The Sun.
London, England, 1845-02-06 00:00:00

THE PRESENT SESSION.
In an article on the opening of a new session of
Parliament, our Contemporary, the Spectator, has
some caustic remarks on the unprofitable results to
which that session, in all probability, will lead. It
takes as disparaging a view of what it calls its "hope-
less" labours, as of the degree of interest with which
the public at large regard their commencement. This
degree, in its estimation, is evidently represented
by that negative quantity which, in commercial par-
lance, is termed nil. If we rightly collect his
meaning, the Spectator himself expects no-
thing from the new Parliament; whilst the public
manifests such an apathy about its existence, as im-
plies that nothing is to be expected from it. We are kept,
it is said, in more than even the usual degree of igno-
rance of the programme of the measures to be brought
orward, the pieces to be performed, and the partie
t o whom their representation is to be assigned. There
is more playfulness, we trust, than truth in these re-
marks, and in the conclusion which is deduced from
them, " that the session of 1845 is destined to follow
the fate of some of its predecessors, in exhibiting
an absurd contrast between any brilliant expectations
formed of it at its opening, and the realised national
benefit derived at its termination, from the whole
aggregate of its labours during that in-
terval." Our Government must strangely neg-
lect its duty, if it fail to originate within the
next six months, some of the most important, ex-
tensive, and urgent questions that-any administration
has submitted to the Legislature during the years
that have elapsed since the general peace of 1815.
Our Legislature will utterly have repudiated its own
legitimate functions if it have not, before the next
sessional recess, compelled the questions we speak of
to be submitted by the Government for full and ma-
ture discussion within the walls of Parliament. In
truth the necessity of the case, properly looked
at, supplies abundant guarantees for the
assumption that the now pending ses-
sion will be rendered memorable by the
variety, the numbs?", and the extraordinary magnitude
of the matters and the interests with which Parlia-
mint will have to deal, which it inust finally adjust
or vindicate, propound or renew, but which it will be
out of its power to postpone. On this account we
differ from our Contemporary, and are disposed to
look rather for a " hopeful" than for his " hopeless"
ces3ion.

Let us consider fur a moment what, under the head
of home business, are the great social and domestic
questions pressing for the earliest consideration, with
a force and exigency proportionate to the intense
solicitude which they excite in the public
mind. There is, first, the reconstruction of the
amended Poor-law, especially in reference to Sir
JAMES GRAHANI'S Bill, which attempts to establish
the law of settlement on a single basis, namely, the
settlement in every case acquired by the father. It is
deemed, on high authority, very expedient that the
Ilace of birth of the male parent should thus deter-
mine the settlement of the progeny; and nothing
seems to be fairer than the course which the Right
Honourable the Home Secretary has adopted, for ar-
riving at the opinions of the soundest practical autho-
rities on this vital question ; for it involves the recon-
struction, not only of the Act, but of the Poor-law Com-
mission itself. If we may judge of the aggregate
returns from the Boards of Guardians throughout
England and Wales (and, we believe, Ireland) to
the questions submitted for their opinion and report,
with copies of the new Bill ; by those we have had
already an opportunity of becoming acquainted with,
we may safely predict that the replies to the Home
Secretary's various queries will be so contradictory,
so conflicting, and yet so unqualified and unhesitating,
in most instances, that Sir JAMES will be compelled
to abandon his new principle. On the other hand,
we firmly believe that the anomalies, absurdities, in-
justice, and uncertainty, attending the operation and
construction of the law of settlement, as it
at present exists, will be so powerfully de-
monstrated by these returns and replies, that
Parliament will be brought to the unanimous
determination that such a law shall so longer be
acted upon. We have heard it surmised that these
difficulties will result in a foreseen conclusion ; and
that the whole burden of the poor-rate will be levied by
a Poor-subsistence tax under Parliamentary authority,
through Government machinery, in the usual manner,
but with a more equable distribution than has hitherto
been adopted in respect of moveable as well as fixed
capital and income. Next, there will be the all-im-
portant question, whether the property-tax is to be
re-imposed and re-endured; and if that should even
be determined in the affirmative, there remains another
almost as difficult—quite as insidious :—" How shall
the surplus revenue be appropriated ?" Without
the property-tax there can be no surplus at all.
With it, and a realised surplus, there will be the re-
missive pretensions of malt to be balanced against
those of windows, of tea against those of raw cotton, of
paper, &c. The manufacturing interest will have to
be fought by the reluctant Minister on one " Supply"
night against the landed interest; on another the
landowner will be set up to ride over the manufac-
turer. It is very evident, that if there be a " surplus,'
the consumers of tea sugar, tobacco, paper, raw
cotton, &c., &c., will not hear of their claims
being postponed or adjourned. These must be met,
and either affirmed or negatived. Then the busi-
ness of appropriation of surplus will be transferred
to its relations with such vast affairs as the paying
fur new harbours of refuge, breakwaters, and forts,
the extension and strengthening of our steam navy,
and all the other details of that necessary condition
of preparation for warlike contingencies, the wisdom
of which appears to be no longer matter of doubt
with any party in the kingdom. A most rigorous 1
revenue inquiry we suppose will also be called for
by some of these Members in either House whose
ej:es have been opened to the scandalous inefficiency
of our Custom House management, in London more
particularly, and the incalculable loss, which the
frauds that have grown up under such a fiscal
administration have inflicted, and still inflict upon
the annual income and financial resources of the em-
pire. We cannot believe that the corn-laws will be
continued to 1846 in the same shape they present
themselves under, now, in 1845. Nor is it to be
imagined that our monetary system can be trusted
for another year in its present rickety and vicious
condition to those happy accidents which have tided
it through so many perils, on so many occasions, with-
out actually renewing its disastrous shipwrecks of
1825-26, and 1838. We are much mistaken, more-
over, if the Legislature will not deem it still its
duty to infuse more vigour and liberality into
any existing plans of national education, so as to
arrest, if possible, the appalling growth and in-
crease of' crimes, in a large proportion of cases the
result of ignorance—in almost all, stamped by a cha-
racter of atrocity, a recklessness of blood, a proneness
to savage violence, and even to treachery, such as will
impart to the criminal annals of the last twelve months
darker and more prurient shades of guilt, than have
been heretofore thought compatible with the charac-
ter of even the most degraded classes of our population.
Besides all these questions, in connexion with our do-
mestic and social status, the Parliament will scarcely
separate again without paying due attention to others
• that it is not less imperative upon t to regard with
the most unremitting vigilance. The restrictions on
our foreign commerce, which cramp our home in-
dustry and contract our foreign markets, impoverish
the trade of our greatest staples, and paralyse the
enterprise and speculation of our manufacturers and
shipowners, whilst they burden our consuming
classes with iniquitous and vexatious imposts ; —these
must be largely removed forthwith. The utmost
'knits of patience, as well as prudence, have been
reached. This is a work which brooks no further
delay.
In the foreign relations of the country, GOD
knows, we detect but too many indications that re-
mind us how possible it is that Parliament, even in
the pending session,opinionisia may be called on to record its
political measures of the most profound
interes the most extensivel bearing. In Europe
we have not yet concluded our differences with the
French Government, touching the right of search,
the Otaheite affair, or the the Gambia and
the Senegal. In America we see but one continued
series of ebullitions, dictatedherbey at
to feelingl to
which it is not necessary
name, but which seems identified app'tK a
double purpose of unprincipled territorial wi
aggrandise-
ment, and of the manifestation of an attitude of defi-
ance to Great. Britain. Neither in the Oregon occu-
pation, nor the annexation of Texas, nor the scanda-
lous tampering with Mexican and Texian authorities,
do we recognise in the bearing of the United States'
Government any cause for satisfying ourselves that
there is no danger of a violent disorganisation,
1845, of those 'amicable relations betwc en the' Union and
this country which have subsisted now, through so
many years, to the great advantage of both nations,
and the benefit of the civilised world at large. It is
not in such elements of disturbing forces, as these,
that we can make out the promise of one of those
"hopeless sessions," whose barrenness of excitement,
--whose routine-torpidity, offer perhaps, after all, the
best assurance for the prolonged maintenance of the
peace and repose of the world—to the two Govern-
ments which are most deeply concerned in preserving
them inviolate.