NEWS OF THE WEEK.
Fr would undoubtedly have served Lord John Russell's inte- Teats better if he -could have carried his new Reform measure without putting forth his bill : " the bill, the whole bill," is his great, stumblingblock, his grand embarrassment. His speech was freely criticized, and the general scheme excited little interest; but when it is before the public as a whole and in its details, it proves to be an exhaustless source of objections from every side, while we hear little in its favour. All its sections are viewed with' an ill impression, though some of the more questionable comparatively escape notice : as we anticipated, the advooates of more extended reforms condemn its omissions and restrictions, but censure is con- centrated upon the schedule for augmenting the small boroughs by the union of others.
Not a political circle is there that abstains from the severest comments on this part of the scheme. The Free-traders object to it, for erecting a new electoral territory carved out of the counties and virtually amounting to" small counties" ; a new species Of joint-stock rural borough, chiefly in the South and West, which seems intended to overbalance the regular boroughs of the North. Protectionists .object, that this new quasi-county constituency is maneuvered so as to increase the Whig influences, by ca- pricious and arbitrary selection of boroughs to be newly endowed • with the franchise. Real reformers object, that the direct mode of ' dealing with the subject would have been to reduce the represents- don of the sixty-seven boroughs to a single Member each, and to have transferred the Members thus saved to towns of some im- portance ; and they further object, that the present plait will not correct but diffuse corruption, increase the business of agency, and enormously enhance the expense of elections. Even the extension -of the franchise -in the larger boroughs by the new five-pound fran- chise receives little attention in comparison with this schedule B: still less does the St. Alban's Disfranchisement Bill receive any attention—less than the amusing ingenuousness of its Member, or the not less" amusing astuteness of Mr. Coppook; much debated by the assembled legislators. The measures of Government have fallen out of notice ; it is only their mistakes that are talked about, and above all that barefaced attempt to create a new special Whig territorial constituency, neither town nor country. -
One thing was wanting. to give Lord John some aid in his strategy for making a new " Reform" reputation on going to the country, and that was a Tory Opposition : the Earl of Derby has supplied the want. A hundred- and one Members, assembled at that nobleman's mansion, have pledged themselves to oppose the seoond reading. This gratuitous occupation of an exposed and useless station has surprised Lord Derby's friends. The muster is too weak to alarm any but those who might be opposed to the bill, ondwere wavering between that dislike and the greater dislike to be found voting in a minority. Whatever refinements may be ad- vanced" to temper this resolve, the Protectionist party will be looked upon as obstinately arrayed against all reform. However brate and chivalrous, such resistance to the march of events is not less hopeless, and Lord Derby ought to have found out that fact when he was twenty years younger. Looking to the inevitable effects, honest Protectionists might infer that it is not the rashness but the inertness of their leader which his dictated this evolution.; that it is not the desire but the fear of a Premiership which makes him render success on his own side difficult; and thus, for the second time, has that simple-minded party been deceived in its chief. -
Not a less manifest error was Lord Naas's move against the Earl of Clarendon for his untoward connexion with a low Dublin news- Paper. It is true that the Lord-Lieutenant committed a grievous mistake, and we have not abstained from censuring that mistake in explicit terms ; but he had found it out himself, he had avowed it, he had-fined himself for it. His colleagues only weakened in- stead of strengthening his case by representing that ho could de- rive any advantage from alliance with a paper of bad oharaoter. It may have been a Castle custom, but Lord Clarendon ought to
have been above falling in with it. He might not have known the antecedents of the man whom he accepted as the champion of ° law
and order " but some of the numerous staff must have known it. Such a channel may have been suited to reach a certain class of Irish minds, but it ought to have been held totally unfit to transmit English ideas. The mistake, however, was matter of history ; the voluntary fine had been paid, to a large amount for a nobleman rich only in good personal qualities ; and the only thing to remem- ber was the experience which Lord Clarendon thus dearly bought for himself and his successors. Lord Naas's violation of the rule to "let bygones be bygones" had a malignant look. It had the aspect of subserving the vindictive hack whom Lord Clarendon had fed without satisfying; it could not have prevailed, even with the help of the false defence which Lord Clarendon's colleagues made, because it had to encounter the more formidable resistance of his undoubted Merits and good service as a ruler of Ireland in troubled and odious times. After the onslaught was threatened, more than half of those who were expected to support it became ashamed of their enterprise, and took leave of absence. Lord Naas and his associates inflicted some inevitable wounds by their attack, but they carried off the field the disgrace of the day. Such is a fit re- suit when men worthy of higher things meddle in the doings of scandalmongers and bravoes.
The unfortunate Dublin Savings-Bank is becoming an annual subject. Pennsylvanian patriots might throw it in the teeth of Englishmen when they talk of " repudiation"; for it is a repudia- tion worse than Pennsylvanian, since it is a repudiation justified by the letter of the law, covertly reserved beforehand, and spa- malty directed against the humbler classes. It is as much worse than the Philadelphian type as the pettifogging of a sharp lawyer among the poor is worse than the brazen outlawry of a "fast man." But the case is stated annually ; Ministers annually lay down'their ears, mulishly to undergo the reproach ; and the public looks on with indifference, too much used to tolerate official ob- liquity for the case to excite any interest. All that Mr. Henry Her- bert could get out of-Government, and that On a subsequent even- ing, was a promise that the general subject of savings-banks should he overhauled.
Mr. Blaney was not more successful with his motion for an im- provement in the law of partnership. His imperfect success, how- ever, is probably inherent in an imperfect position. He was chairman of a Committee which, two years ago, investigated the question, as to the opportunities which the working classes have for invest- ing their savings, and he appears to have been powerfully impressed with the obstacles that prevented the humbler classes front be- ooming possessors of land, or traders. The freehold land societies have done something to remedy the former difficulty ; but the mul- tiplying attempts of the labouring classes to make piactioal periments in self-employment ment are seriously impeded by the laws which regulate partnership and benefit societies ' • insomuch that operative associations are enterprises not indeed prohibited, but rendered highly precarious by the disabilities which the law im- poses. It is Mr. Slaney's object to remove those disabilities ; but the existing disinclination to any form of "Socialism" seems to cramp :the exposition' of the ease. On the other hand, the subject is com- plicated by being mixed up with commercial discussions as to im- provements in the law of partnership for ordinary mercantile pur- poses. Mr. Stoney wanted an unpaid Commission to consider the subject and frame suggestions on it ; but he was induced to with: draw his motion, on the understanding that Government would take the subject into its own consideration.
We have left to the last the starting subject of the week—the plan for embodying the Militia. Lord John Russell propounded it on Monday, and it has scarcely created more 'attention among the public at large than his Reform Bill. It is a plan for calling out, within their own counties, during four years, young men be- tween the ages of twenty and twenty-three; which would give 80;000 in the first year and 150,000 in the last. The drill would be limited to twenty-eight days in the first year and a fortnight in the -subsequent years; Lord Palmerston made his first appearance as an independent leader, by objecting to the Government plan, and proposing to call out a Militia not limited to county service. A re- solution moved by Lord John was considered in Committee on Mon- day, and the question between the late colleagues was postponed to the reporting of the resolution on Friday ; a contest awaited by all parties not attached to' the Treasury-bench with something like curiosity.
