The Sun.
London, England, 1860-11-13 00:00:00

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
THIS DAY.—Morning, !lh. 722m.—Afternoon, lh. 45m.
To-monnow.-Morning, 2h. Bm.—Afternoon, 2h. !32m.

LONDON. TUESDAY, NOV. 13, 1860.

The Cabinet Council convened this afternoon, at
the official residence of the Prime Alinister, is in a
manner the nucleus, as we may call it, of a cluster of
great Ministerial opportunities. Let us hope that
events will show that these same opportunities
have neither been overlooked nor neglected when
recognised, by the high advisers of the SOVEREIGN.
At this reunion, it should be remarked, the
Administrators of England have been brought
together exactly midway between the annual pro-
rogation and re-assembling of Parliament. During
the interval which elapses (every recurring twelve-
month) between these two important events, a
weightier responsibility devolves, as a matter of
course, upon the Ministers of the Crown, as the
conservators of the honour of the country, and as
the regulators and directors (unembarrassed, for a
while, by the co-operation or interposition of the
two Houses of the Legislature), of the gigantic,
yet delicate and complicated mechanism of
our Constitutional Government. At home and
abroad -- in regard to the policy of this
country—they are necessarily in a great mea-
sure as supremely " monarchs of all they survey"
as SELKIRK on his desert island: they are thus in
a great measure collectively as a Cabinet, and thus
also are they each of them peculiarly and individually
in the conduct of the affairs of their respective de-
partments. The only moderating influences indeed
which can be said to affect the councils of her
MAJESTY'S Ministers during this long period of
independent action, apart from the authority of the
Lords and Commons in Parliament assembled, are
those derived on one hand from the remembrance
that with the return of February the Legislature
of the empire will be again brought together, and
upon the other (this influence being always more
urgently felt, because absolutely unceasing in its
evidenees of activity and of vigilance) from the un-
sleeping watchfulness, and the bold and ever
audible voice of Public Opinion as enunciated
through ese,
Kress. if Ministers, therefore, are
thus annually allowed, during very nearly one-half
of the year, viz 9 from the end of August until the
beginning of February, a show•of more than ordinary
independence, an appeamnce almost, as one may say
of actual irresponsibility—their burden of respon-
sibilities, both collective and .
individual, are in
truth only, as we before intimated, enhanced in-
stead of being diminished ; they •
nre never for an
•
instant independent either of that Public Opinion
which perpetually envelopes them, as it were, like
an atmosphere, or of that Coming Session, which
must always haunt the conscience of a Cabinet,
almost like a sense of remorse, during the whole of
the five or six months' interval of the winter vaca-
tion.
At any ordinary Cabinet Council convened ex-
actly midway between the last and the next session
of Imperial Parliament, one might not unreason-
ably presume that the Ministers of the Crown
must necessarily, if only from the mere circum-
stance of their assembling thus exactly midway
between those two (to themselves especially) impor-
tant events—that Ministers, if for no other reason,
at any rate for that, must be impelled then espe-
cially to take a more than usually comprehensive,
and impartial, and attentive survey of the position
into which the policy of the country, both at home
and abroad, had by that time been brought under
their Ministerial guidance, or, it might be, even
in spite of their Ministerial guidance.
'I he Cabinet Council of this afternoon, however,

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THE SUN.