THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE SESSION.
SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE did not make much of his onslaught on the Government on Tuesday for the waste of the Session. A vast deal of time has, no doubt, been wasted this Session, but by the House, and not by the Govern- ment. The House wasted a fortnight on the debate on the Address, for which a single night would have been ample ; and another fortnight,—so far as regards Government nights, —on the Affirmation Bill, for which, considering the reiterated previous debates, a single night would have been more than ample. Again, the Session was delayed a fortnight by the unfortunate necessity for an Autumn Session to discuss the Procedure Rules, so that the Government lost no less than six weeks of its usual resources from causes over which it had no con- trol, and has, nevertheless, passed five out of thirteen very im- portant measures promised in the Queen's Speech, and one other measure of first-rate significance, not mentioned in that Speech, besides several other measures of considerable, though inferior,
utility. The Corrupt Practices Bill, for vindicating the purity of elections and curtailing the expenses of elections ; the Bankruptcy Bill, for discouraging dishonest bankruptcies and liquidations, and putting a brand on the fraudulent trader; the Patents Bill, for encouraging inventiveness without depriv- ing the public of the gain of inventions ; and the two Agricul- tural Holdings Bills, for securing to tenants the value of their own improvements, and for encouraging agriculture by giving them security for all the money which they sink judiciously in their farms,—together make up a thoroughly good harvest for a single legislative Session. But that is not all. The provision made for redeeming within twenty years a very substantial portion of the National Debt is a great step gained in recog- nition of the claims of posterity, and of the duty that lies upon us to contribute something towards repairing the blunders of our ancestors. We should have been glad, indeed, to have seen the Government of London Bill amongst the trophies of the Session ; but if that had been also carried, Mr. Gladstone would have rivalled in 1883 the marvellous legin- lative achievements of his previous Administration between 1869 and 1872. Under the present conditions, that was hardly to be hoped for. But barring the great four years 1869-1872, few Sessions of recent times have surpassed the one which ends to-day in legislative fruitfulness.
And certainly, without any exception at all, never was so much achieved against such overpowering difficulties. The swarms of trivial questions, which have consumed from an hour and a half to close upon three hours of the time of the Government on Government nights,—the deliberate adjournments of the House when talk had fallen to its neap tides, in order to provide in cold-blood for the too probable return of spring tides of talk not at all more bene- ficent,—the bitter complaints urged by the very persons who had allowed independent Members' motions to be counted out night after night, of the encroachments which the Goverh- ment made on their subsequent nights,—the complete in- difference to the urgency of public business betrayed by the most twaddling of these independent Members,—and most serious of all, the deliberate and organised onslaughts of the Irish party on the Government, have all attained a climax this year such as had no parallel at all before the Session of 1881, and only then as regarded Irish Obstruction. The steady friction against which all the work that has been achieved was accomplished, brings the achievements of the Session up from what we should otherwise call a high average, to the level of a marvel of energy and constancy. A key that has so often been turned heavily in the lock, in spite of the accumulated (lust of Wartons, Ashmead-Bartletts, Gorsts, and Randolph Churchills, not to mention a dozen other Members, in its various wards, speaks for the firmness and vigilance of the warder's hand. If the country is disappointed that more has not been done, let the people see to it that the blame falls in the right place. Let them demand the abandonment cf that obsolete and wasteful practice,—rendered wantonly mischievous during the last three years,—of raising a debate without either drift or cohesion, on the Speech from the Throne; let them insist on the decent limitation of the right to question, so as not to rob Govern- ment nights of their best hours ; and let them insist on the de- velopment of Grand Committees; but let them acknowledge that in the Session which has just elapsed, the Government have accomplished wonders in the way of rescuing all these valuable measures from the rapidly extending morass of Parliamentary de- bate. No Session of Lord Beaconsfield's Government yielded as much useful legislative result as the Session just expired, though there were several very useful measures passed, especially by Sir Richard Cross, during the course of that Government. During Lord Palmerston's time, we do not believe that any Session ever even aimed so high in the way of work, as this Session has actually attained. Sir Robert Peel probably effected more in his most successful Session ; and the first Government elected under the great Reform Act did more,no doubt, in the year when it reformed the Poor-law. But taking the last fifty years as a whole, we doubt whether, as Mr. Gladstone said, the average of a Session's legislative work reaches up to anything like the standard of the present year. And if it does reach so high, it is only because during Mr. Gladstone's previous Government, when great measures by threes and fours were carried every Session, the standard of legislative efficiency was for the first time raised un- usually and exceptionally high. This year Mr. Gladstone has not surpassed himself, but he has easily surpassed Lord Beaconsfield, the late Lord Derby, and Lord Melbourne, and has rivalled probably many of the Sessions of Sir Robert Peel. Moreover, Lord Melbourne, Sir Robert Peel, and the late Lord Derby knew nothing of the difficulties which Mr. Gladstone's Govern- ment has this year encountered and overcome, and even the Government of Lord Beaconsfield knew those difficulties only in their comparatively mild and innocent infancy. If success is to be measured by the resistance vanquished, no Govern- ment has ever been more successful than the Government which to-day prorogues the House of Commons.
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