The present ministry is a fair type of the selfishness of British
statesmanship. The antecedents of its principal members are those of
timeserving politicians. Lord Palmerston, starting on his career as a
Tory of the Wellington stamp, has veered round as the tide has turned
against his former associates, and is the still distrusted
representative of the Liberal party. Lord Russell, in the youth of his
public service a Radical reformer, and the eager disciple of Sir Francis
Burdett when Sir Francis Burdett could not lead a corporal's guard, once
the prop and hope of those who sought a wider suffrage, has again and
again eaten his own words, and the history of his political life is a
ludicrous illustration of the perplexities of politicians. His
invariable course as a diplomatist has been to leave the way open to
prevarication, to keep his opinions in a cloud, and to confound sense
with ambiguity. It would be pure credulity to place much confidence in
the expressions of a statesman who within two months boldly censured and
then as boldly favored the designs of Victor Emmanuel on Venice,
officially and unblushingly before all Europe.
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