The Sun.
London, England, 1845-05-24 00:00:00

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LONDON, SATURDAY: MAY 24, 1845.

The Lord Chancellor took his seat on the Woolsack at
Five o'clock.
Before that hour, however, the Church Acts Amend.
ment Bill had been read a second time, and, on entering
the House,
The LORD CHANCELLOR expressed his astonishment
that such an impoi tant Bill should have been forwarded
a stage before he had entered the House, and before the
usual hour for commencing public business.
On the motion of the Duke of WELLINGTON, the
Maynooth Bill, which had been brought up from the
Commons, was read a first time, and the second reading
was fixed for Monday, June 2.
Lord BROUGHAM laid on the table a Bill for securing
the payment of small debts, which was read a first time.
The Marquis of BREADALBANE :presented a petition
from the conference of delegates against the Maynooth
Bill.

The Earls of CUARLEVILLE and of WINCHTLSEA. both
wished that a later day should be fixed for the second
reading of the Bill; but the Duke of WELLINGTON was
inexorable, and said that the Bill should be read a second
time on the 2d of June.

Earl FITZWILLIAM moved for a Committee to con-
sider how far it was practicable to introduce a better
mode of valuation of lands taken for railway purposes.
Lord STANLEY, on the part of the Government,
would not oppose the motion; which, after a few words
from Lord BROUGHAM, the Earl of WICKLOW, Lord
HATHERTON, and the Marquis of LONDONDERRY, was
agreed to.

The House of Commons met at Four o'clock,

The second reading of the Lady's Island and Tacum
shin Embankment Bill was opposed by Mr. REDING
TON. On a divison, however, it was carried by a ma
jority of 93, the numbers being—for the second read.
ing, 113 ; against it, 17.

Mr. S. WORTLEY moved—That the following clause
be inserted in all Railway Bills passing through the
House:—" And be it further enacted, that nothing herein
contained shall be deemed or construed to exempt the
railway by this or the said recited Acts authorised to be
made from the provisions of any general Act relating to
such Bills, or of any general Act relating to railways,
which may hereafter pass during the present or any fu-
ture session of Parliament. And that the said resolution
be a standing order of this House."
After a short discussion, the debate was adjourned till
Monday.

Mr. HUME withdrew his notice of motion for a call of
the House.

The second reading of the Academical Education
(Ireland) Bill was postponed till Friday next, as was
also the second reading of the Poor-law Amendment
(Scotland) Bill.

On the motion that the order of the day be read for
the House resolving itself into Committee of Supply on
the Navy Estimates,

Sir C. NAPIER complained of the manner in which
the money voted for building ships had been squandered,
and entered at length into the merits of the various ex-
perimental ships which had been recently sent to sea.
Sir G. COCKBURN briefly replied ; after which the
House went into Committee, and several sums were
voted for the service of the navy, without material
discussion.

The Chairman then reported progress, and the House
adjourned at Half past One o'clock.

There was a good deal of sound constitutional doc-
trine in Lord JonN RUSSELL'S speech of Wednesday
night last, on the subject of party. For such a dis-
course the third reading of the Alaynooth Grant Bill
undoubtedly furnished a very apt text, and we hope that
Lord INGESTRE will not lightly forget the somewhat
severe illustration into which Lord JOHN was so kind as
to manufitcture him, of that embodiment of party
" which has all its defects, and none of its
redeeming good properties." There is a small class
of very small politicians, whom it is expedient
to instruct in the salutary lesson,' that party, however
good it may be in relation to its results and influences
on the service and welfare of the public, cannot be
tolerated for palpable objects of private advantage. But
the remarkable division of Wednesday shows such a
singular fusion of parties, such an array of con-
fused and conflicting opinions on the side of a
measure of justice and liberal feeling towards our
Roman Catholic brethren of Ireland, that we would
fain draw from it an augury of permanent
benefit to the highest interests of the public, through
the toning down of extreme opinions, the abandonment
of personal prejudices and distrusts, and the combina-
tion of political antagonists in a brave and generous
alliance to uphold the institutions of their common
country, by giving to all classes of the community a
genuine and equal interest in them. Coul 1 we but
evoke from the marshalled benches within the House,
where men on both sides, for the mutt part,
follow as accurately and obediently the tactics of
their political leader, as a line of newly-drilled soldiers
watch the motions of their fugleman—could we but evoke
many such divisions into the lobbies without, we might
reasonably hope that the reign of commie sense and
truthfulness was at hand. Men would soon be brought
into a habit of voting as they thought, not as they were
whipped, as it is called in Parliamentary parlance. The
principles of free trade would find new exponents, who
would awaken, as from a dream, to a sense of wonder
at the perverse tenacity with which they had
adhered, during many years, to the errors of
political connexions, the bond-slaves of monopoly
—instead of acting upon the more enlarged
views which in these mixed divisions they could not but
have learned to appreciate. We should have Colonel
SIBTHORP coining forward as an active Committee-man
in conducting Railway Bills ; Sir ROBERT INGLIS
bringing in appropriation clauses for the better em•
ployment of the surplus revenues of Dears and Chapters ;
Mr. PLUMPTRE seconding Lord MANNERS' motion for
the repeal of the Statutes of Mortmain ; Mr. W. MILEs
mooting the abolition of all restrictive duties on the trade
in Foreign Corn; and Sir ROBERT PEEL himself agitating
for the repeal of his Currency Bill of 1819, and its com-
plement of 1844.
Party must be, per se, quite as good a thing as Lord
JOHN RUSSELL insisted that it is, if it can accomplish
mutations like these. Were some of the diversities pro-
duced by the divisions on, and after, the third reading
of the Maynooth Grant Bill less extravagant? Assuredly
not. Now the moral we would have Hon. Members
to collect from these is simply this—having made a be-
ginning and broken the ice, as it were, in their
accidental encounters with former political opponents,
on certain common grounds cf political sentiment,
influenced in the main, perhaps, rather by a
sense of equity, than on calculations of statesmanship,
let them proceed to discover and to occupy the nume-
rous other grounds on which they may meet the just
advocates of the more matured opinions on gmi
economic and social questions. It would be, doubtless,

romantic to expect at any early period the advent of this
sort of political perfectability; but we may gravely hope
that a few such eh ctrifying shocks as the
divisions on the Maynooth question may bring
the more intelligent representatives of the people--
Whigs, Conservatives, and Radicals—to discover
that there are neither so many nor so insurmountable
organic discrepancies of political theories between them,
as should necessarily prevent their coming to a better
understanding on most of them. And since we give
them credit for being equally animated by a sincere de-
sire to advance and consolidate the welfare of this great
empire, let us hope that, in proportion as the im-

pression is more emphatically produced on them by
occasional accidents of this kind, that it is very possible
for them to travel in the same path for the same great and
common end, they will acquire the determination to
betake themselves to those paths without delay or mis-
trust. For if the counsels of all the great parties—the
popular, the lowest, and the middle classes— the repre-
sentatives of the trading, manufacturing, and landed in-
terests of the empire be really excited, what human
power can withstand her physical force, her naval great-
ness, or her political supremacy ?
hen -

When we very lately animadverted on the strange
anomalies and deficiencies of our criminal law, and in-
stanced the absurd inequality with which punishment
was apportioned to offences corning under the cognisance
of its jurisdiction (an inequality by reason of which the