On this page

• Text (2)

  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.

  • 

    128 ^he Leader and Saturday Analyst. J F...

  • 

    AUSTRIA AKD THE WHIGS. WE would much rat...

• Transcript

  • 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.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    The' Coming Parliamentary Struggle. . Th...

    inoiily to march In procession up Downing Street again , with trampets braying and colours flying , and a hope in their bnrstino- hearts that the spectators might -take them for real old Ehglish ° baronets risen up in wrath to save the country ; while shrewd Mr . Hex ley and scrupulous Mr . Walpole will probably vote in council for further delay before making a grand attack . So * on the opposite side , Mr . Gladstone having a character for originality to support , and being subject to the singular weakness ( among Whigs or Peelites ) of persuading himself that every one of his own measures , and every bit of each of them , is not only sound in logic but indispensable to the nation ' s weal and his own personal honour , is ready to

    risk all upon the issue of an early pitched battle . He wotild rather break up the Government , and go into oppositiori once more , than be suspected , for sake of five thousand a-year and a seat with his back to the horses in the Family Coach , of consenting to be a humdrum Chancellor of the Exchequer . It is essential for the maintenance of the belief in Ids idolised idiosyncrasy , that he should show himself able to do something for the Whigs , which ndrie of their Barings , Woods , or Lewises would have had the wit to conceive or the phick to attempt ; and he is quite resolved to play this role at the . risk of upsetting , the whole concern into the ditch . J 3 eside him sits a prompter , ' swayed by very different feelings , but who , if we not little to do with

    mistake not , has had a precipitating the coming struggle . ; Mr . Milnek Gibson has no more romance in his composition than Mr . Gladstone has of the talent for political intrigue . The member for Asliton , on the other , hand . , possesses unwearied , powers of contrivance , plot , and personal diplomacy . The peculiarities of his actual position would , in themselves , deter him from going to sleep in his berth , were he ever so well disposed to dp so . - Without following family or great fortune , he has contrived to work his way to the Cabinet after five-and-twenty years of a chequered arid laborious parliamentary life ; but he has only been admitted , after all , upon the Oriental condition of leaving , his slippers at his feet under him

    the door . He well knows that to gather on the Downing Street-divan , and to keep merely puffing his chibouque sympathetically beside Lord John , could only end in his being * forgotten- - . out of doors , -and no . longer deemed worth having by those within . He therefore set about stimulating the peculiar ambition of the two most ambitious men in the Cabinet . Mr . Gladstone arid Lord John Russell- —to take a line in their departments respectively , which should keep alive in men ' s minds the distinctiveuess of their personal influence in Government , and not indirectly increase his value , to them as a confidential auxiliary . Against any amount of resistance which either of them might thereby provoke from certain of the palace members of the Cabinet , " the author of all mischief "—as the

    Stafford House Whigs love to call him—held out the promise of active support from his old allies of the Manchester school . Mv . Cojjden agreed to become a" secret negotiator with the French Government for a commercial treaty ; so secret indeed , that even at the Board of Trade' the idea is said to have never been whispered outside the president's room , until the coup was actually made , and the terms of the treaty agreed upon . Mr . Bjr , tght proved somewhat more difficult to deal with at first , but lie also lias been worked round , first into letting off the democratic steam for Reform he had previously tried to get up ; and next into pledging himself to hack the Government through thick and thin in their financial and foreign poUcy . What real amount of strength the member for Birmingham will be able to bring them on a pinch , time must show .

    In the equally balanced condition of the great parties , it clear that the fate of the impending struggle must be decided by the part which the Boshi-Baaouks below the gangway maybe induced to take at the last moment . The number of these , both English and Irish , is far from being inconsiderable , and they are not likely to be rendered , fewer by the infatuated step just taken of conferring the Chief Commissionership of Woods and Works on the Honourable Willta ** Cowpeu . The Whigs , in matters of patronage , are indeed incorrigible . Against all remonstrance , toyo years ago , they insisted on , making Lord Suffolk ' s brother Distributor of Stamps , and the Hon . W . Oowper ' s brothor-in-law Treasurer of a County Court—gobs which it is well known did them more ultimato harm than oven

    the Clanrioaudb scandal , - find for this obvious reason , that it touched tho jealous solf-intorost of n much wider class . And now wo have an equally wilful and wanton abuse of patronage perpetrated in favour of the ' nearest connection of the Premier , and that at tho very moment when policy dictated tho semblance , at least , of regard to political services and abilitios . Prom the Catholic sootion Ministers cm hope but for little support . Some toil or a dozen votes of Irish U Itramontanists will no doubt bo recorded against thorn ; porlinps on equal number of Liberal

    Catholics will be found to side with them ; and the remaindei will stay away . How many discontented Whigs and Radicals ¦ will imitate their example remains to be seen .

    128 ^He Leader And Saturday Analyst. J F...

    128 ^ he Leader and Saturday Analyst . J Feb . 11 , 1 S 60

    Austria Akd The Whigs. We Would Much Rat...

    AUSTRIA AKD THE WHIGS . WE would much rather praise than blame the present Government , and we hoped that the noble sentiments in the Queen ' s Speech wouid be followed by a policy which the British nation could thoroughly endorse and sustain . From Lord John Russell himself , however , come indications that this is not the case ; and he seems inclined to prove to the Italians that , although it may be dangerous to have a Tory for an enemy , it is at the best a melancholy and partial satisfaction to have a Whig for a friend .

    Up to the commencement of the Italian war , his Lordship ' s caution arid advice to Victor Emmanuel was to be quiet ; and Austria herself was scarcely more opposed to the energetic conduct of Count Cavouu . Happily for Italy , and the future prospects of Hungary , the great Sardinian statesman scorried the feeble counsels of the English minister , and continued a course which .. brought .-Austria , to humiliation , and gave freedom to

    Central Italy . This being accomplished , Lord John Russell concurred in the propriety of a Congress to recognise the change tlie people had made , and give the sanction of public law to the enlargement of the dominions attached to the Sardinian crown . When the Congress scheme failed , his Lordship commenced a negotiation , of which he gave some particulars on Tuesday night , and which appears in some respects open to grave objection . . . ¦ <

    To . the first proposition , that Austria and France shxmld both abstain from interference in the internal affairs of Italy , no objection is at first sight apparent ; but it becomes evident upon consideration that it would not be for the interest of . Italy that France , should agree to it " unless Austria were tied down to very strict conditions , which . would- soon be found quite incompatible with her holding the Quadrangle , or retaining Venetia . The second proposition , for the withdrawal of French troops from the lloman states , Was right " enough ; but acting upon'it .. would ' involve consequences which , as we shall show , his lordship is anxious to avert . In the third proposition , as explained by-the

    noble lord himself , "it was proposed that the Governments of Knrope should not interfere in the internal government of Venetia , and that no proposal should be made in order to regulate the internal government of Venetia by the Emperor of Austria . " Now , considering that Venetia is the place in which the Aii'striaris rule . with extraordinary brutality and atrocity , and that their conduct in that territory is intimately connected Ayith the peace of Italy , this proposal to abstain even from remonstrance is one of the most extraordinary that a British minister could make . But it is , in . fact , worse ' than it seems fit first sight , and is

    directed to stop the action of Sardinia 111 favour of \ cnctiau liberty . It is precisely the half-hearted , and we must add , halfwitted , game Lord John Russell played last year with Tuscany , Lombardy , the Duchies , and the Romagna . If Sardinia had then isolated herself from the common cause of Italy , she would have failed in a plain moral duty , and would ia consequence have been exposed to revolutionary outbreaks , as well as to the alarming pressure of the Austrian despotism . She was right then , in acting upon broader conceptions of right . and obligation than the Whig mind seems able to conceive : and she will be rig-ht now , if she again scorns the mean-spirited advice , and dccliues to abandon the national cause of Italv , until the whole ¦

    country is free .. The fourth proposition involvos an interference with the internal concerns of Central Italy which no English minister should have ventured to mako . As explained by his lordship on Tuesday , " it was to the cfiect that the King of Sardinia should bo asked not to send any troops into Central Italy , until there should bo an opportunity , by a new election and a new vote of tho states and provinces of Central Italy , to obtain a clear and unbiassed ex ¦» pression of their wishes With respect to their future destiny . " Central Italy has already , in a legal and constitutional" way ,

    expressed her desire ' , and for on -external power like England to cull upon her to dissolve tho patriotic and fairly elected assemblies by . which this was done , and place tho issue at the disposal of a fresh electoral struggle , is , to say the least of it , a most reprehensible interference with her internal affairs . It is said that tho Emperor of the French , proposed that the new election should take place by universal suftVajjjo , but was told that it would not be convenient for the British Cabinet to sanction that principle in , Italy , at a time when thoy were concocting a Reform 15111 ,. intended to exclude tho bulk of tho English artisans . Wo presume Lord John Russell meant tho schomo to bo (\ ocepted or rejected as a whole , and that ho would uothavo asked

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 11, 1860, page 4, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_11021860/page/4/