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Leader (1850-1860), 1st January 1853, Edition Town of 3, Page 11, Untitled Article

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      Untitled Article

      THE NEW MINISTRY , ITS PROGRAMME AND ITS MEN . The formation of the present Ministry appears to us to constitute the greatest gain to the popular cause that it has ever yet achieved . The present Ministry is drawn from all the parties represented in the House of Commons except one , the party of the Tory Protectionists . But the very principle upon which the Government is formed , that of deferring to the Liberal claims of the great body of the people , while endeavouring to conserve our institutions , precludes the idea that , when once formed , the Ministry can

      be taken to represent any of the several parties . It is a Government formed for a special purpose , and not for the purposes of those severaf parties . In that sense it appears to us to be the only Government possible . There is no party in the House of Commons which possesses the confidence of the majority , the technical qualification for oflice . No party , therefore , can appoint a Ministry . On the other hand , all Liberal parties have agreed that it is necessary to form a Ministry of some kind . All parties have agreed on the main

      principles that should guide such a Ministrynamely , the principle that the Government of the country must be carried on ; and the principle that it can only be carried on in a Liberal sense . Those two necessities , and the concurrence of all the Liberal parties of the House upon those necessities , form three great public facts ; and by the force of those three great public facts the present Ministry has been brought into being .

      By these means the very best administrators of previous cabinets , the very best speakers of the Commons , the very best statesmen to collect public opinion , are brought together in the formation of a Cabinet made out of the strength of many Cabinets . Resting , therefore , upon the solid rock of fact , possessing an unprecedented amount of strength , the Ministry enters upon office at the close of an eventful year , and at the commencement of a year not less so .

      The programme which this Ministry has laid before it is necessarily simple . In Foreign affairs , non-intorference in the internal concerns of other States . In Finance , continuance of the Incometax according to the principles of justice and equity . At Home , extension of national education , law reform , and amendment of our representative system by safe and well-considered measures . But the character of the administration may depend loss upon the names of the measures than tho spirit and modo in which they aro carried out .

      Its utility may bo increased or diminished by tho amount of confidence which it may command in the public , or tho amount of obstruction which it may encounter . The obstruction is likely to arise from a misconcoption as to its real duty . Advanced Liberals will jnistrust it , because tho composition in groat part forbids it from adopting measures nueli as advanced Liberals themselves would put forward ; and wo already see writers calling upon it to hasten , as other Ministers have done , with a shoal of promises never , perhaps , to bo completed . It is to sign the thirty-nine articles of Liberalism before it can be

      certificated as a national m inistry ; as if any such subscription over b ^ ound man or " Ministry . Even Whigs express doubts ; and tho purest organ ol that party , regarding tho Ministry as too strong in its several parts , desires to busy it with many tilings , in order that its conflicting powers may not become mischievous . All those ideas are based on the old party methods of working , with which wo have at present nothing to do . The oldpartios have boon out off from tho future , and tho existing Ministry must work according to methods proper to itaoll" and for tho uctual ocean ion .

      What , then , has it to do P Its course appears to us to be strictly defined by its origin . It has to collect the actual suffrages of the great body of the people on all the prominent subjects of public action . It has , for example , to ascertain and to embody the opinion of the people in regard to the principles which shall regulate our commercial affairs ; to establish Free-trade , and to finish the application of that doctrine in the revision of our tariff and in the framing of those taxes which will have to be a dded for the purposes of increased expenditure . Again , in the approaching conflict which is likely to disturb the relations of foreign

      countries with each other and with our own , it is necessary that the Government of the day should invite , collect , and put into force the actual opinion of the country at that juncture . In our foreign affairs now all is confusion . We are without principles . Sympathizing with constitutional government , we have suffered it to fall to pieces . We have stimulated extreme movements on the Continent unduly , because we were not prepared to support them ; and we have actually played into the hands of despotical

      and tyrannical Governments , whose proceedings provoke our antipathy and alarm . When the movements that are now proceeding abroad , consequent upon the gathering of great forces , shall call upon this country to take its decided course , it will be necessary for the Government of the day—and it will be no distant day—to take counsel with the country as to the position which shall be assumed , and bond fide to support that position in its conduct . In regard to our own constitution , there is much uncertain opinion as to the degree and the manner the classes now unenfranchised should be admitted to a share of

      political power . Many measures are proposed , and no one is carried out , because there is no agreement . It is not the want of conviction that hinders , but the want of concurrence ; and if we could get a sufficient number of practical Liberals to agree upon a measure , that measure , whatever it might be , would be best of all ; for it would be the measure to be realized . The framing of that measure is especially the business of our present Government . To set our national defences in order ; to provide means with

      the least inconvenience to the paying classes ; to render all our public departments efficient in their duties , by improvements in their personal composition , their plans of working , and the honesty of their direction ; to fulfil long recognised , but long postponed , duties to our colonial dependencies , and thus to extinguish one source of embarrassment for the Executive ; in short , to place tho general conduct of public affairs in a state of order , clearness , and honesty , —such are the duties of the Government for the time being ; and such , we apprehend , tho new Ministers understand their duties to be . The Government

      for the time being is to realize tho sum of floating opinion and conviction of the country . Lord Derby made an idle reproach that there had been a concert to displace him from office ; an accusation as easily refuted as it is transparent ; but there is a concert—a concert to do the necessary work of the day .

      We understand that Ministers aro impelled to this duty by strong feeling . There were but two courses open to them—to surrender the Government to the largest of tho minorities ; or , breaking away from , party altogether , to form an administration for the country as the country is now actually situated , with tho materials that the whole country can provide . The first course would have been to let tho Government and the

      institutions of tho country fall into contempt , with consequences not difficult to foresee . It does not at all follow that such a Ministry as the present , however , does nothing for " progress , "evenin thoordinary sensoof the word ; quite the reverse . It will now realize and fix for ever in practical application , the progressive principles which wo have long maintained by continuous effort . It will mark the highest tide to which progress has yet risen ; it will tix the past beyond retractation , and will furnish a new start for the pioneers not yet appointed in the further progress of political freedom .

      Untitled Article

      Sift WILLrAM MOUOSWORTH KOlt SOUTH WAKK . Fkw appointments have promised to be more important in their effects , than that of Hir William j Vlolesworth to be Chiof Commissioner of Works . Wo have differed from Sir William on important

      subjects , and are likely to differ again from a man whose view of politics appears to us to be taken too much from the side of science , and too little from the side of affection . But he is a man of a bold understanding ; he has not only declared in favour of the most liberal policy for our own Commonwealth , but has for twenty years supported his convictions with great effect before the public , and before Parliament . Accomplished as a student of standard authors that have imparted a colour to the intellect of our own day ; drawing ideas from their original sources , he has himself treated many subjects of public interest with , masterly comprehension and much originality .

      He has done more—he has done that which many men , proud of their own attainments and originality , flinch from doing : he has accepted the aid of others , his equals , if not his superiors , in his own most distinguished enterprises . He has , for example , been , a disciple and coadjutor of Edward Gibbon Wakefield , in Colonial matters ; always , indeed , with the independence which distinguishes him , but also with the frank avowal of the companionhood which reflected the highest credit upon his understanding , no less than his moral feeling . In that he may be

      compared with Charles Buller , whose courageous disregard of petty innuendoes , whose frank avowal of a second , or even a third , place in the important Canada mission , marked out that young statesman as possessing an originality and generosity above all paltry competition for the " exclusive" possession of ideas—that bane of small and servile minds . There have been many reasons which might have made it comparatively easy to borrow the ideas of Mr . Wakefield , and to disavow the authorship ; and a man conscious

      of deficient power of originality in his own mind , might have been tempted to do so . Buller and Molesvrorth are good samples of modern chivalry , and we might point them out as the best types of the gentleman in our day ; both members , be it observed in passing , of old Cornish families . Both approached public affairs with a disregard of party , and with a desire to accomplish the thing upon which they set their hearts , when that was good , wise , and for the benefit of their country .

      Sir William lias been able to accomplish some of the most important enterprises that lie has undertaken . It was he who , with Charles Buller , Francis Baring , brother of tho present Lord Ashburton , and x comparatively small knot of active and independent intellects , enforced upon the Government a more systematic conduct of Colonial affairs . To Sir Henry George Ward may be given all credit for tho committee of 183 ( 5 , which put forth , in tlie form of a blue book , an intelligent manual of Colonial settlement ; but Sir Henry was tho

      instrument , and was moved by intellects more powerful than his own . How much his mind belonged to tho adjective rather than the substantive class , is shown by the general tone of his administration in the Ionian Islands , where ho had no such counsel to direct him . In the enforcement of " responsible government " for Canada- —a principle subsequently acknowledged in other colonies , and largely influencing the concessions which have since been made—Lord Durham , guided by Mr . Wakefield , was faithfully supported by Sir William Molesworth .

      Sir William wan himself chairman and manager of tha £ committee in 18157 which effectually demolished the practice of convict . slavery in Australia ,. No man was more opposed by the colonists than lie was ; and he bus lived to see tho colonists who were deprived of convict labour through his means , accept his conclusion as ono vital to the welfare of their own colony , and resent a proposal to re-establish convietism in Austral i a ,, even to the verge of rebellion . A inoro remarkable ease of the successful cxcrci . se of moral and intellectual force upon the practical conduct of an important branch of public affairs cannot bo adduced .

      Tho accession of a man like Sir William MolcHvvorth , marl ( H the character of Uio now Ministry . When Lord Aberdeen throws overboard the old plintHCH " Conservative" and " Liberal" aH V }' J distinctions , though he rotains them jointly , as designating very proper qualities in a public administrator , ho exjm'H . srtf a truth which all f (> o | , and which we nil admit to bo juttt . enough in his mouth ; Imt when ho accompanies Unit declaration with tho admission of a man like Sir William Moleu

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      Jaspahv » » 1853 . ] THE LEADER . 11

      Untitled Article

      There is nothing so revolutionary , because there is nothing so unnatural and convulsive , as the strain to Jceep things fixed when all the world is by the very law of its creation in . eternal progress . —Da . Abttoid .

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      SATTO gAY ^ JATOAE ^ l , 1853 .

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  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 1, 1853, page 11, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1967/page/11/