NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE week has been finer, its telegrams more destitute of mean- -1- ing, and its speeches more successful in the endeavour to say nothing, than any week for some time back. Two Cabinet Ministers have spoken, and two law officers of the Crown, but Sir Charles Wood only praised the Mayor and Corporation of Don- caster, and said—of course, not in that connection—that he knew a good pig when he saw one ; and Lord de Grey only pronounced to the Town Council of Ripon a very just encomium on the late Sir G. C. Lewis, and an equally just censure on Mr. Charles Sumner. Sir Roundell Palmer, in returning thanks to the electors of Rich- mond for his unopposed re-election, had little to say after the masterly speech which we recorded last week, except to make up for the apparent prominence he had given to Lord Russell's name by a panegyric of no measured character on Lord Palmerston, in which, as regards achievements, he dwelt chiefly, as people will do in such cases, on the unquestionable merit of his longevity. Mr. Collier, the new Solicitor-General, who was consulting counsel for Mr. Adams, the American Minister, in the case of the Alabama, evi- dently wished, in addressing his constituents, to remove the im- pression of any Federal bias, and the more so, perhaps, as Sir Roundell Palmer's great speech a day or two previous was decidedly anti-slavery, and also hostile to the Confederate contract with Mr. Laird. Mr. Collier succeeded pretty well in producing the con- viction that he had no private partialities in the matter. " He, for one," he said, "would never be a party to straining the law of England at the dictation, or in consequence of the menaces, of any foreign Power." Probably no Englishman ever contemplated such a thing ; but if Mr. Collier meant that in case the Foreign Enlist- ment Act does not ensure our neutrality he would not amend it, simply because the Americans wish it, he said a very foolish thing, and one in direct contradiction to the expressed views both of Lord Russell and Sir Roundell Palmer.
