The Sun.
London, England, 1868-12-05 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PMILIO JOT:WALL

The Saturday Revicw says the Ministry is a beaten
Ministry, in a hopeless minority, representing a policy
that the country will not endure for an instant. So long
as there was life there was hope. Until the verdict of the
constituencies had been finally given, it was alwsys open
to the minority to say that, however much appearances
might be against them, they were going to win.
But now that the verdict has been given, and
the constituencies have spoken, the Ministry has
no pretence or claim to govern the 'country. It was the
part of honourable men, under such circumstances, to
resign. To resign directly there was an incontestable
majority against them was therefore at once the most
dignified and sensible course the Ministry could take ; nor
ought they perhaps to lose the credit or having consulted
their dignity and obeyed their common sense, because it
happens to be signally convenient to them at this particu-
lar moment to resign. Mr. Disraeli, having decided to
give way to Mr. Gladstone, very sensibly and adroitly
determined to give way to him in the most direct and
the promptest manner possible. He advised the Queen to
send at once for the leader of the House of Commons, and
not to waste time by an unmeaning reference to any of
the well-placed dummies of the Whigs. Liberals have
cried down themselves and their party so long and so
effectively that they really seem to consider that the most
ordinary functions of government cannot be properly die-
charged if Liberals are entrusted with discharging them.
Mr. Gladstone has no greater difficulty before him than
the head of a party must always have when he is fortu-
nate enough to be supported by more men of ability than
he can easily provide with places. Some of those who
look for office must be disappointed, but there is nothing
-new or startling or terrible in this. Able Liberals who
hope for office and cannot get it will have to put up
with their disappointment, and remain out of office.
The headships of the ordinary departments of State will
be easily filled up well enough to prevent the public from
having anything to lose by the outgoing of the present
Administration. Mr. Disraeli, Lord Stanley, and Lord
Cairns are the only members of the late Ministry that can
be called in any way eminent. Mr. Gladstone will have
no difficulty in filling the Foreign Office, because either
Lord Clarendon or Lord Granville is quite competent to
hold the seals, to pursue what has now become the settled
foreign policy of the country, to keep on friendly terms
with foreign Powers, and, we may hope, to avoid thosa
startling sallies of indiscreet speech with which Lord
Stanley has lately astonished and confounded the conti-
nental public. There are, indeed, only two points of much
interest with regard to the formation of the new Cabinet.
By far the most important of these points is, whether Mr.
Bright will be a member of the Government. In the
second place, much interest will be felt as to the mode in
which Mr. Gladstone surmounts the difficulty of filling up
the office of Chancellor.

The Spectator thinks that Mr. Disraeli has made a digni-
fied retreat from an untenable position. He understands
electioneering thoroughly, and knows perfectly well that
when all this talk about the county reaction, and Lanca-
shire conversions, and City defections is over and for-
gotten, the broad facts will remain that his party is in a
hopeless minority in the country, and that his Govern-
ment, as he himself expressed it in a circular to his sup-
porters, "cannot expect to command the confidence of the
newly-elected House of Commons." Party divisions in
this country are affected by geographical considerations,
nor does the Speaker ask whether the Noes come from an
agricultural county or a smoke-stained borough. We are
bound to add that in all the incidents of his resignation as
yet made public, Mr. Disraeli has exhibited a spirit of
straightforwardness and consideration for his foes for
which we have hitherto scarcely given him sufficient credit.
He has recognised Mr. Gladstone as an opponent worthy
of his steel, has cut asunder a hundred webs of intrigue
which might have hampered, though could not have
fettered, his great rival ; and has tendered to his sovereign
just the advice which the nation demanded, but which, had
he been less disposed to recognise that his own dignity is
bound up in his opponent's, he might possibly have evaded.
He can now avail himself of any opportunity, any reflex of
opinion,any outburst of that weariness with which the British
people often regard a question that has been discussed
to death. And he can make his attack, if his soldiers
will let him, from any point, on any ground, and under
any colours. He may even let the Irish question go,
trusting, as we believe, under a total misconception of
the national mood, that with the object of the war once I
achieved the victors will once more resolve themselves,
like the old Italian armies, into disorderly bands of free
lances and desperadoes. He has, in short, left himself
free, and to be free, with Mr. Disraeli, is to be very
dangerous to the Liberal cause. We shall be a little
curious to see how the squires take a surrender accom-
plished before the echoes of their shouts of victory have
died away. The lingering belief in many county circles
that the Tory Premier is not as other politicians, or even
as other men ; that he possesses somewhere some super-
natural fund of wile which might come from above or
below, but was always at the disposal of his party, will
be dissipated; and we should not wonder if Mr. Disraeli
found that one of the best acts of his life had cost him
some of his hold over the imagination his adherents.

The London Review remarks : That Mr. Disraeli never
ought to have had the confidence of the House of Com-

mons is certain ; but that he did in 'a sense enjoy it is
established by the fact that it would not have been safe
during last session to propose a vote of want of confidence.
Under our system of government, for England to be ruled by
a trickster is the country's disgrace more than his. And if a
trickster who has been humoured and petted chooses to
make his bow and his exit when he sees he is going to be
hissed and pelted, he only behaves in his character. We
shall join in no clamour against the poor fallen mounte-
bank who contrives gracefully to slip out of the fair at the
moment when he is about to be hustled by the tardily
virtuous mob. The whole disgrace of the situation lies,
we repeat, with the House of Commons. That disgrace is
the deeper because the tendency of the conduct of Parlia-
ment was to mislead the Queen upon a point on which it
is most essential for her peace and for the good government
of the country that she should not be deceived. It is even
now possible that it is Mr. Disraeli's discretion, modera-
tion, or wise calculation of chances, rather than her
Majesty's unwillingness to stand by him, that has led him
to give up the game. And if, when Mr. Gladstone comes
into office, he should meet with difficulties arising out of
Royal prepossessions, the blame will fall, not upon Mr.
Disraeli, who played the Fart natural to him in fascinating
the Queen, but upon the House of Commons, which
encouraged, by its lethargy and laxity on constitutional
points, that wilfulness which has characterised all her
Majesty's Hanoverian predecessors, and which it
is essential should not be again permitted to
disturb the free action of our popular government.
Personal government is no longer an English institution.
The Crown is just as liable as an Australian governor to
speak in the language of one Minister one clay, and in the
language of another Minister on the next. Conceive how
old Leopold of Belgium would have treated any attempt
to guard him, or any limited monarch whom he could
advise, from the appearance of inconsistency ! He would
have admonished the officious protectors very sharply that
inconsistency was as impossible as error in a constitu-
tional sovereign, because his declarations are not the
utterances of individual opinion, but the embodiments of
the will of the people, as expressed in parliamentary sup-
port of the Chief Minister.
The Imperial Review, which says little ornothing respect-
ing Mr. Disraeli's resignation, observes that it would be
as a.bst rd as it would be hopeless, to endeavour to disguise
the fact, that the Administration which the right honour-
able member for Greenwich is at the present moment
forming is a Radical Administration. The Liberal party
exists no more. The decent equipoise so long
maintained between its diverse and discordant
members has gone for ever. The destructive
element has triumphed over that which clung to the
traditions of Lord Somers and Earl Grey. The lean kine
of Radicalism have devoured the fat kine of old-established
Whiggery. The transformation is complete. And on Mr.
Gladstone has devolved not only the difficult and delicate
task of constructing a new Cabinet, but the grave and mt.
enviable responsibility of inaugurating a new era in our
political history.

The John Bull is rather jubilant • than otherwise at
finding its party in the bracing air of opposition.
After this honourable conduct on the part of Mr.
Disraeli, let us hear, it says, no more of Con.
servatives clinging to office. They were forced to assume
the reins of Government by the dissensions of the Liberals,
and they were bound as patriots and statesmen to settle
the Reform question. That they have accomplished in a
manner which, while-it has fully satisfied the people, has
in no way endangered the interets of their party; for,
as we have before shewn, the result of the elections, though
a numerical gain to the Liberals, is 'a great moral victory
for the. Conservatives, So ends the first act of the drama;
but let. no one imagine that the Conservative party are
dispirited. To suppose that Mr. Disraeli, with a compact
body of supporters, with the whole strength of the
counties behind hiM, with the large towns beginning
to declare in his favour, will quietly surrender the
principle of an Established Church is simply prepos-
terous. The duty of the Conservatives seems to us
plain. It is to labour without ceasing, tosparo no trouble,
to ;midge no expense, in developirig the Conservative
feeling throughout the min! r The temptation a one-
sided compromise, to a bleedii,, the Irish Church to death
gradually, as suggested by the ceport of the commissionersis ,
avoided ; and the Conservative party are committed to
nothing but a strenuous and unceaßing opposition to the
destruction of the Establishment. We believe that the
principle, if honestly upheld and rightly understood, may
be successfully vindicated ; but we sav again, *that rather
than see the Episcopate reduced and.th:Chirch have all
the disadvantages and none of the advantages of an Esta-
blishment, we would rather, as in the case of the lieform
see a Still more sweeping Policy.