The Sun.
London, England, 1858-02-23 00:00:00

THE MINISTERIAL CRISIS.
1

(From the Daily News.)
Those who yesterday evening crowded the gallery
of the House of Commons, in the hope of hearing
from Lord Palmerston some explanatory statement
as to the recent resignation, were doomed to dis-
appointment. The late Prime Minister, rising
amid the silent expectation of an unusually thronged
and excited audience, simply announced, what every
one of his hearers already knew, that he and his
colleagues had, on Saturday, placed their resigna-
tions in the hands of the Queen ; that her Majesty
had accepted them ; and that Lord Derby was
then engaged in the construction of a Ministry.
Under these circumstances, his lordship moved the
adjournment of the house to Friday next. For
the present this is all that can be known with cer-
tainty regarding one of the most singularly rapid
and unexpected devolutions of power which the
annals of Parliamentary history can furnish. Be-
tween this and mat Friday the whisperers and the
mystery-mongers will have it all their own way.
Every day, every hour, will witness the flight of a
fresh brood of political canards from those prolific
breeding-grounds of Pall-mall and St. James's.
Those who take delight in this species of amuse-
ment will be diligently supplied with all the excite-
ment that can be derived from large lists of Cabinet
Ministers and Under-Secretaries—which duly re-
present the hopes of the interested, the guesses of
the ingenious—the private information of the " best
authorities"—everything, in short, but the facts of
the case. In this last trifling respect there is a high
probability of failure, for the simple reason that no
facts exist. The impossibility of seeing the Channel
fleet, " because it's not in sight," has been
acquiesced in by many generations of playgoers as
a somewhat unanswerable inference ; it would be
cruel to apply the same strict reasoning to the im-
patient spectators in the great political theatre, or
to argue that when no appointments have yet been
made their positive announcement must be re-
garded as premature. It is pleasanter, till we are
driven upon facts, to amuse ourselves with fancies,
and to allow the rumour of the morning to be au-
thoritative till it is supplanted by the report of the
afternoon—doomed in its turn to be knocked down
by the undoubted intelligence of the night.
Lord Derby is engaged in constructing a Govern-
ment. So much is certain ; and we aro well satis-
fied that it should be so. Without affecting to
assign places for the colleagues to whom he may be
expected to apply, it may safely be presumed that
he will hardly succeed in finding a President of the
Board of Control more incapable than Mr. Vernon
Smith ; an Attorney-General more ignorant of
constitutional, criminal or international law than
Sir Richard Bethell ; or a Privy Seal more eminent
for all that should not distinguish a British Peer,
than the most noble Ulick John De-Burgh, Mar-
quis of Clanricarde. That many difficulties immi-
nently beset Lord Derby—that many more are
looming ahead of him is sufficiently obvious to all;
it will be for himself and his friends to determine
whether they can muster the requisite courage
to oppose them. With regard to the Conspi-
racy Bill, that is doomed by the indignant judg-
ment of the country. The Chief Justice of
England emphatically denounced last night, in
the House of Lords, the dootrine—reported to have
been advanced by the late Attorney-General—
" that foreigners are able to do in this country that
which our own subjects are unable to do, and that
what would be a crime in natural-born British sub-
jects is a matter of impunity in foreigners." Lord
Cranworth could only defend his late colleague on
the hypothesis that it was impossible he could have
said what he was reported to say. It is sufficient
for Lord Derby's purpose that, according to the
preponderating balance of legal opinion, our own
ems are adequate for all reasonable purposes of
punishment. This is all that an English Minister
ought to want. This is where he should take his
md. Let our own old laws be put to the proof ;
f on trial, and iu the deliberate judgment of the
fifteen Judges, they are found to be inadequate, a
case for altering them will have arisen. Till then,
let them stand firm and unshaken. Such is the
position which the country expects to see taken on
this Conspiracy Bill by any Minister who now
undertakes the responsibilities of office. With
regard to the India Bill, another of the suppose.]
s.umbling-blocks of the now Administration, the
difficulty is surely more imaginary than real.
It would be an exaggeration .to pretend that the
feelings of the country on this point is to be com-
pared with that deep and vehement torrent of
suspicion, and alarm, and anger, which has just
swept away, in the apparent plenitude of his power,
one of the most personally popular of recent Minis-
ters. But this arises in a great measure from tie
remoteness and the intricacy of the subject, not
from any intelligent conviction in favour of the
Palmerstoniaa Bill. The country is by degrees
awakening to a sense of the danger likely to arise
from introducing into India a Horse-Guards army,
instead of a working army, and handing over the
civil patronage from the picked men of the middle
classes to the younger sons of the aristocracy. It is
conceivable enough that an expectant House of
Commons, at the bidding of a reckless Minister,
should eagerly lend itself to a scheme which would
make Parliamentary services and political jobbing
a recognised title to the official spoils of India.
But it does not follow that the country at large
would entertain this project with enthusiasm, or
even regard it with equanimity. It will be a per-
fectly safe and popular course for any Minister, to
postpone all legislation for India until the existing
mutiny is finally suppressed, and to no Minister
would that task be so easy as to Lord Derby.
The assumption by Lord Derby, at this crisis, of
the functions of Government would on many
grounds be anything but a detriment to the Liberal
party. That party has long been in a false posi-
tion. It has allied itself to a leader whose influence
was insidiously but surely leading it astray. What-
ever else the leader of English Liberal ism may have or
want, there is ono quality the possession of which is
absolutely indispensable. He must be profoundly,
penetrated by a just value for the peculiar charac-
teristics of English freedom. He must know and
feel how it is, and why it is, that England is at
this day the freest nation in the world ;—not an
American democracy, rough-ridden by a majority
—not a " Liberty-Equality-and-Fraternity" Uto-
pia, expiating months of ararehy by years of bon-
dage ; but a stately, firm, and ordered temple of
freedom, whose foundations are ancient law,
whose has-stone is personal right, within whose
precincts free speech and tree thought are native ;
where foreign spies and a foreign police have no
place ; with which a foreign despot date not inter-
meddle. The man trained up in the traditi ens of
this liberty, till its teachings have become an in-
stinct is the natural leader of the great Liberal
party of England. Lord Palmerston is emphatically
not such a man. In a day of universal reaction—a
period when, by the grace of bayonets, despots are
the dynasty of Europe—Lord Palmerston has
shown himself devoid of that just sense of the in-
estimable value of our island liberties which is the
prime requisite of an Eriglish Minister. TI
English Nation has felt this—the English House
of Commons has felt this—let Pall mull and

'Change-alley say what they will, this is why
Lord Palmerston has fallen. It would be a deep

misfortune—a misfortune which we will not

contemplate as a possibility—if Lord Palmerston,
from any failure of other ministerial combina-

tions, should be speedily recalled to power. _lt

would be damaging; to the honour of 'England—
it might, we sincerely believe, be dangerous to the
constitutional liberties of England—if Lord Pal-
merston, being such as recent events hare shown

him to be, could be brought back as the inevitable
and indispensable First Minister of the British
Empire. Surely we are not so poor in public men
that it has come to this ! A Derby Ministry is not,
for its own sake, what the country would desire ;
but it would be immeasurably preferable to a Pal-
merston recall. There are many other alternatives
to look to, and it may be confidently anticipated
that this would be the last resort of embarrassed

politicians, as it would undoubtedly be the worst.
We are not yet so nearly reduced to the political
level of our allies across the Channel that we must

necessarily look for political salvation from one
man alone. The devotees of Palmerston the First

cannot yet venture on the " tyrant's plea" of ne-
cessity, which his flatterers put forward in support
of Napoleon 111.

(From the Morning Advertiser.)
The decision of the House of Commons on Friday
night may prove, in the end, an event of historical
importance for all Europe. At any rate, it is en
incidentifraught with the greatest consequences for
our own public affairs. It is an emphatic assertion
of the national dignity of England. It is a denial,
to all foreign Powers, of the right they so haughtily
claim of interfering in matters English. And it is
an indignant protest against the anti-English policy
of those at home who intended making us succumb
to the threats of an alien despot. Viewed in this
bnaecneadsmauisiitdtaeogredwwwhheljeclrhfootwrheae
light, the " Vote on the Second Reading of the
Conspiracy Bill" becomes vested with a paramount
interest. Init., we have a turning point in ourforeign
as well wain our home policy—alandmark, as it were,
from whence to review the course that has been pur-
suedcan chalk out our policy for a coming time. Such
mbeoimngefnottrh
etohncea laststehei
t few
may
circumstances
man
roast a;
House came to its significant vote.

The wording of the amendment of the Member
for Ashton, as our readers are aware, was not such
as to render it literally tantamount to a rejection
of the bill. It was rather an expression of
"regret" that Miaistera should so far have for•