LORD PALMERSTON'S RESIGNATION. •
[Front the Tinier, Dec. la.]
"Wricount'Prilmerston has tendered his resignation of the office of Secre-
tary of State for the Howe Department, and has therefore ceased, within the last forty-eight hours, to form a part of her Majesty's Government, if that resignation has been accepted by the Crown. Upon the receipt of a commu• nication from Lord Palmerston, announcing the resolution he had been led to form, the Prime Minister left town for Osborne House yesterday, for the purpose of laying the resignation of the Home Secretary before the Queen. Whatever may be the surprise which this announcement may excite in the public mind, that surprise will be considerably augmented when the cause which has induced Lord Palmerston to withdraw from the present Adminis- tration is accurately known. That cause, we may confidently state, is uncon- nected with the foreign policy of the Government. It has not arisen out of the difficulties of the Eastern question, nor is it true that differences of opinion on that subject have manifested themselves with such force as to lead to the retirement of any member of the Adminis- tration. The ground on which Lord Palmerston is said to nest his inability to remain in the present Cabinet, and to share in the responsibility of the measures of the approaching session is distinctly and exclusively his decided opposition to the Reform Bill which has been prepared under the direotion of Lord John Russell, and assented to by the other members of the Government. It has been understood for some weeks past that the projected measure of Parliamentary Reform had been referred to a committee of five members of the Cabinet, of whom Lord Palmerston was one ; and, as his opposition to schemes of Parliamentary Reform was no secret, he was placed
-on that committee in order that he might have ample opportunities for con- sidering the provisions of the bill and stating his objections to them. Lord
• -Palmerston no doubt, gave to that committee the able and vigorous assistance and attention which he is accustomed to devote to public affairs; but it seems -*cm the result, that his objections to the principle of the measure were not -to be diminished or overcome. Ile stated them to his colleagues in a manly and straightforward manner ; but it appeared that no measure of Parliamentary Reform such as would meet the expectations of the country was likely to obtain Lord Palmerston's support. It may be necessary here to state dis- tinctly, for the information of that class of democratic politicians who have frequently claimed Lord Palmerston as the representative of their own
opinions that his objection to the measure now in contemplation is not that the provisions of the bill are too restricted, or the amount of reform insuffi- cient. On the contrary, Lord Palmerston, like Mr. Canning and the other statesmen of the school of Mr. Pitt, to which he belongs by the traditions of his whole political life, is not a Parliamentary Reformer ; and, although he bore a part in Lord Grey's great reform of 1831, no statesman of the present day has shown less disposition to alter that settlement of the question, to , extend the franchise, to disfranchise the small boroughs, or to make those eoncessions which the Liberal party have never ceased to demand. It is the more necessary to be perfectly explicit on this point, because it is commonly supposed, both in this country and abroad, that the active sympathy pro- fessed by Lord Palmerston for extreme Liberal opinions in some foreign countries is combined with an equal zeal for Liberal measures at home. No greater fallacy can be entertained as to an • public man ; and his retirement from office on the present occasion, rather than accede to Lord John Russell's scheme of Reform, is it conclusive demonstration on that point.
"We repeat, it is upon this ground, expressly and alone, that Lord Pal- merston has retired from the Cabinet, and not upon any question of foreign plias% We do not affect to disguise the regret with which we have learnt it determination, or bo undervalue the loss which the Government sustains. -On the contrary,. although the opinion Lord Palmerston entertains on the nestion of Parliamentary Reform is at variance with our own, and with that of a majority of the intelligent classes of Englishmen, we do not hesi- tate to avow that there never was a time at which her Majesty's Govern- ment could less afford to lose the advantage of his great abilities and ex- perience, nor was there ever a time when it was more essential to the in- terests and dignity of the nation that the Ministry should preserve a firm and united attitude. In that Government Lord Palmerston has not only roved himself as Home Secretary, a most efficient administrator, but he has given in a leral spirit the benefit of his advice and his judgment in the discussion of all the important questions of foreign policy which the last twelvemonth has brought under the consideration of the Ministers of the Crown. That Lord Palmerston was known to be a party to it, was unques- tionably all additional pledge to the country that the policy of the Govern- ment in the East was firm and honourable. To impugn and misrepresent that policy, the enemies of the Government resorted long ago to the fiction of supposed divisions in the Ministry : those divisions have, unhappily, at length occurred, but not, as was erroneously represented, on the course to be pursued towards Turkey and Russia but on the measure of reform to be ap- plied to the electoral franchise and to the close boroughs. "It would, however, be a great and mischievous error if it were believed that the voluntary retirement of Lord Palmerston from office on another ques- tion would in any degree lower the tone or relax the energy on foreign affairs of the Cabinet to which he has till now belonged. It does, unfortunately, tend to impair the influence which this country may exercise in Europe, that a Ministry is exposed to a secession of this kind at the very moment when it would be most essential for us to be acting as one man to avert or to prose- cute a war; and such an occurrence is the more strange when it is attribut- able to a cause distinctly foreseen at the formation of the Cabinet. But, be- yond this,- we are satisfied that the course which the Government are pre-
d to adopt in the East will suffer no change or abatement from the with- of Lord Palmerston. , _The news of Lord Palmerston's resignation will be received with differ-
kernotions in many different quarters—in some with astonishment, in some -h incredulity, in some with exultation, in many more with regret. The Meeting of Parliament can alone terminate this period of excitement and un- tiettainty, but we have no doubt that it will fully confirm the statements we have made. Lord Palmerston will then vindicate his conduct and explain his motives; but we can conceive no motive short of the most imperious dic- tates of conscience and of duty which would justify a Minister of the Crown in retiring from its service at a moment of so much importance to the lute- rests of the nation and of the world."
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