NEWS OF THE WEEK.
"TRITE no meaning puzzles more than wit." Ministerial compli- cations become more and more unintelligible. Lord John Russell - was left at the close of last week in his favourite position of an insurmountable difficulty. He had told the House of Commons - that Ministers were again brought to a stand. Mr. Baillie's Cey- lon motion he represented as a declaration of want of confidence ;
• IC' it were carried Ministers must resign : and until it were af- firmed or negatived, the financial business of the session must be arrested. Mr. Baillie has declined the invidious character of drag-chain on the sessional business ; but still the ear of state does not move on. No new day has been fixed for the amended finan- cial statement. Mr. Baillie's motion cannot have been the real - cause of its postponement. One thing only is apparent—that from some inexplicable or - unexplained cause Ministers cannot get on with their business. Every person gets out of their way to leave the passage free. Lord - John Manners and Mr. Disraeli have been rebuked for voting with ord Duncan. Jfr. Baillie has been snubbed, and informed that
.the party would not embarrass Ministers by supporting his motion. - It is no external hinderanee that impedes the progress of Lord - John Russell's Ministry ; it must therefore be their own innate -weakness and incapacity. And Lord Stanley takes care that every - opportunity shall be given them to show that they can or will do
nothing.
• The result seems obvious. Time is urgent: the financial busi- ness of the session must be huddled up somehow or other. The Estimates will be voted, with a superficial scrutiny for the sake of appearances ; and any budget approved, because money must be had. Ministers have convinced everybody that it is impossible to help them ; and the Conservative Free-traders have voluntarily put themselves out of the field so long as the present Anti-Pal ferment endures. Lord Stanley appears to be inevitable. The money-votes once passed, he will have nothing to fear from the - present House of Commons till a new session. He can go through the - session reckless of being left in minorities and dissolve at his own : convenience. The elections are pretty certain to turn chiefly on the "Papal aggression," and he has assumed the character of its most zealous opponent among our political leaders. Already the first faint fluttering% of a general canvass are perceptible. The coming party have got a "cry," however insincere a one—it is "Protection and Protestantism."
The venue of the Ceylon indictment has been changed to the House of Lords. When Mr. Baillie declined to incur the respon- sibility of arresting the sessional business by his motion, Sir Ben- jamin Hall suggested that the question might more appropriately be discussed in the other House : the two Peers whose conduct is arraigned would be there to answer for themselves, and the Lords had no financial business on hand to be impeded by the debate. On this hint Lonj Torrington appears to have spoken ; for on Tuesday 'he gave notice of a motion on the subject for that day fortnight.
The way in which the recalled Governor has shaped his mo- tion does not manifest any great eagerness to challenge a final de- liverance of his peers on his conduct in Ceylon. After the lapse of : a fortnight, he will move that a message be sent to -the House of -Commons for a copy of the evidence and report of its Committee on the afrairs_of.that colony. In making this motion, he will have - an opportunity to state his own case; but as he only moves for evidence the Lords will of course decline to pronounce any opinion
• on that case till the evidence be before them. Lord Torrington is bold, but cautious in his boldness. The truth is, that his conduct in Ceylon has sunk into a question of secondary importance. The Proconsul has been removed from his government ; he can do no more harm ; new men may adopt wiser measures, and the past may be remedied. The English public is not vindictive, and is generally willing enough, provided a man be deprived of the power of doing harm, to let him subside into obscurity. The really important question connected with Ceylon now relates to the means adopted by the Co- lonial Office to screen Lon}Torrington, and when it could no longer support, to let him down easily. The manner in which the Com- mittee of the Commons was worked last session by Mr. Hawes and assistants, so as to divert inquiry from the Ceylon insurrec- tion, its causes and consequences to scandalous personal charges
and recriminations between the consequences, and some of his Council, and to make the mere personality of the information thus elicited a pretext for keeping the whole evidence taken by the Committee secret, is what now concerns the public. There is Food reason to fear that the Colonial Office has succeeded in perverting a Commit- tee of the House of Commons into an instrument for the oonceal- ment of official delinquency. This, rather than the faults and follies of Lord Torrington is what the Legislature is now called to sit in judgment upon. Lord Torzington's administration is a thing of the past, matter for history, and very insignificant matter too. But the proceedings in last year's Committee are pregnant with sus- picion: they indicate on the part of the Colonial Office a daring abuse of the forms ofjustice to protect offenders, which, if it has been perpetrated, and shall be left unexposed and unpunished, may help to overturn our Colonial empire. The materials for a deliberate judgment on this subject will soon be complete. The evidence taken by the Ceylon Committee has been published as unaccount- ably as it was withheld ; the report of the Commission 'has also been published, and the evidence must follow. When all these documents have been produced, it will be time to bring up the Colonial Office for judgment. In the House of Commons' the debate on the second reading of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, adjourned over from last Friday, has engrossed almost exclusive attention It is impossible to read the report of this debate without a sense of melancholy and humilia- tion. It is not that there has been any lack of ability on all sides. The ingenious reasoning of Mr. Roundell Palmer, the comprehen- sive views and massy eloquence of Sir James Graham, are not more remarkable than the busy research of Mr. Newdegate, the earnest enthusiasm of Lord Ashley, or the provoking cleverness of the eccentric Member for Surrey. But, with few exceptions, all who have addressed the House have been speaking beside the question : their speeches had little reference to the bill; they were general professions, delivered apparently with an eye to a general election, supposed to be not very remote. The exhibi- tions of the Ministerial supporters of the bill have been eminently discreditable. Lord John Russell's speech, in particular, sedu- lously, ignored the measure and its details. But the most painful fea- ture of the discussion is the sectarian animosity which has embitter- ed it, and which reached its climax when Mr. Henry Drummond was dealing out invectives against the Roman religion in all its tenets and practices, amid fierce interruptions from the Irish Mem- bers and vain appeals to the Speaker to put a stop to the scan- dalous brawl. The House of Commons seemed for a time to have laid aside its legislative character, to indulge in a carnival repre- sentation of a brawling and vituperative controversy between some John of Tuam and Reverend Treshain Gregg.
