THE REJECTED OFFER.
Tire special coalition between Lord Palmerston's Cabinet as it stood and Lord Stanley, heir-apparent to Lord Derby, has mis- earried. Strange to say, however, it is the weaker party that has declined the alliance. Lord Stanley thinks his political prospects better consulted by not sharing the fate of the Palmerston Admin- istration. Lord Palmerston's Cabinet now stands in the position of having confessed that it would feel the stronger with the acces- sion of Lord Stanley ; while deprived of Lord Stanley it is the weaker for the confession. The overt act of failure cannot be without its moral disadvantage; nevertheless, we believe the Cabi- net would have been weaker still for the accession. Lord Stanley would have taken away more than he would have added. Granted to him the largest share of personal ability which he is supposed to possess, and supposing him to have exhausted all his powers, vainly would he have endeavoured to convince the public, that, re- cruited from the Peace party, Palmerston's Cabinet could be more in earnest or stronger in the war. It has now incurred suspioion by seeking such a recruit ; but at all events it has-the advantage of showing that it was not prepared, on the requirement of Lord Stanley, to surrender all its standards on the greatest question of the time.
The idea which suggested the particular recruitment is quite in- telligible. There is a furor just at present for "young" officers in all places, and Lord Stanley, who is not thirty years old, is quite a boy according to the present standards of age. It would also seem to be following up the plan of Lord Aberdeen's.Cabinet, if Lord Palmerston were to collect around him some of the ablest men in public life, although he should be obliged to seek them in different parties. It seemed to be a step in the direction in- dicated by the writer in the North British Review, whose com- mentary we noticed last week.
" With perhaps two exceptions -in the Cabinet, it cannot be de- nied that those who are in are not equal to those who are out. When the Liberals are in office, and the country is at war, it is not without uneasiness and regret that we see Lord Grey, Lord John'Russell, Mr. Gladstone, Sir James Graham, and the Duke of Newcastle, on the oross-benohes or below the gangway, and their plains filled by men of the calibre of Sir Charles Wood, Sir George Grey, Sir William Molesworth, or Lord Harrowby." The comparison is not so absolute as the writer thinks. Sir William Molesworth was as high an authority on Colonial affairs as any of the men named. Sir James Graham was a better First Lord for the Admiralty in peace times ; but, somehow, the Baltic fleet was not fitted out so well as we ex- pect to see it next year. " The right man in the right place " is a good rule, if we define the rightness both of the man and of the place. We want the best administrator in each department, but it does not follow -that the best administrator is the best man for
the Cabinet. Speaking (eenerally, Cabinets have derived their character from their Premiers, and on few occasions from their in- dividual members. It is a great advantage for the Premier to be supported in each department 'by a strong Minister, and the Cabi- net at large may be the more vigorous for possessing strength in that form; but the character of the whole necessarily is derived from its chief. If there be a man more capable of imparting chit- ranter, or of combining others, he is out of place as a subordinate Minister, and should be the chief. Lord Aberdeen collected around him a number of distinguished men from different sections of the two Houses of Parliament ; but it was not with the idea of planing m each instance the right man in the right place. He had not sought to make a departmental Cabinet, with the cleverest public servants in administrative business at the head of each office, waiving political unity in the Cabinet in order to secure executive smartness. He had not brought a Protectionist member into a Free-trade Cabinet, any more than he brought a Peace Minister into a War Cabinet. The master idea of the Aberdeen Cabinet was of a more comprehensive and political kind. By the failure of the Whigs, the division amongst the Liberals, the known absence of supporters for the Peelite section, and the inability of any other minority in the Commons to dress the bench- es even of one side of the House, the succession of office was left to the party of which Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli were the heads. T_hey were a minority, but arrayed against still smaller minorities. If the Cabinet thus formed had contented itself with carrying on the Queen's Government, it would have been able to defy the as- sault of any one of the minorities opposed to it. Unluckily, Mr. Disraeli was too clever for his place. He conceived the 'cute no- tion of identifying the Protectionist party with the future as- cendancy in the country, although avoiding a surrender of its fundamental dogma. By some mystical contrivance, he was " to reconcile finance with our commercial system "; and while adjust- ing the position of the Protectionist system, be was.detected in the endeavour to obtain for it some monied compensation in his new plan of imposing taxes. Already the Liberal minorities had been found incapable of forming a Cabinet that could deserve the confidence of the country, and our political system threatened to break down in the persons of the Derby-Disraeli Govern- ment. It was here that Lord Aberdeen was induced to step forward. The special mission of his Cabinet, he said, was to sustain the principles of free trade, advocated by the Whigs, and put in practice by Sir Robert Peel ; and he declared that henceforward both a Conservative and a Liberal Government would be the only possible system in this country. He found a number of men who agreed with him on those practical principles —men who, as we observed at the time, discovered that the posi- tive ideas of their respective policies were quite compatible, and who were prepared to waive the negative ideas which had kept up their resistance to each other. The continuance of a Free-trade policy and the rescue of our system from a stoppage were lead- ing ideas in which all the members of Lord Aberdeen's Govern- ment practically and positively agreed with each other. The one who had been most conspicuous in breaking away from the falling Whigs, Lord Palmerston, acknowledged the political necessity ex- pressed in these two conditions. He was content, in common with his new colleagues, to waive his pretensions; and he joined Lord Aberdeen frankly, without reservation. This, then, was a Cabinet not recruited by clever men who differed from the es- sentials of its formation, but formed entirely of men united in spirit as well as in fact by the agreement on the main objects. It is some corroboration of this view, that, as soon as the main ob- jects were attained—as soon as Free-trade was placed beyond the slightest chance of retraction, and the political system had been set fairly going again—the turn of events brought out differences in the principles of individuals, and several members of the Ca- binet were thrown off, leaving Lord Palmerston in possession. It is evident that he could recruit his Cabinet less unconge- nially by calling back Mr. Gladstone or Lord John Russell, than by transplanting the scion of a Tory house distinguished for its fealty to Protection. That scion, if it be somewhat twisted out of the Protectionist growth, is still more conspicuously separated from the professed principles of Lord Palmerston's policy by his deviation into the Bright and Cobden doctrines. If it is impos- sible for Lord Palmerston to invite the return of Mr. Gladstone or Lord John Russell, Lord Stanley evidently thought that he was himself still more impossible as an ornamental scion in the War Cabinet of Palmerston. He declined the amalgamation ; and in doing so it appears to us that he was more faithful to his own position than the Premier to the principles of the Cabinet.
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