The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1862-02-11 00:00:00

THE SPEECH FROM THE THRONE.

The Estates of Parliament reassembled on
Thursday last for the dispatch of business. The
message of the English Queen to her subjects is,
"Her Majesty is persuaded that you will deeply
participate in the affliction by which Her
Majesty has been overwhelmed by the calami-
tous, untimely, and irreparable loss of her
beloved Consort, who has been her comfort and
support." The words ostensibly are her own ;
they tell the same tale which was told in the
noble Hartley letter; and never did the Lords
and Commons respond more fervently to a
speech from the Throne. In the Lords the
mover and seconder of the address expressed
with fluency and ability the common estimate as
to the loss we have all sustained in the Prince
Consort, and Lord Derby, Lord Granville, and
Lord Russell more authoritatively stamped the
eulogy with a national and universal character.
In the Commons, the address was moved by the
Hon. W. H. B. Portman, and never had the
county of Dorset greater reason to be proud of
one of its members. His easy and unaffected,
yet graceful style of diction, bespeak for him a
Parliamentary career of ne mean degree. In
pathetic terms he alluded to the loss Her
Majesty and the nation had sustained; con-
trasted the brightness of the past with the gloom
of the present—the happy forebodings of the
session in 1840 with the sad event they mourned
in 1862. He carried the House with him,
as he descanted with fervour on the intellectual
and moral gifts of his late Royal Highness; the
strong influence he exercised for good upon the
domestic habits of the people of this realm, and
his active zeal in promoting the social, moral,
and physical improvement of all classes of Her
Majesty's subjects, and more particularly of the
poor. Alluding to the hon. gentleman's speech,
a daily contemporary says :—"Tbe natural
pathos of his subject, its dignity, its deep and
grave surroundings, lifted the young member's
speech into something like eloquence, as he
commended his address to the House, inviting
it to condole with one mourned with rather aa a
widowed mother' than as a bereaved Queen,
and by every one of her subjects alike—high and
low, rich and poor." Cheers, we are told, broke
from the benches, despite the formalities of the
House on the mournful occasion, while he spoke
of the blameless life which for twenty happy
years the Queen and the husband of the Queen
had lived together. The tone of sorrow which
was manifest in every word of the speech from
the Throne, cast a gloom upon the assembly, and
it would, undoubtedly, have been deemed un-
seemly within and without the House, if politics
had been discussed in anything like a contro-
versial spirit. There were, however, many
curious to know how the leaders of the opposi-
tion would commit themselves and their party
towards their political opponents. They spoke,
but to read their speeches, one would be almost
inclined to suppose that party spirit had become
extinct. Lord Derby, the chief of the oppoai •
tion said— "It will be the desire of all sides of
both Houses to join harmoniously and cordially
in useful and practical measures, and to abstain
themselves and discourage others from bringing
forward agitating topics and violent controversies,
which, by their probable result, might add to the
cares and anxieties of the Sovereign." He
applauded all the Government had done in
reference to the American crisis, gave them
credit for their success in terminating it peacefully,
and expressed his full approval for the precau-
tionary measures they adopted, in case the
demand made had been followed by a less fortu-
nate 138110. In the Lower House, Mr. Disraeli
spoke in a somewhat similar strain as his political
chief. Thus far, then, the session promises to
be a peaceful and a moderately useful one, and
provided Conservative promises are kept—which
by the bye we can by no means guarantee—the
_position of parties will be the same when Her
'Majesty's faithful Lords and Commons separate
for the purpose of shooting partridges and
grouse. as it is at the present time.