TOPICS OF THE DAY.
P.AIMERSTON AND HIS PARLIAMENT.
BEFORE many days elapse, Lord Palmerston will have met his new Parliament; and even in the utterances of the first night, the country may have some means of guessing at the course which the Minister intends to take, and at the character of the present House of Commons. For thathitherto is entirely unknown. We have refused to reckon the Members by the ordinary classifications. So completely have the orl distinctions been nullified, so little known are the new Members, so altered are the ciroumstomees and companions of the old Members, that any such mode of calculating the probable genius and conduct of the new House would be fallacious. For Lord Palmerston also we are disposed to consider the field of politics and administration to a great extent as a tabula rasa. If he will not be able to rely for his political repute and his influence henceforward upon the past, it follows logically, that he is not to be judged by the past. We might have consulted the records to ascertain whether he was the best man to be placed in his present post ; the fact that he: is there is undoubtedly strong testimony that he is such a person, and at all events the foot stares us in the face. He is the Minister, and the House of Commons has been returned with a majority to support him ; but we suppose that he does not intend his political career to end there. He has something greater to record in the history of his country than the steps by which he reached the highest place. On no previous occasion has Lord Palmerston been elected by the people to be their leader. Circumstances left the chief seat vacant for him, and it cannot be said so much that when a Prime Minister was wanted Lord Palmerston was chosen, as that he happened. In the place of power to which he thus half fortuitously drifted, he has been successful; the task of the day which lay before him he has thus far accomplished with éclat: but we presume he does not intend to go down to posterity, only as a departmental Minister, to whom circumstances gave for the time the chief management as a Premier pro hac vice during the paramount importance of particular departments. He is not to regard his majority only as a certificate that he behaved well thus far : the question is, how he intends to use that majority. His fame as a statesman will be tried by his capacity in turning the present opportunity to account both for himself and for his country. If he be wanting to his opportunity, all that his enemies have said of him will be confirmed ; if he prove equal to it, the confidence of his admirers will be justified. The judgment upon that twofold question must be not a matter of "prospective computation" at the present moment, but of fact hereafter. In other respects the circumstances are so favourable that the discredit of failure would be infinitely increased. Those practical measures which must press upon the Executive of the day in leading the Legislature are of a kind upon which public opinion is tolerably matured—upon which to a great extent professional opinion has come to distinct conclusions. We need not now touch upon that business which is a matter of course. The work of the session must necessarily commence forthwith. We have no "period before Easter" to be wasted in idle debatings, or in a pretence of Ministerial diligence. The real session of this year begins with May, and the ordinary work must be commenced at once. It must be done more carefully than usual. The public will be prepared to furnish any amount of money that the Minister really requires for the public service, although so much has been given him for the purposes of war ; but the constituencies of the country will expect the new Members to see that value be obtained for the money.. Extraordinary care therefore must be taken both with the Budget and the Estimates.
We are speaking of the legislative work which is expected from Parliament in this opening session. Foremost of all is an instalment of that class of measures which come under the head of "Law Reform." There is no one of our "domestic institutions" which affects the whole of society so comprehensively and so intimately as the law. Every one must obey it, and it ought to be intelligible; it is the appeal against aggression, injustice, or misinterpretation of rights, and it ought to be easily accessible ; it should be equal for all, open to the means of the humblest, and therefore not costly. For years the leading lawyers, as well as the Parliament, have acknowledged the necessity and the practicability, not only of Law Reform in general, but of specific measures the names of which are familiar as household words. The standards by which a Minister-statesman would be judged in this matter are not wanting ; he may look even to the leader of the present Opposition for an example. When Lord Derby came into office in 1852, the machinery to his hand consisted of a new Parliament and a Lord Chancellor that had been opposed to "organic changes," and was hypercritically punctilious in scrutinizing each specific measure of legal reformation : but Lord Derby so used those instruments that some of the most important improvements which had been recognized in the reports of the Commissioners appointed by his predecessor were by him carried into effect, and within one session he was able to boast that his Government had accomplished. "a vast improvement in the Courts of Law and Equity." Lord Palmerston has a new Parliament; he has not, however, a new Lord Chancellor, but one whose administration, as judged by its results, shows that he is not well adapted to otoTy out those improvements of the law which are only waiting for the requisite Law Minister. On account of his personal character, there has been the strongest disposition not to press
hard upon the present Chancellor : even in Lord Palmerston's Government, however, there are individuals who have not concealed their own impression; and if the Premier will make inquiries among sonic of his most admiring supporters, who are not in the law, and are not in the Government, but are in the House of Commons he 'will find no expectation that Law Reform will be restored to the progress which it enjoyed even under Lord Derby's Government, until the work shall have been placed in hands more congenial to it than those of the respectable judge now upon the woolsack. This would be done without offence, and most appropriately, by appointing a Miftister of Justice. That would be a key to the whole range of the subject ; and the Minister who adopted that measure would in the single act Ira/pass the last Government which stands foremost in the records of law-amendment —the Government of Lord Derby. Not next in importance probably, but next in its maturity of opinions, is the great subjeot of Army Reform. Here we have a settled conviction on the general subject comprising the very head of the military, profession and the entire body of the public. The problem has been laid down distinctly. We must have not a stinted but an economical expenditure, at the same time that we secure perfectly efficient forces, and that we actually increase the working strength of the Staff, with a power of expansion suitable to emergencies in Europe. The Commander-in-chief has issued a general order, which is the first step towards giving the profession a complete efficiency. Hints have been thrown out, as if by high inspiration, that the English public would regard with jealousy any .professional character given to the Army which would render it distinct from the ordinary class of "English gentlemen."' There is no reason why it should be more so than the profestion of the Bar or the Church; but in no course of life combining science and practice can we have thorough efficiency and working economy without a professional character. It will be very dangerous for the Government itself if it should be suspected of endeavouring to maintain a system under which officers of high rank have been dilettanti ; a system of investment in commissions which impairs the responsibility of officers by constituting them virtually a class of "great unpaid." It is scarcely possible that the new House of Commons should so entirely disappoint the expectations of the public as to neglect the groat subject of Army Reform ; and the question for Lord Palmerston is, whether his Government shall be the one to lead the new House in that direction.
Another class of subjects stand even more conspicuously before the public, though opinions are not so settled or unanimous upon aify of tho points of detail. We mean, those which come under the head of "Parliamentary Reform." There has been no recent popular agitation, but there is an abiding popular expectation that "some measure" will be introduced this session. Although an adroit Minister might be able for a time to evade and procrastinate, there is no doubt that a truly Conservative statesman would best consult the tranquillity of the country, and avoid troublesome agitation, if he were, deliberately and carefully, but promptly, to take the means of closing those questions.
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