NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE ctebate on Sir ROBERT PEEL'S want-of-confidence resolution, interrupted by the brief holydays, was resumed on Wednesday ;
and at the time we write these words, it has been continued through four nights of waxing dulness : for certainly, of all the stale, flat, unprofitable performances of the dullest of sessions, this
affair has been the most vapid. The speakers rose upon their legs with an air of exhaustion, and spoke as if they were bound to utter words but wanted the motive. And indeed that is just the case : that it is only a sham fight, is palpably evident in the utter absence of impulse which distinguishes almost every combatant. On what might have been supposed the most exciting of topics, the orators seemed quite at a loss for subjects to hang their words upon; and they were reduced to take up with the most hacknied—as Mr. O'CONNELL did, with Orangeism and the old Tory Judges in Ireland; or to make the most of the leavings of the last debate on the Sugar-duties ; or to anticipate the Corn debate ; or, still more industriously, to repeat and recontest the small matters of historical precedents. In fact, stripped of extraneous matter, the mortal struggle of two great parties for power istresolved into a little, see-saw, resultless wrangle upon a few evanescent distinctions; and the names of "Mr. Pitt" and " Mr. Fox" were bandied about with all the petty pedantry of a juvenile debating-society discussing the momentous ques- tion " whether Mr. Pitt or Mr. Fox was the greater states- man." For the better amusement, the Tories this time supported Fox and the Whigs PITT. Another provocative with which the speakers spurred the sides of their intent was personal vitupe- ration; and one of the most telling speeches of this section of the debate, Mr. HANDLEYS, derived all its force from that : when assailed by Sir JAMES GRAHAM for inconsistency in supporting an Anti-Corn-law Ministry, Mr. HANDLEY retorted the charge, and convicted Sir JAMES out of his own mouth, with arguments which he used while he was a Whig, against abandoning those in whose general policy he concurred, because of one disagreement. It was upon such efforts as these that the speakers expended the most energy. " If I vote black white, you are voting white black," is the recriminating charge which flew from side to side like a shuttlecock. In a word, the debate has been the paltriest and meanest on record. Such is the miserable work which the Representatives of the Nation have been set by their leaders to do ; such the exposure which the people are called upon to witness. It has been sur- mised that Sir ROBERT PEEL invented this tournament of words for a sedative to the zealotry of the extreme men among his party : if so, he has eminently succeeded : but he has succeeded also in applying the sedative elsewhere, and has inflicted equal drowsiness on his antagonists. He called on both parties to fight over an ab- stract resolution, not very exasperating in its terms, and much like a truism excepting where the truism is lost in vague "spirit " : he allowed his eager soldiers to engage, but it might as well have been windmills or a flock of geese. He has thus contrived to get up a grand palaver, just before a dissolution, into which as little election- eering stimulus could be forced by any indiscreet zealot or able enemy as it would be easy to imagine.
