Our review of the closed session last year contrasted the
present Ministers with their predecessors ; this year it is in some respects our less happy task to contrast the present Ministers with them- selves. The session has been eventful ; but, with an extraordinary command of collected influence, Ministers cannot claim many re- sults as their own work. When Parliament first assembled, two great questions occupied the public mind, and it almost appeared as if the two Houses came together for the express purpose of de- mending an answer. These. questions were, the dispute between Russia and Turkey growing out of the questions of the Holy Places, and the position of Prince Albert with the Executive Min- isters. The latter question was at once disposed of by a dis- tinct statement of the Pririce's relation to the Queen, not as h Privy Councillor interfering with the actions of the responsible Ministers, but as an " alter ego" sustaining a female Sovereign by his aid and advice. We trust that the recess, often prolific in a doubtful progeny, may give birth to no new question for Parliar ment on its reassembling next year,—say, for instance, touching the disposal of patronage, to which the Prince Consort's many ao• tivities in the public service might expose him. The most prophetic Members knew not how to frame that other question concerning Russia, in proportions so large as the answer which has been given to it by the events of the subsequent six months. Ministers, indeed, showed no reserve in explaining how this country was sustaining Turkey in resisting the claims that Russia made for an internal interference with the Government of the Porte : they declared the alliance which they had formed with the French Government—a declaration then received with a doubt which now looks ludicrous ; and not long afterwards they stated, with equal distinctness, their efforts to procure the cooperation of the German Powers. It is true that, is Par- liament, Lord Clarendon not only declared that there was not thd slightest ground for supposing that Prussia would go over to Russia altogether, but he pronounced such an event to be "quite impossible"! Lord Clarendon, however, was not the only Englishman who then measured possibilities by too short a rule. Even the publication of the official despatches, and afterwards of the secret correspondence with Russia, failed to open the eyes of the public as well as the Government to the pos sibilities that have appeared in the short interval since that date. Within the week, Austria is believed to have taken a new step in cementing her alliance with the Western Powers for a more active cooperation ; Russia perseveres in alternating her treacherous retreats with her lawless aggressions; and Prus- sia, not announced in the new alliance with the Western Powers, is daily drifting more and more into the stream upon which the Czar has embarked. The German Powers, therefore, of which it was the aim of Anglo-Gallioan statesmanship to secure the alliance, are now divided. Our Government, which was then in- terfering, still with half friendly purpose, to sustain Turkey un- justly oppressed by Russia, now has an immense army and fleet on the way to Sebastopol, besides occupying the Baltic and block. tiding five hundred miles of coast near Cronstadt. The war, which, had not then begun, no longer includes only Russia and Turkey,/ but threatens to spread over so wide a field that the question witli which the session closes is, where will it stop ? At the close of the last session, contrasting the sterility of the late Ministry with the promise of the present, then young in office, we calculated the probability that the Coalition Government would be able to sustain its existence, and that it would command the means of passing moderate and useful measures. It has fulfilled our expectation of its own endurance, notwithstanding the efforts made to entrap it bya Tory Opposition not strong even in tricks—not- withstanding the jars given to it by some only half-explained dis- putes within itself; but it has not fulfilled our expectation in re- gard to its usefulness in effective measures. It is true that the tables which will be found in a subsequent page set down to the credit of Ministers no fewer than 121 measures introduced, out of which only 20 were lost, leaving 101 to be passed into law ; but of those 20, whereof 17 were spontaneously withdrawn by Ministers themselves, the larger number were amongst the most important and interesting for which the Government could claim credit : they comprise the budget of bills for the reform of Parliamentary Representation, others for the improvement of the Poor-law, of the law in testamentary and matrimonial oases, and of police; while the three Ministerial bills rejected by Parliament were framed to concentrate and im- prove the Parliamentsrp oaths, to establish public education in Scotland, (a measure leading to a larger one in the United King.
g the national comforts. It has been with finance more than withtariffs that Mr. Gladstone has dealt this year. His simplifi- cation of the Stocks, his introduction of a Two-and-a-half per Cent, and the device of the Exchequer Bond—promising in themselves, likely enough to have attained useful results and much credit sup- posing the financial course to continue as uninterrupted as it had been for thirty-nine years previously—were put forward at an in- opportune !, time. Refinements have been crushed by overwhelming
necessities and the great anxieties that palpitated in the heart of the money-market at the commencement of the war. Still, the logical clearness and practical fitness of the measures have been such, that in spite of prejudice against the Member for Oxford— in spite of Mr. Baring's endeavour to raise a Parliamentary movement for a loan " in the usual way "—in spite of Mr. Disraeli's watchfulness to seize opportunities of dissension in the Liberal ranks—the present Finance Minister enjoys the confidence of Parliament and the public, merited by his sagacity and probity, and substantiated by the fact that he confronts the beginning of a war with clearer accounts than any previous Finance Minister could exhibit on a similar occasion. The additional ex- penditure for war purposes sanctioned by Parliament has been about nine millions, besides the vote of credit for three millions ; and thus far we have paid our way. The Ministry has come through the bustle of the session— through the contests prepared for it on every occasion, Turkish or Irish, military or financial, by a Clanricarde, a Disraeli, Layard, Monteagle, Ellenborough, Grey, Lucas, or Derby—with- out any large change in its composition or its political relations. But such change as there has been is not for the better. It no longer can claim the credit of the measures which were set down to it by anticipation, but which, in the face of a weak Opposition, it has almost spontaneously retracted and put off to the doubtful , ohances of " next session." It has undergone more than one " crisis," not perhaps the less morally damaging because each did but partially involve the entire Cabinet, and was not perfectly understood. We do not allude to the dead set made on more than one occasion at Lord Aberdeen ; whose fault it was to let his real sentiments on the subject of Turkey be unexplained. We refer more particularly to Lord John Russell's balancing whether he should abandon the Reform Bill or the Cabinet, ' when perhaps had he and his more immediate friends been firmer, ' neither choice bad been necessary ; to Lord Palmerston's strange trifling with a post in that Cabinet, by which he still hangs loosely enough ; and to the unceremonious ousting of Mr. Stratt, in order to give Lord John a higher nominal place and to promote Lord Granville downwards. The last move could not of course have been necessary to let in Sir George Grey for the restoration. of a Colonial Office regime, since the Duke of Newcastle's ap- pointment to the fourth Secretaryship " for War " created a vacancy which would have admitted Sir George. If there was no dispute within the Cabinet itself, there must have been some lack of heartiness, to permit the ungracious treatment of Mr. Strutt; and there must be some serious want of lommand by the whole over its parts, since, clown to the very latest date, we can see Lord Palmerston playing second to Lord Dudley Stuart, calling the ar- gument of a subordinate but not a less trusted colleague " not sense," and, after the most romantio coquettings with an unap- pointed amateur health-statesman, suffering himself to stumble be- tween two Boards of Health.
It is not, indeed, that we can find in any other quarter the strength of men, influence, or purpose, which we should wish to see in the Ministerial party. The Opposition is nearly the feeblest that ever sat on the left hand of the Speaker. Mr. Disraeli has
dom,) and to remodel the Board of Health. Amongst those that have passed into law are some of great general importance, such as those reforming Oxford University, placing the gross revenue under the control of Parliament, improving the common law pro- cedure and establishing a militia; some that are highly useful, such as the West Indian Encumbered Estates Bill; some that are matters of routine or manifest necessity, such as those carrying out the financial plans of Mr. Gladstone. But the large majority are little more than matters of course ; and the list of bills does not really set forth the perfect account of legislation. If we could have found space for tables showing the clauses which have become law and those which have been withdrawn or rejected, the account would have been much darker. We have explained in a separate paper, how little, under such an anatomizing review, Ministers could claim as their own work the Oxford University Bill, which is necessarily down in our list amongst the Ministerial measures. The Bribery Bill that they carried was but a rag of the bill that they proposed. In fine, if we divide their legislation into two classes, it may be said, after a certain rough fashion, that most of their measures of domestic in- terest have been withdrawn, mutilated, or dictated to them by other parties ; and that it is only in the administration of the war, with the legislation ancillary to the war, that their success has been complete.
Although it has not been attended this year with the triumphant éclat which the pupil of Peel achieved last year, Mr. Gladstone's finance has really deserved more credit than circumstances have permitted it to attain. His first effort contrasted well with the attempt of a Disraeli to reconcile Free-trade and Protection, by continuing a stinted free trade, adorning it with compensations, and rechristening it with an old title. The abolition of the Soap duties, the reduction of the Tea-duties, and many simplifications of our tariff, have strengthened the national resources while en-
retained personally a conspicuous position ; but his " brilliant» invectives begin to weary the most admiring listeners by their iteration ; and his elaborated " statements " fail of their effect from having been more than once overturned even while be was speak, ing, and the absence of foundation in fact exposed. There exhibitions—the. increasing conviction that he is an "unsafe man—have lost for him the confidence of the party ; which his lieutenants rather than colleagues, Lord Derby and Sir John Pakington, have not been strong enough to secure for themselves. The Manchester party is out of the field; its members in the sulks during the war. Recently Mr. Bright has shown a practical aptitude for directing his undoubted energy, if he did not still suffer himself to be hampered by his hat-brim and coat-collar. Some of the independent younger Members seem likely to be useful, if they could find a "mission "; but the stem oracle of Nineveh is subdued on finding that Lord Aberdeen is not the fiend it took him for ; and the independent party has not sufficient purpose or discipline to prevent itself from being ren- dered ridiculous by the anti-Ministerial sallies and retreats of the noble Member for the Polish Association, under the patronage of Mr. Disraeli or Lord Palmerston.
The House of Commons, indeed—and this session it has more need of defence than the House of Peers—might plead two great excuses for the manner in which it has wasted time in debating settled questions and in frustrating the very objects of the session; it is unfortunate in its birth, and not compensated in its manage. ment. Misbegotten, enfeebled by inherent disease, its beat di,. positions are dragged down by the evil influence of its " W.13." parentage. But if it bad been elected by a constituency enlarged to a national extension and by the purest methods, it must still look to those responsible statesmen who are Ministers as much to Par- liament as to the Crown, for authoritative guidance. Parliament " likes to be governed." Ministers have succeeded where their purpose was defined and fixed ; but when we see them withdraw. ing measures because they do not think them of sufficient import. anee for a determined stand, or throwing out others as a mere ebauche to be cut and carved into shape by several hands, we have the true reason why five or six hundred Members can stop in town for six months, load the newspapers with " discussion" on every subject that Parliament could touch, and separate without completing any measures, save those dictated by the persevering purpose of the few, by manifest necessity, or by the resistless march of events.
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