The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1852-12-21 00:00:00

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to HER MAJESTY by the Earl of DERBY.
Before proceeding to comment on the probable

consequences of this step, we may pause to cons

whether the act of resignation has not itself been
too precipitately decided upon. We cannot forget
that, when the Earl of DERBY assumed the respon-
hilities of Prime Minister, he confessed to being in
a minority in the Lower House, and only undertook
the duty imposed upon him by the Crown from the
conviction that the choice was between his own
party and revolution. His promise of an appeal to
the country has been performed, but he could
hardly have expected that it would have been so
heartily responded to as to yield him a commanding
majority upon every question of detail, and much
less upon a system of taxation which was likely to
provoke a pressure from without. The majority
against him has been composed of the most incon-
gruous materials and antagonistic principles ; its
number has been swelled by votes gained by
priestly intimidation and ruffianly violence, and
which must be reversed when the petitions against
them have been investigated by election com-
mittees ; his own friends have presented as strong
and united a phalanx as he had any reasonable
grounds to anticipate; and yet on the first reverse,
and that on the most vulnerable point of his finan-
cial scheme, he has abandoned the post which, by
his own avowal, he deemed it indispensable to the
integrity of the empire that he should hold. He
wanted no precedent for persevering, even without
resorting to the tenacity for office displayed by his
predecessors. The great Mr. PITT persevered
against a more formidable majority, until he finally
triumphed ; and there was nothing in the question
just decided which presented any very serious diffi-
culty. The scheme, ostensibly based upon Free-
trade principles, was not so especially identified
with the policy of the DERBY Cabinet as to make
it of vital importance, while the discordant elements
of the opposition rendered it by no means formida-
ble for the practical business of legislation. The
Ministers might have withdrawn their obnoxious
proposition to increase the House-tax, with a taunt
at the Free-traders for its rejection, and more than
compensated the Exchequer by refusing to reduce
the Malt-duty. Such a Budget would have been
more acceptable, have left a broader margin for fur-
ther reductions, and have saved the country from a
crisis, which, in any view we may take of it, cannot

but prove disastrous.
So much for what has passed ; and now we turn
to the future, for which the most fearful apprehen-
sions are very naturally entertained. There is no
one who can suppose that, out of the small majority
which has snatched a temporary triumph, there is
any party or section which is strong enough to have
the slightest possible chance of commanding a
majority of the present House of Commons, or of
agreeing upon any practicable plan of future legis-
lation, to say nothing of the enunciation of great
principles, of which not one is held in common,
save an abstract notion of persevering in Free Trade
—a declaration which has in itself no practical
meaning. In truth, the wheels of the State have
come to a dead lock. The QUEEN is without a
Ministry, and the only party who have the remotest
chance of overcoming the difficulty have abandoned
their posts. If we turn to the former Administration,
can we imagine for an instant that Lord JOHN
RUSSELL will be in a better position than he was
before, now that he has lost the more respectable of
his Whig allies, and has opposed to him a far more
powerful Conservative party ? Rumour, however,
points to a coalition with the small section familiarly
known as PEELITES, but the difficulty seems in no
way to be lessened. The combination of both with
the ultra-Radicals of the Manchester faction and
the Irish Brigade, composed of the tools of
Romanism, were all indispensable to outnumber the
Conservatives ; but they afford no elements of
Ministerial strength—on the contrary, they are the
most intractable of allies. Will the aspiring blood
of COBDEN he content to truckle to a Ministry
from which he is excluded, without concessions to
democracy from which even the PEELITES would
shrink from dread of the consequences ? Will the
Irish Brigade, whose votes confessedly defeated the
DISRAELI Budget, consent to aid any Ministry to
whom they are indispensable, without a new Lich-
field House compact, the main condition of which
shall be a surrender of the Irish Church to the
grasping ambition of intolerant Rome ? Any other
alternative it is impossible to conceive ; and some
idea may, therefore, be formed of the fearful results
of the present state of public affairs. But a new
Administration, so composed, would be hampered
with still further difficulties, a solution of which is
by no means clear. Would the University of
Oxford re-elect Mr. GLADSTONE, who has been
named for an important office, after the prominent
part he has taken in rendering any government im-
possible ? Would the University of Cambridge do
the same kind office for Mr. GOULBURN, should he
he nominated to place ? And, would the farmers of
Wiltshire re-elect Mr. SIDNEY HERBERT, who has
denied them the hoped-for advantage from the
reduction of the malt duty ? These, however, are
but minor considerations ; but the difficulty still
remains, that by no possible ingenuity, short of an
absolute surrender of principle to the insatiate
demands of English democrats and Irish Romanists,
could any combination of parties or coalition of
factions secure even a temporary majority in the
House of Commons. And there is yet a further
obstacle—that any such concessions as those hinted
at must necessarily produce a collision with the
House of Lords, and consequently a shock to the
Constitution, from which it may never be able to
recover.

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