NEWS OF THE WEEK.
As the prorogation approaches, the industry of Parliament grows more and more unsteady and fitful—now scrambling through vast bops of dry work, now stopping to listen to a few farewell squab-. Mrs of party, now feeling the indolent influence of the coming autumn, and suffering the House to be " counted out." The Whigs have had a great field-night in both Houses ; Spa- nish colonial sugars being the subject of contest. Lord Clarendon and Lord Palmerston respectively submitted to the Peers and Commons resolutions declaring that, in accordance with existing -treaties, sugar ought to be admitted from all parts of the Spanish dominions on the terms accorded to the " most favoured nation." Lord Palmerston's speech was a fair specimen of diplomatic con- troversy, saying as much perhaps as could be said by way of ar- gument for his position, and spiced with a good deal of the Vis- izonnt's party sarcasm. Lord Clarendon was less close in the dry diplomatic pleading, but he explained some points in the common sense of the matter very well. As to the mere question of tech- nical right, in one way or another Ministers seem to have settled that against Spain. The odd thing is the discrepancy in their arguments, while severally considered they are forcible enough. First; in his written answer to the Duke of Sotomayor, Lord Aber- deen resisted the claim of admission for sugar from Cuba and Porto Rico, on the ground that the existing treaties comprise a provision by which the Spanish and English West Indies are excluded from the mutual arrangements for trading, and that the old treaties securing mutual privileges relate not to pro- duce but subjects. In the House, the Earl says that such questions are not to be settled by the letter of treaties, but by the practice of nations ; which in the case of Spain and England has been quite of an exclusive kind. This is a very strange argu- ment : because the practice of the two countries has been exceed- ingly bad, quite opposite to the commercial policy which charac- tenzes Sir Robert Peel's Cabinet, his colleague Lord Aberdeen claims for that Cabinet the title to keep up that mischievous policy : Spain proposes to reform ; but no, says Lord Aberdeen, you have been so bad and silly time immemorial, that you have lost all right to be wise and good, and we will keep up the bad- ness and folly in spite of you. Mr. Gladstone, however, cuts his quondam colleague's ground from under him, by kindly bestow- ing upon him a better case,—denying that the old treaties with Spain are in force, or that even if they were they have the effect of the " most favoured nation" clause which is claimed for them ; and he supported his propositions with a great deal of ingenuity and research. But it was all labour in vain ; for the whole of the elaborate argumentation was answered by one re- mark from Mr. Labouchere—What an opportunity was lost, when Spain, so long the adherent of a vicious commercial policy, was committed to new opinions and sounder views, but was repulsed ! But, further, the question cannot thus be determined prin- ciples of mere free trade : the real difficulty at the root was scarcely alluded to except by Mr. Barkly—the sugar-laws are complicated with that tainting folly the inconsistent plans for suppressing the slave-trade ; the emancipation of Negro labour without setting free the labour-market; the pertinacity in an armed intervention, which works nothing but mischief. There is not a statesman of them all that has grappled with that prior question. The House of Commons have agreed, with marked cordiality on both sides, to the second reading of the bill for removing municipal disabilities from the Jews ; a measure already adopted by the Peers. The exception to the favourable feeling was fur- nished by Sir Robert Inglis, and Mr. Plumptre, who desire the English to be " a people of Christians"; which someliersons may think best attained by being universally charitable and tolerant. There has been a second "massacre of the innocents"—a sweeping overboard of the vaunted Irish measures of improve- ment. The Earl of Devon has announced three such measures, relating to reduction of stamp-duties, leases, and ejectments or dis- tfess for non-payment of rent: he has announced them as—not to be introduced this session. And Lord Stanley has abandoned for the session his Tenants' Compensation Bill. Such is all that has come of the Commission: it has furnished something for Lord Stanley to do in the House of Lords or rather to seem to do; and having answered its end, of reflecting a little credit on that damaged reputation, it is cast aside. The calumniated tobacconist and his attorney, who braved the displeasure of the Lords by bringing an action against a witness for evidence given before a Select Committee, have succumbed to the potency of the right honourable House, and have experienced its leniency. Lord Brougham put forth one of the most telling speeches of the session against these exercises of pure privilege, and for leaving questions of individual wrong to be settled by the Law Courts. The Lord Chancellor made a very remarkable reply: witnesses, he said, are compelled to give evidence, and therefore it is unjust to expose them to be called to account for it, especially when we remember that, even if they successfully defended, the action, they could only recover" the taxed costs, and must be mulcted of the difference between those and the lawyers' custom- ary expenses 1 At law, therefore, it is impossible for those wrong- fully assailed to obtain complete justice, because of the absurd arrangements in the Law Courts ; and the President of the highest Court of Law, a branch of the law-making body, declares that the House must interpose to defend certain persons against the in. evitable injustices of law and law courts! It strikes one that this argument for privilege would not exist if the law were made what it ought to be.
