NEWS OF THE WEEK.
PARLIAMENT has been actively engaged this session for the be-. nefit of Ireland, after the established fashion of money-giving and coercion; but this periodical task well forwarded, Earl. Grey has made one of the Houses—the Peers—view the subject of Ire- land as a whole. That was the great merit of his speech on Monday last ; and his sober, ingenuous earnestness, was impres- sive, though there was no novelty in what he spoke, and in the proposed address to the Crown he suggested no new remedies. His strongest position was, that measures of coercion have failed as uniformly as they have been tried ; his strongest argument, that it is futile to attempt the remedy of permanent disease with temporary expedients, whether of succour or compulsion. Lord Grey's two principal opponents were the DUke of Wellington and Lord Brougham. Lord Brougham chose to display his versatility, for the nonce, in heaping together familiar truisms, paradoxes, and commonplaces clothed in forcible language. A man of genius like Lord Brougham might have done something better. The gist of his Irish conservatism is this—" It always has been so, and always will." That is just what commonplace people have said about Catholic Emancipation, Reform of Parliament, Rail- ways, Corn-laws, and a world of things respecting, which we now know better. The Duke of Wellington directed his efforts to show the fruitlessness of " concession" ; and he elaborated a manifesto against spoliation of the Established Church in Ireland. Now Lord Grey had not made the Estab- lished Church the point in his speech, and it was not even named in the address : thus the answer did not fit. Some suppose that the Duke did not hear Lord Grey very well; but as the Earl was speaking of grievances, and as the Duke is conscious that the Irish Church has always been a monster grievance, he not unnaturally assumed that it was the position that he had to defend. The strenuousness of his vindication showed how, in the secret recesses of their souls, the supporters of that burden on the Irish are preparing to give it up as a bad job. But it certainly is not the thing that presses most urgently just now. The land question, with all its intricate and perilous branches, is the difficulty : land- occupation lies at the bottom of Irish poverty—of the Irish famines, for which Government has been obliged to supply pal- liatives; it lies at the, bottom of those agrarian crimes which suggest the necessity of coercion bills. Ireland presents the startling anomaly, that the peasants on the cultivated estates are said to be a "redundant" population while large tracts of fer- tile lands lie waste. We know that fact, keep on repeating it, and staring at it, and doing nothing. And the Irish too keep on staring at it, and reiterating it, and doing nothing except im- puting it to England; as if it were out of the question for Ireland to put her own shoulder to the wheel. Undoubtedly, the whole affair is beset with difficulties. There wants some great man— some enlightened dictator—to grapple with the case. A Cromwell might settle it. He might, for instance, boldly resume to the State all the lands of Ireland, and redistribute them with con- ditions which would insure the employment and maintenance of the people. But such a course would not he accounted polite in our day; and statesmen for Ireland must peddle on as they can, Until some desperate convulsion arise and force upon timid minds more sweeping measures than the boldest innovations of a pre- ventive policy.
The "Country party" in the House of Commons have conti- nued the formal opposition to the progress of the Corn Bill, and have eked out their obstructiveness by a redundancy of speech. If our Postscript -announce a division on the second reading, at the end of the fourth night of the series, it is as much as can be expected. The discussion, however, did not retain a particle of interest until it came to the squabble between Lord George Ben-
tinck and Mr. John Young, with which Thursday's discussion closed. Lord George, it seems, entered into a sort of engagement that he and his friends would not make an obstructive resistance to the Irish Life Protection Bill, on an understanding with Mr. Young that the third reading of the Corn Bill should be allowed to stand over till after Easter. Mr. Young's chief denies that he gave authority for such an understanding so Lord George and his friends, after partly performing their share of the bargain— by keeping silence for one night—do not realize the quid pro quo. Mr. Young seems to have madejust such a mistake as Mr. Littleton made with Mr. O'Connell at the close of Earl Grey's Ministry. It is awkward; but we suspect that if such useful gentlemen as Mr. Young always waited for very definite authority, they would not be half so useful as they area The actual proceedings in the Commons, however great the men there may be, are superseded in interest by the preparations which certain Peers are making to defeat the Ministerial scheme. The Morning Post records a meeting of such Peers, announces the resolve to make a determined stand, and says that the meet- ing was " very numerously attended." That, we presume, is say- ing as much as 'could be said of the attendance • and it does not indicate the presence of overwhelming numbers. Had the numbers been remarkable, it is to be thought they would have been stated specifically. A previous meeting'had broken up without coming to any resolution, the numbers not being suffi- cient to make the demonstration look respectable. Meanwhile, we hear, the Committee on special burdens have alighted on cu- rious information ; and some of those who at last consented to the inquiry, which they had so long and so astutely resisted, begin to repent of their rashness. Perhaps the disclosures may have the good effect of justifying some more conversions to the new policy.
