NEWS OF THE WEEK.
ARLIAMENT assembled on Tuesday, the 19th instant, for despatch of business, and the Queen's Speech was read to a thin assemblage, The Message—the Republican word is Lord Derby's —is not lengthy, the most prominent place being given to the Abyssinian Expedition, which is declared to be for the "liberation of my subjects alone ;" and to the Italian question, on which Her Majesty " trusts " that Napoleon will be able to retire so as "to remove any possible ground of misunderstanding" with Italy—a sentence not pleasantly received at the Tuileries. The "treasonable conspiracy commonly known as Fenianism, baffled and repressed in Ireland, has assumed in England the form of organized violence and assassination," and requires to be rigorously put down, but "Her Majesty relies upon the firm administration of the law and the loyalty of the great mass of her subjects." The Scotch Reform Bill is then promised, a Boundary Bill, a "Bill for Preventing Bribery and Corruption at Elections "—intimidation is innocuous, apparently—a Public Schools' Bill, a Bill consoli- dating Mercantile Marine Acts, a Cattle Plague Bill of a relaxing kind, and a Law Amendment Bill, besides some measure or other, apparently not a Bill, on general education. It is " filling " stuff, all that, but a little more definiteness would have been accepta- ble. Very few of these subjects will be touched in the ad interim sitting, which it seems clear will be confined to Italy, Abyssinia, and Fenianism.
