If the Government should be beaten on the pending question, they will dissolve, at least if the state of their financial affairs will allow them; but at all events they will not resign without an appeal to the country, and this appeal they will make not on this or that question, but on the great one of all, whether the country desires that Palmerston should continue to be its minister, and on this it is impossible to doubt what will be the reply. His popularity is a fact beyond all doubt or cavil, and it is the more decisive, because not only is there no rival popularity, but every one of the other public men who have been, are, or might be his rivals are absolutely unpopular. Nobody cares any longer for John Russell; everybody detests Gladstone; Disraeli has no influence in the country, and a very doubtful position with his own party. He and Derby have made up their minds to coalesce with Gladstone on the first good opportunity, but it seems not unlikely that they will make such a split among their own followers by so doing as to lose more than they will gain by the junction. Palmerston's popularity does not extend to his colleagues, for not one of whom does anybody care a straw. It is purely personal, and I do not think he would strengthen himself by any other alliance he could form. This fact of his popularity just at the end of his strange and chequered career is most remarkable and not a little unaccountable; but innumerable circumstances prove this to be the undoubted truth, and that it is manifested more decidedly out of the House than in it, for in the House of Commons it does not amount to a certainty of his having always a majority. It is curious that a session which not long ago looked like being a very quiet one, in which there would be ample leisure for consideration of legal and other practical reforms, should in the first weeks be a scene of tremendous conflict, in which the very existence of the Government is trembling in the balance. Footnote 1: [A motion was made by Mr. Cobden condemning the violent measures resorted to by the British authorities in the Canton river in consequence of the seizure of the lorcha 'Arrow' by the Chinese when she had hoisted the British flag. The debate was carried on with great acrimony, and ended by the adoption of Mr. Cobden's motion by 263 to 247, a majority of 16 against the Government.]