NEWS OF THE WEEK.
TEE exact amount of Sir Charles Wood's surplus, and the use he
-means to make of it, are still secrets. His financial revelation has been put off till next week. It was promised for Friday ; but Lord John Russell claimed that day to renew the motion for leave to bring in his Anti-Title bill, which fell through in the hurried rising of the House of Commons when the Speaker cried "time's up" on Wednesday. The greater part of three sittings of the Commons was occupied
.with the discussion of this motion. As a whole, the debate was languid and desultory; but some progress has been made towards clearer notions of what the Pope has done, and what Parliament has to do. Lord John opened with an elaborate display of his- torical reading. The sectarian tone which pervaded his letter to the Bishop of Durham was tempered, but not altogether laid aside. The most successful part of his speech was that which showed (as Dr. Twiss and other writers had done) that in promulgating and acting urn the Papal "bull" or "brief," without pre- viously obtaining the assent and cooperation of the English Government, Pio None and Cardinal Wiseman have taken an unprecedented liberty, and usurped an authority never conceded to the Court of Rome by any state. Lord John's explanation of the scope and tendency of his bill was rather vague ; a -defect supplied by the detailed professional apercu of its pro- 'visions which the Attorney-General made on the second night of the debate. The Attorney-General, and after him Mr. Page Wood, threw a clearer light on the secular and political character of the aggression complained of, and the measure introduced to repel it. But Lord John's vagueness had left a door open at which no small amount of polemical theology crept in. Lord Ashley de- livered an enlarged edition of the Durham rescript ; and Mr. Bright pronounced a telling speech against the Established Church,—which, however, seemed considerably out of place, from his omitting to explain that it was provoked by the ap- parent inconsistency of the Premier, who had introduced a bill to guard against what he had declared to be the minor danger of Papal aggression, while he left untouched the covert Popery, in the Church of England, which he had represented as so much more perilous. The zealous Protestants—such as Sir Robert Inglis, Mr. Conolly, and Mr. Napier—manifested a wish for some more strin- gent measure against Popery ; the Irish Members, who spoke in the sense of their Roman Catholic countrymen—Mr. Grattan, two O'C,onnells, Mr. Edmund Burke Roche, and Mr. G. Moore—assumed the tone of men labouring under a sense of an insult offered to the religion of the majority of the Irish people ; Mr. Roebuck with vehemence, and Mr. Hume and Mr. Milner Gibson with greater calmness, seemed to descry in the Ministerial bill an attempt to legislate in an intolerant sense on matters spiritual. This Babel of incompatible yet not directly antagonistic views was an
..isistructive illustration of the mischief which the theological key- note originally struck by Lord John Russell had done. It is to be hoped that at the subsequent stages of the measure Par- liament will confine itself to the political considerations which alone fall legitimately under its notice. Mr. Disraeli's motion, on the unequal load of taxation borne by the owners and occupiers of land, engaged the House of Commons for two nights. Mr. Disraeli struggled with almost incredible success to subdue his propensity to sarcasm and brilliant antithe- sis: he was as modest in statement and conciliatory in tone as if in assuming the office of successor to Lord George Bentinck he had resolved to take Sir Robert Peel for his model. Not but oc- easional tones of his voice and turns of his sentences suggested a suspicion that this elaborate moderation was only external and assumed for the occasion. So long as Mr. Disraeli kept himself to the enunciation of general views, be was imposing if not convincing ; whenever he descended to illustrative details, his want of judgment and practical knowledge became painfully ap- parent. He certainly failed to "produce a proposition entitled to the sanction of Parliament and the confidence of the country " ; for he rather indicated than developed a round dozen of propo- sitions, and, throwing them down before the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, told him to choose among them. Mr. Disraeli, too, somewhat overacted his part as a candid and impartial arbiter be- tween Free Trade and Protection ; in fact, he proved, if he proved anything, that with a revision of our financial system English agriculturists may get on very well with free trade. It was amusing to observe the grave airs of good faith and perfect satis- faction with which the Protectionists gave their support to a mo- tion only tenable upon this assumption. One good hit was made by a Protectionist, and deserves to be chronicled for its singularity : Colonel Dunne remarked, with much truth, that every speaker on the Ministerial side appeared to have risen to disprove the as- sertion in the Queen's Speech that the agricultural interest is depressed. The debate was, however, interesting on account of the ability of some of the speeches, and as seeming to foreshadow new party combinations. Sir Charles Wood and Mr. Labouchere, from their official familiarity with statistics, were able to make good play against Mr. Disraeli ; but the speech of the debate was Sir James Graham's—close in its logic, weighty in its facts pene- trating in its scrutiny, free in its exposure, and rising in the pero- ration to a strain of impassioned eloquence. Sir James's allusion to Sir Robert Peel was impressive and touching, and his notice of Lord Stanley and Mr. Disraeli generous and cordial. His ap- peal to the House not to desert its Free-trade principles had a prophetic solemnity. That the warning was not superfluous, was shown by the somewhat ostentatious defection of two of the Free-trade Conservatives—Lord Jocelyn and Mr. Bernie Cochrane—to the Disraeli standard. Mr. G. Moore, too, went over on "an Irish view of the question "—he voted with Mr. Disraeli to punish Lord John Russell for his Anti-Papal bill and his Durham letter. If Mr. Disraeli laid himself under restraint in his opening speech, he made himself ample amends in his reply ; for in none of his addresses to the House of Commons has he ever given more free scope to his taste for humorous and caustic sar- casm. The division was a close one-267 for and 281 against the motion; a narrow majority, ominous of future complications.
Nothing else of moment has occurred in the Commons during the week. Questions have been put to Ministers on some delicate topics ; which they in general evaded with their usual skill in "di- plomatic fence. The Under-Seeretary for the Colonies was assailed by Mr. Adderley on the subject of the Cape, by Mr. Baillie on the subject of Ceylon, by Mr. Hume on the subjects of Ceylon and Borneo, by Mr. Goulburn on the subject of the cholera in Jamaica; but nothing was to be got out of him. Lord Palmerston was oracular and unsatisfactory in reference to Spain and Nicaragua. But the palm of nonchalant evasion is due to the Premier ; who, in reply to Sir Joshua Walmsley's question whether Ministers in- tend to amend the Reform Act of 1832, stated that he had for- merly admitted certain amendments of the act and certain ex- tensions of the suffrage to be desirable, and that "he would cer- tainly act up to that opinion when he thought the proper time had come to do so."
Throughout the week the Lords have been resting on their oars ; waiting, apparently, to see what the Commons will send them. Lord Stanley has intimated that on Tuesday next he will call the attention of the Peers to the state of the country : cu- riosity is agog to see how far he will reflect the latest phase of Disraeli.
