5 APRIL 1851, Page 1

NEWS OF THE WEEK.

ON the oth of August last, the House of Commons resolved to resume the consideration of the Jewish disabilities "at the earliest opportunity in the next session of Parliament." That earliest op- portunity presented itself on Thursday the 3d of April, when the House had been full two months in session. Lord John Russell was allowed to bring in a bill to relieve the Jews from the practi- Cal though originally unintended disability imposed upon them by six or seven words in the oath of abjuration. Even Sir Robert Inglis and Mr. Plumptre felt it needless to offer more than a pro fonna opposition to the introduction of a measure merely brought in pro forma. It will pass the Commons in due time, and be thrown out by the Lords. Baron Rothschild has been kept standing at the door of the House of Commons like a Pen i at the gate of Paradise ever since his election in 1847 ; and there he will be kept waiting till the next general election. Will he give himself the trouble to knock at the door then? Lord John Rus- sell did not explain by what means it is proposed to pilot his bill through the place where the only serious impediments to its pas- sage exist; nor does he expect to have it 0*i' through. He merely introduces it, because he promised his constituents, the II S of London City, that he would do so ; about the carrying hiièS not trouble his head.

The Commons had given proof, on Wednesday, that, like Lord John, they hold the originating of measures to be the main point, theng of them a secondary consideration. Mr. Locke King's CounerTfranchise Bill was on that evening quietly entombed. The effects of this measure at its first introduction were portentous ; it not only drove Ministers from their propriety but from their dikes. Its life, however, like that of most precocious Feniuses, Was it short, one. The Ministerialists, and the Conservatives who at first had maliciously left Ministers to try conclusions with the Radicals alone, rallied to put a stop to the measure ; and the " con- fiding Liberals," with their usual infirmity of purpose, hastened to profess their readiness to take the dangerous thing out of the way. Nobody had a word to say against the bill, and many had glowing eulogies to pronounce upon it. Sentence of execution was pro- nounced, and immediately carried into effect upon the unlucky measure, amid showers of panegyrics. It was literally compli- mented out of existence—smothered with praise, as a rabbit is smothered with onions or strawberries in cream. In recompense for their subserviency, the "confiding Liberals" endeavoured to elicit from Lord John some explanation of the great Reform mea- sure he says he has in petto ; but the oracle was obstinately mute. Lord John is communicative enough as to what his new Reform Bill,junot to contain. It -will not embrace the ballot, it will not confern uniform franchise, it will not equalize electoral districts, it will not abolish the rate-paying clauses : in these particulars, he appears to contemplate, positively enough, a bill of negatives.

The House galloped gaily through a number of money-votes on Monday. The amended Budget was introduced last night ; it having been previously arranged that criticism should be reserved' for Monday next The details will be found in our Postscript.

A motion by Mr. Anstey, on Thursday, for a Crown Commis- sion to inquire into the state of our Indian empire on the spot, drew from Lord John Russell the explanation, that when Lord Broughton (a short time before his translation to the upper sphere) declared that it would not be necessary to appoint a Committee of inquiry as a preliminary to the renewal of the incorporating act of the East India Company, the worthy President of the Board of Contrei only meant to say it would not be necessary "this session." Arktording to the custom of late years, the hereditary legislators have been.kept two months waiting, and they may be kept waiting

two months longer, till the ',Commons shall cut out some work for them to do. The great Chancellor Hardwicke used to say, that the House of Lords, with its comparatively limited number of members, and with its experienced lawyers, was best fitted for originating legislation. Earl Grey and his colleagues opine that this task may be more advantageously intrusted to the mobbish House of Commons. Lord Lyndhurst, however, has bestowed on Ministers a lesson that may convince them of the expediency of giving the Lords something to do at an earlier period of the ses- sion. The veteran lawyer made an attack upon Lord John Rus- sell's measure of Chancery Reform, that will very probably prevent that crude abortion from ever making its appearance in the shape of a bill. The aged ex-Chancellor, with his unrivalled keen anatomy, laid bare the incongruities of the Premier's plan, the glaring jobbing involved in the proposed transference of the Chan- cellor's ecclesiastical patronage to the Treasury, and the absurdity of submitting one of two functional measures, which form in fact but one measure between them, to the Commons and the other to the Peers. This was severe upon the Ministerial bill-manufac- tory, but the unkindest cut was reserved for Lord John's own Chancellor, who plainly avowed his disapproval of a prominent feature of the pseudo reform—the shutting up of the Rolls Court. Lords Grey and Truro protested that Lord Lyndhurst's proceed- ings were quite irregular : and so, no doubt, they were ; but if Ministers will not allow the House of Lords to go regularly to work, its members can only prevent the waste of time by going to work irregularly. Had the Chancery Reform measure been pre- sented to the Peers, who are doing nothing, instead of to the Com- mons, who have more work to do than they can overtake, Lord Lyndhurst could not have made an irregular attack upon it.

Lord Torrington's exculpatory statement, on Tuesday, was of course ex-parte, and it passed over many awkward points in ai- lence ; but its decorous and deprecatory tone would have left a favourable impression, could it have escaped the praises and pa- tronage of Earl Grey. From first to last in this affair, the Colo- nial Office has been Lord Torrington's evil genius. The tricks and evasions of Mr. Hawes in the House of Commons and the Committee made matters appear much worse than possibly the were in reality; and the petulant tone of Earl Grey counteracted- the favourable impression left by Lord Torrington's manner. As to the real merits of the case, there is now little likelihood that they will ever be generally regarded. So much time has been wasted that all interest on the part of the public, which lives only in the questions of the moment, has subsided ; and the evidence has become so redundant and complicated, that even the keenest: interest might recoil from the task of wading through it. Uuil1.T. or innocent, Lord Torrington has slipped through the fingers of Ins accusers, if not of justice.