NEWS OF THE WEEK.
MINISTERS have contrived this week to impart a revived, but not a very agreeable interest to the waning session. Sir Robert Peel made, on the agreeable, night, the annual exposure of ill-contrived work, by giving account of the measures which they should at- tempt to proceed with or abandon at once. The account includes some fifty or sixty measures, but he only specified a part. Mi- nisters will try to push forward the Colleges Bill, the Scotch Poor- law Bill, the Brazil Slave-trade Bill, the Commons Enclosure Bill, and several others, including some continuance bills. Two measures of note remain in a doubtful position,—Sir James Gra- ham's Physic and Surgery Bill, which he is to alter again, and then to offer once more—for rejection, of course - and the Irish Tenants' Compensation Bill, which is in nubilnis—that is, in a Select Committee of the Lords. Among the measures abandoned, the most remarkable are, the Parochial Settlement Bill—about which Sir James Graham is so much in doubt that he will not undertake to reintroduce it next session ; and the Charitable Trusts Bill—a very necessary measure, but much opposed by the great city of London and a variety of influential persons who have vested interests in malversation. Of important mea- sures promised but not yet introduced, the Irish Parliamentary Registration and Municipal Corporation Bills are given up. Of measures not adopted but patronized by Government, Lord Ash- ley's Lunacy Bill is to be_pressed ; Lord John Russell may carry his Ecclesiastical Courts Bill if he can—Sir Robert Peel has a vote at his service, but not a single night to discuss it in. A totally new Government bill for the Drainage of Towns is intro- duced, but is to stand over till next session ; and a bill for con- solidating the Customs Acts is to be passed before the prorogation. Of the two score bills or more besides these, it is not clear how many are to be abandoned, how many finished : but two things are exceedingly clear,—that Parliament has wasted an immense quantity of valuable time about measures which have come to nothing; and that the work remaining on hand is so bulky and troublesome as to make another lightening of the load inevitable before the end of the session can be attained. It is a strong prac- tical lesson on the necessity of altering the present wretched mode of doing business : and it might suggest to Members the expediency of steady diligence a little earlier in the session—per- haps some such plan as devoting so many hours each night to mere talk, if they must talk, and so many to business. But the annual recurrence of the lesson proves that they are incorri- gible. Its real meaning is, that the country has outgrown its organized government and legislature—that the House of Com- mons, elected by the middle class, having become chiefly a ma- chine to arrange trading and gambling speculations under the name of "private bills, we want a new legislature to attend to the higher class of national work, the advancement of the nation by the gradual improvement of the laws. Possibly a House of Commons adequately representing the People would prove a step towards such a higher kind of legislation. A more singular, if not an equally serious exposure, is the ludicrous inconsistency into which Ministers have been betrayed by resisting the second reading of Mr. Rutherfurd's bill to abolish religious tests in the Scotch Universities. A hint of their inten- tion had been allowed to transpire ; and Mr. Macaulay, who moved the second reading in the unexplained absence of Mr. Rutherfurd, set out with all but assuminr the resistance of Ministers, and rating them for it by anticipation. They were not deterred from the expected absurdity of conduct, but rather aggravated it by the absurdity of their apology,. It is no ordinary want of consistency or principle, but a disregard the semblance of both, so flagrant and barefaced as to imply atin utter ignorance of what principle is or is valuable for. When the bill was intro- duced, Sir James Graham not only abstained from opposing it, but declared that this was the very time for considering the ques- tion • and he intimated that he was quite favourable to abolishing such tests. The other night, he started with assuming that there must be some test ; and that as Parliament had shown a dis- position not to establish even the mildest new tests, those ex- isting must be maintained. Meanwhile, Ministers have intro- duced their own original measure for establishing new Colleges in Ireland—without tests. In doing so, they even ventured to vindicate the omission by the fact that no harm had arisen from the practical discontinuance of tests in some of the Scotch Univer- sities. Yet when asked to extend to the whole of Scotland a practice which has succeeded in a part, they-affect alarm. To justify the con- tradiction, they say that the circumstances in Ireland were pecu- liar,—rather asserting the difference than explaining it : but the greater the difference between Scotland and Ireland, the more do they strengthen the argument a fortiori for extending in Scot- land what has succeeded in Scotland but is untried in Ireland. Scotland, they say, opposes the abolition of tests ; and they cite the authority of the General Assembly. Why, the Assembly re- presents only a smaller section of the Scotch people, and the very section that might be expected to oppose ; the people have actually sanctioned in practice the disuse of tests ; while in Ireland, where Ministers persevere in disusing tests, the people really have made England some show of resistance. But it is not merely in land and Ireland that Ministers are thus practically inconsistent—not merely within the limits of the session, but in the single night's debate, and in their own single speeches. Sir James Graham, for instance, says you must not abolish the tests, because the Esta- blished clergy and the people object to the abolition ; and then he says, if you do abolish them, such is the popular disposition that Dissenters will be appointed to professorships : so that, first, the people desire to maintain the tests, in order that Professors may belong to the Establishment and then the danger is, that if there be no testa, the people will put Dissenters into the pro- fessorships. Sir Robert Peel's grand argument seems to be, that you can do in new institutions what you cannot safely effect by change in old institutions : but his own colleague has used the very safety of the proposed change, so far as it has gone in practice, as an argument for his Irish bill, making the old the example for the new. There really seems to have been but one motive for suffering Mr. Rutherfurd to introduce his bill at all : as Ministers wished to persuade the House to adopt their Irish Colleges Bill without a test, they would not begin the session by asserting the paramount necessity of tests as a security for
gion ; and so they affected a good will towards the Scotch anti-
test bill, and deluded Mr. Rutherfurd into in it until they could safely turn round and disclaim in Scotland' on the 11th of July, the very principle which they asserted in Ireland, up to the 9th of July. The third reading of the Colleges Bill in the Commons occa- sioned a debate on a new point—an ill-framed and fruitless amend- ment, moved by Mr. Bernal Osborne, for inquiry into the reve- nues and management of Trinity College, with the view of throw- ing it open to Roman Catholics. Mr. Shell made one of his best speeches ; insisting that the Catholics ought not to be satisfied without perfect equality. But that enabled Sir Robert Peel to make a plausible reply ; setting forth his sacrifices from first to last, and protesting that the very- object of all his efforts had been to give the desired equality. Still the fact remains, that while, for secular education, the Roman Catholic majority are to have only Provincial Colleges, with a provisional government for three years, and with very doubtful prestige, the Protestant minority monopolize the Metropolitan College, with wealth, antiquity, and a university, all to its single self. That is not equality; and Sir Ro- bert Peel showed no real reason for withholding it, since it might have been given without taking a stiver from the Protestants, simply by adding to the Metropolitan University what is neces- sary for the Catholic scholars. New Zealand has again been on the carpet : not brought to notice merely by the faint rumours which have arrived, of a bloody encounter between a band of Queen's sailors and the sa-
vages at Kororarika, but the old matters—revived in the Lords by a petition from the Church Missionary Society, praying for strict observance of the Waitangi " treaty "—in the Commons, by some questions about the fight, and Captain Grey's instructions, not productive of much information. Lord Stanley, who looked so black "under the gallery" when Sir James Graham and Sir Robert Peel were promising and vowing for him, took occasion to unsay all that they had said to whitewash him or raise hopes
for a better adiiinistration of New Zealand. He avowed such an obstinate adherence to his absurdest view of the notorious "treaty," as to render colonization of New Zealand impossible, so long as he remain in office—for his crotchet must lock up nearly all the land. The preliminary to the smallest national use of England's newest and most promising colony must be the removal of the great mechanical obstruction, Lord Stanley : unless the difficulty be cut short by scenes of violence and extermination,—a process of which the week's news tells the beginning.
In all these affairs, the same damning sins beset Ministers—a deliberate incompleteness of plan, and a needless see-saw, the taking up and laying down of principles from day to day, as if they knew not what they were handling —shuffling between settlers, savages, and soldiers in New Zealand—between tests and no-tests in Scotland and Ireland. This blundering incoherence in their practice, as well as too visible disregard of principle in their policy, is beginning to do the present Cabinet real mischief. People knew that Sir Robert Peel was not a politician of " principles ' : but there was an impression that, though not a far-seeing theorist, ▪ he was a good practical workman by the job—clever at seeing the present expediency of a measure ; and they took him for the good that was in him in that line. Sir Robert seems to have nearly exhausted his peculiar mission : he misses the mark of obvious expediency, trims the balance of rashness by pusilla-
nimity, and incurs danger by invitine.'' contempt. He works by• ; leaving measures incomplete, for future trouble, that it would be easier as well as safer to carry to their just conclusion at once. He defers to underlings, and trusts to incapable instru- xnents. Thus the seeds of the fatal though slow disease are sown. The term of this Parliament's existence draws to a close. The present Ministers prove to be not much more able to cope with the vu inertice of the times not much more able to push their own measures' than the Whigs were. A few more instances of each hardened disregard of practical justice as the New Zealand
• thimblerig " furnishes—of such blowing hot and cold as in
this case of the tests—and Sir Robert Peel's Administration will sink to the latter state of Lord Melbourne's, equally helpless, but less loved by friends and more despised by all. If the rival statesmen only evinced some sparks of greater boldness some renovated vigour for action, the affair would be settled already : if Lord John Russell had spoken as distinctly and as stoutly about some tangible matters of more than local interest as he did about tests in Scotch schools, he would have been now half- way to the Treasury bench.
. Lord Palmerston has made an elaborate assault on the new slave-trade convention with France. Altogether bent on exalting his own meddlesome policy by disparaging. his successor's he threw no new light on the real question of suppressing the slave- trade; about which his notions are as shallow as any; and his factious sally is not worth a second word.
Among the talk on Railway matters, Lord Lansdowne has drawn attention to two most flagitious cases of Parliamentary bungling and commercial wrong. A Member of Parliament, Mr. Craven Berkeley, was asked, seven years ago to be director of a company: he refused : unknown to him, his name was put into a private act constituting the company : a ship-builder has obtained a verdict for 35,0001. damages against the company, for breach of contract ; he sues Mr. Berkeley for payment, and the lawyers say that Mr. Berkeley is really liable! Moreover, Lord Brougham intimates, that to relieve Mr. Berkeley by a special interposition might be dangerous to credit. Again, a Member is asked to be director of a company : he expresses his disappro- bation: he afterwards is told that he has spoken at a public meeting in favour of the project ; and he not only finds his name in a published report among speakers advocating the scheme, but discovers that other people were also set down as speakers who, like himself, did not attend the meeting at all : and on the faith of that meeting, money was subscribed. It is a new doctrine that private companies and Parliament may successfully conspire to make men unconscious debtors for tens of thousands of pounds, 'without remedy or relief. Even the trouble of being called upon to resist such claims is a wanton injury.
A new Privilege case has amused the House of Commons. Mr. Jasper Parrott, whilom Member of the House, once gave evidence before a Select Committee, which Mr. Phillips, a surgeon at Totnee, conceives to have taken away his character: hereupon Mr. Phillips institutes an action for libel : the House summon Mr. Phillips, with his country and London attornies, to the bar ; and Mr. Speaker duly informs them that they are committing breach of privilege : they declare that they did not know— promise not to do it any more, and pray for leniency; which is ciously accorded. All this occupied many hours to settle; and the general impression was, that the House had floundered luckily out of the contest with the irritated surgeon and two firms of attorrties.
The House of Lords too has a little Privilege case, arising in a dispute between a Policeman who gave evidence and some sport- ing person. It is referred to a Select Committee.
