( G03 ) 



GOVERNMENTNO GOVERNMENT. 



SHOULD the time ever arrive for giving a secret history of European 

 Cabinets, that chapter of it, in which is detailed the re-construction 

 of the Melbourne Government, will be at once the most curious and 

 the most painful. It is true, that it has been unattended by foreign 

 or domestic excitement, that it has no record beyond itself to mark 

 its existence, that its course must be brief, and that its closing scene 

 will be equally peaceable and inglorious as its advent ; but, not- 

 withstanding these elements of forgetfulness, it is destined to mark 

 an era in the science of Government, and thus to become immor- 

 talised. 



It is not needful that we recall to the memories of our readers 

 the character of the former Melbourne Cabinet, or rather that we 

 should remind them that it had no character at all: that it was 

 the mere emasculated remains of the Grey and Stanley Government, 

 kept in existence by the subservience of a House of Commons to the 

 candour and well-meaning blunders of one man, the present Earl 

 Spencer that it was a political nonentity, a thing of fragments, 

 without purpose or principle a skeleton without life or soul, a 

 congeries of nothingnesses, without even the merit of a connecting 

 link, except place a Cabinet laughed at by its friends, despised by 

 its enemies, and powerless of every thing beyond the capability of 

 doing harm a shuttlecock, first handled by the Tories, then by the 

 Whigs, and then by the Radicals a Government deserted by public 

 opinion, sneered at by the press a mere straw upon the current of 

 events, showing which way the stream tended, but without mind or 

 power to direct it. 



Such was the Melbourne Cabinet ; and what is it now ? The 

 same " lean anatomy," only robbed of its two most respectable 

 limbs, Lord Brougham and Mr. Ellice, and presenting the ludicrous 

 yet pitiable appearance of palsied impotence, seated in the place of 

 strength. 



So far as the common details of Government are concerned, it 



