NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE great Parliamentary show-fight, the debate on the second reading of the Government Irish Registration Bill, is over, and party-men breathe again. The struggle began with the week, and was protracted through four whole nights. In so lengthened a palaver, much repetition and more irrelevant matter were inevit- able ; and the laboured harangues prepared for the occasion were diluted with the fullest proportion of mere verbiage. The discourse turned but little upon the subject formally set down, the Irish re- gistration; and still less upon the real thing at issue, the ins and outs of office. The Tory speeches dealt chiefly with one incident, Lord MORPETH'S desperate innovation on the Irish franchise ; the Liberal, with the iniquities of Lord STANLEY'S bill. The most remarkable address—the only one perhaps worthy of the speaker's reputation—was Lord STANLEY'S opening of the debate on Mon- day : and the power of that was all of a destructive kind—it da- maged the Whigs, without strengthening the assailant. Lord STANLEY exposed the inconsistency of Lord Moarerir, who had refused in 1839 and 1840 to make less sweeping infractions of the " great settlement of the Reform Bill"; he expose4.the.triekery ,Nehich put a " tack" to the Government Bill merely to spoil 'his market ; he entered into a minute analysis of the Government .scheme, to show that it was based on worthless information, framed in ignorance, and totally unsuited to its professed purpose: and upon the whole, his statements and inferences remained unan- swered by any subsequent speaker. Up to this point Lord STAN- _LEY'S speech was strong in accumulated facts, and crushing in the -closeness and vigour of their application : but when he went be- yond, to defend his own measure of disfranchisement, or to discuss the broad question of representation mooted by the new franchise, he seemed lost to all guidance but that of an overbearing bigotry— without a spark of statesmanlike intelligence, or a single glance beyond the narrowest of the objects which were immediately before him. He still poured forth his facts, as if by the force of a mechanical impulse, but without seeming to mea- sure or to know their bearing. Thus, he accounted for the unwillingness of the Irish landlords to give their tenants leases which would qualify them for the franchise, by complaining that there is in Ireland an influence other than that of the landlord, so that an Irish landlord cannot, like his brother landowner in Eng- land, count upon his tenants' votes as his own by right of cus- tomary courtesy. Self-betraying as this objection is, it is incon- sistent with Lord STANLEY'S fear that the low franchise of the Go- vernment bill would render the voter obnoxious to the oppression of a "grinding landlord." Again, Lord STANLEY saw at a glance the hollowness of ,the evidence brought to support the Goverument measure : he proved, upon the showing of Lord MoarEries own Commissioners, that the test of value taken from the poor-rate is no test at all, because the value is assessed in the most arbitrary defiance of rule and law. But while he thus demolished the evi- dence' on the opposite side, he industriously paraded testimony which seems equally worthless: it was his object to defend his policy from the charge of being restrictive, and especially to prove that the constituency of Ireland is not in process of extermination, as Ministerialista allege, but actually increasing ; and he endea- voured to do so by referring to figures drawn from that identical fictitious franchise which it is the very purpose of his bill to break up.
Passing some smaller speakers, Lord MORPETTI was the next leader who took the field. He defended his bill in some of the details, and attacked Lord STANLEY'S as it has been attacked already. But he stoutly vindicated the " tack" to his bill, as Lord STANLEY called it, the five-pound franchise, and declared it to be, if not the text, at least the needful preface of the measure. Yet even that essential in the scheme was reasserted rather than re- argued; while of the multitude of topics brought forward by Lord SrsisLer, but' a few were handled by his opponent. From this point in the debate, if the speakers added an argument here and there on either side, they contented themselves chiefly with decry- ing each other's oratory, or with vague declamation about Whig trickery on the one part, or the danger of not conciliating Ireland on the other. The Secretary at War, as in duty bound, was one of those who made the most of the topic of preparing for war by satisfying Ireland: but his speech was a theatrical failure. Mr. CHARLES BCLLER touched upon that point—the delicate ar- gument ad melon, the dangers of our foreign relations and " armed peace"— with greatest skill, and effected some hard hits for his friends the Whigs: indeed be was the only debater that seemed able to take in the whole subject in all its re- lations, social and political as well as electioneering : he gave up much to party, but he reserved something for mankind. In general, however, after Lord STANLEY, in whose energy there is a bitter principle which preserves it unimpaired, the leading men of all parties seemed conscious that their effusions were a work of supererogation, only required for appearance's sake, and quite beside the immediate business. Even Sir JAMES GRAHAM'S cumbrous harangue, studded with personal reflections, brought small help to the sv,rn-out and lagging debate. It seemed as if nothing on either side could influence the foregone conclusion, or seduce a single vote from ranks already counted. For this time crotchety Lord HowicK said "more yes than no"; and it fell to the Whigs' turn to enjoy his and his Lordship's satellite's vote for the nonce. So the talk proceeded with increasing tiresomeness, until the Member for Ireland brought it to a climax, with a budget of his standing topics—the " seven centuries of wrong," English hatred of Ireland, the misdeeds of the popular CROMWELL, the un- equal distribution of the franchise, and so forth. Then came Sir ROBERT PEEL; who turned the discussion upon a subject more relevant to the issue—the old understandings and bargainings between parties at the time of the Catholic Relief Bill and the Reform Bill, regarding the disposal of the Irish constituencies. Lord Joule RUSSELL, argued Sir ROBERT, had broken faith; for, whereas he had before professed himself eminently conservative of the Reform Act, he now-consented to a sweeping innovation. Lord -JOHN, on the other hand, averred that he had always desired to define the Irish franchise; but that he -bad postponed his wish, in order to carry those practical improvements which were alone to be realized in the state of parties. But now his party cannot keep that course any longer ; and the reproaches of last year, that they were screening perjury, have become suddenly intolerable. When Lord JOHN Russeer. had finished, the House went to the business of dividing ; and Ministers obtained a glorious majority of five for the second reading-299 to 294. A review of the whole debate, tedious as it was, makes one admire the talent, of its kind, which could muster such a quantity of words all about such a very little matter as the differ- ence between the practical portions of the two rival measures. For that was the avowed dispute, while the real contest was even more trifling—no more than a manoeuvre to exclude or admit a few thousand electors, who might contribute a few votes towards the paltry majorities. As to the rival bills, no one seemed to lay much stress on any difference between them : Mr. O'CONNELL disposed of them when he said that all that the people of Ireland would understand or care about was, that one was a restrictive and the other an enlarging measure. And as for the new franchise, which Lord MORPETH vaunted as the.backhone of his scheme, Mr. Macaueev set out with positively ridiculing the attention which it had received ; and the more business:like' Mr. PIGOTT at once consigued it to the grinding-room of the Committee, to be squeezed into a passable shape. So the fate of that part of the scheme is decided : whether to be deplored or not, is still a mystery ; for all the efforts to support or to destroy it by the evi- dence of statistics, only showed that neither party really knew any thing about its probable effects, bad or good. All the talk about it goes for nothing, except to prove that one party is inclined to bid rather higher for popular favour than the other ; whose leaders could hardly commit themselves once more to an odious policy, if they had any real desire, not to say prospect, of reinstatement Downing Street. The only present use of the new franchise is, to be stuck up at the threshhold of office, like an old horse-shoe, to " keep out the Tories." And the most wonderful thing of the whole is, that it dues keep them out.
