NEWS OF THE WEEK.

-Dissourrrox—not resignation—is the alternative which Lord Palmerston has chosen as the sequel to a defeat in the House of Commons on the China question ; and by the end of the present month the country will be deep in the preparations for a general election.

The protraction of the debate from last week did not better the position of Ministers. The last two nights added to the quantity of speaking, perhaps to the intensity of the feeling on the several sides, but that was all. We had those speakers who were expected to speak, and some few more ; but the additional two nights added nothing whatever to the substance of the argument. The law point still left the lawyers debating upon it, the laymen being perhaps more clearsighted than their professional brethren. The policy of raising the question of a forcible entry into Canton, upon the comparatively trivial affair of the Arrow, received no new apology from Ministers, and could not receive any further

enforcement from the Opposition. Under the circumstances of the case, deprived of most of its more eminent Liberal auxiliaries, the Ministry could not be expected to shine in the debate : the facts, the arguments, the whole weight of speaking-power, lay with the Opposition—with the Cobdens, with the Gladstones and Sidney Herberts, with the John Russells and Grahams, who struck out independent courses for themselves. If Ministers apprehended an adverse majority, on the Friday, night and thought to reverse it by procrastination, Monday brought the poor consolation of a doubtful majority either way. The endeavour to " whip " the House proved to be but partially successful ; as may be seen from the numbers present at the division-510, leaving some 150 Members to spare.

Lord Pahnerston resolved to come to an explanation with his

own party on the Monday, and a meeting was held for that purpose. The very muster showed a certain thinning of the Ministerial ranks : 180 Members attended—only a score above the attendance at Lord Derby's meeting on the Friday; and among the number of the Ministerial party were not now to be seen the fom Mar faces of Mr. Gladstone Mr. Sidney Herbert, Sir James Graham, or other Peelites, nor Lord John Russell, hereditary representative of the Whigs. Although the meeting received Lord Palmerston's confidences very cordially, there were at least some sounds of dissent on the particular question then before the House of Commons.

Tuesday night came ; procrastination was exhausted, and the

division could no longer be postponed. The resolution proposed by Mr. Cobden, separated from the suggestion for a SelectCommittee, was simply a declaration that the papers which" had been laid upon the table failed to establish satisfactory, grounds for the violent measures at Canton ; a proposition exceedingly difficult to deny, except upon such grounds as those taken by one Member— his confidence in Lord Palmerston's fidelity to our Protestant institutions The resolution was affirmed by 263 to 247. Ministers had already accepted this decision as a vote of censure; and Lord Palmerston's visit to Windsor on Wednesday, with his announcement in the House of Commons on Thursday, were matters of course.

About three weeks, it is expected, will be occupied in Winding

up the indispensable business. The one essential act necessary to maintain discipline in the English Army, the Mutiny Act, could of course be passed through Parliament ill a day. With respect to the Income-tax, even if Parliament were dissolved leaving the law as it is, there could be no practical embarrassment; for although it would still remain the law that we should be subject to an assessment of 16d. in the pound, the collection would not take place till the autumn, and Parliament on reassembling could pass an act remitting the amount leviable by law. The proposal to reduce the tax to 71. for one year is the more likely to be

carried. The Tea and Sugar duties present greater difficulties, because if they were permitted to descend to the level assigned to them by the existing law, it would be impossible for any Chan cellor of the Exchequer to lift them up again. On such occa sions it is not usual to throw difficulties in the way of a Minister who is appealing to the country; but, irritated at some ultra official insinuations against their purity, several Members seem disposed to give trouble. The ordinary labours of legislation, of course, will easily give way. The dissolution will not be delayed for Sir Stafford Northcote s bill, excellent as it is, to provide in dustrial schools for young vagrants and other youth who have rendered themselves amenable to the law " ; nor will the two Houses await the Lord Chancellor's law reforms, which have been slowly wending their way to frustration. But Lord Shaftesbury opens the question of the opium-trade and its legality on Monday next ; and in both Houses they persist in asking what Ministers mean to do with Sir John Bowling? The three weeks may still have events in store, and it would not occasion surprise if Lord Palmerston were to take a favour able opportunity for invoking a new division, less liable to a " cross " than the China debate, and more accurately dividing the House of Commons according to the normal s of parties. The effect of this would be to reconcile the olassi on of Mem bers according to their real sympathies, and the 'star and the Members would go to the country with a popular understanding as to their mutual relations. The remark especially applies to the forty Liberal Members who divided against Lord Palmerston in the China debate. Many of them, like the one who expressed a dissentient opinion at the meeting on Monday, differ less with Lord Palmerston than they do with the Ministers aspirant : ao cident placed them in the same lobby with political opponents, but they had practically nothing whatever to do with ' the co alition" i ; and it is not for the Minter s interest, any more than it is their wish, to leave confusion upon the subject in the public mind.

Lord Palmerston's luck does not desert him even in adversity : what are mischances to ordinary men to him become opportunities, and his friends speak with increasing confidence, real or assumed. It is a public mischance that an appeal to the country should be made on this China question, into the real merits of which the country is as little inclined as it is fitted to enter. It draws upon us a general election without a general policy. But this serious deficiency in such an appeal will be felt more by every political section than by that of which Lord Palmerston is for the time the head. His difficulties, indeed, are serious. Ho has not yet been able to explain his Estimates, and he threatens us with a continuance of large expenditure, attended by an income-tax higher than that promised by the Tory-patronized budget of 1833. Worse than that, has he not "torn down the last remaining rag of the old Reform banner " ; stands he not confessed as no longer belonging by his ads to the orthodox Liberal party ;* and has he not reminded us that this was his original character ? Lord Palmerston has occasionally taken a distinguished part in conflicts arranged by others, but home affairs have not been his metier. Domestic questions are treated by statesmen of the "haute politique " only as instruments to attain special objects. Palmerston has troubled himself less with the votes of parties than the votes of states ; but he knows that states are to be governed through their weaknesses, whether the weakness be in favour of Freetrade, a Zollverem, or a Sclavonic frontier arrangement ; and he is as much a Free-trader on the Exe as he is a Disunionist on the Danube. His want of a vocation for questions of domestic politics leaves a void in his round of qualities, which, with unusual indiscretion, he exposed in his wanton declaration on Mr. Locke King's County Franchise motion. If the session had continued, the public might have found that the Premier for Foreign Affairs, left without a war or a congress on hand, had no function in Parliament ; and the legislative barrenness of the session must have provoked a settled discontent. The result of the China debate enables him to go to the country before he has completely uncovered the political nakedness of the Cabinet. Wrong as Sir John Bowring was, probably in strict law, undoubtedly in discretion and broad policy, there are some' and they are influential, who-resent the bearing of Lord Palmerston's opponents in favour of the Chinese and against our own merchants. Palmerston is faithful to the rule ascribed to him of standing by a subordinate ; and an-English public sympathizes with that attitude of generous manliness. The Chinese massacres provoke a sense of irritation at the alliance of a Cobden or a Gladstone with the new " eives Romani,"

• Mr. Cobden and Mr. Roebuck, on Thursdayd

as if they were retained advocates for the ugly barbarians against Englishmen: There has been a "coalition "—hateful to English ideas—against a brave and successful Minister' champion. of right equally against Czar, Mandarin, Disraeli, and Gladstone. Nothing has been more evident in the debates of this session than the growing mistrust of the country gentlemen in their present leader, and their growing inclination to Lord Palmerston, as "English," liberal, yet practically conservative, himself the very best specimen of a country gentleman—so far as they can see. He may profit somewhat by this awakened feeling at the coining trial. The circumstances enable Lord Palmerston to ride to the hustings on the British Lion ; and in default of a political question he can go to the country nylon the question of hnneelf. Wellington advised Sir Robert Peel, contemplating retirement at the close of his great work in 1846, that he should go to the country on no other question but " Peel " ; and the injured Premier of 1857 needs no other than the question of "Palmerston."

The Opposition ascertains its defeat on the very threshold of its supposed victory. Just as Mr. Disraeli tried to make a position for himself by demanding the reduction of the Income-tax, which the Government spontaneously reduced, so Lord Derby opens his ranks for the Coalition only to find that it won't do. It might be got up

fifC Palmerston, it would not serve for any positive purpose. .the Tories and Peelites may agree to dislike the present Government, but what could they agree to do, worth talking about ? Nor is it easy to see how the men could really come together. Sir James Graham has already anticipated the opinion that he could not join the Tories, and has declared himself content with his independent seat, though he has an eye to possible combinations in the panlo-post-futurum. Mr. Cardwell does not seem much inclined to speculate in a consolidated stock. That Mr. Gladstone' with his strong almost fanatical notions on the subject of. peace, his mistrust of democratic changes, his parental partiality for the budget of 1853, should labour in a chronic fever of excitement against Ministers,. is intelligible ; but he would be nothing more gained to the Torus than a new "persona." A general election will most certainly thin the scanty ranks of the Peelitesthe lost seats are already named. The Coalition is a failure even at the moment when Lord Derby, in coy accents, confesses that he might be wooed, if the temptation were strong enough. He will have to preserve his virtue and remain single. But we have already known what a Derby Cabinet is, even with a supposed majority. We saw that it could only enter office on the credit of imagined improvements in its policy, such as its educational designs—to stop all action of that kind.

The general election will not relieve us of the present House of Commons before we have become familiar with its inferior character and its thoroughly disorganized condition. There was more than one cause for its degeneracy, but the conspicuous cause was that the Government which appealed to the country in 1852 did so upon a false issue. The immediate consequence was, that Conservatives were elected who were unscrupulous enough or stupid enough to accept the issue ; it brought together men who did not respect, or did not understand, the policy of their leaders; and those leaders have been punished by that blundering mutinous desertion on "Protestant" grounds which led their soldiers into Lord Palmerston's camp. Will the new House of Commons be any better in these respects F—We have no assurance that it will. The tone of commercial and political morals has not yet so far recovered as to exercise a very stringent influence over the excesses of a general election.

issue will be presentable to the country, and it will be a House of Commons elected without a purpose. The sort of men sent down to the country to be returned, where the constituencies are not already provided with settled convictions and tried candidates will be such as would accept no issue or any; and "the Liberals," in whose name the next House Will be begotten' will probably have to bear the retribution for the sins of its birth in some such undutiful behaviour as the Tories have experienced.

But it will servo the appellant Premier for the day. "Eng

lish" feeling will rally round the conqueror of the Crimea, the denouncer of Naples, the protector of an absent public servant; and he is. not the man to take a lower position on the reassemblingof Parliament. The Persian difficulty is already settled, by the signing of the treaty with Ferukh Khan in Paris, and on terms that will deprive Mr. Disraeli of that "cry," even at the hustings. Some high personage is to be sent out to Canton, with a sufficient force and full powers to settle ever thus superseding the Bowring difficulty without directly recalling the man. Then, according to the horoscope of the hopeful Ministerialists, will the issue of the appeal to the country be announced, and the buoyant Member for Tiverton be seen walking up to the Treasury-benchamid the cheers of an exulting majority. At least, Palmerston will be able to make the first brief summer session of the new Parliament the euthanasia of his political career.

But beyond that first night—on the further side of that personal success—what lies there ? Ask Zadkiel. Much will depend upon the conduct of the Liberals properly so called. The i present s a trial for them, which may be most wholesome in its effects.Much will depend upon their acceptance of the modest opportunity now open to them. There are no brilliant sallies to be performed, but there are public interests to be served; and if Liberals be content to agree upon what they may and can do for the satisfaction of public opinion, the party will de facto arise once more in action. Lancashire may clamour for "retrenchment," and ask, like Mr. Cobden, for a cheap Premier; but, without thus selling a sound national policy to the blind " Jacobinism" of 1816, most Liberals can agree upon a course of reform which would swallow up the narrow shopkeeping policy. They can demand such a revision of our services, civil and military, as would equally prevent abuses like the Luella and Cardigan preferment, or the M'Neill and Tulle& neglect, and would secure more efficient service for the money. They can demand that our foreign relations shall be not only honest but aboveboard and consistent with English opinion. They can demand such a return to progressive reforms as shall be dictated by taking counsel with public opinion. And in the spontaneous acceptance of these watchwords, the Liberal party would once more advertise its existence and win its way to public confidence.