NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE Ecclesiastical Titles Bill has been read a first time in the House of J,ords. No opposition ;was offered, and-none is expected at the future stages of the bill. Ministers, however, allow a fort- night to, intervene between the unopposed first reading and the unopposed second. reading. Yet the House is not surcharged with busuiess..... During .the week, Lord Ellenborough has been waging a desultory guerilla warfare ; now throwing Jotee Persaud in the faees of Ministers, anon lecturing them on the administration`of the merchant seamen's fund, but venturing only on pro forma mo- tions, to be withdrawn after the speech for which they furnished a text had been made; Lord Brougham has postponed till an- other session his bills for consolidating the system of Bankruptcy with the County Courts, and for vesting Equity jurisdiction in these courts. The former, almost entirely remodelled through the numerous amendments made on it, he consigned to the paternal care of the Lord Chancellor, thinking " it ought to be taken Up by Government"; the other he withdrew, having no hope that it could be carried through the House of Commons this session. One creditable measure has been advanced a stage-- ate-Earl of Shaf6sbnry's Lod,ginghoUse Bill. It is indeed merely permissive, but it extends legislative sanction to two important principles,--that spacious, clean, and wholesome habitations, are an essential element in the education of the poorer classes ; and that the modern systein of improving towns by merely rooting out the squalid dwellings of the poor to substitute more showy buildings, requires to be regulated. Though the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill has ceased to vex the Com- mons 'hat House has evinced no haste to avail itself of the riddance to turn in a practical spirit to any business of moment. Mr. Henry Berkeley's annual resolution in favour of vote by ballot has been again carried,,its supporters having been allowed to engross all the talk,—to be again lost if brought forward in the shape of a bill ; and Lord John Russell, by professing his unabated hostility to the pro- perty qualffloation of Members' of Parliament, has afforded the movers of a partial enlargement of the law an opportunity of leaving that question in his hands. These two incidents have furnished "confiding Liberals" with an excuse for make-believing that Lord John will bring forward next session a large and liberal measure of reform. Such an inference from such premises resembles the divination of old women from shuffled cards or examination of the grounds in a cup of tea. - In finance there has been some desultory and aimless skirmishing on the miscellaneous topics which emerge in a Committee of Siipply., Ministers have been left in another minority on the Attornies' Certificate Dutr ; but have reversed their minority On the Bonded Spirits Duty: • - Mr. Hume has at list found an opportunity to bong on his motion for inquiring into Sir James Brooke's: proceedings in Bor- neo; and has had it negatived by the decisive majority of 230 to 19. The only speaker who placed the question at issue in a clear light was Mr. Gladstone. He reminded the House that the relations of civilized conimunities even with pirates are regu- lated by public law; and pointed-out the absence of all proof that this rule had been observed in recent crusades against pirates—not by Sir James Brooke alone—in the waters of the Malayan Archi- pelago. On these grounds, he "felt it his duty to vote, not for a motion proposing a hostile inquiry against Sir James Brooke, thereby marking him as the main author and the party principally
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responsible; but, in the absence of any defence or explanation, for an address, praying for inquiry, without distiietion of Parties," into-the very questionable and suspicious warlike proceedings in the -far, East. Such a view of the case, 'however, was too much above the comprehension of a whipped majority, who saw in it only a question of personal elimination and exculpation. They
. • came as partisans of Sir James „l3rooke, prepared to ,whitewash Kiln; and' they Niere not to be turned from their purpose.
