The Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle. — 1866-06-23 (Stourbridge, West Midlands, England)

THE LONDON PRESS ON THE POLITICAL SITUATION.  The r iMCS, reviewing the career of the Govern, 'tient scheme of Reform, holds that the Opposition cannot be charged with refusing to enfranchise working men. They cannot be 'barged with the exclusion of a single ratepayer franchise. They may even allege that they are ready to apply the principle and privilege of scot and lot to the entire population of England. They stand perfectly uncommitted—except generally to the enfranchisement of ratepayers—and their liberso lity is unimpeaehed. They are as they were at the opening of the session. But a great Government, at the head of a great party, has destroyed itself as rapidly and gratuitously as one of the City banks was said to have done the other day. The only result of immense labour is a suicide, of which no better account can be given than the eccentric reason for which poor creatures occasionally put an end to themselves, Why has the Liberal Government thrown itself over a precipice? No honest jury could possibly return any other verdict than that it has committed suicide to prove estimated rental a better test than rateable value. Such is the bright rcartyrdom Mr. Gladstone has attained to. There is one comfortable reflection, only one which occurs to the Tones, and one owes it to Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues. They have not been overthrown by the Opposition. They have been slain for no principle and by no antagonist. There is neither cause nor foe. The blow, such as it was, to which they have succumbed was dealt by one of their own party. If the chiefs of the Opposition come in now itis because they are invoked as mediators. and called in to heal a party fued. The Government has subsided, and another takes its place by the laws of succession. Not a single item of retribution is due to the new Government, not a grudge; on the contrary, all possible co•operation. The Liberals are bound by the very terms of their own aelf-immolation to give the Conservatives a fair trial, and certainly not to exact from them a task which, with everything in their favour, they have found it impossible to bring to even a respectable end. The Morning Post is of opinion that as the Government knew that the majority of the House of Commons and the people were unwilling to drive them from office at a moment when the Continent of Europe was on the point of being convulsed by war, they traded on that conviction in order to pass a measure which, judged on its own merits, must otherwise have been unhesitatingly rejected. In acting thus the ministry not only committed a serious error of judgment, but they virtually abdicated that high and independent position which an Administration in a free country should always hold. The course which the country ought to take at the present crisis is plain enough to the Star. Everywhere meetings ought to be organised to protest against the displacement of a Government which enjoys the confidence of the people, and to insist that the question at issue between the Cabinet and the House shall be submitted to the arbitration of the constituencies. In any case we have all reason to rejoice that the Government knows what is due to itself, will consent to no base submission, and declines, now and henceforward, to chaffer with Tories and Liberal deserters for the establishment of the people's rights. The Teligraph devotes two articles to eulogize the Ministry in general, and Mr. Gladstone in particular, and to revile all who oppose them. Against whom, it asks, have the peers, the peers' sons, the squires. the county members, and the Adullamites triumphed? Against Ministers? Assuredly not; even they cannot but perceive that the course of this struggle has lifted their arch-enemy, the Chancellor of the Exchewier m 0 to.ight almost noparaliakd. They set, him applauded throughout broad England for the courage and the faith with which he at least has kept his word; and they mast know that when he announces the unswerving course which is obvious, the nation will rise to him like one man in gratitude, as the Minister who has not only brought conscience and ardour and aspiration back into our languid political life, but has fired it once more with the forgotten light of truth, and made public morality once again no jest, lisped by elegant aristocrats' but a stern necessity and a solid fact of !EnglisParliaments.Paraments. Still less is it the Liberal party that sustains the repulse; the Liberal party stands as it did —resolute, compact, irresistable, with the advantage of basing detected the traitors who had crept into its ranks. It is the people of England whom the Tories have defeated, with such miserable aid as that of Lord Ilicho and Mr. Lowe.  The standard holds that Ministers have rightly interpreted the vote on Lord Dunkelliffis amendment; it is simply absurd to speak of the divisi,n as a check, and not a defeat. There is but one constitutional method of meeting the demands of their position, and that is to advise her Majesty to send for the leader of the Conservative party. As for the foreign policy of the Opposition, the Standant contends that the nation will be far better assured under a Conservative Government than it ever can be while Lord Clarendon sits in the Foreign Office, and Lord Russell conducts a secret and supplementary diplomacy, of which his Sovereign is not cognizant, and over which Parliament can exercise no control.  —