NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE business transacted in Parliament has been more than com- monly varied, though it really includes few topics of novelty.
Ministers have both retreated and advanced from the position which they took up on first promulgating the new Irish Poor- law ; which has undergone some modifications at the hands of its originators. It still conveys authority to give out-door relief to the able-bodied, under restrictions essentially the same as those indicated at first, but drawn still tighter. The bill will allow out-door relief in times of famine or general destitution : a pro- vision which for practical objects appears to be at once superero- gatory and nugatory ; since at such times the relief would pro- bably come from without, as it does now. It is out-door relief reduced to the extreme minimum ; but the principle is recognized. One of Lord Stanley's suggestions, an increase of ex-officio Guar- dians, is adopted ; and, in spite of objections made by the Irish Members, we are disposed to think that the machinery of the bill is thereby improved.
Another of Lord Stanley's suggestions, the withholding of relief from persons in the occupation of land, is still under considera- tion. Lord John Russell has been impressed by the fact that re- lief is allowed in England to cottagers; and he evidently inclines to allow it in Ireland to holders of very small pieces of land—say half an acre. There is no analogy between the cases. There is no landholding by the labouring class in England; even the oc- cupants of " allotments " would laugh at the notion of depending upon them for subsistence : the only consideration in England is, whether the applicant for relief is really and virtually destitute or not. In Ireland, the bolding of land by paupers is the crying evil, and the " half-acre," as Lord John delicately calls it—the conacre—is the worst holding of all. To give relief to the holder of conacre, would be to use the poor-law as an aid to perpetuate that pauperizing tenure. Lord John evidently sees this danger ; and it is desirable that he should boldly trust to his own per- ception, instead of halting in " a middle course." Mr. Vernon Smith has come forth from his obscure and ne- glected state, as a reformer in Colonial affairs. We do not recol- lect that, when he had official. power to do some good in that way, he was very zealous. He proposes to render the Colonial Land and Emigration Board a more efficient instrument for promoting emigratien. The reception which Ministers gave to his propo- sition was curious, and rather sad. Mr. Hawes replied, vir- tually, that to make the Board more efficient, would be to make it something greater than it was ever intended to be. He remind- ed Mr. Smith, that there is a vast difference between emigration and colonization ; and he spoke of colonization as something very great, remote, ideal, quite beyond such petty men as her Majesty's Ministers. Mr. Charles Buller spoke truisms which used once to mean something in his mouth, and pathetically pleaded difficulties; quoting paisages from the Reporton Canada which he helped Lord Durham to frame: those passages were composed as the description of grievances—one of the authors now cites them as excuses I Lord John. Russell manfully avowed that he did not mean to promote or facilitate emigration directly : he trusts to the spon- taneous emigration from Ireland—that exode of classes possessing some means, who certainly are not redundant in Ireland, in lieu of the labouring class, who are starving because millions of them are de trap. Such is Lord John's present beau ideal of emigra- tion. The deduction to be drawn from the debate is, that this great colonizing country is still, destitute of a colonizing ma- chinery. Everybody knew that the So-called Colonial Office was not an instrument for that purpose; it is now officially stated that the Colonial Land and Emigration Board is not. The spectacle furnished by these humiliating avowals is _melancholy. It is a new and signal instance, that when men get into office they sacri- fice their energies, their aspirations, their strongest sense of what ought to be—their duty—to quiet. It shows that even the most promising—in a double sense promising—are made to succumb to the spites and jealousies of the Colonial Office ; that their consistency must be sacrificed to its show of consistency and its prejudices ; their knowledge must yield to indulgence of old habitual incapacity, the official inability to get out of " the rut." Mr. Bouvene has achieved the first Parliamentary success for the Free Protesting Church of Scotland—he has obtained a Se- lect Committee to inquire into the refusal of sites for churches by unfriendly landowners. Moreover, he has wrung a declaration from Lord John Russell, that the refusal of sites is a grievance which demands a legislative remedy. Lord John starts from the principle that no man must be hindered in the performance of worship according to his conscience. He admits that if that prin- ciple be recognized in regard to the Free Kirk, it must be so with regard to all : it follows, that if this right of demanding the sale of land be allowed to the Presbyterian Dissenters of Scotland, it must be allowed to the Roman Catholics of Ireland, and to the countless sects of Dissenters in England. It might further fol- low, that any set of men, embodying themselves under some re- ligious denomination, could seize a part of any landowner's pro- perty, as legally as a Protestant could once seize a horse ridden by a Romanist in Ireland. We do not jump to the conclusion that such a licence must in every case be unjust, but it appears to us
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to jar considerably with the institution of private property in land. The Ten-or-Eleven-Hours Bill has undergone a further and a damaging debate ; without, however, any alteration in the fore- gone conclusion to which the Ministerial sanction had brought the heterogeneous majority of the House. Sir Robert Peel made a very impressive speech—filling, says the Morning Chronicle, with guiding and statesmanlike mind, the pro tempore vacancy in the leadership of the House of Commons.' He showed that the arbitrary restriction of time would be dangerous to the com- merce of the country—costly to the millowners, whom it would drive into expenses for the improvement of machinery—injurious to the working classes, whose command over the necessaries and comforts of life it would curtail. Mr. Milner Gibson and Sir James Graham also delivered excellent speeches. The most striking on the other side was that of Mr: Brotherton ; whose avowal (made not for the first time) that he had once been a factory boy himself, and that he was now achieving the wishes of his youth for shorter hours, had a great effect upon the feelings of the House. It proved nothing, in point of reason.' No measure ever proceeded with less distinct and tangible reasons in its fa- vour, with more impressive warnings as to its dangerous ten- dency. We still think the tendency. dangerous, but do not an- ticipate such alarming results in practice as some do. One of the most immediate results, however, seems likely to be,. considerable improvements in machinery, to the temporary detriment of the working classes : and, we repeat, one of the most dangerous con- sequences which we anticipate is a demand to restrain that im- provement of machinery. The debate exhibited perfect anarchy on the Treasury bench : it is not only an open question for votes, but some of the Minis- ters are expressly denouncing the measure, promoted by others, as " dangerous ' to the nation. Sir Charles Wood and Mr. Mil- ner Gibson evidently have such an opinion of the measure, that they ought to move the impeachment of the Minister who sanc- tions it and advises the Royal assent. The Short-time question has been made an " open" one : it should follow that all branches of it ought to be made so too, and we suggest that impeachment should also be made an "open question "—Sir Charles Wood or Mr. Gibson ought to be at liberty to move the impeachment of his noble friend at the head of the Government.
Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer reports the successful issue of his negotiation for a loan. In fact, the whole matter was one of private arrangement, and passed off as easily as a dinner-party. Some complaint was made that better terms might have been ob- tained ; but such grumblings were little heeded. In moving the Army Estimates, Mr. Fox Maule announced several steps that have been taken for improving the social con- dition of the private soldier. Enlistment will henceforth be for short and definite terms; the soldier will have better—not yet the best—accommodation in barracks; rewards in the way of promo- tion are slowly increasing ; the practice of flogging is dying out. With such alterations, the Army will become, in a few years, a different body. Mr. Sidney Herbert made a good suggestion— that soldiers promoted from the ranks should undergo some kind of examination. It deserves to be considered. Such an exami- nation should not, operate as a check upon soldierly merits, but as a stimulus : to that end, probably, it would be well to accompany
it with some provision by which preliminary instruction would be a privilege accorded, as in itself a sort of reward. Moreover, it would fall in very well with a suggestion formerly mentioned, of a preliminary promotion into a distinct class, whence candidates for commissions might be selected : each soldier might pass his examination in order to enter that class ; which would be analo- gous, but only in advantageous respects, to the class of passed Mates in the Navy. The suppression of Cracow has atlength been brought before the House of Commons, by Mr. Hume. He described the violation of treaty by Russia, and recommended that England should make reprisal by refusing to pay the 120,0001. a year interest on the Russian Dutch loan ; which, like the independence, is stipulated by treaty. Lord John Russell refused to do anything so ungen- tlemanly as to talk to Russia about money, especially a sum of such ungenteel smallness ; and he exhorted the House to rest con- tent with Lord Palmerston's " protest." Such is a Minister's idea of the action with which a great, powerful, and earnest nation, should support its words I England entered into a league to protect the relics of Poland ; those relics are destroyed, and England is to be content with calling out " shame ! " In private life, such con- duct would be deemed either heartlessness or cowardice ; in di- plomacy, it is prudence and dignity. The debate stands adjourned. Mr. Hume appears to us to have seized his weapon by the wrong end—by the point instead of the handle. The treaty has been violated, and is still actively violated so long as the Three Powers continue to coerce the independent state of Cracow : while they refuse to fulfil the treaty, England has the right to declare that the action of that treaty is forcibly suspended by the Three Pow- ers; the representatives of the English people have both the right and the ability to say, that they will do nothing to recognize the rights of those Powers while they keep the treaty suspended— until it be restored to the status quo; and among acts recogniz- ing such rights, but now to be suspended while the treaty is sus- pended by the Three Powers, is this payment of the Russian Dutch loan, or any other act of offensive and defensive alliance that might otherwise be demanded under the treaty. That course would not be war ; it would not be open to the objections on the score of dignity to which Mr. Hume's naked proposal is ; it would not be violent or extravagant ; it would, we have some reason to think, be effectual. What we doubt is, whether the Ministers have the earnestness or the courage to take such a position.
