Mr. Lowe replied in Thursday's Times to that attack of
Lord
Russell's on the bandits' of the Cave of Adullam to which we drew attention last week, in writing of Lord Russell, as a strange error of judgment. Mr. Lowe points out that he took the same line on the proposal to reduce the franchise in the debate of 1865, before Lord Palmerston's death, wb en no Government measure was before the House, and when there was consequently no question of loyalty or disloyalty; that so far from gaining by his resistance to Reform, he fully expected to exclude himself personally from office in Liberal Governments by his policy ; that he never- theless declined Lord Derby's advances to him from the Conser- vative side ; and that he " certainly had not the least right to expect the kind and generous treatment which he received from Mr. Gladstone on the formation of the late Ministry." He reproves Lord Russell for not taking the beam out of his own eye, instead of devoting himself to the examination of the mote in Mr. Lowe's; in other words, for not explaining his own abrupt disloyalty to the Government of Lord Aberdeen during the Crimean war, and his subsequent retirement,—not "in the following year," by the
way, as Mr. Lowe says, but in the same year,—after his blunders
at Vienna, from the Cabinet of Lord Palmerston. That is all very well, though it would have been even better omitted, but why does Mr. Lowe speak of the last event as due to " the very serious imputations" on Lord John's conduct? That is a phrase which sounds more like imputations of corruption than imputations of weakness and vacillation. But we never heard that any one charged Lord John's Austrianising conduct at Vienna with any worse characteristics than complete want of clearness, firmness, and diplomatic courage.
