The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-01-04 00:00:00

some unexplained amendment in our represen-
tative system, of which his sudden conversion
to Liberalism had enabled him to see the necessity.
Well .was it remarked by the Earl of DERBY in his
reply, that the new Premier had spoken with such
oracular ambiguity on this point, that his policy,
which was to be Conservative, Liberal, and Liberal
Conservative, might be made to mean anything,
from doing little or nothing to measures going as
far as the adoption of the Ballot. He, however, saw
great danger from entrusting too large a share of
political power to persons who have too little
acquired information, and too small a stake in the
country to qualify them properly to consider the
consequences of political measures. He had as
high an opinion of the loyalty of the people as his
opponent, but among the great body there were
many below those entitled to the franchiser who
from want of sufficient intelligence and foresight
were incapable of judging of the effects of political
measures. It is evident, from the statement of the
Earl of ABERDEEN, that the new Ministry has been
formed without any definite or intelligible policy.
It is impossible that the members of it can have any
principles in common, unless the Conservative por-
tion surrender their convictions to the Liberal por-
tion, who are the most numerous; and the betrayal
of weakness by their nominal leader, shows the
utter impossibility of his being able to guide the
intractable colleagues whom he has brought toge-
ther for the sole purpose of defeating the very party
with which he has all his life professed to have been
allied. He has consented in his old age to be
dragged through the mire of Radicalism, and we
can imagine the day not far distant, when the Peel-
ites who have joined him, in order to gratify their
personal spleen and wounded pride at the elevation
of Mr. DISRAELI, will stand aghast at the fright-
ful abyss from which they can only be saved by a
timely entreat.
The rest of the speech of the Earl of ABERDEEN
was made up of an attempted denial of the charge
of a combination to defeat the previous Government.
The charge was not true, he said, as far as he was
concerned, for he had endeavoured to keep them in
office ; and so little did he contemplate holding his
present position, that he had actually arranged to
spend the winter on the shores of the Mediterra-
nean. This may be true; but the Earl of DERBY,
in his reply, triumphantly refuted the denial of the
combination, as he proved by the statements made
by Sir JAMES GRAHAM in the House of Commons,
that the whole plan of the attack by the Free-trade
resolutions had been arranged by the leaders of the
several -eectione of the Opposition, in which
the Peelites took the more prominent part,
and which was only defeated by the refusal
or Lora PALMERSTON to join the conspiracy.
The latter could not, perhaps, forget his grudge
against Lord JOHN RUSSELL ; and we have yet to
learn what influence has been used to induce him
to make one in the patchwork Cabinet. He may
have surrendered his prejudices in order to meet
the temporary difficulty ; but a belief in his per-
manent cohesion betokens an extent of credulity to
which we have not yet attained. As the House of
Lords was the only arena open to the new Ministry
before the re-election of those in the lower house,
the Earl of ABERDEEN was expected to say some-
thing, and it may be that he endeavoured to acquit
himself of the task with the consciousness that the
least said is the soonest mended.