The Sun.
London, England, 1868-11-24 00:00:00

4t.
01'74,
SIIII

LONDON, TUESDAY, NOV. 24, 1868.

Already the results of the General Election may
be thus summarised-559 members returned up to
the close of yesterday's polling : of these 345 Libe-
rals as opposed to 214 Conservatives, showing a clear
majority (so far) of 131 on the side of the Opposi-
tion. The gains to Mr. GLADSTONR are in excess of
those secured to Mr. DISRAELI on the New Seats by
14, on the Old Seats by 16—the Conservatives having
won 39 from the Liberals on the latter, against a loss
of 55 to their antagonists—Ministers, again, hav-
ing won 13 of the New Scats against 27 secured to
the Opposition. Striking the balance between the
rival parties, so far as the numbers have yet been
obtained, those relative gains and losses on
the new and the old seats together, show an
advantage of exactly 40 in excess on the side of the
Liberals. It is impossible, however, even now to
conjecture with any degree of confidence the precise
magnitude of the majority which will have been secured
to the Leader of the Opposition when the Elections
shall have been completed. It can only be conjec-
tured proximately, and even then with very consi-
derable hesitation. But so forecasting—that_is, with
hesitation, certainly without confidence as to the ac-
curacy of our purely conjectural calculations—we
should feel disposed to regard the Libe-
ral majority as likely to amount to a little
over a clear hundred. , Supposing that estimate
to be well founded, it would imply the reduction
of the present majority by some thirty or there-
abouts, through the county returns which have yet to
drop in. I et, even when so reduced, the final result
would show an increase of the Liberal majority in
the next as compared with the last Parliament by
some thirty votes altogether ! An expansion of the
Liberal majority of over seventy in the old House of
Commons, to one exc_Tding a round hundred
in the new House of Commons ! Whether
the final issue will or will not be
precisely what we are here imagining there can be
no possibility of doubt that the majority at Mr.
GLADSTONE'S back will be very formidable to the
Government. It will be unquestionably (and very
appreciably) larger than it was before the diuvlution.

What Mr. GLADSTONE will do with it? will then be
the question. Or, rather, the first consideration just
now is—what his wily chief i;antagonist, the present
Prime Minister, will afford him the opportunity of
doing with it ? It is even a moot question as to whe-
ther Mr. DISRAELI might not just possibly contrive to
deny Mr. GLADSTONE, during this brief winter session,
any opportunity at all for bringing their rival claims
for the Premiership—for the retention or the acquisi-
tion of the Premiership—into collision. All will de-
pend, of course, upon the structure—upon the
wording—of the QUEEN'S Speech on the opening
of the New Parliament. The paragraph in that
Speech having especial reference to Ireland above all,
the particular section of that paragraph having re-
ference to the position of the Legislature and of the
Government in relation to the urgent and imminent
problem of the Irish Church with a view to its solu-
tion, will be the one point in the Speech from the
Throne upon which everything will turn—upon
which at any rate will depend the alternative of An
Amendment or of No Amendment being proposed.
The Court Circular has just now announced
the arrival of the Prime Minister at Windsor Castle
on a visit to his SOVEREIGN. As a matter of course,
with the General Election so near its close, and with
the meeting of the New Parliament within view at
the end of little more than a fortnight from the pre-
sent moment, the purport of the QUEEN'S Speech
will, in all human likelihood, or (we should
rather say perhaps) for an absolute cer-
tainty, be matter for consideration together, for
discussion together, now, at once, between the first
Minister of the Crown and his Royal Mistress. Upon
it, that is upon that Speech from the Throne, we
repeat everything is just now dependent. And
matters are so intimately and so inextricably bound
up just now with the one dominant question of the
Irish Church, that rumours of the wildest kind
are bruited abroad, rumours of the most extra-
ordinary character in reference, now to the Head
of the Government, now to the Leader of the Oppo-
sition, now to the SOVEREIGN herself. According
to one rumour, Mr. DISRAELI is either meditating
the taking of the wind out of the sails of his an-
tagoni,t by dealing vigorously with the Land
Question as it affects Ireland, or by dealing with
the question of the Irish Church somewhat after
the manner in which he dealt the session before
last with the then dominant question of Parlia-
mentary Reform. According to another rumour
Mr. GLADSTONE 18 now resolutely proposing to him-
self to swamp the House of Lords (as Earl GREY
talked of doing a whole generation back) by the crea-
tion of some fifty new peers all at once : this, of
course, with a view to the carrying of his projected
measure of disestablishment and disendowment
through the Upper House in the very teeth of the
Conservatives. A third rumour states—one while
in regard to her MAJESTY, that in the event of her
MAJESTY receiving the resignation of her present ad-
visers, Lord GRANVILLE will be sent for instead of
Mr. GLADSTONE—another while, that so insuper-
able is her MAJESTY'S objection to becoming a party her-
self to the destruction of that Irish Church Establish-
ment which she, as anointed QUEEN, solemnly pledged
her royal word she would maintain intact when taking
the memorable oath on the day of her coronation, that
rather than break that oath her MAJESTY is resolved
upon avoiding any possibility of coming into colli-
sion with her people by immediately abdicating. The
mere circumstance of extraordinary rumours like
these being rife at this moment, not only here at
home, but abroad on the European Continent, is
clearly enough indicative of the momentous charac-
ter of the conjuncture at which we have arrived.
Whatever else we may be uncertain of, we may
rest perfectly well assure I of this, that
the problem of the Irish Church is now
upon the eve of its solution. And we may
be equally certain, at the same time, that its
solution will be effected simply by that Church's dis-
establishment and disendowment. The guarantee of
this is the majority alrea ly secured (through the G,!-
neral Election now drawing rapidly towards its close)
to that most recent but most formidable of all the
assailants of the Irish Church, the Lander of the
Liberal Opposition.

IT has always seemed to us extraordinary that Mr.
GLADSTONE, the Liberal leader of 1868, should be
reproached with inconsistency because he does not
hold the views of Mr. GLADSTONE, the Tory writer
of 1838. In these days, when there is scarcely a single
prominent statesman who has not altered, it seems
to be both absurd and unjust to accuse Mr. GLAD-
STONE of treachery and divers other political
crimes and offences. Remembering that of the
two chief Conservative politicians now living, the one
began life as a Whig, who harangued a mob from one
of the clubs in St. James's-street when the Reform
Bill was thrown out, and the other entered the
House of Commons as a Radical, the occupation of
stone-throwing might well have been avoided by
those who live in such " regular crystal palaces."
Recent events have rendered this amusement even
more perilous. When violent changes are made in
the course of a few months, it is folly to denounce
changes the result of a life's education, some of them
made at the cost of great personal sacrifice ;
changes, too, which all consistently tend in
one direction. It is quite true that thirty years
ago Mr. GLADSTONE wrote a book in defence of
the union between Church and State as an abstract
principle, though even then he admitted the possi-
bility that the State might be incapable of carrying
it into effect. But it is also true that when, in 1845,
his leader proposed a measure which seemed to mili-
tate against the principle, he, so far from pointing
to that proviso as a saving proviso which
would allow him to sanction the deviation, left
the Government at a time when leaving it seemed
to be fatal to his reputation and prospects as a states-
man. At this very time he had become convinced
of the imperfection of his own argument. He might,
if he had chosen, have pleaded that he no longer held
the same opinions as he had done six years
before. But he would not even seem to be
influenced by the love of place. Approving
of the policy of his chief, he yet went out of office
because he wished that the writer of " The State in
its Relations with the Church " might be clear from
all appearance of evil.

Mr. GLADSTONE'S " Chapter of Autobiography,"
which we yesterday noticed in the columns of The Sun,
shews that the mind of the author has been stea-
dily educating for thirty years. There is no abrupt
conversion at any one period of his history. He
has simply marched forward steadily, generally
slightly behind the nation, but in the last and most
notable instance a little in the van, as a leader should
be. Five years ago he was so dissatisfied with the
condition of the Irish Church, that he told his
great friend Sir ROUNDELL PALMER he should not
be able to restrain the utterance of his
opinions. Two years later he partly unfolded
those opinions. Yet even then he scarcely expected
to be their chief advocate. In 1865 he, having then
had a career of thirty years, thought it unlikely that
the country would undertake to decide the question
now before it during the next ten years, and there-
fore unlikely that he would be called upon to settle it.
Ile knew that the first question mustbe Parliamentary
Reform. Remembering the many abortive efforts
which had been made to effect this change ;
remembering the obstinate vis inertia which
Parliament opposed to all attempts to alter its
constitution, he foresaw years of work in that one
question alone. He could not foresee (was there any
one who could ?) that the opponents of Reform
would deal with it in a far more sweeping way than
he was prepared to do, We know the rest,

•- .