The Sun.
London, England, 1868-12-10 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

A change of Ministry, sari the Times, is like a great
wave, going into all nooks and corners, and sometimes
floating battered hulks long since stranded, and apparently
left for ever high and dry. It is, indeed, understood, that
the Household will be reconstituted almost as it was in
1866, though this general statement is far from satisfying
the anxiety of the candidates anxious to enter the per-
eonal service of their sovereign. It is still asked, and
asked in vain, who is to go to Ireland. The delay in
the nomination of the Viceroy must be taken as of
good augury. No one can know better than Mr.
Gladstone the importance of having a representative
at Dublin who shall conciliate Irish opinion,
and at the same time illustrate the general policy of the
Administration in his domestic government of the sister
island. If there be any difficulty in finding a person at
once suitable for the office and willing to undertake it, it
would be better that the appointment should be delayed
than that a false step should be taken. We cannot, how-
ever, believe that there is any great difficulty, except so
far as it may have arisen from a false step already half
taken ; and if this be the case, we cannot too strongly
insist upon the propriety, or rather the necessity, of cor-

recting an error, at whatever cost of annoyance to persons

we may be unwilling to pain, rather than involve the
Government in injurious consequences through fataper-

sistency in a first mistake.
The Herald observes that, looking solely to the indi-
vidual elements of which it is composed, it is undoubtedly
a strong Ministry, but we have our doubts as to its
" cohesive power." Mr. Gladstone's majority has just

two principles in common. Its mission is to support its
leader and to break up the Irish Establishment. The
same truth holds good with Mr. Gladstone's Administra-
tion, and the moment it deviates from its programme the
process of disintegration will commence. For instance, Mr.

Gladstone and Mr. Bright are deeply sworn to make the Re-
form settlement more democratic by excising the ratepaying
qualification, but the moment they attempt to redeem
their pledges they will be faced by their reactionist col-
league Mr. Lowe. In fact, the main condition of safety
for the new Cabinet is that it shall do as little as possible,
and there is no reason to doubt that Mr. Gladstone and
his colleagues are fully alive to this truth, and quite equal
to the duty which it imposes. It is in the main a Cabinet
of the steady old-fashioned Whig-Radical type, and we
are not disposed to bewail the fact with exaggerated lamen-
tation. The Opposition will find it necessary to keep a
tight hand over the Ministerialists at times, but it will
be quite safe to give them their heads for the present.
Nevertheless, we are free to confess that, as Letween
Mr. Gladstone and the Radical friends whom be
has thrown over with such magnificent disdain, there is
considerable ground for these complaints. The "advanced'
men, having served Mr. Gladstone's turn, are thrust on one
side, and the old Whigs and the mild Liberals, represented
by " the six lords," reap the fruit of their labours. We
always predicted that this would be the case, and we are
not excessively grieved or disappointed, because the event
proves that we have prophesied truly. It is a very pretty
quarrel as it stands, and the betrayer and the betrayed are
perfectly welcome to fight it out between them.
The Standard believes that the country, accustomed to
see a Tory Government distribute offices with a single eye
to the competence of the holders, will not easily tolerate
the monopoly of the high places of a Liberal Ministry by
an oligarchic coterie. The House will feel the absurdity of
a disposition which places Mr. Forster under the orders of
Earl De Grey and Ripon, and bestows Secretaryships of
State on the Duke of Argyll and Mr. Austin Bruce, while
Mr. Bright sits at the Board of Trade. The mere fact that the
leaders in debate, except Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Lowe, will
not be the holders of leading offices, will tend to weaken
the authority and damage the prestige of the Government.
Altogether, the arrangements, which will within two or
three days be finally announced, and completed by the
issuing of the new writs, appear to argue that the worst
traditions of Liberal oligarchy are as strong as ever, and
that while Mr. Disraeli has succeeded in the reform of
Parliament, Mr. Gladstone has utterly failed in the
humbler task which was expected from him of reforming
the Liberal party.

The Telegraph says that Mr. Forster would have been
fully warranted in declining to accept the Vice-Presidency
of the Council, offered, as it was, without a seat in
the Cabinet ; and we believe that he would have clone
so but for circumstances which rendered his acceptance
a sacrifice to the public interest. As a Cabinet
Minister he would have lent weight and force to Mr.
Gladstone and his policy ; speaking below the gang-
way, he would have done a similar service as a
statesman with an earnest and loyal desire to achieve the
self-same reforms for which the Prime Minister is labour-
ing. Undoubtedly, however, there are immediate advan-
tages in having the department of Education entrusted to
a statesman who so thoroughly understands not only the
living facts of the day, and the details of the subject,
but the extreme urgency of legislation. It
is possible that other members of the Government
might not see the peremptory necessity for speedy
action, and might, under cover of more showy
discussion, not unwillingly give the go-by to that which
is so serious and so needful ; but in Mr. Forster we
have at the post one who commands a complete knowledge
of the subject, with an independence of moral character
and a force of will which would forbid any attempt at
needless procrastination. The more advanced Liberals
might, at the first blush, have desired that he should
vindicate their right to a due share in the Administration,
by holding aloof from the Ministry if he were excluded
from the Cabinet. We believe, however, that the progress
and vital strength of the Liberal cause will be more
effectually promoted by his at once agreeing to take his
share in a labour which is not less important than Irish
reform, or the contraction of our expenditure.
Another memorable date, remarks the Daily News, has
been added to the annals of England, To the historian of
the future the 10th of Decmber, 1868, will be fraught with
all the interest with which we now regard the 20th of
January, 1833. The assembling of the eighth Parliament
of Qifeen Victoria is at once a noteworthy incident in
her reign and the; beginning of a new era in our con-
stitutional history. This is the second time since the
liberties of the English people were formally defined and
settled on a sure foundation by the Revolution of 1688,
that Parliament has revised the Constitution, with a
view to render it more satisfactory and comprehensive.
Although the legislative changes wrought by the Parlia-
ments elected since 1833 have been less sweeping than was
expected at the time the Reform Bill became law, they
are yet so important as to have revolutionised this country.
Indirectly, we owe to the Act of 1832 every improvement
by which we now benefit and of which we boast. Free
Trade is the direct fruit of the reforms initiated by Earl
Grey. Had not the House of Lords been compelled to
bow to the popular will when the demand was made for
the extension of the suffrage, that House would never
have assented to the measures which removed a political
stigma from the Jews and a grievous burden from the
backs of Dissenters, and the intolerance which rendered
a Jew ineligible for a seat in Parliament and the injustice
which obliged the payment of church rates by
non-churchmen might have prevailed to this day. Indeed,
that Act proved a schoolmaster for the Peers. The victory
of Reformers taught them that obstinate resistance to the
requests of the people is suicidal. By this time they have
realised the truth that their power must he limited in
What
if it would be retained and exercised with effect.
What another thirty years will effect for the comfort and
convenience of mankind cannot be conjectured. Our hopes
are that alike in politics and in the business of daily life
our successors will have still better reason to thank us than
we have to praise the doings of our predecessors.
The Times notes that Mr. Johnson does not shrink,
even at this extreme term of his power, from counselling
an act of a most decided character. The Message
expresses fears of a coming Indian war, but favours reduc-
tion in the army by the withdrawal of troops from the
South. The Republicans have always relied on the army
for the maintenance of their policy in the South, and for
the due progress of reconstruction. To take the regi-
ments which are keeping order in Louisinia or the Caro-
linas and send them to fight the Indians would be, in the
opinion of the Republicans, and, indeed, of all the world,
the abandonment of all that Congress had been struggling
for during the last three years. This paragraph of the
Message seems to promise anything but a cessation of the
war between the President and Congress during the next
three months. The Congress is the old Congrasi for the
new one does not meet till the 4th of March. Thus, by
the singilar, and, as it seems to Englishmen, the faulty
mechanism of American institutions, a superseded Presi-
dent and a superseded Congress will govern and legislate
for three months, while their successors look on powerless
to control a single action.
Speaking of the Alabama claims, the Post says : The
American Government have never apparently receded one
jot from the position which they originally took up. They
demanded compensation for the losses inflicted on their
mercantile marine by the Confederate cruisers on two
several grounds, namely, that we were premature in
according a belligerent character to the infant Confede-
racy-, and that, considering the existing state of the law,
we did not exercise proper vigilance in preventing the
Alabama and her consorts leaving our shores. In the first
instance we peremptorily rejected the claims, but on a
subsequent occasion (our first concession) we consented
to refer to arbitration the question whether we had
acted with good faith and clue care in seeking to
enforce compliance with that particular statute which was
in effect infringed by the departure from our shores of the
Confederate cruisers. We, however, declined at that time
to submit to the decision of an arbitrator our conduct
in acknowledging the Confederate States as belligerents,
and the negotiations once more fell through. Again
they were renewed, namely, since the arrival of Mr.
Johnson as the successor to Mr. Adams, and then it was
that we made our second concession, and consented (con-
trary to all precedent) to leave it to the sovereign of a
foreign State to say whether, in exercising our undoubted
right of conceding to the Southern Confederacy a
rent character, we had so far compromised ourselves as to
render us liable for the depredations of the Confederate
cruisers. When this last concession was made it might
reasonably have been supposed that the matter was at an
end, and that the American Government having obtained
all they demanded, the negotiations had come to a satis-
factory termination. Such, however, unfortunately seems
not td be the case. The protocol drawn on the above
basis has been returned, and the first duty of the Earl of
Clarendon
_i to whose hands the seals of the Foreign Office
W were 9n edliesday.transposttecl, will be to attempt anew
wiroratius MelnlnfilY melincakkdawity.