. Such is the cool proposition of the Times. According
to this ready reservoir for any malignity, which a party on
the rise may choose to void on a party falling, Lord John
Russell is a great criminal: his " letter gays intensity and
political importance to the anti-Papal agitation." Heaven
knows that if any mouth or pen stirred and aggravated
that agitation, it was the daily articles of the Times, which
journal, in greedily welcoming and prominently publishing
the famous Durham letter, accompanied it by the following
terse and expressive article :
" The letter of Lord John Russell to the Bishop of Dur-
ham, which we publish elsewhere, deserves the deepest at-
tention. It is a clam and uncompromising statement of
principles and opinions which are entertained with wonder-
ful unanimity by all the wise and moderate in this country.
Sweeping aside with manly vigour the false and sophistical
analogies in which the subject has been sought to be en-
tangled, Lord John Russell points at once to the real merits
of the question—the assumption of authority over her Ma-
jesty's subjects and supremacy over her dominions. But
treating these empty bravadoes of a petty foreign prince with
comparative contempt, he proceeds to point to the fountain
and origin of the evil—the apostacy of a large number of the
English clergy, who have prepared the way by secret treason
for this open attack upon our Church and Crown. These sen-
timents, as terse and vigorous as they are wise and true,
would command respect from whatever quarter they came, but
their importance is infinitely enhanced when we consider that
•they are the deliberate opinions of a statesman, the tried
friend of toleration, who has now, alas! no equal in know-
ledge of our constitution and experience of its working, and
whose mind is deeply imbued with the spirit of that ancient
limited monarchy which has descended to us alone of all
the nations of Eur Ope pure and unimpaired. Still more
important is this letter as, a solemn pledge given by the
head of our Executive Government to the nation, that the
two enormous grievances which it points out shall not
remain unredressed, If the law be comprehensive enough
to reach the offenders, it will be put in force ; if not, Lord
John Russell still expresses a persuasion, in which all will
join, that we are strong enough to repel all
outward attacks. Nor can we believe that Lord
John Russell has thus publicly and emphatically called at-
tention to the apostacy of many clergymen of our own
Church, who are acting within her precincts the part of
Roman Catholic propagandists, and of whose abandonment
of their insidious courses he expresses no hope, merely for
the purpose of holding up those persons to obloquy and
disgrace, however well merited We trust to see in these
expressions signs of a purpose, not yet, perhaps, fully,
matured, but rapidly growing towards completion—the pur-
pose of cleansing our Church from the discredit cast upon her
quite as much by the treachery as by the schism of her
members—the purpose of rendering our universities some-
thing better than schools of Popery and mysticism—the pur-
pPse of restoring to us our Church such as the Reformation
gave it to us, the child of light and reason, unclouded by
superstition, undegraded by priestcrafc, clear and comprehen-
sive in her doctrines, built upon truth, and siphoning false-
hood. If Lord John Russell does really entertain such in-
tentions, we are convinced he may count with confidence on
the support of the English people, who are above all things
lovers of truth, and who, though perfectly willing to tolerate
any difference of opinion from their own, will not tolerate
the domineering spirit which seeks for supremacy because it
has been allowed equality, nor the sordid treachery which
hides its insidious advances under the mask of a hollow con-
formity."
Now, is it not disgraceful that an English journal of the
first circulation and repute should feel itself so above every
scruple of conscience, every feeling of honour, every respect
for consistency, that it durst pnblish two such opinions,
within the space of a few weeks of the same document and
the same Minister? Throughout the entire rise of that reli-
gious agitation, the Times hounded on the clergy and the
laity,. and the Cabinet. And because, forsooth, this has had
the effect of alienating a score of Irish supporters of the Go-
vernment, the Times turns round, recants its Protestant zeal,
eats its own Whig panegyrism, and actually comes at the
head of a band of official rivals to demand the dismissal of
that Minister whom, at the head of the public, it drove to
commit that very act, and adopt that very policy, for which
the sacrifice is demanded. If a public man did this, what
should we call him ? Yet one fault scarcely implicates
a country. Whereas a journal like the Times is considered
as one representing the country in its consistency and mo-
rality, as well as in its' opinion. And if so, what is the
character of the English public? We shall not follow the
long and, formal string of accusations which the Times
brought yesterday against that patron in whom it saw
no fault till the day that he fell. We were never
supporters of Lord John. We are as alive to his defects as
to his merits. But when we recollect his long career, his
early struggles, not for place, which was then hopeless, but
for the achievement of those great measures of civil and re,
ligious liberty which for ever must attach to and immor-
talise his name, we must own that we regard those flatterers
who licked this great Minister's plate, and who now, curs
that theyare, turn to bay and bite at his heels, with a feel-
ing of contempt indeed for them, but of indignant sorrow for
the country whose character they stain. We are not, how-
ever, prepared to maintain that Lord John Russell should
have_ a life-tenure of power. If he have failed in the neces-
sary art and address of preserving the attachment of his
party, let him retire, But to dismiss such a
statesman with a kick, such as Harlequin might
deal to Pantaloon, this, though it may suit the Times,
jars with our ideas of • justice and decorum. Let
us, moreover, see, ere we condemn him, that we
actually gain by the change. If Lord Stanley and the
Protectionists have a chance of success, it lies in the break
up of the great Liberal party, and its not being efficiently
led. The Times, with its wonted feelings of delicacy and
justice, throws all the blame of Sir Charles Wood's Budget
upon Lord John. And what it proposes is neither more nor
less than to preserve and perpetuate in
.power the whole
dynasty of the Greys, Woods, and all, dismissing Lord John,
like a scape-goat, his back laden with their crimes. We will
not imitate the Times in discussing the merits and adminis-
trative talents of Lord Grey, nor yet of Sir Charles Wood.
He is defunct, unless the Times' intrigue should galvanise
him. What we would say is, that the country have a
right to have-the beat men of the Liberal party to form a
Cachibeifns eoLf
flanmiolriedsertoto
expellaave tohthemel: wtheiemfsusotf nfaomt
ilies. Wthee
must insist on having the best men, without their tails.
We want Lord John without the Russells and Elliotts—
Lord Grey without his clientelle. If Lord John is to be ex-
iled to Woburn we cannot do less than fling Sir Charles
Wood into the Thames. Let us have a Cabinet of capable
men, business men, trustworthy men; and let us not allow
them to form cliques and family parties, each declaring that
lie cannot come in without his friends, as if a Ministerial
council was like a feudal gathering in which opinions pre-
vailed according to the length of the chieftain's tail. Let-
us have a broad Cabinet, no snug family party of Graham
end Grey, one pretending to be a Conservative, the other
affecting to be Liberal, and neither being either the one or
the other but so tar as it suits them, to gull the House and
make political capital. Constitutional government, as far as
it is carried on by a Cabinet, has hitherto been a humbug.
And what the Times and other people are now striving at is
just to svbstitute a complex humbug for a simple one. We
can see plainly the intrigues getting up for the purpose.
WhoeYer will look into them will see nothing but baseness
and selfishness at work. And if the public light be not let
in the same will go on to the end of time.
POST.—The Ministerial crisis continues, and Rumour is
as busy as usual upon such occasions. Every possible and
impossible combination of men—every conceivable and in-
conceivable amalgamation of measures—all that has ever
been, and all that can ever be, of political action and politi-
cal passion, is, in its turn, asserted as the sure and certain
catastrophe of'this strange and unpremeditated drama. The
truth seems to retire from public gaze, within the decent
precincts of her native modesty. That she does exist there
can be no doubt, but where she is and what she is about no
one seems to be able to tell. In the absence of fact the rage
for fiction is insatiable, and consistency either in statement
or in opinion is sadly out of fashion. Of error, in fact, even
in inconsiderable matters, the Chronicle, the Times, and
the Daily News of yesterday give us curious speci-
mens. The Chronicle says that Mr. Gladstone
gallantly fought at the right hand of Sir Robert
Peel, from December, 1845, to the dissolution
of the Peel Government. The truth is that Mr. Gladstone

lost his seat for Newark when he accepted the office vacated
in December, 1845, by Lord Stanley, and could not get any
other constituency to elect him. die remained out of Parlia-
ment altogether till the general ction of 1847, when Ox-
ford, on ecclesiastical grounds only, returned him to the
House of Commons. During the whole time, therefore,
when the, Chronicle says 'that the Right Hon. Gentleman
was lighting " at the right hand" of his chief, he was not in
the battle at all. He was presentin spirit, perhaps, and that
is as well, so no. doubt was the writer in the Chronicle. The
_ _

Times, fearful that a less apparento; more important mis-
statement might evince a less ardent attachment to error for
her own sake, tells us, in the enthusiasm of his delight
in being wrong, that the Ministry just dead, or
living as the case may be, held office longer than any
other, except the Liverpool Administration. But the
Melbourne Ministry existed from April, 1835, to September,
1841. Lord John Russell's Government came into office in
July, 1846, and lasted until February, 1851. So the Times
declares to the world that four years and seven months is
considerably longer than six years and five months. This is
a small matter, but extremely edifying withal. The Daily
News gives as the newest news from Paris, that Monsieur
Lemoine has just published the latest sentiments of Louis
Philippe, taken down from his own lips. Anybody may
have read M. Lemoine's book in London many months ago.
Such things as these are natural, we suppose, in the time
of a ministerial crisis. Still, they fail to attract atten-
tion, and so the Times resolves to exhibit a more won-
derful wonder than them all. He tells just the smallest
possible modicum of the truth, and if this do not
astonish the world, what on earth will? Our contemporary
yesterday gravely announced the fact, that Lord John Rus-
sell is out of office, or so nearly so, that the difference between
the two conditions is not worth mentioning. The Noble
Lord is, he believes, to be no longer Minister. And what
has the Times to tell the world upon this matter? Why,
that the Times has changed his opinion of Lord John Russell.
Had Lord John continued in office, the Times declares
lustily, and truly no doubt, that he would have supported
him with all the might of Printing House-square. He
would have pronounced him the possessor of every virtue,
and the very pattern of statesmanship; but as
he is out, look ye, my masters—aye, and the only
one who will certainly not come in again—the
sabaz Times avows and swears that he is the very scurviest
politician-,,the most blundering Minister that ever held office.
Any of his late colleaves may, do very well—for the Times
is not sure but that with Lord Stanley or Sir James Graham
Mr. Cobden or somebody, they play yet be in power.
So, if they have any faults, let them bg transferreil to Lord
John. What has a man, ho may yet be in office to do with
faults? If anybody has sinned, let Lord John be punished, for
he is no longer in power. That the Times would pursue such
A course as this most men believed, bat that it would avow it
in the face of day we think no ono was prepared to expect. Let