The Sun.
London, England, 1854-08-12 00:00:00

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LONDON, SATURDAY, AUGUST 12, 1854.

A.,retzospect of the Parliamentary Session,
which terminated this afternoon, is rendered
altogether unnecessary, because the result of its
proceedings may be compressed into one blunt
dissyllable—nothing. Nothing of good, nothing
of advantage to the community, no reforms, no
retrenchment—on the contrary, only the increase
of the burdens of the State by the imposition of
16,000,000/. additional, in the way of annual
taxation, levied, of course, upon the already over-
burdened tax-paying population. And as if to
add to the vexation of this supplementary dead
weight upon the country—a considerable part of
this new incubus secured through the circumstance
of the most obnoxious of all the taxes being—with
all its imperfections unremoved, all its notorious
injustice, all its odious inequality of distribution
—doub/ed ! Literally, the labours of the Session
in the House of Commons may be described,
- without any exaggeration, as having been restricted
to the duty of providing sufficient funds for
the carrying on of the business of the Govern-
ment. While the toils of the Session in the
House of Lords may, without extravagance, be
said to have been drowsily eked out by the prosing
of worn-out statesmen like the Earl of ABERDEEN,
in language sometimes so ambiguous in itself, or
so revolting to the common sense of the people
out of doors, as to necessitate a craven retracting
of the more obnoxious phrases through the medium
of timorous, and halting, and, after all, wholly
unsatisfactory explanations. But for the votes
of money in the Commons, and the wranglings of
what was said and what was not said by the Prime
Minister of England in the Lords—there would
"be little enough to relate of the now completed
Session of the Legislature. Beyond what we
have already specified as the distinguish-
ing peculiarities of this deplorable Session,
we can only recognise in the two Houses a succes-
sion of empty and idle incidents, leading to no
results whatever, either among the hereditary, or
among the popular representatives. In the Lords
the occasional administration to the Leaders of
the Cabinet of casual correction in- the way of
sarcastic witticisms on the conduct of Ministers,
now by Earl GREY, now by the Marquis of CL AN-
.RicARDL In the Commons, by the perpetual
threatening of a debate upon the subject of Russia
by the Member for Aylesbury, and of a debate
upon the subject of Greece by the Member for
Manchester—all ending in the silence of men too
indifferent to the cause they pretended to have at
heart, or too timid to venture upon bringing
boldly to task, for once and for all, the most un-
POPular, avid the most divided of Governments.
Inappropriately enough and by the oddest
of ;ridiculous accidents, the session will be
kil°wu henceferth as the one during the
Cour'e of which first came into operation,
in the metropolis, the Act for the Preven-
ti°ll..of Soioke. Smoke, forsooth, in which alone
everythin-
g has ended during this same lament-
ablesession? so far as the Legislature itself is con-
cerned. From Lord Jena RUSSELL'S scheme of a
new-Reform Bill—to Mr. L AYARD'S motion for a
debate upon the Russian war and the previous
diplomatic negotiations leading to it I From the
promised modifications of the system of Pauper
removal to the vaunted benefaction which we were
told, over and over again, the country was going
to receive from the benignant genius of the
Right
Hon. the present Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Everything has ended in smoke--except the ne-
cessity for increased taxation. There, at least,
we may find solid facts enough for the
satisfaction of a BOUNDERBY, or of a
MA CCHOAXEMCEC LLD. Facts to the tune of
10,000,000/. in the way of annual addition to
the already well " taxed" responsibilities of the
population. A war, a doubled Income Tax, a
genc4al abandonment of further reforms of any
and .every kind whatsoever, a continuance of
Lord ABRunEe* in power—such are among the
chief:results of the Parliamentary Session which
has terminated. As a set-off against all
which -can be mentioned the one fact of the cor-
dial alliance between our own and the French
• Imperial Government. For the which—remem-
bering what Was said of his MAJESTY once
upon a time, and not 6° very long ago either, by