The Sun.
London, England, 1866-03-12 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

THE " SUNDAY TIMES" ON THE OPPOSITION.—
The Conservative party has now such an opportu-
nity of securing the confidence and sympathy of
general British public opinion as it has not enjoyed
since the last retirement of Sir Robert Peel from the
responsibilities of Ministerial office ; and yet it may
be alleged with equal certainty that never could a
mistaken policy be more injurious to its influence
and its prospects than must inevitably be the case
at the present moment. The Russell Administra-
tion is confessedly weak—weak, not from destitu-
tion of talent or of authority in its individual mem-
bers, but simply from the natural incongruity of the
element of which it is composed; and nobody ex-
pects that it can very long hold together. What
the succession will be must depend almost entirely
upon the political attitude assumed and the course
of conduct pursued •by the Conservative party in
the interval between this and its dissolution. For
it is a gross blunder to imagine that, on the possible
downfall of Earl Russell, her Majesty has no alter-
native but to send for Lord Derby. Other combi-
nations are quite within the range of possibility ;
and the ascertained fact that the Liberals have a
considerable majority in the present House of Com-
mons would, no doubt, suggest the wisdom of their
being tried, unless the aspect of affairs on the other
side should be such as to overawe those who might
be ambitious of making the experiment. Mr. Dis-
raeli once committed to a naggling—an ungenerous
and narrow-visioned—a merely blind traditional
.
policy—and that chance lost to him for ever. If
Mr. Disraeli will trust his own ideas and instincts,
however, and consult the requirements of public
opinion at large, as well as the views and prejudices
of his followers, he will be in no danger of commit-
ting so irreparable a mistake. The time for making
a favourable impression upon the unpledged ele-
ments of the new Parliament has arrived. Among
the gentlemen•who sit in the House of Commons
for the first time there are many who by the death
of Lord Palmerston were releasedfrom all technical
obligations to their constituents, and who could
support an enlightened, moderate, progressive Con-
servative government—a government, in short,
which, in the free spirit of commonsense, should
frame its policy on the dominating interests and
obligations of the day rather than upon the canons
of a dull and immobile traditionalism—without ex-
posing themselves to any charge of apostasy, incon-
sistency, or dishonourable compromise. How shall
they be secured ? Certainly, not by any demon-
strations of dogged resistance to change and im-
provement. There are a number of questions on
which the country has virtually made up its mind,
and the solution of which in a liberal sense is neces-
sary to the harmony of the constitution or the con-
sistency of the statute-book. Among the latter
questions, we are clearly justified in placing church
rates' abolition, the abolition of university tests, and
the unsectarian uniformity of parliamentary oaths ;
to the former category as obviously belongs the
great subject of parliamentary reform. Now, we
will not here travel over ground occupied with his
usual individuality of conviction and earnestness of
feeling by our correspondent " Episcopos," but we
may, in one sentence, indicate the pleasure with
which we should have found Mr. Disraeli showing
some willingness to accept the olive branch held out
to him from the other side of the house. There was
in the few words he addressed to the house before
the division a tone of acerbity and uncomprising
austerity which, had victory followed, would have
robbed it of its moral authority, and which, as it
happened, imparted only humiliation to defeat. Mr.
Disraeli must know that church rates are delibe-
rately and decidedly objected to by the nation. In
the last parliament they were condemned by majo-
rities which gradually got less as the parliament
got older; but no sooner was the question referred
again for arbitration to the hustings and the polling
booth than abolition is demanded by the country
with an earnestness and almost unanimity to which
it would surely be good policy on the part of any
parliamentary leader respectfully to defer. Let us
hope that in committee this error will be corrected ;
and that Mr. Disraeli will prove himself generous
enough to eccept and sagacious enough to mould a
settlement on the basis of mutual concession in
which the loyalty of churchmanship and the con-
science of nomonforulity will find equal acknow-
ledgment and equal satisfaction.

THE "SATURDAYREVIEW" ON MR. LOWE AND
THE LIBERAL PARTY.--...The weakness imputed by a
sceptical world to the present Ministry has become
a common topic of conversation. The Times, having
, buried them prematurely, is naturally aggrieved
that they should venture to be such an unconscion-
able time in dying ; but the next few weeks will
probably either kill or cure the "sick man." Since
his acceptance of office Lord Russell has been ex-
posed to several difficulties and disadvantages which
most men except Lord Russell would have thought
serious. The Premier himself has arrived at that
honourable time of life at which exertion and fatigue
becomes a torture, and find himself called upon to
frame a measure of Parliamentary reform for a
generation which scarcely acknowledges the Edin-
burgh Review. He succeeds, moreover, to the poli-
tical cellar of a statesman who has left behind him
more empty bottles than wine to put in them. And
lastly, Lord Russell has to manage, through a bril-
liant but headstrong deputy, a Cabinet that is COM-
posed o f discordant elements, a house that i 8 not
enthusi▪
astic in his support, and a party that is
weakened by the secession of two or three conspi-
cuous debaters. Of the disaffected outsiders, Mr.
Lowe i▪ s the most brilliant, and possibly the most
merciless. His speech upon reform last year ren-
dered his temporary absence from any reform
Ministry a matter of decorum, if not of necessity.
Though he has forfeited for a time the goodwill and
confidence of a large section of the Liberals, he has
won a foremost place amongst thinkers and speakers
of the house ; and the Government that excludes
him from office loses au able administrator, who
would bo useful to the public in any place in which
he would have an opportunity of worrying the re-
ligious world. Once outside the gates of the Mini-
sterial fortress ho becomes, on the other hand, a
formidable critic, whose criticisms will be acute and
damaging. His attitude of amicable hostility, which
is so embarrassing to the Cabinet, is not altogether
without its dangers for Mr. Lowe himself, to
whom Providence has deaied the power of mak-
ing polical friends as fast as he can make politi-
cal enemies. He runs spine risk of falling be-
tween two stools, an.d. of alienating the Liberal
party without conciliating anybody in their
place. In the presence of this contingency
Mr. Lowe has shown some spirit. He plays a bold
game, and has staked heavily on the failure of the
,
Russell-Gladstone Cabinet. . That he will waive no
reasonable occasion of contributing to the success of
s proved by the disposition he has
his own prophecy i
shown to rely on the applause of Conservative
benches ; and he has even
.attempted to disarm the
country gentlemen by
utting forward the interest-
ing plea that he is not to be taken to be as inde-
corously clever as Mr. John Stuart Mill. All this
looks as if Mr. Lowe not only was resolved to break
finally with Lord Russell, but scented the possi-
bility of fresh Parliamentary combination. There
are some considerations that might pardonably en-
courage such a hope. The present Cabinet coheres
chiefly from the force of circumstances, and hardly
can be considered a harmonious whole. Its mem-
bers have neither common traditions nor common
interests, nor perhaps any common object. Such
an assemblage can only be permanently held toge-
ther by the personal fascination of some popular
chief, and in their case this element of stability is
wanting. When they break up, they will disperse
to all the different quarters of the compass ; and,
until they disperse, every single Cabinet measure
must of necessity
be a species of compromise. Lord
Russell has succeeded in collecting in Downing-
street a group composed of some able and some
amiable statesmen, but, when he has collected them,
it seems as if he did not know very well what to do
with them. When men ask themselves why the
Liberal party has now been in power for some
months without hoisting any flag or furnishing any
definite programme to the world, the answer is self-
evident. The Cabinet is a house divided against
itself, and we are taught from the Bible what be-
comes of houses of this kind. Mr. Lowe, who
draws his wisdom probably from profaner sources,
has come to a similar conclusion, and it is not im-