7 MAY 1881, Page 1

NEWS OF THE WEEK.

ON Monday, after a squabble concerning the order of pro- cedure which savoured strongly of obstruction, and after the Irish Land Bill debate was adjourned, Sir Henry ;Fames intro- duced the Parliamentary Oaths Bill, in an extremely moderate speech, in which he stated that the course of events had proved Sir Richard Cross's shrewdness in declaring that the Bradlaugh -difficulty would never be got over without fresh legislation. The House, he said, and apparently the Leader of Opposition, seemed anxious not so much to exclude persons of Mr. Brad- 'laugh's views, as to prevent the profanation of the oath ; and the profanation of the oath could never be prevented at all without fresh legislation, except in cases where Parliament hap- pened to be afforded contemporaneous evidence of the unreal sense in which the words of the oath were taken. In offering, therefore, the alternative of an affirmation to all who had any conscientious objection to the oath, as the proposed Oaths Bill would do, the 'Government took the only way open to it of removing all motive for the profanation of the oath. The debate was then adjourned to yesterday, but for a time too late for any record of its results in our own impression of to-day, but not till after Sir Stafford Northeote had given evidence of very painful indecision in his own mind as to the course he should pursue in relation to the Bill. Clearly enough, he sees the profound unwisdom of fighting for a bare, inadequate, and oblique test of dogmatic Deism; but clearly, too, he finds himself sorely tempted to avail himself of the strong :disposition in the Conservative and dogmatic party to humiliate the Government, if they can, through the Member for North- ampton.