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    AUSTRIA AND THE WHIGS.

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    monly to march in procession up Downing Street again , with trumpets braying and colours flying , and a hope in their bursting hearts that the spectators might take them for real old English baronets risen up in wrath to save the country ; while shrewd Mr . Henley and scrupulous Mr . Walpole will probably vote in council for further delay before making a grand attack . So , on . the opposite side , Mr . Gladstone having a character for originality to support , and being subject to the singular weakness ( among Whigs or Peelites ) of persuading himself that every one of his own measures , and every bit of each of them , is riot only sound hi logic but indispensable to the nation ' s weal and his own personal honour , is ready to

    risk all upon the issue of an early pitched battle . He would rather break up the Government and go into opposition once more , than be suspected , for sake of five thousand a-year and a seat with his back to the horses in . the Family Coach , of consenting to be a humdrum Chancellor of the Exchequer . It is essential for the maintenance of the belief in his idolised idiosyncrasy , that he should show himself able to do something for the Whigs , which none of their Barings , Woods , or Lewises would have had the wit to conceive of the pluck to attempt ; and he is quite resolved to play this role at the risk of upsetting the whole concern into the ditch . Beside him sits a prompter , swayed by very different feelings , but who , if we mistake not , has had not a little to do with precipitating

    the coming struggle . -Mr : Milneu Gibson has no more romance in his composition than . Mr . Gladstone has of the talent for political intrigue . The member for Ashtori , on the other hand , possesses unwearied powers of contrivance , plot , and personal diplomacy . The peculiarities of his actual position would , in themselves , deter him from going to sleep in his berths were he ever so well disposed to do so . Without following family or great fortune , he has contrived to work his way to the Cabinet after five-and-twenty years of a . chequered ami laborious parliamentary life ; but he has only been admitted , after all , upon the Oriental condition of leaving his slippers at his feet under lain

    the door . He well knows that to gather on the Downing Street divan , and to keep merely puffing ln > chibouque sympathetically beside Lord John ,- could only end in his being forgotten out of doors , and no longer deemed worth having , by those within . He therefore set about stimulating _ peculiar ambition of the two most ambitious men in the Cabinet —Mr . Gladstone and Lord John Russell—to take a line m their departments , respectively , which should keep alive in men ' s minds the clistinctiveness of their personal influence in Government , and not indirectly increase his value to them as a confidential auxiliary . Against any amount of resistance which either of them might thereby provoke from certain of the palace members of the Cabinet , " the author of all mischief "— ns-the

    Stafford House Whigs love to call him—held out the promise of active support from his old allies of the Manchester school . Mr . Cobden agreed to become a secret negotiator with the French Government for a commercial treaty ; so secret indeed , that even at the Board of Trade the idea is said to have never been whispered outside the president ' s room , until the coup was actually made , and the terms of the treaty agreed upon . Mr . Brigfh ? proved somewhat more difficult to deal with at first , but he also has been worked round , first into letting off the democratic steam for Reform lie had previously tried to get up 5 and next into pledging himself to back the Government through thick and thin in their financial and foreign policy . What real amount of strength tlie member for Birmingham will be able to bring them on a pinch , time must show .

    In the equally balanced condition , of the great parties , it is clear that the fate of the impending struggle must be decided by the part which the Baahi-Bnzouks below the gangway may be induced to take at the last moment . -. The number of these , both English and ' Irish , is far from being inconsiderable , and they are not likely to be rendered fewer by the infatuated step just taken of conferring the Chief Commissionorship of Woods and Worka on the Honourable Wilitam Gowpek . The Whigs , in matters of patronage , are indeed incorrigible . Against all remonstrance , two years ago , they insisted on making ¦ Lord Suffolk ' s brother Distributor of Stamps , and tlieiion . W .

    Cowpek ' s brother-in-law Treasurer of a County Court—jobs whioh it is well known did them more ultimate harm than even the Clan nig ahdk scandal , imd for this obvious reason , that it touched the jealous self-interest of a much wider class . And now we have an equally wilful and wanton nbuso of patronage perpetrated in favour of the nearest connection of the Premier , and that at the veyy moment when policy'dictated the semblance , at least , of regard tq politico ! services and abilities , Prom the Catholio section Ministers can hope but for little support . Some ten or a dozen votes of Irish Ultramontanists will no doubt be recorded against them ? perhaps an equal number of Liberal

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    W E would much rather praise than blame the present Government * and we hoped that the noble sentiments in the Queen ' s Speech would be followed by a policy which the British nation could thoroughly endorse and sustain . Prom Lord John Russell himself , however ,. come indications that this is not the case ; and he seems inclined to prove to the Italians that , although it may be dangerous to have a Tory for an enemy , it is at the best a melancholy and partial satisfaction to have a Whig for a friend .

    . Up to the commencement of the Italian war , his Lordship s caution and advice to Victor Emmanuel was to be quiet ; and Austria herself was scarcely more opposed to the energetic conduct of Count Cavour . Happily for Italy , and the future prospects-of Hungary , the great Sardinian statesman scorned the feeble counsels of the English minister , and continued a course which brought Austria to humiliation , and gave freedom to

    Central Italy . This being accomplished , Lord John Russell concurred in the propriety of a Congress to recognise the change the people had made , and give the sanction of public law to tlie enlargement of the dominions attached to the Sardinian crown . When the Congress scheme failed , his Lordship commenced a negotiation , of which he gave some particulars on . Tuesday night , and which appears in some respects open to grave objection . . should both

    To tlie first proposition , that Austria and France abstain from interference in the internal affairs of Italy , no objection is at first sight apparent ; but it becomes evident upon consideration that it would not be for the interest of Italy that France should agree to it , unless Austria were tied down to very strict conditions , which would soon be found quite incompatible with her holding the Quadraiigle , or retaining Venetia . The second proposition , for the withdrawal of French troops from the Hainan states , was right enough ; but acting , upon it would involve consequences which , as we shall show-, his lordship is anxious to avert . In the third proposition , as explained by the noble lord himself , "it was proposed that the Governments of Europe should not interfere in the internal government -of

    Venetia , and that no proposal should be made in order to regulate the internal government of Venetia by the Emperor of Austria , " Now , considering that Venetia is the place in which the Austrians rule with extraordinary brutality and atrocity , and that their conduct in that territory is intimately connected with the peace of Italy , this proposal-to abstain even from remonstrance is one of the ' most extraordinary that a British minister could . make . But it is , in fact , worse than it seems at first sight , and is directed to stop the action of Sardinia in favour of Venetian liberty . It is precisely the half-hearted , and We must add , halfwitted , game Lord John Russell played last year with Tuscany Lombardy , the Duchies , and the Romagna . If Sardinia had then isolated herself from the common cause of Italy , s he would

    have failed in a plain moral duty , and would in consequence have been exposed to revolutiouaiy outbreaks , as well as to the alarming pressure of the Austrian despotism . She was right then , in acting upon broader conceptions of right and obligation than the Whig mind seems able to conceive : and sho will bo right now , if she again scorns the inenn-spirited advice , and declines \ , o abandon the national cause of Italy , until tlie whole country is free .

    The fourth proposition- involves an , interference with the internal concerns of Central Italy which no English minister should have ventured to make . As explained by his lordship on Tuesday , •« it was to the effect that the King of Sardinia should be asked not to send any troops into Central Italy , until thero should be an opportunity , by a new election , and a new vote of the states and provinces of Central Italy , to obtain a clear and unbiassed expression of their wishes with respect to their future destiny . '

    Central Italy has already , in a legal and constitutional way , ex * pressed her desire j and for an external power like England to call upon her to dissolve tho patriotic and fairly elected assemblies by which this was done , and place the issue at the disposal of » fresh electoral struggle , is , to say the least of it , a most reprehensible interference with her internal affairs . It is said that tho Emperor of the French proposed that the now election , should take place by universal suUVap ; e , but was told that it would not be convenient for the British Cabinot to sanction that principle in Italy , at a time when ifchoy were concocting a llcform Bill , intended to exclude th

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    Catholics will be found to side with them ; and the remainder will stay away . How many discontented Whigs and Radicals will imitate their example remains to be seen . -

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    128 The Leader and Saturday Analyst . [ Feb . 11 , I 860

    Austria And The Whigs.

    AUSTRIA AND THE WHIGS .

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 11, 1860, page 128, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2333/page/4/