THE UNPOPULARITY OF THE ENGLISH CABINET.

Press, Volume XVIII, Issue 2551, 5 July 1871, Page 3

THE UNPOPULARITY OF THE ENGLISH CABINET.

I The Spectator accounts for the unpopularity ofthe Cabinet to a variety of causes. The Licensing Bill threw the 150,000 publicans of Great Britain, iat least half of them Radicals, into the 'ranks ofthe enemy. The abolition of purchase creates social discontent, and Mr Goschen's bills on local rating have irritated the minor landowners exceedingly, though one scarcely knows why; while Mr Lowe's Budget has produced a momentary secession oi the whole Whig party in the country. Every one of these interests commands or influences a few votes within the House itself, which on any great division either swell the ranks of the Opposition, or by mere abstentions diminish the Ministerial strength, already weakened by mutiny in the Left, and by the immovable and as we think just discontent of all average Englishmen with the position assumed by the Ministry in all foreign and colonial politics, excepting our relations with the United States. The] mutiny of the Left, that is of the ultra-Kadicals, is becoming rapidly i more and more important, as the party I shows less and. less scruple in voting with the Tories. Ostensibly, or it j may be really., it is disgusted with the Government for ,pledging, itself to, trenchment and then introducing enormous budgets--budgets, not; the better approved because they- -are swelled almost entirely by (the. military depart- ! ment; but there is a root;of bitterness below all that. The Left dislikes and distrusts Mr dislikes his tendency to refer in the last resort to moral principles instead of to intellectual ideas; distrusts him on ecclesiastical questions, on questions connected with land, and on all questions in which the aristocratic and democratic ideas clash or appear to be clashing. Most Premiers have balanced their unruly Left by a band of personal adherents such as strengthened the hands of Peel, or of clansmen such as followed Lord Melbourne; but Mr Gladstone, though strong men are gradually gathering round him, and though his popularity in the constituencies has been immense, has never within the House actfacted a personal following. There remains the greatest cause of weakness of allj the failure of this Administration to attract the popular imagination.