NEWS OF THE WEEK.
PARLIAMENT has been in full career this week, in both Houses. Sir William Somerville has introduced a bill to improve the re- lation of landlord and tenant in Ireland; which it proposes to do in three respects,—by securing to the tenant compensation for his improvements, by defending a solvent and industrious tenant from vexatious process in the way of distraint and ejectment, and by facilitating the landlord in regaining possession of his land at certain fixed periods or on the non-payment of rent. If the bill were successful it would tend to establish these customs— the tenant would be paid for his improvements; the land would be held securely, for certain periods, during the punctual pay- ment of rent ; insolvent tenants would be cesplaned ; the usual period of holdingland would be twenty-one years. It would also override and supers'. the dubious and partial custom of " tenant-right." Success, however, arenas impossible ; so com- plicated is the machinery of the bill, 'Atli its arbitrators, umpires, assistant barristers, tenant's eotices, landlord's notices, surveys, estimates, revisals, appeals. The very object-. of the bill is one that implies a failure of At ground on which it must rest.: it is a measure to protect men from making iinprovident bargains : Sir William Somerville almost admits as much; but, going on the argumentum ad miserieardiam, he points to the state of Ireland, and asks the Commons to "try the experiment." A supplementary palaver on old subjects has been brought for- ward by a speaker of an older date ; the distress, with the Bank Charter Act and its suspension by Government, having been re- vived by that obsolete Chancellor of the Exchequer Mr. Herries. Ile propounded three resolutions,—one commending the Govern- ment for the suspension ; another pledging the House of Com- mons to go into Committee on the act ; and then, in Committee, he was to move a resolution to suspend the act until it should be altered. Sir Charles Wood, with a goodnatured malice, stretched a point to indulge his official ancestor as far as possible, by allow- ing him to carry the unasked commendation ; but he stopped the other resolutions, though not by a majority large enough to place the existing arrangements with the Bank of England beyond fear of change.
Mr. Anstey's supplementary Catholic Relief Bill has passed its second reading, the sticklers for the act of 1829 notwithstanding. Poor Mr. Newdegate avowed that he was quite " excited " ; and Mr. Gladstone, copious in refinements on both aides of the ques- tion, threw out some useful suggestions for Rome, touching
the questionable policy of appointing a " Bishop of Westmin- ster questionable
appointment at present illegal, and likely to create embarrassments.
A debate in the House of Lords, on the second reading of the bill to legalize diplOmatic intercourse with Rome, exhibited a re- markable example of the break-up in the quondam Tory party : the subject drew forth the Duke of Newcastle from his retreat, to express horror and alarm ; the Bishop of Exeter was almost as much terror-stricken; the Bishop of Chichester and a few lay Peers were rather calmer ; Lord Stanley half-assented, half-resisted ; the Duke of Wellington confessed a remnant of apprehension, but suggested an improvement in the bill, which Ministers gratefully accepted. The Bishop of St. David's cordially supported the bill, and scandalized Dr. P' hilpotts by regarding the title "Sovereign Pontiff" as an innocent expression. Why not ? Are we mis- taken in supposing it to be a secular and local title—" Pontifex Maximus "—inherited: by the Papal from the Heathen rulers of Rome.? If it be so, it is. the most appropriate of all designa- tions for the sovereign of Rome=more correct and less open to spiritual question than even the title of "Bishop."
The question of episcopal election has been over hauled once more in the House of Lords, cursorily, but with some promise of attaining a judicious result. The speakers may be ranged in three classes. The subject was introduced by the Bishop of Exeter, who presented a petition : he evinced a desire that the act of Henry the Eighth, " the Magna Charts of tyranny," should be so altered that, while the nomination of a Bishop should be re- served to the Crown, his confirmation should be rendered a really judicial act ; the Archbishop having power to withhold confirma- tion from a person pronounced to be "improper." The Lord Chancellor and the Bishop of St. David's expressed jealousy of any alteration in the law, as virtually tending to transfer the power now vested in the Crown to another authority. Lord Den- man and Lord Campbell think that the obsolete and supereroga- tory punishment of prannunire might be abolished. On the whole, we should gather from the discussion that any measure to prune the process of its needless and embarrassing forms would meet with general support and slight opposition.
The New Zealand Constitution Bill has struggled through the stage of the Committee, without the advantage of a single valid argument in its favour. The history of the affair from first to last presents a singular disregard of reason in the official author- ities. An apology has been hazarded for the constitution, that.it was composed in a hiirry : haste in its composition has been made a boast, as a feat of bureaucratic statesmanship ; but if the hand- ling of the measure was precipitate, it was not truly for lack of time. Considering the prominent figure that " representative institutions" and " local self-government " for New . Zealand– made in the speeches of the Whig Opposition in 1845, it might have been expected that when they entered office in the follow- ing year, they should come prepared with well-matured measures for carrying out their own theories : they took sweeping powers from Parliament for that purpose in the summer. of 1846; their constitution wet sent out some months later: it is understoodthat its real author wateufficiently conversant with constitutional laA to have it alla•p:a„, .1.1gers' ends; and it turns out that„ the had the aid offt.litinformation than was publicly krimvp.-at the time,—certain leading colonists having shovrathat the dopy-book and household nse, on which the constitution the its base, was wholly unsuited to the circumstances the colony. Lord Grey persevered, end the document reached the islands,. Gover- nor Grey sends it back with objections, and Lord GreyOoceeds to retract it as precipitately as he had projected it. CaptAin Grey only told Ministers, what they knew before, that the constitution would establish an enfranchised minority in part of the Northern island, to rule over an unenfranchised majority. Lord Grey's re- medy is, to suspend the constitution, and to establish provisionally a still smaller minority to reign over the whole islands—the Gc- vernor in Council, with powers as absolute as those of a Ger- man sovereign ! And this is done in spite of the implied breach of faith with the Free Church settlers of Otago, who went out in the trust that a constitution was to be established. Explana- tions of this extraordinary conduct were demanded, but not ac- corded—perhaps because the Colonial Office is not represented in the House of Commons : the Colonial Secretary is in the Upper House ; the Under-Secretary has no seat in Parliament ; Mr. Charles Buller has transferred his "vote and interest" from Colonial affairs to the service of the Home Department; and Mr. Labouchere, acting substitute for a representative of the Colonial Office, is evidently kept bare of information, and was totally un- able to answer for his clients. Lord -Lincoln suggested, and Sir Robert Peel supported, the proper course to take in the matter— to repeal the objectionable constitution altogether, and to set to work upon the task of framing a more suitable one without delay. Mr. Labouchere does not seem to have been instructed to enter- tain that reasonable proposition. If Ministers do not abandon their bill, it will probably be stopped in the Upper Rouse.
