The Sun.
London, England, 1860-10-19 00:00:00

upon one's legs"—have eagerly availed them-
selves
of the annua.il, custom in vogue upon these
occasions, eschewing. politics as much as possible
and sticking to egriculture. Mr. WALTER, it is true,
but very recently broke away altogether from this
polite silentness in reg and to things in any way
Parliamentary. But th en in Mr. WALTER'S in-
stance, but very little can.le of it at the time, and
this
gthenetisehmeamn•
,:oprcreeviofn
provincial
discursive-
ness--the s
—tie simply
from
harangue
varying " from grave to gay, from lively to severe,'
ifor
from all things in general to most in particular,
constituting, in fact, of a sort of au after-dinner
resume de omnibus rebus et quibusdam alius. The
retrospect of the past year, in that instance, fin-
nishing us, in point of fact, with a very trod sub-
stitute for an index to any one of the daily
newspapers—say the Times—Mr. W ALTER having
had a word to say upon almost every topic, from
the war in Italy to the Road child-murder, from
Mr. GLADSTONE'S slashing Budget to the famous
and, for that matter, about equally slashing
fight for the championship.
Happily, with Mr.-MILNEs' speech upon the past
session, and upon recent occurrences, it is wholly
otherwise—it is altogether different. The member
for Pontefract, attempting less, gets satisfactorily
through a great deal more than the member for
B erkshire. His individual retrospect as a mem-
ber of Parliament is, we rejoice to note, in many
respects eminently, in some of them pre-eminently,
entitled to commendation and commemoration. His
regrets in regard to the unhappy Reform Bill have
the manifest merit of perfect sincerity. His esti-
mate of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's financial
arrangements and innovations we cannot but regard
as singularly judicious. His personal course of
proceeding in the matter of the Paper Duty
is one that he can look back to—as few
Liberal members can—with unalloyed and
unmitigated satisfaction. Now says Mr.
_MILNEs, upon this very question of the Paper
Dray and its proposed abolition—" I have as much
dislike as any one to Excise duties. There is no
mode of taxation more vexatious than the Excise,
and I should be glad to see any Excise duty abo-
lished, whether upon paper or malt, provided the
end can be accomplished without sacrificing too
large a portion of revenue. lam aware that the
House of Commons had previously expressed an
opinion that the paper duty was bad and ought to
be repealed, and I agree with that decision, not only
because it is an Excise duty, but because it checks,
although not in so great a degree as has been repre-
sented,the diffusion of popular literature,and damages
the cheap press. No doubt popular literature is to
some extent affected by the paper duty, but the
cheap press is most ably conducted and largely cir-
culated notwithstanding that the paper duty exists.
It was for me to consider whether the revenue was
in such a position that we could safely afford to
make the sacrifice demanded by the commercial
treaty and the reduction of Customs' duties, and
to add to that the produce of the paper duty. I
did not believe that we were in that position.
I do not say that the £1,000,000 might not have
been made up by some other means—such as sub-
stituting is. for 10d. in the pound in the income-
tax of the succeeding year. But I thought that
the reduction ought to take place more prudently
and gradually,' and I thought it my duty to vote
against the abolition of the Paper Duty. Very
few members of the House did so, and I was thus
placed in a different position from them when the
Paper Duty Abolition Bill, after passing the
House of Commons by a majority of eight or nine,
was rejected by the House of Lords. As far as the
thing itself was concerned, I could not regret
that that had been done by the House of Lords
for which I voted in the House of Commons—but,"
adds Mr. MILNES " I much regretted that
anything was commenced which gave an appearance
of collision between the two Houses of Parliament."
Se much for the raper Duty Abolition and the mem-
ber for Pontefract—a scheme of remission (in regard
to a tax intrinsically odious) sympathised in by Mr.
MILNES upon principle, but one at the same time
voted against wisely, honestly, cordially, and con-
scientiously by him—under the actual circumstances!
While so many others were in the wrong—he, at any
rate, has had the satisfaction of finding himself
undeviatingly in the right—from first to last in
the right upon this delicate question—with a per-
fect regard throughout to his political consistency.
The tax suggested to be abolished, he, for one,
would fain have had abolished—but the time
chosen for its abolition he had the sagacity from
the outset to recognise as flagrantly rash and

grievance is, that England's Foreign Secretary
should, in a. 'way which was to make his views
public to all Europe, denounce as a wrong to Aus-
tria what, if it be a wrong, is the only thing
which can put an end to Italian revolutions. 'We
mean that the junction of Venetia to the rest
of the Italian Kingdom, by whatever means
effected, is a necessity--a necessity which
makes it a virtue to effect it by some
means. All are agreed that if Austria would
recognise the necessity, and sell what she must
some day and in some way surrender, it would be
a most advantageous thing for her. If she will
not, she ought not to be spoken of as having a
" just cause " to defend in Venetia.
Perhaps the worst part of the letter, setting
aside the rudeness of the style of the first half, is
the threat of what the great Powers will do.
They are bent, forsooth, on maintaining peace ;
which, in the connection, means, if it be not mere
that England as well as tho con-
btirnnetuultiallf dule7snnpeo;isms will net permit the deliverance
of the Venetians. The implied reason, indeed, is
that as Sardinia could not do it alone, France
would be brought into the field, if it were really to
be accomplished ; an 4 that this would kindle a
European war ! But why so ? It would not be
difficult, it would be perfectly easy, to limit any
such war to the fulfilment of Louis NAPOLEON'S
first engagement—the expulsion of the Austrians
from Italy simply.
But it is here, if we mistake not, where the cloven
foot of Court Germanism skews itself in the des•
patch. Lord ham left to himself, would, we are
confident, exult over the expulsion of the Austrians
from Italy—but the Prussians would not, the
Coburgs would not, the Dukes and Grand Dukes
of a Beare of little German Governments would not
—and we nave a German family on the throne of
this country, a family for which it seems all Eng-
land is incompetent to provide husbands and wives,
—and German preferences, fears, and, hopes, in-
fluence, perhaps unconsciously, the Foreign
Minister of England. These strange Germans,
content with political serfdom themselves,
content to be cut up into thirty or more frag-
ments of a nation, have no sympathy with
Italian aspirations for liberty and unity; and, worse
than that, they have got it into their heads that
Germany ought to be a maritime power ! Hence
the ludicrous little navy of Prussia, and the hardly
less ludicrous navy of Austria, are a matter of pride
and ambition to this silly people. They think they
are something better than boatmen on the Rhine
and the Danube when they can hoist a broad pen-
nant over the guns of a frigate or two, manned by
sailors who sleep at night on shore. Another fancy
these Prussians and the other burgesses of Father-
land have got into their heads is, that, for the safety
of Germany, one of her sections must have a strong
corner in Italy ! It never seems to occur to these
wiseacres, that by parity of reasoning, Italy might
ask for a strong corner in Germany.
We must confess we are thankful that the QUEEN
and Lord JOHN RUSSELL are at length got away
from Coblentz Conferences, and direct German in-
fluences. If those influences were strong enough
to procure the writing of such a dispatch as that
on which we now comment, in this country ; we
may well be jealous of what they would effect when
the QUEEN, his Royal HIGHNESS, and Lord Joint
RUSSELL were in the midst of them, and when fears,
hints, suggestions, whispers, could be exchanged,
with not even the hazard of a letter getting into
the hands of a personage it -was least of all meant
for. We welcome back our QUEEN to where she
will at least see every day the press of
her own country, from which she may learn, as cer-
tainly as if Parliament were sitting, what is passing
in the minds of her loyal subjects. One thought,
we are confident, she will find quite universal—that
German counsels ought not to influence those of
England, but English counsels those of Germany.
Another, special to the despatch before us, she will
find equally general—That England ought to dis-
courage Austria in holding Venetia, and rather to
encourage than discourage Sardinia in seeking its
emancipation.

The accomplished member for Pontefract, Mr.
MONCKTON MILNES, has been comparing notes in
regard to the past session of Parliament with his
constituency. The incident is somewhat excep-
tional this autumn. For, saving in the almost
solitary instance of Sheffield, the electors of the
United Kingdom, whether of borough or county,
have found their representatives rather shy of
entering into explanations as to the real purport,
good, bad, or indifferent, of these latest sayings and
doings of the British Commons in Parliament
assembled. Even Mr. BRIGHT Lao declined for
once having it out with his more ardent supporters
at Birmingham. Representatives alike on the side
of the Opposition and on the side of the Govern-
ment have abstained with remarkable unanimity
from raking up old grievances, from reverting to
past differences, from sustaining in any way what-
ever outside the house the contests which had
happily at last terminated at any rate for the
delightful annual interval of five or six months'
duration from August to February, from the pro-
rogation to the reassembling of the two Houses of
the Legislature. It is hardly to be wondered at,
however, after a moment's reflection, this really
welcome reticence between members and their
constituencies. There was so little of a satisfactory
nature to be recalled to recollection. So much was
left undone—so few of the promised boons of the
session had been obtained—so often the acquisition
of those boons had not even been attempted,
whether by the individual representative who
could be held responsible for them, or by the collec-
tive energies and combined wisdom of her MAJESTY'S
Ministerial advisers. " Hansard" had been con-
tributed to, without doubt, very industriously,
more than ever voluminously, but the Statute
Books of the Realm enhanced in value most in-
adequately. No marvel then was it after all,
if at the close of a session such as that of 1860,
the vast majority of members upon both sides of
the House of Commons of all parties, of all sections
of parties, should have evinced so general a re-
luctance to pause deliberately in the midst of their
attentive supporters, borough electors or county
electors, as the case might be, to take a compre-
hensive survey of the small doings and of the
lengthening discussions, of the much cry and little
wool of the last past session of the Imperial Legis-
lature. As a matter of common sense, they pre-
ferred going a-pleasuring to the Highlands or to
the Continent—some few of them going " a-colonel-
ing " (rather more in earnest certainly than Sir
IIUDIERAS) at the head of divers gatherings of the
gallant Rifle Volunteers.
It seemed almost as if a reaction had not unna-
turally set in at the close of the Parliamentary
labours of the year, 'M.P.'s were sick and tired to
death of so much talking. They withdrew with more
than ordinary eagerness from the political atmos-
phere. If they in certain county instances found
politics at
agreeable ofe eable social
themselves unhappily upon the verge
the head of one of those otherwise g
agricultural banquets, in the midst of the cross-
firing of complimentary toasts, dragged up again
into that very suggestive attitude, termed in very
Putter-of-fact Parliamentary phraseology,
." being'

inopportune !

There is but little information to be gathered
from the last Australian mail ; everything both in
Victoria and New Zealand (the two colonies which
at present attract public attention) is in statu quo.
The NICHOLSON Ministry are in a fix. Public
opinion and its representatives in the Lower Rouse
on the one side maintaining the constitutional
rights of the people, and the Upper Rouse repre-
senting the squatocracy on the other, keep them at a
standstill. " How haply could they be with either."
But it may not be, Australian legislatures have
sown the whirlwind and they are now reaping the
storm. There was a time when Australia was no-
thing better than a penal settlement, and men who
were content to sacrifice personal comfort, and the
luxuries of civilisation made fortunes in the wil-
derness among the savages. Times are now
changed. The early pioneers of progress have
reaped their reward, and it is not from enterprising
men of this stamp that the advancement of social
progress receives a check, it is from men as it were
of yesterday, such men as Mr. WENTWORTH
wished to elevate into a COLONIAL ARISTOCRACY,
that bona fide emigrants are prevented from settling
down on their own land in the country of their
adoption. The grave mistake was made •by
the Executive when Victoria first constituted
an independent colony by calling into existence
a Council Chamber or Upper House, just we sup-
pose to ape the Parliament of the United King-
dom, forgetting altogether that while the House
of Commons and the Legislative Assembly respec-
tively represent the constituencies of the two coun-
tries that there is no tie in commonbetween the House
of Lords and the Legislative Council. The one, in
spite of many faults, at least has the prestige of
long descent and high character. In fact, the
House of Lords is an institution of the country; it
is not in the power of Royalty itself to interfere
with its rights and privileges, and it is, therefore,
de facto, an independent body. But how of the
Legislative Council ? They are Government nomi-
nees; and the Squatters, finding that universal
suffrage, in spite of the obstacles which have been
thrown in the way, has proved too strong for them
in the Lower House, have concentrated all their
forces in the Upper House, and, for a time, carried
the day. It is, perhaps, as well as it is ; the result
must be the same in the end, and as a stream which,
while an opening is left for its course, will avoid
colLsion with the rocks which bar its progress, when
that opening is closed, gathering up its strength,
sweeps before it in one general ruin the obstacles
which otherwise it would have tolerated, so will
the public feeling in Victoria sweep away that in-
134bus Ito 'progress, that last stronghold of falling

DIE SIGN, LONDOg, FRIDAY EVENIN,G; OCTOBER 19, 186.

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1,

.:1 n

E

The following telegrams have Inca received at
Mr. Reuter's office :

PARIS, OCT. 18.

The Pettrie announces the concentration of Aus-
trian troops on the frontiers, which, it says, has
caused a similar concentration of Piedmontese