NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE customary lull of the Parliamentary recess is characterized this year by the continued though subdued movement—the rest- less tossing of the troubled waters while the wind abates. In London, the week has opened with Mr. Cochrane's baffled parade of paupers : towards the close of the week, white neckcloths and bonnets begin to crowd the pious portals of Exeter Hall.
Discussion busies itself with the proposed "testimonial "to im- mortalize the deeds that might have been achieved by the Special Constables on the 10th of April. We would suggest an obelisk, with an inscription all in the potential mood. But it has been discovered that to commemorate the triumph of Special-Consta- bulary virtue is to perpetuate the defeat of the Chartist movement, and so to erect a perennial record of exultation over our worthy and mortified fellow countrymen. It does not appear in what the suggestion of so invidious a monument originated. Was it an effort of rival journalism ? The Times had suggested a dinner for die faithful and patriotic special constables: did a rival newspaper seek distinction by exacting a "monumentum bove perennius "- a a monument less perishable than plum-pudding? The triumph of the Leading Journal, however homely, was the better for being transitory : it was well tilat rancours of exultation should dis- appear with the tnL.loth, and ')e for ever "laid in that red sea" of port which poured its brawling stream down thousands of loyal gullets.
About the country we notice some few Chartist meetings, and meetings also to back the new " Reform " movement of the Fifty- one Members; the latter being more prompt than united on spe- cific points. Blank "bills" are introduced, sometimes, into the House of Lords, to be filled up when the bounteous legislators shall have made up their minds as to the specific laws to be vouch- safed: so the Fifty-one conscript fathers seem to have promul- gated a blank programme of the blessings to be vouchsafed by pa- triotic bounty, and the imaginations of the English middle classes are running wild even to the extent of "Complete Suffrage"—Mr. Sturge's euphuism for the Chartist "Universal Suffrage." The Fifty-one having resolved to have intentions, but not having shaped those intentions, it follows that the void of their programme is a field for the sportive fancy of ruminating shopkeepers and agitators with fine-phrenzied eyes. So we have seen land laid out for building become a playground for the children of the pa- rish, and a field for imaginative rumours as to the future palaces which shall tower towards the skies ; until the builder enters into beneficial occupation, and destroys the magnificent castle- building dreams by raising a commonplace " row " of houses on the universal pattern of modest and tedious monotony. In Scotland, the Chartists have made pretensions to display a more formidably practical energy : and the London newspapers have had expresses to announce—nothing. By the way, this is a new style of intelligence which begins to swell the "latest" co- lumns of the journal& : they not only hasten to inform their read- ers of all that has happened, but also urge railway expresses at fervid rate, and vex the electric telegraphs with ceaseless work, in telling without a moment's delay all that has not happened,— a vast field for rival priority of news. In Ireland, Mr. Mitchel, boldest of the bold, has not refused the aid of a little chicane, and has tried to evade the Government Prosecution by favour of a plea based on the pretext of a technical flaw in the procedure, but intended to obtain delay by discussion on that point. It is curious to observe in Ireland the lax perform- ance of set duties, and the singular acuteness in detecting flaws, Which jointly mark the practice of the courts. In England they would be mutually corrective, in Ireland they are mutually aug- mentative. Accident is a recognized element in Irish practice : the broken window is the ventilation of the cabin ; the striking of o ship is the practical part of the pilot's information ; to be -‘ ,earned in the law" is to be familiar with the flaws by which it may be broken. O'Connell's proudest boast was the driving of a coach-and-six through an act of Parliament. The " law " most studied in Ireland is the chance of escape allowed to every fugi- tive : the courts of law are elevated to be places of sport ; they are governed less by the laws of the land than the code of honour; and all, from judge to gaoler, would consider it the reverse of " gentlemanly " to set up the real law against the sporting "law." Every one remembers how the O'Connell trials were conducted under the range of the duelling-pistol, and ended with a sort of gentlemanly rustication in urbe ; the convicts being made as comfortable as judge and gaoler could make them. This is the way to " make an example" of convicted prisoners; and the example has been well followed. From the course now taken by the Irish Attorney-General, how- ever, we infer that Lord Clarendon's rule will introduce an in- novation in the genteel practice of the criminal law : the indict- ment to which Mr. Mitchel entered a " dilatory " plea is aban- doned; the Attorney-General institutes a new prosecution ex officio ; the prisoner, who had been allowed "to appear by attor- ney " under the abandoned indictment, is now required to appear in person ; and altogether there is a very ungenteel and busi- nesslike peremptoriness about the revised course on which the Attorney-General has entered. The new course, we presume, is not likely to end in drawingroom burlesques of imprisonment. Mr. O'Connell and his fellows were permitted by the servants of the Crown to use their prison as an office for the continuance of their agitation against the constituted authorities in whose cus- tody they were. Communication with friends, for personal so- lace, has often been denied to political prisoners, most cruelly ; but it is going to the opposite extreme of caricatured forbear- ance to permit communications between convicted seditionists and the public for the very purpose of continued sedition. We assume that under Lord Clarendon's administration the absurdity will not be repeated.
