The Sun.
London, England, 1869-06-16 00:00:00

THE CRISIS.

The Daily Telegraph believes that Lord Derby
will speak on Thursday, and since the State ball 'at
Buckingham Palace takes place on the. evening of
that day, the division will probably not be taken
until between twelve and one on Saturday morning.
Our contemporary adds :—" The general impression
now is that the bill will go into committee ; and since
in the present day every such assertion is ordinarily
snbmitted to the test of figures, it may be worthy of
record that bets of 50 to 40 have been laid on a result
favourable to the Government." On the same subject
the Morning Advertiser says:—" We have received
intelligence from a well-informed quarter, just as
we are going to press, to the effect that there is no
longer a doubt that the bill will be thrown out by the
Lords." The Morning Post will not venture to,
prophecy, but remarks that the hearty reception-
which Lord Carnarvon's speech had from the Con-
servative benches may well make the leaders of the
Opposition feel doubtful as to the result. The
Morning Star lays great stress upon the speech of
the Archbishop of Canterbury, and thinks that the
look of things was, at all events for the first night,
unmistakably favourable to the bill. The 7 imes does
not repeat or revoke its prophecy of Monday; the
twin Conservative journals, Standard and Herald,
are so little confident of the result that they refrain
from anticipating it.
Though what the Lords will do is very uncertain
as yet; what the Government will do in case the bill
is rejected, becomes day by day more plain. There
can be little doubt but that an autumnal session will
be held. The _Dray Nezes declares that this is what
will be done, and justifies that course as being accord-
ing to precedent. Earl Grey did the same thing in
1831. Then, as now, the Government had a
majority of more than 100 in the House of Commons,
fresh from a general election. On July 6 in that
year the Reform Bill was read a second
time by a majority of 116, and on September
21 it was read a third time by a majority
of 113. On October 8 the Lords rejected it by 199
to 158, whereupon the Commons carried a vote of
confidence in Ministers by a majority of 131. On
the 20th Parliament was prorogued, and on the 12th
December the Reform Bill was once more intro-
duced. On the 22nd of March following it was again
read a second time in the Commons, by a majority
of 116 ; and on April 14 the Lords read it a. second
time by 184 to 175. On May 7, in committee, the
Government was defeated on a motion of- Lord.
Lyndhurst by a majority of 35. Earl Grey re-
signed, but within ten days was again in office,
armed with the King's authority to create a suffi-
cient number of peers to ensure the passage of the
bill.
A correspondent of the Daily News finds prece-
dents later hick for the proposed course. On the
accession of William and Mary, the Bill of Rights,
-which fixed the succession, passed the Commons and
was rejected by the Lords, because no successor to the
Crown was provided in case Mary, Anne, and William
should all die childless, which they actually did:
Amendments were proposed, but the Houses could
not agree upon them, and finally in 1689 the king
prorogued Parliament from the 21st to the 23rd of
October, when the bill was passed through both
Houses. The next precedent of the hind is in 1707,
when Queen Anne prorogued Parliamentfrom Friday,
April 8 till the following Monday, on account of a bill
relating to frauds on the Customs. Another pre-
cedent is furnshed by the prorogation of Parliament
from October `_'oth to November 22nd at the time of
the great Deform struggle of 1881-32. It is there-
fore evi.ient that this means of surmounting a poli-
tical deaclloc7; has been previously resorted to when
the usual interregnum between twosessions threatens
to be embarrelssing.
Mr. Gladstone, like Mr. Bright, has been writing
about the Irish Church Bill, and,. like Mr. Bright's,
his epistle has been called forth by a public meeting.
A meeting at Bradford passed resolutions of confi-
dence in tl-e Premier, which resolutions were for-
warded to him. In reply he writes :

" So far as that resolution refers to myself personally,
I accept the communication with respectful gratitude. So
far as it expresses the sense of the great community of
Bradford with reference to the Irish Church Bill, I regard
it as giving utterance in words to that deep and intelligent
conviction to which the nation gave by its acts, at the
time of the general election, the most authoritative con-
stitutional expression, and which, I believe, it still
cherishes with unabated confidence and resolution::