14 FEBRUARY 1857, Page 1

NEWS OF THE WEEK.

THE aspect of the Parliamentary sky has changed. The formidable clouds which hung over the Ministerial fortunes have been replaced by a gleam of sunshine. The storm which appeared to have been conjured up is passing away, and the fantastic forms which the clouds assume alter in passing ; Mr. Disraeli's dragon, which on his approach looked so frightful, in his departure asstmes the guise of a Mother Shipton. Instead of being threatened with exposure for collusion with Austria, with denunciation for excessive Estimates in peace time, with defeat for an unconstitutional obstinacy in maintaining the war-tax upon income, Ministers now appear as the reformers of our military establishments and the reducers of taxation, and the story of an Austrian collusion is explained away.

The second part of the story about the Austrian treaty conspiracy is an amusing specimen of the way in which Mr. Disraeli, leading counsel for the Tory interests, gets up a ease. Last week he was left by Lord Palmerston's contradiction in the position of either having originated a false statement, or of being the unconscious repeater of a false statement ; and his own party avowed that it awaited explanations with some solicitude. At the Monday sitting of the House of Commons, Mr. Disraeli gave notice of explanation ; he made the explanation on Tuesday, and there was a supplemental conversation on Thursday. In our digest of Debates and Proceedings in Parliament the reader will see the elaborate method in which the artist-statesman, after his newest manner, endeavoured to construct and to preserve the show of an accusation. His prefaces were so long as to provoke cries of "question," which he exorcised by promises of "details." Yet after all he did nothing more than repeat what he stated last week,—that there was a secret treaty between France and Austria, "instigated" by England, guaranteeing to the despotic empire its Italian possessions. The one particular which was ushered in by these important prefaces was the date of this secret treaty—the 22d of December 1854. Why, this is nothing more than a specific form of the " understanding " on the subject, which everybody surmised, by which France engaged to protect Austria if she should join in defensive and offensive operations against Russia, and if Russia should take her in the rear by means of Italian insurrections. As Austria did, not join in the offensive and defensive operations, the occasion never arose ; the treaty never was carried into effect ; and, Lord Palmerston had heard, "was never signed." This last point was a mistake, which he corrected on Thursday evening ; and Mr. Disraeli did not neglect to make much of the fact that his antagonist had been misled. Lord Palmerston's mistake, however, was of that kind which attests bona fides : he evidently answered on general information ready at hand; whereas Mr. Disraeli's statement, mistakes and all, had been, he avowed, carefully and deliberately studied. Lord Palmerston was treating of matters beyond the range of his own knowledge and action : Mr. Disraeli was speaking as the mouthpiece of some foreign authority, and could, we presume, if he chose, bring before Parliament the text of this secret treaty ; which would settle the question. In claiming "the indulgence of the House," he declared that it was necessary for him to establish the charge which he had made, lest the discredit of failure should "destroy him as a politician."

The most formidable element of the combination against Ministers was derived from the supposition that they were about

to abide by the full amount of the augmented Income-tax, and were prepared to claim excessive Estimates for the Army and. Navy. The efforts of the Opposition leaders last week to draw Ministers out were he more successful for being ineffectual ; their refusal to make any explicit declaration appeared to confirm the presumption against them. Mr. Gladstone had picked up some figures from the Arbroath statement of Lord Parnnure, and, treating the fragment as Professor Owen would treat the bone of a mastodon, he had logically produced a proximate estimate for the naval and military expenditure, showing a total of twentyfour or twenty-five millions. This accounted for the supposed Ministerial obstinacy in maintaining the Income-tax. The present week commenced with new challenges to Ministers to explain ; and they conquered by yielding. They agreed to break through the usual order, by bringing forward the financial statement on the Friday of this week ; and they preceded that statement by laying the Estimates on the table of the House. The figures show very large reductions. The Army Estimates give a total for the ensuing year of 11,225,0001. as compared with 20,249,0001. in the past year, making a decrease exceeding 9,000,000/. This is mainly attained in the reductions of the effective service---the discontinuance of the embodied Militia, the disappearance of the Army Works Corps, the diminished pay consequent upon the diminished numbers of the private soldiers-5,000,000/. instead of 7,000,0001.—with corresponding decrease in stores, works, transport, &o. The Navy Estimates show a total of 8,109,000/. against 15,812,000/. in the past year, though the Coast Guard is included for the first time under the head of naval expenditure. The real decrease is nearly 8,200,000/. Here again the principal items of reduction are in the effective service—conveyance of troops and shipbuilding. The vessels actually constructed, and a very large proportion of the force in men, remain : the total strength in men is 38,700 of all ranks, with 15,000 marines. The gross total of the reduction in these Estimates is more than 17,000,000/. This sum alone exceeds the whole amount of the Income-tax ; and although some of the remaining charges of the war will have to be met, the reduction furnishes the Chancellor of the Exchequer with the power of dispensing with a very large portion of the tax. Thus the whole attack designed by the Opposition on the score of excessive estimates and maintenance of the grand war-tax has disappeared; and the Ministers, in lieu of the Opposition, stand forward as reducers of the Estimates, repealers of the additional Income-tax. For the time, therefore, their position in relation to the other side appears to be reversed : they have the advantage and the popularity.

Having repaired that part of their lines upon which the first opposite attack was directed, Ministers have recovered some strength for the session, and will have to stand or fall by the success or failure of their own measures.

The Lord Chancellor has reproduced his bills, newly repaired and decorated for the season, on Testamentary Jurisdiction, the

law of Marriage and Divorce, and the Discipline of the Clergy.

But it is needless to examine any points in this well-known string of legislative sketches, since they were one and all, in detail and in bulk, treated on all sides—by Lord. Brougham, Lord Lyndhurst, and Lord Campbell—in a mode which is best

expressed by the inelegant word eeouted. They were condemned alike for their flagrant omissions and their rash concessions ;

authorizing a legalized separation of husband and wife by deed, while neglecting to abolish the atrocious mode of action for criminal conversation. The Court of Judicature for Wills was to be a new Equity Court, under Chancery, presided over by a Common Law Judge. But enough said of the still-born bills ; which have raised in Parliament and out of doors the question,

How is it that the chief legal administrator of the present Cabinet, in days when Law-reforms are demanded by every class, should be a gentleman so totally unequal to the work as Lord Cranworth ?

In another quarter, a considerable step in advance has been made this week. Mr. Napier has proposed as "an urgent mea sure of administrative reform" the establishment of a Ministry of Justice. Sir Richard Bethell, heir-presumptive to the Chancellorship, fought stoutly to protect the Chancery against the removal of any portion of its jurisdiction : but, with all the professional ardour naturally to be expected from a lawyer of his peculiar abilities, he could not help giving the full force of his practical arguments in favour of Mr. Napier's "urgent measure." Ministers wanted to cut out the recognition of the reform as " urgent "; but Lord John Russell stepped in, and showed that on subjects of Law-reform he is as ready now as on some others. And, probably, indisposed to leave that eminent statesman the lead in this department, Lord Palmerston adopted Mr. Napier's motion with a good grace—not as a form, but as a measure to be carried out in earnest.

Sir George Grey has brought in a bill to settle the question of Transportation or Penal Servitude. The bill may be briefly described as sweeping away the present system and substituting another. Sentences to transportation are abolished ; sentences to penal servitude are substituted, and at the same time made of longer duration than they have been—that is, as long as sentences of transportation might be. A discretion, however, is reserved : the sentence may be in part remitted, with tickets-ofleave revocable by the Home Office ; or, after undergoing part of their sentence in this country, the convicts may be transported. Government, however, contemplates no new penal settlement, no convict-depots, no transportation to any colony except Western Australia. The supply of convicts is not adequate to the demand for their labour at the depots in this country. On the other hand, Western Australia could take 600, 800, or 1000 convicts per annum, while there are not more than 250 a year available under the existing law. Sir George Grey produced figures which show that the proportion of offences committed by the ticket-of-leave men is very small compared with those of other criminal classes ; that instead of increasing, the number is actually decreasing ; and that the gross amount of crime is also decreasing, in spite of the fact which we all know that the number of prosecutions is also increasing in proportion to the number of offences. The evils resulting from the present law have been exaggerated, and Sir George Grey recommended his own measure as calculated to provide a sufficient remedy. It did not pass without criticism, but of course leave was given to bring in the bill, with a view to its bona fide discussion by Members.

Sir George has also introduced a bill which in fact allows the system of Juvenile Reformatories for the whole country. In a short statute, he authorizes counties and boroughs to establish Reformatory Schools, to be supported by a county or borough rate ; and thus a class of institutions heretofore depending upon charitable contributions, and therefore fluctuating with private feeling or means, is placed upon a permanent footing. At present the bill is no more than permissive, but there will be comparatively little difficulty in persuading individual counties or towns to adopt the system ; and when it is adopted in many places, the House of Commons will no doubt substitute a compulsory for a permissive measure, as it has done in the case of the County Police.

Sir Stafford Northcote has a bill for another class of Schools, between the ordinary places of instruction and the reformatory : they would be destined for children unconvicted of offence, but found wandering in the streets without obvious means of subsistence or of education. The Schools would be to vagrants what the Reformatories are to young criminals. We have some experience of the plan in Scotland, where it is already at work ; but there are doubts whether the different circumstances of this country render the plan well suited for adoption in England.

Another private measure has been introduced by Mr. Hardy— a bill to enforce with greater rigour the restraints upon the keepers of beer-shops and coffee-shops against the sale of spirits, gambling, and other causes of disorder. The object is to improve the condition of the poorer classes, to diminish their temptations, and "to promote their domestic enjoyments." It is perhaps a question, how far the same effect might be attained by a shorter cut, in extending the principle of the law relating to licensed victuallers, by which they cannot recover payment on account beyond a certain sum,—refusing enforcement of any amount for the sale of beer, wine, or spirits, by retail. If such a law were to restrain the sale of intoxicating drinks, Mr. Hardy's desired effect would be produced : if it did not—if beer-shopkeepers found no difficulty in their traffic, or in recovering their debts, a very interesting illustration would be afforded on the subject of the law for the protection of credit.

The elections for vacant seats in the House of Commons are interesting, though they disclose no political truth. Nothing is told to the country by the reelection of Mr. Cowper for Hertford, on his appointment to be Minister of Education. The election of Mr. Kennard for Newport in the Isle of Wight, in preference to

Mr. Seeley, to whom Mr. Arthur Kinglake had left the Liberal side of the field, resulted probably from the greater fitness of the Conservative in his personal opinions to the personal opinions of the electors. Greenwich has returned a General, in the person of Sir William Codrington ; his opponent, "Colonel" Sleigh, having achieved a wonderful success in mustering so many as 1543 votes. Hull has accomplished an election without bribery and without rioting, and has returned Mr. James Clay ; who will take a strong position in the House of Commons if he can fulfil the promise of his speech. Nothing like an important contest took place env.' where save in Southampton : there the electors had the choice of their favourite townsman Richard Andrews, a country gentleman of the neighbourhood, Sir Edward Butler, and a candidate supported by the general force of the Liberal party, with the disadvantage of the Premier's good word. It seems, however, that neither Sir Edward Butler's connexion with local enterprises, nor Mr. Andrews's strong-coloured cosmopolitan Liberalism, nor the cry of "Ministerial interference in elections," could divert the constituency from the better choice ; and Southampton has retained Mr. Weguelin, a gentleman who appeared to us from the first a desirable acquisition for the House of Commons at a time when bankiog and finance occupy so prominent a place among the subjects to be investigated.

If we are warranted in the inference from certain public acts, a disagreeable feeling has arisen between the French Government and our own. A formal manifesto, almost official, has appeared in the Moniteur, arguing in favour of uniting the two Danubian Principalities, and anticipating that opponents of that measure would be beaten "in the councils of the Powers "that is, in the renewed Conference at Paris. Intrigues have been active in the Principalities and in Paris, for the purpose of bringing about a union desired by Russia ; and Lord Lyndhurst stated in the House of Lords on Monday, that well-known Pansclavonic intriguers and "a Prince connected with the, 'two Imperial families of Russia and France," had been in Paris, no doubt for the purpose of promoting this union. He asked for explanation. Lord Clarendon answered with an expression of "

surprise" at the appearance of such a manifesto in the French Ministerial organ. He was surprised, because an understanding had, been come to between the representatives of the great Powers at the Congress of Paris, that the subject of union should be referred, as an open question, to the special Divans sitting in Turkey. It appears from these facts that France has taken a course directly antagonistic to this country ; and Lord Clarendon does not conceal the annoyance felt by our Government at the Emperor Napoleon's unexpected stroke of policy, in getting up a special Russian alliance against England. Ought this to surprise us ? Have we had any reason to suppose that Napoleon has really been always with us, in spirit as well as obligations ? If we now survey his many-faced positions, perhaps we shall find that he has been with England at Constantinople, with Russia on the Danube, and with Austria in Italy.