Debates nub proceebinas in Parliament.

WANT OF CONFIDENCE.

The House of Commons reassembled on Wednesday, after the Whit- suntide recess.

The adjourned debate on Sir Robert Peel's resolution against the Ministers was opened by Mr. Sergeant TALFOURD; "who grappled with Sir James Graham, the last speaker before the adjournment.. The charge- against Ministers, said Mr. Talfourd, stripped of figures about pirates and foxes, was simply that they carried measures with the concurrence of their political opponents. The Ministers stood upon the table-land, of the Reform Bill, satisfied with what their exertions had gained, and anxious to extend the benefits derived from the change. Government could no longer carry every new proposal of taxation, war, and coer- cion, by triumphant majorities, as in the bright days of Tory domina- tion ; but now stood between extreme parties, and was obliged to seek new elements of power. If Sir Robert Peel himself came into office, the time would not be far distant before he would have to seek the aid, of the present Ministers in resisting the demands of hie Ultra-Tory sup- porters and the claims of his new Chartist allies. Sir Robert had boasted of the support which he had given to Ministers on the Privilege question : was any Roman virtue requisite for that, when, as an ex- pectant of office, be was himself interested in maintaining the privileges of the House ? After touching upon several of the points of difficulty in public affairs, either to Ministers or to Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Talfourd again reverted to Sir James Graham's simile about foxes : the simile was not new, for it had been used by Sir Robert Peel when Sir James himself sat on the Treasury Bench as a supporter of Earl Grey's. Cabinet, in denouncing the Reform Bill agitation.

Mr. HODGSON Hiram did not accuse the Government of premeditated hostility to the interests of the country, but he must say that it was a Go- vernment of easy virtue : he saw no security that next session they might not make the Ballot a Cabinet question and the Charter an open question., Mr. GILLON cordially assented to the doctrine of Free Trade promul- gated by Ministers ; but he thought that a property-tax ought to form part of their scheme of finance. Mr. JAMES Gnarras was fatly pre- pared to give his confidence to the present Administration, and espe- cially to Lord Palmerston's foreign policy; but he could not support their financial policy. What would become of Ireland, if the prohibi- tion were removed from the thirty-four or thirty-five articles of pm- vision upon which it was now imposed ? It was idle to say that Ireland would be a manufacturing country : that day was far distant.

Lord CLAUDE HAMILTON observed, that in citing the precedent of Mr. Pitt, the fact was uniformly kept out of sight that his minorities were conistantly increasing throughout his struggle with the House of Commons. He censured the Ministers for the unconstitutional en- deavour to throw obstiteleS in the way of the Government that was W. pReceed them. Sir GEORGE STAITNTON rose to defend the Ministerial policy in China, to which Sir James Graham had alluded. Sir James had quoted the Emperor Napoleon, who said that it would be very dis- astrous to England to engage in a war with China : Sir George did not regard that illustrious person as any great authority on Chinese affairs; the Duke of Wellington was a better authority, and be had excepted China from his general condemnation of the Ministerial policy, declar- ing the war with that country just and necessary. As far as the taking of Chusan, the expedition had been completely successful ; and at the subsequent want of success he was not altogether surprised : he had pre- dicted that the war would be protracted. He deprecated the divisions in this country on the subject : he had seen a memorial from Commis- sioner Lin t the Emperor of China, calling on China to resist the Eng- lish, on the ground that they were a divided people. What Govern- ment could do they had done : when they found that one plenipotentiary had failed, they immediately appointed another ; and from all he him- self had known of Sir Henry Pottinger in India, he felt confident that British interests in China were quite safe in his hands. Sir WALTER JAMES observed, that Ministers had met with the most extraordinary good fortune in all their foreign policy ; but it was all owing to chance, and not to their own merit; or if they had any credit for that, they must be answerable for their mismanagement in China. Sir Walter repeated some of the arguments already used ; and declared that the contest must soon come between Property and Demo- cracy, Universal Suffrage, and the Ballot—and the sooner it came the better. Had Ministers, he asked, the confidence of the Church, of the Army, the Navy, the Law, of any of the professions, of the gentry, the Colonial interests, the artisans, or even of the manufacturers ? They bad the confidence only of a few among the latter, who expected en- richment from a repeal of the Corn-laws. Mr. WALLACE, without inquiring into the sincerity of Ministers, would support them in their present policy. In reference to the Post- office, both sides of the question should be looked at, the actual advan- tages as well as its deficiency— Be was willing. to confess that he bad been very disappointed in the num- ber of printed circulars that were transmitted through the post. He had been led to expect that there would have been an enormous increase of printed circulars, but such had not been the result of the alteration. The manuscript correspondence had, however, greatly increased ; and that increase, he was glad to say, was daily progressing. He would refer the House to the number of letters which passed through the London Post-office alone, as he thought that the Metropolis was a fair index to the whole country. He would take four weeks in May 1839, and the same period for the years 1840 and 1841, by which an idea would be obtained of the immense circulation of letters. In the four weeks of May 1839, 1,619,755 letters passed through the London Post-office ; during the same period in 1840, 3,461,000; and in four weeks in May 1841, 5,220,000 letters passed through the London Post-office.

Mr. CRESS WELL taunted Ministers with their retractations of policy, on the Appropriation-clause, the Jamaica Bill, and other questions. If a vote of want of confidence had been refused on Sir John Yarde Buller's motion, the effect of that majority was completely neu- tralized by the defeat on Prince Albert's allowance. He read a de- scription of an uproarious meeting at Stroud, and asked if the present policy of Ministers was intended to promote similar meetings throughout the Three Kingdoms? Lord John Russell would be called in history the head, not of the " Squeezable Ministry," as Mr. Waktey had called them, but of the " Wicked Administration."

Dr. LIISHINGTON denied the right of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to bind up the three questions of sugar, timber, and corn, in one ; but nevertheless, he would not oppose the Ministry generally on account of the one question of sugar. He cited the adherence of Mr. Byng, Mr. Denison, and Lord Holland, to prove that in their general policy Mi- nisters had not departed from Whig principles. He denied the appli- cability of the precedents which Sir Robert Peel had quoted to show that Ministers were obliged to resign— According to every precedent referred to by him, it appeared that whenever a resignation had taken place in consequence of the Ministry not commanding a majority for the purpose of legislation, it had occurred in consequence of there being an absolute impossibility of dissolving the Parliament. Thus, in the case of Sir Robert Walpole, it would have been in vain for him to have appealed to the people against the decision of a Parliament only a few months assembled ender his auspices and under all the influence of the Crown. So in 1830, the right honourable baronet was himself defeated in a Parliament assembled by himself, and he resigned. The right honourable baronet said it was absurd to carry on the Government with the existing Parliament : what was the case of Mr. Pitt in 1784? The Parliament then was called by his adversaries, and being defeated he determined to appeal to the country. The present Parlia- ment had sat four years ; and during that period many important measures had passed though others had been successfully resisted. Now, he wanted to know whether it was not competent for the Government, consistently with the spirit of the constitution, to go to the country, to explain what they had done and had attempted to do, and to call on the country to compare their policy with that of their opponents, who would, if they left office, succeed them.

Dr. Lushington asked how Sir Robert Peel's " difficulty with Ire- land" had been removed, with Lord Stanley's Irish Registration Bill to usher in anew Government? Would the supporters of the despotic policy of Russia, Germany, and Prussia maintain peace in Europe ? This Government had spread education from the mountains of Berwickshire to the mines of Cornwall. He had heard a political agent of the West Indies give his tribute of praise to the Colonial government, and Dr. Lushington believed that the present system of government secured tranquillity in those colonies. He deprecated strong language in dis- cussion, regarding the present crisis as peculiarly requiring calmness of consideration ; and he adverted to the distresses of the manufacturing districts, observing that no plan but that of Ministers had been suggested for their relief. This would probably be his last address to the House : he should quit that assembly adhering to his party principles, and leaving, among many political opponents, not one, he trusted, who was a personal enemy. [This personal appeal was responded to with gene- ral cheers.]

Sir Winuest FoLnerr asked why Dr. Lushington, in citing the names of old Whigs who adhered to the Ministry, had not included that of Earl Grey ? was it not that he, the head of the party, condemned the conduct of that Mhiistry ? He admitted that Ministers had a right to dissolve ; but not a right to remain in office without dissolving, in Order to Moot a question upon the food of the people, which they 84-

mitted that they had no expectation of carrying, while they stirred it for the mere purpose of excitement. It was precisely to avoid such excitement that Ministers had thrown aside the Poor-law Amendment Bill : but then, the Poor-law excitement would have been injurious to their party interests; which, on the contrary, they thought the Corn- law excitement would promote. He condemned the language of Mr. Macaulay, who openly endeavoured to revive the excitement of 1831. The people, he believed, would not again be ready at their bidding to

show the same spirit of bitterness and animosity. Sir William main- tained that the precedents relied on by Mr. Macaulay for the retention of office in spite of adverse majorities did not apply—

They consisted merely of isolated measures. The Peerage Bill of Lord Sunderland, the Fortification Bill of Mr. Pitt, lost by the voice of the Speaker, and the Property-tax, were all the measures of Ministers possessing the favour

of the Crown and the confidence of both Houses ; and it was acknowledged that there existed at that time no other party sufficiently strong to carry on the .government of the country. That, however, was not the case with the

Ministry which had called forth the resolution of his right honourable friend. It was far different when a continued inability was found in a Government to carry any measure through the House, no matter how much importance they might attach to it, except by the permission and sufferance of the party in op- position.

Sir William entered further into the question of precedents ; and then recapitulated the'history of Ministerial vacillation, the alternate opposition and adoption of successive measures ; finally quoting Lord Melbourne's often-quoted declaration against touching the Corn-laws in contrast with the present propositions of his Cabinet. He challenged Ministers to mention an instance in the history of this country where with a large deficiency in the income of the country the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed a budget as a means of supplying that defici- ency which they admitted they . never expected to make available for the purpose.

Sir GEORGE GREY was at a loss to reconcile Sir William Follett's ad- mission of the right of Ministers to dissolve Parliament, with his sup- port of Sir Robert Peel's resolution, which recognized no such right ; and Sir George again quoted Sir Robert Peel's denunciation of the Reform agitation, when Sir James Graham was a member of the Government— The right honourable baronet the Member for Pembroke had denounced a dissolution as reckless, dangerous and revolutionary. He supposed the right

honourable baronet, when he made that assertion, had come fresh from the

Library after reading the yet unfinished speech of the right honourable baronet the Member for Tama °Alt, made in the year 1831, and interrupted by a sum-

mons for that House to attend at the bar of the House of Lords. In terms it certainly was not so strong or vituperate as the speech made the other night by the right honourable gentleman, who seemed to think himself privileged to use such language towards those whom he was once proud to call his col- leagues; but upon that occasion the right honourable Member for Tamworth, seated opposite to the noble lord the Member for Lancashire, who answered

him, and to the right honourable baronet the Member for Pembroke, who re- mained silent under the attack, denounced in the strongest terms the course of the Government of that day, and said that they had laid measures on the table of the House without any intention of passing them, and for the mere purpose of popular excitement—a course which was fraught with danger, and which must lead to tumult.

Sir George could understand the objection to such meetings as that at Stroud, where Chartists came in aid of Conservatives, but not the ob- jection to a regular and dignified discussion of the Corn-laws in the House of Commons, unless on the ground that such a discussion might be inconvenient to gentlemen opposite. The question being merely whether the dissolution should take place before or after a discussion on the Corn-laws, he believed that the public in general would expect that a discussion of the Corn-law should precede a dissolution. He wished for sonic comparison between the claims of the two parties to power : be wished to know what measures the Opposition had introduced to show their new love of Liberal principles, except the Irish Registration Bill. Sir George supplied the reason why the discussion on the Corn- law was allowed while that on the Poor-law was not : the Poor-law Bill had been discussed over and over again, and nothing new could be said upon it : the Corn-laws would only require three or four nights' discussion ; the Poor-law would have taken up weeks, and would have postponed for a long period the dissolution for which some were so eager. Although Sir Robert Peel had been very "explicit," Sir George had not heard much from his explicitness : but from what he did gather, he saw no reason to suppose that Sir Robert had at all changed from that policy which drove him out of office in 1830. The House might transfer its confidence from Ministers to Sir Robert ; but let them beware of forfeiting that confidence which the people ought ever to have in their representatives—of compromising the respect due to that House—of surrendering the privileges, neglecting the wants, and opposing the wishes of the great body of the people.

Mr. HANDLEY begged to reply to the lecture which Sir James Gra- ham had been pleased to read Lord Worsley and himself upon political

considerations. He had never said what Sir James asserted, that if it depended upon him the Corn question should never be brought for- ward as a Government measure: he had only said, in denying the repre- sentation of a morning paper that he approved of the Corn-law measure, that if it depended on his vote Mr. Baring never would have an oppor- tunity of bringing it forward. Mr. Handley then answered Sir James out of his own mouth, quoting the reasons which he had given to his constituents in 1835 for not joining Sir Robert Peel's Cabinet-

.. I must add, (said Sir James,) that in my opinion the composition of that Ministry is as be as I can well imagine • for it is entirely composed of men to whom and to whose measures I have 'been all my life opposed." If Mr. Handley remembered rightly, that Ministry comprised Mr. Goulburn, Mr. Berries, and Sir E. Knatehbull ; who but a short time before had branded his right honourable leader with the indelible and warning motto, "nusquam tuta fides." Mr. Handley proceeded with the quotation from Sir James's speech : "I rejected the offer on the ground of public duty; for I could not think that I should have been acting right—that I should have been discharg- ing my duty to my country, or showing that proper regard which I consider due to my own character—if, because I differed from my late colleagues upon one point, 1 had plunged into opposition on all points with men against whom I have struggled during the whole of my political life : such conduct I should have looked upon as inconsistent with pnvate honour, and it could not have advanced the public good." To gain all Sir James Graham's talent and station Mr. Handley would not so sacrifice his private honour. He had no confidence in Sir Robert Peel's protection of agriculture-

The right honourable baronet had said to the House, " Look back to my speech of last year,. by that I am willing to abide." Now he had listened to that speech with the utmost attention ; and he remembered conferring, after the debate, with some friends of his who were supporters of the right honourable baronet ; and they had most completely concurred in this, that never had the right honourable baronet made a speech so full of reservations, so interlarded with "buts," and that there was no word in the speech which pledged the right honourable baronet to any thing, except the cuckoo-note of " I feel myself called on to express my predilection for a sliding scale"; and then, turning round to the ever-ready cheer of his admiring friends, the right honourable baronet added, " but as to details, I shall reserve to myself the right of dealing with them as I think fit." Why, a sliding scale was but the skeleton of pro- tection, without specifying those details which formed the pith and marrow of the

9nestion. He could give the right honourable baronet a sliding scale, if he wished it, which would have the practical effect of a very low fixed duty. He asked whether he fixed the pivot of his scale at 70s., 60s., 50s., 40s., or 30s. a quarter?

Where was the vanishing-point at which the duty was to cease ? He called on him to give the House some more satisfactory information than he had yet done, especially as in his speech the other evening he had made use of a sen- tence which fell with ominous import on the ears of the farmers of England- " The prosperity of manufactures is a greater support than any Corn law." The question to be answered was simple enough--did Sir Robert mean to con- tinue to the farmers of England their present protection ?

At the close of Mr. Handley's speech, the debate was adjourned.

It was continued on Thursday, by Mr. COLQUHOUN; who retorted upon Mr. Handley the charge of inconsistency, since he had once been a keen opponent of Reform and Catholic relief. He then went on to argue against the right of Ministers to dissolve Parliament before resigning, and against the historical precedents upon which they relied. Mr. O'CONNELL held the real question to he, which party should hold the reins of office ; and upon this he entered into a comparison of the Whig and Tory Governments, especially iu Ireland. He called to mind Sir Robert Peel's administration— What was the state of the country at that time? Was there any man ap- pointed to the Magistracy, or office of any kind, who had not taken the Shibbo- leth of the Orange party ?—No. Every office was filled by the adherents of the Government of the day. Then it was that, while going circuit, the Attorney- General ordered the Chief Justice to call the country gentlemen into his private chamber and to argue with them against Catholic Emancipation. During that period, the whole of the County Magistracy was selected from the ranks of Government. What step did the right honourable baronet take when he formed a yeomanry corps in Ireland ?—out of the 32,000 which constituted that body, 19,000 were drawn out of the province of Ulster. What had been the consequences ?—scarcely a year up to 1829 in which several persons had not been shot at the annual Orange demonstration • sometimes four, and never less than two persons, fell annually victims to that 'horrible society. The same spirit was still in existenec.

Mr. O'Connell predicted that the present alliance between the Tories and Chartists could not last ; and he ridiculed the new political prudery which made the Tories find out that they were the enemies of slavery, and refuse cheap sugar to the people.

Mr. Sergeant JACKSON objected to Mr. O'Connell's wandering from the question ; and then himself argued against Mr. O'Connell on the Sugar question. He threw hack on Ministers the charge of partial ad- ministration in Ireland— Here was a Government that pretended to set its face against the cry raised for the repeal of the Legislative Union. The present Governor of Ireland came forward and made a set speech upon that subject : he declared that the course he should pursue was, to dispense with the Magisterial services of all those gentlemen in the commission of the peace who took any part in the Repeal agitation. But with what sincerity had this declaration been acted upon ? The Repeal Association was established by the Member for Dublin lumself ; and he, the founder of the association, was at the time he formed the society a Magistrate of Ireland. Had he been removed from the commission ? There were many other Magistrates and Deputy-Lieutenants of counties who were Repealers; were any of them removed by this honest Government ? But what had been the course pursued towards the Conservatives ? A gallant friend of his [Colonel Verner] had been removed from the commission of the peace because he was present at a dinner in the county of Armagh while a certain toast was given. Another honourable friend of his was removed from the office of Justice of the Peace because his lady happened to wear some part of her dress having an orange colour.

Mr. O'Connell was in the habit of attributing the state of Ireland to the harshness of the landlords : had he not himself, in April, dis- trained on some tenants in Kerry for rent due only on the 25th of the preceding March ? He had been in the habit of attacking the absent : this question, as to himself, was put openly in his presence. The causes of evil were not the oppressions of the landlords, but the agitation of Mr. O'Connell and his followers, and the misgovernment of Ministers. Mr. Jackson proceeded to enlarge upon the shifts to which Ministers had resorted to retain office, and upon the impropriety of their present course.

Mr. O'Coseru., assailed as be had been, had never before been at- tacked for his conduct as a landlord— On all the land he possessed there was not a single farm that was not let for from four shillings to five shillings less than the adjacent farms except one, which was contiguous to the property of the honourable Member behind him. He had more persons living upon his lands, having houses and gardens, and paying no rent at all, than any other person who possessed four times as much property as he did. He bad never turned out a tenant for the purpose of clear- ing the land : whenever he had turned out a tenant it was on account of per- sonal misconduct ; and he had always given the outgoing tenant a year's rent as a bonus for going out. As to any distraint on any tenant of his last April, he never beard of it before—it never came to his hearing before. If his agent had done it in his absence, he was in utter ignorance regarding it. Sir DAVID RocHE bore testimony to Mr. O'Connell's forbearing and indulgent conduct as a landlord. In reply to Mr. O'CONNELL, Sergeant JACKSON said that his charge was made on the authority of a letter ; and he would communicate the name of the writer to Mr. O'Connell. Mr. SLAKE' complained of the growing and alarming indifference to the proceedings of the House, which its disregard to the practical griev- ances of the people had provoked out of doors. In some further debate, Sir Robert Peel's resolution was supported by the Earl of DARLINGTON, Mr. CUMMINO BRUCE, Captain HAMILTON, and Colonel CONOLLY ; and opposed by Sir CHARLES GREY, Sir WILLIAM SOMERVILLE, and Mr. Mtrwrz. The discussion was again adjourned. BRIBERY AT ELECTIONS.

On Wednesday, in the House of Commons, Mr. THOMAS DUNCONDE presented a-petition from Samuel Doubleday, complaining of notorious bribery and treating at Nottingham, and praying that measures might be taken to prevent a recurrence of such practices; and that the offenders might be indicted. A somewhat similar petition was pre- sented by Mr. Godson, from Edward Pillbeam Cox, a Nottingham elector, who made a very elaborate accusation— At the last election for Nottingham, he had been a supporter of the present Member, Sir John Cam Hobhouse. Since that time, he had been offered a sum of money to buy over the Chartists to the Whig party—which he would not consent to ; and then he had been offered a sum of money to go out of the way, or to go to Bassetlaw, Newark, or Walsall, to bribe the electors during the ensuing election. He had been offered fifty pounds and all his expenses to do so; and he had been informed that it bad been arranged with the returning- officer that the elections for Bassetlaw and Walsall should not take place on the same day. In order to test the sincerity of the parties, he had received a portion of the money, and had directed the rest to be remitted to him in Lon- don; and he had since received a letter enclosing a remittance of 20/. • which letter stated that the parties sending it had remitted that out of their own funds, and would send the remainder in a few days; and that they were going on as favourably as they could, considering the limited means at their disposal.

Mr. Godson gave notice, that he should call the attention of the House to the petition on Thursday the 10th of June.

MISCELLANEOUS. LORD WALDEGRAVE AND CAPTAIN DUFF. On Thursday, Mr. LEADER corrected a misrepresentation of his speech on the presentation of the Chartist petition last week : he had not said that Lord Walde- Qave and Captain Duff were permitted to be outside the walls of the ueen's Bench prison, but that they were allowed to be in the out-ward. JEWISH DISABILITIES. In the House of Lords, on Thursday, the second reading of the Jews' Declaration Bill was moved by the Mar- quis of BUTE. The Archbishop of CANTERBURY moved as an amend- ment that the second reading be put off for six months ; on the ground that, if the bill passed, Great Britain would cease to be an exclusively Christian country. On a division, the second reading was carried, by 48 against 47 ; and the bill was ordered to be committed on Tuesday.