have the Prime Minister, who more than any other man ought, now that war is declared, to be imbued with hostile feelings against Russian aggression, and determined to carry on the war with vigour, eternally whining after peace, and throwing cold water on the ardour of the people by constantly enlarging on the horrors of war and the blessings of peace. They say that old age is second childhood. England seems likely soon to become aware of this fact, through dire experience. Her Premier, on the Continent, is described, and rightly so, as “the apologist of Russia;” the Minister who is supposed to be, more than any other, in the confidence of his Sovereign. Talk of explanation! The very fact of his entertaining sentiments with regard to Russia so ambiguous, so equivocal, and so lenient towards the enemy of his country, that actually in giving expression to them he is mistaken for offering an apology for the Czar, and exposed to the scorn of the country and the distrust of Europe, seems to us to be amply sufficient to disqualify him henceforth for ever being “the first Minister of the first Sovereign in the world” during the eventful period of war; and the only charitable construction which we can give to the passage is, that he—our helmsman in the storm—has entered upon his dotage, and returned to the proverbial folly of childhood. If his sentiments are the result of mere folly, then he may properly be charged with credulity; if his friendship for the Czar regulates his conduct, then it is connivance for which he is answerable. In either sense he is unfit for his office. There may be, for aught we know—indeed there probably are—others in the Cabinet of the same frame of mind. The man who could denounce Turkey as a country full of anomalies and inconsistencies, and endeavour with all the force of his “sanctimonious rhetoric” to excite an antipathy to that State, and despair at her fate, just at the moment when it was necessary to rouse the people against Russian aggression, was merely supporting the Emperor’s theory of the “sick man,” and cannot be said to have any definite ideas with reference to the aggressive policy of Russia, to check which we are at war; or any very great sympathy with that country to defend which we are also at war. Here is discordancy in the Cabinet on the most vital question; and there is probably as much on every other question that is brought before the notice of the British Parliament. Here is food for discontent and anxiety to the people of England. Thus may their ardour be damped and their spirits quenched long ere the struggle has concluded. And if we look at the supporters of the Government—the Ministerial party, as they are termed—there, too, we behold the same intestine strife. What has been the attitude of the Manchester party with regard to the Government?—what the attitude of the Whig statesmen who have been “banished to invisible corners of the senate?”—what of the Whig peers—such men, for example, as Lords Grey,