The Sun.
London, England, 1857-03-24 00:00:00

LONDON, TUESDAY, MARCH 24, 18b7.

Viscount PALMERSTON has at last issued his
Manifesto to the Country, according to the old.
established usage ever observable under similar
circumstances. He has spoken indirectly to all
the possessors of the elective franchise through-
out the three kingdoms by addressing himself di-
rectly to his own immediate constituents. He
has, for the most part, repeated deliberately in
his Epistle to the Electors of Tiverton, what he
had already expressed cursorily in his after-dinner
speech at the hospitable board of the Mansion-
house. Nothing more ! Or, if anything, some-
thing so very trivial in the way of additional sup-
plementary explanation, that it would require for
the purposes of scrutiny to be placed as it were
under the lens of a Political Microscope !
Now, in a very great measure, of course, this is
disappointing. Not b comment upon the mat.
ter at all in the language of exaggeration, this is
at the least, we repeat, disappointing. It is dis-
appointing when wo are hearkening with the most
eager curiositylfor some explicit, minute, formal,
categorical statement, to find ourselves in refer-
ence to the very topic in regard to which we are
waiting, as we have before intimated, for every
imaginable detail, and for the utmost possible degree
of particularity—listening only to the meat vague
generalities ! It is disappointing when we are
prepared to receive the utterances of the Oracle
to hear actually, for the most part, little else than
the "foam and fury"--(really just now " signifying
nothing ")—of the presiding Genius of the
Dolphos of Government. We are surely not
speaking extravagantly when we venture to
observe that Silence or Evasion in regard to the
Great Questions of the,Hour, at such a time and
from such a source, appears to us really, after all,

very—disappointing.
Yet it must be remarked that Lord PALmEn.-
STON'S Address to the Electors of Tiverton is,
with one exception, altogether admirable in what
it expresses. That one exception being, as a
matter of course, the c3mplimentary, or rather the
eulogistic, reference to the Peace with Russia, a
Peace never to be glossed over in our opi-
nion, a Peace in regard to which we, at any rate,
can never be cajoled into a sort of an after-thought
of admiration I Apart from the really preposte-
rous and wholly inadmissible encomiums upon the
Treaty of Peace, and upon the Diplomatic Negotia-
tions through the means of which it was brought
at length to the date of its ultimate ratification
—the Premier's Address to the Electors of Tiver-
ton is altogether admirable, we repeat, in what it
expresses. It disappoints us solely in regard to
what it leaves un-expressed. As an enunciation
of the Prime Minister's Foreign Policy it ig, in
the very highest sense of the term, inspiriting
and satisfactory. But in regard to that policy we
really needed no information whatever. It is
patent to the whole community. It cannot, in

common parlance, b© ignored. It is part
and parcel of the National History during the

past Half Century. It has already become the
theme of our popular annalists. It may still be
carped at by the more jealous and the Inure cap-
tious, by the least generous and magnanimous
among Lord PALMERSTON'S contemporaries. But
with reference to the impartial judgment of Poste-
rity, Events ha.ve long since secured for it its most

signal and decisive vindication. Therefore the
mere circumstance of the Prime Minister's restrict-
ing himself almost exclusively, in this his formal
Political Manifesto, to the detailed enumeration of
the more recent and more emspicuous, and there-
fore- doubly well-known phases of his Foreign
Policy—does really and truly appear to us to be
a mode of proceeding, to say the very least of it,
quite superfluous ! Instead of recapitulating
what everybody by this time knows so perfectly
well, Lord PALMERSTON Would have done much
better, we conceive, by enunciating what scarcely

"Finance has always been A stumbling-block in
he way of the Whigs." This is "a great fact,"
so notorious that it would be an act of superero-
gation to offer additional arguments iu support of
the assertion. It is greatly to be regretted that
the Government of Lord PALITERSTON, deservedly
populer in many respects, exhibits not the slightest
improvement in this particular over that of hi 6
predecessors. Sir G. C. LEWIS is perhaps the most
inefficient Chancellor of the Exchequer ever pitch•
forked into Downing-street ! Foitanately for the
country, his hands are so far 'tied that he
'cannot now introduce exploded principles, or
resusc,tate the monster grievance that received a
death-blow in 1846. But he has shown an un-
flinching determination to support and sustain all
the existing abuses. Ile may be regarded as the
chief impediment in the way of fiscal, financial,
and monetary reforms ; and, if permitted to havb
his own way, the nation will for a protracted
period be afflicted by tht monopoly of the Old
Lady of Threadneedle-street —an unimproved
Bank Charter Act continued for a further term of
ten years, an unmodified Income Tax for an in-
deficits period, and the maintenance of various
burdens alike condemned by justice and expe-
diency, and which will effectually prevent the
further development of the glorious principles of
Free-trade or unrestricted competition, or what-
soever ether denomination may be accorded to
the doctrines that have been recognised by Par-
liament for the last 15 years.
Now, the great problem that requires a satis-
factory solution, and which must speedily be de-
cided, is—whether it is'not possible to continue
a Government in which the nation approves, so
far as the Foreign policy is concerned, without
delivering it bound over hand and foot to the
tender mercies of an incompetent Financier, who
will certainly retard, if he cannot altogether pre-
vent, the introduction of measures essential to the
welfare and prosperity of the country. We may
highly approve of Lord PALMER,STON—may con-
sider hint " the right man in the right place," but
does it therefore follow that we must repose con-
fidence in Sir G. O. LEWIS, and submit to all his
vagaries in the financial department. Th© sick
lion, in the fable, grieved more at the insults of
the donkey than at more serious evils. If there
must be a financial dictator, it should unques-
tionahly be a man of very different mental calibre
from either Sir G. C. LEWIS or Sir 0. WOOD.
The verdict on this important issue is in the
hands of the several constituencies. If luke-
warmness or indifference be now displayed, the
national interests must suffer severely for years
to come. Some time ago the people nianifested
extraordinary excitement. Economy and re-
trenchment was the universal demand, combined
with a judicious mode of procuring the n ecessary re-
venue to provide for the public expenditure. More
recently, the mere notion that a " pettifogging