London, February 24. Yesterday, the House of Commons was 
packed, as ministerial statements on the breaking up of the first 
Palmerston administration had been announced.” The closely- 
crowded Members waited impatiently for the arrival of the noble 
Viscount, who at last appeared, an hour after the House had 
opened, received with laughter by one side, with cheers* by the 
other. The Ministers who had broken away—Graham, Gladstone 
and Herbert—took their seats on the benches of the so-called 
Radicals (the Manchester School*'), where Mr. Bright seemed to 
welcome them. One bench in front of them Cardwell, who had 
also resigned, sat enthroned. Lord Palmerston rose to move that 
the Roebuck Committee should be considered immediately. Sir 
James Graham then opened the ministers’ case” and was still on 
the threshold of his rhetorical phantasy building when Palmerston 
began to accompany him with unmistakable signs of healthy 
sleep. 

Graham’s polemic against the Committee of Inquiry was 
mainly confined to the claim that it represented an intrusion into 
the royal prerogatives by the House of Commons. As everyone 
knows, for a century and a half it has been the custom of English 
ministries to talk about the privileges of the House vis-a-vis the 
Crown and about the prerogatives of the Crown vis-a-vis the 
House. In fact Graham spoke threateningly about danger to the 
Anglo-French alliance in consequence of the Committee’s investig- 

ations. What was this but an insinuation that the French ally would 
prove to have been the main cause of the deplorable mishaps! As 
to his own resignation from the Ministry, the Ministry had 
regarded Roebuck’s motion from the beginning simply as a 
disguised vote of no confidence. Aberdeen and Newcastle had 
therefore been sacrificed and the old Ministry dissolved. The new 
Ministry consisted of the old personnel with the exception of 
Canning and Panmure; how then should Roebuck’s motion 
suddenly be capable of a new interpretation? Not he, but Lord 
Palmerston had changed his views from Friday to Tuesday. Not 
he, but his noble friend, was a deserter. In addition—and this was 
a naive admission—Graham gave as reason for his resignation 
from the renewed Ministry that he had become convinced 

“that the present Administration [...] does not [...] possess in a greater degree the 
confidence of the House than that Administration which only a few weeks since 
retired”. 

During his statement Graham said inter alia: 

“When the new Administration was formed I wished to know from my noble 
Lord” (Palmerston), “whether there was to be any change in the foreign policy ‘of 
Lord Aberdeen’s Administration [...]; and also whether [...] there was any alteration 
with respect to the stipulated peace terms. Lord Palmerston gave me the fullest 
assurance that in these respects everything will remain as before.” 

(These words are quoted here as they were spoken in the House 
of Commons, not as they were printed in more circumscribed form 
in the newspapers.) ” 

Bright at once took up this pronouncement by Graham, stating 
that he did not wish the Palmerston Government to be over- 
thrown, that he had no personal animosity against the noble Lord, 
that rather he was convinced Palmerston and Russell possessed 
everything the unjustly persecuted Aberdeen had lacked, namely 
sufficient popularity to make peace on the basis of the four 
points.” 

Sidney Herbert: Roebuck’s motion consisted of two quite diffe- 
rent parts. First, he proposed to investigate the state of the army at 
Sevastopol; second, to investigate the conduct of the Government 
departments specifically in charge of the maintenance of the 
army. The House was entitled to do the second, but not 
the first. Presumably it was for that very reason that he, Herbert, 
had opposed the “second” on 26 January?’ as violently as he now, 

on 23 February, opposed the “first”? When he (Herbert) took 
his position in the present Ministry, Lord Palmerston, in line 
with his speech of last Friday,* had declared the Committee 
unconstitutional, abolished with the resignation of Aberdeen and 
Newcastle. Palmerston had not even doubted that the House 
would now reject Roebuck’s motion without a debate. The Com- 
mittee, in so far as its object was not a charge against the Govern- 
ment but an investigation of the state of the army, would prove an 
immense sham. Lord Palmerston, since he did not have the courage 
of his repeatedly expressed conviction, was weakening the Govern- 
ment. What was the use of a strong man if he pursued a weak 
policy? 

Gladstone in fact added aeliies to the statements of his 
colleagues except the kind of argumentation which, on the 
occasion of Gladstone’s resignation from Peel’s administration— it 
was then a question of the Maynooth college **— moved the late 
Peel to declare that he believed he understood the reasons for his 
friend’s resignation before his friend undertook to lay them before 
Parliament in a two-hour speech. 

Palmerston considered it superfluous to enter into the explana- 
tions of his ex-colleagues. He regretted their resignations, but 
would be able to console himself. In his view the Committee did 
not intend any reproof but an investigation of the state of the 
army. He had opposed the setting up of the Committee but had 
become convinced that the decision of the House could not be 
rescinded. The country could not be without a government, hence 
he would remain the Government with or without the Committee. 
To Bright’s question he replied that the peace negotiations were 
meant seriously and that Russell’s instructions had been drafted on 
the basis of the four points. He told the House nothing of the 
position in his own Ministry. 

It is incontestable, that in spite of the sudden breaking up of his 
first administration, Palmerston has already won some victories, if 
not in public opinion, then in the Ministry and in Parliament. By 
Russell’s mission to Vienna he has got rid of a troublesome, 
temperamental rival. By his compromise with Roebuck he has 
transformed the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry into a 
Government Commission which counts only as the fourth after the 
three appointed by himself. As Sidney Herbert says, he has put 
“immense sham” in place of a real thing. The resignation of the 
Peelites has enabled him to form a ministry consisting of nothing 

but ciphers with himself as the only figure. It is beyond question, 
however, that the formation of such a real Palmerston Ministry 
will have to struggle with almost insuperable obstacles. 

Karl Marx 

[JOSEPH] HUME 

London, February 24. With Hume, the veteran of the House of 
Commons has died. His long parliamentary life was an accurate 
barometer of the radical bourgeois party which reached its highest 
point in 1831. In the initial period of the reformed House* a 
kind of parliamentary Warwick or Member-maker, eight years 
later he figured with Daniel O’Connell and Feargus O’Connor as 
one of the originators of the People’s Charter, which to this day 
forms the political programme of the Chartists and_ basically 
contains only the demand for a universal franchise together with 
the conditions which would make it a reality in England. 

The break between the workers and the bourgeois agitators 
which soon followed found Hume on the side of the latter. At the 
time of the Russell Ministry he drafted the “Little Charter’, which 
was adopted by the so-called “parliamentary and _ financial 
reformers” *’ as their programme. Instead of the six points of the 
People’s Charter it contains three points and replaces the 
“universal” franchise by a more or less “enlarged” franchise.* 
Finally, in 1852, Hume proclaimed a new programme in which he 
-even abandoned his “Little Charter’ and demanded only one 
point: elections by ballot.’ For the rest, Hume was the classical 
representative of the so-called “independent” opposition, which 
Cobbett aptly and exhaustively described as the “safety-valve” of 
the old system. In his last days the habit of proposing motions and 

then, just before the closure, at the nod of a minister, withdrawing 
them again, became a veritable mania with him. His flirting with 
“economising public funds” had become proverbial. Each Ministry 
allowed him to fight and reduce minor items so as to get the big 
ones the more safely through the House. 

Karl Marx 

PALMERSTON * 

London, February 27. The outcry against the aristocracy has 
been answered ironically by Palmerston with a ministry of ten 
lords and four baronets—ten lords, moreover, of whom eight sit 
in the House of Lords. He has met the dissatisfaction occasioned 
by the compromise between the various factions of the oligarchy 
with a compromise between various families within the Whig 
group. For the Grey clan, the ducal Sutherland family and, finally, 
the Clarendon family have received indemnification in his 
ministry. Sir George Grey, the Home Secretary, is a cousin of Earl 
Grey, whose brother-in-law is Sir Charles Wood, First Lord of the 
Admiralty. Earl Granville and the Duke of Argyll represent the 
Sutherland family. Sir George Cornewall Lewis, Chancellor of the 
Exchequer, is a brother-in-law of the Earl of Clarendon, the Foreign 
Secretary. India alone has. been allotted to a man without a title, 
Vernon Smith; but at any rate he married into one of the Whig 
families. “A kingdom for a horse!” shouted Richard III.* “A horse 
for a kingdom!” shouts Palmerston, aping Caligula, and makes 
Vernon Smith Grand Mogul of India.‘ 

“Lord Palmerston has given us not only the most aristocratic Administration 
of which we have any example in the history of the countrv”, complains The 

Morning Advertiser, “but he has constructed his Government of the very worst 
aristocratic materials he could have selected.” 

The worthy Advertiser, however, finds comfort in the fact that 
“Palmerston is not a free agent. [...] He is still in fetters and bonds”.? 
As we predicted,* Lord Palmerston has formed a cabinet of 
ciphers, he himself being the only figure in it. Lord John Russell, 
who in 1851 had tumbled him undiplomatically out of the Whig 
cabinet, has been sent by him diplomatically on a journey.” 
Palmerston has made use of the Peelites to enter upon Aberdeen’s 
heritage. As soon as he was sure of the premiership he dropped 
the Aberdeenites” and filched from Russell, as Disraeli says, not 
only the clothes of the Whigs but the Whigs themselves. Despite 
the great similarity, almost identity, of the present government 
and Russell’s Whig administration of 1846-1852, nothing could be 
more erroneous than to confuse them. This time we have not a 
cabinet at all but Lord Palmerston in lieu of a cabinet. Although 
its members are largely the same as before, the posts have been 
distributed among them in such a way, its following in the House 
of Commons is so different and it is making its appearance under 
such completely changed circumstances that whereas before it was 
a weak Whig ministry it is now the strong dictatorship of a single 
man, provided Palmerston is not a spurious Pitt, Bonaparte not a 
spurious Napoleon, and Lord John Russell continues to travel. 
Though the English bourgeois has been annoyed by the unex- 
pected turn of events he is at present amused by the unconsciona- 
ble adroitness with which Palmerston has duped and cheated both 
friend and foe. Palmerston, says the merchant of the City, has 
once more proved himiself “clever”.* But “clever” is an untranslat- 
able qualification, full of ambiguity and rich in connotations. It 
comprises all the attributes of a man who knows how to blow his 
own trumpet, and understands what profits him and what brings 
harm to others. Virtuous and respectable as the English bourgeois 
is, he nevertheless admires most the man who is “clever”, who 
does not bother about morals, who is not disconcerted by respect, 
who regards principles as snares in which to catch his fellows. If 
Palmerston is so “clever” will he not outwit the Russians just as he 
outwitted Russell? Thus speaks the politician of the English upper 
middle-class. 

As for the Tories, they believe the good old times are back 
again, the evil coalition spell has been broken and the traditional 
Whig and Tory governmental seesaw has been restored. A real 
change, not confined to mere passive dissolution, could in fact 

only come about under a Tory government. Only when the Tories 
are at the helm is tremendous pressure from without* exerted and 
the inevitable transformations are put into effect. For example, the 
emancipation of the Catholics during Wellington’s ministry; the 
repeal of the Corn Laws during Peel’s ministry; and the same was 
true if not of the Reform Bill then at least of the reform agitation, 
which was more important than its result.”! 

When the English asked a Dutchman to come specially across 
the sea to become their King? it was for the purpose of ushering 
in with the new dynasty a new epoch—the epoch of the 
association of the landed aristocracy with the financial aristocracy. 
Ever since then we find privilege bestowed by blood and privilege 
bestowed by gold in constitutional equilibrium. Blood, for instance, 
decides in the case of certain army posts, whose incumbents hold 
them by virtue of family connections, nepotism or favouritism; but 
gold gets its due since all army commissions can be bought and 
sold for cash. It has been calculated that the officers now serving 
in the various regiments have invested an amount of £6 million in 
their posts. In order not to forfeit the rights they have acquired 
during their service and not to be ousted from their jobs by some 
young money-bags, the poorer officers borrow money to secure 
their advancement and thus become encumbered with mortgages. 

In the church as in the army, family connections and ready cash 
are the two factors that count. While part of the ecclesiastical 
offices is allotted to the younger sons of the aristocracy, the other 
part belongs to the highest bidder. Trade in the “souls” of the 
English people—in so far as they belong to the Established 
Church—is no less usual than the slave trade in Virginia. In this 
trade there exist not only buyers and sellers but also brokers. One 
such “clerical” broker, named Simpson, appeared yesterday before 
the Court of Queen’s Bench‘ to demand the fee due to him 
from a certain Lamb, who, he claimed, had contracted to procure 
him the right to have the rector Josiah Rodwell presented for the 
West-Hackney parish benefice. Simpson had stipulated 5 per cent 
from both buyer and seller, besides some minor charges. Lamb, he 
said, had not fulfilled his obligations. The circumstances were as 
follows: Lamb is the son of a seventy-year-old rector holding two 
benefices in Sussex whose market price is estimated at £16,000. 

The price is naturally in direct proportion to the income from the 
parish and in inverse proportion to the age of the incumbent. 
Lamb junior is the patron of the livings held by Lamb senior and 
is also the brother of a still younger Lamb, the owner of the living 
and rector of West-Hackney. Since West-Hackney’s rector is still 
very young, the market price of the next presentation to his 
sinecure is relatively low. Though it provides an annual income of 
£550 as well as a rectory, its owner has agreed to sell the right to 
the next appointment for only £1,000. His brother has promised 
him the Sussex parishes upon the death of their father, but wants 
to sell his thus vacated living in West-Hackney through Simpson to 
Josiah Rodwell for £3,000, thus pocketing a net profit of £2,000, 
and his brother obtaining a better benefice. The broker would 
have received a commission of 5 per cent., ie., £300. It did not 
transpire why the deal did not go through. The court awarded the 
broker Simpson £50 in compensation “for work done”. |