NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE business of the Parliamentary session gets on like a heavy old-fashioned waggon in a lane full of ruts. First there is a dead halt, with scrambling and straining of the horses ; then comes an Impetuous rush forward; and then another halt. On Monday there was an advance Ministers, with some slight obstructions, _easily brushed aside, careered it gaily through no fewer than nine of the votes on the Navy Estimates. On Tuesday the wheels of the machine were again clogged : Ministers, opposing Lord Dun- can's motion on the Woods and. Forests, got themselves once more into a minority. The House resolved that the gross income of the Woods and Forests ought to be paid into the Exchequer, and the annual expense of management voted in the Estimates : it is one of the plausible general resolutions that remain a dead letter from the practical difficulties in the way of their being put into practice. On Wednesday, with a little more tact, Ministers -contrived to have better fortune : warned by experience, they -did not oppose the second reading of Mr. Milner Gibson's .County Rates and Expenditure Bill, but slyly took it under their protection, and got it sent up stairs to a Select Com- mittee; where they can burke it, or pare it down, like their own Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, to a mere preamble. In this there may be no great harm done : though the ,principle of Mr. Gibson's bill, to give the payers of rates in counties some control over their ex- penditure, is a sound one, the complicated machinery and enormous length of the bill inspire misgivings as to the manner in which it might work. On Thursday everything was brought to a stand : no House was made. Whether Lord John shrank from the arduous task of introducing his Jewish Relief Bill, or Mr. Hawes grew _sick at the aspect of the news from the Cape colony and fear of awk- -ward questions, or it was deemed advisable to husband the strength of the Ministerial phalanx for the tussle on the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill on Friday, the record sayeth not. Bating the rapid progress made in the routine business of the session on Monday, the first four days of the week were little better than a blank m the House of Commons. In the House of Lords, a Government bill intended slightly to modify the Passengers Act was advanced a stage ; and Earl Fitzwilliam gave vent to his Protestant zeal in a protest against the elimination of the effective clauses from the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. Apparently, Ministers, puzzled how to bring their Budget into a more acceptable form against the 24th, _have no, leisure for Parliamentary business, and Parliament con- siderately keeps their inaction in countenance. Tom is doing no- thing, and Dick is helping Tom.
