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

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LONDON, FRIDAY

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Now ready, in 2 vols., 215.,
HISTORIC OF THE
CONQUESTS
By HORACE ST.
"As a full presentation of the Indian question on one side—a de-
fence of the course of English extension in Hindustan—Mr. St. John's
book may be advantageously consulted by all who wish to be in•
formed on a subject which is about to engage the most serious atten•
tion of statesmen and public writers. The style is graphic and
spirited. • The facts are well related and artistically grouped. The
narrative is always readable and interesting."—Atheumnin.
Calburn and Co., Publisher, 13, Great Marlborough-street.

BRITISII

in INDIA:

FROM ThilitAqE.PIEA, GRAVESEND.

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JULY 1852, • - . -

REVIEW OF THE SESSION.

(From the Times of yesterday.)
To-day this strange session will be over, w
hours and in a few
our 656 representatives will be released from the
arduous and honourable office which the greater part of
them so lately Won at much cost and trouble. They
came
jaind:sf_ter a great settlement,sl. and at a time esttee it
measly proclaimed that the reign of faction
Was Ore.r; nor can it be, said that their period of power
has been disturbeda either by any great domestic event
or by any unusual
and seettin sai struggle of parties; yet in four years
months from their assembling; for business
they are sent back to their constituents: So frail is the
life of a
,Parliament, and so precarious the tenure of this
much prilal position. The existence of this Parliament,
however, brief
as it has been, is considerably over the
autraefraprgrao
)'3Wihui.Ch!2as prevailed since the passing of the
l-rea"n,
prescribing shorter Little then, does there seem for
itself such seeds amits to that which contains within
of decay.- ,But it is only when we
the
aisiclieegir
legislation
of
difficulties and delays inseparable from
a
great empire and a complicated
state of society, that we see the whole case against
the demand for
most "short reckonings" with our repre-
sentatives. Theimportant questions must be
discussed for many years before they can attract even
the notice of the Legislature. They must then pass
through an ordeal of annualmotions and petitions. At
last they rouse debate, and form the subjects of prelimi-
nary investigation before
which,
Committees. They are
then embodied in
be de`eated,lcoh; ev.fen under Ministerial
auspices, maY
most, successfullaarried measures may
yurfeasil rein-
operation. The best and
quire almost annual amendment,it requires no or-
dinary skill and research to track andthe principles one by
one adopted or rejected in a long series of abortive Bills
and' imperfect Acts of P. arliarnent. Nor, can it be,over-
„._ looked that tile beeY-dwhlgeh hag to follow all these threads
of legislation from ay
to day, and from
Darnsua se s,
ses-
sion, itself undergoes no inconsiderable inchnsesgseionto
last year alone, through illness, death, andaotlee'r n
nine changes in the re
there were twenty.
re esentation, or
whole at the rate of near a quarter of the body in the
course of .five years. These changes, too, all
politicians and thmosaestabrele
whom we chiefly look for the movement
member, embrace thole ardent
statesmen to
and regulation of the Legislature.
Our representatives may truly tell their constituents
,hat this has been an eventful, a laborious, and a useful
Parliament. They might add, what is equally true, that
there never was a Parliament which more illustrated the
weakness, not merely of statesmen and of parties, but of
Legislatures themselves, and their absolute dependence
upon influences over which they have little or no con-
trol. The events of the Parliament have been from
without; its labour has been a mere compliance with
imperious calls, and its good deeds have been often so
done as to reflect but little honour on the doers. Sc tar
as regards mere
matters of history, its five years' exist-
.etice has been one of the most memorable periods in the
'annals, not only of this empire, but still more of Europe
and of the whole
world. It was summoned to Pe first ses-
sion n haste, while trade was slowly recovering
teota a recent universal collapse, and while Ire-
land was suffering an unparalleled famine.
Every circumsttace of the crisis was e tra-
ordinary, colossi. and portentous. Commerce had
Jo-. adjusted itself to an immense increase c f im-
ports, and domestic credit was breaking down under an
extravagant =omit of railway enterprise. The Ba: k
Restriction tiet bed just been suspended on the respon-
sibility of the slinisier. C rime, now predatory well
as "agrarian," was rapidly increasing in Irel sedt the
of the first votes of the new Parliament was 1,100,0001.
fee the late Kafir war. On the continent were heard the
storm. Pius IX. Wus at the
murmurings of the coming
beck of a revolutionary committee. The Austrians had
occupied the city of Ferraaa. A civil war raged is
ttedersrlancl. Lombardy and Sicily were bath en the
eve of revolt. Schleswig-Holstein already gave work to
the diplomatists. There were ill-omened scandals ia the
Court and Government of Louis Phillipe. The new
Parliament had scarcely met alter the Christnise recess
when the volcano justified these warnings and all Europe
was in afl me. capital after capital fell into the hands
of the populace, and Government after. Government was
revolutionized. All the existing bonds of empire seemed
broken, and Italian, Sicilian, ra
e.erman, Slavonic, and
lastly Celtic nationality, were struggling to extricate
themselves. With the continental part of these con-
vulsions Parliament did little, except sit still and hope
that Lord Palmerston knew more about them that it did
itself. Whether it had any plan, whether his Lordship
had any plan, and whether either Parliament or Lard
Palmerston is better satisfied with the forcible suppres-
sion than with the sanguinary outbreak of a dozen re-
volutions, does not appear in the proceedings of the
British Legislature. What we possibly admired, how-
ever, we were not inclimed to imitate. When a crazy
Irishman took some twenty thousand Chartists across
the river with equivocal designs, at least ten times that
cumber of peaceable citizens took care there should be
no revolution here ; and when another crazy gentleman
Pushed matters rather further in Ireland we sent him,
with a few vulgar miscreants, to our penal colonies.
The rest of these five years has been of the , same
eventful character. We have had a fearful visitation
of the cholera, and have seen the mortality of the me-
tropolis trebled. We have had, and still have, another
Kafir war. The Punjaub has been finally annexed;
and we are now at war with the Burmese. While we
were still absorbed in the calamities of Europe, and
while Protectionists still talked about a drain ofgold,
'
strange news came from afar. California which when
this Parliament met was an almost unknown province of
Mexico, disclosed
its long hidden treasures. Australia
has yellowed, and, though the amount of gold and silver
now in the Bank is the largest ever accumulated by the
hand of man,
two it is no more than the expected annual pro-
duce of thesenatural
at Pacific,
treasures. A new state has
the
been founded on and a new empire is strug-
gling into existence our antipodes. Meanwhile, the
nightmare poverty of the miser no longer sits upon the
industry of the old world;th and a Parliament under which
has
the Bank of England dreaded the drain of its last
sovereign may this week see there 22,000,0001. of bul-
lion. Another fear now presents itself. What if our
people should leave us too rapidly? Of these wonders
England, as well as the Legislature, has bee
spectator; bat in another event thecountryan a
tleaPsatsshiayse
some honour. Thanks to a noble-hearted Prince, and
a small band of enlightened men, we had a festival of
art such as the world has never seen. Among incidents
not so agreeable, but adding, to the memorable character
of the period, we have witnessed the establishment of a
foreign hierarchy with territorial titles in this island,
with other attacks from the same quarter on the autho-
rity of the Legislature and the dignity of the Crown.
The usurpation of despotic power in France by a nephew
of Napoleon Bonaparte has revived the alarms which
the victories of Nelson and of Wellington had long since
dispelled. At least, since the Peace, there have been no
five years so crowded with events likely to govern or to
disturb the course of the future.

Bat, while such has been the period as Providence has
made it, Parliament has had to perform an unusually
humble part. The legislation of the period has been of
a remarkably passive sort. There has been no ruling
mind, or oven a dominant party. Events have been
met, and measures which have been for many years in
the political laboratory, dropping from one party to an-
other, have fallen on this Parliament, and will give to it
an undeserved celebrity. We have met, or rather had
met, the Irish famine. We have established an Irish
poor- law en a tolerably permanent basis. Thanks
meinly to the surviving shadow of the League and Mr.
Cohden's attractive idea of falling bock to the expendi-
ture of 1835, we hove hid searching Committees,
tollowed by reductions in the Miscellaneous, the
eArtny, Navy, and Oednance expenditure. Under the
advice of the late Premier, the actual insolvency of
nearly all Ireland has been met by a novel court of
bankruptcy with special powers for the purpose. The
actual insolvency of a score or two unions has been met
with a rate•in-sid from the rest. When the arch Re-
pealer was gone, and his position usurped by men who
talked of vitriol and gingerbeer bottles, we
m. 4 these
vermin with an Act which made it felony to agitate
against the Act of Union. We met wholesale evictions
in Ireland with an Act that provided at least a roof
under which the evicted might lie down and die at the
cost of the landlord. We met the cholera, when it came,
with a Public Health Act, and with Acts for the removal
of nuisances and the management of the m` tropolitan
sewers. We have met one qr two monstrous cases of
bribery and corruption by diarranchisiog the freemen or
the borough. The West Indies have at last received
their threatened coup' de grace by an Act for the equali-
zation of the sugar duties. The navigation-laves,
reall
involved in
the fate of the corn-laws, and actually
suspended in 1846, as far es corn Was cti
earned, have fallen, in spite Of a noisy
defenoce
-
though with hardly a blow. Perhaps it marks the ,
neral feebleness of the period, that the coastingtrade
was excepted. In order to sweeten the measure to the
shipowners'
we threw in an Act for the regulation of
the merchant service;
and, in order to sweeten that Act
to the sailors, we added another for the extrication and
better management of the Merchant Seamen's Fund.
The Boards of Excise and Taxes have been consolidated,
and the Crown lands and public parks and buildings put
into different hands; both
sound c
ood
dadministrative improve-
ments. The Cape
of
hope, and most of our
other colonies, having all steadily refused oar convicts,
we have met the difficulty
with public works on our Own
coasts and with moult
_pri3oll9. The Australian
:co-
lonies and New z,ai
and have demanded self-govern
ment, and we e
"VO met the demand after a fashion of
our own. The Canadian Government required an
prial aid in the s-tt!enicint of a certain awkward
que,;,tion, and wigdom
we rendered it with more
roan glory in the Rebellion Losses Act. Sir Jr
ces
Brooke cut off the heads of too many Pirar,'
we reduced the allowance of head-money for
The Ten Hours' question has been wiselyit emu:7(T
comprUP i
There has, during
eas, this Parliament, beert. :" a;a
usualJr
number of questions rather of a materiel
alaff:lo .
character, and which certainly might ba'r'incipal t) +Yale
scope for a etrong Government. The Prise •
le • '"e
has been the question of railway entorp $ one knell it
must be confessed Sir Robert
Peel had set the evil -)-.
c _. i ,e_
codent of inviting rather than
controlling
a the , enapetition.
The chief mischief was done. be or °Ykt of this
pressure by exterer, -
Parliament. It met the . mg time to
their land or c. • ,
companies that could not buy
.. .thiSit their
works 3 by offering facilities for Int) abandouratht of

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