spiritual wants of his diocese. On the 27th of Nov., sermons preached in the St. Leonards Church realised £31 for the Jews Christianity Society. After the drowning of the four preventuremen at near Pevensey a collection for their widows and families was set on foot and realised £300.
Imperial Politics, locally viewed
Referring to Mr. North’s speech at the Borough Election (see next chapter) Mr. Montgomery, of St. Leonards, with the signature of “S. Leonardensis”, wrote to the Hastings News as follows: “Our worthy member, as everyone knows who enjoys his acquaintance, is a very pleasant facetious person, who likes a sly joke occasionally (small blame to him say I), and I think he must have been indulging in the bent of his humour when he ventured to speak of the olden time when ministers would have been impeached for dissolving Parliament under such circumstances as we have just witnessed. Backed by the approving voice of the House of Peers, and of the property, education and respectability of the country, as contra-distinguished from mere numbers, with the full and hearty consent of the Sovereign, as well as in the conscientious discharge of a public duty, ministers who had accepted office under circumstances of peculiar difficulty, determined to dissolve a House of Commons that had been elected under the influence of their opponents on a sham issue, and which by the factious and temporary combination of discordant elements, had succeeded in bringing public business to a deadlock. Under these circumstances, I believe the dissolution to have been? perfectly conformable to constitutional law and practice, nor will I do the Queen the injustice to believe that any ministry, Whig or Tory, will ever be able to coerce her into aiding and abetting an unconstitutional act, much less one deserving impeachment. As to the defunct House of Commons itself, taken in the concrete, there certainly was no cry of wailing and lamentation in the land at its decease. Sir J. Pakington was too complimentary when he called it a china house made to be broken. It was very ordinary earthenware, and of the earth, earthy, in the full force of that expression. Could a Palmerstonian Parliament be otherwise? But let us assume for the moment that the late dissolution was a high crime and misdemeanour, deserving impeachment; then I say, on the strength of the logical axiom causa causae, causa causati, Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston’s sayings were the cause of the dissolution – ergo, Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston were the authors of the dissolution, D.E.D. With regard -
