The Sun.
London, England, 1858-02-24 00:00:00

THE NEW LORD CHANCELLOR,

Like the great Lord Chancellor Erskine Sir
Frederic Thesiger began active life in the Erskine,
navy, and would doubtless have distinguished him-
self as a sailor had it not been for the sudden death
of an elder brother, which entirely changed his
career. Soon after this event, which occurred in the
year 1811, young Thesiger, in compliance with his
father's wishes, quitted the navy, and repaired to the
island of St. Vincent, in the West Indies, where
his parent resided, and had an estate.
.Not long
after Lis arrival he resolved to follow the law, and
immediately began to attend the courts ; but in the
subsequent year, for the better prosecution of his
studies, he came to England, and was entered at
Gray's Inn, which, however, he afterwards aban-
doned for the Inner Temple. The period which
elapsed between the autumn of 1814 and Novem-
ber, 1818, when he was called to the bar, was
occupied by Mr. Thesiger as a pupil—first in the
chambers of that most eminent lawyer, the late Mr.
Justice Holroyd, and upon his promotion to the
bench in those of Godfrey Sykes, a celebrated
special pleader of the day. Upon being called to
the bar Thesiger attended the Surrey Sessions, and
went the Home Circuit, on which he quickly gained
a considerable practice and was for several
years
the leader. In 1834 he obtained a silk gown, and
ten ytars afterwards (iu Easter term, 1844) was
made Solicitor-General, uuder the Administration
of Sir Robert Peel, and in 1845, Attorney-General.
Upon the dissolution of Sir Robert Peel's Govern-
ment, in 1846, he resigned Lis office, and was. suc-
ceeded.i
after his resignation Sir Nicholas TindadlAttorney-
General, steped into the vacant
public
_
proviously
desire and expectation of the b and
regarded as the rightfultrent but brief
Thesiger. Of Sir Frederic'
rd 80erb3- all the world is
tenure of office under
loud
Sir Frederic
dis-
aware. At last,
?after
reat man has reaped a reward
Appointments, this g prerogative
pliluethnscee'l andif many
ids deserts. Ho has accepted
commensurate
for his own sake. That he will
retails it We hope
discharge its duties worthily wo arc well assured.
the dignity of Lordwi Chancellor. That he may long

THE MINISTERIAL CRISIS.

(From the Daily News.)
Intrigue is busy, and at every corner fabulous
tales_ salute the ear. In the resignation of Saturday
last, it is hardly now disguised that there was an
arriere pate.see. Lorul Deruy rums Lot ven.ure, it
was supposed, to undertake the task of forming an
Administration • and upon this delusion the dis-
comfited and dismissed tremblers at the nod of
Louis Napoleon reposed till Sunday night. It then
became 'generally known that the Conservative
Chief had accepted the task confided to him ; but
the hope remained that he might fail, and to secure
its fulfilment no artifice of rumour was left unem-
ployed. As time wore on, however, and the hope
died out, it hourly became harder to sustain droop.
ing spirits and to invent new difficulties which
alight even for the moment look like real. A mas-
terpiece, in its way, of this kind of thing, was the
ungracious perversion of an act in itself every way
honourable and creditable on the part of Lord
Derby's son. With a generous instinct of what was
due to himself and to others under the circum-
stances, Lord Stanley, we believe, spontaneously
waived all personal claims to consideration, and ad-
vised his father to seek Parliamentary strength in
the formation of his Cabinet beyond the circle of
his own family or connexion. Any lower office than
that of Cabinet Minister the noble member for
King's Lynn felt he ought to take, after having
been offered a Secretaryship of State by the late
Premier. But Lord Stanley also felt that the
Whigs had made the imputation of family cabal in-
tolerably odious to the country ; and he wished to
take the opportunity in his own person of showing
that he and his friends were capable of acting in
this report a worthier part. What, then, must be
the state of desperation to which the claqueurs of
Lord Palmerston are reduced when they could tor-
ture such an incident as this into the assertion that
the offers of Lord Derby had been spurned by his
own son I Equally reckless and absurd seems to
have been the reliance placed upon the production
of Lord Cowley's dastardly and disgraceful de-
spatch. The minority who voted in favour of M.
Walewski's insolence being mutely borne were con,
fidently assured that as soon as the contents of the
document in question were known the tables would
be turned, and the majority would feel that they had
been in!the wrong. But we cantruly say, that within
our recollection no public letter of an English Minis-
ter, ether at home or abroad, has ever been received
by such an universal cry of shame and scorn. When
Lord Clarendon telegraphed to the Englishambassa-
dorat Paris foraletter of credit, he ought to have filled
up the draft himself ; he ought to have known that
Lord Cowley did not possess the intellect capable
of adroitly doing the dangerous work he asked him;
and for the credit of the name of Wellesley, if not
for the honour of the country, which was at stake
he ought to have spared him the ignominy of self:
immolation. If the un-English and unmanly paper
laid upon the table on Monday night by Lord Cla-
rendon be not torn to pieces and flung into the dust
by the Commons, the voice of the country, repudi-
ating its base and abject terms, will make itself
heard in a marmernot to be disregarded or mistaken.
The conviction is forced upon all candid minds by
the perusal of every craven sentence of Lord Cow-
ley's, that it was high time to make a thorough
change in our Foreign-office. Stupid and syco-
phantic as it is, no man in his senses would have
written such a letter to Lord Clarendon at such a
juncture if he did not feel it would have been ac-
ceptable. 1 hat it was acceptable is proved by the
fact of its uncalled-for production by the censured
Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Evidence of incapa-
city to comprehend the national will and character
can no further go.
And now but one resource remains—that of back-

stairs intrigue. Having failed to bully the nation
into fear of the wrath of France, no pains will be
spared to betray the Court into the fatal mistake of
setting at nought the decision of the House of Com-
mons. Once before during the present reign a Mi-
nistry who had been left in a minority in Parlia-
ment were reinstated in office after another Cabinet
had actually been formed. The infelicitous prece-
dent is now recurred to in anxious whispers, and w hat
was done before, it is muttered, may safely be done
again. For the sake of that which is far more precious
than the temporary ascendency of any aristocratic
patty, or the passing or rejection of any measure,
however intrinsically important, we sincerely hope
that these insidioussuggestionsmay never be listened
to in high places. Eighteen years have passed since
Sir Robert Peel on presenting himself at the door
of the royal closet found it unexpectedly closed
against him. The Queen was then very young, and
had not been very long upon the throne. Parties
were at the time very evenly balanced. Though a
majority of five on a Jamaica Bill had led to the
resignation of Lord Melbourne, upon the general
of the country at home and abroad he still
could claim the approval of the House of Commons.
In a singularly doubtful case the youthful Monarch
threw her sceptre into the trembling scale, and the
Opposition leader, though surprised and chagrined,
had the wisdom and generosity to acquiesce with-
out an audible murmur.
It might, perhaps, be enough to say that in con-
stitutional practice a deviation such as we have
referred to is all the less likely to happen now be-
cause it has happened before. A loyal and peace-
loving people are accustomed to look leniently upon
the rare and casual exercise of power even when
they disapprove of it ; but the same people are alt
the more apt to conceive and express resentment
when the exception threatens to become a rule
Apart, however, from all such considerations the
cases sought to be paralleled are widely different. '
The Ministry of Lord Melbourne was tripped up
by a vote upon a bill of which not one man in ten
thousand of the population had ever heard, and
about which not one in fifty thousand cared a jet.
The Cabinet of Lord Palmerston has been driven
from power amidst the exultation of the great body
of the people, and by the votes not only of a consi-
derable msjority of the House of Commons, but
by a majority containing nearly every man of Par-
liamentary talent, statim, or experience, of every
shade of opinion. It has been hooted off stage,
not for a blunder in a colonial bill, but for a de-
liberate and conscious abandonment of the first
of administrative duties, that of maintaining the
honour and independence of the nation when pub-
licly called in question. We do not say that the
Austrianism of Lord Clarendon, the impotency
of
Mr. V. Smith, and the effrontery of Lord Clan-
ricarde, had not already alienated many of its sup-
porters. Neither do we deny that the tendency to
exclusive aristocratic jobbing in every sphere of
patronage, from the highest to the lowest, had con-
tributed to pave the way for the event which has
at length occurred. But the immediate and specific
cause of that event it is impossible to mistake, and
any doubt as to the national judgment in the matter
• would be a fearful error. W hen the Parliaments of
England contained but few representatives of the
great towns ; when as yet the majority of those
towns were not ; when popular education w.es a de-
bateable theory, and the daily and weekly press, as
it now exists, had no place in the national being—
. when railway locomotion, and the power of concen-
trating the sympathies of millions at any given mo-
ment by the touch of the electric wire, were unheard
of and uneuo ere—a fsud het, ,vcce t',e Pe!ace of St.
James and the Palace of Westminster might be
provoked with impunity. But times are altered
now, and we should deeply grieve to think that
any man of any party worthy of the name of a
statesman should so betray the first duty imposed
on him by his Privy Councillor's oath as to commit
the Crown to a contest with the House of Commons.
We care not for our own partovho is Minister, or of
- What material the new Administration may be corn-
l'"d• If Lord Darby cannot form a creditable or
a competent Government, there are others unques-
tionably who can.
• oacde Cabineto canrt o But the Clarendon and Clan ri-
nnly now be reinstated by the
will of the
Court,
and the people will understand, that deplorable eventcoinsphalt.ake place, by what
means it-has been ac

(From the Morning Herald.)

Theministerial crisis will Boon
n be at an end. Lord
Derby's arrangements are in a satisfac-
tory mannerineaouf t
other column,
names chief
eafford
we are enable so much so that, d
to publish a list
ap-
pointments in the new Cabinet. The
the surest guarantee of the admirable manner in
which with then
which the selection has been made,
—l'Bllistance of such gifted, energetic and experienced
p,rgublicraitesai, the Conservative leader will direct
with credit to himself and advantage
t 3 the tat
not on account of any defi-
ciencysm on el • It was
gatinutihaeon:inbz of first-rate men to be found
that the Prime Minister
was induced to invite tirreaic'eo-nreration of Mr. Glad-
stone and some of his
object was to construct his
the broadest possible basis, and upon
• 'therefore applied to Mr. Gladstone, tahned"l-)1° earl
to Earl Grey, in order to enlist teir valuable.fterards
vices. In both instances the advance made=
such delicacy and consideration for public interests
failed to produce the desired result, and Lord Derby
immediately confined his attention to the rich re-
sources available in the Conservative ranks. In
paying this graceful compliment to the Peelite
party, the Premier probably wished to show that
the hour for the complete reconciliation between
this brilliant group of political leaders, without -
d fol-
lowers, and the great Conservative pay, ba. ar
rived. Differences that would justify a continued
estrangement or even separati'on have all been
removed, and the opportunity certainly seemed
favourable for the consideration of an alli-
ance that has long had a nominal if not an actual
existence. The Peelites may prefer occupying an