FURTHER SIGNS OF THE TIMES.
"Friend after friend departs." Whilst last Saturday we were quot- ing from English, Scotch, and Irish newspapers, passages indicative of dissatisfaction with the Ministry, our neighbour the Examiner was mak- ing "ready for going about." The occasion was the topic of the Past Session ; in which, amid a general soundness of conclusion, there were one or two errors of judgment or of fact, which, in reprinting the paper as a sign of the current of opinion, it may be well to note as We pass along.
"THE PAST SESSION.
" Since the existence of the Melbourne Ministry there have been sessions in which less has been done than in the past, but no preceding session, however comparatively barren, has left so general and so deep a feeling of dissatisfactim in the minds of Reformers, not because of the size or bearing of the measures carried, but because of the principle of submission—for a principle of submis- sion it clearly is—which the leader of the Como-ions declared he hail adopted to procure the Lords' consent to his most costly, if not his most important mea- sure. From the moment when Lord John Russell stated that he waived the Appropriation principle, to which he and his colleagues were so solemnly pledged to abide, because the Lords had persisted in a three years' opposition to it, the confidence of the popular party received a heavy shock. The policy of the Administration was by that declaration placed on a pivot upon which It might take any turn that the obstinacy of the Lords might prescribe. When upon such pound the cardinal principle of the Ministry was suspended, and the resolu- tion which was the keystone of the structure of the Government virtually Violated, upon constancy to what principle or principles could reliance be placed ? The rule seemed to be established in the most marked way, that if the Lords would resist for a sufficient time, not much taxing their powers of
putioacity, the Commons roust yield the disputed point. Upon such a prin. ciple of submission was the concession of Lord John Russell confessedly founded. The leader of the Common., indeed, protests that be will fight tine battle again if he has the promise of adequate support ; but the commander
who has laid down his arnas is not the man to procure the greater support
nec i esaary to enable him to take them up again n the face of a triumpliaot enemy.
" Radical Reformers, with a wise regard to the balance of good and eel, en- dured Lord John Russell's declaration of inflexib!e hrstilitv tan their principles; but though they bore with his resistance to their principle's, they cannot extend the same toleration to the abandonment (‘ suspentsion,' if his Lordship prefers the word) of his own.
" Upon the causes behind tire scenes which really produced the ill-advised concession, at once so fruitless and so costly', we have repeatedly thrown light ; but we are now treating of the effects on the public mind, and it has been pecu- liarly unfortunate that, in taking a had coin se, Lord John Russell has given the worst reason for it (the necessity of yielding to the obstinacy of the Lords) in. stead of the true reason for it, the impossibility of maintaining the conflict with the Turks when the parties mainly concerned, the Irish chiefs, were clamour- ing for a surrender.
" At the close of tine session of '36, when Lord Lyndhurst taunted the 111inistry with the comparison of the much it had proposed and the nothing it had performed, Ministers, with reference to their defeated measures, might have said, in the words of Francis the Flist, after Pavia, We have lost all but Our honour.' What they have gained this session is poor compared with what they have lost, and what they had not lost hi the campaign of '37, in which they held fast to the principle upon at Lich they entered office. Up to that time, moreover, they bad acted on the system ethich had reconciled their Government to those who 11441 been dissatisfied with that of Lord Grey, namely, the 5% stern of proposing such measures as seemed to them just and requisite, without refe- rence to the foreknown hostility, of the Lords. This plan of operations, which we deselibed as tile bombardment of the Lords with good measures, was foolishly attacked by the extreme sect run of the Radicals, Who had not patience to wait, or sagacity to foresee, the sale results of it ; and the moment it was dropped, [in March or May 16:;SI the opi Muir which was yrweiny so rapidly against the ill-used irresponsible pdver of Ho: Lwrls, 'in March or May 1:SZ:S rhvindled away and shrunk to the ground, like the prophet's gourd. 'l'o the clamour of the extreme section if the Radicals against the Ministry for doing nothing, while they were holding fist to their principles, and bringing the Lords to the trot of principles just and good so far as they went, we snay in sonic degie refer the change in the policy of the :Ministry (a change most Imisterous:y reprobated by the very men who have assisted, unconsciously no doubt, in bringing it about), which returns us too nearly to the state of things to which we were opposed in the Grey Govern- ment ; with the great exceptien, indc,l, or the ad i»inistration of Irehmd, now all that is fair mu liberal, instead of, as it was from '31 to '34, narrow and harsh to the people, and truckling and pan tial to the faction opposed to them."
There appears something like it little contradiction here, in attribut- ing the surrender of the Appropriation principle to the "impossibility" of maintaining it against the " clamours " of the Irish Head and Tails, arid yet in part referring the necessary, and therefore inevitable "change," to the " clamours" of the extreme section of the Radicals, who had not patience to wait, or sagacity to foresee, the sure results of the bombardment of the Lords. But, passing this, we may remark that the sere results of the bomb:it-dm...la policy svere seen in less than a single session, twelve months ago, and answered exactly to the fore- sight " of the extreme section of the Radicals." 'Flue sure results were seen in a majority dwindling down to 5 on Church questions—the only set of questious which in prineipity separated the Whigs from the Tories : they were seen in the and in Mess distress of' the Reform Alinistry, which nothing bat the King's death rescued from destruction ; and (if these things should be attributed to the " extreme section of the Radierls" in tils. 1-1tiss, though we have some re- membrance of a brog that they only forint:1i the dead. nu nilarr) the " sure results" of the bonibartins nit 1,01:ey—tine policy of submitting to bold place aisl its responsibility iv :Jana power.—were shown in thy results of the elections, where the I'M Parlianitnt majority of 80, sank down to a fluctuating unreliable inajoniry of 20, although the :Melbourne Ministry strained every nerve of their own and the Court's, and made a very free use of' the Queen's name. It is a mutter of doubt whether Govermnent could brave got the Appropriation principle into Coro- mittee ; it is almost certain they could not have carried it And though willing enough to " prepare bills for rejection by the Lords," the philo- sophical Whig principle of "keep out Tories," rendered the Ministers unwilling " to prepare bills for rejection " by the Commons. The Examiner thus continues, and with truth in tine opening- " And, after all, what is the first link of the concession is hich has so shaken the credit of the Government, and which has been purchased at such a price in principle, and what is but dro:s compared with it, public treasure? Why, the first fruit is "Mr. O'Connell's instant commencement of a new agita- tion, mme extensive and formidable in design than any that has preceded it ! A million has been given for a truce which to all appearance will not last a month. The thuni is already htating up to recruit for the war. By the next meeting of Parliament, the eth.ct of compromises satisfying no party, and settling nothing but a great public hos, will pi obably be so broadly apparent as to compel an abandonment of that writhed policy ; amid none will rejoice more sincerely than ourselves in seeing Lord Mlbourne's Ministry occupying a SivSer am/ a stronger popidar yronml, as WC are sure they may yet do, than that from which they have so unfortunately desceoded."
How are they to do it ? Open questions might have done at the commencement of 1837, with a fair majority in the House : in 1839 the occasion will have gone by ; it will he two years too late, even if the selfish motive which prompted it, after the hostile denunciations of last session, were not too palpable for the moral sense of any one but a placeman, or an expectant. Some people can never learn that such a thing as character is essential to success ill great and continuous affairs.
Our contemporary then concludes-
" But for this, or for any other purpose, be it for better or for worse, it is certain that the Government roust undergo some repairs, some renovation; for, constituted as it is, it cannot yo through the first stove of the next session. • A deplorable deficiency of the faculties for business has lately been observ- able in Parliament. this must be cured, for it most certainly will not be endured."
This Zs cruel. This is what the poet calls "hard unkindness' alter'd eye." But (unless, indeed, the hostility is a feint to forward some Ministerial intrigue for the removal of unfavoured individuals from office, or another ingenious plan for rubbing-on by making some personal changes—men, not measures—an excuse for gratulation and hope,) we seem to truce in these remarks a deficiency of consistency and logic. The Government, both in members and conduct, appears to us i»tich the same as when the Examiner admired it as the best of all possible Ministries, and freely took those to task who dared to doubt its dictum. As for the business aptitude, we think Ministers have rather improved during the last session, speaking of the management of measures without regard to their nature. The Civil List and the Canada Coercion Bills were got through in no time the Irish Poor-lava was sent up reasonably soon to the Lords; and if the Tithe and Cot. potation Bills were late this year in reaching the Upper House, last year they did not reach it at all. The Ministers we conceive to be what they always were. It is our friend's " faculties for business" that have sharpened ; though he will not stand alone in this line. Members will soon learn that it will be safe, or perfume necessary ; and journal- ists seem to be learning that already it may be profitable, first to desert, and then to assail the Whigs. Having formerly exercised his sagacity and foresight with such +success in predicting the "ripening of the pear," our contemporary pro- phesies, that unless the " change" he points out be made, the " Go- vernment cannot go through the first stage of the next session." This is possible ; probable, or certain perhaps, if the Tories please ; other. wise not. The " wise Radical Reformers" may turn sulky, and go sway; or they may go into opposition ; (though such a consumma- tion is unlikely, early in the session ;) but, for the present, the game Las gone from the Liberal party. If bread be dear, trade bad, the revenue ticklish, the expenses of Canada great, and its affairs un- settled, the Tories will not hastily nod needlessly encounter difficulties and their attendant odium. The 200 Ballot-men may attack the 60 or 70 placemen and old Whigs ; but 300 Tories will defend thero,—just to hold place and to wind up matters for Tory purposes, to Tory dictation, without Tory responsibility. This may require the whole session, perhaps longer: but " it is not," said a shrewd Tory, " our policy to take office till the country is thoroughly sick of the present mon." Then—when the characters of the Ministers are irretrievably ruined—when the Liberal party, perhaps divided into sections, some opposed to the others, is without admitted leaders, party organization, or binding objects, and all, save the masses beyond the pale and a few of the extreme section of the Radicals, are crying out for a recognized government on almost any terms—then, and not till then, as matters look stow, will be the time for the Trade& And then will be seen the final and always sure results of the do-nothing.but-hombard policy.
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