In a Parliamentary sense, the principal business has been Lord
John Russell's statement respecting the advancement or abandon- ment of the Government bills. Lord John specified only' the principal measures: whereof those to be pressed forward are, the Irish Encumbered Estates Bill, the Borough Elections Bill, the Public Health Bill, the Diplomatic Relations with Rome Bill, and some others : the bill to repeal the Navigation-laws is to stand over till next session ; and Lord John also defers his in- tended motion respecting the alteration of oaths taken by Mem- bers. Of the other bills on the Order-book he made no specific mention, and it has been assumed that he does not mean to give them up ; but the terms of his speech certainly imply that at least a large portion of those measures will be abandoned. Hav- ing opened the week with that announcement of work given up, Parliament seems to have been seized with a natural fit of list- lessness.
The next piece of business in the House of Commons was that section of the "relief" far the Colonial sugar-growers which re- duces the differential duty on rum from Oil. to 4d. Sir Charles AVood's explanation does not make the logical reasons for the selection of that particular sum very clear : it does not appear why he selects some grounds of compensation to English distillers, and rejects others—that of leakage, for instance, after payment of the duty ; nor, on the other hand, why he should interpose at all to adjust the natural competition between English and Colonial producers of spirits. The 4d. is nothing but an arbitrary com• promise between opposite claimants. Lord George Bentinck has exposed a flaw in the Ministerial Sugar-duties resolution. The intention was to admit the sugar of the West and East Indies at a duty of 133.: but specific men- tion of the West Indies is omitted, and the East Indies alone are covered by the phrase " British possession into which the im- portation of foreign sugar is prohibited." Under the resolution, therefore, it appeared, the West Indies could not import their sugar into this country at the reduced duty, but must import it as the produce of " other British possessions" at a duty of 15,s. 9d. So the very object of the resolution is missed through the lax and
• The whole of this paper was written before the proceedings in Parliament, lad night, had taken place.
inaccurate wording ! When Lord George Bentinck pointed out the blunder, on Wednesday, Sir Charles Wood had not a word to say ; but by Thursday he had discovered a:loophole : although the Jamaica Legislature distinctly recognizes the importation of fo- reign sugar into that island, having it set down in the colonial tariff of import-duties, yet there are certain unrepealed Imperial acts which—so says Sir Charles—do prohibit the importation of sugar into the West Indies ; so that technically those colonies come within the terms of the resolution as it stands. Is not this backing one flaw by another? Thefact that foreign sugar, pro- hibited or not, is imported into the West Indies, does not at all stand in Sir Charles's way. It would be awkward if some troublesome person were to enforce the operation of these nnrepealed Imperial acts. But what a system of office, which sets one blunder against another, and bases the administration of affairs on a nice balance of legislative ambiguities !
The House of Commons was "counted out" on Tuesday after- noon. After spending some hours, at a morning sitting, in a minute discussion of the Highways Bill, and a short adjourn- ment, the House reassembled in such small numbers, that a Member seized the opportunity of giving a holyday to the legis- lators and the reporters. Mr. Henry Berkeley had on the paper a resolution commending vote by ballot, and Mr. Hume one ad- vising the transfer of the two Members for Sudbury to a Metro- politan district formed out of Kensington, Chelsea, and Fulham; but the joint interest in those two measures was not sufficient to secure the attendance of forty Members at five o'clock. So slight is the care for organic reforms just now.
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