The Sun.
London, England, 1866-06-27 00:00:00

order, from proceeding with the business, but I am
sure the house will concur with me in thinking that
such prosecution of business is inconvenient during
a period when there is an absolute abeyance of the
functions of Government, excepting in cases beyond
dispute, when only formal business will have to be
proceeded with. One vote will be taken to-day for
the packet service, the amount of which falls due at
the end of the month, and which.will be reported on
Thursday, and will be in time for the purpose in-
tended. (Cheers.)
The motion for the adjournment of the house at
its rising till Thursday was then agreed to.
On the motion of Mr. CHILDERS, votes
amounting in the aggregate to £1,450,000 were
taken on account for departments belonging to the
Post-office Packet Service.

The house then adjourned until Thursday.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—Lord Russell's Government has breathed
its last with more dignity and consciousness than
some of its friends had expected. Another course
was open to it ten days ago, but the choice once
made was not one to be spontaneously recalled,
averted by officious interposition, or inflamed into
the calamity of a dissolution. The Leader of the
Commons has spoken his last words, if not quite
in charity with all men, at least with a self-restraint
which proves at once a sense of the occasion and
the sweet uses of adversity. In the account he
renders of himself and his Chief the Queen has to
perform a part of unusual prominence, and every
loyal subject will rejoice to find her Majesty taking
decidedly a more sensible view of the matter than
her late advisers. It certainly requires not only
explanation, but apology, that with half Europe in
arms, and diplomacy rapidly quickening its pace as
well as widening its range, the Government of this
great Empire should throw down the reins upon
such a detail as the choice between rateable value
and estimated rental. The simplicity with which
Lord Russell describes the Queen's surprise at the
question which has dragged her across the island,
and broken up an Administration, will suggest to
some innocent minds a wish that he could change
places with his Sovereign for the nonce, and let her
come to Downing-street, upon finding him com-
fortable quarters at Balmoral. After the Queen,
the two topics on which Mr. Gladstone has spent a
great occasion are a review of the history of the Re-
form Bill and an argument upon the special diffi-
culties arising out of Lord Dunkellin's success. Un-
fortunately, the two topics counteract one another,
as in a bad composition the background of the pic-
ture is only seen to diminish and confuse the prin-
cipal object. Mr. Gladstone attempts a climax sub-
lime in its national import, and affecting in its
personal consequences ; but, as the argument of the
whole is that the last ounce has broken the horse's
back, the closing catastrophe is reduced to that ex-
act weight avoirdupois—that much, and no more.
It really comes upon us with the force of a foregone
conclusion. The patient camel bore a good deal. As
the burden was doubled and trebled, it groaned and
grunted, and ground its teeth, but still stood up
manfully. The brutal drivers heaped one thing on
another. At last a feather, a rag, a dry stick brought
the load beyond the pitch of endurance, and the
poor beast lay down. No doubt, this view of the
case has a certain foundation in fact, but it does not
say much for the great saving principle of " esti-
mated rental." Mr. Gladstone cannot get over his
astonishment and indignation at the treatment of
his bill. It was meant to do so much good to his
party, and in so clever a manner 1 Each successive
division, either for or against him, is still, in his
eyes, a fresh and gratuitous act of persecution. He
cannot understand that others have their views of

the right balance of political power as well as him
self, and that others can think themselves as clever
and be as obstinate as himself. Like his Chief in the
other house, he refuses to believe that his opponents
can have an opinion entitled to respect. He asks
with surprise why Lord Derby, who had a Reform
Bill of his own—a very good Reform Bill, he re-
peats--allowed his friends to stand in the way of
this bill, as if the question could not be retorted.
Then, why on earth should the Opposition object to
deal with one thing at once, as if one was not enough?
With the sensitiveness of a saint he recounts
the successive provocations to his temper and trials
to his faith. As we cannot think that any of the
objections were so utterly unreasonable and so
purely malicious, we can only conclude that Mr.
Gladstone had immensely underrated the difficulty
of the task, and that he had overlooked the necessity
of securing adequate support for his measure. The
divisions, the small majorities, the concessions, and
the downright defeats were heavy blows, but not
unlikely, and not unexpected. Then, just as their
cumulative effect has reduced to insignificance the
last fatal blo w,so it becomes in its turn the measure
of them all. It has been a war of details, as it had
a perfect right to be. Our Constitution itself is a
mass of details. But if anything could have re-
deemed the last decisive question upon which
Government has sacrificed itself, it would have
been some attempt to prove that a principle is
involved in the choice of " estimated ren-
tal." It would be a great relief to think
that this crisis had the dignity of a principle at
stake. But whatever principle there is or could
be imagined in it is abandoned at once. It would
not have given us the requisite numbers, says Mr.
Gladstone ; and, besides that, the assessments are
not equal ; whereas the rental must be fair. Thus
the principle, like a stream sinking in the sand,
disappears before a question of figures and an irre-
gularity of assessment. Even the question of figures
is abandoned as soon as stated. The franchise, it is
admitted, might have been put as low as £5, but,
says Mr. Gladstone, it would have given different
results in different towns. Why should it not?
Then, as for assessment, it is impossible to do in
England what is done in Ireland and Scotland ?
Such is the petty question upon which Government
has elected to wreck itself and its party at a time
when we have a good many other things to think of
besides Reform. Is such an apology perfectly seri-
ous, and must we take it for granted that Mr. Glad-
stone is astonished to find seventy members defend-
ing their private interests, and an aristocratic class
doing its best to secure its old place in our system ?
Mr. Gladstone's great personal qualities will always
secure for him a very high position in this country.
So will Mr. Bright's. But the men these have to
deal with in a battle for reform feel that.they require
all the aids and appliances which fortune and the
actual state of things may give them. They are not
the men to throw away a single chance; and whatever
they find their own they will hold it if they can. No
doubt their private interest must give way to the pub-
lic when necessary, but they will fight for it, and
they are generally very determined, and very united
in its defence. Lord Russell and Mr. Gladstone
were bound to foresee all this, for they certainly
would not remove the danger by overlooking it. At
the instigation of a General of Volunteers they have
led their forces to the assault, not of a Quadrila-
teral, but of 50 ancient strongholds, all bound toge-
ther by the tie of a common interest. Was there no
danger in this ? There was, and Mr. Gladstone
knew it. The confessed difficulty, the impossibility
of the task, was the excuse for postponing it, and
even shrouding it in mystery. The reduction of the
franchise, it is admitted, was only a siege opera-
tion, and the boroughs were the real object of at-
tack. There is, then, some real and substantial rea-
son for the resistance made to the bill ; and there is
a little affectation in pretending not to see it. Jus-
tice to the measure itself requires that it should not
be described as tke poor innocent flouted and cuffed
by a rude crowd. It proposed a great change. It
was worth a great effort to carry it and an equally
great effort to defeat it. Parliament has not been
fighting about a shadow this session. It has been
fighting about a new Constitution, to tell its tale for
ages. That much is due to the authors and sup-
porters of the bill, and that much is due also to its
foes, in whatever degree of hostility.
HERALD.—In announcing in the House of Com-
mons the Queen's acceptance of her Ministers' re-
signation, Mr. Gladstone did ins best to fulfil the
promise with which he set out, that his statement
of the facts which had compelled that resignation
should be confined to uncontroverted points, and
should throw no reproach upon those whose opposi-
tion, finally successful, had overthrown both the
Reform Bill and the Government. Except one
single significant phrase applied to Lord Stanley's
motion, there was nothing in the Chancellor of the
Exchequer's speech which could give occasion of
complaint or hostile criticism. This was the tone
suited to a time at which controversy and recrimina-
tion would have been out of place, and befitting the
attitude of a Minister retiring from office with honour
unimpeached and dignity unimpaired, on account of a
hostile vote in the House of Commons. Lord Russell,
unfortunately, behaved in a very different manner.
Unable to imitate the reserve of a colleague whose
irascible temper was on this occasion at least
kept under perfect control, the veteran chief of the
defeated Administration suffered his vexation to
betray itself in every
sentence of his address to the
Lords, and to lead him into a violent and most in-
decent attack upon the successors to whom her
Majesty is necessarily about to appeal. He com-
plained of factious hostility, of obstruction, of de-
lays, as if it had been an unheard of and unconsti-
tutional thing for the Opposition to endeavour to
defeat a bill introduced by the advisers of the
Crown ; accused Lord Derby of having violated the
promise he gave that the Conservative party would
consider the question of reform with a candid desire
for its settlement, and would offer no factious or