Karl Marx

On the New Ministerial Crisis

["Neue Oder-Zeitung" No. 97, 27 February 1855]

London, 24 February. The House of Commons was crammed full yesterday, as ministerial statements on the break-up of the *first* Palmerston administration had been announced. The closely packed parliamentarians waited impatiently for the arrival of the noble Viscount, who finally appeared an hour after the opening of the House, greeted with laughter from one side and with cheers (applause) from the other. The seceding ministers – Graham, Gladstone, Herbert – took their seats on the benches of the so-called Radicals (Manchester School), where Mr Bright appeared to be doing the honours for them. On a bench in front of them sat Cardwell, who had likewise left. Lord Palmerston rose to move that Roebuck’s committee be taken into consideration at once. Sir James Graham then began the ministerial confessions and was still on the threshold of his rhetorical edifice of words when Palmerston accompanied him with unmistakable signs of healthy sleep.

Graham’s polemic against the committee of inquiry confined itself in principle to the assertion that it was an encroachment by the House of Commons upon the prerogative of the Crown. We know that it has been the custom of English ministries for a century and a half to appeal to the privileges of the House against the Crown, and to the prerogative of the Crown against the House. In fact, Graham threatens that danger will befall the Anglo-French alliance as a consequence of the committee’s investigations. What was this but an insinuation that the French ally would prove to be the main cause of the lamented disasters! As for his own resignation from the ministry, the ministry had from the outset regarded Roebuck’s motion

only as a disguised vote of no confidence. Aberdeen and Newcastle were therefore sacrificed, the old Cabinet dissolved. The new Cabinet, with the exception of Canning and Panmure, consists of the old personnel; how, then, should Roebuck’s motion suddenly have become capable of a new interpretation? Not he, but Lord Palmerston had altered his views between Friday and Tuesday. He was not the deserter, but his noble friend. Moreover – and this was a naïve admission – Graham gave as the reason for his resignation from the reconstituted Cabinet that he had convinced himself

“that the present administration does not possess the confidence of the House to any higher degree than the one that withdrew a few weeks ago”.

In the course of his exposition, Graham let fall the following words:

“At the formation of the new administration, I desired to learn from the noble Lord” (Palmerston) “whether any change in the foreign policy of the Earl of Aberdeen would take place, and likewise whether anything in the established peace conditions was to be altered. Lord Palmerston gave me the fullest assurance that in these respects everything would remain as before.”

(We quote these words as they were *spoken* in the House of Commons, not as they were *printed* in more circumlocutory form in the newspapers.)

Bright immediately seized upon this utterance of Graham’s to state that he did not wish Palmerston’s government to be overthrown, that he had no personal hatred of the noble Lord, but was on the contrary convinced that Palmerston and Russell possessed what the unjustly persecuted Aberdeen lacked, namely sufficient popularity to conclude peace on the basis of the four points.

Sidney Herbert: Roebuck’s motion falls apart into two quite different components. First, he proposes to investigate the state of the army before Sevastopol; second, to investigate the conduct of the government departments specifically charged with the maintenance of the army. The House has the right to do the latter, but not the former. Was it for this reason, then, that Herbert opposed the “latter” on 26 January just as fiercely as he now, on 23 February, opposes the “former”? When he (Herbert) took up his position in the present Cabinet, Lord Palmerston, in accordance with his speech of last Friday, had declared the committee unconstitutional and disposed of by the resignation of Aberdeen and Newcastle. Palmerston had even had no doubt that the House would now reject Roebuck’s motion without discussion. The committee, insofar as it aims

not at an accusation against the government but at an investigation into the state of the army, will prove to be a monstrous semblance. Lord Palmerston, by not having the courage to act in accordance with his repeatedly formulated conviction, is weakening the government. What use is a strong man if he follows a weak policy?

Gladstone adds nothing, in fact, to the statements of his colleagues, except that species of argumentation which caused the late Peel, on the occasion of Gladstone’s resignation from his administration – the question at that time was the Maynooth Institute – to declare that he had believed he understood his friend’s reasons for resigning before his friend undertook to develop them to Parliament in a two-hour speech.

Palmerston considered it superfluous to go into the statements of his ex-colleagues. He regretted their resignation, but would know how to console himself. In his eyes, the committee aimed at no censure, but rather an inquiry into the state of the army. He had opposed the appointment of the committee, but had convinced himself that the decision of the House could not be reversed. The country could not be without a government, and therefore he would remain the government with or without the committee. In reply to Bright’s question, he declared that the peace negotiations were meant seriously and that Russell’s instructions had been drawn up on the basis of the four points. As to the state of his own ministry, he communicated nothing to the House.

Palmerston has indisputably, despite the sudden break-up of his first administration, already won victories, if not in public opinion, yet in the Cabinet and in Parliament. By Russell’s mission to Vienna he has rid himself of a troublesome, moody rival. By his compromise with Roebuck he has transformed the parliamentary committee of inquiry into a government commission, which, alongside the three appointed by himself, counts only as a fourth. He has, as Sidney Herbert says, put a “monstrous semblance” in the place of a reality. The resignation of the Peelites has given him the possibility of forming a cabinet composed of mere ciphers, with himself as the only digit. That, however, the formation of such a genuine Palmerston ministry has to contend with almost insurmountable difficulties is beyond question.