The Sun.
London, England, 1861-02-11 00:00:00

i COURT, together with Lord DERBY'S own son,
successively the noble Earl's colleague in the late
Cabinet as Colonial Secretary and as Indian
Secretary, and with these Lord DERBY'S inde-
fatigable and laborious First Lord of the
Admiralty, Sir JOHN FAKINGTON, one who has
of late years made good for himself a foremost
place among the ablest of our administrators. Ten
. out of the twenty-one members of the Committee
I have thus been here, one by one, particularised. The
emaining eleven, leading off with Sir FRANCIS
BkARING,are, for the most part, thoroughly business
men who will, if accepted by the House, thoroughly
well acquit themselves of the responsibility de-
volved upon them by their selection. Of this,
judging from their character as members of the
Legislature, we may rest asured. No matter how
little sanguine we may be as to the result of the
labours of the Select Committee when all has been
said done—at any rate we may rest confident of
that, that the members of it will devote them-
selves seriously to the consideration of
the momentous problem as to whether the Business
of the Session may or may not in any way be ap-
preciably faci:itated.
As to the actual state of things in regard to the
progress of the Business of the Session in the
House of Commons, the Committee may judge how
far a change has become desirable from their own
very recent recollections, Not, of course, that any
light can be thrown upon the question by their
immediate experience. We are only now to be
, sure in the second week of the Session of 1861—
, and last week, the initial week of the Session, was
minus one sitting—beginning the parliamentary
labours as it did only on Tuesday evening. Out of the
whole four days of that first week, that week of
mere ceremonials, preliminaries, and preparations,
out of Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday
(Saturday being, for the chief part at least of each
,session, a dies non no less than the sacred day-of-
res',t itself, the Sunday—and Wednesday, again,
being, according to custom, the weekly half-holi-
day of both Lords and Commons)—out of the first
four days' sittings of the session, or rather the first
three nights' and one day's sittings, there are
twenty hours of actual work already set down " to
the good" in the new year's annals of the popular
branch of our Parliament. Examining the way in
which this score of hours came to be consumed in
the House of Commons, we find that on Tuesday,
from four p.m. to very nearly two o'clock, they were
debating the Address in answer to the Speech from
the Throne. On Wednesday, from about noon till past
three, they were discussing Foreign policy ques-
tions for the most part. On Thursday evening,
from five o'clock until nine, they were debating
this very subject of the Committee proposed by
Lord PALMERSTON, with a view to the facilitation
of the business of the session, and the saving of that
" time" which is more than its proverbial equiva
lent of money to the nation at large, when squan-
dered. On Friday evening, to complete the
analysis of the business of the House of Com-
mons during its first week in '6l, the occu-
pation of the members was a little more diver-
sified in its character—relating in succession to
a variety of miscellaneous topics " ventilated"
in the first instance in the form of questions
addressed to Ministers, and secondly, in that of
running comments Apropos to the formal hebdomidal
motion for the adjournment of the House until
Monday; and after this, to three subjects of
curiously contrasting interest and importance, i.e.,
Mr. VILLIERS' motion for a committee on the
Poor Laws—Mr. GLADSTONE'S motion for the
amendment Bill respecting the guarantee for the
Red Sea Telegraph, and that other proposition,
the proposition relating to the establishment of
Post-office Savings Banks submitted to the House
at the close of its last sittings by the
right hon. the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It
can hardly be said, therefore, that much time has
been wasted in the first week of the New Session, in
which first week it was idle to expect that anything
practical could very well be accomplished. It will
be necessary for the committee to look further back
for " cases in .point"—but not in any way further
back than last session, that long wasted session of
1860 in which the Lords and Commons, but in which
the Commons especially, made good the etymological
accuracy of their title as a House of Parliament.
That one session alone of 1860 is a complete justi-
fication of the appointment of this Committee upon
Public Business—and we yet hope that the depres-
sing remembrance of its " much cry," in the way
of debate, and its " little wool" in the shape of
actual legislation, will act as a wholesome incentive
to the labours of the one-and-twenty committee-
men.

It will be seen that judgment is again adjourned
lin that lamentable PATERSON-BONAPARTE case
which is just now so much of a scandal in the
two hemispheres. It was adjourned thus for
another week (we may at length presume of course
positively for the last time) at the conclusion of the
proceedings at Friday's sitting in the First Cham-
ber of the Civil Tribunal of the Seine. Upon that
occasion, at that last sitting, the conclusions were
broaght for ward by the Imperial Public Prosecutor,
M. MERVEILLEUX-DUVIGNAIJX. And certainly they
are "conclusions"in their way sufficiently significant,
conclusions not very likely now to be foregonely
for the simple reason that they are already fore-
gone conclusions.
It is noticeable in the first place that the Public
Prosecutor avowed quite plainly that he deemed
it necessary "to set aside from consideration the
decrees issued by the Emperor Napoleon 1., which
had been mentioned in the pleadings, and which
had for object to annul the marriage of his
brother JERomE, those decrees not having any legal
authority ! " M. DUTIONAUX'S expression of his
opinion immediately afterwards that the marriage
contracted at Baltimore, in 1803, between PRINCE
JEROME and ELIZABETH PATERSON, " must be
looked on as clandestine, in consequence of not
having been acccomplished with all the conditions
of publicity:required by the French legislation,
and must, consequently, be declared null, the object
of such proceedings being to evade the law"—
that surely is rendered, as an opinion, "utterly
valueless by the remembrance of the simple fact
that one whole year had elapsed before Madame
.0 ere, the mother of the bridegroom, entered
her protest against the marriage ! A lapse of time
altogether invalidating that protest, and rendering
legitimate (even if had not been so originally) the
public ceremonial of the marriage at Baltimore by
the Catholic Bishop of Baltimore. Insisting, how-
ever, that (in the recollection of the facts of all that
publicity !) the marriage there was nothing less
' than clandestine—the Imperial Public Prosecutor
admits on Friday, " nevertheless, as Miss PATER-
SON acted with good faith in espousing Prince
JEROME, the marriage ought in that respect to pro-
duce its civil effects as regards her." Allowing this
much, however, only to add immediately thereupon,
"but on looking at the decision come to by the
imperial family council, the whole affair was
already decided. That council, in fact, had not
confined itself to judging the question of name, but
had added, in express terms, the nullity of the mar-
riage, and refused to it even the civil effects which
might appear attendant on it. Consequently, the