the moment it is out of our hands' it ceases to be the measure of the cabinet, and becomes essentially the measure of the House of Commons?' And, therefore, measures are thrown before us with the foregone conclusion that we are to save the administration much care and trouble in preparing the means of governing the country. Thus it happens that the House of Commons, instead of being a purely legislative body, is every day becoming a more administrative assembly. The House of Commons, as now conducted, is a great committee, sitting on public affairs, in which every man speaks with the same right, and most of us with the same weight: no more the disciplined array of traditional influences and hereditary opinions-the realised experience of an ancient society and of a race that for generations has lived and flourished in the high practice of a noble system of self-government-that is all past. For these the future is to provide us with a compensatory alternative in the conceits of the illiterate, the crotchets of the whimsical, the violent courses of a vulgar ambition, that acknowledges no gratitude to antiquity--to posterity no duty; until at last this free and famous Parliament of England is to subside to the low-water mark of those national assemblies and those provisional conventions that are at the same time the terror and the derision of the world. Sir, I trace all this evil to the disorganisation of party. I know that there are gentlemen in this House who affect to deprecate party government. I am not now going to enter into a discussion respecting party government; but this I will tell you as I have told you before, in a manner which has not yet been met by any of the gentlemen who oppose my views on this subject-that you cannot choose between party government and Parliamentary government. I say you can have no Parliamentary government if you have no party government; and therefore when gentlemen denounce party government, they strike at that scheme of government which, in my opinion, has made this country great, and which, I hope, will keep it great. I can foresee, though I dare not contemplate, the consequences of the system that now prevails. They are weak words that would describe them as prejudicial to the realm, perilous to Parliament, fatal to that high tone of public life that is the best security for national grandeur and public liberty. It is more than this; it is the finis fatorum of the great Dardanian house. I really believe that, if you persist in this system, it will effect results which no revolution has yet succeeded in accomplishing—which none of those conspirators that you have lately disturbed in their midnight conclaves have had the audacity to devise. I know no institution in the country that can long withstand its sapping and deleterious influence. As for the class of public men who have hitherto so gloriously administered the affairs of this country, I believe they will be swept off the face of the political world. For my part, I protest against the system; I denounce it. Even at the eleventh hour, I call upon the country to brand it with its indignant reprobation. But, whatever may be the consequences-whatever may be the fortunes of individuals or the fate of institutions-I at least have had the satisfaction of calling public attention to this political plague-spot-I at least have had the satisfaction of attempting to place in a clear light the cause of this great national evil. I have had more, I have had the consolation of justifying this great assembly, in which it is my highest honour to hold a seat, and of vindicating, in the face of England, the character and conduct of the House of Commons. 457 THE SLOUGH BANQUET, May 1858. [The years 1857 and 1858 were the years of the great Indian Mutiny. Early in May 1858 a proclamation reached this country which had been issued by Lord Canning, the Governor-General of India, to the inhabitants of Oude, threatening with confiscation all the great landowners who should not return to their allegiance within a certain time. Lord Ellenborough was the President of the Board of Control, in the newly-formed Government of Lord Derby, and he immediately wrote to Lord Canning censuring his proclamation in very strong terms. He directed the despatch to be made public, and forthwith drew down upon himself a storm of indignation, not only from Lord Canning's friends, who were numerous and powerful, but from all the enemies of the Government. Lord Ellenborough himself was compelled to resign in consequence of the publication of this despatch. But the Opposition were not satisfied with this result. Mr. Cardwell, on May 14, moved a vote of censure on the Government, and at first it appeared likely that he would command a considerable majority. As time went on, however, the face of affairs changed. Further reflection convinced many members of the House that if Lord Ellenborough had been hasty Lord Canning had been highly imprudent. Sir James Graham made a strong speech in favour of the Government; so did Mr. Bright. The refusal of Mr. Vernon Smith (Lord Lyveden), Lord Ellenborough's predecessor, to produce certain letters which had been written to him by Lord Canning, informing him that an explanation of the proclamation was on its way, and his neglect to inform Lord Ellenborough of the communication he had received, told strongly on the House; and when the news arrived from India that Sir James Outram heartily disapproved of the proclamation, the combination against Government began to show symptoms of a thaw. On Friday, May 21, the crash came. Member after member rose on the Liberal side of the House to beg Mr. Cardwell to withdraw his resolution; but the picture may well be left to the master hand, who drew the following sketch of it at a banquet in honour of the members for Buckinghamshire, given at Slough on May 26. ] It was withdrawu. G ENTLEMEN, though your kind invitation to meet you here to-day was offered to my colleague and myself before I was qualified to return thanks for the toast which has just been given, I can assure you that I am gratified that this unexpected opportunity is afforded me of expressing the hope that I do not misinterpret the reception you have accorded me into the belief that as far as you can form an opinion you are not dissatisfied with the conduct of Her Majesty's ministers during their brief tenure of office. I may be permitted on this occasion the first, I believe, that any minister of the Crown has had of meeting a large body of his fellow-subjects since the present Government came into office-of recalling to vou for a moment the circumstances under which we acceded to office. You will perhaps remember that a Government supposed to be omnipotent suddenly fell to pieces with a collapse altogether unprecedented. You will perhaps recollect that Her Majesty, in the exercise of her constitutional prerogative, in these circumstances applied to my noble friend the present Prime Minister of England, and requested him to undertake the great responsibility of directing public affairs. You will, perhaps, recollect that, with a frankness which belongs to him, Lord Derby, not eagerly grasping at office, represented to the Queen, as it became him to do, the position of himself and his friends in the House of Commons, communicating to Her Majesty that in that powerful assembly he could not, from the extraordinary circumstances in which the present Parliament was elected, answer for receiving support to his Government from a party much exceeding one-third of the number that formed the House. Then, though he expressed his readiness under all circumstances and at all hazards to undertake the responsibility, he respectfully counselled Her Majesty to pause and well consider the great contingencies at issue, and not hastily call on him to undertake the charge which she had so graciously offered to intrust to him. I say, therefore, there was no unseemly eagerness for office on our part. I may remind you that Her Majesty availed herself of the opportunity thus afforded her by Lord Derby. Her Majesty graciously condescended to reconsider the circumstances of the time and of the State, and it was only after that second consideration that the Queen expressed her conviction that it was the duty of Lord Derby to undertake the trust, however difficult it might be. From that expression of Her Majesty Lord Derby did not shrink, and he took upon himself, with all its difficulties, the office of Prime Minister of this country. The heritage of difficulties to which he succeeded was not a slight one, and it would have been no easy matter to have encountered those difficulties even if we had been supported by an overwhelming majority of the House of Commons. It is well now for us to think lightly of the perils we have passed through—even to forget them; but when I tell you, and tell you seriously, that the question of peace or war when we acceded to office was not a question of weeks or days, but of hours,' I am sure you will remember that peace has been preserved, while the honour of the country has been vindicated. Let me also remind you that at that very moment two of your fellow-subjects were lingering, and had long lingered, in a foreign dungeon, and that the efforts of a Government which boasted of being irresistible in its domestic strength and in its foreign policy had not succeeded in relieving the misery of their position, or in vindicating the honour of their country. But in a few weeks-I might almost say in a few days the Government of Lord Derby, with all these difficulties to encounter, and with its unquestionable want of strength in the popular House of the Constitution, did succeed in freeing these two neglected and suffering Englishmen 2-brought them back in triumph to that country which had so long felt indignation inexpressible at their unmerited sufferings and shame for the weakness of that Government which had permitted them so long to endure it. I think, therefore, I may also refer to that circumstance as one to which the Government of Lord Derby, so often described 1 With France, in consequence of late events and the 'Conspiracy to Murder' Bill. 2 The two English engineers taken on board the by the Neapolitan Government. See Life of Prince justification of language here used. Cagliari' and imprisoned |