Mr. Dillwyn met his constituents at Swansea on Tuesday last,
and delivered an excellent criticism of the foreign policy of the Government, in which he brought out, much better than any one else has done, the extraordinary ignorance in which POMO of the members of the Cabinet have been kept by the Prime Minister as to the exact policy of the Government. He showed that Sir Stafford Northcote had told. the House of Commons expressly that the late Khedive had a full right to dismiss his European Ministers, and that we should not punish him for doing 80; that further, he had stated in a dinner at the Mansion House, near the end of the Session, that it was the sultan who had removed the Khedive, not France and England ; whereas a few days afterwards, the Queen had said in her speech proroguing Parliament, "At the suggestion of my Government,
in conjunction with that of France, a change has taken place in the Viceroyalty of Egypt, which the past misgovernment of that country had rendered necessary." Clearly, as Mr. Dillwyn said, that proves that, unless Sir Stafford! North cote wished to misinform the country, he could not have known the true state of the case, though he is both Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House of Commons. And clearly, too, Mr. Dillwyn was quite right in inferring that there must be a Government within a Government, and no adequate collective responsibility in the Cabinet. He drew the same inference also from the empty verbal censure of Sir Bartle Frere by the Colonial Minister for a direct defiance of the authority of the Government at home, on so important a matter as a declaration of war, with- out its being followed by his recall. This question of collective Cabinet responsibility for the greater political decisions taken by individual Ministers, deserves more attention from the country than it has received, and Mr. Dillwyn is doing a great service in pressing it on public notice.
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