19 APRIL 1851, Page 1

NEWS OF THE WBEK.

AN easy, indolent, piektooth fashion of doing business, or rather Of leaving it undone, has been brought to perfection in the British Parliament. Our Legislature has been converted into a pow- curante club. As this is what the country would seem, from its ehoiee of representatives to wish, there is no call upon the re- corder and critic of political action to be in a fuss about it. A good many years ago' it was observed by Franklin that if you give servants little to do they will contrive to do still less. The public servants in Parliament assembled have been very suc- cessful this session in imparting to the sarcastic joke of the Penn- sylvanian humorist the appearance of a simple affirmation of fact. The work sketched out for them to do, in the Queen's Speech, was light enough in all conscience but though we have reached the Easter holydays they can scarcely be said to have begun it yet. In the matter Of legislation, only three subjects were recom- mended by her Majesty to the attention of Parliament,—the Papal Aggression ; reform of the Courts of Law and Equity; the esta- blishment of a system of registration of deeds and instruments re- lating to the transfer of landed property. A measure (if it deserves the name) bearing upon the Papal aggression has been read a second time in the Lower House, and will be committed in a. week after the Commons meet again. Notice has been given in the same House of a bate talus the Master of the Rolls from his own court to do part of the Chancellor's work, and to transfer the Church patronage of the ChThedlor to the First Lord of the Treasury ; but it seems extremely doubtful whether the bill will ever be brought in. As for the registry of deeds, it was alluded to in the Address in reply to the Speech, and has not since been heard of. The progress made in the financial business of the session is lath greater than that made in the legislative. Votes have been taken on the Army, Ordnance' and Navy Estimates ; but-the Mis- cellaneous Estimates have not yet been handled. The scheme of ways and means for the year embraces another three-years con- tinuance of the Income-tax, the repeal of the Window-tax and im- position of a House-tax, and a reduction of the import-duties on coffee and timber. The repeal of the Window-tax may be consi- dered as settled ; resolutions too, for the reduction of the duties on timber and coffee have been passed ; but there is still to be a discussion on the subject of the House-tax, and the tug of war on the Income-tax has yet to come. Even in regard to the inevitable routine financial business of the session, the Easter holydays can scarcely- be called a repose from labour • they are merely a varia- tion in the external show of Parliamentary idleness. The incidental and the volunteer business transacted in the House of Commons since the opening of the session has not been of a nature to palliate its remissness in the discharge of tasks pre- scribed to it by authority. The time consumed in adjournments, statements and counter-statements, occasioned by "the Ministerial crisis," was due to complications wilfully and unnecessarily in- curred by the head of the Administration. Sir William Moles- worth's important and comprehensive motion on the defensive ar- rangements of the Colonies has been elbowed out of the House without a decision, by an episodical debate arising out of the Caffre war. The result of that debate has been, a vote preferring inquiry into those relations with the natives of South Africa which gave rise to the war, by a House of Commons Committee sitting in London, as proposed by Lord Join Russell, in opposition- to Mr. Adderley's proposal to intrust the investigation to competent Com- missioners on the spot ; although Lord John admitted that the ap- pointanent of a- Commission would probably be the upshot of his Committee's trifling with the subject. The question of Ceylon has been postponed ; the County Franchise Bill has been thrown out with the assent of its own promoters ; and no use has been

made of the victory gained over Ministers in the division on the Woods and Forests motion.

This picture of easy make-believe-to-be working is taken from the House of Commons. The history of the session in the Upper Chamber is a mere blank. The Peers, while waiting till the Com- mons please to send them work to do, have endeavoured to alleviate the tedium of their compulsory idleness by discussing Lord Brough- am's County Courts Bill, canvassing the merits of the Ministerial Chancery measure before it be submitted to them, listening to an exculpatory statement by Lord Torrington, and marvelling at Lord intrepidity ntrepidity in rebuking Earl Grey for following Lord Stanley's example in thwarting constitutional reform in British Guiana.

There remains for notice only one incident in the act of the Par- liamentary drama of 1851 that has just closed,—the proceedings in Committee and in the House of Commons arising out of the last St. Alban's election. Defied by lawyers laughed at by old women, and evaded by witnesses, the Committee and the House have wound up their bungled business by a tacit confession of utter inability to act as judges. They abandon the attempt to deal with the St. Alban's delinquents by a judicial sentence, and propose to reach them by a legislative act. It is a great name "the House of Commons "but, somehow, everybody, seems to beard

it with impunity. Irregular publishers, courts of law, traders in Parliamentary corruption, all are sure to get the better of it, if they have but courage and perseverance. This weakness has its origin in the same source as the legislative incapacity ; both are chargeable against those who have the making of the House of Commons. When electors complain, they may be told that the Men they send to Parliament only work as they might have been expected to work. " Tu l'as voulu, George Daudin."