The Sun.
London, England, 1861-06-11 00:00:00

as that " financial and-military business will be the I
only things that can properly command the atten-
tion of Congress, as the repeal of the MORRILL Tariff
will not, I think, be so much as seriously proposed,
in view of the hostile attitude, as it is supposed to
be, of England to the Union. Had matters
taken a different turn in England—that is to
say, had the English Government treated the
Secessionists as they deserve to be treated—there
would have been prompt sentence of death passed
upon the new tariff, and it would have been but a
serpent strangled in its cradle. But, as things are,
we shall wait and see who are to be our friends
and who our fobs, and then alter our tariff to meet
the altered state of our relations. The subject will,
from present appearances, go over to the regular
session of Congress in December.". All we can say
is that England is conscious of no hostility, rather,
exactly the contrary, provoking as that disgraceful
tariff well might be. But certain as the tariff is
both to defraud the American exchequer, and to
tax very heavily the Americans themselves, the
punishment of England reminds us only of st, pro-
verbial revenge supposed to be taken on the face by
excision of its most prominent feature.

The Bankruptcy Bill—having been trans
formed almost out of all knowledge
has, in its mangled condition, passed
through Committee in the Lords, and is
consequently so far farther advanced on its pro-
gress towards the date of its enrolment on the
statute-book. However changed and modified,
however diminished and deteriorated—we have at
least in its regard this consolation ! Namely, that
even at the best the measure as originally sun-
milted to the House of Commons by the Attorney-
General was only a partial improvement, was never
once championed by him as a proposition that
could be regarded either as definitive or
as sufficiently comprehensive. Compared with the
Bankruptcy Bill previously laid upon the table
of the House of Commons during the previous
session by Sir RICHARD BETHELL—the Bill of
,1861, this Bill which, in its shrunken and distorted
shape, passed through Committee in the Lords last
evening, was little better than the precursor of some
later enactment, or it might more probably prove in
the end of many later and better enactments. It was,
in point of fact, introduced to the consideration of
Parliament by the Attorney General as no more
than a commencement. An important and remark-
able commencement, if you will—but still no more
than a commencement. It was submitted to the
House of Commons by Sir RICHARD BETHELL as
the beginning of an improved system oflegislation
in regard to the laws relating to Bankruptcy and
Insolvency, with a view to their eventually complete
and perfected (so far as anything of this kind can be
perfected) consolidation. The Attorney-General
never affected to regard his measure as conclusive.
Ho acknowledged when bringing it forward for the
first time very early in the session, he then frankly
enough acknowledged that he could not, for his own
part, do otherwise than look back wistfully to that
more elaborate and comprehensive measure of
his which had died the death but a few
months previously in the midst of the ruth-
less slaughter the political battue known at West-
minster as the Massacre of the Innocents.
He hoped—(he now intimated almost in so many
words)—he hoped to do more during the present
Session by simply aspiring to do less (in the matter
of these reforms of the Bankruptcy Laws), than he
had, as the event proved, rashly attempted in the
Session immediately preceding. And it was upon
this understanding that the Bill was to be
regarded merely in the light of a prudential and
judicious commencement, that the House of Com-
mons passed it on with so much amiable facility
through all its various stages—modifying it
scarcely in the least as it went—sending
it, almost in the same shape as when it originally
appeared from the hands of the Attorney. General,
on to the Upper House of Parliament. There it is
that the Bill has in every way,come to grief. It was
first threatened with serious alterations by its trans-
ference to the care of a Select Committee—there to
be examined under the microscope, and touched up
with the scalpel. It had to undergo the usual
parliamentary ordeal upon those occasions, the
frightful and perilous political ordeal of dis-
section during life. From this mangling
in the Select Committee it emerged at las

as we know, in a manner raw and bleeding. And
in this condition it passed through Committee in
the Lords yesterday. So that it only requires now
to go through the final stage of its third reading,
there in the House of Peers, before it is sent beck
to the House of Commons for the consideration
in that Lower House of the slashing amend-

ments adventured upon in the House o:

It will then be seen how far the
Attorney-General can recognise these changes
as Amendments. Sir RICHARD BETHELL may
even when he comes to look upon his maimed and
amputated offspring, feel disposed to put it alto-

Peers.

gether out of existence—as a promising measure,
reduced by these cruel means to an abortive attempt

at the commencement merely of a great legal re-

formation of the laws relating to Bankruptcy and In

solvency. Dropping all similitude, however—we do
earnestly trust that, so far as this may be in any way

practicable, the Attorney-General will swallow his

own very natural chagrin at the sweeping changes

Introduced into his measure during its passage
:hrough the House of Lords, consenting to regard it

still simply and exclusively as an instalment, as a
beginning, as a preparation for future, and wiser,
and bolder legislation upon the laws both of
Bankruptcy and Insolvency.

So then—the House of Commons, while in com-
mittee last evening on the Appropriation of Seats
(Sudbury and St. Albans) Bill, decided, by an
immense majority, that there shall be no member
for Chelsea and Kensington! Is this to be re-
garded in any way as a Government defeat ?
Judging from the vociferous cheers of the Oppo-
sition when the numbers were announced, one
would be led to imagine it was so in the estima-
tion of the Opposition. But then the latter have
so often exulted in the same way during the
previous labours of the session—particularly upon
Wednesdays—with nothing coming of it all ex-
cepting, perhaps, worry, vexation, and obstruction.
Nay, it cannot yet be forgotten how the serried
phalanx of the Conservative Opposition had at length
got themselves so drilled into the habit of cheering
when the numbers of a division were announced
that they actually raised a sort of derisive shout
when a clear majority of eighteen, in an immense
house, was declared, upon a certain memorable
occasion, to have secured the triumph of the cause
of the Government. Hence the cheers of yester-
day, when the order in which the tellers advanced
to the table showed how that division had gone—
may be passed by as of comparatively small account,
as the token of what might be termed a party
demonstration.

The division of last night, recollect, was a divi-
sion upon the amendment on Clause 3, in the
Appropriation of Seats Bill already particularised.
That clause went modestly enough, as most
people on the Ministerial side of the House
imagined, to the assignment to Chelsea and Ken