Parliament reassembled as arranged on Thursday, but the first night's
proceedings were very tame. Their main interest, apart from the catastrophe in Zululand, consisted in the disclosure that the Ministry had nothing to dis- close. As we anticipated last week, they are not going to settle the Catholic University question in Ireland, or the County Suffrage question at home ; still less to plunge into the Chat Moss of Protection, or the muddy morass of Reciprocity. Lord Beaconsfield and Sir Stafford Northcote each delivered a diluted Queen's Speech, in which they mourned over her Majesty's 24th Regiment, commended in just terms the heroism of the defence of the post at Rorke's Drift ; announced effective measures for reinforcing Lord Chelmsford; restated their belief that the Berlin Treaty would work , showed that Cyprus was worth having ; stated obscurely that they should leave Afghanistan as " independent " as possible ; and promised a number of very ordinary administrative Bills, the most important being the County Boards Bill, the Criminal Law Consolidation Bill, and the Bankruptcy Bill,—useful, but not very exciting measures. Their plan evidently is to await the expected attack upon their foreign policy, and hamper themselves with as few measures as possible,—a plan liable, as we have just witnessed, to derangement from the unforeseen.
