The Sun.
London, England, 1862-07-29 00:00:00

apparently of letting well alone. The calamity
which had so very recently befallen the widowed
SOVEREIGN and her loyal and sympathising people
afforded Ministers, it is true, every reasonable ex-
cuse for allowing the session to be tided over quietly,
without much of an effort being made on the part
of Government to forward what is vaguely spoken of
amongst us as the course of progress. The lamented
death of the PRINCE CONSORT—the absence of the
Court from London throughout the whole of the
season in consequence of that bitter affliction to the
Crown—the apathy of the country at large in re-
gard to that remodelling of our representative
system which had during the four or five years
previously been talked of in the House and out of
the House usque ad nauseam—all combined to en-
courage ministers (reasonably enough it ought, in
simple justice to them, to be acknowledged) to do
and say—just as little as possible ! Nothing was
urgently pressing upon the attention of the Legis-
lature. It was precisely—and when most wanted—
the opportunity for—we wont say exactly apathy,
but we will say—as much quiescence, for as a little
stir and agitation of any serious kind, as could well
be insured in either of the Houses of Parliament.
Not only did her MAJESTY'S Ministers recognise
the advisability of all this, but her MAJESTY'S
Opposition showed at once that they recognised it
quite as clearly themselves. The noble earl, the
leader of the Opposition, fairly intimated as much
when the Parliamentary Session was commencing.
The Speech from the Throne was, for once, loyally
responded to, both by Lords and Commons, "nemine
contradicente." The Address, in answer to it, was,
in each instance, but its eeho. Our legislators con-
tented themselves with expressing their profound
and heartfelt sympathy with our beloved QUEEN
in the great grief that had befallen her MAJESTY
under the permission of Divine Providence. In the
eloquent enunciation of these feelings of sympathy
for the QUEEN, and of gratitude and admiration
for the departed Prince, the first night's proceedings
in the two Houses may be said to have been con-
sumed. Hansard will soon recall to general recollec-
tion how this was the case in those earlier pages of
the new volume now speedily forthcoming—pages
that will long be looked back to with a sorrowful in-
terest by those who best appreciate the blessings that
have accrued to the British empire from this last
quarter of a century'sreign of the most constitutional
Sovereign that has ever sat upon the Throne of
England. Otherwise—apart from what was then
said in tribute to the memory of the PRINCE
CONSORT—the opening night's discussion might
almost as well have remained unreported, for any
light it threw upon the designs of the op-
posing ranks of politicians thus confronting
each other in, as nearly as possible, equal
numbers. The Government and the Opposi-
tion merely crossed foils, as it were—and foils con-
spicuous having their buttons firmly on. There
was the salute—there was the attitudinizing. But
there was not a single thrust, daring or diffident,
and therefore was there no opportunity afforded
to the most cunning fencer of them all for
a display of his dexterity at the parry. Later on
in the Session no doubt the apparent equalisation
of the numbers, to the right hand and to the left
hand of Mr. Speaker, was not without its tempta-
tion to the Opposition. As the ultimate result of
which temptation there came those threatenings of
a raid every now and then beyond the border line
between the Outs and the Ins. As last Session
was flagrantly and disgracefully known as the
Session of the lost Wednesdays, the one now ex-
piring might be designated quite as characteristi-
cally—the Session of the Sham Fights on
the part of the Opposition. They would if they
could—but—they couldn't ! The last of these
sham fights, the crowning absurdity of
them all, being the ever-memorable one
in which Mr. WALPOLE was put forward suddenly
as the chosen leader of the Opposition rank and
file, then seemingly with clenched hands and set
teeth bent upon making a bold rush upon Office.
Yet, hardly had that redoubtable champion of the
Opposition flung down his gage of battle before the
Government—when (it is preposterous still to re-
member so ridiculous an anti-climax) he timidly
picked it up again and slipped it into his pocket,
nearly frightened out of his senses, apparently, at
the mere clearing-of-the-throat of the most for-
midable of his antagonists ! It was immediately
after this most ludicrous spectacle that the hon.
member for Liskeard capped the climax of his many
sharp sayings and home -truths this session, by desig-
nating Lord PAMERSTON—as he is in point of fact
—a Political Dictator. And, as if carried away by
a sense of his own irresistible predominence in the
House of Commons, the Prime Minister, not very
long afterwards, scandalized the vast majority we
believe upon both sides of that house by his out-
rageous arrogance. of tone and manner, of voice
and language towards one of the most distinguished
men still ranked among its occupants. It will be
well for his interests and for those of his col-
leagues if the Premier thinks better of it all
—of himself and of the situation of things gene-
rally—during the calm interval of the holidays
now almost immediately about to commence. Even
Lord PALMERSTON's immense and unrivalled popu-
larity will failto save his powerful administration from
an abrupt and even ignominious downfall, if these
indecorous evidences of a haughty sense of his own
virtual Dictatorship are allowed by him to outrage
the amourpropre of all parties indiscriminately. His
lordship has already had one lesson to this effect—
no further back than within the last lustre. He
may yet have another, and, probably, it would,
this second time, be a final one, if he must needs
persist in offending the proud spirit of the Com-
mons, by any such welcome incentives to a fresh
display of its innate and absolute independence.

The third reading of the new Game Law Bill is
fixed for to-morrow. The manifest destiny of the
country squires is to carry it ; yet if the three-
fourths of the House who have absented themselves
horn the discussions had any sense of what was due
to their odwisneussio it reputation and to public opinion, even
this
indecent haste in " changing the laws of Eng-
ilsanudn"dwer"ki
telt be successful. When the poor law
miseammbuesrisngerteo sfoere
shtoawndsitnrgenoun-
ous the agricultural
the "good old laws:'
They see no objection to the
annihilation of the .„1.
k) op er t y of a manufacturing
parish, before it shalt havebecauseparishes, SO it seemed good in the
day.
hof ELIZABETH. But when the protection of
pheasants,question,
thenotf operatives and their
families, h e
most settled maxims
administration of
to
Of justica r
es
in
e go for
nothing. A man is
of English law and adbe peto convict him_
self over, not a dead fellow man, but over a dead
pheasant—murdering the latter being by much the
more serious business to sporting gentlemen, who
prefer to murder and sell the pheasants themselves.
' So it is nothing worth objecting to, in the interest
of pheasants and hares, that the police should treat
every common cart, every carrier's cart, and every
hind of conveyance they meet, as a suspected
venicle, no information on oath or warrant inter-
vening. All such things are but the dust of old rusty
legal balances when game is in question, and hence,
to-morrow, a bill which the Home Secretary of
England has declared to be full of unconstitu-
tional enactments, a bill opposed by the most re-
. spectable Conservatives in the House, is -to be