NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE House of Commons has greatly enjoyed the week. It has had nothing to do, gossip has been allowed un- limited scope, and Members have taken a cordial part in at least two personal and piquant "rows." On Monday night, Lord Palmerston called attention to a challenge sent by The O'Donoghue to Sir Robert Peel, which he had been compelled by the Premier to decline. The Secretary for Ireland, it appeared, had spoken of the" mannikin traitor" who called a meeting in the Rotunda "not attended by one respectable pepon,"and The O'Donoghue thought the expres- sion derogatoly to his honour. So he sent a "friend" with a "message," and the friend was referred to Lord Palmerston, and Lord Palmerston referred to the House, and the "friend" explained, and The O'Donoghue promised peace, and Sir R. Peel—did not apologize as he ought to have done. Then on Tuesday Mr. Bentinck moved that the names of the "counters out" should be published, thereby exposing those gentlemen to the vengeance of their constituents. Lord Robert Cecil, who, poor man, is very frequently counted out, supported the motion, and was laughed at by Mr. Bernal Osborne, who asked the House if any subject which it wanted to hear had ever remained unheard. The House was de- lighted, and the motion was voted down, nobody apparently recollecting that there are one or two subjects which the House ought to discuss, whether it likes it or not. It takes a sharp Government whip to keep a House together on Indian nights.
The last club saying is, that whatever becomes of the Ministry, Sir Robert Peel will not "go out."
For the rest, the Windham case has at last reached its apotheosis in the shape of a bill avowedly based upon that most expensive suit. On Thursday last, Lord Westbury brought in a measure which seemed to please the Law Lords, as it certainly will the public. The bill hits every blot, squashes Mr. Warren, orders a Judge to preside, introduces the ordinary rules of evidence, puts the personal inquiry first, and turns those social nuisances, the doctors who believe everybody to be mad but themselves, out of the witness-box. They are only to be consulted when the matter of inquiry is beyond the sphere of plain common sense, and even then the jury had better refer to men of medical science acquired somewhere else than in Bedlam. Lastly, no evidence is to be produced which is more than two years old, Lord West- bury apparently believing that even in England, where the law makes it the interest of the mad doctor to keep his patients insane, there is such a thing as cured lunacy.
The Highway Bill has been strangled.
We are a practical people, if we may believe ourselves, but we certainly contrive to mismanage some practical questions iu a most egregious style. We have summoned the world in May to a great Exhibition in Kensington, but have neglected to make them a road. There is no open public way between Bayswater-road and South Kensington, the route by which half the world will want to be driven. Of course Parliament is called in, and Mr. Cowper proposed to take 30,000/. from the Thames Embankment Fund, and make a sunk road to extend from Lancaster Gate to the Exhibition-road, a proposal which seems ingeniously bad. The road is too far to the west, the money was raised for a totally different purpose, and the work cannot be done in the time. The Times proposes to use a road from Vic- toria-gate to the Serpentine, and then by a belt of almost useless land to Exhibition-road. What is the obstacle to widening Park-lane ?
The Queen has decided on the form of Memorial to be erected in honour of the Prince Consort. Her Majesty, in a letter of much feeling and dignity, chooses an Obelisk in Hyde Park, and appoints Lord Clarendon, Lord Derby, Sir Charles Eastlake, and the Lord Mayor, Committeemen, to carry out the design, which will comprise apparently bas-reliefs at its base. The question was referred to the Queen by the nation, and it only remains to carry out her Majesty's decision, upon the most fitting scale. We only hope the Committeemen will perceive that to make such a monu- ment worthy of a nation, it must be of colossal proportions. There are quarries in England and Ireland which might, if properly hewn, produce monoliths before which those of Egypt should seem trifling.
The crisis so long anticipated seems to observant eyes at last approaching in France. The conversion of 44 per Cents seems likely to succeed fairly,—but the Legislative Body is bitterly hostile to the Italian policy, and a speech from Prince Jerome on Saturday, defending the Revolution, has created profound anxiety. Hampered by debt, irri- tated by failures, and angry at the workmen's distress, the nation is half inclined to recommence opposition. The Emperor, well aware that opposition spreads fast among Frenchmen, has, it is said, to choose between two un- pleasant alternatives : either to suppress the last vestige of liberty and rule like a common-place despot, or place him- self at the head of the Jacobins and carry out a policy of propagandism. It may be that, awakened out of its habitual indolence, that dreamy brain may devise a third and a safer course, the more probable because the Emperor alone among Bonapartists knows that there is one thing stronger even than himself and his army, and that is France.
The Government of France has prohibited the lectures of M. Renan, Hebrew Professor to the Sorbonne, on the ground of heterodoxy. It appears that the Professor, who is a Jew, spoke of the gradual development of religious thought as a fact, though without any attack on Christianity. The order, which was obviously passed to please the priests, will give deep offence in France. Frenchmen have lost their liberty of political thought, but they are not prepared to give up also their philosophical freedom, especially at the call of a Government which, suppressing the development theory, publishes in the same Moniteur an official report affirm- ing that manufactured articles have been found in the quaternary deposit. The Government punishes a Jew for disbelieving the Gospel, but asserts that man was contem- porary with the mastodon!
A number of English ladies, all of the highest rank and most of the purest Toryism, have presented a turret-shaped crown to the Queen of Naples, the lady who defended Gaeta, and who shot Cardinal Antonelli's sister's cat. The ladies have sought to honour misfortune, or we might remind them that the mural crown belongs of classic right to those who save citizens' lives, not to those who are wasting them.
Lord Canning has organized the new Councils, and the root of bitterness made its appearance at the very first sitting of the new central Legislature. The Governor of Bengal claimed the right to pass a "law of assurances"—the tech- nical Indian tone for an act. enforcing the registration of deeds—for his Meal council. He was promptly put down ; but Sir C. -wood has turned India into a Federation gni has now to see that the States do not swallow the Union.
A bill has been introduced into Congress which indicates the policy the Northern States intend to pursue should they eventually conquer the South. It provides that the States having by rebellion forfeited their rights, have relapsed into territories, and shall be governed as such ; in other words, their laws shall be passed by the Northern Congress, and their officers nominated by a Northern Prestdent. It is a plan which will work;, only, if this bill passes, what becomes of the Constitution ? If one of the partners can tear up a deed of partnership, why not the other ? The truth is the Americans, victorious or defeated, must reorganize them- selves and remodel their Constitution. It is not very cra. cult. All they have to do is to declare Congress possessed of the powers of a Parliament, and the parchment withes will fall from their limbs like burnt cotton.
The Marquis de Boissy has cast his zegis over the Lrmperor, deeming him in danger from the ambition of his cousin the Prince Napoleon — conditionally, however, on his de- voting his resources to a war with England, which, he thinks, might be conquered at less expense than that of the Bassian and Italian wars. He pronounces the name of Waterloo "to revive all old animosities." The speech pro- duced an avowal of the warmest loyalty to the Emperor from the inculpated Prince, and a rebuke of his insane anti-Anglican sentiments from M. Billault and the President. The Mar- quis appears to be the Sibthorp of the French Senate, if we are not wronging that deceased hero by the comparison. The direction of the noble Marquis's antipathies was per- haps in some measure determined by his marriage with Madame Guiccioli, so long the mistress of Lord Byron ; for the Italian cause and the glory of England, which were both in their way dear to the heart of the wild poet, seem to be his favourite aversions. Perhaps he resents the principles of his predecessor.
The table of British Exports for the year 18-61 has now been completed and published by the Board of Trade, and shows just the falling off in the declared value of the export trade that Mr. Milner Gibson, in his speech at Ashton- under-Lyne, had led us to expect. The total is 125,115,1331. in 1861, as against 135,891,227/. in 1860, and 130,411,5291. in, 1859—a loss of nearly 8 per cent. on 1860, and about 4 per cent. on 1859. The following is a list of England's, principal customers in. the order of their direct importance, going down as far as those who take 2,000,000/. worth of English goods : 2 1. British India 16,412,090 / Germany (including FIanse Towns, Prussia, Han-
1 over, &c.) 2,937,273 3: Australia 10,701,752 4. South America (including'Brazil, Buenos Ayres, &c.) 10,470,574 5. United States 9,058,326 6. France 8,896,282 7. Holland 6,439,098 8. Italy 5,780,980 British North America 3,696,646 10: China (except Hong Kong) 3,114,157 11. Spain . 3,060,122 12. Russia 3,045,992 13! Turkey 2,986,443 14. Egypt 2,278,799 15. Foreign West Indies 2,167,178
16. Portugal and Azores . . . ....... 2,135,365 Besides these, the Cape of Good Hope and Natal, Belgium, British West Indies, Hong Kong, Sweden and Norway, Java, Singapore, and Gibraltar, all take upwards of 1,000,000/. worth of English goods, and take more or less in the order in which we have named them. The most remarkable change, of course, is in the rank assigned to the United States, which has fallen from. the head of all our customers to the Alia place in a single year.
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The Italian railway loan of 1,388,0001. bas been well taken up, and a good deal more than the amount of the loan was subscribed ; the subscribers being, for the most part small bend fide investors,—a large number of Loudon shopkeepers and of private persons in the midland coun- ties having applied for allotments. Considering that the second instalment on the loan has been paid, the price keeps up-exceedingly well.
The Poor-rates and Pauperism returns for England and Wales show, as might be expected, a serious accession in the rdistress ofthe industrials classes, yet not, relatively to last year, quite so serious as might have fairly been apprehended. On the 1st of January, 1861 and 1862, the numbers receiving relief were as follows (in 647 unions, all that had been re-
In-door. Out-door. Total. Increase.
First week in Jan., 1861 131,790 728,748 860,538
Ditto, 1862 141,241 760,143 901,384 44 per cent.
The distress, however, though still on the increase, is not so much relatively greater, as compared with last year in. the last week of January, as it was in the 'first. The number of persons relieved usually increases towards the end of the winter, and this year, though it is in advance of last year, it is not so much in advance of it as it was in the earlier weeks. For the last week in January we find: In-door.
Out-door. Total. Increase.
1861 133,525 786,474 919,999
1862 115,948 799,16/ 945,110.
2 per cent.
We may hope, therefore, that though the distress is still on the increase, its acceleration, relatively to the distress of last year, is not on. the increase. turned) :
