2 OCTOBER 1886, Page 1

NEWS OF THE WEEK.

THE dreary Session, the second Session of 1886, dribbled to an end on Saturday. There were the usual number of futile questions, Mr. Lawson being in particular anxious that the Queen's Jubilee should be " celebrated in some national manner," and then the Queen's Speech was read. It contains a notifica- tion that, as far as this country is concerned, there will be, as regards Bulgaria, no breach of the Treaty of Berlin, and that 4' other Powers " have given a similar assurance, and a statement that a Commission of Inquiry has been ordered into the circum- stances which have impeded the operation of the Irish Land Acts ; and there the interest of the Speech ends. The Session has been the most useless and one of the most fatiguing upon record, all time having been consumed by Parnellite virulence and new-Radical " philanthropic " drivel. There has not been one debate which enlightened the public, or one measure passed tending even remotely to the general good. The single gain from the Session has been the evidence it has afforded that a Tory Government is more endurable than the dismemberment of the Kingdom ; and most Englishmen were convinced of that before. It has, however, elicited one assurance from the Ministry,—that they will deal with Procedure seriously ; and even that is rendered less pleasant by the Liberal threat that such dealing shall be resisted as a mere effort to postpone the claim of Ireland to the undivided, universal, and never-ending attention of a sickened mankind. Perhaps, though, the Liberals are right. A man with a grain of sand in his eye thinks the world a place of torment until the grain is out.