NEWS OF THE WEEK.
WHEN. Lord Clanrioarde forced on the House of Lords statements purporting to raise a legitimate discussion upon the Eastern Blue- WHEN. Lord Clanrioarde forced on the House of Lords statements purporting to raise a legitimate discussion upon the Eastern Blue-
books, but really aimed at throwing the most disparaging light upon the manner in which Ministers had conducted matters in the East, Lord Derby professed to be animated by the desire of giving to the Ministers a patriotic support in carrying on a national war. The debate in that House did not furnish so strong a contrast between profession and acts as in the other ; perhaps because Lord Clanri- earde and Lord Grey had well performed the service of the Oppo- sition. But the ease has been reversed in the House of Commons ; where Mr. Layard, less inveterate perhaps in disappointment than his noble seniors, surveyed the case, still unfavourably to Minis-
ters, but rather from the Oriental than from the Opposition point of view. It therefore became incumbent upon Mr. Disraeli to supply the defect. The more incumbent, no doubt, since the duty afforded an opportunity for displaying his peonliar talents in " dressing up a case." He did not neglect the opportunity. Others have accused Ministers of delusion and indecision; Minis- ters themselves have confessed that they were deceived, and have explained the grounds of their deliberation ; but Mr. Disraeli en- deavoured to make the charge wear a much graver aspect. With many apologies for troublinr, the House by reading extracts out of the blue-books,—apologies that covered his motive for not reading more, and gave an air of candour to picked selections of isolated passages,—he strove to make out that Ministers must have fore- known the whole course of Russian policy, and that they had been specially warned by the reports of their Ambassador at St. Peters- burg respecting the great military preparations of Russia. Mr. Disraeli left to them the alternative of having been credulous to a degree inconceivable, or of having " connived" in the encroaching designs of Russia. Sinope, with its forewarnings and disasters, fur- nished an illustration for strengthening this impression, by sug- gesting the innuendo, that as they might have prevented the disas- ter at Sinope, Ministers must have desired the result ! The speech was delivered with the most careful rhetoric,—with the coolest self-possession, the prepared effects of a stage-player, long pauses and varied inflections of the voice. The unreality that might be discerned in the whole aspect of the performance was stamped upon the result. Having made out a case of criminal iLcompe- tency, or scarcely more criminal complicity in the designs of the enemy, Mr. Disraeli based upon that awful impeachment no mo- tion whatever, but perorated with a promise of assisting that crimi- nal Administration !
The answer of Ministers to a proceeding which merits no other designation than the Parliamentary phrase of censure, " frivolous and vexatious," was really conveyed, not. in the rapid but prac- tical résumé of the whole discussion which Lord Palmerston had waited to deliver at a very late hour, but in the frank statement of the actual position and of future intentions with which Lord Bohn had preceded Mr. Disraeli's unreal oration, and in the un- interrupted course of businesslike devotion to the prosecution of the war and the marshalling of alliances which Ministers have evidenced by their statements in Parliament and by their acts.
If it had been necessary to pronounce judgment between the two sides, that service was effectually performed by Mr. Hume, on re- ceiving the report of the Committee of Supply, with a force de- rived from honest singleness of purpose and a plain matter-of-fact view of the matter. Mr. Hume's judgment comprised a summing- up of the main facts. He certified the straightforwardness of Ministers' he pronounced them to have been guilty of having been deceived by the incredible duplicity of Russia ; but he testified to the truth of the Ministerial representation, that the delay which has taken place has been advantageous, not only in a military sense, but also in ripening the public conviction on the subject of the war, and bringing about that unprecedented unanimity which gives
Ministers and the State their principal strength. This unanimity was strikingly exemplified by Mr. Hume himself, when he ap- peared, for the first time in his life, as joining the Government in recommending an increase of the Army and Navy. Excepting some strict matters of business, almost the only large and prominent subject that has engaged Parliament this week has been Education ; in more than one, however, of its branches. Some preliminary questioning has taken place on the subject of Uni- versity Reform ; but the sole result of these preliminary conversa- tions on the question is, that the attempt of the Hebdomadal Board at Oxford to save itself by interposing a crude scheme even after the eleventh hour is a signal failure ; and that Ministers, setting it aside, proceed in their own course.
The small debate arising upon that which purported to be a pri- vate bill to establish a peculiar local system of education in Man- chester and Salford, really involved the whole question of public education in England and Wales. There were two reasons for in- troducing the subject as a private bill—an avowed and an unavowed reason. The avowed reason was, that as the measure was for the special advantage of a local district, it necessarily came under the rules of private legislation. The unavowed reason was, that a party which originated in an opposition to the plan of National Secular Education, and has endeavoured to effect its resistance by proposing a substitute compromise, desired to establish a footing in the Legislature, by entering it in the most modest guise. The real object of the bill, however, was so mani- festly general, that the attempt to proceed upon a private bill was not sanctioned by Ministers or the House of Commons ; nor was any promise thrown out for the success of the scheme embodied in the bill, even if the form were amended. On the other hand, the impracticability of divorcing religion and education was reasserted by the preponderating voice of the House ; and the impression left by the debate is one of general and insuperable difficulty.
The third form in which the Education question was brought forward was a plan for establishing general education in Scotland. Met by some hints of objection, it nevertheless has considerable, promise of ultimate success, in the great ingenuity with which its details are framed for working together and for falling in with the existing institutions in Scotland, and further in the sincere desire of the Scotch people themselves to have some measure upon which their divided religious parties can agree.
