The Speech from the Throne, with which the business of
the session of Parliament was formally wound up on Thursday, was of the approved stereotyped form. There was a touch of novelty in the prayer at the close, that Providence might enlighten constituencies in their choice of representatives at the coming elections, coupled as it was with a meaning allusion to our "Protestant institutions." This indirect appeal to sectarian prejudices had a painful importance added to it by the news of the Stockport riots, received on the very day it was uttered. It contains, however, the least inexplicit avowal of the policy upon which Ministers appeal to the electors for support, that has escaped from them in the course of four months that have elapsed since their assession to office. The rest of the Speech was simply historical—an enumeration of acts passed and monies voted by Parliament; of treaties con- cluded with and battles won over barbarous and semi-barbarous powers by Her Majesty's Government; of measures said to have been taken to mitigate the social dislocation occasioned in Australia by the discovery of the gold-fields—measures of which nothing had been heard before, and of which some more detailed explanation might have been reassuring.
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