POSTSCRIPT.
SATURDAY NIGHT.
It is a common presumption that the subjects discussed at the Cabinet Council, which met at Sir Robert Peel's private residence yesterday, were the state of the potato crop in Ireland and the needful measures to mitigate the distress; and the result of the deliberation is looked for with anxiety. Nothing has been made known. In the absence of real information, some persons make guesses, and then discuss those guesses as if they were realities. The Globe on Thursday evening thought it worth while to print "a rumour," that the measure which the Council would adopt, by way of opening the ports to supplies of food, would be a fixed duty of four shillings on wheat, and on other grain in proportion; and the Chronicle thinks it worth while, this morning, indig- nantly to criticize such a measure as lengthily as if the Minister had actually proposed it. The "rumour," indeed, has not been formally con- tradicted; an attention which it scarcely merits. There is no reason to believe it true. Sir Robert Peel has always said that a fixed duty would be untenable at a time of scarcity; and to impose it precisely at the period when scarcity is threatened, would be quite inconsistent with all ex- perience of his special tact at hitting upon the right time for a mea- sure. It is needless to glance at the more general arguments with which he has always exposed the inexpediency of a fixed duty: to advance it now, would seem to be neither more nor less than to propose what he has ever denounced as a bad measure, at what he has indicated as the worst of times.
The Herald, this morning, hints at an early call of Parliament to expe- dite railways in Ireland, as a means of meeting the distress by affording em- ployment and wages; a suggestion which some would be disposed to regard as an official "feeler," but we rather incline to put faith in the modest disclaimer with which the Herald has denied the close official connexion imputed to it.
The non-appearance of any announcement as to the result of the Ministers' deliberation may be in part explained by the following notice in the Standard of this evening- " We understand that another meeting of the Cabinet Ministers will be held at the residence of Sir Robert Peel, in Whitehall Gardens, this afternoon."
• Among the rumours afloat is the following, from the Brighton Herald— "We learn from a source on which we place great reliance, that important changes are in course of operation in the :Ministry; and that there is little doubt that Lord John Russell wall join the Administration of Sir Robert Peel,—that Lord Stanley will retire from the office of Colonial Secretary, and will be succeeded by Lord John."
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