Gentlemen who make a business of going about and talking
for the Whig Government, are very active just now in spreading two reports which precisely contradict each other. Both relate to the Colonial ques- tions now so rife. The first is, that if Ministers should be outvoted on any of these questions, they will certainly resign ; the inevitable eon- sequences being a Stanley Ministry, a general election, and a Protect- ionist House of Commons, with a revolution at the end. Awful ! The second story is, that Lord Grey has resolved to steal- a march on the Colonial Reformers—to take their proper work out of their hands—by meeting Parliament with aproposal for offering entire municipal independ- ence to every colony that will undertake the entire cost of its municipal government, both civil and military. This would be "recurring to the wisdom of our ancestors," as Lord Grey used to say when Lord Stanley was in office. Which tale is true ? Neither. "Number One first," is a law in the policy of nations : the Parliament of England, Scotland, and Ireland, cares so little about the Colonies, that it would let them set up not municipal but sovereign independence, (for which last not a few of them are preparing because municipal independence is withheld,) rather than dis- turb this United Kingdom by a general election at the present time. So the Whig Government, adroitly upheld by Sir Robert Peel, will not be out- voted on a Colonial question. But a serviceable means of preserving the Russell-Peel Ministry is the loud threat of their resignation. The first story is a bugaboo for stimulating partisans and alarming the timid. The other (for which see, in a preceding page, an extract from the Daily News) may serve to blind for a while, and to enfeeble, the new Society for the Reform of Colonial Government. That they should be induced to wait in reliance on Lord Grey, instead of preparing for a self-relying course, is indeed an object of importance to the Minis by and the mere Whig party, who, though not outvoted, will be sorely bespattered and harassed in Colonial debates, just in proportion as the Colonial Reformers shall make ready for the conflict. The means is not ill adapted to the end in view. But if you intend to disarm opposition by dumbfounding concessions, why threaten to resign ? And if you intend to resign pro- vided too qrge concessions should be asked, why stimulate the appetite for "concessions by promising to concede all ? The runners of Downing Street must have neglected to compare notes before they started on their gossiping mission to bamboozle the lieges.
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