The Sun.
London, England, 1859-07-23 00:00:00

The Parliamentary History of the session now
rapidly drawing to its conclusion will certainly
prove one of the most confused, as well as one of
the most melancholy and fruitless, that has for a
long while past contributed its quota to the annals
of Constitutional Government. From first to last
it has been little better than a series of beginnings.
It has been the beginning of a Ministerial effort at
a comprehensive reform in the popular representa-
tion. It has been the beginning of a new Parlia-
ment. It has been the beginning of another Coali-
tion Ministry—a Coalition Ministry more startling
in its way than the most remarkable among all its
predecessors—beyond the Fox Coalition in 1806—
beyond even the Coalition elaborately contrived in
the winter of 1852-1853 under the Premiership of
Lord ABERDEEN. This same Parliamentary Ses-
sion, moreover, has witnessed successively the
beginning of a war in Italy and the beginning
of a Peace in Europe—for one can hardly
help in either instance arriving at any other
opinion than that the war has been, that
the peace will be little better, when all is said and
done, than a beginning. Reverting, however, to
purely internal or selfish considerations, as contra-
distinguished from those of a more cosmopolite
character affecting more or less the hopes and aspi-
rations of all Christendom—the pages of Hansard
for 1859 will present a spectacle of debates more
than usually fragmentary and interrupted. Com-
prehensive measures of reform begun—broken off—
never brought to a satisfactory termination. A
Government bill elaborately pre-arranged for the
extension of the electoral franchise by the addition
of some 400,000 voters to the already existing con-
stituencies—a bill carried through a first reading
—brought to the crisis of a second reading—but
abruptly set aside before it could be subjected to
the wholesome scrutiny of a committee. A landed
estates registration bill, ingeniously prepared by
the then Solicitor-General, and brought by him
under the favourable consideration of the House of
Commons, only, however, to be eventually allowed
to drop through in the midst of all the after con-
fusions in the Legislature. And so on—and so on
—through all the various schemes of prospective
improvement andinnovation of which this expiring
session has afforded us such abundance—at any rate
of beginnings.

It is not merely, however, that 1859 has proved
fruitful of beginnings in attempt after attempt at
actual legislation ; its prevailing characteristic has
been exemplified not less strikingly in the mere
commencement, one after another, of various
auspiciously announced but prematurely and
abruptly abandoned explanations. It has been
impossible, even during this tantalizing session
—which at any rate itself we will hope may
somehow or other come to some kind of a con-
clusion, good, bad, or indifferent—it has been
actually impossible even to have a clean breast of
it from any one in regard to the merest political
explanations. This indeed will shine forth upon
the pages of Hansard as one of the most whimsical
of the pecularities of 1859 as regards the sayings
and doings of the Imperial Parliament. Precisely
as in 1858 there was a momentary glimpse of a
skeleton through the half opened door of a cup-
board here on the side of the Opposition there on
the side of the Government—the door in each
instance being suddenly shut to, double-locked,
and the key thrown away somewhere beyond the
reach of recovery ! Precisely as in 1858 there
was that partial disclosure of a plot or compact
overtly championed by Mr. CARDWELL, and
obscurely fostered by the Earl of SHAFTESBURY—
preciseIy as in 1858 there was that half-and-half
revelation begun but never ended, hastily hushed
up, and never heard of since, when the Presidency
of the Board of Control was independently re-
signed into the hands of her MAJESTY by the Earl
of ELLENBOROUGH! Precisely in that same
abrupt, foreshortened, irritating, disappointing
manner—have we not had during this sessionof
1859 abundance of early-interrupted, or
some-
times even of wholly-suppressed explanations ?

Who even for that matter has ever to this
UT quite comprehended the circumstances
which led so bewilderingly to the abrupt
withdrawal from the DERBY Cabinet of those
two right honourable gentlemen, the member
for Cambridge University and the member for Ox-
fordshire, the late Home Secretary and the late
President of the Board of Trade ? It is incompre-
hensible to us to this moment why they deemed
themselves constrained to withdraw from the Ad-
ministration—or how it came to pass that their
colleagues failed in any way to reconcile differences
admitting so readily upon the very lace of them of
reconciliation. Mr. HENLEY'S honour an d Mr.

4.-
,
, .:.-,: ,w,:z7----,_., ---- i •-r.it
„,„ ..,4 - ....1, 4041 °÷7z97 ,\‘.-;; .% .117L,"=::,.i..‘
04,/,,,*
-,,xf,;6.;;;; v 7.-- "
..._ 3
_,,,,' am r!",:: .-, • „,, -'* .. = ..,404.-A, -
Act,s.
`,""latiegpriol);:i -DRoir •
,','.,.`
, \ 'or, ii,
..".„6 1 bi r m ' "'
''
~‘
~,,,, 4, 1.,i4
_.• 1, will%

THE SUN.
SATURDAY, JULY 23, 1859.