what process—has resulted in the disorder exposed by these ac-
counts, have the assurance to threaten the new-corners into office with the perils which they must encounter in the endeavour to meet the exigency : the unjust steward counts not only upon what he can do with the proceeds of his misconduct, but upon the help- lessness of his embarrassed successor ! It is the first time in history, that falling Ministers have delayed their exode to perfect the most extensive and complicated preparations for annoying their succes- sors when they themselves are in opposition ; but it is besides totally new to the lax morality even of Parliamentary or bureau- cratic licence, for a Ministry to boast of the deficiency which it has itself produced, and a waning revenue, which is the ordinary test of misgovernment.
There are those, indeed, who make a merit of this very deficiency, or at least of its cause. Mr. STANLEY, who in his past capacity of Secretary to the Treasury and present capacity of Paymaster of the Forces, ought to have ex officio a double insight into the matter, clearly explained to the Cheshire electors all the beauty of the deficiency. The Whigs, he says, have abolished the Tory scheme for taking more money than was requisite from the people's pockets, the Sinking-fund, and only draw the supplies wanted for the moment : this renders unavoidable some difficulty whenever an extraordinary expenditure arises : such a difficulty has now arisen, in the demand for our armies in the Levant, in Canada, and in China : and then he congratulates the electors upon the success which has attended "our arms" in these quarters! He goes on to say—and it is worth noting, though beside the present purpose— that the deficiency cannot be made good by a loan, because it is
' i time of peace, (in the Levant, to wit, in Canada, and in China! ) and with the
deficiency came commercial depression ; so Govern- ment had to look the question fairly in tir face, and " with that view the Committee on Imports had been appointed." Now what are the excuses which this intrepid official, the Whig Whipper-in, finds for his principals ? Let us retrace them : first, they have adopted a policy which postpones the yearly demand for a little surplus, and risks the occurrence of a deficiency whenever any et- traordinary expenditure arises; then, being thus helpless for ex- traordinary expenditures, they have incurred such expenditures by engaging in war in the Levant, Canada, and China—war, it is assumed, crowned with success to "our arms "; then, having been thus at war in three quarters of the globe, a loan is forbidden by the peace which Ministers have preserved ; then, something—Sir ROBERT PEEL is perverse enough to attribute it to these very wars—produces commercial distress ; and lastly, the Import- duties Committee was appointed. This is what a Minister has to say. in excuse for the deficiency. The most brilliant jewel of the string is the warlike success; and it is the most questionable— more questionable even than the merit of the boasted Import- duties Committee, which Government did not appoint. Mr. STAN- LEY vaunted his successes at an awkward time, when news from the East seems to show that all " success " there has been nuga- tory; the Sultan, by restoring Arabia to MEHEMET ALr, beginning to undo all that " our arms " have been doing. In Canada the success of "our arms" has only begun to be finally tested by Governor SYDENHAM, in relieving the province from the thraldom under which it has lain with its constitution in abeyance. But China!—No news, they say, is good news; and on that showing the last overland mail brought good news from China, for it brought none : but the previous mail unluckily did bring some accounts, which told of a Plenipotentiary occupying a small spot in a hostile country, with a little knot of countrymen who dis- trusted his judgment and capacity ; troops concentrating on his position; his own forces dying off under the noxious climate, and his Commander-in-chief obliged—for some urgent cause, of course—to abandon his post. Such is the success in China which helps to justify the deficiency.
But the question does not stop there. It is the grand reproach of Tory Ministries that they dealt in wars, which entailed upon us a debt for which we yearly pay some twenty-eight millions : the Tories are about to return to office, which the Whigs leave with the germ of a further debt and various wars all ready-made to their band and justified to their use. The Whigs have disarmed the Opposition which they are to lead : for how could they complain
of wars, in which they involved the country without the power to extricate itself; or of a new debt, of which they have laid the foundation-stone ? It is customary with their friends to pass over " the deficiency " as a mere phnnomenon of fate—something which has happened : but they made it ; and now they hand it over, with their batch of little wars, to the Tory Ministry,-.who can enjoy their emoluments without the responsibilit Ast-"the 'Cabot, ship.
