NEWS OF THE WEEK.
Two more nights have been devoted by the Commons, this week, to the adjourned discussion on the Irish rate in aid ; and the proposition has been handled with a roughness that signifies little respect for it or its authors. The Irish Members differ. They generally concur that the money is imperatively necessary ; but while some few sanction the Ministerial plan of drawing it from the more prosperous unions of Ireland, others wish it to be drawn from England, or at least from the general funds of the United Kingdom. Others hinted at a more stringent measure than that of the Government. Mr. M‘Cullagh would sell the fee-simp fore ap Black the po d on all Irish property, in lieu of the general rate on property at present liable to poor-rates; and this amendment was supportepla..Lord Lincoln, as more equitable and more produc- tive. ,A was negatived by 237 to 164; and after some further resistimueg Lord John Russell's resolution was carried, by 206 to 34.
Although he supported the motion of the Cabinet, as such, on the ground that money however levied was necessary for imme- diate purposes, Sir Robert Peel gave the debate an unexpected and interesting turn by hinting at the necessity of a much larger measure. The land of Ireland, he argued, cannot be made to sup- port its own poor until it is in the hands of owners able and will- ing to devote capital to it and to employ labour : such help is not to be expected from the present proprietors ; at present more ef- fective capitalists will not purchase the land, because of the cost and difficulty in obtaining a title; and therefore he suggested the appointment of a commission to efict a transfer of all such lands as need it—the commissioners to buy up the lands and resell them with a Parliamentary title. The idea has occurred to the minds of others, and Sir Robert himself was careful to show that it might be traced as far back as Lord Bacon ; but he is the first, in our day at least, to bring it distinctly before Parliament. In his speech it appears as a mere suggestion, undeveloped and unshaped into a practical measure ; but it has the merit of turning the dis- cussion from mere official clerkship, or the tinkering of prescribed regulations to real statesmanship, or the guidance of national affairs according to the actual condition of the country by the command of its actual resources. The hint presents itself as a standard by which any future legislation on the subject will be tried ; and ere Jong some Ministry must perforce attempt the ob- ject which it contemplates. • Mr. Disraeli has made a great demonstration on behalf of the landed interest. On Thursday he proposed his resolution for going into Committee, and gave a hint of his plan. The real property of the country, he-argued, is exclusively charged with ten or twelve millions sterling, under the name of local taxation, for objects not local but national,—the support of the poor, the luaintenance.of roads, the administration of justice, the erection of gaol?, &c. On the other hand, from whatsoever cause, the landed interest is admitted to be in a state of serious distress. But he did not wish to abolish local administration, because it is
economical, and is connected With our habits of self-government ; so he would retain all the present local machinery and plans only be would pay half of all local charges out of the Consolidated Fund; thus relieving the landed interest of live or six millions. And where would he get the money asked Mr. Hume. Mr. Disraeli did not say ; he gave no details, only promising an Trish measure to follow this English one: and the debate stands ad-
journed till Wednesday next. Mr. Disraeli said nothing of oc- cupiers, little of the farmers. A contemporary glorifies him for Undertaking the reform of our local taxation • but his speech in- dicates nubio, gid the sort : he seems only to : *pole a subsidy the land which does not support its own poor, be- g to the rest of Ireland. On the other hand, Major posed as an amendment an income-tax of sixpence in from the Consolidated Fund in aid of the local rates—a gigantic rate in aid levied on the Treasury ; and a step half-way towards the so-much-maligned "centralization." Lord Mahon has moved for papers to illustrate Lord Grey's va- cilitating counsels in the matter of transportation, and has urged a renewal of that system ; and in reply, Sir George Grey says that a renewal is under consideration, with no doubt that it will be adopted. Lord Mahon asserts that the shocking disclosures of 1837 have been all contradicted,—which they have not ; and Sir George Grey has a variety of " opinions " on the subject, one of which is that perfection is unattainable : so transportation is to be renewed. Reason or substantial evidence in favour of such a con- clusion none was advanced ; it is, we suppose, "all a mattar of Opinion ": but it is evident that all parties, including Mr: Glid- stone, are quite at sea.
Mr. Henry Drummond has done good service, by laying before
Parliament a bill to effect what a Committee, sixteen years ago, pronounced to be absolutely necessary then but what -Sir John
Romilly now all but pronounces to be impossible-a register of real property in order to its more facile transfer. The lawyers of course
object ; not, we believe, from self-interest, but from the false com- plication of the present system, which perverts their ,minds, _ makes them believe complication to be needful fur accuracy in- stead of Inistile to it, and yet alarms them with the increase of perplexities, already overwhelming. Many lawyers admit the necessity of reforms, "in the abstract" or "in principle," but find practical details impracticable. They confess that changes there ought to be, but insist that they should conduct the process of incubation ; which they so manage as to addle every,meaure. To Sir Robert Peel's suggestion of an Irish commission, Sir George Grey characteristically remarked, that all the commission- ers must be lawyers and then their habitual adhesion to teChnicil forms would make their delays as bad as those of Chancery. :Eng- lish lawyers assume that this evil is inevitable. They forget that, in all professions, professional men are seldom the best judges of the broad effects of their own art : an actor cannot so well perceive the effect of a play as one of the audience can. Nor are lawyers essential to law : neither barristers nor solicitors have assisted at the promulgation of the first laws among any nation. Indeed, law as it exists among us is not a science, but a highly conventional art ; the principles on which it rests are much more clearly apparent to the philosopher, the historian, and the politi- cian, than to the professional man, whose mind is overlaid by technicalities, which to his understandino.a usurp the place of the essence of equity. The practitioners in English law are mostly ill-fitted to be law reformers ; though some illustrious example's of great law reformers among lawyers show that the English mind is robust enough to preserve its vigour undepraved; and in this very debate Mr. Page Wood proved that the hand need not always be coloured like the dyer's to his trade. Mr. Drummond carried the second reading of his bill by a con- siderable majority ; but whether he will be able to defend it from fatal mutilations by the lawyers in Committee' is very doubtful. Discussions on foreign policy have disclosed another dis- crepancy of feeling in the Cabinet, curiously coincident with that on Lord John's Irish resolutions. Lord Stanley interrogating, Lord Lansdowne explained that a contractor had been allowed to withdraw arms from Government stores, avowedly to sell them to the leaders of the Sicilian insurrection ; but he said that per- mission had been given through " inadvertence," which would be confessed to the Neapolitan Government, and repaired if possible. The same question was raised by Mr. Bankes in the other House, on moving for correspondence ; but it was met by Lord Palmer- ston in a very different style : instead of a simple admission, like that of 'his colleague in the House of Peers, he entered upon a bantering criticism of Mr. Bankes for meddling with matters on which he was not duly informed, raised verbal cavils about the terms Of the motion, was ostentatious of insisting that the terms should be altered, and agreed to it when they were so ; thus he evaded the question, and endeavoured to get up an appearance of
'having defended his conduct and triumphed. Lord Lansdowne regrets and extenuates what Lord Palmerston shields and defends.
