NEWS OF THE WEEK.
AGAIN a vast amount of business has been pressed forward in both Houses of Parliament; the legislative activity extending over a great range of subjects, amid which, however, the political element was reduced to a minimum. Mr. Locke King's Bill to abolish Property Qualification for Members of Parliament has been brought forward on the second reading, only to be thrown out, on the remark of Government that questions relating to the representation were to be postponed till the session of 1858. The same remark suffices to dispose of Lord Robert Grosvenor's Election Expenses Bill, and of Mr. Thomas Duneombe's Registration of Voters Bill. The Oaths Bill was read a second time, without a word of debate—but not in silence, for the Ministerial side cheered lustily. The Opposition preferred to take the more limited issue of an amendment in Committee, restoring the Christian" character of the measure, and in some degree relying upon the confusion which the Roman Catholics threaten to introduce into the Oaths question before the bill reaches the House of Lords.
Although politics have been sent very much to the background, some few questions of special administration have been entertained. Mr. Wise asked for inquiry into the administration of "the Duchy of Lancaster," as a certain part of the private property of the Crown is called. It costs immense sums annually, and yields a paltry revenue. The reply of the Chancellor of the Duchy is, that improved administration is improving the revenue, and that as vested interests—the holders of patent offices—die out, the saving will be still greater. Lord Goderich called Ministers to account for not having fulfilled an implied promise by adopting a competitive examination as the means of admission to the Civil Service. The answer was, that Government had never pledged itself to adopt the system of competitive examination as the rule of admission, which is still nomination by the official superiors in each department, but examination is used as a test of individual fitness, and it will be gradually extended. Mr. Thomas Duneombe stood up for the rights of the Land Transport Corps, the members of which have been summarily dismissed with a gratuity of twenty shillings and leave to get home as they could, contrary to the military rule that soldiers on discharge shall have a regular inquiry into their services, character, and claims ; and he suc ceeded in obtaining a Select Committee to examine their petition. . The mutinies in the Indian Army have been ascribed to. interferences with the religious prejudices of the natives—in fact, to missionary attempts at proselytism ; but Lord Fllenborough has drawn forth the assurance that such is not the fact—that the efforts of Colonel Wheler to extend the knowledge of the gospel have no connexion with the disturbances. Perhaps it would have been better to say that they have no ostensible connexion ; for Mr. Vernon Smith refers to those very disturbances as a reason for putting the negative on Mr. Kinnaird's resolutions, proposing inquiry into the administration of justice and the social condition of Bengal, at the instance of a petition from the Protestant missionaries in that Presidency. Some special questions of public economy have been virtually settled. Government has taken the first step in amending the law of Highways ; constructing District Boards, partly elected by the ratepayers, with the aid of a Surveyor appointed by the Quarter-Sessions. This looks rather like the first stone in local. self-government for districts not in corporate towns. Sir Frederick Thesiger has, in like manner, with full Government support, been allowed to take the first step for abolishing Grand Juries in the Metropolitan district ; the lawyers on both sides generally believing that the Grand Jury is unnecessary as a safeguard for the subject where there arc Stipendiary Magistrates. It may be so in our day, but we must remember that Stipendiary Magistrates have not always been independent ; and if the Grand Jury be abolished we must look the more sharply to the character and. power of the official Magistrates.* The Savings-Bank Bill has passed its critical stage, with a general acquiescence on the part of those representing the depositors, and a consequent overruling of objections made by the representatives of the dilettante managers. Mr. Hardy has been balked in his endeavour to bring Beer-houses once more under the same rules with public-houses as to licensing ; Government and the House drawing a strongline between the sale of an article in such general consumption. as beer, and the very different business of the licensed victualler ; and there is a growing disposition on both sides to doubt whether any interference, any kind of licensing protection, produces the benefits ascribed to it.
The rights of persons have been equilly under the reforming hand. The Divorce Bill has been materially improved. Lord Grey has endeavoured to procure a special inquiry into the ease of a Mr. Sheddon,—an interesting illustration of anomalies in the law both of matrimony and of wills. Sir Fitzroy Kelly has introduced a measure for placing wills of British subjects abroad under the control of the English law, instead of the lox loci ; a measure certainly adapted to the nomadic character of the Englishman hi these days of easy transit, but, as the AttorneyGeneral showed, overturning an established legal maxim, that personal property follows the person in being governed by the local law. The proposed law may perhaps have other consequences which lawyers do not at the moment perceive. A whole class of personal rights and wrongs has been brought under an improved law by the new bill to regulate the treatment of lunatics in Scotland. An interesting debate has arisen out of the Breach of Trust Bill ; practising lawyers of high standingrather confirming our own anticipation that the penal safeguard against the abuse of trust will deter private persons from accepting the office of trustee, and will thus occasion an inconvenience more than counterbalancing the advantages of the measure. Some of those gentlemen would have reserved general legislation, and have kept the bill to those abuses which have been illustrated by the Royal British Bank and similar cases. Lord St. Leonards takes a curious course : he introduced a bill to counteract Sir Richard Bethell's penal bill, by indemnifying private trustees, beforehand, for various breaches of trust if well meant and short of fraud.
Only three topics in this long list need any more specific remark. The Divorce Bill has been materially improved. The clause prohibiting the remarriage of any person convicted under the act has been cancelled. The right of the wife to formal separation on a systematic desertion by the husband has been reciprocally extended to the husband, who is allowed the same right on the systematic desertion by the wife. The proceedings for divorce and criminal conversation have been entirely remodelled. There will be one process, in which the wife as well as the paramour will be put upon defence, permitting her to bring forward her evidence ; and the punishment for the con victed will be either "fine and imprisonment, or fine or imprison ment"; the imprisonment being introduced, not by the Lord Chancellor, who has constructed this clause, but by the Bishop of Oxford as an amendment. It is an amendment of doubtful expediency ; tending, if the imprisonment be enforced by judges, to deter husbands from seeking relief, out of humane considera
tion for their erring wives ; and if it be not enforced, adding one more to those most objectionable laws which frown in the statute-book and smile leniency on the judicial bench.
The substantive measure of the week is the Scotch Lunacy
* For many reasons against the abolition of Grand Juries, see Mr. M. Hill's new volume on the Repression of Crime, p. 439, Bill. It does not adopt either the exact recommendations of the Commissioners, or carry out what was understood, at an earlier day to be the intention of the Government ; it neither adopts an independent Board for Scotland, nor extends the jurisdiction of the existing Board with two additional Commissioners for Scotland. It establishes a species of assistant Board, with a Commissioner and other officers ; the Board being subject to the chief Commission in London. Perhaps this plan evades rather than avoids the unpopularity and the cry of centralization which thsight have been provoked by giving up Scotland to the London Board, although recruited by Scotch members. It deprives the local Commissioners of that final and full authority which they
• would have carried with them as constituent members of the chief Commission. These, however, are secondary considerations. The establishment of the Board, with powers to carry out the act, will be an improvement too excellent to carp at. , The demand advanced by Mr Kinnaird, for inquiry into the complaints of the British missionaries in India, is calculated to increase the alarm already excited by the intelligence from Bengal. Mr. Kinnaird's statement exposes one of the causes of the unsettled condition of that Presidency,—an administration of justice rendered perfectly inefficient by the ignorance and scanty number of the magistrates, by the weakness and corruption of the police. This is the key to many Other abuses. The official admission that the abuses exist is wholesale ; but the caution administered by Mr. Vernon Smith, that the state of the Native Army renders it dangerous to interfere in India in the name of the Christian religion, involves a painful confession as to another cause which threatens to render our empire in India precarious. With this want of civil administration, the army is in a state that confessedly occasions alarm in the Government, and we are told that there will be improvement. Government promises that it will as soon as possible endeavour to render the building fire-proof, when the house is already on fire ; the official promise is almost as alarming as the official cautions.
An important act of legislation has been advanced a further stage at Oxford University ; it may be considered the second reading of the statute establishing what has been somewhat imperfectly called middle-class examinations. The subject was discussed at a previous meeting of the Congregation, but on Wednesday it was put to the vote. The general scheme was carried by a vote of 81 to 16. The clause creating the title of Associate of Arts was carried by 62 to 38. It is an interesting circumstance, and one promising well for the future both of the University and of the measure, that the minority appears throughout to have been actuated by a spirit of fairness. The dissidents have not stated their objections in a manner which implied any obstinate hostility, but which led one to expect that, having been fairly overruled, they will not refuse their assistance in honestly carrying out the new plan. Should they do so, it will be the means of rendering their own influence more useful.
It is rather remarkable, that while Oxford is thus cheerfully entering upon a broad path of " progress " with something like the zeal of a neophyte, a class that has received large benefit from reform is placing an obstruction in the way of a reform measure. The Roman Catholics have come before Parliament and the public, asking that if the oaths now administered to other Members of Parliament be remodelled, the oath prescribed for them by the Emancipation Act of 1829 shall be superseded by the new form,— that is, they wish not to be excluded from the use of the new oath. On abstract grounds this claim is perfectly fair. The fact that their claim was settled in 1829 is no plea against a further improvement in 1857, if the community has advanced so much further. But the great objection to their request is quite as true,—that if a second question, besides the Jew question, be introduced in the Oaths Bill, every hope of inducing the House of Lords to pass the measure this session will be frustrated. Thus the Roman Catholics would prevent the extension of relief to Jews without procuring any benefit for themselves. What they demand amounts to nothing more than to asking that the Lords, instead of passing a Jew Bill this year, shall include the Catholics with the Jews in a rejected bill.
Lord Palmerston has been invaded by a deputation of AntiSlavery gentlemen, with Lord Shaftesbury at their head, and in their hand a new scheme. The chief incidents of their plan are, a gun-boat blockade of Cuba to exclude slaves, and a "free emigration" of Negroes from Africa to English, French, and Spanish possessions. The proposal would have been freer from embarrassments if it had come twenty years ago. Even now it might be available for English possessions. But how can Spain or France administer a " free" Negro emigration ?—Spain, with whom " Emtmcipado " is only another name for slave ; France, who cannot even treat Frenchmen in the colonies so well as sumpter-beasts.
Some important public men in Paris are lending their assistance to the Government by coming forward at the elections as a sort of Opposition Members. Some of the names in the list of candidates are eminent. Gendal Cavaignac is the most conspicuous; M. Bethmont, M. Carnot, and M. Goucichaux, were
Ministers under the Republic ; and M. Ferdinand de Lasteyrie was formerly a well-known representative. How far the Emperor will resent or hail this recognition of his system does not appear. The list implies a certain fusion between the Republicans and the Orleanists, if indeed. it implies anything but the impatience of some individuals to be again taking a part in public affairs.
The overland mail brings more disagreeable news from India. At UMballah the Sepoys have joined in the "greased cartridges" agitation, and have shown a mutinous reluctance to obey orders for the extinction of a fire which was perhaps not accidental. And the Third Regiment of Cavalry at Meerut, with a scanty exception of men, has refused to make use of the cartridges. The late execution of capital punishment therefore has not stopped the mutiny ; which continues, and extends. One predisposing cause of the imperfect control over the soldiers is -undoubtedly the very scanty allowance of British officers, who are withdrawn for Staff duty, and even for Civil Service appointments. Will the improvement of the Civil Service supersede the necessity for this very objectionable mode of recruiting it at the expense of the Army ? It is quite clear that the first remedial step would be to increase the number of British officers. But probably a better use might be made of the Native officers, and a better spirit engendered among them, if they were no longer restrained from advancing beyond the rank of havildar, a noncommissioned officer. The Natives in other vocations of life have shown a very sensitive regard for British recognition, and there is no reason to suppose that the higher castes would not hail the prospect of distinction under British promotion. As it is, they are almost compelled to seek distinction in opposing British authority.
The American news is indicative of embarrassments for the rule of the new President. Although the appointment of Mr. Walker is said already to have settled the discords in Kansas, the Mormons appear resolved to compel a military invasion of their territory, by their obstinate refusals to admit the supreme authority of the Federal Government. And General Walker, escaped with his immediate followers from his dangerous position in Central America, has enjoyed a reception at New Orleans which is likely enough to be but the beginning of aggressive agitations in that quarter.
