A good deal of idle talk about Kossuth’s “warlike preparations” 
and probable “movements” has infested the public press. Now I 
happen to know from a Polish officer, who is setting out for 
Constantinople, and consulted the ex-Governor about the course 
he should take, that Kossuth dissuaded him from leaving London, 
and expressed himself by no means favorable to the participation 
of Hungarian and Polish officers in the present Turkish war, 
because they must either enlist themselves under the banner of 
Czartoryski or abjure their Christian faith, the one step being 
contradictory to his policy and the other to his principles.” 

So deep was the impression produced by Mr. Disraeli’s masterly 
exposure of the Ministerial policy* that the Cabinet of all the 
talents ** thought fit to make a posthumous attempt to burke him | 
in a littke comedy arranged between themselves and Mr. Hume, 
and performed in Wednesday morning’s sitting of the Commons.” 
Lord Palmerston had concluded his lame reply to Mr. Disraeli’s 
epigrammatic alternative of a morbid “credulity” or a treacherous 
“connivance” by appealing from faction to the impartial judgment 
of the country, and Mr. Hume was the man chosen to answer in the 
name of the country, just as Snug, the joiner, was chosen to play the 
lion’s part in “the most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisbe.’’* 
Mr. Hume’s whole Parliamentary life has been spent in making 
opposition pleasant, moving amendments, in order to withdraw 

February 22, 1854. Speeches in the House of Commons were reported in The 
Times, No. 21672, February 23, 1854.— Ed. 

them afterward—constituting, in fact, the so-called independent 
opposition, the rear-guard of every Whig Ministry, sure of coming 
forward to rescue it from danger whenever its own registered 
partisans may show any signs of vacillation. He is the great 
Parliamentary “extinguisher” par excellence. He is not only the 
oldest member of Parliament, but an independent member; and not 
only an independent, but a radical; and not only a radical, but the 
pedantic and notorious Cerberus of the public purse, with the 
mission of making pounds slip unnoticed by while picking quarrels 
about the fractional part of a farthing. 

For the first time in his Parliamentary life, as he himself 
emphatically stated, Mr. Hume rose not to condemn, but to 
express his approval of the “Estimates.” This extraordinary event, 
as he did not fail to remark himself, was the most incontestable 
proof that the Ministry had not in vain appealed to the sound 
judgment of the country from the unmerited slanders of faction, 
but had received a solemn acquittal from the charge of credulity 
and connivance. His arguments were characteristic. In order to 
rescue the Ministers from the alternative of credulity or conni- 
vance, he proved the credulity of the Ministers in their transac- 
tions with Russia. He had, then, understood the true sense of 
Lord Palmerston’s appeal. All the Ministry asked for was the 
discharge from intentional treason. As to credulity, had not that 
excellent Sir James Graham already declared that “a generous 
mind is slow.to suspect”?* Because the impending war was 
brought about by the Ministry’s own diplomatic mismanagement, 
certainly it was a war of their own, and they, therefore, were, of 
all men, as Mr. Hume thought, the very men to carry it cunningly. 
The relative littleness of the proposed war estimates was,.in Mr. 
Hume’s opinion the most convincing proof of the greatness of the 
war intended. Lord Palmerston, of course, thanked Mr. Hume for 
the sentence Mr. Hume had pronounced in the name of the 
country, and, in compensation, favored his audience with his own 
doctrine of state papers, which papers, according to him, must 
never be laid before the House and the country, until matters are 
sufficiently embroiled to deprive their publication of any use 
whatever. Such was all the after-wit the coalition had to dispose 
of after due deliberation. Lord Palmerston, their manager, had 
not only to weaken the impression of their antagonist’s speech, but 
to annihilate also his own theatrical appeal from the House to the 
country. 

On Tuesday night,* Mr. Horsfall, the Member for Liverpool, 
asked the question: 

“Whether the treaties with foreign nations or the steps which Her Majesty’s 
Government were prepared to take in the event of war were such as would 

effectually prevent privateers being fitted out in neutral ports to interfere with 
British shipping?” 

The answer given by Lord Palmerston was: 

“That the honorable gentleman and the House must feel that this was a 
question to which, in the present state of things, no explanatory answer could be 
given.” 

In quoting this answer of its master, The Morning Post, 
_ Palmerston’s private Moniteur,” remarks: