The Sun.
London, England, 1860-11-20 00:00:00

THE FORTHCOMING SESSION.

About this time part of next year's crop of legis-
lation begins to be sown. Whether drilled in by
the painstaking Attorney-General, or sown broad-
cast by the lavish hand of the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, the seed of future measures ought now
to be receiving the moist and warm aids of earth
and sky. We are in no secret, and have nothing
to tell. If Mr. Bright has been commissioned to
make a Treaty with the Emperor of Russia, or Mr.
Lindsay has been empowered to surrender the duty
on tobacco, we have been told nothing about it, and
shall not hear till the thing is done. Our advice,
then, is of the most general nature, and in the in-
terest of all parties. The first thing that occurs
to us, as it must be to our readers, is that Ministers
should attempt no more than they are likely to ac-
complish, and that when the State ship has as
many projects on board as can be got into the hold,
they should set their face against deck cargoes.
We have no patience with the man who at the very
day of sailing, when the ship ought to be under
way and ready to avail herself of the breeze in her
favour, comes down to the ship's side with a huge
boiler, a hundred bales of cotton, and as many huge
packages that may contain anything or everything.
It was the deck cargo that wrecked last Session, and
sent the legitimate freight to the bottom of the sea.
Fortunate indeed it was that we had a concurrence
of two calamities last year—a deluge of waters
without and measures within •, so that, if we lost
the summer, we had not much to lose. But it is
quite possible the sun may shine this year, and, if
he does, the country will raise a very loud protest
against the surrender of another August to the
hungry and longwinded dragon of debate. The sim-
plest review of last session shows that all the work
could have been done, and a Reform Bill passed into
the bargain, before August. As it was, everything
was done to provoke useless controversy. It was not
less the fault of the Government than of the gene-
ral garrulity that the Orders of the Day did not
come on till the proper hour for adjournment, and
days, weeks, and months were wasted in talk that
led to nothing. Parliament ought not to be treated
like a besieged town. The Minister has no right to
make half-a-dozen attacks upon it, and compel half-
a-dozen defences, on the speculation of carrying one
point out of half-a-dozen. Let him propose no more
than he intends to carry, and he is the more likely
to carry it than when he has to contend not only
with differences of opinion, but with the physical
impossibility of doing many things at once.
If, too, Parliament does not deserve to be treated
as a foe, neither is it quite the child or the silly fool
that some statesmen suppose. The public has
ceased of late years to put the smallest faith in a
Budget. It no more believes that it will be let off
with the figure, nicely put at so many pounds, shil-
lings, and pence, for the army or the navy, or this
or that war, than it trusts the architect's esti-
' mate for the imposing edifice he tells you
can be done for a mere trifle. Large sections of
the human race cannot be brought to reason or
reduced to submission at so very cheap a rate.
It is, then, mere child's play to come before the
House with Estimates that mean nothing at all,
and that have to be explained afterwards as
pieces of constitutional etiquette. The dignity
of legislation is seriously affected when a pro-
ductive tax is remitted one month and found to
be necessary the next, when duties are lowered
in the spring and screwed up again at Midsum-
mer, and when it is found that the glittering
largesse thrown by handfuls to the mob is no-
thing but gilt counters to dazzle the eye and
produce a momentary cheer. A Budget is pre-
eminently a matter of calculation, and, unless
it aims at infinity, can be estimated sufficiently
near to save corrections. We had three, if not
four Budgets, this year; like so many attempts
to extract a had tooth, or to improve an ill-
fitting dress, or to correct a clumsily constructed
sentence. In fact, the figures of the Budget
varied as much from day to day as prices at the
Stock-Exchange. There are people who will
neither make an arrangement nor acquiesce in
one, and whose delight is to keep everything
unsettled till the last moment, when something
must be done. An instinct seems to tell them
that their best chance, with regard to their own
convenience, is a scramble, and that if they make
a dash they can manage for themselves, leaving
others to do the same after. Somebody or other
must have made a strong dash at the beginning
of last Session to throw affairs into the higgledy-
piggledy state they remained in to the end. But
we doubt if anybody gained much by it.
We beg also to suggest that a loose formation
is not usually the best for a Cabinet. It must
more generally be a close phalanx, with a very
definite plan of its own ; ready, indeed, to profit by
opportunities, but still with something to fall back
upon. All successful causes have been well orga-
nized, and a bad cause with a system and a policy
will any day beat a good cause which has neither
out of the field. But Parliament itself is a cause,
and representative institutions, as we are told, are
on their trial. It is our glory to spread them, and
the state of affairs in Europe certainly seems to offer
some slight hope of success. This is not to be done
by diplomacy or by propagandism. It is an affair
of example. Were the British Parliament for a
few Sessions to effect all the improvements and
make all the progress which it confesses to be de-
sirable, and were it to do this without waste of
time, words, temper, and good name, no doubt that
would have a powerful effect on the world, and lend
new strength to many a struggling cause. As things
are, we are almost tongue-tied on the question with
foreign absolutism. It is vain to argue on abstract
grounds with Empires and despotic Courts, when
we can only show an annual chas of promised, in-
tended, andabandoned measures, makeshift finance,
schemes in perpetual postponement, debates begin-
ning and ending in nothing, and six months of
loose talk, followed by one month's crash of half-
digested Bills. Yet this is not the fault of the
nation, nor is it so much the fault of Parliament as
is sapposed. A Cabinet with a few carefully-
prepared measures will easily override the small
plots of an irregular and divided Opposition.
Where are the angry cries and exorbitant demands
that used to keep the nation on the verge of
anarchy, and which afforded a bad excuse for doing
nothing but stand still ? There are no such de-
mands in these days. At this moment we do not
see the giant that is to shake the Cabinet out of its
propriety. Lord Palmerston need not fear such a
scheme as the ballot, and as for all the other
schemes of Parliamentary Reform, there is not one
that he could not neutralise at once, if he desired
it, by a simple but comprehensive bill of his own.
What else is there that he need fear, except that
indefinite future, which is likely enough to ,be
fertile in new horrors if it be not anticipated ?
That is all that is required. A session requires as
much preparation as a military campaign, and if it
be entered on without forces, stores, or plan, the
want is soon found out. But in politics, as in war.
it is best not to have too many irons in the fire, and
so waste on unprofitable enterprises the strength
wanted to secure one single success.—Tinges

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