The session of 1845 can now be judged as a

whole. Regarding the promises with which it opened, it cannot be said to have dis- appointed expectation : on the contrary, though larger promises dawned as it advanced, and sank in disappointment towards the close, and although the session was not one of great positive activity on specific objects, it may be considered to have worked out some useful problems, and to have effected its full share in the advancement of opinion formally recorded. It opened with a remarkable quiet—a quiet continued in Parliament up to Easter ; and although the fervour of legislation, stimulated by the railway-speculators, and party feeling roused by the mere mechanical force of action, imparted some air of greater warmth to the latter half of the session, the quiet has really continued almost unbroken. The campaign began with a very moderate display of promises in the Queen's Speech ; and they have gene- rally been fulfilled. They were—increased Navy estimates, mea- sures for improving and extending academical education in Ireland, for improving the health of large towns, and for discon- tinuing the Income-tax or reducing other taxes. All those pro- positions havabeen consummated, except the one to improve the health of towns ; which has been made, but stands over till next session. The Income-tax remains • but the alternative reduction was adopted, to the further simplification of the Tariff.

But these general announcements scarcely indicated the heap of " bills " thrust forward. It would be as difficult as it would be idle to enumerate all ; lint the following are the chief, with the fate that attended them.

MEASURES CARRIED OCT. Reduction of the Sugar-duties, Abolition of the Glass-duties, of the Coal-export-duty; Reduction of the Auction- duty, Sm.; and Abolition of many smaller duties that encumbered the Tariff. Consolidation of the Customs Acts. Banking in Ireland and Scotland. New Poor-law for Scotland. Maynooth Endowment, and establishment of Irish Colleges. Removal of Jewish Disabilities. Commons Enclo- sure. Bill to punish Brazilian Slave-traders as pirates. Lord Ashley's bills adopted by Government,—namely, to regulate Juvenile Labour in calico-printworks, and to provide for the better care of Lunatics. A mass of Railway bills. MEASURES POSTPONED OR ABANDONED, [which of the two is doubtful.] Medical Reform. Drainage of Towns. Law of Settlement for Paupers. Charitable Trusts. Compensation to Tenants in Ireland. A larger mass of Railway bills.

PROMISED, BUT NOT INTRODUCED. Registration of Parliamentary Electors, and Municipal Reform, in Ireland. Further measures founded

en the Report of the Tenure of Land Commission.

Of a few among these the fate is known beyond the mere result of the divisions in Parliament. The reduction of duties on Colonial and Free-labour Foreign Sugars has been followed by considerable increase of sales to the grower, and diminution of price to the consumer : but, practically, the measure has been stretched into a new one, by the unavoidable reduction of duty on some slave-grown sugar, under "the most favoured nation clause" in treaties with slave-owning countries. The al- terations of the Tariff work so far well. The Maynooth grant is slowly influencing the Irish mind. The Colleges Bill starts with a damning sense of its imperfections : it will begin to take effect when completed by the establishment of a central University. The Scotch Poor-law is an instalment that whets not satisfies, the demand. The Medical Reform preferring particular to general interests, is cursed with an evident incapacity for struggling into existence.

There has been comparatively less of mere party hinderance to obstruct the Ministerial measures this session ; and the cause a the large list of projects frustrated or delayed must be sought in a fault common to all Governments, of our day at least-- the defective preparation of their work. Lord John Russell says, in extenuation, that the amount of official and legislative work is too oppressive : a good reason, not for cons. enting to go on doing _

it badly, but for altering the plan of working. •

On the whole, it is the Railway business which has been the most diligently and effectively pushed, large as the portion• is which stands for completion next year. It was clear at the be- ginning that railway-legislation would be the grand characteristic of the session,—and.it has been so; but some disclosures were not anticipated. The innnber of bills was nearly. two hundred and fifty ; the House of Commons was split up into Committees of five, to deal with the details' and with more or less felicity the details have been disposed of. But an unexpected embarrassment lay in the immense extent of fraud and forgery mixed up with the most respectable of these projects. The first exposure was that of the Irish Great Western Railway : it was found that, to make up the requisite number of shares, paupers and phantoms had been set down as capitalists to the extent of half-a-million and more: the Irish Great Western was defeated, hooted, and reproached with the opposite example of the London and York Railway. The London and York is the greatest of the enterprises before Parliament, and one of the most respectable : it is now charged with being vitiated by precisely the same prac- tices as those which caused the defeat of the Irish project : still the Commons passed the bill,—loth to disappoint projectors who bad got so far, or to frustrate the labours of Committee-men who had spent days infinite in forwarding the bill. And it is said that between these two extremes—the extremely lax Irish Company, and the extremely cautious York Company—all railway schemes are similarly vitiated. Such are the morals of the mercantile world under the intoxication of a speculating mania. With all this devotion of Members to Railway business, however, the paramount national interests have been so little regarded that no step has been taken to secure the safety of the public whose fate compels it to travel by railway ; and when at the eleventh hour, under the impulse of a dozen bad accidents, Lord Palmerston suggests a bill to give the Railway Committee of the Board of Trade some effectual power of control, he is put aside With a sneer from Mr. Goulburn, and a demand for deliberation and caution by Sir George Clerk. The jobbing interests will not brook delay ; but the vested interests of the people in their own limbs and lives may stand unprotected, for consideration next year ; so potent is the trading spirit in Parliament.

Apart from its labours for the public, Parliament has performed some achievements for itself as a body ; each House having had a few little questions of privilege on hand. The Commons have paid Mr. Attorney Howard damages, and threaten him with a writ of error on theoretical points ; and they have made Mr. Phillips and some other attornies succumb. The Lords have been equally successful with Mr. Harlow the tobacconist. And some ulterior questions of the kind remain for disposal. Such are the acts of Parliament in the six months. We have next to glance at the position of the several parties into which it is divided, now so numerous. All parties exhibit signs of being weakened—more by some inherent decay than by the strength of opponents. The fact appears to be, that no single pasty has fully kept pace with public opinion ; which, again, is itself unsettled and distracted by different objects. The result upon the several parties and sections is, that none dares to appeal to the power whence it must after all derive real sustenance, but strives to rub on by keeping up a semblance of intelligence with the public and a boast of strength which it dares not bring to a full test by bold and decisive deeds, lest the deeds should be dis- aVowed. The difference lies in the degree to which each party is in discredit.

The most so, perhaps., lathe old Ultra-Tory party; whose prejudices have gone out of fashion, whose tricks of government have failed, *hose battered arguments no one has remembered to patch up With new piecings. Of this party, the Pietists who swear by Church and State are reduced to a band of gentlemen so few in number as to throw an air of ridicule on their devoted resistance to every relaxation in the ancient code of intolerance; ridicule being the most dangerous of all influences for political parties to encounter. The Agricultural Protectionists are nearly in the dame predicament ; and when Mr. Miles or Mr. Bankes made a peremptory demand that their interests should be "consi- dered," the overwhelming majority against them showed how

little consideration survives for the kill-their-own-mutton country gentlemen," who have forgotten to read up their poli- tical economy, and to disguise their exclusive projects in free trade "principles."

The Whigs began the session, in the person of Lord John Rus- sell, by cavilling, with glances at the Whig Budget of 1841, otherwise forgotten ; they end the session, still in Lord John by cavilling: the whole burden of their song is, that if Ministers are praised for doing something, the Whigs could have done it better. It was obvious that they began the session without a plan or a policy; they went on without either; they finish with- out either, except that some notions dawn upon them simply of outdoing the Tones. Thus while Lord John, in his retrospect of the session, sneers at Sir Robert Peel because his principles of "protection" have grown "fine by degrees and beautifully less," "lied duty" has grown "equally evanescent: he now it in the abstract, without naming any sum, so that it has from 8s. to Os.; while he is evidently drifting towards rs's position a total repeal. erston has been the other active Whig; and he has y nibbles at the right of search, the new convention ce, and other foreign matters—without result. But the manner has been very strange: in his efforts to dä..

mage this Administration, he hatnotenrupled to make asserti respecting the defenceless state of the country, which are atrociou

if &Ise, most rash and culpable if true. So reckless a talker cannot expect a return to office with its responsibilities : he speaks like a

desperate man, hopeless of ever regaining power, and conscious of some special exchision; nay,.it might almost be supposed that he felt a spite against the country for neglecting him and his pre-

tensions, and wished to injure it in the struggle to maintain its station in the world. The French journalists read his allegations somewhat after that fashion ; and the Presse says that he has " established the fact that France may grapple with her ancient rival on her own soil." He has courted invasion!

To these mouthpieces of faction, Lord Melbourne's speech, delivered this week in Fishmongers Hall instead of Parliament, is a severe rebuke, with its calm and impartial glance at Sir Robert Peel's practical measures. The great Whig deed of the session was the motion of Lord John Russell's resolutions ; which purported to be about the state of the working classes, but really were about the merits of the Whig as compared with the Conservative Ministers. There was no popular response to the claptrap : the hurrah was confined to a few Whig journals. The ungrateful people were quietly work- ing for themselves, negotiating with their employers for a prac- tical shortening of time without Parliamentary intervention, and for higher wages; and, with the help of the last good harvest and prosperity—better coadjutors than any statesmen of them all— they succeeded. For all the Whigs did, the people might have remained where they were in 1841not a very desirable situation.

The Free-traders have done nothing very striking. Mr. Cob- den made a good move, for inquiry into the operation of protec- tion on farmers ; Mr. Ward made his annual demand for inquiry into the "special burdens" on land Mr. Villiers, for total abo- lition of the Coin-laws: some excellent speeches were delivered, and on the whole no ground was lost ; but the good harvest an the ease of prosperity were against any effective action on the Corn-laws in Parliament. The best advance was made by the pleasant holyday-making style of practical disquisition out of doors, in the Free Trade Bazaar, and by Sir Robert Peel's quiet, cautious process of undermining " protection " with quasi Pro- tectionist admissions and sweeping inroads on the outposts—the lesser duties in the Tariff.

The Irish Members have found how much attention has been paid to Ireland, how little obtained by themselves. If they have attracted more notice in Conciliation Hall, and have done their work more effectually there, the reason is not altogether that the manoeuvre was the most skilful, but partly, it may be inferred, because many of them are best adapted for shining in the pro. vincial and unlicensed assembly. If they had known their oppor- tunity better, they would have seen that, however agitation in Ireland might have extorted some of these late concessions, the attendance in Parliament to urge the practical results and im- prove the details would have furthered the real interests of Ire- land. Perhaps, however, it might not have furthered the imme- diate interests of Irish Members—traders on their country's wrongs. One other party ought not to be forgotten—Lord Brougham; copious in his legislation, universal in his activity, terrible in his hostile vigilance over railways. The House of Peers is said to have dwindled down to be the House of Lords Lyndhurst, Brougham, and Campbell ; and as he is the most active partner,— acting for both sides, against both sides, and by himself,—it is really little more, as a substantive body, than the House of Brougham. The Three Estates now are Queen, Brougham, and Commons.

Amid all this inertness of large public elements, all this con- flict of party and sectional interests, the position of Ministers has been seriously affected. Its personnel has been altered. Lord Eliot had left it just before the session opened ; so did Mr. Glad- stone, on a punctilio ; Lord Stanley was transferred to the Upper House, as if wanted there and not wanted in the Commons; there was some shifting among the Fremantles, the Sidney Her- bert,s, and others of the second and lower ranks ; and some of the subordinates have resigned in disgrace. In the person of leading members the Cabinet has incurred discredit. Sir James Graham obstinately dabbled in scandal, in the affair of Mr. Mazzinis Lord Aberdeen had to bear the brunt in the awkward affair of the brothers Bandiera, and, more recently, in the different kind of disagreeable work, the task of rebuffing Spain's advances to- wards free trade with diplomatic technicalities. Lord Stanley has exhibited himself as a greatly deteriorated speaker in the House of Peers, and as an incompetent statesman in his own de- partment. The Duke of Wellington has become a mere utterer of remarks, often judicious, sometimes otherwise. But, after all, the Government is Sir Robert Peel; and his position determine its whereabout.

Peel has both gained and lost strength. By the mere perse- verance of his policy, he has gained adherents among those who opposed him : the slow thinkers of the middle-classes-have began to understand him, and, having come round to agree with those who counted him the beat man to be had under the circumstan are now disposed to regard him as the best man, possible,—a mel statesman, not to be questioned, whose bit-by-bit policy realizes .the slow natural progress of ages ; and profane zealots in the new faith have gone so far as to adopt the cry of" Peel and Providence." On the other hand, his liberalized career is viewed by a eons sislerable portion of his original party adherents With increasing

L disgust•, and he has had need of all the prestige attaching to his

Vnal influence and ability in order to mamtain his ground. , in the wish to stave off some good projects not included in his own programme, though strictly suited, to it, he has Consented to use for the occasion pretexts of so low a standard is to reflect a damaging discredit on the utterer. Of that kind were the paltry arguments with which, after advocating the ab- sence of sectarian distinctions in Ireland, he resisted Mr. Rusher- turd in abolishing religious tests in Scotland. The pretexts for opposing Mr. Hutt's demand to admit corn from Australia on the same terms as from Canada, were of a still baser metal—the dread of competition from foreign corn imported into Canada, and thence into this country by a second voyage across the ocean ! These are not trifles, but grievous disparagements to the Minister's repute for ability ; not merely inconsistencies, but niaiscries ; not merely violations of principle, but violations of the principle of his hold on office—the practical common sense recognized by all the world. Sir Robert Peel is maintained in office by the general belief that he is the statesman aptest to learn what it is that all men of the world are agreed, at any one moment, must now be done, and ready to act on that knowledge : and when he borrows pretexts which are puerile and silly, he points out flaws in his own lease of power. Perhaps the session has developed a yet more serious defect in his capacity as a statesman—the want of power over his colleagues. It may be doubted whether he has in any eminent degree the faculty of estimating the import and value of an individual as a colleague. There is a glaring lack of mark and ability in some of the second officers in most important departments. Even in the higher offices, he shows a want of tact in selecting, sub- duing, and commandin&• men. Symptoms of disagreement among the members of his Cabinet peep out too often. He himself ex- hibits aspirations utterly at variance with those of his lieute- nant in no less important a post than the Secretaryship of State km the Colonies ; yet he seems unable to command fulfilment of his own purpose. When Lord Stanley: was hurrying New Zealand to ruin and his Administration to irretrievable disgrace, the Premier should peremptorily have arrested his errant col- league : he should have said, "This is an unstatesmanlike posi- tion—you must retreat from it, or withdraw from the Cabi- net"; and should thus have enforced his own wiser view. But no ; Lord Stanley was left alone in his wrongheadedness, till he got committed and identified with a course of error, and the mischief became irreparable. Even if the Premier deems it a point of honour to uphold his colleagues at all risks his utter ab- stinence from timely intervention in each department is not friendly to them : he suffers them to drag upon themselves disgraces from which he might save them, while serving public interests. Perhaps it was, in the particular in- stance, thought that indulgence was due to the Steward of Goodwood Races for relinquishing, as Sir Robert said not a quarter of a century ago, "the pleasures of youth"— soniething to the Derby branch of the house of Stanley, which lent its quasi-regal and traditional influence to grace the Cabinet: but the Premier might have been as independent of such support as he was of the ducal countenance of Buckingham or Richmond. Probably he attaches too much weight to mere knack in debating, as men are apt to overvalue the importance of those things in which either their own forte or their own foible lies. A skilled debater himself, Sir Robert Peel thinks too much that all is settled by a mere show of victory, for the moment, in a "discussion" or a division. In consequence, he retains a bad colleague, and is betrayed into a false position.

These mischances and mistakes have done something to shake the popular faith, that, among available statesmen, Sir Robert Peel is the best for the day. They will not prevent the future historian from perceiving, that, while his power was somewhat on the decline, he vindicated in his assertion of opinion that acuter, bolder, and more liberal policy, which has distinguished his riper years, and has made him one of the most efficient agents in bringing the average public opinion of the country to its present advanced stage.