The Sun.
London, England, 1868-12-08 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING, DECEMBER 8, 1868,

denied to him, and one with which his name must
always henceforth be associated—of solving at last,

for good and all, and of thenceforth sweeping out of
view altogether as an obstruction in the broad on-
ward path of good and wise legislation, the hitherto
destructive and forlong seemingly insoluble problem of
Parliamentaryßeform. Simply regarding him its aParty
Leader, these are incontestably among Mr. DISRAELI'S
achievements. But it is not as a Party Leader
merely that we are here desirous of estimating at its
just value the worth of his career as a Minister of
the Crown—now that his career as such, for the time
being, has closed, but more especially during these
last nine months as the First Minister of the Crown,
as Prime Minister of England. Comparatively
brief though the interval has been, it has
been in many rupees very momentous. It is
not in every Premiership that a Primate has to be
appointed. It is not in every Premiership that a
Viceroy of ilindostan has to be entrusted with that
vast and awful responsibility. It is not in every
Premiership that an integral part of the United
Kingdom has to be pacified after the imminent
threatenings of an insurrectionary movement. Yet
these and other kindred anxieties have been concen-
trated within the space of these nine months last past,
during which Mr. DISRAELI has been at the head of
affairs as First Lord of the Treasury. Having at-
tained that lofty pre-eminence, without any adventi-
tious aid whatever, by the sheer force of his own
genius and of his own indomitable determination, ho
has,within these last few months during which he has
been installed in office as Prime Minister, tasted to the
full of the intoxicating draughts of power as head of
the Government. Starting in life as a man of letters and
the son of a man of letters, he has won his way to
supreme power, and has during his possession of it,
during the best part of a twelvemonth, had abundant
opportunity of exercising it. He has created a
Duke. He has created a Chancellor. He has
created an Archbishop, and more than simply an
Archbishop—he has created a Primate. He has
created a Governor-General of India, ruler, vice-
regally, of from 150,000,000 to 200,000,000 Asiatics.
And invested with all the responsibilities of
a First Minister of the Crown upon whom devolves
the trrst of disposing wisely of such enormous pa-
tronage, we believe that men of all parties will
allow that Mr. DISRAELI has throughout made his
selections with temperate discretion in the distribu-
tion of honours and offices as high and august as any
that are in the gift of the SOVEREIGN. And
even now in his very manner of withdrawing
from office, in his abrupt and unprecedented
resignation of power by himself and his colleagues
into the hands of the QUEEN, whatever may be
thought of it, just possibly (as a needless and pre-
cipitate and almost insensate begging of the ques-
tion) by the members of his own party— his antago-
nists, at least, have no cause for complaint against
him. lie has thereby demonstrated, in the most
signal manner possible, his determination, conk qui
coute, to abide by his word. Appealing to the
country upon the question of the Irish Church,
he recognizes before the meeting of Parliament that
in his anticipations he has been altogether disap-
pointed, that the decision of the country has been
given against him overwhelmingly. immediately
thereupon—directly the General Elections are draw-
ing so nearly to a close that those who run can
read in the signs of the times the glaring fact that
the Leader of the Opposition has at his
back a clear majority over him of upwards
of one hundred—he shrinks from the delay of one
unnecessary day, and upon the instant and unhesitat-
ingly places in the hands of her MAJESTY his resigna-
tion. The interpretation put upon his so doing by
the Times is characteristically enough that he has
thrown up the cards. According to the humorous in-
terpretation of the Saturday Review, the act is
nothing more than the Coining down of the Coon.
According to the same cynical mode of viewing it by
one or another, Bell's Life might just as sagaciously
and as appropriately compare the resignation of office
by Mr. DISRAELI to the throwing up of the spolge
before what was felt must be the last round, the
round that would accord to him, as the vanquished
champion, the coup de grace, could even be
commenced. A contemporary journalist has even
somewhere taken occasion to remark with a
snigger of self-sufficient depreciation—and speaking
in the language of, the police courts —" That's his
' male game!" when commenting upon a resignation that
is nevertheless at one and the same time so very sig-
nally for the convenience of the country, of the Liberal
party, of the Crown, and of the Parliament. Now
that he has actually resigned office, let us at least have
the satisfaction of saying, as we are happily enabled
to say as truthfully as dispassionately, that this
man of letters turned politician, winning his way
first of all to the position of a Parliamentary
notability, and afterwards to that of Leader of a
great constitutional party, and eventually to the
supreme post of all, that of Prime Minister of
England, has in that last mentioned capacity acquitted
himself with dignity of his high personal responsi-
bilities, and has now with lrawn with no derogation
from that dignity, but rather with an enhancement of
it, to the only less eminent position of Leader of her
MAJESTY'S Opposition.

Tm new Ministry is in one respect very like the
new House of Commons ; it resembles its prede-
cessors. A Cabinet in which five of the principal
seats have been assigned to peers, in addition to those
ornamental places which are always assigned to
members of the Upper House, does not look very
much like the progress of democracy. Mr.
GLADSTONE does not, indeed, summon around him a
bodyguard of dukes, as Mr. DISRAELI did; but he has
distributed sufficient posts among titled politicians to
prevent any revolt on the part of the ruling families.
Nor will a House of Commons so eminently respect-
able and moderate as the present find fault with
the new Cabinet on that account. Englishmen
like to be governed by lords, and it must
always be remembered that, their abilities
being equal, a lord is likely to make a
better administrator than a commoner, simply
because the first has more time for administration
than the second. The one danger to be guarded
against on the part of the peer is the want of popular
sympathy. But no one will condemn Lord GRAN-
VILLE or the Duke of ARGYLL on that account.
Few noblemen have kept themselves so well abreast
of the age, or have so completely acquired the confi-
dence of the most liberal of politicians. There are
other Whig noblemen of whom the same could not
be said. But Mr. GLADSTONE has had the wisdom
not to include them in his Administration.

Taking the new Ministers seriatim, there is much to
nspire confidence. Nevertheless) there are one or
two appointments which do not satisfy us. That
Mr. GLADSTONE should be Premier was a matter of
course. He has directed the policy of the country
for the past three years, whether in office
or out of office, and the vigour with which his oppo-
nents created difficulties out of their fertile imagina-
tion only shews how secure he was of the leadership,
and how jealous they were of his influence. The new
LORD CHANCELLOR is an able, upright, high-minded
man, but, unfortunately he is no debater, and will
make a very inadequate opponent to the eloquent
Lord CAIRNS. Possibly Mr. GLADSTONE remembered
a former occupant of the woolsack, and his melancholy
downfall thirty months ago, and came to the conclu-
sion that character was, after all, worth more than
brilliancy. At all events, in Sir WILLIAM PAGE
WOOD the new PREMIER has a Chancellor who
should quiet the fears of zealous Churchmen. The

institu ticn v Bich a Picsbyt€rian Chancellor_ su

ported, and which a High Ch4irch Chancellor attacks,
can scarcely remain valuable in the eyes of one
section of the Church. The appointment of Lord
CLARENDON to the Foreign Office we cannot view
with entire satisfaction. Doubtless his lordship is
one of the most accomplished diplomatists of modern
times. But then he is also, without doubt, decidedly
inclined to autocracy in foreign politics. His great
blunder with regard to the Belgian journals, which
he proposed to gag at the instigation of NAPOLEON,
chews that his sympathies are not so Liberal in
the Continental sense of the word as we
could wish them to be. He had too short a
tenure of his office in 1866 to have committed
himself in any undesirable manner so -far as the
American claims are concerned, and it is to be hoped
that he will be able to carry through the negotiations
which Lord STANLEY, has so happily commenced.
Unfortunately, even before the latter nobleman has
surrendered the seal to his successor, an unforeseen
difficulty has arisen, which seems likely to
impede the settlement of the vexed ques-
tions, if not to throw them back into the
unsatisfactory position which they occupied before
the present negotiations were undertaken. Nor is it
only in American politics that Lord CLARENDON
will encounter difficulties. With Spain apparently
on the eve of a revolutionary outbreak against its
Provisional Government ; with France in a state of
deep-seated and yearly increasing discontent, certain
o lead to great changes should the present by no
means robust EMPEROR die; with threatening
quarrels in China and Japan ; above all, with
the ever-present Eastern difficulty more for-
midable than ever, there is enough work
cut out for the new Minister. We only
hope that he may be able to secure the assistance
of such a man as Sir HENRY BULWER, to whom
more than any other English statesman living the
clue of the Eastern labyrinth is known. It is not
surprising that both Lord GRANVILLE and the Duke
of ARGYLL should have desired something better
than the ornamental posts which they occupied
formerly ; that they should have looked for depart-
ments in which they could exercise their great abilities.
The Colonies mighty_ perhaps, have been better
assigned to Mr. LOWE, but for the reason which is
given for his not taking the War Office—that he is
deficient in the art of conciliation. The India Office
was offered to Mr. BRIGHT, who knows every road
on the map of India as perfectly as a
country squire knows the roads on his own
estate ; but the great orator has such an
aversion to war that he could not bring
himself to take charge of a department which,
among other duties, would impose upon him those
of maintaining a large standing army, and, possibly,
of directing a campaign. At the Board of -Trade
he will be able to carry out fully his free-trade prin-
ciples. Our only fear is that he will prove, like his
friend Mr. MILNER GIBSON, -too much afraid of
Government intervention, and that his depart-
ment will for that reason fall behind the
public requirements. Failing Mr. BRIGHT, the
Duke of ARGYLL is by far the best man that
could have been appointed to the India Board. He
has for some time past made India his special study,
and it is satisfactory to know that he has recently
abandoned the annexionist policy which he once
favoured. The appointments of Mr. CHILDERS and
Mr. CARDWELL to the Admiralty and the War Office
are unexceptionable. Both departments require
able economists and heads determined not to spare
themselves. Mr. CumuEns has lately made the study
of Admiralty accounts a specialty. Mr. CARDWELL
is a glutton for work, and Mr. GLADSTONE has found
a much better use for him than that to which Lord
PALMERSTON put him when he gave him the Duchy
of Lancaster. That Mr. FORTESCUE would return to
Ireland was as certain as that Mr. GLADSTONE would
be Premier, and the two appointments will receive equal
approval. Mr. FORSTER deserves. a place in the
m
Cabinet, which he will have ; and any persons will
regret that Mr. STANSFELD is not there. Mr. BRUCE
will be consoled for his disappointment at Merthyr
by the offer of the nomination seat at Richmond
which will be vacated by Sir ROUNDELL PALMER on
becoming Lord Justice, and by the post of Home
Secretary, and of course a seat in the Cabinet.
The Poor-law Board will be entrusted to
• another peer, and it is to be hoped that
Lord KIMBERLEY will display the energy of Mr.
HARDY, Lord DERBY'S President, rather than the
inertia of Lord DEVON, Mr. DISRAELI'S President.
Sir GEORGE GREY gets the Duchy, the only post
that could well be offered to a statesman whom years
have unfitted for the hard work of a department.
We have still to speak of one of the most impor-
tant members of the new Ministry. Everyone has
_
during the general election. But the leader of them
has been returned without opposition, and to him has
been assigned the high post of Chancellor
of the Exchequer. For this post Mr. Lowz
has special qualifications, which will to
a great extent counterbalance the suspicions
Ile has no enthu-
no belief inor great principles ;
swiahsimch, politicalchiregedh
min:ptiirveses.
he is avowedly a utilitarian, and almost a cynic; but he
is also an economist, and nearly drove the country
clergy into
erebellion down the salaries of the
school ea ruthless thless in his thrift that
trs.
Heb y
is cuttings o
he will be able to resist all those schemes of which
Mr. GLADSTONE spoke in Lancashire, and which
were urged, not always without success, upon Lord
PALMERSTON'S Administration. He is clever, saga-
cious, and unbending. He will throw all his mind
into finance, but he will never make it a thing of
poetry and of high principle, as his leader did.
As for the legal appointments, these, so far
as they are known, may be dismissed in a few words.
Sir R. COLLIER becomes Attorney-General in the
ordinary course of succession. The Times assumed
that Mr. COLERIDGE'S refusal to serve in the
Government was due to personal jealousy. There
was no foundation for the supposition. The
brilliant member for Exeter • did, indeed,
decline at first the honour offered to him ; yet not
by reason of the paltry motive attributed to him. We
believe that he was influenced solely by an indisposi-
tion to take upon him additional work, and that if he
accedes to the earnest request of Mr. GLADSTONE
he will sacrifice his personal wishes to those of his
leader. Mr. O'HAGAN'S promotion to the Irish
Chancellorship is an indication that Mr. GLADSTONE
is determined to abolish the last relics of religious
intolerance in that country whose pacification is his
first and most pressing work.

It is understood that the selection of Mr. Lowe
to be Chancellor of the Exchequer was as much a sur-
prise to that gentleman as it has been to the public gene-
rally. Mr. Lowe's own predilections would, it is said,
have led him to be the successor of Sir John Pak-
ington rather than of Mr. Hunt ; and several of
our contemporaries have already suggested that an
exchange of posts between him and Mr. Cardwell would
strengthen the Ministry, It would seem, however, that
Mr. Gladstone has for some time been of a different opi-
nion, and had made up his mind with respect to his War
and Finance Ministers oven before the change of Govern-
ment was imminent.— Echoes f rm.& the Clubs.

The use of monograms has become so gene-
ral pat the greatest taste is now displayed in
their execution. Messrs: Jenner and Knewstub,
cif St. James's-street, stand prominently forward for
the beauty of their designs, and the manner in which
they have combined the use of more than two colours
in combination with gold, will still further tend to in-
crease the reputation of their house. A little work has
just been published, containing a variety of their choicest
and latest spe,intens of the art, which for beauty stand
unequalled. The little hook is particularly cheap, as it can
be had merely for the asking.
During the last three years the amazing number
of 1,604 tigers, 2,637 panthers, 1,439 bears, 742 wolves,
and 1,295 hyenas have been destroyed in the Central
Provinces. In the same period 1,751 lives have been
lost by wild beasts, and 1,874 by snake bites.—Delhi
Gazette.

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