NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE past week has presented little that is noticeable. The daily journals teem with facts, but they are all alike small, calculated rather to satisfy the demands of the printer than the reader.
The Cholera keeps its ground at Sunderland, but does not make progress. At Bristol everything remains quiet. The fires, indeed, still smoke, and the minds of the people are yet unsettled ; but there is little chance of the one being relighted or of the other being sti- mulated to fresh outrages. In the mean time, the Ministers hesi- tate to inquire into the causes of the late disorders—to the glory of their enemies, as usual, and to the shame of their friends. Lord MELBOURNE, it seems, has a cold, and cannot attend the Cabinet ; and it would be improper to redress the wronged or punish the guilty until he get better. Colds, at this season of the year, are sometimes troublesome and long-continued ; but the people of England are a patient people, and can wait. Sir CHARLES WETHERELL intends to go down to try the revilers of his authority, from whom he lately ran away,—that is, if Government do not anticipate his visit by a Special Commission, which it is said they will. We hope we shall not witness in the working of it any of those scenes that disgraced the last Special Commissions.
As an appendix to the riots of Bristol, we have had in the Me- tropolis the meeting, or rather we were to have, the meetings of " the Useful Classes," at White Conduit Fields on Monday. Un- luckily for the mob, their leaders ran away. The Government and the Cocknies looked for nothing short of a fire, commencing, like that of old, at Pudding Lane and ending at Pye Corner : but the cloud that hovered over London was big with rain, not thunder. Monday passed, and the Thames yet remains as cold as ever— there was not even an attempt to set it on fire.
HUNT continues his tour. He has visited Leeds and Preston ; at.which last place, contrary to his constant assertion, that the Ra- dicals never riot, a considerable riot marked his stay. Like the Cholera, he seizes on the dissipated, the drunken, those who live in low places, whose habits are irregular and means scanty. Decency and moderation, but above all things, common sense, are singularly secure from his attacks ' • and as in the disease of which he is the humble imitator, it has been observed that not one of the religious part of the community has fallen a sacrifice to them. Our con- temporaries busy themselves with this man,—the Reformers be- cause they look on him as their enemy, the Anti-Reformers be- cause they know him to be a friend. It is not because we view him in the former light, that we are at all heedful of his acts. It is because we look on him as the mouthpiece of the Tories—as giving utterance, in his coarse way, to the thoughts which " the PEEL and DAWSON crew" cherish though they express them not— that we are at the trouble of noting his sayings. Thus speaks Mr. HUNT to the rabble of' Leeds touching the King and Queen.
" He is-an old-man ; he has a colt's tooth in his head, and he must have a young wife after having a large family brought up by Mrs. Jordan, who are all pensioned out of your pockets. We have a right to talk of that, because it is notorious that they are paid out of your pockets. If a man has children in this way, and pays for them himself, is another matter; but when large sums come out of the pockets of the people, we have a right respectfully to speak the, truth. The children which he had by the play-actress, Jordan, were brought up Fitzclarences. In his old age, he got rid of the mistress by whom he had this family, and he married a young German Princess. A very good woman I believe she is, but of a very poor family. In all probability, the King will die some forty or fifty years before his wife; she being a young woman. Well, his Majesty sends down a message to the House of Commons, who are supposed to be the guardians of the public purse, begging they will make a provision for the Queen in case of his death. What was the answer? I should have said, and did say, Your people, Sire, are suffering greatly from the weight of taxation. We have settled a million a year upon you ; you may pro-
vide for your wife out of your income." .
Were it not that we believe these remarks to emanate, at second- hand, from a faCtion which, with abundance of loyalty on its lips, has never scrupled, where its interests were concerned, to insult the King equally with the People, we would feel called on to apo- logize for quoting them. As it is, we give them al:thice to show how well sustained is that spirit of insolence towards his Majesty as well as towards the " Bill" which actuated the brawlers on the floor of Parliament on the memorable day of the Dissolution. It was then VYVYAN and PEEL and MANSFIELD and LONDONDERRY ; it is now the humble manufacturer of blacking in Stamford Street ; but it is one spirit of the low as of the high.
Speculations have been as rife, during the week, as facts, but they are also small. The hesitation or incapacity of Ministers to adopt the only constitutional means by which Reform can be carried—namely, a creation of Peers—is again the subject of serious comment. It is asserted, that of the forty-one, twelve have been gained over, leaving a hostile majority of seventeen only. It may be so—though we have our doubts of it ; still, seventeen can stop the measure as easily as forty-one did. Time, to which the Ministers seem to trust, affects other parties than Lords ; while the latter are changing, the rest of the world are not standing still. Perhaps when the Upper House has at length made up its mind to grant, the People may be no longer in- clined to accept " Me Bill." We hope for the best. The period of the reassembling of Parliament is yet in obscurity. The Standard—an oracle in its way, and, like the oracles of old, revered by those of the ancient faith as a divinity, and reviled by. those who follow the new doctrines as a daemon—says, last night, in one column, that the House of Commons will not meet until after Christmas ; and in the next, that it will meet in the first week of December. Which part of this dubious response will ouireaders. accept ? The Bill is understood to be ready, so far as form goes ; but there may be other causes of delay which cannot be so easily announced. " Reaction" continues. Nearly every county of the empire will have once more recorded its .senti- ments before the " quite-as-efficient" measure greets the light. The Anti-Reformers hug themselves in the assumption, tha though there are meetings, they are not quite so numerous meet- ings,—a point which is somewhat difficult of proof, and from which, therefore, they are not easily driven.
O'CONNELL seems to have taken up a new position, or rather his old position once more. The appointthent of some Tory Lord- Lieutenant—another specimen of the absurdities of which our Ministry are daily guilty—has made him despair of any steady good at their hands. The continuance of Mr. STANLEY in office is another, though a less obvious ground of the Liberator's change of sentiment. He has written his griefs in the newspapers. Whether he will proceed to agitate again, must depend in some measure on the length of the prorogation.
The Chronicle of this morning is busy with a plan for arming the people, by authority of Government, with pikes nine feet long! We have known men banished for having a pike-head in their pos- session. The pikes are to be accompanied by muskets, which are legitimate weapons.
