The Sun.
London, England, 1858-02-22 00:00:00

LONDON, MONDAY, FEB. 22, 1858.

Lord PALMERSTON has resigned, and, acting
no doubt on his advice her MAJESTY immediately
sent for the Earl of DERBY, who unhesitatingly
undertook the task of constructing a new
Administration ; and already the programme has
bees put forward on apparently good authority.
The only available parties were the Noble Earl
and Lord JOHN RUSSELL. The latter could only
have attempted a reconstruction of the existing
Cabinet, with a slight infusion of new blood, such
as might be obtained by a junction with the
PEELITES, or rather the ABERDEENITES, for,
as we long since declared, they have long
ago abandoned the principles of their quondam
leader. Her MAJESTY'S opposition wore
the legitimate parties to profit by the
victory which had only been obtained by their
assistance and co-operation. It could only have
been on Lord DERBY'S declining the duty imposed
on him by his SOVEREIGN that Lord JoAN
Mamas would have been applied to.
We cannot regret the accession of Lord DERBY
to office. The Noble Lord has doubtless profited
by the painful but salutary lesson which he re-
ceived more than five years since, and it is more
than probable that he will now be disposed to pay
attention to public opinion, and to act more in
accordance with the popular wishes. He has se-
cured the co-operation of many able and expe-
rienced men, far better certainly than the list of
ineapables which, with rare exceptions, constituted
the PALMERSTON Cabinet. The course so speedily
adopted was that which might have been antici-
pated from the chivalrous character of the Con-
servative leader. It was a duty which he owed
o the country in general, and his own party in
particular, and he has promptly and honourably
discharged it. Although differing in many respects
from the Noble Earl, we rejoice to find that he has
accepted the onerous task imposed on him by the
desire of his SOVEREIGN and of his countrymen,
When Lord DERBY came into power some
six
years since, we, belonging to the section of
ad.
Teamed Liberals, and never in the slightest degree
abandoning or compromising the principles
we had invariably advocated demanded, fair play ;
for the New .tGovernment we desired that their
policyahould be fully developed—that they should
have a reasonable opportunity of stating their
opinions, and the nature of the measures which
they proposed to inaugurate. 'We knew that they
would have to make a high bidding for popular
favour, and that the Whigs would be compelled to
put forward still better offers ; for the Whigs, in
office and out of office, are very different persons,
and a brief exclusion from place and power has
invariably been the best mode of enlightening
their views, and inducing them to
join the com-
munity in their reasonable demands.
Mr. DISRAELI, in his budget, proposed a modi-
fication of the iniquitous principle on which
the Income Tax was framed. It is true that he
did not go far enough, but still he recognised the

distinction between thehard earnings of industry,
and the dividends, interest, and annual produce,
arising from actual property already accumulated
and realised. This was the admission of " the
sharp end of the wedge," and would inevitably
have led to still more important modifications of
that, which, if properly constituted, would be the
best tax for the community, but in the existing
form was nothing but a legalised swindle. There
were many other good points which would have
been brought forward, but forthe premature defeat
occasioned by what we then termed, and must still
designate, as the unfair and factious opposition
offered. Let the nation clearly understand what
the Derbyites tender for its acceptance, and what
it may expect from the new Opposition—as well
that of Lord J. RUSSELL as of Lord PALMERSTON.
We shall then be able to arrive at a calm and
deliberate conclusion between the rivals, and to
accept that which promises to be most beneficial,
and accept that which offers the greatest good to
the greatest number.
Lord DERBY has undoubtedly put forward a
strong and promising programme. He will, of
course, himself, occupy the chief position.
He has also secured the services of Mr.
GLADSTONE, the skilful debater, who has been
wooed by every would-be Premier, and without
whose aid, the task of forming a government has
repeatedly been declined. Recognising to the
fullest extent the extraordinary talents of the
Right Hon. Gentleman, we cannot help thinking
that his adhesion will prove a source of weakness
rather than of strength to the DERBY Cabinet.
He is to a certain extent committed on the Bank
Charter question, and from him we can only an-
ticipate fresh restrictions, instead of the liberal
and judicious modifications that might be hoped
for, if Mr. DISRAELI had been placed at the head
of the financial department.
That Right Hon. Gentleman had on a former
occasion consented to waive his powerful, and
almost irresistible claims to the leadership of the
House of Commons, and to transfer his services to
a different department from that which he had
previously occupied. As Secretary of State for
Foreign Affairs, he will have most important and
arduous duties to attend to. It is hinted that
the arrangement is but of a temporary character ;
that he is to exchange with Lord STRATFORD DE
ItEDCLIFFE, who will become Foreign Minister,
while Mr. DISRAELI goes to Constantinople as
Ambassador. We cannot, however, believe that
the Right Hon. Gentleman would at such a crisis
abandon the position for which he is Bo pre-emi-
nently qualified, and which he has achieved by the
distinguished reputation he now enjoys.
Sir FREDERICK TLIESIGER, the eminent, the
learned, the graceful advocate, is to be placed at
the head of the profession of which he is now the
most brilliant ornament. Lord ST. LEONARDS
has very handsomely waived his claims to the
Lord Chancellorship in favour of his quondam
Attorney-General. Of the new Lerd Chancellor
we may say, nil teliget quod non ornavit. There
are some points, however, to which it will be
essential that he conform to the exigencies of the
hour, and materially modify his views on " the
Oaths and the Marriages Affinities Bill."
Mr. WALPOLE has already been tested at the
Home, and Sir JOHN PAKINOTON at the Colonial-
office. Lord ELLENBOROUGH has given ample
proof of the stuff that is in him, and it is needles
to say that great anticipations may reasonably be
entertained of his discharge of the duties attached
to the Minister for War. Sir EDWARD 1311LWER
LYTTON, the brilliant, the accomplished poet,
novelist, orator, and statesman, has also accepted
a position in the Cabinet, and Lord STANLEY,
as the head of the India Board, adds the
weight of his name, which has generally
been accepted as that of "the coming man," the
head of future Administrations. Sir FITZROY
KELLY, as Attorney-General, gives the soundest
lawyer at the bar his proper position ; and Mr.
HENLEY will make a very respectable President
of the Board of Trade.

Although it is unusual to notice, on such
occasions, any below the rank of a Cabinet Mini-
ster, we cannot refrain from expressing our satis-
faction at the promotion of the amiable, excellent,
and talented Recorder of Hull to a position more
befitting his talents, and for -which he will prove
himself to be eminently qualified.
The list is unquestionably good, but it is on
the measures brought for ward that the perma-
nency of the new Ministry will depend. The
vexatce questiones have been got rid of. They have
proved themselves to be true conservatives,
so far as the national honour was concerned. Let
them now show that they are also willing and ready
to bring forward the domestic improvements so
urgently required by the nation. The people will
give them fair play, and there should be perfect
reciprocity. They should also act fairly towards
the people. We still bide our time, and shall
judge of the New Ministry by their acts.

Unless the proverb of " the darket hour before
the dawn " be true, the prospect would be hope-
less indeed for Europe. We know what is going
on here, but the first glance at the position of
despots and their standing armies abroad, is in.
deed a gloomy one. The Peace of Paris was a
peace of despots, and a peace for despotism. Just
at the moment when England was in a position to
outshine all the glory acquired by the casual ex-
plea at the Malakoff, a glory which our artillery
had prepared for ourlight-limbered neighbours; just
as our army was ready to have swept the Crimea,
and our fleet to have enabled us to occupy or to
demolish Odessa, and every town on the Black
Sea ; just as we might have delivered the Crimea,
Bessarabia, and Circassia, from the grip of the
bear, and made them the territories of freedom—
--
just then the Autocrat of the coup d'etat, and the
Autocrat of Spielburg found that a brother Auto-
crat was in danger, and we gave up liberty for
the enslaved, and our own national honour, to
please an " illustrious ally," and an anything but
illustrious go-between. One act alone showed the
purport and object of that peace—Lord CLAREN•
DON, the Foreign Secretary and Plenipotentiary
of England, not only did not remonstrate against,
but even signed a clause which was a practical
attack on the Belgian press, and a coercive decree
from the great Powers against a small Power, not
there represented. Count WALEWSKI, and those
for whom ho acted, seem to dread above all thing
the daylight of a free press. The Isle of Serpents'
affair, and that of the Danubian Principalities,
allow how the French Government has leaned,
since the peace, to a brother despot ; the proposed
Riverain Code for the Danube shows how all the
benefit of the liberation of that river is coveted by
the recusant Austrians, who never dared to fire a
gun all the time ; and the present state of \th
roguery and evaii
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Bll.ck Sea ports exhibits the
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All this is bad enough ; but the worst is, that
such is now the state of Continental Europe, that the
opposition of enlightened discussion is exchanved
for the hideous opposition of the dagger. Despots'
I and assassins divide between them the functions
of Liberals and Conservatives. The pen and the

speech are silenced, and they avenge themselves with
pistols and grenades. We Englishmen do not under-
stand. assassination as a political resource. Our
temperament is against it, and we have botter and
safer, and, eventually, more successful weapons.
The very columns of our journal are worth more
than all the daggers and pistols in France and
Italy in the warfare of Liberalism, and it may be
safely predicted that, were the patriots of
those countries permitted to do what we do
every day, they would soon throw aside
the vile weapons to which they resort. But
while we execrate the crime of the exiles for
liberty—while we detest murder for freedom's
sake, or to avenge murdered freedom, yet let us
be just. Temptation, though no excuse for crime,
is yet a mitigation of its enormity ; and if ever
the impulsive natures of Italians and Frenchmen
were provoked to unnatural violence, they are
just now. So far as we can tell, such men as
OREN' and his companions had no selfish object
to serve. They were maddened, literally so we
mean, on one point. ORSINI, so far as we yet
know, was sane otherwise—a man, indeed, of a
kind and even mild temper, but he was in-
sane on his country's wrongs. He saw Italy
ground down to the earth under Austrian
and French armies. Ho probably regarded the
man who kept the latter on Italian soil, as the
worse of the two oppressors ; the subverter of a
republic by the soldiers of a republic, and indi-
rectly the buttress of Austria. He brooded over
what he had seen and known till on this one point
he was deranged, and till reason was powerless
except to devise cunningly the means to gratify a
diseased mind. Such at least is the picture which
seems a natural one to us ; and it seems the
natural picture of the state of mind of political

assassins.

Of course, such self-generated insanity can nei-
ther be taken account of in a court of j ustice, nor be
allowed for a moment as a moral vindication of the
criminal. We are looking simply at the fact.
We know what human nature is ; we know that
pondering over a wrong, real or supposed, often
converts even an Englishman into a being, in the
view of his neighbours, beside himself ; what then
can be expected when whole countries live under
a perpetual and grievous wrong, and when those
countries are the hot-blooded tribes of Italy. It
would be strange indeed, if among a people of such
mental endowments, such love of liberty, and such
fiery natures some were not from time to time mad-
dened by their oppressors. To us it seems hopeless
to look for the extinction of assassins till the gene-
rating cause is done away. When Monarchs rule
by immense armies alone ; when intelligence far
surpassing that perhaps of the Monarch and his ad-
visers is not allowed toutter any opinion of its own;
when police and spies dog the footsteps of every
man supposed to be something better than a sub-
missive
or indifferent slave, men will be driven to
imagine deeds of violence right and honourable,
from which, excepting under such perverting ins
fluences, they would shrink with horror. We, in
England, revolt from what we feel to be the in-
herent:cowardice of the assassination, but the poli-
tical assassin looks at the glory he shall gain
amongst the circle to whom he is known. Be
thinks the cowardice belongs to the man whose
life depends on huge standing armies. Be dwells
on their crimes, as he deems them, against free.
dom ; and regards every soldier around their
thrones as an evidence of the cowardice of a guilty
conscience. He thinks himself the courageous
man for venturing his own life to destroy the life
of the oppressors of liberty.
Perverted as such reasoning and sentiments may
seem to us phlegmatic Englishmen, we believe
them to be a pretty accurate description of what
will be found passing in numerous minds across the
Channel, and still more across the Alps. But, if
so, how foolish both the Conduct of the French
EMOROR and of our own Government. The wise
course with all kinds of insanity, and still more
with a kind of moral insanity like this, is not to
notice and irritate it, not to be put into a fright,
but just to deal with ft, as much as possible, like
ordinary crimes of a similar character. As with
the Israelites under the oppression of PHAROAH,
so of the assassinating class, the more you oppress
them, or rather the more you direct specific laws
against them, the more will they multiply and
grow. Terrific punishments, ingenious and appa-
rently complete repressive laws, and moving all
the adjacent kingdoms to devise measures against
them, such things do not but confer a false glory
on the enterprise and stimulate the invention of the
class who are aimed at. It becomes a battle of the
otherwise obscure and cunning fanatic, with the
greatness and wisdom of Princes and their coun-
sellors. Of course death must be the punishment
for assassins ; yet we verily believe that a good
whipping, and subsequent confinement in a mad-
house, would do infinitely more than bills brought
in by a Premier here, and repressive laws and the
guillotine there, to put an end to such schemes as
those which seem to have confounded the coun-
sellors of two great nations.

It is, indeed, sad to think that half Europe is
now in the condition which makes it a hotbed of
assassins. In Belgium, in Switzerland, in Sar-
dinia, now, we hear of no such things. Here, of
course, they are unknown—so far as native growth
is concerned. Tyranny, however, exports them
to us, and then charges us with smuggling. We
can hardly account for the fright and flurry into
which the EMPEROR'S Ministers, and probably the
EMPEROR too, have put themselves. At first he
used to take these incidents to an arbitrary domi-
nion somewhat violently obtained at least, more
; but on this occasion all his self-possession
appears to have left him. We can cornpree
head his stretching out his arms to Sardinia
and Belgium, and begging a law or two where
they dare not refuse, but how could he forget
himself so far as to let the bullying braggadocio
of his Gascon colonels be heard beyond his own
reception room—how could he let it get into
print and into the Monitcur ; and then how in
the world could he think that an English House
of Commons would stomach the imperious lan-
guage of such men as Counts PERSIGNY and
WALEWSKI. Is there dissatisfaction and danger
that we know not of in France itself ? Has the
entire suppression of all the intellect and libe-
ralism of France in behalf of stock-jobbing medio-
crity and absolutism begun to tell? Is there
volcanic matter more ready to cause an eruption
than we on this side the water can discover ? We
confess the unusual trepi lation of so cool a mind
as LOUIS NAPOLEON'S has dune riloie to shake our
faith in the present order of things than anything
which has occurred since his acquisition of the
Empire. Can it be that the really elect of eight
millions trembles before a few Italians, and must
in consequence cut himself off by a stringent pass-
port system from DieJand, affront her by demands
she would not concede to NAPOLEON 1,, and enact
laws for Franco which place the liberty of every
Frenchman at his mercy ?

Our contebaporaries the Times and Standard
appear to entertain oninions wide as the poles
asunder on the sui,juot of LotLi attorruhaks
bill
for the abolition of imprisonment for debt—the
one accusing his Lordship of unfair leniency, and