NEWS OF THE WEEK.
BOTH Houses of Parliament have finished the session with a scramble; each having detected the other in furtive attempts to pass favourite enactments in the confusion. The Commons cry out that the Lords send down atnended bills at such a time that it is impossible to "consider" the amendments ; the Lords are surprised by an attempt to smuggle the Bribery at Elections Bill at an unusual sitting. The Vice- President of the Board of Trade avows that he has allowed a bill to go with an improper clause in it, because the haste is too great to permit his altering it in the House of Lords ; the Commons discover in a private railway bill the pith of Lord Monteagle's Railway Audit Bill, which they had rejected. The Lords throw out the bill ; the Commons, the clause. The damage to the particular bills was a small matter, compared to the confession, on all hands, that both Houses were turning out their work, at the close, in a state that nobody understood. The Prorogation Speech pro- fesses that "the state of public business" permits the dispersion of Parliament; but, in order to get off by Wednesday, it was ne- cessary to spend three or four days in that slovenly patching and slashing.
In one way or, other, measures have been disposed of : but some matters that do not come within-the category of measures engaged attention. Lord Roden volunteered an explanation of his conduct towards the Orangemen on the 12th of July. His defihce was little more than an echo of thy charge : with some show of reluctance;he consented to receive the Orangemen; regaled them with beer, but pleads that it was only of the sort called small; joined them in a field of his own, where he °found" a scaffold ; and addressed his " brethren " in a speech full of what he probably meant for dehortations from violence,- only they read very like the Irish incentive "not to nail a rascal's ears to the pump." People here are shocked at the faction-fight tone of Lord Roden's pacifies; they do him an injustice in viewing him from the House of ords point of view : there he is an exotic—at Tully more he is of the indigenous Orange species ; all his affections and convictions are Orange ; he has Orange ideas of right and wrong; he speaks in the Orange dialect, and is too old to learn another. Some are scandalized, because, being Custos Rotulorum, he does not know that an armed and'intimidating assemblage is illegal : yet he is not altogether without warrant in the contrary opinion. Until lately, there was a special act to forbid party processions in Ireland ; the act not having been renewed, the natural inference is that party processions are not illegal ; moreover, he had seen armed bodies of Roman Catholics unmolested. It is true that those two negations do not establish the requisite affirmative, the legality of armed Orange processions ; but to perceive that fact requires some cool acumen; to which, in- deed, sharp Sir George Grey has but newly attained, since his revelation of the illegality at common law is quite recent. Lord Roden is manifestly stronger in the heart than the head. He is not only out of place geographically when speaking in the House of Lords, but also chronologically ; he belongs to the past—he is the Newcastle of Ireland ; the really contemporary generation of Jocelyn is the one that has succeeded him, and that testifies that the house of Jocelyn has advanced with the times. Lord Roden is but a surviving ancestor, enjoying a cherished longevity. The Ceylon inquisition has ended for the session in an official scandal, which insures its revival next year, thanks to the nimiety H of Mr. awes's zeal. The. Committee found that they could not form a judgment without further evidence as to the mode in which the insurrection had been suppressed ; and Mr. Dis- raeli proposed, in Committee, that the Committee should be reappointed next year, and that witnesses should then be produced. Mr. Hawes, on the rule of admitting nothing, stoutly refused. The Chairman was therefore instructed to move in the House an address to the Crown, asking for a Commission to take evidence in Ceylon. Lord John Russell opposed the mo- don, mainly on the ground that the Committee had adduced no evidence in support of the application,—evidence being the very thing desiderated!—and that such an inquiry would embarrass the Governor, by implying a prima facie charge against Lord Torrington,—as if that charge were not implied in the very pro- ceedings of the Committee. No, said Lord John ; rather let the Governor be impeached. "I will impeach him !" cried Mr. Home. " Or," said Lord John, "let the Committee be reap- pointed next year." '' Precisely what I desired !" cried Mr. Dis- raeli. And that was the ultimate arrangement : Lord John an- swers for the reappointment of the Committee and the produc- tion of witnesses to be named. Thanks to Mr. IIawes, the case of the colony against its Governor has acquired a signal notoriety to preserve it fresh throughout the recess. Nor are foreign affairs left without a party scandal ; in which too, by singular luck, Mr. Hawes has a share. Mr. Mouckton Milnea has extracted from him the ugly fact that Italian refu- gees have been refused an asylum at Malta. The pretext was, a fear for the peace of the island ; "several hundreds," says Mr. Hawes, having arrived, and more being on their way. The com- putation looks very lax. By this step, the boast that the English dominions are the refuge of the vanquished is stricken down ; Lord Minto's fostering of insurrection in Rome and Naples is wickedly stultified ; and a self-inflicted sarcasm is appended to Lord Palmerston's flaming oration on the independence and patri- otism of Hungary. Our public officers affect to be impartial : would the King of Naples have been repelled from Malta T Assuredly not. But he is a prince; it is peoples and patriots whom British policy cajoles to their destruction.
