It will, we think, be admitted on all hands, that the present ministry, however well disposed, are most wofully infirm of purpose. We make every allowance for the situation in which they found themselves when called to office. However sanguine may have been the dreams of the Whig partisan, he could not, some eighteen months ago, have entertained the slightest idea of that extraordinary combination of chances which led to his return to office; neither do we believe that the leaders of that party ever expected to obtain even a temporary ascendency during the existence of the present parliament. When Lord John Russell and his confederates threw down the gauntlet of Free Trade, they could not have calculated upon the possibility of its being picked up and appropriated by their old antagonist of Tamworth. Well as they may have known, from former experience, the nature of that “tricksy spirit,” they never could have been prepared for that crowning denouement to a drama of political apostasy; and we are certain that no section of her Majesty’s subjects were more amazed than the Whigs when they found themselves again in possession of their coveted quarters in Downing Street. Without plan, and without preparation, we freely admit that they were entitled to a large share of public indulgence. In ordinary times, their administration might even have been productive of good. Schooled by adversity, and instructed by previous failure, they this time put forward in the van no opinions of a revolutionary tendency. They promised to apply themselves in the first instance to the mental and physical amelioration of the people--they offered to become the patrons of educational seminaries, directors of public baths, and inspectors of extended sewerage; and no one could gainsay in these respects the purity of their projected measures. But, unfortunately for them, the necessities of the time required more than sanatory legislation. The prodigious increase of national wealth which was prophesied as the immediate result of the change in our commercial policy and the repeal of agricultural protection, did not arise, like Aladdin’s palace, in one night from the liberated ground. The various and complex questions of Irish policy became all at once merged and confounded in the cry of common famine. The staple food of an unenterprising and improvident people had failed; and the Celts of the western islands, desisting from their absurd denunciation of the Saxon, were fain to supplicate Great Britain, herself by no means exempt from the calamity, for the means of absolute existence.