The Sun.
London, England, 1866-06-22 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, JUNE 22, 1866.

The draught of water forward is 12ft. 4in., aft 15ft.
sin. The vessel is fitted with a Griffiths propeller,
the diameter of which is 12ft., the pitch 16ft.,
length 2ft. nin., and the immersion of the upper
edge 2ft. tin. The force of wind was Ito 2, and
the direction S.W. The ship was fully rigged and
ready for sea. The engines worked well throughout
the trial, but the boilers slightly primed.
Frederick Boston, a gunner belonging to No. 5
battery of the Depot Brigade of Royal Artillery at
Sheerness, was on Monday morning drummed out
of the ranks. The prisoner had deserted five times,
and was continually committing other crimes, until
at last his conduct became so bad that he was sen-
tenced by a court-martial to be turned out of the
army and to undergo 84 days' imprisonment in
Springfield Gaol.

By direction of the Admiralty the dockyard and
naval establishments at Chatham are to be closed
at noon on Saturday, the 30th inst., to enable the
members of the Volunteer corps to attend the re-
view which takes place on that day. A subsequent
order, by telegram, states that a day's holiday may
be granted on the occasion should the dockyard
hands consent to work up previously the additional
time thus allowed.

lar payment in future of the subsidy due from his
province, with a proportion each month of the re-
maining debt, until arrears be paid off.

After some discussion the meeting was adjourned
to the 6th of July.

STATE OF TRADE.

BRADFORD, 21st.—The outbreak of hostilities in
Germany and the non-reduction in the Bank rate of
discount have tended to deepen the gloom which
existed in this quiet market. Wool in the country
is receding in price, and, with the entire absence of
business here, a continuance of this drooping ten-
dency is inevitable. There was no change in either
worsted yarns or pieces. Several rather serious
local failures during the last few days tended to add
to the prevailing depression. Machinery is being
stopped in all directions, and the working of short
time also is being generally adopted. Prices are ir-
regular and drooping.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—It is now known that her Majesty will
not return to Windsor Castle till Tuesday morning.
Ministers will, therefore not be able to tell Parlia-
ment on Monday evening much more than it knows
already, and the expected explanations will have to
wait until Tuesday evening. The public will be a
little disappointed ; but the public is rather apt to
consider what is convenient to itself, and it thought
—we must admit not altogether unreasonably—that
an entire week was sufficientfor a Government which
had accepted a defeat to come to all the requisite de-
cisions, and prepare all the proper explanations. If,
as is verynatural, her Majesty has the greatest dis-
like to change her Ministers, she will probably desire
a personal interview with them. If, too, their deci-
sion in this case is not so unqualified as to leave no
opening for other alternatives, it is evident
that the real communications between the Crown
and its advisers will only begin on Tuesday, and
may be protracted several days. This is rather a
slow pace for the affairs of a great nation to travel
at. Indeed, half the time that has elapsed since the
division of Monday night has proved enough for the
absorption of several continental monarchies. But
we must not quarrel with a delay which gives men
breathing time, and must have been advantageous
to the health of our over-worked and over-strained
chiefs. The delay has answered another purpose
not so useful or important. It has given- time for
the exercise of that political invention which deals,
not with constitutions or constituencies, but with
possible Cabinets. First one combination, then
another, has enjoyed a temporary acceptance. It is
extensively believed that the Queen has given her
Ministers the option of a dissolution, and, as it is
also supposed the idea could not originate with her
Majesty, it has been added that the two leaders had
desired this last resort, and had pressed it rather
warmly on their unwilling colleaguep. As it is well
known that the majority of the Cabinet did not want
a Reform Bill this session at all, it was surmised
that they thought it hard to punish Parliament for
what they thought no crime. All this was consen-
taneous and probable, but on that account as likely
to be invented as to be actually true. When, how-
ever, we are assured that her Majesty wished her
Ministers to remain in her service, and was ready
to dissolve Parliament if they should desire it, we
only recognise that her Majesty leaves everything to
her Ministers, and that in so doing she acts both
constitutionally and wisely. They have taken upon
themselves a considerable responsibility, and are
entitled to the widest scope of action in carrying it
out. A dissolution, then, is possible, but we should
think most improbable, because most evidently
unwise. It really would produce nothing more
than one of those theatrical operations in which
20 men are marched out at one side of the stage
to reappear at the other, for there could be no
change in the elections worth the outrage to public
feeling and the inconvenience to public business.
Then come three alternatives—a Conservative Cabi-
net, a reconstruction of the present, and an entirely
new Cabinet, rather in the nature of a Coalition.
We must leave the Conservatives to anticipate their
own Cabinet. They have old and proved hands who
have shown themselves equal to any political or
official labours. They have younger men of great
promise, and would find no difficulty about most of
the offices. Whether Mr. Disraeli —in the Lords,
some people say—would be as good a Foreign Se-
cretary as Lord Clarendon is a matter of opinion,
which we need not enter on just now. The difficulty
would be in the rank and file, not the officers, and we
think it more than probable that a dexterous motion
for Parliamentary Reform would lead to the rein-
statement of the Whigs next February. We are
sorry to think that it should be so, because we don't
see what the Reformers are likely to get by such a
motion, except a return to office. So much for the
alternative of a Conservative Cabinet. Perhaps a
Reconstruction is the favourite idea; and if Lord
Russell and Mr. Gladstone would either retire or
condscend to a lower position in the Cabinet, that
would wonderfully simplify matters. As for the other
scheme, of an entirely new Cabinet, it is one that will
have to speak for itself when the names are given. If
a neutral Premier can be found—such as Lord
Stanley, for example—with the temper, the abilities,
and the personal following for the office, no doubt
there are men of high mark ready to serve under him,
who would not and could not serve under either Lord
Russell or Lord Derby. Such are the questions we
find ourselves discussing for want of better, as we
enter the last week in June. It will be July before Par-
liament will sit down to business again. We are al-
ready entering the period in which officials count the
days necessary to the progress of the bills that must
be carried. Never has there been such a wanton de-
struction of public time. That destruction, and its
miserable result, were anticipated from the first. We
foretell their recurrence whenever Reform is taken
up simply to strengthen the hands of a Govern-
ment, and not from the sense of an overwhelming
necessity. IVe often hear prophecies intended to re-
buke our self-satisfaction, or our want of forethought.
" The day will come," we are told—a day of anxiety,
disaffection, distress, and the like—when England
finds herself involved in some wide-spread revolu-
tionary epidemic, and when we shall exclaim, " 0
that we had reformed our Parliament when all was
quiet, and when we could do it leisurely, gracefully,
and wisely !" That day may possibly come. What
we anticipate is somthing short of it, but yet not
quite the present c'mparatively even tenour. There
must he some degree of agitation and pressure from
without to induce and carry a Reform. There are
many things to be done in heat that are impossible
in cold blood. You may take a leap, you may scale
a wall, you may force yourself through a fence, you
may raise a weight, or overthrow an obstacle, when
the blood is up, that you cannot do at another time.
Soldiers have marched up sandbanks, or scaled
breaches, burdened with heavy arms and accoutre-
ments, in the face of a foe, which they could with dif-
ficulty ascend the day after the battle or the assault.
But whose blood is up now, except Mr. Gladstone's,
and his is not a pure Reform fever? The nation was
never so cool about anything, and it will not rise.
We will not answer the argument that the nation
would on this account do the thing more wisely. It
will not do the thing at all. It will not put a particle
of pressure on its representatives, and till it does
Parliament will no more carry Reform than a loco-
motiVe will drag a train at express speed before steam
has been got up.

POST.-It is in consequence in no small degree of
their own over-astuteness in attempting to inani-
pulate the House of Commons that the Ministry
now find themselves in face of a situation than which
a more difficult could hardly have been contrived for
them by their worst enemies. When they adopted
the remarkable scheme of getting through the first
instalment of their Reform Bill by suppressing the
second instalment, and so avoiding for the time
the objections which they knew well would operate
against it, it seems wonderful that it should not
have occurred to them that when the second instal-
ment should be brought forward the objections
would be stronger and the objectors more bitter in
their opposition from the knowledge that they had
been unfairly used in the former stage of the mea-
sure. It is, of course, open to a Ministry, if it so
pleases, to treat the House of Commons as an enemy,
and to take all the tactical advantages which seem
to be open—though it would seem that when a
Ministry counting a majority of some seventy or
eighty does so treat it there must be something very
doubtful in its conduct or its measures, or both ; but
at any rate the house does not like to be so dealt
with, and the reaction which follows the recognition
of the fact that it has been outflanked or surprised
is perfectly intelligible and defensible. We have
reason to know that there were eight members
among those who voted in the majority on Monday
night who were considered as certain supporters of
the Government, and who, up to the very last mo-
ment, were counted by the Ministerial whips as being
on their side, and the result was consequently as as-
tounding to the Treasury bench as it was unex-
pected ; and these eight, the number which just suf-
ficed to turn the balance, represent the reaction
all'ided to, and may, it is to be hoped, avail at
any rate to: teach the lesson that, in a Consti-
tution like ours, the essence of which is that
there should be an open and clear confidence
between the Ministry and Parliament, it is
safer to lay frankly, before the house the whole of
any scheme to which it is asked to give its assent,
rather than to attempt to out-inaneeuvre it, and to
steal a preliminary success by devices which, in the
end, can but lead to total failure. The Ministry
were, it is understood, from the first agreed that the
vote could not be accepted—indeed the very ex-
plicit, perhaps too explicit, declarations of Mr. Glad-
stone, which were intended to serve a different end,
precluded all possibility of accepting it ; and, hav-
ing before their eyes the tempting fact that the
Opposition were in a minority, the Ministry would
probably—had the Sovereign been more accessible
than she was--at once have placed their resigna-
tion unconditionally in her hands, and have trusted
to the balance of chances and votes which seemed
so much in their favour for an early opportunity of
a return to power. But in the time that special mes-
sengers take to go to and return from Balmoral
many plans for renewing their lease of power, or,
at any rate, for postponing its termination, may,
and probably have, presented themselves which
were not at first sight apparent. When it was but
a choice of evils it became a question whether the
greatest possible of all evils, known as resignation,
could not be avoided by any other course, and the
question naturally arose—the rather that it was
assumed tobe certain that her Majesty would be
averse at such a conjuncture from a change of Mi-
nistry, and more especially of the Foreign Minis-
ter.—whether dissolution were not capable of being

so worked as to be a lesser evil. Against such a
step there are always grave obiections, and never
were they greater than at this time, or at-
tended with greater risks. The expense to the
country is enormous—the disorganisation of the poli-
tical and social system most serious. But the chief
objection on the present occasion must have been
felt to lie in the fact that it is all but certain—
indeed it is universally admitted—that it would
leave the Government worse off than they were be-
fore. On the other hand, time would be gained,
and the events which succeed each other so rapidly
on the Continent would, of course, avail to
strengthen any Government which might be in pos-
session of the reins of power. Perhaps a Reform
agitation might be got up too, and the nation be
persuaded that the Ministry was standing up in de-
fence of " the inalienable rights" of the governed.
Altogether it has come to be thought—thanks to
the interval which fortuitous circumstances have
provided—that it might not be absolutely necessary
to resign without trying another fall after all, and
there is good reason to believe that the fall will be
tried, and that the Government will elect to take
the extraordinary measure of dissolving Parliament
in which they are supposed to have a majority of
seventy or eighty, and that in consequence of their
having been defeated by their own followers. The
dissolution, if it be finally decided to trust to so
hazardous an experiment, would not probably take
place until the natural end of the session, since there
still remains a large amount of business which must
be got through. If it takes place it will have this
at least to recommend it, that it will probably dis-
pose for ever of the theory that there is any wide-
spread demand for Reform in the country, or any
intense affection for the Government bill. But it is
difficult, if not impossible, to find any justification
under the circumstances for a dissolution—unless,
indeed, it is to be laid down that every Government
which sustains a defeat shall dissolve ;—and so much
ill fortune has attended the former tactical move-
ments of the Ministry that they will, we imagine,
do well to reflect before they commit themselves
finally to a course which will save them but for a
short time, and will probably do such permanent
damage to the Liberal party as it will not soon or
easily recover.