" TO WASTE A YEAR ! "
WHEN Lord Palmerston dissolved Parliament after his China defeat in 1857, we all remember the famous manifesto issued to the freeholders of Bucks, in which the object of the Premier's appeal was, in a sentence typographically set forth as a para- graph, concisely and dramatically declared to be-
' To waste a year." Alas, how party epigrams, like curses and chickens, will fly home to roost ! How prophetic of 1859 was the startling assevera- tion of 1857 ! Mr. Disraeli must look back with pride to the com- pleteness with which his famous line describes the results of the dissolution of 1859. If ever year has been wasted, in the parlia- mentary sense, it is this year. The session is practically at an end. Members are to go out just one day after the grouse come in. Where are the fruits of their labours ; where the harvest of the session? Is it the money voted to provide a bait to entice able seamen from the mercantile to the royal service ; or is it the Income-tax Bill which comes with a double rap at the pockets of the rich and poor ? We were promised Reform. How the shade of the venerable Mr. Rigby must *gloat with malicious satis- faction over the egregious fulfilment of that promise. La* Amendment was to be the glory of the Derby Government. But the splendid array marshalled by the painful Whiteside, the able Cairns, and the much-promising Fitzroy Kelly, where is it now P Gone, all gone, to the sacred dust of official pigeon-heIet.--
Bankruptcy Bills, Consolidation Bills, Transfer of Land Bills— cobwebs and darkness cover them. Where is the great Con- servative plan. for settling the question of church-rates ? Dwindled into mere cold obstruction. What has become of the reorganization of the Indian Array ? It has been the subject of a one-sided inquiry before a one-sided. commission, and like all the rest, it remains to be done. We have had a political sand- wich composed. of two party combats with a. general election. be- tween them, but the most substantial fruits of the session, are two positive results and one negative result—the Indian loans and the British Income-tax, and the frugal= of the pro-Austrian policy of the late Government. And if the utter absence of any- thing like great business achievements in Parliament,, coupled with the most notable legislative failures of our day, and the devotion of a year to faction fighting, constitute the wasting of a year, then the programme imputed to Lord Palmerston in 1857 has been. executed with a retributive distinctness by its author and his. colleagues in 1850. May we hope that right honourable gentlemen will be discreet in future, and not, in moments of histrionic vigour, sacrifice with such lavish generosity upon, the altar of effect.
But we must let bygones be bygones. The year 1860 is to be the anus mirabilis of legislation and finance. We are to have a great session, and make up for our wasted, years. We are to reform our representative system ; settle our finances upon a per- manent basis ; amend our bankruptcy and insolvency laws ; deal with the transfer of land and the registration of title ; set up a department of justice ; abolish our church-rates ; reorganize our Indian. army ; determine how much we will spend on fortifica- tion ; put our militia in order ; in short, do more in one session than of late has been done in ten. It is a brilliant prospect; we wish it may not prove a. Parliamentary mirage; but, alas I such things, have been,. and other years of promise have, when ap- proached, turned out to be as barren, as the present has been. We accuse nobody of desiring to waste a year. The thing is ridi- culous, and the phrase would never have been used had it not been deemed by its ingenious author to be cuttingly effective, whereas in fact it was a coup mansue, because it was not true, and its arti- ficial spontaneity was too manifest. But, touching 1860 and its glowing promise, we are not sanguine. It will, like other years, bring its own unforeseen labours and imperative troubles; and we shall be satisfied if one half the programme is accomplished, and 1860, at all events, not added to the list of wasted years.
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