The Sun.
London, England, 1860-08-03 00:00:00

man should have it, though in that case Lord ELGIN
will, we hope, insist tha4 it shall come back directly
to us. We must, however, pay our debaters of
Thursday night the respect of a fuller notice than
we have room for to-day.

Although the retrospect of the expiring Parlia-
mentary session is certainly anything rather than
satisfactory, we cannot but think that Lord
BROUGHAM somewhat exaggerated its demerits the
other day when that noble and learned ex-Chan-
cellor pronounced it to be a distinct indication that
Parliamentary Government was upon its trial. We
believe the illustrious Juris-consult to have been in
this opinion of his quite as much in error as we
certainly deemed H.R.H. the PRINCE-CGNSORT to
have been five or six years ago when, as Master of
the Trinity Board, presiding over the annual ban-
quet at the Trinity House, H.R.H. declared that a
like crisis was then being passed through by our
Constitutional Government. In effect the PRINCE
CONSORT and the ex-Chancellor, when speaking
thus, may be regarded as having said the same
thing in different words. For what in simple mat-
ter of fact is the pre-eminent characteristic of the
Constitutional form of Government in this country,
if not that it is in one phrase—Parliamentary ? In
asserting it to be apon its trial either six years ago
or yesterday, the Prince and the Peer would almost
seem to imply that we are speculating as to the
vitality of a system that was only founded either
six years ago or yesterday ! It is as if we were
experimenting then, down at Westminster,
with one of those ingeniously elaborated
paper-constitutions taken by the Abbe SIEGES
from one of the many pigeon-holes of his marvel-
lous escritoire ! One would hardly suppose, what
is nevertheless, upon the contrary, the absolute and
indisputable fact, that allusion is here being made
to a venerable and majestic scheme of Government,
the growth of many centuries—a scheme of Go-
vernment at once Parliamentary and Constitu-
tional. The notion of such a Government as this,
a Government so ancient, so deeply rooted, so
firmly

" Moored in the rifted rock,
Proof to the tempests' shock,"
as indicated by its survival not only unmarred, but
actually solidified, through the downfall of succes-
sive dynasties and the crash of reiterated revolu-
tions—the notion, we say, of such a Government
as this being liable at any moment almost to be
put upon its trial, now by a war in the Crimean
peninsula, now by one verbose and inoperative
session of Parliament, appears to us to be some-
thing very nearly indeed approximating to the
ridiculous. It is certainly hardly less preposterous,
in its way, than it would be for an Egytian Vice-
roy, or for one of the learned pundits of Grand
Cairo to be in a panic every now and then, as to
the possibility of some fitful breeze from the Levant
blowing one of these fine days across the Delta of the
Nile and uprooting one of the Pyramids ! The Con-
stitutional Government of England was just as
seriously put upon its trial six years ago, as though
a zephyr had been toying with the branches of one
of the cedars of the Lebanon ! And just as seriously
has the Parliamentary Government of England
been arraigned at the bar of public opinion during
this:present and now fast-expiring session—a session
powerless to do aught more seriously detrimental
to discredit a vacillating or indifferent House of
Commons, or to destroy the prestige and under-
mine the bases of an insincere and prevaricating
Administration.

There is this obvious and undeniable security for
the immediate future—that a session like that of
1860 cannot in the nature of things, cannot in rea-
son, cannot, we might almost venture to assert, by
possibility, be very speedily repeated. Two such
sessions cannot, certainly, come together. The post-
ponement of Parliamentary Reform—the postpone-
ment of the most pressing among all the projected
great legal reforms, that relating to the revision
and reorganisation of the whole of the hitherto en-
tangled and unsatisfactory laws relating to bank-
ruptcy—the postponement of the settlement of the
old, embittered argument as to the alteration between
the perpetuation or the abrogation of the compulsory
levying of the Church-rates—the abandonment one
after another of the numerous measures to the
carrying of which the Liberal Coalition Govern •
ment had solemnly and formally pledged them-
selves—and, finally, the ruthless massacre of all the
Innocents, after all the Guilties, as we may call the
chief of the destroyed Bills of the Cabinet—these
kind of agglomerated shortcomings and do-nothings
we may safely predicate can only occur, so to speak
just once in a generation. The repetition of a
session like this is clearly an impossibility, either
if attempted by the existing or by any
succeeding Government. Forewarned is forearmed
says the proverb—and quite manifestly the
session of 1861 will, thanks to the session of
1860, be forearmed, and by the most impressive of
all conceivable forewarnings. Then, again—look-
ing back among these fruitless leaves of the
_Hansard of 1860, we have at any rate the conso•
lation of recognising upon almost every one of them
the perfect liberty of speech enjoyed throughout
them both in Lords and in Commons by—what is
certainly not " upon its friar —our glorious and
time-honoured parliamentary or constitutional form
of Government !

The "Colour Question" turns up where we should
least expect it. It was amusing to meet with it at
the Statistical Congress, introduced, appropriately
by that life-long friend of the coloured man Lord
BROUGHAM, and brought under the notice of the
American Representative,in the person of a gentle-
man—Doctor DELANY—who, notwithstanding the
difference of his complexion from that of his Euro-
pean audience, could rise and assure them
all, Mr. DALLAS included, " that he was a man."
It was mortifying to meet with the question on
board one of the noblest lines of English merchant
ships, the Cunard steamers, and to find even
Sir FRANCIS CUNARD, a gentleman bearing
a title earned by the mental superiority which
has been sufficient to raise him to his
present high Mercantile position, but, alas,
not to enable him to confront the vulgar preju-
dice of his American passengers, and rather than
sacrifice their fares to sacrifice his own reputation
by sacrificing the rights of the coloured man to the
most stupid prejudice which ever disgraced a civi-
lised and edocated people. But the colour question
has lately appeared, it seems, where we should least
of all have expected it—in a church of the Inds
pendent persuasion, and on British territory.
At a meeting held to commemorate the twenty-
seventh anniversary of the Ist of August, it was
mentioned, discussed, and denounced—the secretary
of the society being present—that a colonial mis-
sion belonging to the Independents in Vancouver's
Island, supported by the society's subscribers here,
bad adopted the practise of a " negro pew,"
in deference to the Republicans who came
over from California. The respectable English
were opposed to it, and so was one of
the society's two missionaries, Mr. CLARKE ;
bat Mr. MAeriE, the other, and probably the senior,
persisted. Mr. CLARKE was not, however, to be
`moved, he persisted, and very adroitly turned the
tables on those who would separate white from