Karl Marx

Russell's Dismissal

["Neue Oder-Zeitung" No. 333, July 20, 1855]

London, July 17. Russell's dismissal, voluntary or forced, parries Bulwer's motion, just as Bulwer parried Roebuck's motion. This view, which we expressed in our correspondence of July 11 <see present volume, pp. 352/353>, has been fully confirmed by yesterday's sitting of the House of Commons. It is an old Whig axiom that "parties are like snails, where the tail moves the head." The present Whig cabinet, however, is rather a polyp cabinet; it seems to thrive by amputation. It survives the loss of its limbs, its head, any thing, only not the loss of its tail. Russell was indeed not the head of the cabinet, but he was the head of the party that forms the cabinet and is represented by it. Bouverie, the Vice-President of the Board of Trade (Ministry of Trade and Transport), represents the tail of the Whig polyp. He discovered that the Whig body must be decapitated in order to keep the Whig trunk alive, and communicated this discovery to Palmerston in the name and on behalf of the Whig tail. Russell assured this tail yesterday of his "contempt". Disraeli tormented Bouverie with a "physiology of friendship" and a natural description of the various ways in which the generic being, known under the name of "friend", secretes itself. Bouverie's attempt at justification, finally, that he and the tail had cast off Russell in order to save Russell, completes the genre picture of this party of place-hunters.

If, in this way, the natural head of the Whig party is amputated, its usurped chief, Lord Palmerston, has grown all the faster to the trunk. After the fall of Aberdeen and Newcastle, he used Gladstone, Graham and Herbert to assume the inheritance of the coalition cabinet. After the resignation of Gladstone, Graham and Herbert, he used Lord John Russell to form a pure Whig cabinet. Finally, he uses the Whig tail to spirit Russell away and thus become sole ruler of the cabinet. All these metamorphoses were just so many stages towards the formation of a pure Palmerston cabinet. We saw from Russell's explanations that he repeatedly tendered his resignation to Palmerston, but was each time persuaded by him to withdraw it. In exactly the same way Palmerston persuaded the Aberdeen cabinet to resist Roebuck's committee of inquiry to the utmost. Both times with the same success and for the same purpose.

He attached Bulwer's motion so directly to Russell that it fell to the ground of itself as soon as the corpus delicti, Russell, vanished from the cabinet. Bulwer was therefore forced to declare that he withdrew his motion. He could not, however, resist the temptation to deliver the speech that was to justify his motion. He forgot that the motion which justified his speech was missing. Palmerston took advantage of this unfortunate situation. He immediately threw himself into a gladiatorial posture after the fight had been called off. He became insolent, blustering, boasting, but thereby earned a castigation at the hands of Disraeli, which, as his facial expression showed, made even him, the consummate comedian, lose his customary cynical composure. The most important thing in Disraeli's reply, however, was the following declaration:

"I know that the views which Lord Russell brought back from Vienna were favourably received, not only by a majority, but by the whole of his colleagues, and that only circumstances which they had not anticipated prevented the cordial and unanimous acceptance of the noble lord's plan. I do not make this declaration without sufficient authority. I make it with the same conviction with which, six weeks earlier, I spoke of the ambiguous language and uncertain conduct of the government, the correctness of which subsequent events have proved. I make it with the conviction that, even before the close of this session, the proof of this assertion will be in the hands of the House."

The "circumstances" to which Disraeli is just alluding were, as he explains in the course of his speech, "the difficulties that were presented from the French side." Disraeli intimates that Clarendon's correspondence intended for parliamentary use stands in contradiction to the ministry's secret instructions. He concluded his speech with the following words:

"A belief exists in the country that guilt prevails in the conduct of our affairs. A foreign document appears (Buol's circular), the excitement among the people grows; they think, they speak, their representatives in the House ask questions. What happens? The most eminent of your statesmen dares not meet the controversy which such questions raise. He disappears in a mysterious fashion. But who dares to meet it? The first minister of the crown, who addressed the House this evening in accents and in a language altogether unworthy of his position and of the occasion, which have convinced me that, if the honour and interests of the country continue to be entrusted any longer to his guidance, it is only to degrade the former and to betray the latter."

Roebuck surpassed Disraeli in the vehemence of his language. "I demand to know who are now the traitors in the cabinet?" First Aberdeen and Newcastle. Then Graham and Gladstone and Herbert. Then Russell. Who is the sequens <following>?

Meanwhile, the position of the man who has controlled the coalition in secret, just as he now officially controls the ministry, is fairly secure. Should any vote of no confidence be passed before the end of the session, which is not likely, he will dissolve Parliament. At all events, he has six months before him to direct the foreign policy of England without any restriction, not even troubled by the noise and the sham fights of the House of Commons.