"Vie 6pectator," Zugust 17tb, 1850
WORK DONE THIS YEAR IN PARLIAMENT
OPPORTUNITY is the opprobrium of Incapacity; a fact which may explain why Ministers have gone through the easiest session with manifest hesitation and annoyance. Never did a Government 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, and 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 manageable followers and accommodating friends; even the Manchester School section mitigating its financial rigours. The residuary Opposition, the remnant of the Tory or Protectionist party, was not obstinate in its aggres- sions, 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 deter the Ministers from a rapid and glorious career along the road of the session —nothing except their own deficiencies.
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