The Express.
London, England, 1852-11-04 00:00:00

PARLIAMENT.

(From tits Daily New.)

PARLIAMENT meets to-day, and its first business
will be to choose a Speaker and Chairman of C
mittee of Ways and Means. It ie generally under.
stood that Mr. Sitaw leeeevne, who tilled the same
high office in the last Parliament, will be elected
without opposition. Entitled by his length Of her-
, vice to a peerage—the customary reward that awaits
persons filling this eminent and tesponentile station,
—it was hoped perhaps by the present government
that Mr. LE:FEVRE would not again have offend him-
self at the last general election to the constituency
he has so long represented. It is certain that
more than one of their own party was
ambitious of the enviable distinction. Fortu-
nately, however, fur the Lite:rale—and fortu-
nately, perhaps, for the Ministerial minority
likewise—the same expAieneed hand is cer-
tain to be chosen once more, and in preeeme of
such a competitor neither Mr. Waeteet.e. nor Sir
FitemeleK Tilesinete would have any chants: of
success. Government makes a merit, therefiere,
necessity, and abandons meekly the customary claim
of nominating the President of the Commons.
The campaign time opens by. a decisive abandon.
ment of one of the great positions of the field. It
is the unfurling of the Hag of retreat, which cannot
be hidden or disguised from either friends or fees.
'Tie nut that the Speaker has often to give
a casting vote, or that either side expect or desire tee
obtain any party advantage from having a friend in
the chair. Traditional equity and the high tone of
constitutional manners--which more than any wri•te n
forms govern our Legislature--render it 'aimed a
mutter of incredulity that any political leaning
should bo shown by the first gentleman in the
highest assembly of gentlemen in England. And it
is obvious that on all ordinary occasions the political
party who place one of their number in the poet of
umpire practically make a sacrifice of a voice and an
influential vote during several religions. Nevertheless, it
is universally. understood and acknowledged that the
Speakership is the highest honour in the immediate
gift of that party for the time being predo.
meant in the I louse of Commons, and, as such, its
bestowal has a grave and deliberate significancy
14 renter than any other formal act which the Heeler
branch of the legislature can be called on to perform.
Ministers are fully conscious of this, and with
their usual desire to "dodge", they will endeavoueit
is supposed, to cover their retreat front the steps of
the chair by placing a newly-found ally
at the right hand corner of the table;
they will strive to compensate themselves
for the humiliation of a Whig Speaker by impressing
a Peelite for Chairman of Committees. A Prone-
tioniht for either place they dare nut name ; and in
their forlorn and destitute condition they are oniy
too glad to affect unbounded deference for a Whig
opponent, and impartial appreciation of business
talents in a Peelite adversary. Mr. WILSON PATTEN
held North Lancashire against them, and voted in
their teeth for six long years ; and he is now to have
his reward in their humble solicitation that lie still
do them the honour to allow them to name him
Chairman of Ways and Means. There is an exqui-
site consistency in these two steps in the business
of the session, eminently characteristic as they
are of the party who at present hold office without
power. No denunciation of customary privileges is
too abject, no abnegation of vows and professions
too open for them. Let them but be allowed to tie
and untie the tapes, and to be paid for the tying and
untying of the same, and they are contented. Let
them but have permission to bow at the bar and
bring in bills founded on any principle, they care
not what the principle is, whether one they aro
entitled to call their own, or one they have picked
by sleight of hand out of their opponents' pocket.
Were it possible for the measures of a few mer-
cenary men whom accident has placed for the hour
in a prominent position to peril the character of
great assembly—an assemble, the oldest and most
powerful in the world—Mr. Minim.' and his col-
leagues could not fail to do so. Happily there is no
danger of such misconstruction; the nation has
pronounced its opinion unmistakeably. It has not
indicated by name whom it would have for minister
of the crown, but it has distinctly and impressively
declared its distrust and disgust of a cabinet of double-
dealers. The majority whom it has sent to the new
House of Commons to express this opinion may he-
sitate or waver about its utterance—but uttered it
assuredly will be ere very long, and that in a tune
which cannot be mistaken.

Tho duty of electing a Speaker and a Chairman
being over, the house will next have to discharge the
duty of verifying its own constitution. Its members
must be sworn at the table in the anomalous fashion
which still unhappily exists, whereby some three or
four different furuas of solemn adjuration are pre-
scribed as necessary to be observed by members of
different creeds. Surely it is time that something so
like solemn Wiling or profanity should be put an
end to by the adoption of one common test of loyalty
to the constitution. Let us hope that this is the last
occasion on which the Churchman, the Dissenter, and
the Catholic, will be called upon to stand at the same
table and to call Gen to witness that they hold
themselves bound by the terms of three separate
vows, regarding the interpretation and meaning of
which terms they are utterly disagreed—as the votes
of the last Parliament in the case of Alderman
SALOMONS confessedly prove. The dignity and
honour of the house imperatively require that en
end should be put to this scandal, and that one
uniform oath should be imposed upon all who are
chosen by the people as their representatives in Par-
liament.

The members of the house being once enrolled
another duty devolves upon them. Many returns
will be impeached fur invalidity of various kinds.
IThere will be the old traps and quirks regarding
property qualification and other merely technical
points, to which it is unnecessary further to allude.
But by far the greater number of election petitions
will, it is probable, raise the grave and serious ques-
tions of intimidation and bribery. It deeply con-
cerns the safety and influence of the House of Com-
mons, that such practices should once and for ever
be dealt with in a wise and firm spirit of correction.
Random projects, like that of Lord BeouonAst, for
converting political larceny into felony, were worse
than useless. Swiftness and certainty of detection
are infinitely better guards against the perpetration of
crime than revolting and impracticable penalties It is
plain that society does not look with the horror on
electoral corruption that it naturally does upon bar-
glary or horse-stealing ; and society is right in re-
fusing to confound what lunatic legislation alone
would seek to equalise. But public opinion e:
neither indifferent nor callous to the shame and till
of corrupt practices, because it will not call them by
wrong names, or commit the hypocrisy of regarding
them as crimes of the first class. Public opinion ears
earnestly and loudly for the efficient repression of
these base acts, and points with true discernment to
the cheap and ready means by which they may be
held in check, if not wholly eradicated. If pick-
pockets were still subject to be flogged through
the town, branded in the cheeks or otherwise
tortured, nogentleman of humane disposition would
be able to keep a silk handkerchief twenty-four hours
in his possession; he could not bring himself to be
the instrument of bringing punishment so dispropor-
tionate on the poor and ignorant, and rogues would
profit without check or scruple by the impracticable
severity of the law. it is even so with bribery. It
must be made an ordinary misdemeanour, and punish-
able as such in the ordinary courts of justice. Tbis
and the cheapening of the trial of contested returns
are the true means by which an honest Parliament
may vindicate its sincerity in the cause of ri presen-
tative rule. Let us hope that the new House of
Commons will turn its back upon obsolete prece-
dents and practices in this matter, and thus add a
new chapter to the code of law reform.

STARTLING DISCOVERY AT THE IVATEIII,OO t-
riox. Yesterday, while come carpenters were • in-
plo3 ed in the removal of some cupboards in the apartment
forint rly aced as a cloak room for the deposit of luggage
and travelling gear at the principal station of the South
Western Railway, in the Waterloo-road, they
one of them a paper box, of the dimensions of an ordinary,
hat box, to which they drew ths? attention of the clerk s!.l
that department. 'I his person, on discovering that it
emitted a most offewdve stench, resolved to examine it!
contents. The box was aecordingly opened, and was t‘Tnd
to contain the body of a full-grown fs male Want. The
circumstances connected with the department show t?,
the box must have lain in the precise spot white it""
found fur upwards of twelve mantha, but it is n kn.esa
by whom the box was depoaited at the station.
discovered In