The Sun.
London, England, 1852-07-02 00:00:00

[PRICE SD.

railways and .the closing of their accounts ; and by
several railway 'audit Bills, ending in 5 Rail-
way Audit Board, the only fruit of which was a
very long speech one ee.ernaon, concluding with
the announcement that, nothing, was to be done. To
this day nothing tee been deep, ard,. excepting a eert',!ln
wholesome dread of large divi&ndsedeeived from hitter
experieece, there is little now to prevent dividends being
wpai:Lidde
juutgot,tm. capital, o
taill,rt4s
tar; ica the palmy days of Hudson and
material • quesion sees forced
upon Parliament by the ehelera, during the ravages of
which at ono time there were deposited round our nabi-
tatiens, and in grounds already teeming with corruption,
three thousand bhdies aeweek. The Legislature met the
evil by Perthiiting some volunteers to bring in a meatne,
by requiring that its administration should be left to e,
Board already oNe>reorked, by leaving it without woo-
niary means, and by stifle: ing it to became wholly in-
operative. The place of that Bill has now been supelitd
by another of a lee; daring character, the success of
welch has yet to be seee. Some other que3tions of the
same combats; been left in the serve unsatisfactory state.
But this Parliarnent will be memorable, not only for
the greatness of the contemporaneous events and the
strange position of parties, ,but even for a certain in-
glorious usefulness. A Parliament will always be re-
membered with gratitude that removed the window-tax,
though with a substitute.. Of that Aet, however, it
might be said that it was the result of the sanitary agi-
tation, the cholera, and the glass house in Hyde-park.
The vast number, and the improved scale of the build-
ings rising in all directions round the metropolis and our
manufacturing towns, testify to some other beneficial le-
gislation in the repeal of the duty on bricks, and the
great reduction of that on foreign timber. The now
scale of stamp duties is certainly the work of this Par-
liament, but of what section or statesmen in it cannot be
so easily stated. Again, the Legal Reforms of this Parlia-
ment will PreettriLik lahistg.and...knonrable mention in
the books of lawyers and the mouths of suitors. It has ex-
tended the operation of the County Courts;—it could
hardly do otherwise when the public had pronounced so
rhleoafuosrdemlbysoin their favour; at the powerful instigation of
Mr. Jacob Omnium, it has abolished the Palace Court;
imnittaohdaethsvemasrahidoneudsethat alteration in the law of evidence which
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as abolished ehe dri
tegyhtaehi
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meritorious
extensive reformsauthors;
th ori;
dt the
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closing
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u b show,ati 0
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an adverse House
honourso
f long
g
hardly be appropriated.
maturity by Lord John
o franchisewa
nedr to oho
ushagayhs, eheeehnasuhshetreld
into the world by his opponents
of Lords modified the measure, it will doubtless
u
it
increase the weight of the people in the ensuing election.
ppr
tatiint aTolilifitech aeltiririosnhp,
If, as we have intimated, this Parliament has been too
much occupied with meeting emergencies to venture
on any original path of legislation, that will not rob it
of all merit. The Papal Aggressions provoked the Act
against the Assumption of Ecclesiastical Titles. To the
possibility of a more material aggression we owe a new
Militia Act. Earlier in this Parliament the reviving
animosities of Irish. zealots compelled a new Act against
religious processions. The glaring scandal of a vast
Crown property that, so far from yielding an income,
was an expense to the nation, has compelled the enclo-
sure of Hainault and the New Forest, and the better
management of all the Crown lands. The crowding of
our towns necessitated the supervision of common lodg-
ing-houses, and the crowding of our emigrant ships
fresh rules for the safety of passengers. It will possibly
be remembered for some years that we owe to this Par-
liament what is to be Battersea Park, and the transla-
tion of Smithfield-market to Copenhagen-fields ; the
latter change at least not before it was wanted.
When measures of this sort occupy a prominent
place in the annals of a session, it certainly does sug-
gest that Parliaments have not so grand and spon
taneous a part to perform as we have learnt trom
our school-books. In fact, the moving forces of legisla-
tion are the course of events, the natural changes of so-
ciety, the growth of public opinion, the elements of
nature, popular passion, and the merest accidents. It is
ono short /ustrum since the mandate went forth to re.

turn the now expiring Parliament; and ihe most sag;
cious statesman in the world could not possibly have
foreseen any one of the extraordinary events which have
occasioned at least the most prominent features of the
subsequent legislation. Some of the more useful fea-
tures he might have anticipated, simply because they
could not be avoided.

If more has not been done during the last five years ;
the Government which existed the greater part of that
;me inherited its best measures or bequeathed them to
,s successors ; if legislation has been unduly limited
,o meeting emergencies, to abating nuisances, to
resisting aggressions, or providing against attack;
if, after all, there is little to show for the
concentrated energies of confessedly great statee-
men and an industrious Legislature at a great
epoch, it is partly owing to the greatness of the events
and the peremptory nature of the exigencies durinc,
these five years. That Conservative element which
procured for the Whigs a certain degree of support from
the so-called Conservative party at a crisis of national
danger, may be presumed also to have checked their
own more ambitious development. But the chief cause
of this apparent inaction has been, that the Ministers
who met the Parliament in the autumn of 1847 had not
emerged, and never did entirely emerge, from the diffi-
culties of their first humble position as a Government
on sufferance. They were paralyzed, not so much by
the direct blows of a powerful minority, though that
minor* pressed them several times very near, as by
the increasing apathy and disaffection of their own
camp, and by the want of any watchword that could
stimulate their listless and rally their wandering sup-
porters. For many,of their friends they could not go
far enough, while a still larger class were never very
enthusiastic in the defence of that Free Trade by
which they conceived their own fortunes to have
an Administration as one
been impaired. Thus
might describe the late Whig
series of damaging defeats. The Targ Minister tried
every session some new device for the introduction of
with a direct the Jews into Parliament, beginning
ripper House. One of the
mea-
sure, and ending with a Reform Bill, but with the same
invariable ill success ifs the
first acts of this Parliament was that for the establish-
ment of diplomatic relations with Rome, for which Lord
J. Russell bad ostentatiously prepared by sending his
own uncle to the Pope. The House of Lords ignoredrtoaivseaytheffincome-
the ecclesiastical character of that potentate, and on the
motion of the present Irish Viceroy, insisted that his
ambassador should be a layman. The first session of
Irisho famine.
this Parliament summarily refused to
entirelyuse of
tax from three to five per cent., even
Miscellaneous
millions of new debt incurred through the the tea
It refused a Secret Committee on the
expenditure. Two years after the
widor out .of the
and imposed a
Com-
mons took the stamp duties
Chancellor of the Exchequer's hand
tariff with which :be, never professeds' to be satisfied.
Ministers with a
Lord Naas could nt any time defeat
" Home-made Spirits in Bond Bill,
the Duke of Argyll
Lord Ashley on
Sabbath,natnedrest In the fourth
tohne osobmseervgaanocsetioonf theef
session Lord John was beaten • •
one, on Mr. Locke King's ignominiously, two to
motion for a 101. county fran-
chise. It may lie Said that any day during the whole
Parliament till Lord pal
titerStOn's fatal motion Lord
John,was not safe from a
the wbippersin. I, _
was surprise. Yet no one blamed
only the Derby day
the
whneot always the dinner hour, or
pledged and returned as Whigs,truth was, that Whigs, men
tune vote with Lord and who would any
John unless they had a very good
excuse, on a regular field 'd
most shameless - cl. ay, went about avowing the
in ifference to the stability of the Cabinet.
Either it went too far for them, or not far enough; and
in the personal interest in preserving a just mean
r.. hands of that cold and cautious Minister.
But, besides actual defeats, there were some
Memorable debates of a rather destructive, though not
very conclusive character. Thanks to a clumsy anta-
gonist, Lord Torrington escaped through the fire. The
present Minister was always terrible in the Lords, and
his eloquence was remembered when the occasion was
forgotten. 'Lcird Palmerston was always in trouble, and
though he personally emerged more splendid th
"'which
policy
his colleagues were engaged to a foreign.use or under-
they evidently did not themselves app
reciwent down '
stand. - Don Pacifico's little account never
ent
occasion
in
n the
this country, and though on a BEOOI
lousaresolutio
House of Commons paased a gral,tagrinmeat, the 11
in
most fa-
vour of the foreign policy
°f Gs
Sir R. Peel's
me-
morable part of the debate-
wrarention. The f last earnest
speech in favour of non :ever
has been act, indeed,
could not be denied. .
°Datil revolutionary denied, that du-
ring the whole of . the
,sali the Countenance it dared to
tish Government stave
that same. Vase and those identical principles on
give to
which it put down with •
the continent Yr a high hand and a
story orne.
strong han a
In-the hof
.Parliament which •is to afford some
thEsntt, it la needless guide to . to dwell on its numerous
des its
petty epIEL. _,h personal questions, or its annual
motions. "e eve had, and we shall probablylong
continue
continue to have, annual motions about landlord and
tensnt•right, the better government of the colonies, Par-
liansentarY reform, either one or all the points, taxes on
knowledge, secular education
and , Irish national education,
the malt-tax, county financial boards; to which
must be added
aptain Warner, the Raja of Sattara, the
Arneers of S"
all this I Ind°, and Baron de Bode. We will pass by
standing material, and look at the
racter of this individual link in
the great chain of Bri-
tish
itslegislation. The Parliament that is now passing to
account must be allowed some credit for preserving
he peace of the empire and the integrity of our
institutions in a crisis of European change and
disaster. But -its great and most useful feature
has been transition. The Conservative party bas
unlearnt its long error, and is prepared to bid for
power on the common ground of public good. A
mysterious destiny has taken away the two men that
' moat hindered its return to good temper and good sense
—the statesman by whom it had felt itself betrayed, and
the new chief who had sworn implacable enmity against