The Sun.
London, England, 1858-05-27 00:00:00

Commence at Seven.

CANTERBURY HALL, Westminster-road..—
OPEN EVERY EVENING.—The follow-
ing company of Vocalists are engaged for the performance of
Selections from all tho popular OPERAS, MADRIGALS,
CHORUSES, GLEES, D UETS, etc., :—Miss Russell, Mrs.
Badzey, Miss Brnuell, Miss Ray, Madame Bartoletti,
Miss Montague, Mrs. Lawrence, and Mrs. Anderson;
Herr F. Jorghmans' Mr. Renshaw, S. Joner, J. Barker,
W. !dolling, Senor Antonio, E. L. Rime, Mr. Badzey,
Senor Tiroli Mr. Cozens, Mr. Bell, and Mr. Bernard ,
Messrs. W. T. Critchfield John G. Fordo, and E. Mackuey.
Pianoforte, Mr. Cecil Hi'eks ' • harmonium, Mr. Courtuay ;
Director, Herr F. Jonghmans. Commence at Seven o'clock
precisely. Suppers, des, until twelve o'clock.
Mr. AUGUSTUS BRAHAM will appear every Evening
in a Selection from "LA DAME BLANCHE" (TaE WHITE
LADY), first produced at the Canterbury Hall. English
words by Desmond Ryan, Esq.

THE WEATHER—SUN OFFICE, MAY 27.
IsraNOMETER, IN THE SHADE.
65—highest since noon yesterday.
49—lowest this morning and during the night.
65—this day at noon.
BABOMATEB, 3022 a sudden fall.
WIND, Westerly ; light, with mild weather.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
Tait DAT—Morn., 32 min. aft. I—Even., 52 min. aft. 1
To-Motßow—Morn.,'lo min. aft. 2 —Even., 28 min. aft. 2

rci ,
t 14,
•

LONDON, THURSDAY, mA.y 27, 1858.

Never, perhaps, during the course of a very
brilliant career, was the Chancellor of the Exche-
quer more effective than last night, when, at the
banquet at Slough, to which he had been invited
as a.private Member of Parliament, he was called
on to respond to the toast of " Her MAJESTY'S
Ministers"—amongst whom ho now occupies so
prominent a position. It was, to say the least of
it, one of his most felicitous efforts. LThe occasion

was one of no ordinary importance. Although,
nominally, a social gathering, intended to do
honour to two gentlemen who had gained the un-
limited confidence of their constituents, it became,
under the peculiar circumstances of the case, a
matter of deep interest, not only to the electors
of Bucks, but to the entire community. The
Sabbath-day Conspiracy had only just been igno-
miniously defeated ; Parliament had adjourned
for the recess on the very night when truth and
justice prevailed ; and a straightforward, manly,
and equitable policy was vindicated, and a factious
Opposition " brought to grief." It was, there-
fore, a glorious opportunity for the Ministerial
leader in the popular branch of the Legislature to
explain the conduct of the Government since
their inauguration in office; and it was turned to
the best advantage. It was not a defence. That
was totally uncalled for. It was rather a posan
for their unquestionable triumph, showing the
substantial grounds on which their victory was
founded, and, still better, on which it was so pre-
eminently merited.
Mr. DISRAELI fully entered into the subject.
He explained that Lord DERBY had not sought
for or desired, (much less "grasped" at, office.
On the contrary, if a feeling of imperative duty
had not reigned paramount in his heart and soul,
he would rather have avoided the serious respon-
sibility, the formidable difficulties, and the
damaged inheritance bequeathed to him by his
predecessor. As a loyal and devoted subject he
yielded to the legitimate and constitutional
command of his Sovereign, and threw himself
into the gap with a devotion and intrepidity
becoming his chivalric character. He cared not
for obstacles, for by manly and energetic conduct
they could be overcome. He was, or rather was
supposed to be, in a minority in the House that
really ruled the nation. But with fair play
he could level every impediment, and pilot the
vessel of the State into a safe and commodious
port. With this feeling ho accepted " the heri-
tage of difficulties" bequeathed to him, and en-
tered on his arduous task with an earnest determi-
nation so far as the foreign relations of the country
were concerned, of neither cringing to the strong
nor bullying to the weak, but of vindicating the
honour of his country, under every emergency,
and by temperate firmness extricating her from
the embarrassments in which she was, unhappily,
involved.
Nobly has he discharged that duty. He has
avoided a war—terrible to the cause of civilisa-
tion and of humanity—without any sacrifice of
dignity ; nay more, winning the respect and
esteem of those who might, by any unwise pro-
ceeding on our part, have become our opponents,
and cemented the mutual esteem between the
peoples of France and England, and placed their
mutual kindly relations on a more enduring
and permanent basis than ever. Our deeply-
wronged countrymen were rescued from the
horrible dungeons in which they were so
improperly placed, and restored to their
family and friends. A possible, nay more,
an impending war between Sardinia and Naples,
which would have caused a general European con-
flagration, was wisely and judiciously averted.
It was, indeed, a proud moment for him—a man
of the people—one who by his own extraordinary
talent, indefatigable industry, and indomitable
energy, elevated himself to so exalted a position,
when he could refer with natural exultation to
what the Government, of which he was so influ-
ential a member, had accomplished, in respect to the
foreign relations of this country.
Nor was this all. There was a subject in
which he was more immediately concerned, that
fell within his own peculiar department. As he
himself truly declared—" The finances of the
country were in a position of the most extreme
difficulty; and—what was still worse—they were
imagined by the country generally to be in a
position even more embarrassing than they really
were. The tendency of that feeling greatly in-
creased the difficulty of dealing with the sub-
ject, because it induced depression and even
panic on the public mind, and acted in a
most injurious manner on the commercial
enterprise of the country. These financial
difficulties were looked forward to by our
opponents, equally with those we encountered in
our foreign affairs, as the means by which it was
hoped our failure might be accomplished. It
does not become me to refer to the mea-
sures by which these financial difficulties were
encountered, but I may bo permitted to
make this single observation, that it was my
duty, as the Minister of Finance in the Govern-
ment of Lord DERBY—in the midst of this
hostile House of Commons, and facing a band of
opponents such as few have had to encounter—to
propose measures to meet the emergency which
had the singular and unprecedented fortune of
being passed by general acclamation." The
financial scheme which he promulgated was uni-
versally approved. He had solved the difficult
problem, and maintained the national credit
unimpaired and unimpeachable, without resorting
to additional imposts objectionable to the people,
and actually carried out a reduction of taxation,
giving a reasonable hope of ultimately getting rid
of the oppressive burden, if it cannot be rendered
fair and equitable.
But the greatest difficulty of all was the In-
dian question. That indeed was of the deepest
interest not only to the inhabitants of the United
Kingdom, but to one hundred and fifty millions
of their fellow-subjects. The Government had to
decide the principle on which they proposed to
reconstruct the Indian Empire---,to re-establish
the British supremacy. " Was it to be military oc-
cupation by an army four times greater in amount
than any army of Europeans that ever entered
that country ? Was it to be military occupa-
tion, attended by enormous taxation, by a drain-
ing of her MAJESTY'S subjects from this country,
and by a perpetual exhaustion of our resources ?
or were we to recognise that vengeance had done
its duty ? Were we to recognise that the time
had arrived, or was fast arriving, when, upon the
fall of the rebellious capital, we ought to announce
to the inhabitants of India the principle on which
it was proposed to reconstruct our empire—a prin-
ciple that we believed must contribute to their

happiness, and to the welfare and power and

glory of this country ? Was it always to be mu_

sacre and confiscation ?"

What response should be given to these inter-
rogatories ? Is it not the response which both
Houses of Parliament have given, and which the

nation has so cordially re-echoed T It was ; and

❑ever did a cabal so egregiously err as iu suppos,-
ing that their vile scheme would achieve the

success which they fondly hoped for it. The plot

had been artfully contrived. The concoctors fan-
cied place and power within their grasp. They were
resolved " to loot the Treasury," and saw nothing
that could hurl the anticipated cup from their
thirsting lips. "A gentleman in the House of

Commons brought forward the motion, and be
was a man of unimpeachable character. Thy
cabal, which had itself rather a tainted character,
chose its instruments with pharisaical accur ey.
can assure you that when the It;,glit Hon. Gen
tleman who brought forward the motion in the
Souse of Commons rose to imploaph me I was

THE SUN, LONDON,

terrified at my own shortcomings, and I
listened attentively to a nisi pr itts nar-
rative, ending with a resolution, which I
think must have been drawn up by a conveyancer.
In the other House of Parliament a still greater
reputation condescended to appear upon the
human stage, and like a Pharisee of old, with
broad phylacteries upon his forehead, he called
upon GOD to witness, in the voice and accents of
majestic adoration, that he was not as other men
were, for that he was never influenced by party
motives."

But " man proposes while GOD disposes." The
overthrow of the Cabal was the most signal ever
known. It was totally unparalleled. The inde-
pendent Members would not march through
Coventry with the detected schemers. Prejudices
were cast aside. Honour and justice resumed its
sway, and party feeling was for once disregarded
in the interests of the community. This
was a miraculous result, and clearly
and distinctly has Mr. DISRAEL/ explained its
causes. His speech, as a marvel of eloquence, is
well worthy of perusal, but it should be more
closely and attentively considered for the sound
and wholesome information which it conveys to
the great body of the people—information which
might otherwise have been beyond their reach.

The Barnacles are, at any rate, no longer stick-
ing to the old State Vessel. In time, perhaps,
the triple group of the British Laocoon—Eng-
land, Ireland, and Scotland—may be extricated
from the serpentine involutions of red-tape, in the
midst of which those three unfortunates have been
so long struggling helplessly. Ultimately, even
we may get rid, at last, of the old stubborn,
stifling, strangling system of CircumlocutiOn.
The two latter anticipations are, of course, at
the present moment, simply hypothetical. But at
the very least—already—we have extricated our-
selves from the clutch of the Barnacles !
In order to realise this extremely gratifying
fact, at once and to the uttermost, it is only neces-
sary to contrast the actual Ministry of to-day
with its two immediate predecessors.
With the one solitary exception presented by
the instance of the Noble Lord the Member for
King's Lynn—between no two members of Lord
DERBY'S Cabinet are there anywhere traceable
the ties of relationship. And let it be recollected,
particularly in the instance of Lord STANLEY, that
that young and promising Statesman was offered
by Lord PALMERSTON the very post be now occu-
pies, namely, that of the Colonial Secretaryship.
Whereas—don't we all of us remembar only too
well how it was in the matter of relationship with
two preceding Governments, the RUSSELL Admi-
nistration and the PALMERSTON Administration ?
Each of those Cabinets consisted of fifteen mem-
bers—while the present Ministry numbers only
thirteen.

But out of the fifteen members of the Cabinet of
Lord JOHN RUSSELI.:--. there was not a single
one of them who was not either himself a
specimen of the old Whig nobility, or,
what comes pretty much to the same thing, closely
allied to it by family c3nnection or blood relation-
ship. Eleven out of those fifteen were distinctly
linked together by recognisable ties—constituting
quite a domestic party; altogether giving the
Cabinet Council the appearance of a Christmas
Dinner-table when tho ladies have gone upstairs to
the drawing-rooms. Among a single family alone
nine conspicuous offices were comfortably distributed
—three of these nine individuals were Cabinet
Ministers, the other six were cleverly sprinkled about
in stray places at home and in the colonies. And
so, under Lord Jorn's delightful regime, the Bar-
nacles—meaning the GREYS, and ELLIOTTS, and
RUSSELLS, et hoc genus omne—were clustered toge-
ther in bunches all over the old hull of the good
ship Britannia.
As to the fifteen members of Lord PALMERSTON'S
Government—they were chosen, too, with an espe-
cial regard to the pur sang, to the blue blood, the
divine ichor of the old Whig aristocracy. As
many as four seats in the Cabinet were secured to
one admirable Family—blood relationship securing
to another the Irish Lord-Lieutenancy, and marital
connections inducting at the eleventh hour into the
high post of Lord Privy Seal, Timex Jon; the
most noble the Marquis of CLANRICARDE.

Both Ministries wore in this respect, no doubt,
most admirably and ingeniously arranged. The
RUSSELL Cabinet lasted very nearly six years—the
PALMERSTON Cabinet more than three. But each
in turn went at last--smash. The family party
in each instance had to be scattered, to do
penance on the front benches, or the back
benches, or below the gangway, on the side of the
Opposition. The RUSSELL Ministry going down
under the influence of two crushing overthrows,
ono in '5l, on the motion of the Member for East
Surrey in regard to the Franchise, the other in
'52, on the amendment to the Militia Bill, pro-
posed by the Noble Viscount the Member for
Tiverton. The PALMERSTON Ministry succumb-
ing only the other day under the weight of that
clear adverse majority of Nineteen. And thus,
and thus, history will say, was the vessel of the
State rid at last of its antique and almost imme-
morial incrustation of the Barnacles.

Now under the Earl of DERBY'S Premiership
with the one exception already particularised, that
afforded by the circumstance of the Premier's son
being (what Lord PALMERSTON wanted him to be
in the late Cabinet) Secretary of State for the
Colonies—no two members of the existing
Ministry are in any way bound together
by the ties of relationship. Here, at any
rate, if in nothing else, there is a positive
gain to the country in the change of Ad-
ministration. The peculiarity we are now no-
ticing in Lord DERBY'S Government of '5B was
observable also in Lord DERBY' s Government of '52.
So that it seems to be in truth really and actually
a distinguishing party characteristic. It is certainly
a characteristic that at once endears the party to
the general community, makes it welcome to the
country at large as a positive relief from the old
intolerable repressive system of exclusiveness.
Here, at any rate, we have men at last installed
in office, because of their fitness for office, and not
simply because of their family relationship. Here
are Ministers selected by reason of their political
antecedents and their Parliamentary careers, and
not in any way by reason of their constituting a
branch, or a twig, or a leaf upon one particular
genealogical tree—a sort of political tpas. No
longer, thank Heaven, as under the Whig regime,

_ .
a certain descent absurdly and incongruously re-
sults in a certain elevation. Lord DERBY'S col-

leagues, at any rate, have not been chosen for
their ancestry, but, on the contrary—as ministers
ought to be—for themselves. There is ob-

viously here—under this system of things—some
better chance, some really good chance at length
of getting the Right Man in the Right Place.
We don't
believe in the possibility of wonderful

families—either upon the histrionic stage, or on
the arena of politics. Whenever the manager of a

Country Theatre fills up the list of the dramatis

persona: by distributing all the principal parts

among the membors of his own immediate household

* " Phases in Politics." By Edmondstone
[not Aytoun, but] Lendrick. London :T. and W. Boone,
1858. bvo. pp. 76.

—Mr. Crummles as Macbeth, Mrs. Crummles as
Lady Macbeth, Master Crummles as Macdufr;
Master Vincent Crummles as Banquo, with
Fleance enacted by the Infant Phenomenon—we
look upon the whole affair as a humbug, as cer-
tainly as the audience deluded into the theatre
must inevitably look upon the whole performance,
long before it comes to a conclusion, as a bore.
We have never yet been able to persuade ourselves
that, however large their hereditary patrimony may
be, the Dukes of BEDFORD embrace within the limits
of their personal estate, toto orbe terrarum, the whole
circumference of the British Empire. That bubble,
meaning this particular hypothesis about the toto
orbe, has burst at last:: and—whew ! with what a
sigh of relief—we are rid at last of the Barnacles.
Any ono who wishes to luxuriate over this sense
of relief would do well to conn the pages of a very
sensible and, in some respects, a very remarkable
pamphlet, * entitled " Phases in Politics," which
has but just now made its opportune appearance.

In a few days the liberal motions of the session
will come before the House ; in the week which
terminates on the Bth of June, the third reading
of the Church-rates Bill, the Committee on Lord
BURY'S Marriage Law Amendment Bill, the second
reading of the County Franchise Bill of Mr.
LOCKE KING, and on the Bth the Ballot itself,
will also bo proposed. All of them measures in
the interest of civil or of religious liberty. The
last two should be looked after immediately by
electors themselves. The extension of the County
Franchise ought, of course, to be vigorously aided
by all Liberal electors, and we hope it will pass
the Commons by decided majorities, such majori-
ties as will make the Lords bethink themselves,
ere they reject a measure of this sort ; a measure
with which they have in all fairness nothing at
all to do. Peers have no more equitable right to
interfere with the franchises of the citizens than
they have with elections themselves. They have
vastly more than their share of legislation, when,
insignificantly small class as they are in the
kingdom, they are allowed to have a voice on all
business done by the people's representatives.

But the Ballot is even the more urgent motion
of the two. Its adoption would at once create
many more voters than Mr. KINQ'S Extension
Bill. It would convert all the tenants at will
into voters. We cannot now say that they pos-
sess the franchise—it is in every case mortgaged
to the landlord, and the landlord enters and
takes possession at every election. Thousands
besides, both in counties and boroughs, would be
at:once converted from machines to electors by the
simple agency of secret voting. !While, therefore,
we would urge the most cordial support of Mr.
LOCKE KING'S Bill, we would press as still more
important the necessity of backing Mr. BERKELEY
in his motion for the Bth. Hundreds, indeed, of
the persons proposed to be enfranchised by Mr.
KING'S motion, would not be really enfranchised
unless enabled to vote apart from the cognizance
of those whose behests they must obey.
Our special object, however, in adverting to the
subject just now is to stir up our readers to some
kind of action. Our Representatives are pretty
much what we make them ; like other servants
they need the eye of their masters, and occasion-
ally a word, to remind them'that their master's
eye is upon them. Liberal members are now in
a somewhat impressible mood ; their late insolent
Chief is cashiered, probably for life ; there is now
no Leader's name of the o/d clique with which
they can go to the people, and they will think
more than they have done of supporting, or at
least not opposing popular measures. Many of the
so-called Liberals who have hitherto stood aloof

from the Ballot, or who voted against it, may
think better of it for being thrown more on the
people, and less on aristocratic Leaders. Besides,
dissolution impends over their heads. It is Lord
DERBY'S strength against faction, and they know
not how soon they may have to give an account of
their votes to their constituencies. The present,
therefore, is a very favourable time for electors to
deal with their Representatives. Allegiance to the
old Whig anti-ballot Leaders is now shaken. And
allegiance to the constituencies is all-important.
The practical modes of dealing with members
are well known. Petitions, especially if signed by
those who have voted for them, will always have
weight—weight with the member who will some
day ask again their suffrages, if not much
with the House. How easy it is for the electors
who dare sign, both in boroughs and counties, to
sign petitions on behalf of their neighbours who
dare not. It needs but that a few should stir in
it, and the thing is done.
In addition to this, individuals who have voted,
and, it may be, canvassed, or otherwise acted for a
member, should personally write to him. Mem-
bers, like other men, feel more difficulty in
evading a direct communication than a more pub-
lic and formal one. The necessity of answering,
of finding reasons to justify refusal, and such rea-
sons too, as shall not make the member's conduct
appear either wilful, or quit common-place, com-
pels attention ; and in every good cause to get
real attention is half the battle. It would pro-
duce a very happy effect, we think, on scores of
Pahnerstonian and Russellite members to b 3 told,
by letters from their supporters, that the condition
of future suppcit must be their voting for the
Ballot, and the County Franchise extension
also. That voting against either would insure the
loss of their seats.

EPIGRAM.
SUGGESTED BY RECENT EVENTS.

That we don't live in Paris our stars we may bless,
And pray for Newspaper inditers ;
For there, while the Emperor strangles the Press,
His Lieutenants are stabbing the writers.
London, May, 1353.