The Sun.
London, England, 1858-02-20 00:00:00

TEE DEFEAT OF THE MINISTRY.

(Prom the Daily News )
By a majority of 234 to 215, the House of Commons has
expressed its regret that Ministers did not answer the inso-
lently dictatorial despatch of Count Walewski, before pro-
ce ding to introduce their Conspiracy Bill. This may not be
quite equivalent to a vote of want of confidence, but
it certainly is a vote of censure, and that is not much more
flattering to the C ,binet. Every friend to the honour and
dignity of the country will thank Mr. Milner Gibson for
I hating afforded the House of Commons this opportunity of
expressing its regret at the failure of the Foreign-office to answer
the demand of the French Government f ,r the adoption of new
penal measures against foreignersdomiciled amongst us. Apart
from the tone of assumpti is and dictation in which the
demand was officially made, aad the offensive and threaten-
ing language un-officially, but not the less significantly, used
to enforce it iu high quarters, the mere fact that a powerful
ally should formally require the responsible Ministers of an
English Sovereign to change the legislative or administrative
policy of the country ought at any time to have elicited a
serious and deliberate answer. To have permitted such a
requisition to pass unrebuked, or to have suffered the incom-
patibility of its purpose with all we hold traditionally most
dear in national liberty to pass undemonstrated, would, in
former days, have subjected a Minister to the gravest re-
proach. Lord Hawkesbury thought so when he wrote his
oft-quoted reply to tho summons of Napoleon I. that we
should surrender, at his discretion,our political individuality.
The Foreign Secretary of England in 1803 was a Tory, as
were a majority of his colleagues in the administration ; but
he was animated with the true spirit of an Englishman, and
with the entire approval of the Sovereign and Parliament of
the time he put courteously, but unflinchingly, on record
the reasons why it would have been unbecoming iu him to
entertain foreign suggestions for changes in our domestic
laws. Lord Hawkesbury answered with sense and spirit,
and with the calm courtesy of a minister who had no wish
to involve his country in a quarrel, but with the dignified
firmness that is always best calculated to remind a rash
intermeddler that he is in the wrong. Ho had to deal, as
he well kirew, with an impetuous soldier intoxicated with
victory and full of conquest and aggression. Yet he did not
falter for an instant, or truckle by the use of an equivocal
phrase. The true instinct of honour guided his pen, and
guided it successfully. The first Napoleon knew h
respect courage in diplomacy as well as in the field to
fi and
angry though ho was, or affected to be, at the inflexibility
aof
the British Government in resisting his attempt tobrow bet
them, he did not recall his Ambassador, or even talk of going
to war.
Unhappily, Lord Clarendon has pursued a different course.
Though bred a Tory and trained in the maxims of the
party, the present Foreign Secretary se ems to have imbibed
i
little of the high ' and resolute p
faults, distinguished tine statesmen of
which, with all their
of Mr. Pitt's school. And
Lord Palmerston, who is now the sole survivor of the class to
which the Hawkesburys, and Wellesleys, and Cunnings be-
longed, seems to have outlived alike their policy and their
pluck. How would the men who did not hesitate to repel
theUreat Napoleon's insolent interference regard the faint-
hearted and unworthy silence in which the orders of Monsieur
Walewski and, the menaces of Monsieur Persigny have been
received F Wild they rite from
_their marble _tom) m and