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Title: The Derby Ministry – Palmerston’s Sham Resignation (1858)
Description: Leading article by Marx for the New-York Daily Tribune on Palmerston’s fall over the Conspiracy bill, the alternation of Whigs and Tories in office and England’s refusal to go on playing second to the French Empire.
Author: Karl Marx
Date: 1858-02-26
URL: https://marxismo.school/archivo/marx-engels/originales/1858%20The%20Derby%20Ministry%20-%20Palmerston%E2%80%99s%20Sham%20Resignation
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*Published unsigned, without a headline, as a leading article in the* New-York Daily Tribune*, No. 5272, March 15, 1858, p. 4; attributed to Karl Marx by MEGA² (I/16), whose title is used here. Text from the original newspaper (Library of Congress, Chronicling America); one letter missing for want of ink is supplied in square brackets. As in MEW, the text ends with “…the jackal of his successor.”: the lines that follow in the paper without a break (a passage from Gladstone’s speech in the debate on the Conspiracy bill, with comments) are not given here. [Traducción al español](https://marxismo.school/archivo/marx-engels/1858%20El%20ministerio%20Derby%20-%20La%20falsa%20dimisi%C3%B3n%20de%20Palmerston).*

If Orsini did not kill Louis Napoleon, he certainly killed Palmerston. Made dictator of England by a Chinese Mandarin at Canton, it is historically appropriate that this political gamester shoul[d] finally be ruined by an Italian Carbonaro at Paris. But that he should be succeeded by Lord Derby is something above the range of mere historical propriety, and approaches the dignity of a historical law. It is in accordance with the traditional working of the British Constitution. Pitt was followed by Fox; Fox by Perceval, a weaker Pitt; Wellington by Grey, a weaker Fox; Grey by Wellington; Wellington by Melbourne, a weaker Grey; Melbourne by Wellington again, under the name of Peel; Peel by Melbourne again, under the name of Russell; Russell by Derby, the substitute of Peel; Derby again by Russell. Why should not Palmerston, the usurper of Russell’s place, be followed by Derby in his turn?

If there be in England any new force able to put an end to the ancient routine exemplified by this last change of places between right honorable gentlemen on one side of the House and right honorable gentlemen on the other side; if there be any man or body of men able to confront and supplant the traditional governing class, the world has not yet found it out. But of one thing there can be no doubt; and that is, that a Tory Administration is far more favorable to every kind of progress than any other. For the last fifty years, all popular movements have either been initiated or consummated under Tory rule. It was a Tory Ministry which passed the Catholic Emancipation bill. It was under a Tory Ministry that the Reform movement grew irresistible. The imposition of an Income tax, which, however incongruous in its present state, contains the germs of proportional taxation, is the work of a Tory Ministry. The Anti-Corn-Law League, weak and timid under the Whig Administration, assumed revolutionary dimensions under the Tories; and while Russell, in his most audacious flights, never ventured beyond the limit of a fixed duty, as moderate as himself, Peel could not but consign the Corn Laws to the grave of all the Capulets. So, too, it is the Tories who have, so to say, popularized the aristocracy by bringing plebeian vigor and talent to reënforce its energies. Through the Tories, Canning, the son of an actress, lorded it over the old landed aristocracy of England; so did Peel, the son of a parvenu cotton spinner, who had originally been a hand-loom weaver; so does Disraeli, the son of a simple literary man, and a Jew into the bargain. Lord Derby himself converted the son of a small shopkeeper of Lewes into a Lord High Chancellor of England, under the name of Lord St. Leonards. The Whigs, on the other hand, have always proved strong enough to bury their plebeian tools in vain decorations, or to drop them by dint of haughty insult. Brougham, the soul of the Reform movement, was nullified by being made over to the Lords; and Cobden, the chief of the Anti-Corn-Law League, was offered the place of Vice President of the Board of Trade by the very Whigs he had reinstalled in office.

In point of mere intellectual ability, the new Cabinet can easily bear comparison with its predecessor. Men like Disraeli, Stanley, and Ellenborough, suffer no harm when matched against people of the stamp of Mr. Vernon Smith, late of the Board of Control, of Lord Panmure, a War Minister, whom nothing but his “Take care of Dowb,” can ever make immortal, and of Sir G. C. Lewis, of *Edinburgh Review* dullness, or even against such moral grandeurs as Clanricarde of the Privy Seal. In fact Palmerston had not only replaced the Ministry of all parties by a Ministry of no party, but also the Cabinet of all the talents by a Cabinet of no talent except his own.

There can be no question that Palmerston had no idea of the finality of his ruin. He believed Lord Derby would decline the Premiership now as he had done during the Crimean war. Russell would then have been summoned to the Queen; but with the bulk of his own troops serving under Palmerston, and the bulk of the hostile army arrayed under Disraeli, he would have despaired of forming a Cabinet, especially as he, a Whig, could not resort to the “ultimate reason” of dissolving a Parliament elected under the Whig banners. Palmerston’s return to office, after a week’s oscillation, would thus have become inevitable. This fine bit of calculation has been nullified by Derby’s acceptance. The Tory Ministry may hold office for a longer or shorter period. They may go on for several months before they are compelled to resort to a dissolution—a measure they are very sure to employ before they finally resign their power. But we may be certain of two things, namely: that their career will be marked by the introduction of exceedingly liberal measures in regard to social reforms (Lord Stanley’s course thus far, and Sir John Pakington’s education bill, are a pledge of this); and above all, that in foreign policy they bring with them a most beneficial and cheering change. It is true, many shallow thinkers and writers argue that Palmerston’s fall is not a damaging blow to Louis Napoleon, because several of the new Tory Ministry are personally on good terms with the French despot, and England in no condition to wage war with a giant Continental power. But it is precisely because England is in no state to embark in a new war that we deem the answer given by Great Britain to the bullying menaces and exactions of Louis Napoleon’s satraps most significant. It was not because Malmesbury and Disraeli were to come into the Ministry that the independent Liberals in Parliament, reflecting the undoubted and emphatic sentiment of the Nation, answered the dispatch of Walewski by throwing out Palmerston’s Conspiracy bill. Lord Derby may stumble and fall, but the vote which carried Milner Gibson’s amendment will live and bear fruit, nevertheless.

We do not believe in any cordial and lasting alliance between British Toryism and French Bonapartism. The instincts, traditions, aspirations of both parties revolt at it. We do not believe it possible that the new Cabinet will take up and press Palmerston’s Conspiracy bill, as the Paris journals so confidently anticipate. If they do, it will not be till after they shall have answered Walewski and De Morny, and answered them in the spirit of Pitt and Castlereagh. Toryism, with all its faults, must have changed its nature to be ready to change the laws of England at the beck of a Bonaparte.

But the significance of the late vote is unaffected by any presumption of speedy feud between the two Governments. It is as a proclamation to Europe that Britain has ceased to play second to French Imperialism that we deem it most important. Thus it is understood at Brussels, at Turin, and even at Vienna; thus it will soon be understood at Berlin, at Madrid, at St. Petersburg. England, so long the jailer of the first Napoleon, has pointedly refused to be longer the jackal of his successor.