The Sun.
London, England, 1860-12-15 00:00:00

have won for himself, in the National Walhalla. '
As with so many of our peers, his names, style,
and title, as recounted by the heralds, ring
grandiosely enough upon the ear—the deceased
being designated the Right Hon. GEORGE HAMIL-
TON GORDON, Earl of ABERDEEN, Viscount FOR-
MANTINE, Baron HADDO, METHLICK, TARTER,
and KELLIE, in the peerage of Scotland, Viscount
GORDON of ABERDEEN in that of the United
Kingdom, and (a bit of an anti-climax this, it
sounds to us) a Baronet of Nova Scotia. Stately
though the appellations, however, what a mockery
it all seems when the dead patrician lies in his
coffin, and the wand is broken and the fragments of

t cast after the coffin into the open grave.

It is not, however, by any means as a
member of the patrician. order in this country
that Lord ABERDEEN'S name appears before us
as one in any way worthy of remembrance.
Though of an ancient race and an illustrious,
Lord ABERDEEN stood forth among his peers
as one in no particular so especially conspicuous.
He was only the fourth possessor of the Earldom.
It is as a diplomatist and as an administrator
that Lord ABERDEEN is entitled to consideration
from his fellow countrymen. In both these capa-
cities his labours, during the first half of this nine-
' teenth century, had been so frequent and so
remarkable, they were at some periods so protracted
and at others 'Were invested with such an awful
responsibility, that it is incumbent upon us to cast,
however cursorily, a retrospect glance over the
career of the departed statesman—conscious,
when doing so, that while by his public
labours he was unquestionably one of the foremost
men of his age, by his individual capacities he was.
beyond a doubt, all the time a man of the merest
mediocrity. He was no orator. He was a diplo-
matist without finesse. He was a leader of men
without any commanding ability. As a statesman
he was deficient in sagacity. As an administrator
he lacked courage, he lacked forethought. It was
during the period of his longest continuous
tenure of office as Foreign Secretary, under
Sir ROBERT PEEL'S Administration ,that he allowed
himself to be cozened by the wiliest of all the
huckstering Monarchs that ever sat upon an
European throne—Hence the Spanish marriages—
hence the downfall of Louis PHILIPPE—hence the
convulsion of all Europe by the consequent outbreak
of the February Revolution, For all which the
late Earl of ABERDEEN was directly in a very great
measure responsible. History will infallibly say
this. We are only anticipating its inevitable
utterance. Again—it was during his subsequent
three years' power as Prime Minister of England,
as chief of the great Omnium Gatherum Coalition,
at the Head of All the Talents and of
All the Mediocrities—[the Premier himself
at the head of the latter class—he who was in
truth, with all submission to Mr. DISRAELI,
more undoubtedly than even JENKINSON,
Lord LIVERPOOL, the Arch Mediocrity !]—it was
during Lord ABERDEEN'S three years' Premier-
ship that England, France, Turkey, and Sardinia
"drifted" into that miserable war in the Crimea—
that sanguinary and deplorable struggle with the
Autocrat of All the Russias—causing (quite
unnecessarily) the destruction of thousands upon
thousands of lives, end the squandering of mil-
lions upon millions of gold. All these calamities
being attributable, we do believe firmly in our
conscience, to that constitutional timidity which
was Lord ABERDEEN'S most conspicuous charac-
teristic—a timidity that dimmed All the shining
Talents of all his illustrious colleagues—that
paralysed the collective energies of the Coali-
tion, that palsied even for the time
being the lofty resolution of such men as Lord JOHN
RUSSELL and Viscount PALMERSTON. It were
criminal to " hush up" the truth in this matter—it
were criminal to gloss over the frightful and
lamentable fact that to the enervating influence of
this deplorable timidity of Lord ABERDEEN, at the
head of the last Coalition Government, the death
of a whole army was mainly attributable. Let us
speak the truth right out, though the heavens ruin
down upon us. Had the Government of the late Earl
of ABERDEEN, that deplorable and cumbrous Coali-
tion, avowed plainly and betimes to the late Russian
Emperor NICHOLAS " Pause ! Cross not the
Pruth ! Dare not to advance one step further in
the direction of Const antinople—Oß,a collision with
the Allied Powers of Western Europe will be the
one inevitable consequence !"—the Crimean war
would never have come to pass-100,000 men would
neverhave perished—.£loo,ooo,ooowould never have
been squandered in working out the terrible task
of their destruction. We are not prophets after
-the event in thus speaking.. We repeat now (in
these columns) only what was said then (in these
columns) before that dreadful war had commenced.
The Coalition, nevertheless, under the bann, under
the curse of Lord ABERDEEN'S hesitating and timo-
rous Premiership, allowed England, in spite of all
remonstrance, to drift, drift, drift into the war.
Et hint ilice lachrymce. Hence the crash of that
appalling collision, of that collision between the
East and the West, that (but for Lord ABERDEEN)
was in very truth so easily avoidable. The best,
indeed, that we can say of Lord ABERDEEN as an
administraleir may be condensed into those few
words, He; »2eant well, those few fatal words that
have but too often implied, as they unquestion-
ably imply in this present instance, such a world
of unintentional disasters, such an appalling mass
of undesigned destructiveness.

The Liberals of Northampton have had their
annual show—their two members being, of course,
the prize speakers, and as one, Mr. GILPIN, was a
Minister, and tha other a Lord, the fete ought
not to be unworthy of some notice. Mr. GILPIN,
indeed, declined to speak as Minister when a little
pressed by Mr. VERNON on the subject of the
Poor-laws and out-door relief, and gave almost
such a Delphic answer as he would have done to
a deputation—the Poor-law was the law of the
land, but no doubt it was susceptible of modera-
tion, and those who had the charge of it were
desirous of its being administered with all possible
humanity.

Not so Delphic was his language on the French
treaty—that was an equivocal good. Instead of
defending it, however, himself he preferred to quote
the honourable recantation of a Tory paper in the
North of the largest circulation :—" The _Manches-
ter Guardian, following the lead of the Times,
opposed Mr. COBDEN. and said, with many terms
far from complimentary to the Emperor of the
FRENCH that
our glorious freetrader had been taken
in by him. Now, the Manchester Guardian, after
commenting
upon the '
treaty says, For this good
n sult we areint
dneEbNte,daidetao
bythe intelligence and
zeal of Mr. co
from this country, and active deputations
to the enlightened
views of the French Government. We feel that,
in
our fear lest our redoubtable
byu
Manchesteror a
astute
true
te e-
b
t racier
should be practised
upon
neighbour, an injustice was done
us to that
~entlenian, and so far from hesitating
to make the
amande honorable, we gladly embrace the oblige;
If
Now that is honest.
tion in do so.' people are
mistaken, owing to the press, with respect to a
treaty which is worthy of all praise, it is but honest
on the part of the press to acknowledge their mis-