The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1881-01-08 00:00:00

SATURDAY, JANUARY Bth, 1881.

THE WORK OF PARLIAMENT.

THE summoning of the British Parliament for
the 6th of January is, so far as the date is con-
cerned, an event without parallel in modern
political history. Not even when the country
has been at war, as it was a quarter of a century
ego, or when it was believed to be drifting
dangerously near to it, as in 1878, nor when we
have been upon the eve of revolutionising our
fiscal system, as in 1860, have the lords spiritual
and temporal, and the knights, citizens, and
burgesses been gathered together from all parts
of the kingdom at a time so speedily succeeding
Christmas. In the dark days of January, 1855,
when the British army lay before Sebast )pol,
and when the bitter wind which blew in from the
Black Sea was committing more havoc in the
ranks of our gallant soldiers then the guns from
the Russian batteries, Parliament assembled on
the 23rd. In 1860, the session which witnessed
the negotiation of the Commercial Treaty with
France, and was the most importent in its bear-
ings upon our financial administration that had
been witnessed since the repeal of the Corn
Laws, the sittings of the Legislature were in
augurated on January 25th. In 1878, when
Plevna had surrendered, and the Russians were
• thundering at the gates of Constantinople, Par-
liament met on January 17th. Each of these
three occasions may be described as having an
important bearing on our national affairs, in
the first war Was actually existent, and we were
involved in a great European struggle ; in the
second we were on the eve of initiating a develop-
ment of the commercial rosoarcos of the coon:ry
which would have a permanent effect upon the
national prosperity ; and in the third we seemed
to be on the eve of being drown into a conflict
with Russia rather than allow the shores of the
Bosphorus and the Golden Horn to pass into
the possession of those who, living awirt per-
petual snow and ice, are said by tradition to
totes for a residence in a land with bright skies
and long summer days. But at neither time,
ranging over a period of more than twenty-five
years, was it deemed necessary to brine Par-
liament together on the 6th of January..
This time it is not a question of existing war,
of fiscal change, or of threatened danger so far
as our prestige in Europe is concerned, that is
the moving cause of the assembly of the Great
Council of the Nation. It is not even a question
.4 colonial troubie, although the news from the
Transvaal is grave enough ; but it has come
since the decision to summon Parliament was
arrived at by the Cabinet. The present Lerd
Derby declared long ago that Ireland was the
question of the hour, and so it remains. 'the
difficulty with which successive generations of
English statesmen have in various ways
endeavoured to deal, yet confronts our law-givers.
From the days of Lord Castlereagh to the
present time coercion acts of different degrees
of severity, suspensions of the Habeas Corpus,
State prosecutions, repressive measures of all
descriptions, interspersed here and there with
remedial legislation which has proved inadequate
to efffct the object aimed at, have been in-
timately associated with the history of our rule
in Ireland. But still is the attitude if Ireland
the same, and after eighty years of union Parie-
ment has to be summoned at an unprecedentecUy
early date to take counsel together as to the best
means to be adopted to bring Ireland into her
proper place as 0119 of the integral parts of tbe
United Kingdom.
Ireland and South Africa are of themselves
sufficient to occupy What will probably prove
a long session. The condition of the vast popu-
oition of India and the administration of its
revenues, the myriad wants of the people of the
United hingdom exclusive of Ireland, the legis-
lation demanded from the Board of Trade by
the representatives of our enormous commercial
community, the prevention of those disastrous
floods which every few months carry devastation
through the rural districts, the management of
our finances, the direction of our naval, military
and civil services the amendment in'our system
of jurisprudence, all these and a host of others
incidental to the busy life of a great country,
can receive but Hale attention. And this lead.
to the consideration of the point whether the
cumbrous system of transacting the work of
Parliament, which was called into existence
centuries ago, is suited to the immense demands
made upon the Parliamentary time of today.
The assembly which fixes the taxation not onl.,
of Great Britain, but of two hundred millions of
people in Hindostan, also settles the details of a
, local gas bill. It becomes increasingly clear
that a time must come when the rending of the
oak must be separated from the picking up of the
and the sooner Parliament devises a plat;
weereby it can relieve itself from the euiuutire
welch now absorbs so much of its notice, the
better for the immeasurably greater interests
committed to its care.