The Sun.
London, England, 1866-06-19 00:00:00

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LONDON, TUESDAY, JUNE 19, 1866.

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Distractingly vexatious, disheartening even
though it is, that again the popular hope for Re.

form should be doomed to disappointment, it seems
like Poetical Justice that the mover of those Ab-
stract Resolutions of 1859, by which the Country
was " dodged" out of a Reform Bill that could
have been passed, and was thus dodged simply for
the furtherance of the compartively petty and paltry
interests of the Whig Party, should now find him-
self imminently threatened with being ousted from.
office, from power, and all its perquisites, upon
that very same question, by an Avenging Opposition.
The division of last night or rather of this morning
thus looked at, appears in the light of a NEMESIS.
Sir HUGH CAIRNS spoke, it will be observed,
shortly before the division, and he was the one who
dubbed the " resolutions" of Lord JOHN RUSSELL
(idiomatically dubbed them) a. "dodge !" The Noble
Earl may possibly himself we presume, act hence-
forth upon his own axiom—resting, that is, for the
remainder of his days and being thankful ! Sir
RORERT PEEL, again, has had his revenge ! Having
been chasseed out of offi'3e immediately upon
the death of Lord PALMERSTON, the wound
thereby inflicted upon his amour propre was sup-
posed by some to have been bound up, if not healed
altogether, by the comforting bandage of the Red
Ribbon of the Bath. All this while, however,
under the Red Ribbon, that galling wound has been
rankling. Driven .out of office by his colleagues,
he has done his best towards dragging them after
him, and that almost as summarily. So confidently
have Ministers counted upon carrying everything
before them, even their two one-legged Reform
Bills rolled into one, a measure that could only
at the best have been a deformity, that Her Majesty
has by this time flitted far away from the regions
of Government to her Highland home at Bal-
moral. The result of this last sitting in
the House of Commons—the sitting of the
18th of June, the Waterloo of the Conserva-
tive Opposition—may now necessitate the return
of the QUEEN to Windsor or the Isle of Wight. A
Ministerial Crisis can hardly be carried to a satis-
factory termination in the middle of June, with the
Budget not yet passed, while the SOVEREIGN
and her Statesmen are separated from one

another by the whole length of the island.
The probabilities, however, of the political

situation will be shadowed forth, we presume, in

some faint degree at least, by the explanation
to be vouchsafed by Mr. GLADSTONE to the House
of Commons this evening, shortly after our first
impression for to-day shall have made its
appearance. To that explanation of the Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer's, may be referred not
only our curiosity and solicitude as to the intentions
of her Majesty's Ministers, consequent upon the
division of the House on Lord DUNKELLIN'S amend-
ment, but, together with our curiosity and solicitude,
our numerous, and some few of them at least highly
probable, conjectures and anticipations.

The excitement of the political world during the
Session of 1866 yesterday reached its climax. All
through the past week it was known that the dis-
cussion of the question of rating versus rental, as the
qualification for the borough franchise, would bring
on a trial of strength ; and after the division on Mr.
HuNT's amendment, rejected only by a majority of
seven, it became evident that the contest would be
a close one. Some friends of the Ministry advised
them to adapt themselves to circumstances, to
withdraw or modify some of their clauses,
or by other means to avoid coming to au open
battle with the enemy. This, however, they could
not or would not do. The question of a rating
qualification is not in itself so important ; the rival
merits of rateable value and clear yearly value is a
matter upon which genuine Reformers may very
well agree to differ. But the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, in a few words before the division of
last night, explained distinctly his views on the
matter. He said, as we remember, on the
introduction of the Bill, that by it the
Government intended to stand or fall ; that is

to say, by its main provisions or vital prin-
ciples, since no man would be unreasonable enough

to expect them to make a Government question of
every single clause. These chief features Mr.
GLADSTONE considers the £l4 franchise in counties
and the £7 in boroughs, and he has never failed
throughout the course of an unusually trying and
tedious progress to uphold them unflinchingly. Last
night he reiterated the substance of what he had
previously said, denying that the Government had
in any degree shrunk from fulfilling their words,
but showing that he had endeavoured, so far as
possible, to separate what he called the political
from the practical part of the bill. He has made
concessions on minor points, and every one
knows that very few Bills come out of
Committee just the same as they went in,
so that to submit to alteration, amendment, and
modification is no discredit to the most uncompro-
mising Minister. But to the £l4 and £7 fran-
chise Mr. GLADSTONE stood firm, and to any cur-
tailment of this moderate enfranchisement the
Government, he says, cannot be brought. He de-
clared, therefore, last evening,. that looking to the
effect of the amendment, he considered that it
would strike at the plan of enfranchisement pro-
posed by the Government. "So viewing it," he
added, " I cannot enter into any engagement that
we will accept an adverse vote, or regard it as
incompatible with the progress of the bill." After
these closing words from the leader of the house
there was immediately evident the excitement of a
great political struggle. There have been many
close divisions, many struggles when the fate of the
Ministry and the Bill trembled in the balance, but
it has been reserved for Lord DUNKELLIN'S amend-
ment to strike the final blow. In the midst of a
scene of excitement such as the House of Commons
seldom offers the numbers were declared, and in a
house of 619 members a majority of 11 was declared
against
o - n itghhet Government.
T
we are to learn the, course which the
Government intend to pursue. Speculations of all
kinds are of course rife, but the main question at issue
is whether the sacrifice to ba made will be of
the Government or the bill. It would be easy to
favour of either
find precedents and arguments in