3 APRIL 1841, Page 1

NEWS OF THE WEEK.

THE Parliamentary deeds of the week may be briefly recounted. Lord JOHN RUSSELL has tied down the House of Commons to work out, in Committee, the clauses of the new Poor-law Bill, from night to night ; and so roughly has the measure been handled that it is difficult to know precisely what has become of it. The ge-

- neral results, however, of what has hitherto been done, seem to be—that the Commission is continued for five years, with a pros-

• pect of continuing for an indefinite time longer; that the Commis- -stoners, in spite of the pertinacious bitterness with which they are assailed by a few in the House, have acquired by the new bill more power than they have lost ; and that they have been constituted the ministers of a new kind of national education—not limited to pauper children, but extended to the children of any poor persons who choose to avail themselves of the advantages to be offered by the proposed Union Colleges. This provision received the sup- port of the now zealous useful-knowledge-diffuser, Sir ROBERT PEEL, The Jews' Declaration Bill has passed in the House of Com- mons, with a clever display of gratuitous opposition by Mr. GLAD- STONE : and a Committee has been appointed, at the instance of Mr. PAIUNGTON, to inquire into the state of Newfoundland. Mr. PARINGTON'S account agrees with that of Lord ABERDEEN and the Governor of the island in describing the Assembly as the most disorderly and corrupt of all legislative bodies : but we have still .only one side of the story.

The House of Lords have finished the petty inquiry into the

conduct of the Irish Poor-law Commissioners and their officers; and Lord GLENGALL is to turn the evidence to what account be can in a motion after Easter. The House have also received.an ex- planation from Lord DENMAN, about a judicial compromise which he was blamed for sanctioning, between Lord WALDEGRAVE and a po- liceman whom the lord had grievously assaulted. Lord DENMAN denies the substance of the charge—that he had taken any steps to relieve the noble offender from punishment ; and he shows that the permission which he was disposed to give, for a pecuniary atone- ment, had its chief reason in consideration for the injured party. He does not justify the practice of pecuniary punishments, which allow the rich to escape with a nominal penalty t'or wrong.

But among the most notable acts of the legislators, are the de- cisions of the Election Committees of the " Reformed" House. The petition against the Whig Lord LisrowcOs election for St. Alban's has been withdrawn, because the Committee would not bear the evidence withnut encouraging perpetual objections and

Interruptions by the sitting Member's counsel. Per contra, the Canterbury petition against the Tory Mr. SMYTHE has been with- drawn, without a word being uttered on either side, except the politest insinuations that each party was above impeachment. Then the Committee on the petition against Mr. GLADSTONE'S re- turn for Walsall have pronounced. that the election was marked by extensive bribery and corruption : but they have a punctilious doubt whether Mr. GLADSTONE, though he consents to profit by the corrupt practices of his friends, actually knew any thing about them. Such is the working of Sir ROBERT PEEL'S new system, which was to qualify the House to be judge in its own case. The event proves the mere uselessness of the endeavour to form a tribunal on certain offences out of the very class which furnishes the principal offenders. The decisions of the week present a very curious feature: grant that one decision might, by an understand- ing, be set off against another,—that forbearance in St. Alban's „might purchase immunity at Canterbury,—still there remains a third decision which is thrown into the bargain--Walsall. That decision must have been bestowed without purchase, proprio motu of the Committee. But then, all the Committee-men had been elected i • all. could sympathize with a " sitting Member" ; and -eN)rit de corps prevailed against evidence too glaring to be passed over, in the very decision which refused to act upon it. Sir ROBERT PEEL has complicated the process of electing Committees, and so disguised the nature of the tribunal a little; but the raw material is of the same staple. Sitting Members are still the judges in the cage of sitting Members : unlearned men are called upon to deal with perplexed -questions of law and the puzzling mystification of dexterous lawyers.