NEWS OF THE .WEEK.
THE efforts of the Tories to break down the majority for the Ministerial measure of Municipal Reform in Ireland, have re- sulted in another signal defeat of their party. That majority, instead of being diminished, was larger on Tuesday morning, in proportion to the numbers present, than on any previous trial of strength in the PEEL Parliament. Lord FRANCIS EGERTON'S motion was rejected by a majority of 64 in a House of 550 Members ; but on the present occasion only 459 were pre-
sent, and yet the third reading of the Irish Municipal Bill was carried by a majority of 61—the numbers being 260 and 199. Thus, if it be true that the Peers required the encouragement of an augmented minority to induce them to reject or seriously in- jure the bill, that encouragement is more than their friends in the House of Commons have been able to afford them ; and there is an additional chance that their Lordships will leniently exercise their powers of mischief.
There was nothing very novel or striking in the arguments ad- duced on either side on Monday night; but some admirable speeches were delivered. We refer more especially to those of Mr. WARD, Mr. &TEM, and Sir WILLIAM FOLLETT. The reporters pretend that, occasionally, Mr. WARD was inaudible. This is not true: Mr. WARD'S, enunciation, always clear, was more than usually distinct on Monday ; and the only portions of his speech which were " inaudible in the Gallery," were those drowned by the cheers of the House., It was an effective display of debating power, calculated with Parliamentary tact for the atmosphere of the House of Commons. It is by making every sentence and every proposition perfectly intelligible to the meanest capacity, that Lord STANLEY has gained his reputation as a debater. Mr. WARD'S speech deserves praise for these qualities, which dis- tinguish Lord STANLEY'S more happy efforts, whilst he eschewed the grand and almost invariable STANLEY fault of provoking op- position by unnecessary acrimony of manner.
It is universally allowed that Mr. SHELL delivered one of the most brilliant and powerful speeches ever heard in the House of Commons. The best report of it is in the Morning Chronicle ; from which paper we have extracted all the best passages,—and which Mr. Some undoubtedly transcribed for the press himself; yet we miss, even in this report, several points of satire and epi- grammatic phrases, which charmed his auditory, whilst the trans- position and misplacing of words and the Latinized inversion of sentences seem to be carried to an excess in the report which certainly did not strike us so disagreeably in the speech as de- livered by the orator. We, who are neither orators nor rhetori- cians, would whisper a word of friendly warning to Mr. SHELL against this his besetting sin. He should remember that modern English—as terse and epigrammatic as he likes—is the language which they must use who would influence the masses; and that his speeches are read by multitudes who cannot fancy how they were delivered, or how much of their effect arose from the panto- mime of gesture and studied pauses of the artful declaimer. Sir WILLIAM FOLLETT has given us no opportunity of judging of his capability to make an effective reply without study and "'preparation. Ile has probably not had sufficient experience to be a first-rate debater ; but his set speeches are the best which the Opposition side of the House produces. For the lack of good matter his bad politics and desperate cause are to blame; but we are now speaking of his manner. His silvery tones, melodious Inflections, and just emphases, fall pleasant upon the ear. His bearing is modest and gentlemanlike. His sophistries are put together with more art, and though perhaps his speeches are really more elaborate, they do not appear to be so much laboured, as those of Sir ROBERT PEEL. His taste saves him from introducing worn-out arguments, and extracts which fall
flat
ri upon the House, with a flourish of trumpets. His supe- riority in this respect over Sir ROBERT was strikingly mani- fest on Monday, when, by the adroit introduction and skiifol reading of a letter from Mr. FITZGERALD, of the Carlow Club, [l. {.TEST EDITION.] relating to the interference of the Catholic Bishop in the election, he made that letter pass for far more than it was worth. PEEL, on the other hand, with great parade and a mock-modesty which disgusted, read a complimentary epistle to himself, from Air. N. P. O'GORMAN, to prove—what ?—why, that some Catholics were grateful to him for carrying the Relief Bill ; a point which had only an incidental connexion with the question before the House, and which, bad he made it out most completely, would not have been of the least consequence, half an hour before the division. We never witnessed a more complete failure than this part of Sir ROBERT'S reply to Mr. SHELL. Even the " Roarers " could not, albeit desirous, find any thing to cheer for. The other parts of Sir ROBERT PEEL'S speech were more to the purpose, and by no means destitute of ability ; but, after the excitement administered by Mr. SIIEIL, they seemed tedious and dull.
Indeed, Sir ROBERT has not been in his best cuo this week. On Tuesday night he attacked Lord JOHN RUSSELL, on the ground of partiality in the selection of Magistrates for the new Municipalities ; himself affecting zealous horror of the bad admi- nistration of justice which must be the consequence of paying attention to party politics in the choice of Justices. Considering that the practice of the Tories has been uniformly to give Ma- gisterial power, both in town and country, to their own friends and those only,—Sir ROBERT himself having, as Mr. EWART stated, thrust seven Tory Justices on Liverpool during his brief Premier- ship,—it did require no small " power of face" to make it a crime in Lord JOHN RUSSELL that be had consulted the wishes of the great majority of the inhabitants of the towns in appointing Liberals to be Justices, and, in those cases where the Tories had the predominance in the Councils, had qualified their Toryism with an admixture of Liberalism also. Mr. Roaeucx saw that the Member for Tamworth had laid himself open to a sting- ing retort ; and he supplied the deficiency of those on the Minis- terial side of the House who had preceded him in the debate, by applying a most severe castigation. Sir ROBERT, in a second speech, defended himself; but, as Mr. ROEBUCK observed, in a manner so " dull and weak," that a rejoinder was quite unne- cessary. The mortification of PEEL at Mr. ROEBUCK'S con- temptuous refusal to answer him was conspicuous. Sir RICHARD VYVYAN endeavoured to make up for his neglect of the Parliamentary business of his constituents, by an absurdly vehement tirade against Lord JOHN RUSSELL, whom he in terms accused of being actuated by " corrupt motives," on account of his displacing the once noted Alderman DANIEL from the list of Bristol Magistrates, and cutting down the said list from twenty- four to eighteen by the removal of six Tories, thereby giving the
Liberals a majority of Justices, although the Tories have a preponderance in the Town-Council. Sir RICHARD, when called
upon, neither would retract his charge, nor promise to substan- tiate it in a Parliamentary manner. He cut a remarkably shabby figure on the occasion, and was well punished by Dr. LUSHINOTON and Mr. POULETF THOMSON.
To the Bristol charge against Lord JOHN RUSSELL, it is a suf- ficient answer,—though it was not made in the House,—that the present superiority of the Tories in the Bristol Town-Council was acquired- by the unfair and illegal mode in which Mr. PRAED divided the city into wards ; and that, in point of fact, the majority of the Bristol Municipal voters are Liberals, and have the same claim to a majority of Liberal Magistrates as the inhabitants of Liverpool, Leeds, and Norwich. The recent appointment of Lord BRUDENELL to the command of a dragoon regiment, was brought under the notice of the House of Commons on Wednesday, by Sir WILLIAM MOLESWORTH.
From the discussion that ensued, we learn the kind of responsi- bility which Ministers acknowledge themselves to be under for the doings at the Horse Guards. They do not interfere in the details of Lord Theis department : they rely on his Lordship's judgment, honesty, and zeal for the service : he is responsible for distinct acts, they fur his general conduct; and should Lord HI Le misbehave him-
self, it would be Lord MELBOURNE'S duty to recommend his dis- missal to the King, or take the consequences upon himself. This was the explanation of the relative positions of Lord MEL- BOURNE and Lord HILL given by Lords JOHN RUSSELL and
HowicK. The Secretary at War declared that, as a general rule,
he knew nothins, of the appointments and promotions in the Army until they had taken place; though he admitted that he, as well as Lord JOHN RUSSELL, knew that Lord BRUDENELL'S appoint- ment was in contemplation, and had not interfered in any way to prevent it. Lord Howlett, it appears, occupies the dignified office of Lord Hues clerk and man of business • whose duty it is to find pay and provender for just so many soliters as Lord nice chooses to say are required for the public service. We h ive now an admission, that the patronage of the Army is beyond the pale of Ministerill control. Until the accession of Earl GREY to power, we believe that tie Premier always had an acknowledged right to dispose of military appointments; and, considering the vast sums annually voted for the payment of the Army, it is cer- tainly proper that Parliament should have a more direct means of preventing the abuse of patronage, than is erived through the doubtful and indistinct responsibility of Lord HILL to Lord MEL- BOURNE, and of Lord MELBOURNE to the House of Commons.
Both Houses of Parliament adjourned on Wednesday for the Easter holydays; the Commons to the llth, the Lords to the 12th instant. The Peers, as usual, have done nothing worth especial notice since the commencement of the session—their day of busi- ness and of trial is to come: but the Representatives of the Nation have seldom passed the first period of the session more profitably. Ministers met Parliament prepared with a stock of useful and generally well-digested measures. Most of these have been submitted to the House of Commons and the country ; and several of them are ready to be launched into the House of Danger immediately after the recess. The hopes of the Tories have been blasted by the success of the Liberals ; who have not sustained a single defeat. The Morning Post confesses, that for the Tories, " backward or forward, the prospect is equally dreary." Very different was the strain two months ago. Then, the " beg- gar-ridden" Cabinet of Lord MELBOURNE was on the eve of dissolution ; ZETA wrote long letters in the Post to prove that there were 312 sure Tories in the House ; and the Standard announced as a positive fact, which none but idiots could doubt, that on the 22d of February, now past, Sir ROBERT PEEL would be Prime Minister. The Tory prospects then, forsooth, were most promising ; now, " backward or forward" they are " equally dreary." There is no more talk of a dissolution ; there is no need of a dissolution ; 64 in a full House is a working majority ; and until it is materially diminished —the probability rather is, that it will be considerably increased— there will be no fresh election. That is the only bit of comfort we can offer, this Easter, to the STORMONTS, GLADSTONES, VYVYANS, SANDONS, SCARLETTS, and the rest of the worthies whose constituents are only waiting for an opportunity to send them into the retirement of private life.
