NEWS OF THE WEEK.

BY the prorogation of Parliament today, to be followed by immediate dissolution, the agitation to influence the constituencies, which was begun within the walls of both Houses, and has been increasing out of doors, is definitively handed over to the country at large. As a general fact, it may be remarked, that although Lord Palmerston's popularity does not seem to have declined, many of the constituencies show a disposition to be less tamely led, and in several important instances they are returning to their first loves notwithstanding the furore for the Premier. The Ministerial position has been rendered at once more modest and safer. In some instances aggression has been moderated, as in the case of Devonport, which is left to Sir Erskine Perry uninvaded by the Secretary to the Admiralty. And in the debate raised by•Lord Herby, Lord. Granville contributed an explanation touching

Lord Palmerston's conduct on the County Franchise motion, which places it in a different light. Ministers had agreed among themselves to support the principle of an extended county franchise; but on examining the bill, they found it to require so much change, that debates upon it would have been waste of time ; and hence that departure from the understood arrangement which so surprised and offended the Liberal party. Lord Granville, however, now pledged the Government to support a progressive re form in our electoral system as well as in other things. At the Mansionhouse, last night, Lord Palmerston did something to undo the moderating process, by a " dashing " speech with not a breath of "reform," but a tantarara against the "combination."

Lord Derby opened the week by making the House of Peers a platform from which to address electors at large on behalf of his own party and against the Government. Such is the decorum of a high Conservative ! His speech was intended to be rousing ; it has been likened to the call of a trumpet ; and it was dashing— even impudent. He explained away, every coalition except the " fortuitous " concourse with Mr. Gladstone. He tried to damage Lord Palmerston by giving him a testimonial as a good Conservative. He used his art of lucid arrangement and forcible expression to clear up what Mr. Gladstone meant by the six millions and a half of deficiency in 1858, but without bringing the "prospective computation" to book for the present year. And, alas ! he declared his own policy,—which is nothing more nor less than the maintenance of the Crown and the Church, with all their prerogatives and privileges. Lord Ellenborough, colleague pro hag vice of Lord Derby, has followed up his chief with counsel to Government on military dietetics in China, and with a tirade on all the topics of the day, to tell at the elections; the whole tinged with couleur locale peculiar to his Indian experiences. Except by an attempt in the House of Commons to draw from Ministers some admission of complicity with France against a Republic, and, apparently, favourable to a Muratist movement in Naples, Mr. Disraeli has maintained a quieter attitude than Ins chief; and his address to his constituents, while Wm:cords with the general spirit of the day, is proportionately discordant from Lord Derby's : Mr. Disraeh's policy is "honourable peace, reduced taxation, and social improvement." This is very like the inscription on the banner of Sir James Graham at Carlisle—" Peace, retrenchment, and reform." Another coincidence is Sir James's success in showing, like Lord Derby, that Lord Palmerston is not a Reformer. Lord Granville denies that the Ministry are against reform ; but the question is whether the Prime Minister himself is not either hostile or indifferent Lord John Russell has challenged the electors to judge, not ripen the personal question, but upon a larger issue, on which he takes his stand. At the meeting of his own supporters in the City, on Thursday, he explained the circumstances

under which the present position has been brought about, very much as we have from time to time explained the same circumstances in our own columns. For, in truth, no small part of his explanation consisted of a recapitulation of the facts stripped of any disguise or forced construction. He asked, if he did not impute any coalition between Ministers and Tories to defeat Mr. Locke King's County Franchise Bill, how those who had judged the China question as a jury could. be charged with coalition because they came together in the jury-box and agreed in their verdict? 'Through the electors of London, he asked the electors of the United Kingdom to judge candidates by their past conduct; to consider, not whether this man calls out for the present head of the Government and Reform and another for the

present head of the Government and the Reform, cause, but whether they are men who from their past conduct and character are likely to promote the cause of progress ? Already it is said that Lord John's chances of election in the City have been restored, and that another Member will make room for Mr. Raikes Currie • and, put in this shape, Lord John's appeal will have an effect fa beyond London.

Ministers had made Mr. Cobden the scapegoat of the dissolution, by withholding the announcement of Lord Elgin's mission, which would have disposed of the China motion ; and in revenge for their letting themselves be defeated through imperfect defence, he was to have been sacrificed to the popular indignation. But he has saved himself by exceeding locomotive activity and unequalled power of stating his own case. He will not be misunderstood, and he manages, after his own fashion, to make himself understood. He has appeared in London, with Mr. Roebuck and Mr. Layard, explaining practical objections to the Persian and Chinese wars. -He has appeared in Salford, to decline an invitation to stand for that borough, anti to canvass for Sir Elkanah Armitage. He has appeared in Manchester, to strengthen the position of Gibson and Bright ; with a few words at Mr. Lowe' —who has rather indignantly called a newspaper to aocount for having imputed to him that he was standing for the manufacturing capital of Lancashire. Mr. Cobden goes to Huddersfield; for, practically, he and Lord Goderioh are exchanging constituencies, apparently to the satisfaction of both constituencies and both candidates.

It is needless to notice the herd of adventurers who are now seeking admission to the House. The cry of " Palmerston " is pretty well kept up. The Conservatives have decidedly fallen back into the return of Conservatives as such. The Liberals, neglecting rather than resenting Treasury dictation, have fallen into a similar course ; and there has been so much progress in bringing out new ideas, or old ideas revived, that the general election may take a More political turn, and lead to more political results, than any one at first expected.

To review the achievements of the House of Commons which now expires, may assist us in estimating the Parliamentary tendencies of the country, and may perhaps 'impel us to admit that there was much philosophical force in Prince Albert's remark, that Constitutional Government is now upon ite trial. The Parliament had not a happy birth, any more than the Ministry that called it into being. The previous Cabinet was one that had never warmed the nation into enthusiasm ; and in February 1852 Lord Derby was called upon to be Minister, for no merit or popularity of his own, but solely for the reason that Lord John Russell's Cabinet had gradually lost the power of keeping its place. Lord Derby came into power under circumstances which precluded him from the only mission that he could have undertaken—the restoration of Toryism in politics and of Protection in our economical system. He had therefore to assume a mission, or the counterfeit of one ; and with Mr. Dieraeli's assistance he succeeded for the time. Of Lord Derby, indeed, it was expected that he would be efficient as a bulwark to keep back the Democracy; but as the Democracy was not very forward, and has not been so since, the special-constable policy was not called into activity. Still something was requisite to satisfy both the country and the party of the new Cabinet Ministers. Mr. Disraeli contrived. it. " Recent legislation," as the Free-trade policy was politely designated, was to be "corrected." Finance or taxation was to be adjusted to "unrestricted competition." The first process was that reconstruction of the Income-tax which introduced a distinction between permanent and uncertain income. Mr. Disraeli's sole work as a budget also comprised a slight relief of tea, and a relief to shipp.i to the extent of Si. per ton. The great critic of Finance who found out the mode of reconciling Free-trade and Protection, each under an alias, had devoted himself solely to the evolution of his plans in their most general scope, and had not mastered his own ache

dules ; and we all remember the stinging remark which Mr. Sidney Herbert made when he pointed at him the finger of scorn as the picture of "humiliation." The author of the Revolutionary Epic, like the other epic poet M. de Lamartine, could sketch the grand outlines of a policy, but could not apply himself to the drudgery of elaborating it in detail. His statesmanship was simple bankruptcy before he was fairly settled in business. Lord Derby, himself missionless, was involved in the political bankruptcy; and the sole practical result of his Ministry was to prove that the Tories were as incapable of retaining their place without the public support as the Whigs had been.

During their tenancy of office, the Tories had used their allotted resource of an appeal to the country. They went to the general election on the credit of Protection, not meaning to carry out Protection. Their policy was a sham. The Parliament sent up, uninspired by political ideas, unbound by pledge or by honourable understanding, turned out to be neither independent nor tractable. It failed to support the Government which had created it, and could not dictate a definite policy to any Government which should be called into being. The Constitution was at a stand : the Representative Chamber made no distinct suggestion to the Crown ; no statesman could command a majority ; there was nothing to guide the selection of the Sovereign, until Lord Aberdeen was sent for, only 'because no man's character stood higher, none had been more respectably connected with influential and stable Ministries. Lord Aberdeen accepted office simply for the purpose of "carrying on the Queen's Government." Other statesmen were, with some persuasion, induced to relax their ordinary political affiliations for the same loyal and patriotic purpose ; and we had that Cabinet which the defeated Lord Derby called "an unprincipled combination," comprising Russell, Palmerston, Graham, Gladstone, Lansdowne, and Molesworth, only with some unusual adjustment of the offices. Lord Aberdeen, for example, placed the tried Liberal, Lord John Russell, in the Foreign Office ; and Palmerston was made as harmless as possible by being placed in the Home Office.

The session of 1853 began with the most smiling anticipations of peace ; it loft us involved in the anticipation of war. Ordinary legislative business gave way before immediate exigencies. Lord John Russell had a Reform Bill, to keep up the idea ; but it was not of a kind to attract much favour. Efforts were made at Vienna to close the opening hostilities with Russia in Turkey.; but the energy of Lord Stratford de Radcliffe at Constantinople prevented "the Vienna note" from being accepted, as it should have been on tho pacific principles of Lord Aberdeen, to which Mr. Gladstone has preserved an enthusiastic adherence, so much out of date. Lord Aberdeen took up the Government with a clear policy of carrying on, during the suspension of political agitation, practical improvements. Ho clung to peace with a firm reluctance to abandon it ; and although he afterwards accepted his duties as a Minister of this country in conducting a great war, it would perhaps have been most consistent with his convictions and forecast, if he had more peremptorily, and at an earlier date, surrendered the conduct of the war to moro congenial hands, and had assisted his country in her contest by his own independent suppert. No)doubt, it was a sense of duty which determined him to persevere in serving his Queen and country as long as possible : but an instinctive sense of duty, when it is at variance with strict reasoning, sometimes misleads ; and no statesman should make himself responsible for beginning a difficult course unless he clearly perceives the results to be arrived at, and his own fitness for working them out.

The session of 1854 found the country struggling with the difficulties that arose from being plunged into hostilities after a protracted peace had impaired our war-machinery. By a not unnatural prejudice, a part of these difficulties were ascribed to the known predilections of Lord Aberdeen and his most important adherents. Individual statesmen, following out their own personal objects, assisted the complication. Lord John Russell, indeed, consented to abandon a Reform Bill, this time of a much larger scope ; and he made the sacrifice with an emotion very unusual in Parliamentary proceedings. Lord Palmerston, who had ulterior objects in view, was restless in his own station in the Cabinet. The immediate effect was a shifting of persons, which weakened the solidity of the Cabinet without strengthening any one office. Mr. Strutt was ousted to vacate a convenient seat for Lord John ; the Duke of Newcastle rather disappointed the manceuverers for a remodelling of the Government, by keeping the War half of the divided Colonial Secretaryship ; and he only retained it on sufferance. While war and negotiation alternated with each other, the leading statesmen trifled with the House of Commons, and the House of Commons permitted itself to be trifled' with ; the influence of both sinking in the downward race.

The session of 1855, legislatively productive of Limited Liability and Beer regulation, witnessed the breaking up of Lord Aberdeen's Government, through the prejudices against it, and the cabals of its rival members. The reading Whig professed to share the popular belief that the conduct of the war would be more energetic if there were a War Secretary of more experience than the Duke of Newcastle ; and thus, vvith the working of ulterior contingencies that he could not control, Lord John paved the way to introduce Lord Palmerston to the Premiership, which it was thought he rather intended for himself.

Lord Palmerston, for his part, threw no obstruction in his own way. As a member of Lord. Aberdeen's Government, he refused the Sebastopol Committee ; as an individual statesman, he woo supposed to favour it ; and he confirmed the supposition' when as Premier, he acquiesced, in the face of solemn protests by dadstone, Ierhert, and Graham, who had till then adhered to him. The month of March brought him into office as the statesman who was to carry on the war under the surveillance of the House of Commons. Lord Palmerston had it all his own way. Every shillino.p that he demanded was given without question. The only stipulation was that he should ask enough, and employ every means requisite to strengthen our armies, to press the siege of Sebastopol, and to overcome the enemy. At the close of the session, however, it would, as we remarked at the time, have been an exaggeration to assert that Lord Palmerston's Ministry possessed the whole confidence of the nation.

In 1856, Parliament sat for six months, to witness the conclusion of peace and to enable Bishops Blomfield and Maltby to retire with handsome pensions. The measures that were carried, great or small, were continuance bills or amendment bills. In deference to supposed public opinion, we had a list of "practical improvements" at which Lord Aberdeen had pointed, and which the public was supposed to require,—assimilation of the Commercial Law; suppression of Passing Tolls or Local Dues ; Law Amendment, especially amendment of Divorce, Marriage, Ecclesiastical Courts, &e. English and Scotch Education. But the list has become familiar: it represents annual bills which never become acts ; it marks the confession of public wants, and duties which the Parliament recognizes to be its own, but never performs.

Lord Palmerston's Government came into office for the special purpose of carrying on the war ; its special purpose ceased with the war ; and from that day the influence of the Government on the House of Commons continually declined. On four or five occasions, last year, Lord Palmerston commanded a clear majority ranging from 190 to 194—a command gigantic compared with his power this year. Yet, paradoxical as it may appear' the influence of the House of Commons over the Minister has declined as manifestly as the influence of the Minister over the House. Political considerations have throughout been gradually rendered subservient to personal considerations; and at the close of last session we noticed, as distinctly as we do now at the commencement of the general election, this substitution of the personal for the political. The Cabinet could only say for its raison d'être, "We are, because we are" ; and Members, we then observed, would be compelled to admit that "the one principle by which we have stood is Palmerston."

It is not very easy to pack up in a few sentences a description of the mode in which Lord Palmerston acquired this paramount personality. He gained his own credit by his reputed prosecution of the war ; yet it would be puzzling to make out what he, individually, had done for the "vigorous prosecution of the war,"which might not be set to the credit of other men. Under his administration, no doubt, the civil department of the Army, and in some respects its command, were improved. But Lord Panmure has been compelled by conscience, on more than one occasion, to. acknowledge that he was only carrying out the designs already formed and begun by the Duke of 'Newcastle. Lord Palmerston set on foot some inquiry into the abuses of our military system ;. but it was Mr. Roebuck's Sebastopol Committee which compelled. him, after he had objected to that very Committee ; and we have seen how he treated the Commissioners whom he sent to the Crimea, partly to inquire, but partly also to blunt the edge of the Parliamentary inquiry. When Lord. John Russell returned from Vienna, after agreeing to the principle of settlement proposed by M. Drouyn de Lhuys, he was, like the author of the suggestion, visited with disgrace for the proposal; • yet Lord Palmerston, through his Foreign Secretary, agreed at Paris to the very principle which was condemned at Vienna. Perhaps the one thing in which Lord Palmerston. differed from his predecessors was a more unqualified tone of language. He joined heartily in the martial strains in which the public indulged, and became the favourite Minister because he seemed to sympathize with the general feeling .So far as he went with that fashion, he was completely successful ; and his whole credit has been gained, by the seeming earnestness with which he launched into the career. He aimed at success partly by appearing to aoluiesce in the demand of public opinion, without really satisfying it. Thus he acquiesced in the Sebastopol inquiry, and he sent to. the Crimea Commissioners to investigate ; yet when the Commissioners returned, he withheld from them any acknowledgment or honour, and promoted or retained in office the very men who had originated or kept up the abuses that the Committee and. the Commissioners had exposed. In the humiliation of consenting to the Parliamentary recommendation of Sir John M'Neill and Colonel Tulloob, Lord Palmerston has had to do penance for that practical hypocrisy. But a whole year has elapsed since the declaration of peace, and we have yet to learn that anything substantial has been done so to reconstruct our military establishments as to prevent the recurrence of the same evils, from the same causes, on a similar occasion.

When Lord Palmerston came into office, we failed to discover any principle upon which we should expect him to be guided,, We derived no assurance from his personal character. In manner he is frankness personified, but his frankness is the veil for a diplomatic reserve which can never he torn off; and down to this week, notwithstanding the demonstrations against Naples, diplomatic and naval, the House of Coaimon& has failed to discover what our popular Minister, in close alliance with Austria,, ill really doing in Italy. We recognize in him a statesman who is always prepared to accept the dictate of the House of Commons ; who will execute a job assigned to him with activity and decision, but the job must be distinctly pointed out and peremptorily demanded—he is not the man to originate it. In the present week, with nothing specifically demanded by the public, he has nothing to propose except that the public shall again take for their principle—Palmerston. He has completely conquered the House of Commons by the same device which has really secured his influence abroad : he compels what he can, and yields when contest will hurt himself. So it was in the ease of the Sebastopol Committee, of the Commissioners McNeill and Tulloch, of the Black Sea neutralization, of Sardinia, of Naples, of Mr. Locke King's motion. The House of Commons has been enervated, because official acquiescence has always superseded victory at the last hour. The principle which Lord Palmerston initiated in the session of 185,5, and consummated in the session of 1856, is positively advanced by his partisans to guide the election of 1857.

Any seeming inconsistency in Lord Palmerston's career will probably be reconciled, when we remember that all his repute has been earned as a departmental Minister, and that, unlike most of our statesmen, he has not been strictly identified with any of the political movements of the country.

Although official etiquette restrained Lord Clarendon from laying the text of the Persian treaty on the table of the House of Lords, last week, similar restraints do not prevail on the Contineat; and the text of the treaty found its way to the public, in a shape more or less accurate, through the columns of the Russian organ in Brussels, Le Nord. The document itself bears out Lord Clarendon's description. It secures, so far as paper can, the primary object of the war—the independent sovereignty of lierat and of Affghanistan, with certain conditions to preserve the interest& of Great Britain as an Asiatic Government, if either of those independent states should compel Persia to take up arms for the restraint of aggression. The surrender of the right of sanctuary—a privilege annexed to foreign embassies in Persia—is not given up absolutely, but conditionally upon a similar surrender by other European states ; a condition which shields us frombeing reduced below the position of "the most favoured nation."

There is a mystery in relation to Naples, which has occasioned inquiries by the Opposition in both Houses ; and the replies from Government have not been satisfactory. Lord Palmerston asserted point-blank that this country had never entered into any combination to prevent the establishment of Republican institutions in Naples. Lord Clarendon, however, has subsequently explained, that the French and English fleets were withdrawn because the English Government agreed with the French in not desiring to promote an insurrection, or even "a change of Ministry." Such was the mildness of feeling in those who made the demonstration as an act of moral compulsion on the King !

An English journal has published another diplomatic paper, professing to be a report from the French Envoy at Rome to the Minister of Foreign Affairs at Paris. It is a long special-pleading against terminating the French and Austrian occupation of the Roman territories, lest failure of support for the Pope should destroy the Government of Rome and deprive the Catholic system of its organization. For the Envoy contends, that the question is not amendment of the Government of Rome, but the very foundation of its existence. Even if authentic' this paper i only the opinion of the writer ; but it is an impudent avowal, and it is not inconsistent with the suspicions of French action in Central Italy ; a course of action, both in Rome and Naples, to which we are in some degree bound by the boasted French alliance.