The Express.
London, England, 1848-07-18 00:00:00

MOH WATISII aT LONDON 1111110.1..

15 ail. {•••• 3 31tPmflor. 31 min. out 1.
To.uossow—Maraiag, 014 P 444 3 s Aftn4o,4l. 11 .5.. pa. 1.

LONDON. TUESDAY. JULY lB.

_
PARLIAMENT has been in session—except during
the hclidays—since the 23rd of November last. It
has already altered the sugar duties, and shifted sedi-
tious speaking front the class of crimes in which it
formerly ranked into that of felonies. And Lord done
RUSSELL last night informed the house that govern-
ment still intends to proceed with the Health of
Towns Bill, the Diplomatic Relations with Rome
Bill, the Irish Incumbered Estates Bill (if the Lords
are agreeable), and the Borough Eieetions Bill. The
Landlord and Tenant Bill is to be pressed in the
House of COIIIIIIOIII4, with the view probably of its
being taken up by the House of Lords next session.
The measure for the repeal of the navigation laws,
with all its subsidiary bills, is to be abandoned, and
so is the Elective Franchise (Ireland) Bill. This is
the whole amount of the positive information bestowed
upon tee house ; all the other measures depending in
parliament were declared to be " minor measures" by
Lord JOHN, and as such he intimated that be thought
their fate not worth foretelling.
'fhe plain English of this not very explicit an-
nouncement appears to be:—That the llealth of Towns
Bill, as it has been mutilated, and the Diplomatic Re-
lations with Rome Bill will be passed this session ;
that ministers will try to persuade the House of
Lords to pass the amended Incumbered Estates
(Ireland) Bill ; and that if the session lasts long enough
the Borough Elections Bill will also be passed. No
other measures are to be insisted upon ; for the refusal
to speak positively as to the fate impending over the
" minor measures" we understand to be a veil thrown
over " the massacre of the innocents," as the ancient
painter threw a veil over the face of the father in the
sacrifice of I ohigenia, least a spectacle too harrowing
for human feelings should be presented to the spec-
tators. . _ . . . _ . . . .

It cannot be said that this foreshadowing of actual
performance towards the close of the session contrasts
very forcibly with the note of promise at its opening.
In the QeEns's speech it was intimated that parlia-
ment had been assembled to pass three measures, but
that only two of them would be found necessary. It
had been apprehended that government and the
Bank of England would lite° required an act of
indemnity for a breach of the law, but as they bad
not found it necessary to perpetrate the illegal
action they contemplated such a measure was un-
necessary. I'arliamet t was therefore my invited to
alter the navigation laws and pass a Health of
Towns Bill. There was not much boasting in this
ministerial intimation of what it was intended to
persuade parliament to do; and one half of the pro-
mise will be kept.
Still it does appear that, seeing members were
called from their homes at as uncomfortably early
period, and that the session will extend far beyond
the usual length of sessions, something more might
have been expected from the labours of parliament
than a Health of Towna Act, and modifications of the

sugar duties and the sedition laws.
The fault does not lie entirely at the door of minis-
ters, though Lord JOIIN'S exculpation of them is
something of the lamest. Ministers were prevented,
he says, from introducing the bill fur altering the
navigation laws so early as could have been wished
by the debates on the expediency of increasing the
force of the army and navy, and the rate of the in-
come tax ; and they were obstructed in their attempts
to urge it on by the debates on the sugar duties.
Now, all these impediments have been of
ministers' own creation. Of the sugar debates
we will say nothing, fur though the change
in the sugar duties appears to us to have been as un-
called for as it is sure to prove inefficient for good, that
is matter of opinion. But the inutility of the debates
on the proposed increase in the income tax and
augmentation of our defensive establishments is
admitted by ministers themselves. Notwithstanding
their representations at the beginning of the session
that our naval and military force ought to be kept up
or rather slightly increased, and that in the dilapi-
dated state of the national revenue this would render
an increase of the income tax necessary ; they have
since been convinced, by a more careful perusal of the
estimates, that a reduction in the military department
may be safely effected, and consequently any addition
to taxation dispensed with. The debates, therefore,
which impeded the introduction of the bill for altering
the navigation laws, and which were provoked by
ministers themselves, are now admitted to have been
quite uncalled for.
But, in truth, ministers might have pleaded
that the experience of late years shows that
parliament never can contrive to finish the business
of the session in the course of the session. The minis-
terial speech, announcing what measures are to be
abandoned, is as unfailing a standing dish as the royal
speech announcing what measures are to be brought
in. Be the session short or long, let parliament meet
before Christmas or protract its deliberations till
after the 12th of August, it comes to the same thing in
the end. Be the business submitted to the legislature
great or little in amount, more than one half of it is
begun for the purpose of being left unfinished. Vehe-
ment debates, personal attacks and recriminations, close
divisions and breathless whippers-in, all are but pre-
ludes to the annual confession that parliament
cannot finish the work it has in hand. From the
measures of any consequence, one or two are selected
to be passed for shame's sake ; the routine business
of the session is huddled up anyhow ; and members
having spoken themselves hoarse, adjourn to tell
curious inquirers that they have done nothing or next
to nothing. A phenomenon, of which every session
witnesses the recurrence, indicates the existence of
some cause enracinated in the very constitution of
the legislature.
It must be obvious to the most cursory observer that
parliament every session undertakes far more busi-
ness than it is possible to accomplish during the
average time for which sessions last. There
are the estimates for the year, with all
the subordinate inquiries arising out of them,
to be got through. There are innumerable
questions of the day, relating to foreign, domestic,
and colonial policy, to be inquired into. There is
always some -branch of civil or judicial administra-
tion calling for amendment ; some law or other
to be rendered less oppressive, more efficient, or more
consonant with public opinion. And the great
changes in the structure of society, resulting from the
silent workings of time, are continually rendering
institutional changes of a more or less extensive kind
necessary. As if these legitimate functions of a central
and supreme legislature did not cut out work suffi-
cient for parliament, parliament must needs burden
itself with other tasks. Not a 'county road can be
made nor a branch railway, not a foreigner can be
naturalised, not a man or woman can get rid of a pro-
fligate spouse, but parliament must needs have the
doing of it. Parliament encumbers itself unneces-
sarily with the discharge of many tasks which would
be much more efficiently, economically, and expedi-
tiously performed by local boards or the courts of law.
Much might be done to bring the parliamentary
business within the compass of parliamentary powers,
by a judicious delegation, to inferior administrative
bodies or courts of law, of by far the greater part of

what is called private business. The immense mass
of public business that would still remain might have
its despatch accelerated by improved arrangements of
parliamentary procedure. Bat after all that is possible
towards this end has been done, girl it is to be
apprehended that it will be (sand impossible
to overtake the annual business of parliament in less
time than the year itself. All our judicial tribunals
are found no more than sufficient to finish the year's
business in the lapse of the year. The time was when
justices in eyre in the course of their hasty circuits
were found sufficient. The parallel holds exactly in
the case of the legislative business of the country.
The only chance the legislature has to escape con-
tinually increasing arrears of public business, is in
having its sessions as regular and permanent as the
terms of court. of law ; its procedure regulated by as
strict a regard to the expediting of business as the
forms of process in three courts.
But such a change in the habits of parliament would
require as great a change in the personnel of the legis-
'attire as has taken place in our courts of justice.
Time was when non-lawyers presided in the Court of
Chancery. None but professional men are now com-
petent to that task. If the sittings of parliament
were to be made permanent, and its members tied
down to more strict forms of business, none but pro-
fessional men could be expected to undergo the toil.
Much has been said in favour of such a change by
BENTHAM and others who have argued in favour of
paid members of parliament. And there can be little
doubt that legislation might be followed as a pro-
lession with quite as much advantage to the
public as any of what are called the
liberal professions; and with quite as little
detriment to the independence and honourable feel-
ings of thou who might engage in it, as is experi-
enced by naval and military office's, dignitaries of
the church, or leaders at the bar—all of whom think
no shame to earn their livings by their respective
callings. But the prepossessions or prejudices of
society are eo strong on this head, that it were vain to
do more than throw out the suggestion, of the expedi-
ency of adding the legislative profession to the
already existing list of liberal professions, for the
consideration of the public.

THERE is no theme of which the French are more
fond than the misgoverned and degraded state of the
Irish people. Their writers have always taken it for
granted that nothing could be more easy than for the
rich to impart a certain share of their superfluities to
the poor, and that thus the terrible inequalities of
classes, and the miserable condition of the lower or-
ders ought be :instantly remedied. The French have
now got an example at home of the difficulty of deal-
ing with a labouring class, who, by neglect or other
causes, have at once been ;educed to indigence and at
the same time inoculated with a rebellious and sub-
versive creed. _ . .

The fact is. that the lower orders of Paris have
been reduced to a state of condition and feeling, very
like the state of the labouring Irish. They were
allowed to suffer want, an insufficiency and uncer-
tainty of livelihood. They underwent a marked sepa-
ration from the classes above them, and were made
converts to a creed which taught them to consider the
upper classes as their natural enemies, and the pro-
perty of those upper classes as their destined and
rightful prey.
Communism as it was preached in Paris is, in fact,
a kindred philosophy to the repeal religion preached
in Ireland. The communist told the French opera-
tive that the wealth of the citizen was accumulated
robbery. His political and sometimes his religious
preacher told the same story of the Saxon citizen to
the Celtic peasant There was, of course, a certain
admixture of spirituality in both doctrines—the one
assumed the cloak of patriotism and philanthropy, as
the other did of patriotism and Christianity, but both
wera essentially material religions which held forth 1
the land of promise with worldly prosperity and
ascendancy to the votaries who persevered and. who I
dared to march to its conquest.
We will not pursue the comparison as we might,
through all its ramifications. Suffice it to observe
that French politicians have got a little Inland to
deal with, and where it was least to be expected, in
the heart of their metropolis. French statisticians
have shown how very nomads the class of la-
bourers arc in Paris, how they come and go,
are in full work one portion of the year, starve and
are ready to rob or fly to any extreme the rest. The
principles of religion, or the tics of family, are un-
known to this population. The clergy have no hold
Upon them—no Sunday-school receives their young,
or adult place of instruction attracts themselves. They
obtain work by the system of tlntipagnonage ; that is,
a band is engaged for in the name of a chief, and the
employer knows but the chief. Want of family ties,
proved by the absence of marriage and the number
of illegitimate children, takes from the Parisian the sole
motive for being orderly that the Irishman possesses.
Amidst such a population communism sent forth its
missionaries. Is it to be wondered at that they were
successful? _ .

And now comes the question of how to purify and
to reclaim. Of course, when the overweening confi-
dence in their numbers and principles tempts such
masses to fly to arms, and essay their physical force,
nothing is left to society in self-defence but recourse
to the same weapons. The citizens arm, march with
the regular troops to the conflict, and the weight of
cannon decides the contest, applied by the superior
resources, which a government and an intelligent and
a wealthy class must have at command.
But it is in civil as in international contests. The
difficulty is not so much to conquer as to know how
to make use of victory. General CAVAIGNAC has
wielded his sword like a hero, and directed his cannon
with all the precision and rifer• If the captor of
Toulon. But the victory gained, how to deal with
the Hibernians of the Parisian faubourgs ?—for Irish
we cannot help considering them in their reckless
courage, their extravagant hopes, their distorted
views of right and wrong,' their execration of those
above them, their readiness to give life or take it,
and their inveteracy shown in assassinating those
whom they can no longer meet in tLe open field.
How to deal with these men? The French nota-
bles have held council, like the three men in tie
fable, and each says " there is nothing like leather."
The military man is for martial law, and
a camp under Paris. The lawyer is for
monster prosecutions. Some madmen of this class
are for bringing up the whole of the late provisional
government to the bar, and trying them for their con-
duct in the late anarchic times. Others are for trans-
porting the labouring population en masse. The
clubs are the terror of one, the press the bugbear of
another. All forget that there cannot be a perpetual
proscription of one class of the population by another;
and that a society divided against itself cannot stand,
either by the aid of the soldier, the lawyer, or the
hangman.
It is no doubt but too natural that in a city where
the lives of the best and most valuable citizens have
been sacrificed in putting down an insurrection that
menaced property and society itself—it is but too
natural that stern and vindictive feelings should still
prevail. It is time, however, that they should begin
to give way to others. The acts of great and
exemplary severity, called for by the late
insurrection, ought already to have been ac-
complished. And instead of continuing the
state of war against the population, treating them
like wild beasts, shooting those that are caught, and
threatening to transport the thousands already in
duraece, some words of peace and clemency ought to
be spoken. If any one will trace the degrees and the
political events, and the material neglect by which
the Parisian population have been led or left to their
late criminal attempts, he cannot but come to the con-
clusion, that the madness of the many comes from the
fault of the few, and these few the rulers of the
people. Stained as the late uprisings in Paris were
by some horrid and inhuman acts, too easily accounted
for by that fatal system of allowing a large portion of
convicts to swell the ranks and sugzest the crimes of
a metropolitan mob ; that population of Paris have
given too many proofs of courage, disinterestedness,
and of all the nobler civic virtues, not to command a
more than ordinary degree of sympathy for its good
deeds, and of compassion and regret for its misfortunes
and its errors.
We should therefore like to hear of the war in the
streets and environs of Paris being put an end to by
some words and acts of clemency. If the Saxon in-
tends to remain in Ireland be must conciliate the Celt
atter having conquered him. And so must the Pa-
risian citizen deal with the labouring class beneath
Vim, whom he can neither slay nor transport in mass.
Moderate French politicians should perceive that it is
the very vindictiveness and severity of the riding
power, without there being any visible issue or termi-
nation of this reign of terror, which has awakened the