The Sun.
London, England, 1866-06-05 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—The debate of last night had about it an
air of unreality which detracted sadly from the
effect of the speeches delivered. Everybody knew
from the beginning what the result would be, and
I the proceedings might almost as well have gone on
in dumb show. There was, of course, much excel-
lent display, j3eginB, the- air,_and
exquisite fooling.' No one was in earnest, except
Mr. Bernal Osborne, whose vivacity is always
greatest when nothing can come of it, and who had,
moreover, the pleasure of proving that everybody
was in the wrong but himself. The rest of the
combatants did not possess the easy self-satisfaction
of the new member for Nottingham, and were, in
fact,. conscious that their position was a little ridi-
culous. They were like the redoubted champions
who faced one another ten days or a fortnight since,
and showed admirable science, but still somehow
disappointed their patrons. Men felt then that they
had not gone down into Kent by a special train,
kindly provided by the London, Chatham, and
Dover Railway Company at 4 o'clock in the morn-
ing, only to see Mace and Goss show how cleverly
they could avoid drawing blood, and in the same way
the house felt last night that it was scarcely worth
while to carry on the farce of debating Capt. Hat'ter's
amendment to a conclusion. Instead of throngs of
members, including many of the second if not of the
first rank, contending one with another who should
catch the Speaker's eye, even during the dinner hour,
as on the debate on the Franchise Bill, the attend-
ance was slack, the desire to speak anything but
widespread, the weariness inexpressible. We be-
lieve that if the House of Commons were as omni-
potent as it sometimes imagines itself to be, it would
have voted the annihilation of the hours from 7 to
12, and so have precipitated the conclusion which
was all it wanted to accomplish. It is impossible to
misunderstand the issue of the debate on Captain
Hayter's amendment. The general opinion on the
demerits of the Government scheme was unchanged,
but the best friends of reform confessed that the
only thing to be done was to allow it to die a natu-
ral death, instead of strangling it at its entrance
into committee. In the spirited defence of the
scheme made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer
he confessed that a large portion of the Redistribu-
tion Bill was open to discussion, and that the Go-
vernment did not consider their plan of grouping a
necessary ingredient in their proposals. The Go-
vernment, it seems, is still bent on enfranchisement,
but as the House of Commons is resolved to pass
none but a complete scheme, the errors of the Re-
distribution Bill infect the consolidated measures.
Lord Grosvenor frankly declared his opinion that
the Franchise Bill was bad and the Redistribution
scheme unsatisfactory, but he thought a change in
the Government at present so hazardous that he was
prepared to vote against the amendment, in the con-
fidence that her Majesty's Ministers would recog-
nise the impossibility of carrying their measure
through Parliament this session, and would there-
fore withdraw it. We adopt Lord Grosvenor's con-
clusion. There can, indeed, be no question but
that the critical relations between Austria, Prussia,
Italy, and France have saved the Ministry. It
may be a matter of regret, in the interest of party
Government, that the Opposition should be unable
to cross over to the Treasury Bench for want of a
Foreign Secretary possessing both the knowledge and
condition to their
discretion requisite to inspire the confidence of the
necess to
ary them as in making
country, but their long exclusion from power has
assumption of office at home. Nor do we repine at
the result in the interest of Reform. Had a Liberal
tranquillitynowhere
been
abroad
sr o o damagingad
a
Government been driven from power by a hostile
division on Captain Hayter's amendment, Reform
would not have perished with them. The question
must be settled. The demands of the more advanced
section of the Liberal party would have grown, and
after a brief interval a Liberal Government would
have been reconstructed, pledged to accomplish the
results desired by the ardent supporters who had
reinstated them in power. It is possible that this
would have been the beginning of a fresh period of
disorganization ; it is more probable that the coun-
try, wearied of an apparently endless contest, would
have acquiesced in the schemes of the most
vociferous Reformers. It is no small satisfaction
to be spared this contingency. So long as the pre-
sent Ministry remain in power they are pledged to
Reform ; but whatever Reform they may carry must
be carried with the help of the. Opposition. The
present scheme being withdrawn,_.
and the neces-
sity"t
of withdrawing must soon be acknowledged,
—we may expect to see it again next Session, based
on fuller knowledge and more mature reflection.
The Session has not been lost, for we have already
learnt to understand the practical consequences
of changes which in the beginning were suggested
only from theoretical considerations. The members
of the Government themselves ought to confess
that they have been instructed by the discussion
to which their plans have been subjected ; and
if recourse were had during the recess to the as-
Nipitance a a COLurairoo9; we bane that A CCM,

; siderable, yet Constitutional, scheme of Reform
I might be framed capable of being carried into law,
because commanding the consent of moderate men
of all parties. The result of the debate is‘so satis-
factory that we are not disposed to examine too
closely the apology for the Government put forward
by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, though much
of it was very questionable. It is true, as he said,
that the early part of the Session was occupied
with necessary business, but it was in great part
mere routine, and presented no obstacle to the
earlier introduction of the Government scheme of
Reform. The charge that time had been occupied
in irrelevant discussion was fairly met by Mr. Dis-
raeli when he pointed out that on the main points
discussed the Government had deferred to the ex-
pressed opinions of the House of Commons. Mr.
Gladstone was happier in criticising Mr. Disraeli's
suggested plan of grouping than in defending his
own, and the truth is that both of them can only be
looked upon as rough sketches put forward for the
consideration of the country. They are suggestions
towards the Reform Bill of next session, and nothing
more. They deserve to be studied, and we hope
will be studied, in the autumn, so that next year
the best parts of them may be embodied in a com-
plete measure. As for the present scheme, its de-
fects have been for some time so patent to the
world that, now the honour of the Government
has been saved, there can be no reason why it
should long continue to engage the attention of the
House of Commons.
DAILY NEWS.—It cannot be said that the result
of last night's debate, though neither unexpected
nor undesired by the majority of the house, leave
the Government in its relations towards its own
party and its own bill—we might even say, simply
as a Government—in a position entirely satisfac-
tory to thoie who would most sincerely consult its
dignity at this critical moment in domestic politics
and in the affairs of Europe. Nor is this any fault
of Government itself or of its habitual supporters
in Parliament, so far, at least, as last night's pro-
ceedings are concerned. All the credit of a state of
things which cannot safely be permitted to last
much longer belongs to an Opposition which has
neither the courge to fight nor to run away, and
more especially to those gentlemen sitting on the
side of the Government who have neither the cou-
rage of bad faith nor of repentance. After com-
paring the conduct of the Conservative party
towards Reform with the spontaneous and osten-
tatious promise made by Lord Derby on the first
night of the session of " fair play" and " no corn-
' bination," and after dismissing the accusation
of introducing the Franchise Bill tardily and the
Seats Bill with precipitation, by reminding the
Tories of their Cattle-Plague Compensation debates,
and suggesting that forty-five days should be time
enough for a Government including members who
had already been parties to the introduction of
three Reform Bills to frame redistribution clauses
with tolerable maturity of judgment and prepara-
tion—Mr. Gladstone remarked the poetical justice
with which Captain Hayter had, out of the abun- ,
dance of filial duty and devotion, taken up arms in
defence of the exclusive rights of the electors of
Wells, whom his own father had, as Secretary of the
Treasury, out of the abundance of his official duty '
and devotion, shown himself perfectly ready and
willing to disfranchise altogether. Touching very
lightly the transparent, the almost avowed com-
plicity—even to the wording of the amendment
—with the Tory managers, Mr. Gladstone had
once more demanded of the Opposition some-
thing like the good old English Ayes and Noes,
instead of the shifting devices of amendments
so vague in style, so large and loose, and elastic
in substance, as to be intelligible only to
the dupers and the duped. To this appeal Mr.
Disraeli had, in his most artificial and uneasy
manner, replied as best he could by insisting on
the fact of both amendments having proceeded
from the side of the Governnient, in evidence of
the conciliatory disposition of the Conservative
Opposition, and had then indulged himself in a
copious-argument, founded on statistics of his own
discovery, and to which he referred not as a partisan,
but as a disinterested witness, to prove the gross
injustice to the lauded interest which the present
Reform Bill would aggravate by leaving half the
population of the country—(Mr. Disraeli loves good
sweeping generalities)—that is, half the population
of the counties and the unrQpresented county towns,
in a worse position than before. If this means any-
thing, it must mean that in the next Reform Bill to
be introduced by a Tory Govormnent this monstrous
inequality will be redressed, and the landed interest,
which all the world knouts is so ineffectually repre-
sented in Parliament, as the Cattle-Plague Com-
pensation debates showed, will obtain a fair share
of its rights, and no longer be scrificed to the borough
populations. Nor was this the only inference to be
drawn from the most striking passage of Mr.
Disraeli's speech, which was delivered with all the
emphasis of a statesman who had been in office, and
may probably be again, and who is therefore bound
_ _

to inea,sure his words. Alluding to Lord Grosvenor's
speech, in which that noble earl (upon whom an
unnatural and impossible parliamentary impor-
tance is being thrust by his injudicious friends,
and almost, we fear, believed in by himself) had de-
clared that he should vote for the Government on

is occasion, because he was unwilling to remove
Lord Clarendon from the Foreign-office in the pre-
sent anxious state of foreign affairs, Mr. Disraeli
affirmed the general proposition that a Foreign
Minister who succeeded in preventing war deserved
great credit ; but that a Foreign Minister who should
not succeed in preventing war might be excused if
it were understood that the Government to which
he belonged was unable to enforce its conclusion in
a Conference by making war upon the Powers that
dissented from them. And he he pointedly asked
whether the Foreign Minister who suffered England
to drift into the Crimean war, and who at the Con-
gress of Paris, in 1856, consented to terms with
Russia which it required' all Lord Palmerston's
vigourand resolution to set aside, and who was party
to attacks on "the free press "of Europe"—whe-
ther, in short, the present Foreign Minister was
a man whom it would be dangerous at the present
crisis to dispense with. In this reference to some
passages in Lord Ciarendon's career, Mr. Disraeli,
no dout, was not exceeding the limits of fair
fight as the leader of the Opposition. But how
could a man of Mr. Disraeli's sagacity fail to per-
ceive that he was allowing it to be inferred that, as
Foreign Minister himself, he would as representa-
tive of England in a Conference be prepared to go
to war to enforce the foreign policy of a Tory ad-
ministration—say, the policy of Austria in Italy ?
Is the house or the public prepared to accept a
change of Ministry on such terms? This is a ques-
tion well worth Mr. Disraeli's reflection. When
Mr. Disraeli sat down it was clear enough that
something strange was coming. And when Captain
_Hayter rose this something was discovered. With
great intensity the member for Wells observed that
as Mr. Gladstone had stated that as grouping was
not a " vital principle" of the bill, he should, in
deference to the advice of Lord Grosvenor, who was
a keener antagonist of :the Government than him-
self, withdraw his amendment. Upon this Lord
Elcho, as " one of the aboriginal Adullamites," as
he pleasingly described himself, rose also, and as
soon as he could get a hearing, told the house
that, as the David of the Adullamites had gone
over, and as he understood that the Government
had " virtually " given up their bill, he should not
divide, and he trusted the member for Wells would
persist in withdrawing his amendment. Observe
the sequel. Loud cries for a division from the
Liberal, not from the Opposition benches. When
a division seemed imminent the Tories left the House
almost in a body ; the Liberals remained fixed to
their seats ; so that when the question was put, the
amendment was withdrawn without a division, and
when the words " that the Speaker do now leave
the chair" were uttered, the cheers and the groans
of the Tories had subsided to a faint and scattered
murmur, while the fall force of the Government
supporters remained firm and steady at their post.
The Government, then, has defeated an amendment
which, if it meant anything, meant a vote of want
of confidence. The bill is committed, and the divi-
sion is avoided, by the Tories, because the Liberal
deserters have deserted them in turn ; but deserted
them not because they have gone back to their alle-
giance to their principles, but because they are
afraid to be responsible for a change of Ministry at
this crisis in the affairs of Europe. So far as the
Reform Bill is concerned, if the Government can be
said to be on the way to victory it is over a mined
causeway, against masked batteries, through a con-
verging fire of ambushed enemies and deserters in
the ranks behind them. This, we say, is a state of
things which, neither for its own sake nor for the
sake of the party which is more important than a
Ministry, or of a cause which is more important
than a party, it is desirable to prolong.

-
A New York paper states that 13 American and
English Atlantic steam lines made 454 passages in 1864
and 1855. They carried 28,279 cabin passengers, and
190,911 steerage passengers. There were 89 births and
192 deaths on board the steamers. Of the deaths 180 wero
children under eight years of age; 21 of the deaths were
Win cholera.