1 MARCH 1851, Page 12

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

THE POLITICAL BREAK-UP: NEVER was a political crisis precipitated for reasons so inadequate as those assigned by Lord John Russell in the House of Commons on Monday for the self-dissolution of his Cabinet. The reasons set forth in his formal statement amount to this—that Government had only a majority of fourteen two days before the financial state- ment was made ; that in a House of 150, Ministers were beaten by a majority of two to one on Mr. Locke King's motion; that "on other measures and other incidental questions" they "might meet with similar defeats"; and therefore he resigned. That a Govern- ment should continue "liable to defeats from time to time," and "carry on a kind of lingering existence during great part of the session," he thought to be a very dangerous and a very disadvan- tageous thing for the country. Now these reasons, we say, are in- sufficient and unusual, having a regard to the consequences which threatened to follow Lord John Russell's hasty act of resignation. Whig Ministries have before consented to a lingering existence on a "working majority" of less than fourteen; under many circum- stances Mr. King's success would have been treated as an accident; the pith of the whole explanation lies in Lord John's apprehensions of the future—he shrank from facing the future as it had been pre- cared mainly by himself. We must seek the real reasons, then, underneath this allusive impli.iation ; and there truly we find them, obvious and simple

• enough. In every great branch of his administration he had so contrived as to fritter away the strength of Government in bringing matters to an inextricable entanglement, so that in each branch it had become positively impossible to go on. His allusion to the future implies a spontaneous turning-back for which the his- torian of the Constitution would probably be unable to find a paral- lel : the Chancellor of the Exchequer has proposed a Budget, most elaborately prepared ; it has encountered no resistance ; but be- fore the week is out Lord John loses all heart to encounter the trouble of carrying it through ! It was the same with the Eccle- siastical Titles Bill,—a poor measure, which would have created no vast agitation if he had abandoned it ; but in that affair Lord John had effectually precluded himself, by the ineffaceable Durham Letter, from going back, by the composition of his bill from going on, and by the sensation which he had got up from standing still. In the government of Ireland. the Whigs had obtained some

• credit,—all swept away in favour of this unworkable Anti-Papal project. Even in matters of an unpolitical kind,, the utmost was done to spoil the credit which was almost forced upon Ministers. Measures of improvement were avowed to be necessary, and pro- mised only to be put off,—such as Mr. Baines's Poor-law Amend- ments, the Franchise Extension, and the Law Amendments. If Ministers were not in earnest, other persons were ; and an impres- sion was created in many quarters that Ministers only repaid sin- cerity by a deliberate desire to make fools of honest people. Some of the most important legal appointments were unpopular, and the promises of comprehensive law reforms distrusted. Lord John failed even in the primary essential of preserving consentaneous .action and discipline amongst his colleagues. His right hand did not know what his left hand did. For example, the Lord Chan- -calor did not know in which House the Chancery bill was to be introduced, and he confessed to the Peers his ignorance at the very time when Lord John Russell was announcing his intention to the Commons. It is shrewdly suspected that Lord John Russell him- self did not previously know the budget with which Sir Charles Wood was to amuse the House on the 17th. Not only without a policy, Lord Sohn was also without any plan for keeping his Cabi- net together. These are the obvious and substantial reasons why his Govern- ment could not go on in every branch his policy was imprac- ticable and self-destructive ; he had no mastery over his own Cabinet. Being in a position to have it all his own way, he had so managed matters as to render the going on an impossibility. His political bankruptcy entailed stoppage also on his party. But it did not become them to reproach him ; for their overthrow was the result of their own misconduct. He had been the spoilt child of the Whigs, and they had made him the idol of their party : in their total discomfiture we see the punishment which attends the sin of idol-worship. Their adhesion went far beyond the faith- ful following of an effective leader. Lord John had indeed ac- quired considerable tact in House of Commons exhibition and ma- nagement, from a long experience in that arena. But Whigs and Liberals chose to take claptrap" management of the House " for statesmanship—to accept, in lieu of deeds, promises never growing into acts, vaunting reminiscences of struggles never to be renewed, or sounding babble about Fox, and Mackintosh, and Burke, distin- guished prototypes. So fell the Whigs. We have seen a "great party in the state" broken up before in idolatry not dissimilar; for the Tories chose to cling to Peel even after his own language had marked that he did not belong to them : but they liked to impute to him the virtue of insincerity, and their idol failed them. Other "great parties," perchance relics of that one, may come into power--and may repeat the lesson.

For we see no change in the temper of politicians to indicate a re- covery from the state of things which brought on the present crisis. All the parties into which Parliament is divided stick to their own crotchets, unable to disengage themselves from Protection or Free- trade dogmas, Whig or Conservative ; unable to go upon existing facts and construct a policy based on the actual state of the coun- try, its needs and opportunities. Each party is too small to be a majority, and none takes up a course which shall include several ; for the policies which now go a-begging belong all to the past—to the Anti-Corn-law days, or to a great departed statesman, even to Mr. Canning's time, or farther back. If it is physically impossible to go back, it is equally impossible to go forward with the used-up deeds of the past. But the real cause of embarrassment lies yet deeper—in the very condition of a community broken up into sectional ideas, class or clique interests, and decided only in ne- gatives and scepticisms. We may blame Lord John Russell, but he was the very man who remained, by a process of exhaus- tion' as the only one that represented the feeling of the poli- tical world sufficiently to command extensive adhesion. We blame Parliament, but it is after all the very cream and flour of society as it really exists. The want of positive opinion and set- tled purpose in Parliament is but the image of the same wants throughout the constituencies. As Lord John was appointed to office for no positive claim of his own, but from the unfit- ness of other parties, so the next Premier, be he Lord John again or some one else, seems likely to enter upon the same tenure ; whence we may calculate, that, without some wholesome change of method, its history is not likely to be very dissimilar. It is not the present crisis, therefore, which will extricate us from the hin- derances of a petty anarchy and Babel of opinions—we still await the larger utterance of "the Coming Man' to consolidate parties by the power of command, or a juncture so critical, if not disas- trous that it shall stimulate invention with the sharp spur of ne- cessity.