NEWS OF THE WEEK.
As the period approaches for the reassembling of Parliament, there is the usual gossip about thickening plots and startling combinations; and, the hubbub in Ireland having abated for the moment, the disposal of the Corn-laws is the favourite topic. According to the quidnuncs, the project on that head is very startling indeed. Circumstances coincide to encourage the notion that " something " is brewing. Not that any one circumstance taken by itself proves much. The League has made conquest of London : but that only proves London to have revived its old interest in free trade. The League has encroached upon Salisbury : but that borough was not won. The Times has declared the League "a great fact " ; which makes the Post angry : but what then ?—the Leading Journal always bad a :knack at blurting out truths and truisms at critical junctures. The League is a great fact : but why say so just as the Post is becoming painfully unable to resist the conviction ? The Times has declared for a fixed duty : well, the Times always did declare for a fixed duty. The Mark Lane Express, a farmer's and corn-dealer's paper, assumes that the present law is to be abandoned—that there will probably be a fixed duty ; and clamours for alteration of the law of distress for rent, as an auxiliary measure justly due to the farmers; the opinion of the London agricultural paper singularly agreeing with the opinion of farmers in the land of "Rebecca." Still, that fright of the farmer's organ proves little. Finally; Earl SrENtER has reappeared again, as a sleeper awakened to the political world, and has avowed himself as hearty a Freetrader as Mr. RAINES CURRIE, and a Total-repealer. Lord SPENCER, explains the Globe, always has been a Free-trader and Total-repealer ; his proxy in the House of Lords has always been given for total repeal of the Corn-laws : so that he is no new accession. But then again, why should Lord SPENCER, any more than the Times, choose this particular juncture for enunciating old news ? Each of these things tells nothing whatever : taken altogether, of course, so many nothings really amount to nothing : yet does the perpetual recurrence of some such "sign of the times" beget a very general feeling that "there must be something in it." It is not surprising, therefore, that speculation is directed to divine what that something may be. At present the "Liberal" notion is, that Sir ROBERT PEEL is to propose a fixed duty, and to combine with the Whigs for the purpose ; that there lis,1 in fact, to be a special coalition to remodel the Corn-laws,care being taken to make the measure in some way different from that recommended by any party. People may reflect, that Sir Ronnar PEEL is not likely to meddle with a law so recently framed, under less compulsion than he sustained last year, since another fair harvest has dissipated much anxiety ; that, though not pledged to any particular amount of protection, he is pledged to the slidingscale as preferable to a fixed duty ; and that, if he were to legislate for the sake of finally settling the question and superseding agitation, he is too prudent to arrange a settlement that must be unsettled again with the first dearth. In that view, Sir ROBERT appears more likely to favour total repeal than a fixed duty : so that the whole story must be idle. Nevertheless, people will be inclined to believe what many would desire as a compromise : and that disposition may not be unserviceable to the Whigs, since a policy borrowed from their Budget would vindicate the wisdom of that contemned scheme. All these rumours, too, help on the movement, by keeping the Corn question in perpetual remembrance.
