The Sun.
London, England, 1869-04-16 00:00:00

LOT DOiV, FRIDAY, API?11., IG, 15C9.

The discussion provoked last evening upon the
Irish Church Bill by Mr. NEWDEGATE was alternately
dull and uproarious, tedious and effervescent, gran-
diloquent and ludicrously common-place, often
utterly nonsensical and, for the most part, weari-
some beyond all possible endurance. The result was
a majority more overwhelming than any that has
yet pronounced in favour of the immediate disesta-
blishment of the Irish Church. Instead of support-
ing the member for North Warwickshire's Proposi-
tion, for the bill being committed that day six months,

or, in other words, for its being altogether shelved the
House Ly a clear majority of 126, out of a total of

589 members, Speaker and Tellers included, decided
upon the course of legislation in the matter being no
longer, in this frivolous and preposterous way, inter-
rupted. An air of the ridiculous was imparted from
the veryoutset to the discussion of the bill last evening
by the grandiose manner in which Mr. NEWDEGATE
undertook, in his sepulchral tones, to announce the
determination of himself and his followers to with-
stand this sacrilegious onslaught upon the Protestant
Establishment in Ireland by the Leaders of her MA- I
JESTY'S Government. He wasso fantastically high and
mighty in his way of saying this, that instead of excit-
ing anything like feelings of awe among his hearers, Mr
NEWDEGATE only the more effectually appealed totheir
sense of the ludicrous ; and instead of eliciting cheers
called forth occasional shouts of laughter. For one
hour and a half the true-blue member for North
Warwickshire trumpeted forth his indignant pro-
tests against the measure with the lungs of the
BOANERGES. By a fantastic contrast thegentle tonesof
the gallant Colonel, the memberfor Dungannon, gave
out with an, if possible, droller effect, still, the hope-
less cry of No Surrender. Then followed the mem-
ber for Kirkcaldy with his previously baulked protest I
in regard to the compensation proposed for Maynootli
College. This interpolated harangue, the House
could hardly muster patience enough to even
affect a disposition to tolerate. The House for a
whilebecame, as thephrase is, astumultuous as a Bear-
garden. It was a complication of noises, the hub-
bub excited by Mr. AYTOUN'S speech, amounting to

what is termed on the other side of the Channel
a charivari. The tumult at last became simply
intolerable. And having been still further enhanced
by the uncalled for interposition of the mem-
bers for Fermanagh and Shoreham, who were both of
them sharply rep.itnanded by the Speaker as distinctly
out of• order—the Bar had eventually to be cleared,
at a most unusual mandate from the chair, by the
noble lord the Sergeant-at-Arms. The continuation of
the debate assumed afterwards something like a show
of decorum up to the taking of the division. Fre-
quently - there is no doubt of it—with a
sense of tediousness amounting to absolute
desolation. A maiden speech, that would have
otherwise been a success, was delivered at a great
deal too much length, though with considerable
fluency and self-possession, by Mr. HOLT, the newly-
elected member for North-East Lancashire. So vio-
lently was Mr. GREENE, the member for Bury St.
Edmunds, opposed to the innovation sketched out by
the Government Bill, that in a sort of desperation, as
one may say, he frantically talked of the necessity for
another General Election being passed through
,be-
fore the matter under discussion were finally de-
cided. The fanatical member for Peterborough
indulged himself with unmeasured denunciations of
Maynooth, what though himself, as a Liberal repre-
sentative, numbered among the supporters of Mr.
GLADSTONE'S measure for the disestablishment of the
Protestant Church io Ireland. A worthy contempo-
rary of Mr. WHALLEY, to wit Mr. CHARLEY, the
member for Salford endeavoured immediately after-
wards in what appeared to be, as one may s:iy, a
foreshortened speech to fulfil his own extra Parlia-
mentary announcement, that he would himself carry
retribution home to Mr. GLADSTONE in the sight
and hearing of the assembled House of Commons.
Somehow in spite of all this Mr. GLADSTONE seems
to have weathered the storm of the member for Sal-
ford's wrath just as Mr. DISRAELI has failed to
be extinguished by the pitiless influence of
the new member for the city of Ox-
ford, Mr. VERNON HARcourtT, who was supposed
by some people to have entered the House of Com-
mons for the express purpose of sweeping out of view
the political existence of the right hon. gentleman the
member for Buckinghamshire. About the only rational
speech last evening against the bill was the one de-
livered by the nobleVisc3unt the member for Liverpool,
but the force of folly was:clearly reviving when the
member for Coleraine could only retort upon those
who groaned under the infliction of his speech by
comparing theircries of Oh, oh," to the like monosyl-
lables uttered years ago in Vauxhall-gardens on the

soaring and explosion of the fireworks. It was with
a profound sense of relief that the House became
aware at last that Mr. GLADSTONE had risen to his

feet for the purpose of rapidly winding up a singu-

larly discursive and perfunctory discussion upon a

measure about the eventual passing of which

through Committee, orindeed through the honse,there
are not entertained • seriously two opiniOns. Mr.

DISRAELI'S observations were still briefer than those

of the Prime Minister, the leader of the Opposition

plainly enough intimating his preparedness for a

result on the approaching division even worse than

that arrived at through the division on the second

reading. An anticipation fully justified by the clear
majority last night of 126 on the side of the Go-

vernment.

AN interesting scene was witnessed on Tuesday at
the London Terminus of the Midland Railway.
Three hundred and twenty-seven men, women, and
children, London artisans, labourers, and their fami-
lies quitted a capital which can furnish them no
subsistence, and started on the journey to Canada.
Their passages will be paid, they will not be landed
penniless, and everything has been provided to give
them a fair start in the labour market of the New
World. The benevolent ladies and gentlemen who
are trying this experiment are applying a practical
remedy to a practical evil. The East-end of London
has for some time past been under a cloud. For
the idle and the drunken there is no hope, either in
the metropolis, in Canada, or elsewhere; but un-
doubtedly many thousands of the vast population
inhabiting the Tower Hamlets have suffered from
sheer want of employment, The late commercial
crisis injuriously affected the labour market. More
than this, the industry of East London has for some
time been in process of decay. It was only in the
nature of things that the shipbuilding and some of
the manufactures of the Tower Hamlets should dis-
appear from a district where coal is very dear,
and flourish only where the staple commodity is
cheap. The decline of manufacturing industry in
East London has of late been accelerated by strikes,
collapse in the money market, and the like ; but a
natural law beyond human control would have brought
it to pass in the end. A large surplus population,
desirous of work, but unable to find it, has been
thrown on the poor rates. It is with this good labour
in the wrong place, and not with paupers proper,
that the emigration scheme proposes to deal. The
movement is popular in East London. , It is not un-
natural that the honest poor should prefer to live in
a strange land to starving in the mother country ;
and hence the applications for a passage to the West