The Sun.
London, England, 1859-04-04 00:00:00

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4th April, 1859.

The town is filled with vague rumours. The
clubs are in a state of extraordinary agitation.
Every person considers it Lord DERBY'S duty to
act in accordance with his own individual wishes
and feelings, and has no hesitation in saying that
such a course will be adopted. The Premier kas,
however, strictly preserved his secret. Not the
slightest hint has been suffered to ooze forth re-
specting the Ministerial intentions. It would be
highly disrespectful to both Houses of Parliament
to give any intimation to others, before they re-
ceived full and complete information respecting
the line of policy to be pursued, and the causes
therefor. The very natural anxiety raustt"there-
fore he subdued until the proper time arrives,
which will not be much longer deferred. This
evening the mystery will be dispelled; the cur-
tain duly lifted; and the comparative accuracy
of the various speculations fully ascertained.
Westill adhere to the opinion that we expressed
on Saturday, that Lord DERBY will not resign. It
is due to his SOVEREIGN, to the people, to his
followers, and himself, that he should not do so
without first giving an ample opportunity of re-
spending to a suitable appeal, and showing how far
it sympathises with the unnatural coalition formed
for the sole purpose of substituting a different set
of men for those who now occupy the Treasury
benches, without reference to the best interests of
the country or to their own political reputations.
Nay, more, with the certain effect of shelving the
question of reform for the present, and perhaps for
many successive years.
If his sole object were to avenge himself on his
political opponents, to teach them the painful but
salutary lesson, that there are circumstances under
which a temporary triumph may be more disastrous
even than a defeat, he would give the conspirators
rope enough and let them play out their game.
They would speedily discover the folly of which
they had been guilty, and see that they had dis-
placed the best Government that could be formed
in the present state of the House of Commons ;
and cui Bono with what object or purpose ? simply
that Lord JOHN RUSSELL might hold office for
a few short weeks, or possibly months, and that
it might be rendered apparent to the world
how wide- apart are the opinions of the red-
tapist Whigs, and of the really independent
Liberals, whom they have the vanity to class
amongst their followers (!) and supporters (!) and
to suppose that they can control and direct their
votes as they think proper. This pleasing delu-
sion would however speedily be dispelled, and they
would soon discover how totally impossible it was
to stand against a compact body. of 273 members
rendering a general, cordial support to the policy of
Lord DERBY ; nor, after what has no recently
occurred, could much forbearance be anticipated,
and Lord JOHN, or his rival the noble member
for Tiverton, whichever might " win the toss" for
first place, would soon be compelled to relinquish
office after a term dwindled to the shorgest span.
But Lord DERBY is too patriotic to adopt
such a course, however tempting it
might be. He well knows that the peace and
tranquillity of Europe depend on having a firm
but conciliating hand directing the helm. of Foreign
Affairs. All that has been achieved would be
lost, what was done would be undone, and all
the various complications that had been so skilfully
disposed of—the tangled webs so completely un-
ravelled—would be restored to their original posi-
' tions. Fresh difficulties would spring up, "New
Alps on ,gps arise ;" and war would be as
imminent as it was when the rejection
of the odious Conspiracy Bill drove Lords PALMER-
I STON, CLARENDON, and their noble and right hon.
colleagues from office.
We feel to the full extent the great incon-
venience attending on a dissolution at this
period of the year. We know that two years since
Lord PALMERSTON made it the excuse for doing
nothing for the remainder of the Session, and that
although it took place a month earlier than the present
time. But we would encounter all this inconvenience,
the general interruption of business, and the turmoil
attendant on a general election, rather than there
should be an immediate resignation of Ministers.
We fancy that we gave the correcticard on Satur-

day. There will neither be an immediate resigna-
tion nor a dissolution. A few short weeks will
suffice to pass not only the measures absolutely in-
dispensable, but many of those Which are
accepted by members of all parties, and the
advantages whereof are fully recognised by
the country. Keen, indeed, must be the
appetency for office, parching the thirst for
patronage, which could so completely disregard
the best interests of the nation as to cast any fac-
I tious opposition in the way of such a course, should
Lord PALMERSTON and Lord JOHN, notwithstanding
the conflicting views to which they have given ex-
pression, it will set the crowning seal to the de-
struction of the slender remains of their political
reputations.

We look now with no little interest to the course
which will be taken by the leaders of the advanced
Liberals. Amongst them we have always reckoned
the honourable members for Birmingham and Ash-
ton, the former of whom has had the cause of
Radieal Reform in his hands during the whole
autumn and till the meeting of Parliament. Mr.
Fox also, of Oldham, is prominently a people's
man, and his speech in the great debate was in-
comparably the best which was made for the so-
frequently praised working classes ; and the
honourable member for Bristol has a claim to a
foremost place amongst the advocates of popular
reforms. What will all these gentlemen, and per-
haps some others who might be mentioned, do, at the
present juncture, to justify their course on the last
division of Thursday night
We are bound to assume that they had reasons
of overwhelming importance for their absence from
the division on Mr. WYLDrS motion. We do not
presume to doubt this. SeVeral of them are men
whose sincerity •on the particular reform of the
Ballot ought to admit of no' question ; but
their judgment has yet to be . vindicated by
the development of their policy. Losing to
win is fair play, whether. in games of amuse-
ment or the graver games of politics or war.
The winning, however, ie the only justification
of the temporary sacrifice, and we now wait to see
the great gain to accrue from the Crimean policy
of withholding support when a brave officer was
striving to carry a political Redan. That the enemy
of the hour should be strengthened by such deser-
tions from the Liberal ranks as Lord JOHN Rus-
SELLL, Lord PALMERSTON, Sir G. C. LEWIS, Sir
CHARLES WOOD, Sir GEORGE GREY, Mr. R. LOWE,
Mr. M. T. BAINEs, Mr. J. WILSON, and Mr. SMITH,
can excite no surprise. These noblemen and gentle-
men have of late always ratted on every question
of earnest and real reform i according as they were
in or out of office, they and the Tories have always
been ready to help each other against the people.
This whole knot, of old stagers as most of them are,
ought now to be laid aside by the country—as gover-
nors of it we mean. They might be very useful,
from their experience, to criticise, and so improve the
measures of other men up to the wants and demands
of the present day; but as originators of measures
for the people, they are but fossils of the Old
Reform Bill Era ; their minds can never get out of
the ruts of their famous Anne Domini eighteen hun-
dred and thirty-two. Fine fellows some of them
no doubt, in their time ; so were the huge ante_
deluvians, whose shapes and forms mingle with
the realities of the Crystal Palace. We accomplish
far greater things now, however, by the less por-
tentous creatures of the age to which we belong, and
we fear that it is only by leaving our fossil
friends to their fate, and throwing ourselves upon
those whom the present:day has adapted to itself,
that we shall achieve anything worth doing.
That the acknowledged leaders of Radical Re-
form should, however, desert while the antiquated
Reformers did worse than desert—this is the course
which has yet to be justified by results. If we find
that they have made a compact, or 9nly an honourable
engagement with the worn-out, Whigs, which will
issue in laying on the table of the House and
pushing through all its stages a Reform Bill
worthy of Reformers, then we shall acquit them—
acquit them heartily and gladly. We shall only
wish that they had contrived to let old and un-
flinching Reformers, like ourselves; know before-
hand, in the confidence of those who wish for the
general support of the independent press, the ex-
cellent reasons they had for preferring co-operation
with Old Whigs, and burking for a time their own
views. But if we find that, although professedly
thorough-going Liberals, they could sell themselves
to those who have tricked us so often ; that they
could make speeches of the most reticent, moderate,
guarded character ; that they could be silent about
the Ballot while Tories were pushing them upon
it; that they could speak and act as if Mr. HAYTER
were pulling their coat tails all the time they were
talking or making motions—if, in a word, we find
that they have served Lord JOHN RUSSELL and the
old family clique, to be jilted with fair words and
left in the lurch at last, what shall we think of
their wisdom ?

We shall not affect to regret the " untimely
division," as those not in the secret have termed it,
till we see what BRIGHT and Company have gained
for us by entering into a joint-stock concern
with RUSSELL and Company. If the Anti-Church-
rate-Abolition and Anti-ballot !Whigs have given
Mr. BRIGHT a bill on liberalism which they will hon-
our in office, all will be well ; if not, we shall only
be able to regret that some who ought to know
better have been again caught with Whig chaff.
A little time, come what will, must show whether
our old friends have sold themselves for nothing or
not. If the former, they will most seriously have
damaged their position, and destroyed confidence
in their leadership. We shall have Lord JOHN
RUSSELL boasting on the hustings at Guildhall that
he only voted against the ballot when the Birming-
ham and Bristol members ran away from it ; and
not improbably his not shirking the question, al-
though he voted wrong, will be well set off by the
foil of "old stagers" turning tail when it came to a
pinch. We condemn no one, however, at present;
we await the proof of run-a-way wisdom.

An admirable suggestion has recently been made
by the eminent surgeon, CHARLES HAWKINS,
F.R.C.S., with a view to the better expression of
the honour and homage with which the memory of
JOHN HUNTER is regarded by that great man's
profession. This suggestion, it will be understood
at once, has sprung out of the project now advanc-
ing towards its happy realisation—that of erecting
a suitable monument to the renowned anatomist.
And that project, as will be remembered, arose in its
turn out of the discovery of JOIIN HUNTER'S remains
in an obscure vault under one of our London
churches, and the transference therefrom of the
mouldering coffin, with all funereal pomp and cere-
mony, to Westminster Abbey, for the purpose of a
final and fitting interment. Now that one of the
greatest of England's sons rests at length in that
honoured sepulchre down in the old Abbey at
Westminster, it is but reasonable, as a sequel to the
re-burial of his dust, that the members of the
medical profession should desire to give expression to
the homage with which they cherish the remembrance
of his glorious life. As the most distinct evidence
of this unanimous feeling on their part, the Sur-
geons and Physicians Of the United Kingdom are
at once bent upon raising a public statue in honour

of JOHN HUNIER. Whereupon, while the subscrip-
tions are pours g in to swell the funds raised for
the erection ofthe proposed monument, Mr. HAW-
KINS interposel with his suggestion between the
memory of IJUNTER :and the unanimous and
enthuSiastic replied entertained towards that
"memory by to members of the medical pro-
fession. Thal profession, Mr. HAWKINS re-
mii6 is; fmi ers at the present moment some
20,000 members in all—surgeons and physicians.
A guinea fromeaeh of these members would fur-
nish, of courge, according to COCKER, a fund of just
£21,000. An mount sufficient, as Mr. HAWKINS
observes, to yield in perpetuity two or three fellow-
ships of £3OO e, year, to be held each for two or
1 three years by successful competitors according to
a periodical avard of the College of Surgeons.
This suggestion we have already spoken as,
to our thinkirg, a really admirable one. It
is, to our m.nd, especially so, because at
once and quite obviously very feasible. Where
is there a member of the medical profession
who would not delight to give his guinea in honour
of the greatest man who ever adorned its annals
—more especially when the sum thus collected
would be applied to the material advantage of the
profession itself—to its living advantage year after
year, generation after generation. Instead of ossi-
fying this homage to the great man's memory into
a colossal statue carved in granite, the profession
would be securing to itself the boon of these bene-
ficent fellowships.

It is only where Mr. HAWKINS rejects the notion
altogether of raising the proposed statute of MIN-
TER that we cannot go with him in his proposition.
To our thinking, the original design of the com-
mittee, and his own navel and most iDgeninus sug-
gestion, apPear in no way whatever incompatible.
Supposing, for example, that the " guinea a-piece,"
as proposed, brought togethei this noble fund of
£2o,ooo—the first year's interest upon this would,
of itself, be quite sufficient to liquidate the ex-
penses incurred in the raising of the monument
originally designed to be erected in HUNTER'S honour
somewhere in the metropolis. So that the sub-
scriptions would be collected together upon an
honourable understanding that the ultimate employ-
ment of the funds in the furnishing of these fellow-
ships would commence with the second year after
the £20,000 had been collected. The first year's in-
come resulting from that capital being applied to
the purpose at • first intended, that of raising in a
suitable position in the capital of the empire a statue
of JOHN HUNTER--carved or cast in that illustrious
man's honour at the instance of the members of his
eminent profession. To the medical men of the
'United Kingdom we would most earnestly commend
this notion of blending the original design of the
Committee with Mr. CHARLES HAWKINS' really
admirable and perfectly feasible proposition. The
realisation of a project in every respect so noble
and benificent would be an honour at once to the
memory of HUNTER, and to the members of his
Profession ; and it would be an honour, we may
add, worthy' of HUNTER and of the Profession.

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THE SUN.
MONDAY, APRIL 4, 1859.