The Sun.
London, England, 1856-07-01 00:00:00

that some uuc will insist on bringing forward the

subject of Central Atnerici, too.
The annual "slaughter of innocents" has also
begun in good earnest. The A_rricultural Sta-
tistics Bill was amongst the first. A really useful
measure, one which had got through the House
of Obstruction, and which ought to have been
got through the People's House. It would be
worth any reasonable sum to have reliable data
as to the amount of our agricultural produce even
as a matter of statistics ; but as a means of pre-
venting needless alarms and panics, or specula.
tion and fluctuation of price in the first necessary
of life, its utility is unquestionable.
Next came an outsider, Sir WILLIAM CLAY,
who certainly was unfairly used. He had brought
in his bill for the abolition of Church Rates, and
obtained a considerable majority by the aid of the
Government. Not only that, but the aid was
given because the Government offered it on condi-
tion of the promoters of the bill accepting certain
amendments in conformity with the bill introduced
by the Archbishop of Canterbury into the House"
of Lords last year ; the amendments were accepted,
the bill thus in all fairness and honour became a
Gov.ernment one ; yet the Government steadily
refused to give Sir WILLIAM an opportunity to
bring it forward again in sufficient time to give
any hope of its reaching the Lords this year. The
barefaced excuse was that it could not be
called a Government bill till the Government
amendments had been formally adopted in com-
mittee, while the only reason why their own
ameadments were not thus adopted was that
the Government itself prevented it. Surely
a measure to settle this long controversy, and to
let all the parishes in the kingdom know their
true position in regard to it, was worth some
little effort on the part of the Government.
And now the London Corporation. Bill has fol-
lowed the rest. It may be questioned whether
Ministers ever intended to do more than give the
worthy body a year's notice, or to try how their
scheme would take. They see now that the Lon-
don Corporation with all its virtues is like other
old bodies, and considers the most moderate reform
a ruinous attack on its privileges. The grand
defect of the Bill has undoubtedly been that it is
based on a fiction. It provides for the amend-
ment of the Corporation of the City of London—
but instead of regarding all London as London,
it limits its provisions to the comparatively insig-
nificant portion which the intelligence and wealth
of the metropolis have quite deserted. The old
City is now much inferior in point of population to
many of the large boroughs of the kingdom, and in-
deed to the large adjacent parishes. It is a City of
warehouses, offices, and shops, not a city for the re-
sidence even of its Corporation magnates or of the
majority of its Common Council Inert ; yet the
bill treats this business office of London, as London
itself, leaves all its vast funds applicable to this
little London only, and igaoras the existence of
the largest city in Europe. It sees the whole
affair with Corporation spectacles. The reforms
proposed were very well in their way ; but, mo-
derate as they were, the old monopolists of power
and privilege were not disposed to part with
them too easily ; they saw that the public, for
quite an opposite reason—the inadequacy of the
bill—took little interest in it, hence they gained
courage, instinctively sought aid from the Tories,
threatened Lord PALMERSTON' with a troublesome
job, and got another year of it to take the chance
of an American War or anything else which may
fill the hands of Ministers and the minds of the
public. The dinners, the Lord M tyor's Show,
Gog and Magog are safe to little London fur
another year at least.

So—the National Gallery Bill has been pru-
dently withdrawn, after all, this session, by her
MAJESTY'S Government ! The hint given by the
.najority on Lord Er.cuo's motion, on the evening
)f Friday, the 27th ult., was rather too plain
and straightforward altogether for there to be
any mistake at all about it. Well, yes—rather !
And so Lord PALMEILSTON himself seems to have
Thought, and, indeed for that matter, so did the
Noble Viscount virtually acknowledge last night,
in his double capacity as Leader of the House of
Commo,s, and head of the present Adreinistra-
ion. The fact alluded to—as given in our Third
Edition of yesterday—being simply this : that in
reply to the Hon. Gentleman the Memberfor North
Warwickshire, the Prime Minister announced
that " for the present session " it was not in-
tended to proceed farther with this bill. It was,
therefore, his intention, he observed, simply to
move (pro forma, of course,) that the order be now
read and discharged. And the order, adds the
report, was accordingly read and discharged.
And so, for the time being at least, the matter
terminates, and terminates, moreover be it said,
satisfactorily ! But, obserre—all that Lord
PALMERSTON says upon the matter is merely to
the effect that it is not intended to proceed farther
with this bill—" for the present session." Suf
ficiently significant, that, surely ! Eaough
to put us all upon the alert upon the
iultj-ct, if we did not happen to be so al-
ready. " For the present session"—not for

the next, but only for the present ! Verbam
sap. ! We, for one, shall not relax our
vigilance. The notion is altogether too ridi-
culous to be very easily, forgotten. 11-R.H.'s
-elietne of a National Gallery in a mar-
ket-garden ! And so exulting, as well we
may, in our triumph, our signal and decisive
triumph (" for the present session") over CONSORT
and Cabinet, over Government and Opposition,
over the whole of the formidable phalanx of
the new Germanic Confederation in England—we
shall sedulously keep the postponed, though still
proposed, absurdity not only in our own, but also,
in a particular manner, in the public remem-
brance I

The Oath of Abjuration Bill, it will be seen
on reference to our Parliamentary columns, was
last night, withdrawn. Gathering from the in
dignant proi;est of Lord LYNDHURST and other
unmistakeable expressions of opinion in influen-
tial quarters the fate that awaited the measure
in the Commons, Lord DERBY gracefully con-
sented to forego the further indulgence of his
hobby, and the reader is in possession of the re-
sult. We arLe glad of it, for it presented the
Earl in au att-47tude which by no means became
him, and was tt tally unworthy of an enlightened
age. The sooner, indeed, the question of admit-
ting Jews into P arliament is settled the better
for all parties and the credit of the country. It
would be difficult to conceive anything more pre-
posterous than the ,continued refusal of admission
into the House of CL Nimmons of the members of a
class of citizens who heave shown by their scrupu-
lous concern about the termsof an oath the fidelity
with which they wet ild keep any oath they.,
undertook to be bo and by. Second only
in preposterousness to this is the farce which has
been enacted in connection with Baron ROTHS-
CHILD at the expense of our representative sys-
tem. And as throwing a flood of absurdity over
the entire affair must be regarded the fact that
the words "on the truie faith of a Christian"
were confessedly never is Mended to exclude the
Jews, but, on the sontn try, a widely different