TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE PAST SESSION OF PARLIAMENT.
FEw sessions have been marked by so much irritation as that of 1844, few have created so much disappointment ; yet Ministers boast that it has been singularly fruitful. The dissatisfaction was not without cause, while the boast is not quite untrue ; and although that sounds strange, it- is not difficult to make out. The case will be better un- derstood by examining the actual produce of the session. Let us enumerate the measures passed on behalf of the several quarters of the United Kingdom.
The empire gains, financially, by the reduction of interest on a por-
tion of the Public Debt ; and although the remodelling of the Bank Charter, with the cognate measures to regulate banking and trading companies, is in many respects limited to England and Wales, yet the wholesome effects, especially on the currency, will be felt through- out. The same may be said of the reduced Wool-duties and some minor fiscal changes. The alteration of the Sugar-duties was meant to benefit the whole kingdom ; and so it will, if it benefit anybody— there was at least the intention. England and Wales have to thank Ministers for the amendment of the Poor-law, strengthening the main provisions and improved machinery of that law, but yielding many points demanded by agitators ; for the bill to quiet Dissenters in the possession of their chapels ; for the abolition of the practi- cally obsolete Penal Acts, so useless, yet so insulting to the Roman Catholics ; for the mitigation of the severe insolvent-law, which is already throwing open the prison-doors to many a miserable wretch uselessly confined : and Wales must acknowledge a better regulation of the tolls, that figured so prominently in the Rebecca riots. The Railways Bill stands between success and failure ; but it begins the attempt to bring railways into one general system, and to protect the public against some of the consequences of monopoly. The direct failures with which England may reproach Ministers are, in the attempt to esta- blish a more extended education, of which the modicum in the Poor-law Act Amendment Bill is a mockery ; in the reform of the Ecclesiastical Courts, and of the County Courts. Ireland par- ticipates in the advantages of some of these measures, particularly those relating to the Roman Catholic Penal Acts and Dissenters' chapels ; receiving, besides, new facilities for Catholic church- endowments by bequest and donation, and the assimilation of the municipal franchise to that of England. The good results of the Landlord and Tenant Commission are matters of the future, and have no place in this account. The signal failure here is in the promised registration of Parliamentary voters, with extension of the county franchise. The original taint derived from contact with the unlucky hand of Lord STANLEY is not yet effaced from that branch of Irish politics. Scotland—much as her reli- gious dissensions have agitated her, and grievous as the want of an efficient poor-law is—has been comparatively neglected : the power to divide parishes, and some prison-regulations, are the little boons conferred upon Scotland by the session. One of the questions arising out of the late secession in the Church, the administration of oaths in the Scotch Universities, Mr. Fox MAVLE tried to settle ; but he was not allowed. Of all the component parts of the British empire, the Colonies have been the worst treated. Mr. Hurl. endeavoured to procure admission for corn from our settlements in Australasia and Southern Africa, on terms like those voluntarily accorded to Canada ; but he was repulsed, with scarcely an effort at a reason for the refusal. The only positive action that concerns the Colonies is one inflicting injury—the alteration of the Sugar-duties, which professedly admits foreign sugar the produce of free-labour, and most probably will admit slave-made sugar, into competition with the British West Indies, still languishing under the influence of our crude legislation—under unprepared, badly-contrived eman- cipation, and arbitrary restrictions on the supply of free-labour to compensate for the slave-labour withdrawn. That, a positive in- jury to them, is all that has been done for all our Colonies. The department of general " discussion" has been for the most part utterly barren of tangible results. Lord ASHLEY has usefully agitated the subjects of popular education and lunacy ; but, ex- cepting the trifle of what is called education vouchsafed to pauper children, nothing has been done on either of his movements. The House of Commons is growing used to Lord ASHLEY; his some- what feeble fervour does not carry the House away by surprise, as it did at first ; and he must strengthen his resources if he would command success in future. Mr. COBDEN, Mr. Vuxuas, and others of the Anti-Corn-law corps, have kept their question astir ; Mr. COBDEN giving it a novel turn by his dissertation on the con- cernment of farmers and labourers therein : but the League have not yet realized a majority in Parliament, and Corn-law Repeal has not made much ostensible advance this season. Lord N0RMANBY has prevented the sanatory improvement, so deplorably wanted to relieve the people of much needless misery, from being forgotten. Mr. SHARMAN CRAWFORD'S " stopping the Supplies " and " Com- plete Suffrage " came to nothing. Anti-Poor-law opposition in Pirliament has lost combined activity, through the perpetual failure of its immediate aims, with the concession of many points on which the faction had some concurrence in public opinion : the Bishop of EXETER was its last champion—how, we all remember. Indian affairs—Scinde, and Lord ELLENBOROUGH ; Irish affairs— the trials, Mr. O'Dittscor,t, and his whipping of little boys—occu• pied many, many nights, to little purpose.
Ministers did not allow Parliament to adjourn without some promises and earnest for next session; and among the notable bills introduced only for the purpose of consideration during the recess, were those brought forward in the last week by Sir JAarna Gamsax, to alter the law of settlement, and to reform the medical profession. The Opposition also held out its pro- mises, and Lord Joan RUSSELL issued a sort of prospectus noti- fying all that he would undertake,— some amendment of the franchise, for pure politicians ; something to amend the " con- dition of England," for more social and philanthropic politicians ; alteration of the Corn-law and Import-duties, for political econo- mists ; reduction of Malt-duty or County-rates, for agriculturists ; assurance of a "fair day's wages for a fair day's work," for the working-classes; and Heaven knows what beside,—very imposingly adumbrated in such guise as to intimate, that if a Premier be wanted, Lord JOHN is at the service of all folks, without too strictly pledging him to any task. Such was the last session. It had all the idly-protracted de- bates, the party follies, the frustrated legislation, of any session that has gone—all the waste of time in stale and bootless "discussion" that we anticipated before it began ; more than the average of heart- burning ; and although it was, as we have seen, not unproductive of good, Members against Ministers and the People against both, were as irritated and disappointed as if it had been utterly worthless in its results. Could it be regarded merely as one more in the Parliamentary series, it might pass for being up to the average mark ; but, under the present circumstances of the country, no single session can be so regarded. For a long time past, the " con- dition of England" has been unsatisfactory ; so unsatisfactory, that the management of the nation seemed to need a great change— some new element introduced into its system, to cure its morbid condition by masterly statesmanship. Once that was hoped from the Reform Bill : but the Reform Act changed the component parts, without mending the bad methods of Parliament ; which in- deed acquired fresh bad habits. Then some difference was ex- pected from the peculiar manner and professions with which Sir ROBERT PEEL entered office : but, except in a somewhat larger proportion of practical results as compared with his promises, it is not easy to discern any material difference. Sir ROBERT has been legislating since 1841 : he boasts that the country is in a much better state as to its commerce and social condition,— which is true; but we cannot tell how much of the returning prosperity is the mere alternation of bad and good epochs, which has been seen in the history of the country with such fortuitous regularity. The same agencies exist that produced the distress and dangers of 1841 ; far larger causes than mis- management of joint-stock banks were then at work, and those causes remain untouched, to be called into operation again. With all the fruitfulness of the session, what has it done to provide for the additional thousand people that every day in the year adds to the number of those that must be fed ? Nothing. PEEL'S legisla- tion has occurred in a brighter time, but it gives no guarantee that the future may not find us as unprepared for storms as in 1841,— unless the armed Chelsea pensioners are to he accounted adequate provision for such emergency.
Setting the substance of legislation aside for the moment, and assuming that every session is not to be characterized by " great" measures, we must think that the mere conduct of business in Par- liament was such as to account for all the irritation and annoy- ance—to bring discredit even upon really useful measures. One old fault was absolutely as bad as ever—the foolish arrangement which leaves the House of Lords idle throughout five months or more, and then overwhelms it with work that cannot be performed in the remaining time. Never was there such a scene of hurry and con- fusion as in the Upper House for those last few days in which it ran through its share of work for the season. Of what use could the sanction of a second chamber be, when given in that galloping unthinking fashion? Formerly—in the Reform mra—there was a controversy between the People and the Peers, because the Peers obstructed improvement ; and there was a disposition fiercely to ask, "Of what use is the House of Lords?" It came to pass, however, that, with all their professions, the "Reformed" Com- mons and the "Reform " Ministers were as bad,—collusively pass- ing good measures "to be rejected by the Lords," or not even taking that trouble, but standing upon " finality." The English dislike of humbug was roused, and the displeasure at the Lords was lost in disgust at the insincerity of the Reforming Whigs. Besides, some points of favourable comparison were remembered : the Peerage comprises not a few picked legislators—men less dependent on transient interest than the Commons, but accom- plished debaters, and mostly of maturer age ; even the smaller number conduces to deliberation; and therefore the House of Lords is especially fitted to be the assembly for the deliberate dis- cussion of measures claiming of the Representative branch a simple fiat. But this indulgent view of the hereditary chamber, to be of any force, implies that the House of Lords should have ample time to cogitate on all measures; not that it should lie idle for nine-tenths of the session, and then ratify or reject every measure in such brief time as to forbid all reflection. The old controversy was not settled ; it was only laid aside, to be revived on occasion ; and the method of employing the Upper House last session was such as to recall the notion that it is useless—the most perilous of all condemnations for a political institution. The management of the Commons was not a whit better. All the earlier part of the session was thrown away in useless debate. The Morning Herald makes a statistical display of the nights thus wasted, by way of excuse for Ministers ; whereas it is part of the very charge against them. The Opposition is said to have been
obstructive : in time past, that excuse for the feebleness of the Whigs was not admitted by the Conservative Opposition ; and it is indeed no excuse. It was no doubt the aim and purpose of the Opposition, last session, to frustrate the legislation of Govern- ment,—which, to be sure, was very naughty and factious; but a Government must be prepared to meet and overthrow such ob- stacles, or what is it worth ? We do not want a Government that wishes to do well—every upright and intelligent citizen can do that ; but one that can do well. It is true that a Minister who forces the Senate to attend to the business which he thinks needful for the state, is apt to be assailed by declamation and called "arbitrary " : but no Minister with thorough faith in his vocation—with an earnest purpose, inspired by the gravity of his task, and resulting in great measures, anxiously matured by a master-mind—need fear such counterfeit reproaches ; for the public would back him in bearing down all obstruction. Could the Minister, last session, boast of such source of strength ? Alas ! no. Some of his measures were introduced in so crude a state as to be only fit to be with- drawn ; others were impracticable, from inevitable tendency to pro- duce angry dislike ; and to both those causes was much of the irri- tation due, much of the wasted time. From whatsoever ridicu- lously strained punctilio of allowing "free discussion "—from whatsoever guilty consciousness that Ministers had idly provoked debate by submitting impracticable or immatured measures, and that therefore they could not check a fault they shared—from what- soever cause their feebleness arose, the waste they encouraged was not their apology but their condemnation. Nor was it only in the negative matters of neglecting to spur the Commons or em- ploy the Lords that Ministers were to blame: there was more posi- tive mischief in their manner, personally, of dealing with some things. An early instance was in the angry and peevish mixture of self-willed obstinacy and weak relinquishment in the Factory de- bates ; in which Sir JAMES GRAHAM allowed himself to appear in the light of a man arbitrarily refusing, because be chose, what Popular Members asked in the name of the People. A more glaring instance, because not complicated with embarrassing ques- tions of policy, occurred in the Post-office case. Mr. Tnostas DlINCOMBE discovered a very objectionable practice in the conduct of the Executive, and demanded inquiry. As it turned out, the present Government has the uniform example of all predecessors, including statesmen the most universally respected and the most popular ; and in the practice they had been less to blame perhaps than any : the practice therefore was one which was to be con- sidered apart from them ; it was very fit matter for inquiry; and the best way to expedite the investigation was to put Mr. DUN- COMBE at the head of it. But, by resisting that natural mode— gratuitously resisting it, since there was nothing to fear from it—Sir JAMES GRAHAM assumed the carriage of a man dreading and obstructing inquiry from conscious wrong or personal super- ciliousness. This kind of obstinacy is quite a different thing from that earnestness of purpose which would make a Minister give to all his great measures the preference over his own official existence. Examples of a similar maladroitness may be found in other depart- ments—in the conduct of the Railways Bill—in the general reluct- ance of the Colonial Minister to do .aught but hurt any one who attempted a service for the Colonies. It was this bad management, this want of masterly control over the machinery, that hid and kept from view the better spirit at work. With a certain Conservative discretion, Ministers have really combined much liberality of feeling. All parts of the kingdom are in fact quieter than they were—England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland. If no large measures have been propounded, still the interest of the people has been constantly kept in view. This spirit of mode- rate and considerate policy was especially discernible in Ireland. Even the appointment of Lord HEYTESBURY to the Irish Viceroyalty is an instance. It has been usual to send to Dublin either a showy politician—a man to be idolized for a time by the mob, or hallooed by the Orangemen—or a man of great rank and fortune, to gratify the Irish avidity and love of display : but Lord HEYTESBURY is only a tried man of business, and the friend of Lord Emor—a man to do the official work well, and to act with, not against, the well- intentioned Secretary; giving uniformity of purpose, in a liberal direction, to the Dublin Executive. In the general demeanour of Parliament, there has been an improved kindness and deference for the people, their interests and feelings : that is a distinctive cha- racteristic of Young England ; Lord ASHLEY obtains his power from his attention to the wants of the people ; the Poor-law has been modified in deference to them ; and the special provisions, made with the general concurrence of all sides, for third-class pas- sengers in railways, attest the altered tone of dealing with such subjects ; and none more encouraged that altered tone than the Ministers. But a Minister cannot rest his power upon a " tone" : so long only as his power is seen in the accomplishment of his inten- tions—in tangible deeds—can he retain it. Frequent defeat and frustration are fatal to him. Sir ROBERT PEEL failed to master the Opposition throughout last session : he beat them—not quite always—on division ; but they prevented full half his work laid out. For want of thorough sympathy, he does not stand well with his own party—he cannot keep even them in order : they often fur- nished a sectional opposition to him, as troublesome as any. It is true, that there is no other man of such bold and determined pur- pose, that if he cries " I will be your leader," a compact majority will follow him ; but the leader in possession, whose authority de- pends only on the comparison that be is less weak and mistrusted than others, has a most unsafe and precarious tenure. With such feeble cohesion, any accident might blow to the winds the party collected but not riveted together by Sir ROBERT PEEL. On the other hand, the very breaking-up of parties suggests a feeling, that separate portions might combine to further measures of national interest, apart from ordinary factious mo- tives. This feeling slipped out of Sir ROBERT'S mouth, when, alluding to the protracted session, he said that it might be got rid of by " the concurrence of political parties." Lord JOHN RUSSELL appeared to go still further—saying of those who differed from him in general policy, " There may be measures on which we agree, and by our agreement in which the interests of the country may be promoted." This has revived the long-forgotten idea of coalition : not usually a popular thing ; but party is a thing so effete, so discredited before the country, and so powerless for good, that any other method of managing the business of Parliament would stand a fair chance of approval, for a time at least, and might compass measures of real advantage. Could a coalition act upon the broad and noble principle of totally overlooking party—party-interests, party- ambitions, and party-restrictions—acting solely with a view to the great wants of the country, for the improvement of its social con- dition, they might introduce into its affairs that greatly desiderated new element in the practice of British Cabinets, doing good for its own sake. But then, even a coalition must be prepared to grasp its power firmly, to exercise it actively, to define and mature its ob- jects, to press towards their attainment, and to relinquish power as soon as the force of action ceases. Every Ministry for some time to come is likely to be a special Ministry — that is, a Ministry called into existence by and for some special object ; and as soon as any Ministry ceases to fulfil any distinct and active purpose, it will be extinguished. Sir ROBERT PEEL must either devise new objects for next session, or cede to those who will,—unless, indeed, no one is prepared to go further, or propound something more de- finite than Lord Jonx RUSSELL'S prospectus.
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