The Sun.
London, England, 1845-04-21 00:00:00

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mortnnta

LONDON, MONDAY, APRIL 21, 1545.

The remarks which we hazarded at the commence-
ment of the Easter recess, on the es ils arising from
the accumulation of Parliamentary business, derive,

we think, additional force from the protracted debate
of lag week ; and from the incidental animadversions
elicited in the earlier period of the discussion, in the

House of Commons, on Friday night, of the careless
and unsatisfactory transaction of business by the Rail-
way Department of the Board of Trade. Under the
present aspect of public affairs, and especially of our
foreign relations, we feel increased anxiety to see the
business of the Legislature return into the long-neg-
lected channels of orderly arrangement, digestion,

and dispatch. The ordinary course of ordinary
sessions is mischievous enough. We cannot too often

repeat the fact, certified by the experience of all men
connected with Parliamentary business, that of the mot

important questions, and the most useful Bills in-
troduced in any given session, a large proportion are
indefinitely postponed, cushioned for the session, or
passed into laws without a tithe of the investiga.
tion and mature discussion which they demand. The
facilities afforded by the modern practice of Par-
liament for " dropping" orders, and the unboundcd
licence which modern Administrations exercise, of ad-
dressing requests to private or indivilual Members,
to postpone the rotation of their respective notices,
in favour of some Government or official busine.is,

are among the chief causes of that mischievous ac-
cumulation of Bills which results in their wholesale

precipitation in the six weeks preceding a proroga-
tion. The "requests" we speak of have grown into
an organised grievance, by reason of the little chance
they run of being refused. It is suicidal policy to
turn a deaf ' ear to the bland solicitations of a
Chancellor of the Exchequer, or a Secretary

of the Treasury, a Secretary for the Home Depart.
merit, or a Secretary to the Admiralty. In the first
place, these Gentlemen have always the plausible pre-

text of the exigency of the business in their depart-
ments. In the second, if they are disposed to retort
the tenacity of Mr. H. to-day, in refusing to allow the

vote they desire to move to take precedence of his motion

on the notice-paper,—Mr. H. runs a pretty certain
ri.k of discovering to-morrow the art and mystery of
Ministei ial tactics, in the shape of a "no House,"

by withholding men from coming in before 4 o'clock,

or the effect of less than 40 members being present,
by a " counting out" of the House, or of " a whip" by the
sudden filling of the House with a formidable
detachment of members, who, not having heard
one word of his speech, or of the discussion to
which it has led, come down, on a preconcerted
notice dispatched to them in all the quarters of the
Metropolis—vote, tbrongh some extraordinary power of
intuition, in favour of any hostile question that may
be raised, off-hand, upon his original motion.
This latter is thrown out, or thrown over, before he
can imagine that two-thirds of the House have yet
heard one word of the matter. It has happened this
session, according to the usual course, that a great

proportion of the time of the Legislature has been al-
ready occupied in the labour of mooting amendmetts
on the legislation of last session ; simply because
Bills were then pa3sed into law, in a condition too
crude and defective not to cause them to break down
on the first attempt at practically administering them.

In the usual course, also, there has been a vast ex

penditure of time which might have been much
more profitably appropriated, on the discussion of
abstract principles and general questions, such as, to the
thinking of all practical men, after being once distinctly
enunciated and fairly discussed, might have been very
much more speedily disposed of by vote, with results
at last equally satisfactory with any that have been
arrived at, after so many nights of bootless argument,
subtracted from the term, too limited, that is Set
available for the imperative demands upon it of the
public service. From the observations of Lord
HOWICK, Mr. DUNCOMBE, and Mr. AGLIONBY, on
Friday night, we are compelled to infer that the
defects of the Railway Departme the Board of
ir
Trade, to which we were amon the first to
direct public attention, are becoming, every day, more
palpable and more serious. But let us note,
in passing, how extensively prejudicial ad-
ministrative defects in that Board—superadded to the
customary alternations of ruinous delay and still more
fatal hurry produced by the technical forms of " pri-
vate business," as it is called, and the interruptions
we have alluded to of even their halting action—
must prove to the extensive community and vast ca-
pital embarked in railway constructions; and these
evils, thus aggravated, inevitably re-act on the proper
discharge of the public business. If the legislation on
railway Bills has been hitherto so slovenly and im-
perfect, owing to the mass of preliminary details in
each case to be brought under the cognizance and
opinion of Parliament, and the impossibility of doing
justice either to them or to the measures of the
executive and financial departments of the State, in
consideration of whose exigencies they are so often
slurred over or delayed—what may we not anticipate of
the amount of embarrassment and prejudice likely to
be experienced from the vast increase of railway Bills
now pending in Parliament, and coming before it,
not in that more organised and perfect form of in-
ception, which it was the object of this Board's
creation to communicate to them, in order to econo-
mise the time of both Houses, but in a condition the
very reverse of this. Lord HOWICK (himself a perfect
master of official business) remarked that a certain
omission, in laying a promised report before the
House of Commons, " was only another example of
the system of carelessness which, from first to last,
had characterised the fiscal business of that depart-
ment." We d'o not remember, in the case of a young
" Board," to have heard so severe a censure passed
in either House of Parliament; and we greatly fur
that it is too well merited. In addition to the
objections we have before urged to the constitution
of this Railway Board, which we deny that it was
c smpetent to the Lords of Privy Council of the
Board of Trade, by virtue of their own
" minute,"—exnzero motu, as it were, originally to
create so empowered—to its assumption of original
functions hitherto permitted only to the Queen's
Courts at Westminster, and to its exercise of a spe-
cies of equitable jurisdiction, which it is marvellous
to find wholly unexcepted to by the vigilant legal
acumen of the House of Lords,—we have now to
urge those which have- been so strongly enforced' in
the House. The House will do well, dismissing all
party feeling in the matter (and to say truth, it is
not easy to understand how such feeling can he . in-
fused into it), to discuss Mr. Dtoscostee's motion on
the subject of this anomalous Commission or Board
with all care and deliberation. Its object involves
considerations of the most extensive and profound im-
portance to the public, and in an especial degree to
parties interested in railway undertakings. The
Board seems equally overwhelmed by the magnitude
of its powers and extent of the busness they are to
be applied to, by the incapacity or " carelessness" of
some of its members, as much as by the extravagant
grasp of its delegated jurisdiction.

The result of the division on the Maynoeth grant, which
took place on Saturday morning, is only what might haT:e
been expected. After declarations in favour .of the
measure from so- -many: • f,epresentatiiies Who
oppose the Governments- -and taking into account the
influence of the Cabinet on the Conservative party, it
was calculated that the majority would not be less than
150, and the actual number falls short of that only by
three. Though we rejoice at the result chiefly for the
peace of Ireland, and the integrity of the empire, the
satisfaction is modified by the reflection that it resembles
the victory of one of the contending parties in a civil
war. A great contest has been carried on now
for nearly three weeks, in which the Liberals
have been fighting with each other, their opponents