WAR AGAINST MINISTERS—MANIFESTO OF

THE OPPOSITION.

IN the present state of the Ministry and the parties in Parlia- ment, we are disposed to ascribe importance to an article in the Number of the Edinburgh Review which has just appeared ; and we therefore hasten to lay the greater part of it before our readers. In fact, we consider it as tantamount to an open declaration of war against the Ministry. The text out of which the discourse grows, is a smart pamphlet, published towards the close of the last session, termed "The Country without a Government." It will be seen that the article in the Review was written before the result of the elections was even guessed at. Had that result been known then as well as it is now, it would have furnished a powerful topic on which to dilate. Our opinion of the Ministry has been repeatedly recorded. If they retain power, they must do one of two things—either join to the Cabinet some clever, active, and popular men, and turn adrift the incurables that at present encumber it with help ; or determine on bringing forward no measure but such as the good sense of the country evidently and strongly demands, and trust for support to their enemies instead of their friends. In the one way, the Duke of WELLINGTON may still remain at the head of the Ministry; the other, ke may do the same, but his Ministry will evidently m that case. be a Ministry of sufferance. We dislike all such set Op- positions as the subjoined article seems to indicate ; and they very seldom succeed, unless when opposed to a worthless Government. The manifesto is vigorously written—full of facts, and in its spirit carries us back to the palmy days of the old " Blue and Yellow." The Duke is evidently about to be put on his country. We wish him a good deliverance.

THE MINISTRY AND THE STATE OF PARTIES.

" Let us consider what has so far enabled the Duke of Wellington to perform so extraordinary a feat as to take and keep the government of this country, at a season of unexampled difficulty, and while all the ques- tions of civil policy, of which he is confessedly ignorant, have been in discussion. That he has no qualifications for the place into which acci- dent has thrust him, cannot be asserted by any candid observer. He has valuable qualities even as a statesman ; he has firmness, sagacity, indus- try. Had he taken the Great Seal, as ignorant of equity as Sir John Copley was, in 1827, he would, we verily believe, have made himself a much better equity lawyer than Lord Lyndhurst can now pretend to be. His pride, if not his principles, would have made him ashamed of taking the emoluments of a high station, without at least attempting to qualify himself for performing its duties. But to pretend that the Duke of Wel- lington has the habits of debate, and the experience of civil affairs, or the political and general information necessary for him who would be first Minister of a great country, the affairs of which are so complicated as ours, and the business of which is to be transacted in popular assemblies, would be ridiculous. And to pretend to believe that he was chosen for his office on account of any such fitnesses for its duties, would be the grossest affectation. There are not three men, hardly three women, in the country, who seriously dream of any such thing. Why, then, was he selected for a place, to which all agree he had no claims from merit ? Nay, why did he consent to take a place in January 1828, which, in June 1827, he had himself pronounced nothing but insanity could ever make him think of holding ? The question is not difficult to answer. " The late King was alarmed at the weakness of the Ministers, who, in the latter part of 1827, left him more than once without any Government, by the ill-placed diffidence of some, and the downright pusillanimity of others. He must have a Ministry ; but he was resolved not to have those who alone could well administer the public affairs. A steady man at all events was wanted,—one who would not lose heart and run, the moment any difficulty came in his way. Such was the Duke of Wellington. His further reflections of six months had made him think either less highly of others, or less meanly of himself. He was the only man who had the nerves to undertake a task of vast magnitude, for which he was almost wholly unfit, and to risk the shame of a total failure, against which, should it befall him, he had to set the success of a long life in war, and the excuse of having been forced to take a place which nobody else was willing to face. It is plain, however, that his real qualification is to be found in the late King's personal hatreds and caprices, which made it absolutely necessary to rule him with a steady hand, and at the same time to avoid forcing certain individuals upon his choice. " A few months after the Duke became Minister, the ablest and most experienced part of his colleagues resigned ; driven away, it is under- stood, by his domineering spirit, which makes all his coadjutors mere ciphers, except Sir R. Peel,—and leaves even him in a somewhat anoma- lous and not very explicable predicament. A Ministry was now exhibited to the astonished nation, and pretended to steer the state through all its difficulties at home and abroad, such as eye had not seen, nor ear heard, nor had it entered into the heart of stateman to conceive. A Field-mar- shal ruled over the Treasury—received deputations from the Bank on currency questions—the Stock Exchange on funding—Lloyd's on trade— discussed questions of dockets and coquets with the Chairman of the

Customs—the mysteries of the Honssts with the Leadenhall Street sove-

reigns, and the arcana of process and costs with the attorneys and the special pleaders. The Secretary at War, of course was a soldier; but the colonies were handed over to a Quartermaster-General, on whom de- volved the disposal of all questions touching slave evidence—the protect- ing duties on East and West India sugars—and the preparation of new codes for colonies stretching through every clime, and peopled by so many races, with such various habits and institutions, as it would affright Bentham himself even to think of giving laws to. To aid the board of general officers in their hopeful task, and to conciliate the Commons to their measures, a Chancellor of the Exchequer was appointed whom the House would not listen to ; the foreign affairs were committed to a noble- man of Prince Metternich's school, of whom the pamphlet before us speaks somewhat complimentarily when it describes him as inheriting all Mr. Pitt's insolence, with less than Mr. Addington's capacity f while Ireland and India, about to become the grand topics of parliamentary discussion, and whose affairs assuredly presented the most appalling diffi- culties, and required the most experienced heads and the most delicate hands, were intrusted to a frothy spouter, without temper or judgment, and a feeble translator of German poetry. " Such was the Ministry of 1828, when the necessity of some great measure to prolong its existence for six months became manifest, and ob- tained for it the respite which even party will give when actuated by prin- ciple. The session of 1829 opened with the Catholic question. The Duke, and still more Sir Robert Peel, deserved the greatest possible praise for the manner of carrying through that great measure. One only regret remained; the personal feelings of the King in regard to Mr. O'Connell were consulted; and the gratification of his Majesty's dislike occasioned

much painful debate in Parliament, and a contested election in Ireland. The Opposition might well for themselves have resisted the disfranchise- ment of the forty shilling freeholders, which was annexed to the emanci- pation. It would have raised, instead of risking, their popularity—it would, moreover, have destroyed the Duke's administration—but it would have endangered the Catholic question ; and they nobly disdained to purchase, at such a price, any party triumph ; and preferring real and patriotic, to apparent and passing consistency, they reluctantly supported one measure for the sake of the other. The Duke of Wellington never in his life betrayed a greater want of magnanimity towards an adversary, or committed a more decided error, than when he avoided all due acknow- ledgment of such disinterested, such almost romantic, conduct. Not only did he so, but he ostentatiously discarded his new coadjutors. He had won the day by their help ; he had been in their hands for life and for death ; he had found them incapable of taking the least advantage of their own power and his weakness ; and be chose the moment of victory to thank them for their past services, and pretty plainly to indicate that he had no further occasion for them. This courteous speech was fol- lowed up by a cautious estrangement from them, and no little dispo- sition to reunite with thdee whom he had left, and whose hostility he had provoked. The Ultra-tory party, however, were not made of such phant or supple materials. He had plainly yet to learn the new trade Ike had taken up. He fancied all men made of the same stuff with those

courtly Tories whom every Minister may command, and can both surely reckon upon for friends while in office, and as surely for enemies when

be resigns. He now discovered that there are two classes of Tories—

those who cannot quit their places,—and those who will not quit their principles. To the former he owed his majorities in favour of that ques- tion which, up to half-past two of the clock on the fifth of February, 1829, they bad strenuously resisted—and which they crowded the Bar of the Lords at that hour of that day, ready still to resist with might and main. When they found that the King's speech was for emancipation, they might be somewhat startled : but they never hesitated or flinched, They went to their places, cheered the minister, applauded their old adversa-

ries, and called aloud for Emancipation, instead of No Popery, as they had

been doing all the rest of their lives, and as they were quite prepared to do that night also ! The question was carried in the Commons by near

two to one—where it had never been carried before but by some half- dozen of majority. In the Lords, where it had been uniformly defeated by two to one, it was carried by a large majority. This astounding fact —this spectacle so cheering to the Duke, if not to the respecters of our parliamentary constitution,—seems to have intoxicated his Grace with the dream that he could now do as he pleased. But he found there was another kind of men, hitherto his supporters, henceforward his enemies. These complained, unjustly perhaps, of being betrayed in the change of policy, happily for the state, adopted under the pressure of imminent necessity ; but they complained, with less injustice, of having been de- ceived in the progress of the new policy. They recollected that the Soli- citor-General Tindal had suddenly abandoned the ground of his repeated canvass at Cambridge, and avowed that he should devote himself to the discovery of securities. They recollected that the Duke himself had told them, when Lord Colchester expressed his unabated alarm for the church, to wait till they saw the securities, and perhaps they might find no fault with the bill. They recollected that the Chancellor, once a stanch reformer, but who had become a leader of the Ultra-tories, had lectured long and loud on securities. What, then, was their astonishment to find the nill come from the hands of the soldier and his two lawyers, without the shadow of a shade of security in it, from the preamble to the close I They said they had been duped once :—but it must be their own fault if the trick succeeded again.

" Accordingly, those consistent and honest, though much mistaken men, have ever since repulsed all his Grace's advances; and much as he has seemed to yearn after their lost embraces, he has been fated to be.. hold others, more fortunate than himself, obtain a share of their favours. The truth is, that the Duke was driven to the great step he so unexpect- edly took, by the mere force of circumstances; and the praise of doing with a good grace, and in a determined and manly way, what he had no choice in adopting or rejecting, is all the merit which can be fairly allotted to him. No one beyond the circle of his unthinking flatterers can ever muster power of face enough to give him more honour than this, for the measures of 1829. But the Ultra-tory party were men of princi- ple ; and freely acknowledged the immeasurable superiority in point of principle by which their ancient adversaries the Whigs surpassed their late friend and leader. A very natural esteem thus sprung up between two classes of men both actuated by a sense of duty, and it has been ce- mented by occasional co-operation during the succeeding session of Par- liament.

[The writer here proceeds to notice the transactions of last session.] " The first night clearly showed that the Ministry had lost all power and. influence in the House of Commons :—an amendment was moved to the Address ; and it was, to all practical intents, carried—for the leaders of Opposition professed to support it without desiring to turn out the Minis- ters, and this induced between twenty and thirty of their steadiest adher- ents to vote with the Government—by which votes alone the amendment was lost and the Ministry was saved. The Duke, then, had virtually ceased to reign; but his adversaries did not choose to turn him out, and thus saved him. This step has been made the subject of much censure by those far less competent to decide than the experienced leaders of the Opposition; because ignorant of the facts known to those statesmen, and. not gifted with their sagacity. The King's personal hatreds remained as deeply rooted as ever ; his caprices were as difficult to control. Had the Duke resigned, no new Government could have been formed ; and he must have returned more powerful to office, and might, by possibility, have trampled on his opponents. Even the hazard of this was to be avoided ; and it was equally manifest, that no man is at liberty to destroy a Cabinet, if he possesses not a fair prospect of being able to replace it with a better. Events have since confirmed this wise and temperate view of the Whig leaders ; but the Duke's Ministry now received the blow; and they have gone on from week to week, reeling under it, trusting to the forbearance of their adversaries, and exposed to the pity of all men. " The first night clearly showed that the Ministry had lost all power and. influence in the House of Commons :—an amendment was moved to the Address ; and it was, to all practical intents, carried—for the leaders of Opposition professed to support it without desiring to turn out the Minis- ters, and this induced between twenty and thirty of their steadiest adher- ents to vote with the Government—by which votes alone the amendment was lost and the Ministry was saved. The Duke, then, had virtually ceased to reign; but his adversaries did not choose to turn him out, and thus saved him. This step has been made the subject of much censure by those far less competent to decide than the experienced leaders of the Opposition; because ignorant of the facts known to those statesmen, and. not gifted with their sagacity. The King's personal hatreds remained as deeply rooted as ever ; his caprices were as difficult to control. Had the Duke resigned, no new Government could have been formed ; and he must have returned more powerful to office, and might, by possibility, have trampled on his opponents. Even the hazard of this was to be avoided ; and it was equally manifest, that no man is at liberty to destroy a Cabinet, if he possesses not a fair prospect of being able to replace it with a better. Events have since confirmed this wise and temperate view of the Whig leaders ; but the Duke's Ministry now received the blow; and they have gone on from week to week, reeling under it, trusting to the forbearance of their adversaries, and exposed to the pity of all men. " Never, accordingly, was there such a session of Parliament. On every question it was doubtful which way the majority would decide. On no question was there any doubt that the whole force of the debate would be found against the Government. The Ministry had Sir R. Peel, and him alone, to speak a word for them. He is a man of respectable talents, but far, very far certainly, from being a first-rate man. His character is highly estimable; his official habits and his industry are exceedingly valuable, and he would be a great accession to any Ministry. In easy and tranquil times, he might even play the first part, and state the case for the Government, or defend its little peccadilloes, or meet its ordinary opponents, and give to those who wanted to vote with it plausible reasons for supporting its. measures. But for the stormy times we live in—for questions involving the fate of Cabinets, and even of dynasties—for the real tug of war, and to meet such antagonists as he sees ranged against him, it must be ad- mitted that he is wholly unfit. Were he far more capable than he is, no man standing quite alone in his situation, and in the present position of parties and of affairs, can possibly conduct the business of the country in the Commons House of Parliament. And yet the utmost forbearance was shown towards him throughout the session. No one ever made a personal attack upon him ; his arguments were answered, and his errors exposed, with the reluctance and the tenderness of the most friendly disposition. Even when the trenches were opened against the Government at large, he was always made an exception; and the blows that fell thick and heavy elsewhere, were never aimed at him. He has tried to lead.the Commons, and has failed, in circumstances which would have defied the powers of any single man: but he has not yet made the attempt, in the circumstances that await him, should parties remain next session mar- shalled as they are now. He has had no real hostility to contend with; he has only been matched with half friends, or with the most reluctant adversaries; he has never any one night felt the ' power of any adversary' whom he had not a fair chance of defeating. The following passage of the pamphlet before us, paints the very different scene which now awaits him, should he prefer a blind obedience to his military chief, before every thing that is due, in common prudence, to his own character and station. .‘ No more courtesy—no more displays of superiority without mischief-• no more exhibitions of skill in showing men their weakness, without doing them any harM—no more shaking them good-humouredly over the precipice, and then setting them down on its edge—no more taking them up by the nape of the neck, or holding them on the palm of the hand, and patting them on the head as thellrobdignag King did Grildrig. The time for action is come—the buttons are dashed away from the foils—the guns are shotted to their lips—they are pointed at the weak parts—that is, they are pointed at all parts—the matches are on fire—and the word only is wanted to make them roar. The Captain is a bold man ; but to lead the forlorn hope upon such an occasion as this, requires a madman, not a bold one'

The reviewer goes on to enumerate the forces in Parliament which must be disposed of by the Minister.

"In the meanwhile, let us survey the dangers that await him should he retain his present unprecedented position. On his front, the great body of the old Opposition, reinforced, and led with a vigour and talent not to be exceeded—endowed with all the popularity arising from steady and disinterested adhesion to public principle, and from a series of victo- ries, unparalleled, in favour of the people't rights, and of their only sound and enlightened opinions. On the one flank, a smaller, but most compact and effective corps, the remains of Mr. Canning's friends, and who, to great talents and acquirements, add long experience in office. A much more numerous body of men, representing the Church and Tory party, and numbering, too, among their ranks active debaters, and old implacable enemies, forms the third grand division of the Opposition. To meet all this array of strength and of numbers, the Government has tut a single mail whom the House will hear speak, and the influence of the Treasury Note, which has during the late session constantly failed. on the occasion of a new reign, and the first address to the Sovereign after his accession, that Note could only procure the attendance of a bare snajority ; while 146 members, without a single summons calling them to- gether, and with only an accidental notice that there might be a division, at once voted against the Government. " The Lords, however, it may be said, are another House of Parlia- ment, and there the Minister himself acts with his Peers, and commands the applause of the listening senate' In good truth, he might as well think of waking to ecstacy the living lyre !' Few sights so piteous as Sir R. Peel and Mr. Goulburn (if it be not Lord F. Leveson Gower and Sir G. Murray) have ever moved the pity of men of experience and right feelings; but no sight so grotesque as the Duke of Wellington in his debating capacity, was ever, certainly, offered to the gaze of the curious observer. When Rousseau once undertook to write an opera, ignorant of musical composition, and then to direct the orchestra, as ignorant of execution, he tells us, No, never since the world began was there heard so strange a charivari.' The conqueror of Waterloo, we verily do think, would hardly be less at home upon the violin, than he is in meeting Lord Grey, Lord Holland, and Lord Lansdowne, in debate. He may rest assured, this is not the line in which nature intended him to excel. • * *

" In these circumstances, what can the Government do ? The King has kept them together for the present. Any security beyond the present they have not, neither can they have. His Majesty must have a Govern- ment that can transact the business of the country, and save it from the mischief's and the risks of uncertainty and feebleness approaching to anarchy. He is a Prince of a manly and plain understanding ; he has no personal hatreds to gratify, and if he ever had, they were pointed against the Duke himself, and these he has nobly sacrificed to the conve- nience of the slate, deeming a sudden change on his accession detri- mental to the public service. The instant that his Majesty's eyes are i opened to the state of things in both Houses of Parliament, that instant there is an end of the weakest Ministry that ever tried to rule any country. All this the Duke well knows ; but with his usual confidence, he trusts to better his desperate condition by the chances of a general election !

" Will he gain by those chances? First of all—can he remedy, by the utmost success, the real mischiefs that beset him, the weakness that paralyzes his government? The fantasy is preposterous ; it shows a gross ignorance of his real danger,—an almost incredible unacquaintance with the nature of Parliament. He wants numbers, it is true ; but he wants supporters of power in the House, and of weight out of it, a thou- sand times more ; and he is beleagured by adversaries, any one of whom is far more than a match for all his debaters in both Houses together. In the mere question of numbers, what right has this overweening chief to be confident of bettering his condition? Does he suppose that mem- bers of Parliament can be levied by main force, like conscripts, or that the whippers-in can beat up for them like recruits, by crying out, God save Great Arthur, Down with Lord Grey ?' He will find elections a harder job than he thinks for. He will possibly learn that there are as many willing to come forward on the popular as on the deeply unpopular side Of the question. He will, in all likelihood, experience somewhat of Prince Jules de Polignac's disappointment, who dreamt, once upon a time, that the King could make any man a Minister, whether nature had made him

or no of proper stuff, and that any Minister could elect a new and subservient Parliament, and found to his sorrow and surprise, that the new were ten times worse than the old. Does his Grace really fancy he has any one topic on which he can appeal to the people for favour ? Can he point to any one act of his domination, save the Catholic question, as a title to confidence? Does he flatter himself that the Catholic question will reconcile either the church or the people to his incapacity for par- liamentary life, as a first Minister of state ?

"But he makes as grievous a mistake, if he supposes that a mere increase

of numbers will augment his majorities. He must not suppose that men are to be moved about in the parliamentary as in the military campaign. He must by no manner of means suppose that men love to prop a falling cause by being crushed under its ruins, or even coming nigh enough to be choked with the dust its crash must raise. He must in no wise fancy, that when a gentleman has been returned to serve in Parliament, he likes being treated Ite a livery servant, and set to stand, or sit, or walk, where his master or his mistress's caprice may direct. Far less must he expect to find any gentleman going down, night after night, to be laughed at, to be put sorely out of countenance by witnessing the pitiful counte• names of their leaders,—to be galled by sharing in their perpetual dia- comfitures. Nodnen, certainly no men in Parliament,—love to partake of other men°s embarrassments and mortifications. No men in London society are patient of never-ending ridicule, in public or in society, in Parliament, in club-rooms, or in drawing-rooms. All vows made to the whippers-in are forgotten when the time comes ; the Duke will find his popularity nearly where it was; and while his enemies press on to the easy victory of debate, and crowd the ranks of Opposition to insure a powerful division, his suppotters, lukewarm and abashed, will keep out Of the way, and leave him to the phalanx of placemen, and a select few Whe-bope to become such. " It is fit, however, that we should inquire how the Opposition, in its threefold division, is likely to act. That there can no longer be any fog,- bearance, any measures kept, is now quite clear. Public duty combines

with party attachment to render this inevitable. The day of delusion has passed away; and, with it, all armed neutrality, all mere vigilance, are gone out of the question. The great men, who have a high destiny to

fulfil towards their country, know that she looks to them for rescue from the worst of evils, a Government utterly incapable of managing her affairs, and too weak to secure the success of any one measure it pro- pounds. But this being the common object of all the three parties, will not its pursuit, of necessity, league them together ? We think it may fairly be expected to do so; and we also think that the Duke of Welling. ton is in this, as in other matters, the dupe of his sanguine disposition ; for assuredly he has never apprehended such a junction to be possible. He has suffered himself to be led away with the idea that he would be strong in the weakness of his various adversaries, and make up for his own native feebleness by their divisions. He has reckoned on being able to make a dexterous game, by playing off one party against another. He or his sycophants said to the Whigs, Mind you do not press me hard, or I must take in the Huskissons l' To the Ultras they said, ' Take care% or we shall throw ourselves into the arms of the Liberals !' To the Can- ning party the word has been, Beware how you drive us to the High Tories !' Cunning gentlefolks ! High-principled statesmen ! Frank, open, straightforward, plain-dealing politicians ! Principles then are all the while mere nothing, any more than party attachments ; and you are just as ready to follow the bigoted as the liberal course of policy, if by so doing the great end of your existence, the keeping your places, can be se- cured ! But let the Duke, whom his panegyrists have fatigued all ears by lauding for his sagacity, reflect, that such hopes are now as unwise and un- thinking—as unworthy a sagacious politician, as such manaeuvering was always beneath any man who plumed himself on plain-dealing, straight.. forward conduct. The Catholic Emancipation has removed nine parts in ten of the grounds of difference that separated such able, and virtuous, and highly honourable men, as the Duke of Richmond, from congenial spirits like Earl Grey. It was always stated, as a main object in compassing that great measure, that it would enable the state to profit by the services of all its ablest men. This was the uniform language of those whose mighty efforts, for above a quarter of a century, brought about the immortal triumph of religious liberty. Shall they, then, be the first to say,—the separation shall continue, when the cause of alienation is no more ? Consistency, principle, common-sense, forbid us to expect any such aberration from the path of duty ; and we therefore regard a junction of the men of sound principles in all parties, to give the country an efficient Government, as the certain result of the Duke's blind obstinacy, and his resolution to meet a new Parliament with the same incapable Ministry by which he so greatly lowered his own reputation in the old."