THE THREE KINGDOMS.

THE Whig Ministry are again in power, no stronger than when they were driven from it. The "crisis"
has led to nothing, and proved nothing, but that the leading politicians of the day are more capable
of the self-denial of refusing office, than of the courage and capacity of conducting it on any other than the
old routine. This has been called patriotism, and adorned with a great many gracious phrases. But it is
possible that history may apply other names to it, and less polite expressions.

Lord Stanley tried hard to form an administration; but found, after beating up recruits for nearly a week,
that his regiment of followers was too ragged to be marched anywhere but into Coventry. There accordingly
he took them. To use his own expressions, he found that his party comprised men of talent, but unfortunately
contained hardly more than one individual of political experience, and versed in the transactions of
public life. In other words, he could rely on nobody but poor Mr. Herries. Nay, in a subsequent part of
his speech, he threw a doubt upon the value of even that veteran Red-taper. "There were few men, if any,"
he emphatically observed of those very men who, under his own guidance, have been hammering at the gates
of Downing Street ever since 1846, "possessed of sufficient experience or habits of public business" to
conduct the service of the crown. Therefore, though he had a nostrum that would have been monstrously
restorative, he thought it less safe to apply it in a new mode, than that the country should continue to
decline under the old hands.

While Lord Stanley was saying this in one house, in the other Lord John Russell was holding forth upon
the old school-copy about the danger to good manners from evil communications. Nothing could have
carried him through his political life, he said, but the fact that he was acting with men in whom he had the
utmost confidence, on whose judgment he could rely, and in whose integrity he felt the most perfect faith.
In other and plainer language, the house was not to expect him at this time of day to betake himself to new
personal familiars, or to sanction new public combinations. It seems impossible to place any other meaning
upon words applied to a crisis which had been chiefly remarkable for a government defeat brought about
by men unconnected with either of the old government parties. It had never occurred to Lord John Russell
that the Queen should call in anybody but Lord Stanley. It had never occurred to Lord Stanley that
anybody but Lord John or Sir James should be sent for. It had never occurred to Sir James to think of
leaning upon other help than Lord John's. And here were the "explanations" that made all this clear.
How could confidence be felt in men who had never worn the Windsor uniform?  Could their judgments
be reliable to whom the Treasury Bench appealed with no tender recollections?  Was it possible to feel a
perfect faith in integrity never tried by the temptations of Downing Street?  "Such a state of things as
the present," exclaimed Lord Lansdowne, enlarging on that absence of the amount of parliamentary support
needful for a proper carrying on of public affairs to which his colleagues had been obliged to succumb,
"if prolonged, cannot fail to be detrimental to the honour of the crown, and profitable only to those—not
the most respectable class of politicians—who in such circumstances find a consequence which does not
naturally belong to them, and which they would not otherwise possess."

So the Government was restored to those, the most respectable class of politicians, who naturally belong
to it, or to whom it naturally belongs; and the less respectable class were left to find their want of real
consequence as best they might. Some have accordingly showed it by a little restiveness, which was
immediately snubbed by their superiors. For instance, Lord Stanley is believed to have rapped Mr. Disraeli
on the knuckles for having voted in the majority of one for a better administration of the Office of Woods;
and Mr. Baillie suddenly found himself in so sad a scrape for having even given notice of a dangerous motion
about Ceylon, that he was obliged to back out of it in most humiliating fashion. In brief, therefore, the Whig
Ministry are come back expressly on sufferance, with their assailants bound over to keep the peace; and
the only thing that bears marks of the fray through which they have passed, is the little bill they were
"carrying" when set upon, and which, small before, is now become so infinitesimally small, that its very
authors can hardly explain what it is, or what it means.

The second, third, and fourth clauses (which alone were expected to have any penal efficacy against
possible attempts at Roman Catholic Ecclesiastical domination) are now removed from the bill, which
consists solely of the preamble and first clause, and appears to be directed exclusively against the mere
assumption of titles. Nevertheless Mr. Bethel and Mr. Bramwell aver that even the first clause will
interfere with the administration of trusts bequeathed under territorial titles; while the Attorney-General
protests that it will make nothing void but acts to which territorial titles are essential. But among such
acts the learned Attorney-General counts the Canon law and its administration, which will thus, in his judgment,
be barred by the bill; while Sir George Grey as strongly implied in his speech, that the mutilation
of the bill would leave it perfectly innoxious in so far as regarded matters strictly ecclesiastical. Mr. Roundell
Palmer protests against the measure because it invades religious liberty; and Lord Palmerston supports it
as a completion of the Roman Catholic Emancipation Act. The Solicitor-General will have it that when once
it is passed, there can be no more Synods to denounce education; while Lord John Russell as expressly states
that though Synods are untouched for the present, he will be prepared, if need be, to curb them hereafter.