TOPICS OF THE DAY.
WORK DONE THIS YEAR IN PARLIAMENT. Oraonrustrrv is the opprobrium of Incapacity; a fact which may explain why Ministers have gone through the easiest session on record with manifest hesitation and annoyance. Never did a Go- vernment meet Parliament for the annual term with a more open path before it. The great political superseder of the " Liberal " official party had stepped aside, for the second time in his history had dissolved his party, and from being a rival had become the patron of the Whigs. From allies being troublesome and hazardous through their pressing forward, the Radicals had become manage- able followers and accommodating friends ; even the Manchester School section mitigating its financial rigours. The residuary Op- position, the remnant of the Tory or Protectionist party, was not obstinate in its aggressions, for a threefold reason,—it had no well-defined policy of its own ; it was less jealous of the Whigs than of Sir Robert Peel who had suffered the Whigs to supersede him; and at the very commencement of the session the divisions on the Address had exposed its weakness. The want of policy, the want even of a common accord in the Tory party, was exposed in the sequel,—in the idle debate of the Peers on the Dolly's Brae riot ; in the treatment of Mr. Disraeli's proposal to transfer part of the local burdens to the general taxes. Nor was anything like unity of action displayed until the debates on the Greek affair. The lions in the path of Government therefore had come in and proved their tameness, and there was nothing to de- ter the Ministers from a rapid and glorious career along the open road of the session—nothing except their own deficiencies. By the return to a motion of Sir Benjamin Hall it appears that Government had introduced ninety-fi.ve bills; up to the 9th of Au- gust they had passed fifty-eight, including nearly all the routine and minor bills. Of the rest, the greater number were defeated by the indecision and delays of Government. The excuse which Lord John Russell offers for this result is a clenches to the accusation. He pleads that time had been consumed in discussion !—the fact being that there never was so little hinderance in the way of volunteered or adjourned debates. Nay, he even instanced the
• Greek debate, which happened so late in the session that it ought not to have interfered in any degree with the fate of Government bills ; and that debate, too brought on by the contrivance of Lord John himself! He instanced the Metropolitan Interments Bill among important measures of which the discussion had consumed much time, and he appealed to the Speaker for corroboration : he was shown that it had occupied only two morning sittings and one night sitting ; and he could not help joining in the laugh at his own barefaced plea !
Lord John boasted of the amount of work done; taking credit for all the small bills, continuance bills, and so forth, that swell the list. But this is not the sort of work that characterizes the value of a session—that distinguishes one session from another. Equally might the public man boast of the dinners that he had eaten, the coats that he had worn out, the horses that he had fa- tigued, and, like Major Sturgeon, include even his mishaps in the account of his exploits. No doubt, Lord John Russell and the Clerks at the table have been very busy; but what then ? Does the " Reform " Premier -occupy his position to exhaust himself in the carrying of routine bills and the accomplishing of small amendments ? Is there no other and greater work to be done? Has the °wintry attained that final and supreme condition which precludes the statesman from doing more than keeping as it is ? Either the First Lord of the Treasury thinks so, and is still "Fi- nality John," or he does not think so, and is prevaricating to con- ceal the urgent work neglected. But for the great source of wasted time, the number of bills in- troduced without the intention of proceeding, he made the most ludicrous plea of all; the most ludicrous, but also the most pitiable for its helpless inanity-
" If the Governmmit thoughts measure useful to bring forward, the Mem- bers of the House might take a different view of it ; or it might be that the House was disposed to sai,. that the strong feeling out of doors with regard to a bill rendered it unadvmable to proceed with it." The Irish Landlord and Tenant Bill "had been very carefully matured in Committee," "but yet when it went to Ireland it was Considered that it was not likely to produce satisfaction there." Surely Ministers had the means all along—at the outset as at the close—of ascertaining the state of feeling in Ireland ? To the pub- lic it must needs appear that they had consumed the time of Par- liament in very carefully maturing -what they ought to have ma- tured before introducing, and what they ought not to have intro- duced at all if it was to be withdrawn. The Lord-Lieutenancy Abolition Bill, he said, was delayed because "there arose a ques- tion as to a fourth Secretary of State" ; which question must have been foreseen, if Ministers had only "considered" the bearings of their own measure before introducing it. But they are falling into the modern slovenly practice of working up their ebanches in public: as a celebrated English landscape-painter sends a mere pro forma sketch to the Exhibition and "finishes" it on the walls ---as an eminent novelist sends to the feuilleton of Paris journals passages of the novel that he is to write, filling -up the description m proof—so our Ministers ask leave to introduce the crude idea of a measure, literally "discuss the principle" on the second reading, and do not " consider " it in its details until they are in Committee. The Jew WIT, said Lord John, was cut short by the Greek debate aforeoaid,—that hill which ought to have been disposed of long before Mr. Roebuck brought on the Greek debate for Lord
John. By way of backing his own dilatoriness, Lord John mentioned. the Education Bill introduced by Sir James Graham and. withdrawn,—a really great measure, meriting to be discussed in the national council, but unexpectedlyhinderedhy the lukewarm- ness or treachery of those who called themselves "liberals." It is not the libeller of )(misters, but their Preinier, who represents them in the position of making tentative efforts at learning their business by offering measure after measure " for the refusal" of Parliament; learning public opinion for the first time by their own defeats; and selecting their measures, not by their conviction, but by the exhanotive process of winnowing the chaff of their raw ideas in the wind of debate.
Even if 'Ministers had been blessed with a clearer conception than Lord John allows to them—even if they had possessed a more vigorous grasp of the thing to be done than he pretends to claim— it does not appear that they would have been able to keep up the forward movement : the facts of the sesoion exhibit so deplorable a want of will, that it must be natural to the men—a moral moli- ties ossium, which makes their very bones bend under the effort of pushing. Look at their unaccountable delays. The Charitable Trusts Bill was deferred, in various stages, thirty-two times ! The Landlord and Tenant Bill deferred fifteen times on the second reading alone, and then dropped till the 1st of August. The Lord- lieutenancy Abolition Bill yielded to debate when only opposed by thirteen or fourteen Members, and then was withdrawn; with many other such instances of foals "deferred," and finally with- drawn or dropped. The Savings-Bank Bill was deferred and - wantonly abandoned, without a show of reason except the spon- taneous delay. It was not for want of any real facility that. those bills were not passed. We have seen as much a priori, and the event proved it: Ministers had no difficulty in carrying their miserable Australian Colonies Bill, accompanied as it was by every possible doubt, by the self-condemnation of their own misrepresentations, and by their own confession of imperfect intelligence ; they had no difficulty in carrying the Brick-duties Bill, the Charitable Trusts, the Mer- cantile Marine, the Metropolitan Interments, the Parliamentary Voters, or the Ecclesiastical Commission Bill; they have had no trouble with the Cambridge Annuity BM, or the 5,000/. vote for the Marlborough House stables. The Parliamentary Voters Rill, indeed, was so mutilated that it was not the measure which they introduced ; but, with a triumph of indecision Unparalleled, they have shone this year in suggesting their own defeats ; for their President of the Council, the mover of the bill in the House of Peers, himself suggested that the qualification in the Irish Fran- chise Bill was too low! In a word, where Ministers willed suc- cess, they were successful ; where they willed non-success, they were unsuccessful: never was a Parliament, never especially was any House of Commons, more diligent or more accommodating.
One moral source of feebleness was the want of directness; and the most disastrous deficiency of which they have been convicted has been their want of truth. The exposure has spared neither department nor " rank " of office. Thus, in the Home de- partment, Sir George Grey is accused by Mr. Horsman of shafting certain clauses in the Ecclesiastical Commission Bill ; and although for a time Mr. Horsman is made to lie under the ban of being a false accuser, he is at last admitted to have been correct. The Great Seals are taken from the well-working Commission, and Baron Truro is appointed Lord Chancellor, on the understanding that the office is to be divided : several Whig adherents get a lift, but one hears nothing of the splitting of the office. In the Colonial department, the evasions, assertions, and contradictions about the Australian Colonies Government Bill, are notorious ; also the suppression of evidence in the case of the Ceylon Committee. Early in the session, Lord John paraded a bran "new Colonial policy" : it proved to be a more stalking-horse. In the roreign department, we have M. Drouyn de Lhuys refuting Lord Palmer- ston's statements of fact; the Pope doing the same, and answered by a breach of confidence which literally confirms his assertion ; the Chevalier Bunsen doing the same in the Schleswig affair. In the Greek debate, Lord Palmerston was all Liberalism, in the Schleswig protocol he adopts naked Absolutism.
The session is over. Excepting the Interments Bill, it may be said to have done nothing for the public. In the ease of the Post-office, Ministers allowed Lord Ashley to inflict serious and vexatious inconvenience. The most willing and diligent of Par- liaments, for want of guidance, has been merely frivolous and vex- atious. Some impatient spirits cry, " Shut it up altogether!" The very 'extravagance of the proposition only shows the degree of the disappointment. However exaggerated, that feeling is too na- tural not to be dangerous : Members are dragging Parliament, as well as Government, into contempt. People are beginning to re- flect that it is not merely the redundancy of speakers since the Reform Bill which hinders business; it is not merely the mul- tiplicity of local business that oppresses the central Legislature; but it is the absence of any real concern for the public welfare which oppresses the enervated and drowsy, Members—the uniform postponement of public interests, by that demoralized body, which renders it so useless, such a public encumbrance and eyesore ; while those whom it suffers to be its leaders have so little mastery over the body whom they lead, the subjects which they handle, or the public whom they profess to rule, that government has degenerated into a mechanical routine, 'without moral influence or vitality to bear it up in a day of trouble. Pray Heaven that tempests may not overtake us in our present condition—or the session of that time might prove more eventful than this of 1850!
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