One is struck with the contrast between the earnest indus-
try of the Absolute Governments of the Continent and the pick- tooth insouciance of the English Ministers. The European policy which the Russell Cabinet has denonneed.with emphasis—against which Palmerston sometimes seems to labour' with perhaps more of zeal than discretion—triumphant in the North and East, moves Southwards, "to spread its conquests further " ; and Lord John and his colleagues disperse in search of amusement, as if all the world were in a state of stagnant tranquillity. The Premier, according to the original gossip, had gone to bury himself in the recesses of the Scotch Highlands so long as the Queen should remain there. This is now contradicted, but the new rumour does not bring him much nearer to Downing Street. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is superintending his farm in the North ; the Secretary for Horne Affairs is cruising of the coast of Norway; the rest of the Cabinet are scattered in all directions. Only Lord Palmerston is left at head-quarters, to devote as much time to public affairs as he can spare from financial negotiations with which the Owlish public have small concern. His colleagues repose unbounded confidence in the discretion of the Se- cretary for Foreign Affairs,—knowing that although he will speak in their collective name in their absence without scruple or hesita- tion, he will do nothing. This light-hearted abandonment of their offi - dal functions by our rulers, in the face of the anxious aspect of Con- tinental politics, is perhaps the highest compliment they can pay to England's powers of self-government. A new [era has com- mented with the Russell Cabinet; certainly none of its predeces- sors ever took matters so easily. /n the days of Peel or Pitt, it would have been deemed indecorous if not dangerous to leave the quarter-deck of the vessel of the state at any time so entirely de- nuded of officers. Nor is this the only change : the free and easy manner in which the Home Secretary appropriates an Admi- ralty yacht for a pleasure-cruise, though not without a precedent under the Russell regime, would have been thought an usurpation of the public property on the part of old Tory Ministers.
