NEWS OF THE WEEK.
AMONG the utilitarian recreations of Easter, is usually an increas& of political agitation about the country ; and this week has not proved.
an exception to the rule. Parliament being suspended, the activity is removed from the heart to the extremities. The Anti-Corn-law agitation of course goes on with additional vigour ; and if we may believe its promoters' accounts, they are making a great effect in all quarters, converting farmers and routing monopolists on every side.
The antagonist agricultural agitation against free trade also goes on, but not healthily. While the League have their meetings every day and at every place, we have one agricultural meeting a week. This agitation is weakened by being partly Anti-Ministerial, though nothing but the Ministry stands between the agriculturists and the Whigs, whom they profess to dread so much. Their
meetings chiefly serve to expose their own disunion. This week, we see Lord STANHOPE, who was not supported in his own coun-
ty of Buckinghamshire by him whom he has named " the former farmer's friend" and the leading agriculturists, pass into Berk- shire, to play one of the spokesmen at a public dinner in rating the Connty Members for their support or sufferance of Ministers. And the Members reply, more or less boldly, by throwing over- board ultra-agricultural sentiments. Such exhibitions can scarcely serve the Purpose of those who occasion them. A new agitation is that which the Dissenters are getting up against the Government Education measure. Their votive of- ferings at the shrine of Christianity are to be petitions against the endeavour tobegin the mental instruction of that people whose crime - tindmisery, whose denial of practical Christianity itself, spring mainly 'from ignorance. Seasonable warfare! It is not to details alone 'that the Dissenters object, but their hostility extends to the whole measure; and it is expressed in terms so sweeping and bitter as to make it doubtful whether they would accept any measure that is likely to be offered to them by any Ministry whose members belong to the Church of' England—the Church to which the Sovereign must belong. Practically, the Dissenters may be considered to have avowed themselves adverse to any scheme of Government educa- tion: they would prefer the task to be left to themselves ; and how they have hitherto performed it, let the factory districts, their depraved towns, and their beer-shop debaucheries, the prisons and their ignorant inmates, the insurrection and its boy rebels, tell. However, though the Dissenters have not been strong enough to accomplish even a rude education of the people, or to make them' practically as virtuous as some communities in abhorred regions of "Popery," they have the organization and the right good will for agitation against rival educationists, and their opposition gains in the weight of numbers. Political parties already begin to favour the storm which may waft them a little profit, like wreckers holding out false lights. One of the Whig organs avowedly looks forward to converting the new crusade to elec- tioneering purposes : speaking, it says, from knowledge specific and extensive, "not aWealeyan vote will be given at any future election to a supporter of this odious bill "—" the link which associated the Wesleyans, as a body, with Toryism, is severed "—not one Member who votes for the second reading of the bill " will have the slightest chance of sitting in the House of Commons for a place in which
Wesleyan votes are of any avail in obtaining a majority at the poll." To people who, like the Wesleyan Methodists, finish a list of spe- cial objections by the broad declaration that amendment of the measure is hopeless, no answer can be made. Others, who have also special objections, share in Lord JOHN RUSSELL'S expectation of improvement ; and when the best has been done for the mea- sure that is possible in the House of Commons, the question for the man of sense and conscience will be, whether it is better to take the gift as it stands, with all its imperfections, or reject that opportunity of doing some good—of making a beginning ? The Nonintrusion agitation in Scotland, to erect a new "Pres- byterian Free Church" composed of the seceders from the Esta- blishment, is kept up ; but its fate is as yet obscure. Whether or
not they will possess such a majority in the next General Assembly as would enable them to decree the secession of "the Church " itself in a body, daily becomes more doubtful: it is even calculated that they will be in a minority, and that they will be denied any greater eclat than that of the secession of so many individuals. Subscriptions for churches are said to come in at the rate of 1,0001. a day : but if the prudent Scots subscribe to build churches before they know how many ministers will finally make up their mind to relinquish State stipends for the offerings of Voluntaryism, they must abandon their character for looking to "the main chance."
The most amusing of all the agitations is a sort of bastard Repeal which has sprung up in Ireland, to keep company with real Repeal and Anti-Poor-law turmoil—all about a mail-coach contract. For a long time, a very respectable Whig gentleman, Mr. PETER Pun- CELL, supplied the Irish Government with mail-coaches : his con- tract was about to expire; tenders for the new contract were sent in ; one was lower than his, and he lost the business. The Govern- ment have not quite cleared themselves from a charge of some par- tiality towards the new contractor ; but the hubbub in Ireland, because a Scotch coach-builder has beaten an Irish coach-builder, almost passes belief. The Liberals enrol themselves into remon- strating deputations to Lord DE GREY, and are in a flurry of peti- tioning; the Ultra-Tories are out of their wits with anger ; their principal organ, the Dublin Evening Mail, calls for the formation of "an Irish party" in Parliament, and hints dislike to the Union, on such terms; while another Tory paper says that "the British connexion " is in jeopardy ! The Repealers exult in this adoption of their doctrines, in favour of separate legislation and Irish manu- factures, by the extreme Tory party ; who begin now to tell us, by way of frightening Sir ROBERT PEEL about the mail-contract, that Repeal is "an infant giant"—an infant giant that cries for mail- contracts instead of pap !
