NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE Easter recess passes away with unequalled quiet in the po- litical world. The closing of Parliament used to entice the Members to exchange the arduous struggles of either house for the lighter oratory of public meetings throughout the country, affording an agreeable diversity of excitement, and enabling each party to renew the interest of its adherents in the provinces. This season there has been nothing of the kind. Members have not sought their constituents to commune with them on pending measures ; because there are no measures pending—none expected or in- tended to pass—which any constituency cares about. Members have not run down to their homes to revive the interest of poli- tical questions among their local supporters; because there is no interest to revive : interest in the party questions of the day is clean gone : Members feel little themselves, and have no motive for effort. They know that the people see through the stale counter- feits, Whig, Tory, Radical ; and they can no longer spur themselves to the bootless office of simulating a zeal which no one feels. It is too much to go even a mile from the snug country-house merely to say that they wish this or that party to draw the salary of office ; and that is all they could say. So they just stay at home, resting after the aimless and irksome labour of walking in and out of the lobbies to divide. In this universal negation, we see the cha- racter of the time : even professed busy bodies and dealers in public meetings, the most indefatigable of political traders, are worn out with the tedium of carrying on sham contests. Nevertheless, there must be some show of action when Parlia- ment meets again ; and the daily broad sheets, which must be filled in the holydays as in session-time, have been pointing to the future with a make-believe of preparation. Nothing newer pro- mises at present, however, than a return to the great show-fights of the past half-session, on the Irish Registration Bills and the New Poor-law. The party journals occasionally blow a note or two, like minstrels of old, carrying on the battle-song while the com- batants are resting : the Ministerial Chronicle sings the wrongs of Irish electors, to brace up the nerves of Lord Moneyru and his retainers ; the Times chants the tricks of Whig Registration schemes, to fire the fury of a STANLEY, or the iniquities of the Poor-law, to keep up the effervescence of a WAKLEY.
