The Sun.
London, England, 1859-08-13 00:00:00

THE WEATHER.-SUN OFFICE, AUGU ST 13.

THERMOMETER, IN THE SHADE.
75—highest since noon yesterday.
60—lowest this morning and during the night.
74—this day at noon.

BAROMETER-30.03.
WIND, South-Westerly; light, and very fine.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
This DAY.—Morning, lh. 55m.—Afternoon, 2h. 13m.
To-MORROW-Morning, 2h. 30m.—Afternoon, lh. 46m.

CLOSE OF THE SESSION.

The Parliamentary sessions of 1859 have at
length, thank HEAVEN, been brought to a close!
Those two sessions between which—as effectually
as between the two stools of the adage—everything

in the way of wholesome legislation has fallen to
the ground. We have long since had quite enough
for one year of all these fruitless bickerings of party,
both in the Lords and in the Commons. We are
heartily glad to be rid at last, for a brief interval,
of those spiteful wranglings of faction, which have
for a Ni hole twelvemonth precluded the nation from
the merest chance of enjoying the realisation of
any positive and practical legislative improvement.
Unless something at present entirely beyond
our ken should arise to necessitate the ex-
eeptioial and always unpopular labours of
an autumnal session, the Gallery Reporters

will have no more to do in their magic art of per-
petuating oratory by hieroglyphics, until February.
Our ultra-reforming Premier will, in that case,
have to curb his impatience as best he may during
five whole months before he can seize the oppor-
tunity he is known to court so eagerly for tho-
roughly remodelling and reorganising our existing
system of popular representation As if in doubt
as to that eagerness on the part of Lord PALMER-
STON and his colleagues, Lord DENMAN last evening

gave notice in the Upper House, that " in the event
of her MAJESTY'S Ministers delaying a reform bill
next session, he would move for leave to introduce

the bill so prematurely put an end to last session."
It is a painful reminder—this prospective and con-
tingent notice of motion by Lord DENMAN—that
we elose the Parliamentary labours of 1859, the
toils of two sessions, the deliberations of two Par-

'laments, at precisely, and absolutely, and literally
the same identical point, at which those labours,
now upwards of six months ago (namely, on the
3d day of last February) commenced! And yet
further—the Manner in which this outrageous
waste of time has been brought about, the Cause
of this monstrous wasting, and worse than wast-
ing, of a whole year, Lord DENMAN yesterday sen-
tentiously but most fully indicated when, in giving
his notice of motion for 1860, "in the event of
Ministers delaying a reform bill next session,"
(as they are known to have done, in truth, so often
previously) his lordship observed, "He had given a
silent vote for Lord DERBY "—adding—" he would
now mention that he had received a letter from a
gentleman, a cousin of his (Lord DENMAN'S) in
which the writer said, I quite agree with you that
Lord MALMESBURY has been unfairly treated.
Nothing could be more constitutional, upright, and
firm than the way in which he conducted the
foreign business of the country." Yet it is notori-
ous that it was precisely by reason of that unfair
treatment of Lord MALMESBURY, because of the
wicked and intuitive perversion of his sayings and
doings as Her MAJESTY'S Foreign Secretary, be-

'cause of the entire misrepresentation of his policy
from beginning to end, that the last chance of the
possibility of any real work in the way of whole-
some legislation for 1859, was lost to the country !
Simply for the sake of bringing back to office those
.dear inevitable Whigs, so that the great families
might yet once more cram the loaves and fishes down
the insatiable maws of all the GREYS, and. all the
ELLIOTS, and all the RUSSELLS Sixteen months
exclusion from power having whetted their natu-
rally fine appetites from a hunger to a positive
ravening for place and its perquisites.
That is really the One Result of these two sessions
of 1859—the 'Whigs are located once more in their
old haunts in Whitehall! Sir CHARLES WOOD is en-
abled to dedicate his immense genius to the service
of his country
a Perfectly new character, namely,
as the reorganizer of our Indian Empire, as the vir-
tual ruler of 200,000,000
of his fellow creatures !
Sir GEORGE GREY is empowered to
draw a pretty
handsome salary in the sinecure position of
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Sir GEORGE
LEWIS devotes his resplendent administrative capa-
cities to the conduct of the affairs of the Home
Department. Lord JOHN RUSSELL is entrusted
again with the management of that delicate and
complicated loom of the Foreign-office, ,
'cm-office where the
fibrous threads of diplomacy are spun and inter-
woven—that same Lord JOHN who has already so
frequently and signally illustrated his adroitness as
tdiplomatist; for example, let us say, in the instance
th e Vienna Conference ! When we recall these
tl zings to mind—when we remember, moreover,
tl ) at there, again, somehow or other, in the sacred
p arliens of Downing-street and Whitehall, Mr.
I .OWE, for instance, the high-minded and public-
s pirited Mr. LOWE, now of Calne, lately of Kidder-
xiinster, toils at the public desk and draws the
aublic money—we are consoled, we are fain to re-
I ;met our estimate of the fruitlessness of the two ses-

mons of 1859. If such are the result of these sessions,
can they be regarded as wholly fruitless ? Have
the Lords and Commons, but especially the latter,
laboured in vain during the last stormy and anxious
half-year, if—scanning the whole of this last weary
volume of Hansard, surveying the whole of these
sour debates and spiteful divisions—we find, as the
result of all, the joyful return of the Whigs to
Downing-street ? What is the postponement for
another year of Parliamentary Reform ? Have we
not compensation for this, full and complete com-
pensation—in the restoration of the Whigs to the
offices of the Administration !

Common sense certainly tells us that we
ought to make the most of this one Great
Result of the Parliamentary session of 1859
—for it is a result that has been purchased
dearly enough. The price of it is, among other
things, the postponement not merely of Parlia-
mentary Reform (though that of itself is matter
of sufficient consideration), but with Par-
liamentary Reform of every other kind of Legi-
slative Improvement. The Legal Reforms,
among others, prepared for us at the open-
ing of the first of the two sessions last
past those of the insolvency and bankruptcy
laws, those involving the consolidation of the cri-
minal laws, those relating to the titles to land and
to their registration—all have been given the go-
by—that the Whigs might be brought back to
power ! In the eager struggling of the Whigs back
once more to power, place, and patronage—we end
the Parliamentary sessions of 1859, leaving the
church-rates still unabolished. Because the
Whig determination to wriggle back at any
hazard, coute qui coute, at any cost of principle, of
public spirit, or of consistency, the diplomatic
labours of Lord MALMESBURY were first of all
rendered powerless, and were afterwards flagitiously
misrepresented. The precipitation of the war in
Italy—was the adverse majority of 39 upon Thursday
the 31st March, upon Lord JOHN RUSSELL'S paltry
because entirely partisan and " dodging," resolu-
tions. Nay, the Times itself, the thick-and-thin
advocate of the present Coalition in its rise and
development, as afterwards in its formal installa-
tion, the very Times itself acknowledges this morn-
ing, in reference to the position of the late Govern-
ment, as far as its Diplomatic efforts to prevent the
outbreak of war were concerned, that " a Ministry
on sufferance immediately after a defeat in the
House of Commons is naturally regarded with dis-
trust and comparative indifference by Foreign
Powers." Now, remember that while as far as
relates to the interests of Parliamentary Reform
alone, there was not only every reason not to vote
for Lord JOHN'S ridiculous resolutions, but, as we
still believe, every reason to vote diametrically
against them—as regards the influence of that
untoward division upon the affairs of Europe
even the organ of the then Opposition to-day
acknowledges the result of the majority to have
been—disastrous. To put the matter plainly, and
in as few words as possible—To thrust Lord DERBY
and his colleagues out of office, and to bring the
dear old Whigs back again into power—the war
in Italy (to say the very least of it) was precipi-
tated. For (to repeat the ipsissima verbs
of the Times) " A Ministry on Sufferance
immediately after a defeat in the House of Corn•
mons, is naturally regarded with distrust and com-
parative indifference by foreign Powers." There-
fore, by reason of Lord JOHN RUSSELL'S own act,
the introduction (for purely selfish ends) of his in•
sidious and paltry resolutions, the war in Italy was
precipitated! He inherits now, in his Ministerial
capacity as Foreign Secretary, difficulties for which
he himself is in a very great and a very heinous
manner responsible.

Nothing hardly could have justified such a
course at a moment so peculiarly perillous
to the peace of Christendom nothing, cer-
tainly, could yield a shadow of justification to
it below the immediate interests of the great ques-
tion of Parliamentary Reform, the problem of re-
organising and revivifying the whole system of
our popular representation. But that those
immediate interests were in no way at all
advantageously affected by the momentary
triumph ensured to the Whigs by the " dodge " of
Lord JOHN'S Resolutions—the position of the
question of Parliamentary reform at the present
moment only too clearly and too painfully demon-
strates. On the contrary—as independent Liberals
and thoroughgoing Reformers in the House, like
Mr. ROEBUCK, and equally independent Liberals
and no less thoroughgoing Reformers out of the
House like ourselves, maintained loudly and
strenuously at the time—the " immediate interests"
of Parliamentary Reform demanded the rejection
of those paltry resolutions, and the reference of
the inadequate but improvable Bill of Lord
DERBY and Mr. DISRAELI to the judg-
ment of the House of Commons in Corn-
mitteee. Had those honest recommendations
been followed, we might now have had cause to
exult in the happy triumph at last of the Cause of
Reform—all that was evil in that bill being easily
eliminated, all that was good in it as readily de-
veloped—developed even, had the House so willed
it in Committee, to the approximation to Universal
Suffrage, to the realisation of the Ballot, to the
securing permanently, what we have now virtually,
but irregularly, namely Quadrennial Parliaments !
But no : the Whigs, like true dogs in the manger,
wanted the glory of the thing to themselves. If they
could not give Reform, no one else should. Reform,
in fact, appertaining exclusively to the Whigs, as the
Times has the singular audacity (even for the
Times) to express it today, as " the legitimate pro-
prietors of the doctrine !" The Whigs " the legiti-
mate PROPRIETORS" of the doctrine ! As if Reform
belonged not to the -whole mass of the population !
But no—that is the. Whig creed. There may be
free trade in everything else—but of Reform of all
kinds (Heaven knows why), they are the impre-
scriptable Monopolists. Wherefore—not, of course,
that they loved Reform less, but that they loved
power more—the Whigs, led on by Lord JOHN, set
aside the possibility of our getting Reform: securing,
instead, the success of those insidious andpernicious
resolutions.
.1

As the first consequence of which, The Italian
War became in a manner inevitable—the media-
tion of the discomfitted Ministry being rendered
powerless for good by the selfish and partisan
tactics of the Opposition. In the next place,
the setting aside for yet another session of Par-
liamentary Reform, as well as of all other reforms,
was ensured, as we have now the anguish of
-witnessing! Everything was lost for ourselves,
everything was imperilled for Christendom—so
that the Whigs and their friends might only con-
trive, by the grossest bribery in the elections, and
ythe most flagitious misrepresentations in de-
bate, to worm their way back somehow, any-
how, by fair means or by foul, to the power
greedily hungered after by themselves and their
following. The end of it all being, that the Whigs
are back again, and that the nation' is expected
to feel consoled by that one fact for having No
Reform, a nearly Doubled Income Tax, and a very
dubious degree of dignity in our Neutral
position
among the Great Powers of Christendom

The immaculate counties ! But one petition, we
believe, has beentried, or will be tried. Boroughs
not only
have been proved to be nests of corruption ;

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THE SUN.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 13, 1859.