The Sun.
London, England, 1869-07-22 00:00:00

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LONDON, THURSDAY, JULY 22, 1869.

The decision understood to have been arrived at
yesterday by the Ministers of the Crown is certainly
remarkable. It remains to be seen--when it shall
this evening have been announced to the Lords
by the Earl GRANVILLE, as leader of the Go-
vernment in that Assembly—how it will be re-
garded, and how it can possibly be acted upon,
by the Conservative-Whig Opposition. Supposing
the debate to be actually renewed in spite of
a distinct proviso that the Bill be regarded as lost
unless the Peers reconsider, and, in point of fact,
reverse their decision of Tuesday nigh:, in that matter
of the preamble—theleast probable incident that could
well be calculated upon by the Administration—the time
consumed by this renewal of the debate will only be
so much more time wasted. In the temper the
House of Lords is now in, it is simply ridiculous to
count upon their reversing their opinion in regard to
the contumelious treatment of their amendments by
the House of Commons under the direct instigation
of the powerful Minister at the Head of the Govern-
ment. It is frivolous, moreover, for the Lord Chan.
cellor to resent with such burning words of indig-
nation the jocularity indulged in by the Marquis of
SALISBURY when dealing with the matter under dis-
cussion. The joke was simply going the round—having
been started, in fact, by the sarcastically humourous
allusion by the Prime Minister himself to the House
of Lords as Up in a Balloon. If Ministers are so
exquisitely sensitive of ridicule, if, in common par-
lance, they are so exceedingly thin-skinned, as Lord
HATHERLEY'S outbreak of temper would appear to im-
ply, it seems a pity that they, themselves, shou'd not
have remembered,bethues, the good old axiom, which
recommends all those living in glass houses not to I
fling stones. Again, it appears to us rather ludicrous
to note the flame of passion with which the hon. gen-
tleman the member for the North Riding of York-
shire, resents what he has the absurdity to call
a certain noble lord's (m aning Lord SALISBURY'S)

" insult" to the House of Commons and " insolence "
to Mr. GLADSTONE. Insult to the House of Commons
forsooth ! We should uncommonly like to know
which, if either of the two Houses, has, all through
this session, in season and out of season, within and
without the walls of the Palace of the Legisla-
turc,'.been insulted flagrantly, pointedly, wantonly,
wildly in one sense and intermittently, but in
another persistently and systematically ! Ask any
thousand men taken haphazard out of any dense
mass of our three million observant Londoners, and
we question very much whether one solitary in-
dividual amongst them could be found to
say it was the House of Commons, and
whether more than nine hundred and ninety-nine
would nob instantly proclaim at once, on the con-
trary, that it was the House of Lords. Then, again,
as to what Mr. MILBANK monstrously calls Lord
SALISBURY'S ".insolence" to Mr. GLADSTONE. Why,
the epithet is simply outrageous. What the Marquis
said, instead of partaking in any way of the character
of insolence, amounted, far rather, to a very extrava-
gant declaration of the Prime Minister's personal
importance. To adopt the extraordinarily em-
phasised diction of the Duke of ARGYLL, we
would [say—Why, we heard it. with our own ears !
[With nobody else's.] Lord SALISBURY'S remark
—his insolent remark, according to the member for
the North Riding of Yorkshire—being simply to the
effect that the rejection, as one might say in the lump,
of the Lords' Amendments was the act not of the
nation, not of the House of Commons, but was the
expression or result of the arrogant will of one single
man ! At the utterance of which words the Peers
roared their applause like any mob—thereby partici-
pating in the responsibility of the expression, or in
other terms, adopting that expression as their own by
the very plaudits accorded to those words, as they
fell from the lips of the Marquis of SALISBURY. But
reverting to the words themselves—" the arrogant
will of one single man"—wherein can possibly be de-
tected anything whatever like insolence ? Is it in the
word arrogant ? Then--(which would be absurd, as
absurd even as Mr. MILBANK'S ridiculous; imputa-
tion)—ought that hitherto tolerably familiar adjective
to be expunged forthwith from the English diction-
ary. Repeating, again, the Duke of ARGYLL'S odd
phrase—we would say, with his Grace's ludicrous ex-
aggeration of emphasis, that Lord SALISBURY'S words,
his no doubt caustic but certainly not "insolent" words,
we heard with own ears, on Tuesday night, at the
moment of their utterance ! A glance of the eye
recognizing, the instant afterwards, on the steps of
the Throne, Mr. GLADSTONE himself, and in the
Peeress's Gallery, the wife of the Prime Minis-
ter ! Lord SALISBURY'S words, so far from being
insolent were calculated to be rather as incense in the
nostrils of any great Leader of Party—for inas-
much as they must have realized to him a very lofty
notion, indeed, of his own individual importance.
The arrogant will of one single ma❑ ! Why, they
are words that might apply to an Arbitrer of the
destinies of the Human Race, such, let us say,
as even NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. And words, too,
that if so applied to NAPOLEON the GREAT would
certainly not have been deemed by him to be ex-
pressive, in his regard, of anything like insolence.
The member for the North Riding of Yorkshire
had, henceforth, far better look to his own familiarity
with at least a portion of the alphabet tha❑ criticise
another man's vocabulary—he had better mind hie