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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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The Session. If We Except The Three Or F...
., .. In that which has been the principal busi-M 6 BB of the session , the war measures actually rcatapleted have , we conceive , constituted the -terjr smallest part of the results . We have devoted through our Commons something i £ ke > 49 , 000 , 0002 . to the war in the form of cdduble income-tax , and taxes on tea , coffee , sugar , Ac ; a loan of 16 , 000 , 000 ^ . and J 7 , 000 , 00 ( M . in Exchequer Bills op Bonds , ibesides extras . We have screwed tlie Execug tive up to its duty where it was failing . We shave had the Sebastopol Inquiry ; have
Jearned the disorganised state of the army , ' have ; compelled a thorough improvement of the hospitals ; have secured a new organisat ion of the war department with branches for ^ supplying the army with clothing , food , and ¦ other materials , punctually and effectually . fWe have at last got our army and its managing departments in a condition to go on with the business of war according to rule , and creditably . But what does it import us to survey these items of the account with which we
have been familiarised week by week , when such results are small in comparison to the great lesson that the session has afforded upon much larger subjects ? During t \ W session the Government has been schooled in a manner that will make it an example for succeeding Governments ; the House of Commons itself has undergone leasons which must be useful to its successors ; and the nation has learned something about its rulers
and itself which it will turn to account . We do not say this with reference to any of the « et lessons that individuals have attempted , or in reference to the organised agitations 'Which the session has produced , and which have not been rendered successful . Mr . Roesuck , indeed , succeeded in upsetting Lord Aberdeen ' s administration , and making Xiord PAiirBBSTox accept the Sebastopol
enquiry , which some of his Abert > ef , kt colleagues supposed him to resist . Mr . Ijayatid and Mr . Liindsay have lectured G-overnment on the glaring mismanagement iu the East ; Xjord I / stndhiirst has exposed the misdoings of Prussia , and-hinted at the claims of Poland . lLord Albemakie has usefully & ept attention fixed upon the treacherous neutrality which enabled Prussia to profit by herrillicit transit trade . Sir Edward Lytton
proposed a general resolution on the subject of Administrative Reform , which was not resisted by Government , and was carried . But in all these cases it is quite evident that the acts of the individual for the particular evening in Parliament had far less effect in influencing the conduct of tlio Government , and bringing about tangible results , than tho bfrdad necessities of the case and that potent deity which we call public opinion . The war , iniact , has roused tho whole country for the
first time since tho free-trado array ; or rather , we might say , since tho Reform Bill ; or } 'et more properly , perhaps , since the last war , to something like a positive unity of feeling . And both Government and Parliament , the Commons having been elected while public opinion was aaloop , have been taught to know that they must obey . The effect has shown itself in great things and in trifles . Ijfcet year a sleepy Commons permitted a few f & iactic pietists toforce a practical impediment
upon the weeklyholidny of tho humbler classes . t £ oim year tho saino House of Commons has seen the necessity of altering ita mistake and permitting tho people to have houseroom rid Bustcnonce on their weekly excursions . ^ he deference to public opinion is not leaa tnaaoked in that instance than it ia in tho loyalty with which at last Government and Ktoliamenb have aubmittod to tho nocossity ol < 3 ttTjring on tho war with a single mind , and Rotting rid of every pedantic , prejudiced , or dishonest obstruction that clung to them .
Never was political tutelage more distinctly exhibited than in the training of the Government—its training under adversity . Never was the revived strength of public opinion more gloriously shown in this country . Jjet us recite the Btory of the Cabinet , its extinction , its purification , and its regeneration . "Lord Abjsbdeen's Cabinet was
constructed for the single purpose of redeeming the Executive , which — utterly discredited by the incapacity of the Russell Government—had descended into the keeping of a cast-off Stanley , a knight-errant Disraeli , and a Quarter Sessions chorus of Ministers ! They were kept together by idolatrous worship for the old heathen god of Parliamentary Toryism — a worship which supplied the place of community of feeling , completely destroyed in the Liberal party ;
and thus the Tories held the Government simply because the public men really representing the country could not act together , to hold it for themselves . There seemed almost a chance that the British constitution had come to an end , incapable of producing that Executive which maintains our organism by fulfilling the idea of monarchical Government through
responsible Ministers . It was Lord Aberdeen ' s function to use his personal influence in order to bring the men together , and he did it . When he had formed a Government , and still held it for that single purpose , the war began , and , a Peace man , he had a war upon his hands . His known predilections , a vague tradition that unjustly confounded him with Austrian associations in the former
war , and a rumour that there were some traitors in the Cabinet , raised public suspicion against the Aberdeen Ministry ; and here we see , in its first blind effects , the consequences of reawakened public opinion . It became impossible for the Aberdeen Cabinet to stand against the popular suspicion ,
and Lord Aberdeen , a conscientious though reluctant upholder of the war , the Duke of INTewcastle , an earnest and active employer of the warlike instruments impaired by peace , resigned , in order that the efficiency of the Executive might not be damaged by the appearance of disuuion in it . For some reason or other the Aberdeen Cabinet had
resolved to resist Mr . Roebuck ' s motion for inquiry , and afterwards we had the real reason why the Cabinet so resolved , though Aberdeen might well have undergone investigation , and Newcastle could only have been advantaged by it . Gladstone and his immediate friends desired to prevent inquiry , because they wished to avoid any pledge to continue the war . They agreed by anticipation to that " equipoise" trick which afterwards entrapped Lord John Russell . They were even then working within the Cabinet for the equipoise ; but Roebuck ,
honest Aberdeen had left it , and patriotic Newcastle had been driven out . The country then asked , " Have we exhausted the list of traitors ? Is there no other equivocator in the Cabinet ? " There was , we believe , no other traitor ; but there was something which , is sometimes worse . There was a person who had been in the pursuit of one idea . Great men fall , and because ha had fallen , Lord John Russell was convinced that he was a great man . He was
young enough to rehabilitate himself ; and , like a knight of old , he entered upon , a quest . St . John of Bedford set out in quest of Russell ' s lost greatness . The quest led him , far wandering , into Lord-Aberdeen ' s Cabinet ; into the Presidency of the Council ; into a seat without office ; into the back seat out of the Cabinet : into the
Plenipotentiaryship at Vienna ; into the Colonial Office ; and back out of the Cabinet to uphold the " equipoise" plan . Anywhere , so that poor Lord John could make the public remember him , and could , seem to have the settling of it all . This was not treachery of malice prepense , but it was equivocating and trifling with public interests . Sir Edward Lytton became tho
instrument for declaring the public conclusion , that while a man who had so behaved remained in office , the country could not trust the Cabinet . Whether tho mouth be that of Roebuck , Lttton , Latard , Lyndhurst , Moleswortii , Pakington , or Palmerston , whenever a man stands up in Parliament and declares that the Government of the present day , without reference to party , must , in word , act , and person , lead on the war energetically and unequivocally , the
speaker declares the manifest "will of the country , and nothing can stand against hiir Sir Edward Lytton gave notice of his motion , and Lord John Russell left the Cabinet . On the other hand , any man who endeavours to embarrass the Government by retrospective motions based on Mr . Roebuck ' s committee , as Mr . Layard did , — by impromptu combinations , as in the attempt to stop the Turkish loan , —by teasing fov
papers , as Mr . Laing did , without a definite object , —that man is powerless against the Government , because he is not farthering the will of the people . Sir Edward Lytton or Mr . Roebuck could drive from the Cabinet men who are not with the country ; but when Mr . Laing or Mr . Gladstone attempts to bar the march of the war , the Ministers trample over him like soldiers marching down a flock of creese .
By the same means which has invested the Government with absolute power when it proceeds in a certain direction , the public has ill so discovered its power , and it is likely to develop a long-forgotten relish for that enjoyment . A season of war has recalled some of the most stirring emotions of our nature . The death of our countrymen , and the hope of victo ^ for our flag , have excited the feeling of living patriotism . Tho coercion of tho Government by the public when tho Government has thwarted us , the sharing of imperial power when the Govern in en t has gone with us , have made us know again the pleasures
who happened to coincide with public opinion for the day , persevered ; public opinion was too strong for the Government ; and here came the second grand tribute of office to the nation : Palmerston concurred , and in agreeing to tho inquiry , agreed also to make common cause with the people , and throw open the conduct of the war . For him to join the nation was for Gladstone to separate from Palmerston ; and the four statesmen , whom it is an injustice to the memory of a really great man ' to oall Peelites , were eliminated from the Cabinet . Ever since , month
of power . AVe have upheld a feeble nation—Turkey ; we have defied that state which was supposed to be the most powerful in the WOrl ( l — Russia ; we have bargained with Austria and Prussia ; we have disposed at tho iuto of peoples on a great sonic ; and stall larger principles remained to bo influenced by our actions as a nation . Hurt in our very flesh by the t reacheries » n < l cruelties ot Russia , wo have once more learned what t is to hate our too ; ami in hating our foe , we have once more a renewed consciousness of a feelin" which we had almost forgotten—tho love
after month , with increasing pertinacity , Gladstone has endeavoured to embarrass the country in the war — to magnify our " reverses " ' —his own phrase ; to exult our enemies ; to assist combinations against ; us ; to impair our credit in tho money market : all in vain , except as distinctly proving the spirit that permanently animates tho man who remained lurking in tho Cabinet after
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 11, 1855, page 765, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/ldr_11081855/page/9/
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