THE LATE MINISTERS.
WE heartily agree with the Times, that if the conferring of cer- tain honours on Lord Derby and two of his colleagues has created " a certain amount of discontent amongst the more intense Liber- als, this discontent is unfounded." If we differ with our contem- porary at all, it is in thinking that the gift of such honours is a legitimate subject for criticism. Once allow that the public writer may criticise the conduct of the Sovereign, and you admit ".the sharp point of the wedge, which, while rendering the Sove- reign amenable to public censure would restore to him a responsi- bility far more cumbersome and dangerous to the public than to the personage himself. God forbid that we should ever again see in this country a responsible Sovereign,—that is responsible in any other way than to his own moral sense. But, again, if we are to consider the conduct of our own present Sovereign upon that broad ground, we should only arrive for the hundredth time at the con- clusion that during the present reign we have been peculiarly blessed in having a Sovereign who, while understanding the con- stitutional limits which strengthen the position of the Crown in this country, has also appreciated the obligations which she owes to her own dignity and public feeling. We certainly should in- troduce no improvement by commencing a course of criticism on the conduct of the Crown, and hence we regard all honours flow- ing from that fountain as being absolutely beyond the province of criticism.
We might, indeed, pass judgment upon the motives or actions of men who importunately thrust themselves forward to claim such honours ; but it is extremely improbable that any of the three statesmen who have been more particularly distinguished this week have subjected themselves to such reproach. A garter could add little to the semi-royal traditions of the house of Derby, standing as it does amongst the very flower of the English aris- tocracy, and distinguished as it has been in all generations by a certain generosity and freedom of spirit which are qualities as valuable in a nation as prudence or the perfect elaboration of poli- tical logic. Lord Malmesbury accepted office from a sense of duty to his party and his country. Circumstances throw the responsi- bilities of the Ministry upon the Conservative party ; it would have been to assist in pronouncing a final doom for that party, if any leading member of it had shrunk from his own liability to serve ; and a patriotiO statesman might well have hesitated before he lent his single voice however gently, to the final abandonment of a great English party. We do not agree with the Tory party, but, we do say that a conscientious Tory was bound to accept office, as Lord. Malmesbury did, when his colleagues called upon him IA do so. It was a duty from the first hazardous for his re- putation. Circumstances over which, most literally, he had no control, rendered his administration unhappy ; save in the sense of having done his duty, he has finally reaped for his labour no- thing but mortification; and a spontaneous act of the Royal fa- vour we regard as being no more than a just compensation. Sr John Pakington has positively done well, as he may be said to have done throughout his public life. He began in Parliament with the utterance of sentiments opposed, to our own, but his utter- ance was conscientious and frank. From mere public spirit he took up the great question of public education ; he testi- fied to his own candour and patriotic devotion by acknowledg- ing principles which did not originate amongst his party; and in some respects, on this most important subject he has done better than men of our own party. He was " pitchforked" into the Colonial Office ; incurred the credit of some little blunders which perhaps he found in the portfolio ; but went through his apprenticeship so promptly and creditably that he came out one of our most commendable Colonial Ministers. The permanent men of the Admiralty admit that Sir John Pakington has been amongst their best chiefs, and the English fleet is a monument of his zeal and activity. Why, on being pitchforked out of office by a party reverse, such a statesman should not have a mark of his Sovereign's approbation, we cannot for the life of us understand. On the contrary, if any question could possibly be asked about this " distribution of honours," we might ask whether other emi- nent and public spirited men have not something like a similar claim to a plain recognition of the fact that when they took office they behaved well, they did their best while there, and although removed on political ground merited a recognition of their ser- vice on personal grounds. Some of these men are still so young that we may expect them to earn their honours hereafter ; but they are not all so, and one at least we may mention by name, precisely for the reason that he is most absolutely and broadly separated from our own party—we mean Mr. Disraeli. Sad would be the day for England when even political oppo- nents took a mean estimate of the motives and actions of public men. We hailed the spirit in which Lord John Russell stood forward as a candidate for the city of London, when he heartily disclaimed mean estimates and challenged generous views. We agree with the whole tone of Mr. Sidney Herbert's speech on Fri- day, when he judged. men by a high spirit and broad principles. We admit the force of the reply he made when Mr. Whiteside
had claimed for his chiefs and colleagues the credit which Sir Ro- bert Peel attained, by declaring his conversion to free trade. There was, said Mr. Sidney Herbert, a difference Sir Robert Peel was at the head of a powerful majority ; he had been de- feated in argument, and having a great majority, holding power
in his hands, he forfeited that majority and that power in order that those might first introduce the measures of which he now saw the necessity, although he had formerly opposed them. Yet the distinction is not quite so absolute or so wide as Mr. Her- bert seems to think. Lord Derby and his colleagues were not at the head of a majority, but they entered office with a minority under circumstances which rendered it probable that they might retain office. Nobody will for a moment imagine that Lord Derby himself craved the mere possession of " power. ' It is notorious that he did not, and there is hardly a man in the country so Vul- gar or so stupid as not to understand why the position must have been disagreeable rather than pleasant to a man of Lord Derby's disposition. There is scarcely a man so dull as not to perceive that the time had come when the holding of power by those who assert the active prosecution of the Conservative principle was rendered impossible, unless at least they recognized the propriety of amending our Parliamentary representation. They had, like Peel, been beaten in argument ; they, like Peel, saw that the en- during interests of the country demanded the sacrifice ; but they saw something else, more hard to swallow, far more hard than Peel's confession,—they saw that the Tory party could exist no- longer if it refused to enlist itself as a band of recruits in the- great army of Reformers.
Now Lord Derby himself and most of his personal friends could- have had their fair share of opportunity for office, power distinc- tion, and all that sort of thing, if they had avowed such convic- tions individually; but it had to be done corporately. It required courage to make the effort, but the effort was made. Lord Derby and his friends accepted office, but no sooner had they at- tempted to administer the affairs of this country with the avowed conviction that Reform principles must be accepted as the national faith, than their difficulties commenced.
We at once perceived the true distinction between the Tories in office and Liberals. It is made a complaint against the Liberals of our own party, that we are never permitted to have any but Lords at the head of affairs,—" Aristocrats," "Dons," " Swells " or whatever synonym may suit the grumbling dialect of die moment. The fault is laid to the account of the Dons themselves, but unjustly. The true causes of the peculiarity are two-fold ; first, that our self-made men are in general too busy to be troubled with public affairs; but secondly and above all, that John Bull himself, for all his independence, is not a republican, and " dearly loves a Lord." Nor is that innate affection of your true-born Englishman quite so vulgar and servile a propensity as some think. Its prompting motive is a dim consciousness that money is not all in all ; that the circumstance of being born to a good position may, and most likely will, help to make the man inde- pendent; that an hereditary acquaintance with power mitigates, if it does not remove, the proverbial vulgar disposition to abuse newly-acquired power ; that an hereditary bond with the chivalry of the country, the right to bear arms which "blush with the blood of kings and queens "—though sometimes with something else—tends to make even common men acknowledge nobler associations than mere pecuniary advantage or logical formulas. These are among the dim ideas in John Bull's mind if he so readily gives " a Lord" the preference, whenever a Lord asks his acquaintance. We have then the patricians or magnates of each party prominently put forward in office ; but as between the chiefs of the Liberal and Tory parties there is one great working difference. When the Tory ' stars " tread the political stage, they are for ever dragged back by a chorus of Ellenboroughs, Thesigers, Bentineks, Sibthorps, and such genuine old Tories as have not yet got abreast of the age ; whereas the Liberal stars, in the same glorious position, are perpetually urged forward by their chorus, in hearty sympathy with the audience. The Tory party, long since enfeebled by the departure of the. Peelite section, by alteration in the constituencies, and by the " progress of the age," was unable to man a Cabinet ; and it had to patch up the wreck of its forces by recruits from other scarcely re- cognised parties—the antiquarian, the curious in political physio- logy, the imaginative. Hence a Cabinet was formed, with NI strange mission of carrying forward the measures and embodying the opinions of another party, while the individuals composing it' each had some special mission of his own,—from Mr. Disraeli' whose historical duty it was to reconcile Charles the first and Somers, Ship-money and the Bill of Rights, Washington and George the Third, to Mr. Bentinok, helplessly doomed to reconcile himself with his own position as a consistent Tory Protectionist supporting a new-fangled Liberal Government ; while Lord Ellen borough with merciless consistency, Mr. Walpole and Mr. Henley, with equally merciless bona fides in their adoption of constitutional reform, tore to pieces the whole mystic machinery of reconcile- ment.
We believe that the political mission of the late Ministry was an impossibility ; but perhaps it was an impossibility of which the Tory party could not be convinced until the experiment had been workedpractically ; and the duty was accepted honestly. In taking office the late Ministers pledged themselves to receive it as
a trust, and to perform no act in breach of that trust; and we are bound to say that in departing from office they have done nothing to tarnish their honour as statesmen or as gentlemen. They ac-
cepted a not very hopeful task; they have gone through it, before the face of the public, with assiduity and good faith ; they have performed many administrative services in the best spirit ; and they have submitted to their dismissal from office with manly frankness. In bidding them farewell, the country would discredit itself if it did not, in harmony with the Sovereign, cordially vote them thanks
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