London, February 5. The duration of the present ministerial 
crisis is more or less normal, as such crises last on average nine to 
ten days in England. It is astonishing that in his famous work The 
Abilities of Man,* Quetelet manages to demonstrate that the annual 
total of accidents, crimes, etc., in civilised countries can be 
determined in advance with almost mathematical accuracy.” The 
normal duration of English ministerial crises in different periods 
of the nineteenth century is, on the other hand, nothing amazing, 
for—as is well known—there are always a given circle of 
combinations to be traversed, a given number of posts to be 
disposed of, and a given sum of intrigues have to paralyse one 
another. The only extraordinary thing is the character of the 
combinations which the dissolution of the old parties necessitates 
this time. The fact of this dissolution made the formation of the 
fallen Coalition Ministry possible and inevitable. The governing 
caste, which in England is by no means the same as the ruling 
class, will be driven from one coalition to another, until the proof 
is furnished exhaustively that it has lost its calling to govern. The 
Derbyites, it will be remembered, had objected most vehemently to 
the Coalition. The first step of Lord Derby, as soon as the Queen 
had charged him to form a new Cabinet, was to attempt a 
coalition, not only with Palmerston—to whom Disraeli had 
expressly declared during the Roebuck debate that the proposed 
vote of censure was no more directed against the Duke of 

Newcastle or Aberdeen than against him—but also with Gladstone 
and Sidney Herbert, that is with the Peelites, who are persecuted 
by the Tories with especial hatred as the immediate instruments of 
the disintegration of their party. When Russell in his turn is 
requested to form a Cabinet he attempts a coalition with the very 
same Peelites whose presence in the old Ministry he had taken as 
the pretext for his resignation, and who had given the lie to him 
in all the solemnity of a parliamentary sitting. Finally Palmerston, 
if he manages to form his Ministry, will merely present a second, 
little changed edition of the old Coalition Ministry. The Grey clan 
of Whigs will perhaps replace the Russell clan of Whigs, etc. The 
old parliamentary parties that had been entrusted with a 
monopoly of government now exist merely in the form of coteries; 
but the same causes that deprived these coteries of the strength to 
form parties, to differ from one another, deprive them of the 
strength to unite. No epoch in English parliamentary history, 
therefore, shows such disintegration into a mass of insignificant 
and fortuitous cliques as precisely the epoch of the Coalition 
Ministry. Only two of these cliques are numerically significant, the 
Derbyites and Russellites. In their train follows a highly ramified 
group of powerful old families with a numerous clientele. But it is 
precisely this numerical strength that constitutes the weakness both 
of the Derbyites and the Russellites. Too small to command an 
independent parliamentary majority, they are too large and have 
too many place-hunters to sustain in their own ranks to be able to 
buy sufficient support from outside by giving away important 
posts. The numerically weaker cliques of the Peelites, Greyites, 
Palmerstonians, etc., are therefore more suitable for forming 
coalition ministries. But the factor that enables them to form 
ministries—the weakness of each of these cliques—turns their 
parliamentary majority into a matter of chance, liable to be lost 
any day of the week whether by a combination of Derbyites and 
Russellites, or by a combination of the Manchester school, etc.,. 
with the Derbyites. 

From another point of view the recently attempted combinations 
of Ministers are just as interesting. All of them contained members 
of the old Cabinet. The last is headed by the most important 
member of that Cabinet.* And did not the House of Commons, in 
passing the Roebuck motion against all members of the old 
Coalition—as Palmerston himself declared in his reply to Dis- 
raeli—not only announce a vote of censure but also a committee 

of inquiry? The committee is not yet appointed, the inquiry not 
yet opened, and the accused are again taking over the helm of 
State. But if Parliament possesses the power to topple the Ministry, 
the Ministry possesses the power to dissolve Parliament. What 
effect the prospect of dissolving the present Parliament must have 
may be gathered from the statement made by Sir John Trollope in 
the House of Commons on March 1, 1853: 

“There are,” he observed, “already 14 committees sitting which the House has 
created out of its Members to investigate the cases of bribery which occurred at the 
last parliamentary elections. If we continue in the same fashion, the whole of 
Parliament will disintegrate into committees of inquiry. And furthermore, the 
number of Members accused is so overwhelming that the unsullied remainder will 
not suffice to try them, or even inquire into their misdemeanours.” 

It would be hard to lose the seats bought so dearly right at the 
beginning of the third legislature—out of patriotism.