The Sun.
London, England, 1861-02-08 00:00:00

hither WlLLutm of ORANGE. Of course the Whig
Lord desired .nothing better than to defend such
Despatch. And he treated Mr. FITZGERALD to a
homily on that subject, and on the long misrule of
Italy which the hon. member will not easily
forget.

One of the most important motions that could
well have been submitted to the consideration of

the House of Commons, was yesterday embodied
in the following resolution, by the leader of that

great assembly, and leader also of her MAJESTY'S

Government :—" That a select committee be ap-

pointed to consider whether, by any alterations in
the forms and proceedings of this House, the
despatch of public business can be more effectually
promoted." It might surely have been thought
by any one that the wording of this resolution was
in every respect sufficiently explicit. Not so, how-
ever, thought the most captious carper and caviller
in the House of Commons, the right hon. gentleman
the member for Stroud, himself conspicuous among

,hose independent members who are, above all

others, the principal delinquents in this very par•

ticular. According to Mr. HORSMAN'S view the
lion's share of the blame in regard to that annual

waste of public time, for which the popular branch

of the Legislature is every successive year
becoming more and more remarkable, appertains
especially and peculiarly :,to the members

of successive Governments. Not—observe—to

,hose who squabble with them at every turn, who

have objections to raise, amendments to introduce,
explanations to demand upon any and every con-
ceivable opportunity : not to himself or to his
brother independents !
" 0 wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursel's as ithers see us—"
Not a notion evidently has the member for Stroud
of the figure he " cuts" only too frequently during
the session, as the systematic squanderer of that
public time he now affects to regard as so peculiarly
precious, and the responsibility of wasting which
he would now fain fasten exclusively upon the
successive holders of the offices of Government.

Why, for an example, it is only necessary to look

at the turn given by Mr. HoRsMAN himself las
evening to the discussion provoked by the very
business-like resolution submitted to the house
betimes by Lord PALMERSTON. As we have already
insisted, the wording of that resolution was about
as terse, about as clear, about as directly to the point
surely as any reasonable man could well have de-
desired. Mr. HORSMAN, however, belong-
ing, we presume, to the very opposite cate-
gory, thought, as a matter of course with
him, quite otherwise ; and, so thinking,
acted accordingly. Hence, in point of fact, the
Right Hon. Gentleman must needs at once follow
suit, after his own fashion, upon the exceedingly
practical motion of the First Lord of the Treasury.
To the resolution of the Premier, the Right Hon.
Gentleman must perforce, as by necessity, raise a
distinct and point-blank objection. And by way
of turning this perverse objection of his to account,
he must tag on to the Prime Minister's resolution a
neat little amendment of his own. After the words
" business of the house," therefore, he proposed to
interpolate in Lord PALMERSTON'S resolution,
these particularly roundabout, excessively confus-
ing, and wholly unnecessary words,—" And by a
more careful preparation of measures, their earlier
introduction, a judicious distribution of business
between the two houses, and the order and method
with which business is conducted." Equally, as a
matter of course, with the introduction of an
amendment at all by Mr. HORSMAN—the amend-
ment he thus sagaciously decided upon introduc-
ing to the consideration of the House, came to
nothing whatever in the end—it was withdrawn
(quite a matter of course), and might consequently
just as lief, after all, never have been introduced.
Only in obedience to his favourite guiding prin-
ciple, the " rule of contraries," Mr. HOESMAN,
we are left to conjecture, spoke upon the matter
of Lord PALMERSTON'S resolution last evening,
objected to it as not altogether satisfactory, and
suggested his usual pro forma amendment to be
afterwards, according to custom, withdrawn as
bootless—by way of illustrating how little he
himself had to do with the waste of the public
time by needless harangues ! The discussion, in
fact, yesterday, was in this particular just a case
in point. If the Leader of the House had wanted
to have an illustration of the evil complained of
patly introduced at the very tail of his resolution,
he could not by any possibility have had his wishes
more opportunely fulfilled than they were upon
the instant by the member for Stroud, and his
ridiculous little amendment—that amendment
which was only made to be destroyed.
Every one, we may safely say, without excep-
tion, recognizes the need for economizing the time
of the session—just as every one without exception
is conscious of the awful and solemn necessity
there is for reducing the amount of the nation's
annual expenditure. The only difficulty is—How
either the one economy or the other, the economy
of time or the economy of money, is really and
truly to be accomplished. The financial economy
the House leaves in the first instance, of course, as
in duty bound, to the sagacity of the Chancellor of
the Exchequer. The economy of time, aimed at
by Lord PALMERSTON'S resolution for the better
regulation, for the greater facilitation, and for
the clearer systematization of the business of the
session, the House—now that the Premier's motion
has been adopted—refers (as a difficult problem
urgently requiring solution) to the collective wis-
dom of a Select Committee. A Committee to be
framed of course without even the smallest refe-
rence to mere party considerations, or rather with
only such reference to these considerations of mere
party as may result in equipoising the represen-
tation in the Committee, of the " ins" and the
"outs" of her Majesty's Government, and her Ma-
jesty's Opposition. The right hon. gentleman the
leader of the latter—strange to tell—is for leaving
this wished for economy of time to the patriotism
or the conscience, to the civism or the forbearance
(or however it may best be expressed) of the
House generally, of the representatives of the
people collectively and individually. One might
have thought that the nation had had sufficient
experience of the futility of any such fondly
confiding anticipations. Civism, patriotism, con-
science, forbearance, all go for nothing when
weighed in the balance against—what shall we call
it ?—vanity ? perversity ? ambition ? A love of
oratorical display ? A wish to be listened to of
nights by the hour, and to be read of mornings by
the column ? An overweening anxiety to have
one's thoughts entombed in that vast and increas-
ing parliamentary mausoleum, the stupendous and
appalling Hansard Whatever the inducements
held out by patriotism, or by any other lofty and
elevating motive to keep silence, to practise the high
legislative virtue of reticence, to restrain in some
degree that perillous flux of words which, but too
often, swamps the action both of the Administra-
tion and of the Parliament as disastrously as the
development of harvest and vintage would be
reduced to nought by the devastating influences of
an inundation—whatever noble incentives might
be expected to exercise a wholesome power over the
volubility of individual members in the House of