SUMMARY

Lyttelton Times, Volume X, Issue 609, 8 September 1858, Page 4

SUMMARY

(Prom <tbe ' Home News,' June 17.)

Mr. Disß&.Eii£, being entertained by Ms constituents at Slough, soon after the Ministers in ■the Ellenborough Debate triumph, delivered an 'harangue upon the occurrences in the House of •Commons, in the course of which he dwelt with •undisguised satisfaction on the defeat of the incoherent Opposition, and called the body of atoms of which it was composed by the oppi-o-•brious name of a Cabal. The occasion was legitimate, and the speech, as full of slashing points as a Christmas pudding of plums, told powerfully upon his audience. How far it was safe, or jjndicious, to kindle fresh fires instead of letting the expiring embers of the feud die out, remains to be seen. His sarcasms, and glowing allegations, have called up rejoinders which, should they be aggravated much farther, may lead to fresh rencontres, and finally to a rapid reorganisation of the Liberal party, and a victory over Ministers. It is whispered, indeed, an the clubs that this is exactly the game Mr. Disraeli is playing. He feels the difficulty of -carrying on the Government under existing circumstances, at the risk of being placed, at any moment, in a minority, and his main hope lies 'in provoking the Opposition to a renewed attack, so that the Administration, beaten upon •a specific question, may have a just ground, or 'feasible excuse, for appealing from the ComTOons to the country. This is a desperate game, but the stake is large, and there is no other chance upon the cards for the Conservative party. With the existing House of Commons it is clearly impossible for them to secure a working majority; and if a general election were to take place while the Liberal party continues to be broken up into divisions, it is ifoighly probable that Lord Derby might obtain •a considerable accession of strength. In the interval some damage has been iniflicted on Ministers by the notice which has been taken in both Houses of the Slough speech. /Lord John Enssell, and some of the principal members of the Jate Government, have replied to certain statements it contained, the only excuse for which is to be found in the circumstances under which they were delivered.

Mr. Gladstone, with whom Lord Derby was •in treaty for some time, is stated to have finally declined office on the night of the 27th May. On the following day, the arrangement originally contemplated, and now resorted to as a pis ■alter, was again pat in motion, and carried into •effect, Lord Stanley being drafted to the India Board, and Sir Edward Bulwet Lytton taking office as Secretary for the Colonies.

The former appointment is, in the peculiar -situation of the Government, perhaps the very •best that could be made. Lord Stanley is a man of a very high order of ability, of comprehensive views, and remarkable aptitude for business. His faults He in his excitable temperament, rather than in any deficiency of judgment ov mental power. He is eager and impulsive, and apt to undertake too much; 'but if any office under the Crown can cheek or cure such •tendencies, it is assuredly the India Board, in this tempestuous crisis.

Sir Edward Bulwer Lyttori's fitness for an official career has yet to be tested. His antecedents are not favourable to the suppositioa that he will make a good practical Secretary of State, and it is rather late in life to commence such a noviciate. But he is entitled to what he asked in his address to his constituents—a fair trial; and his political antagonists are well disposed to concede it to him.

Lord Stanley took his seat on June 7, when the Indian resolutions were resumed, the House going into committee on the 3rd resolution, which sets forth the appointment of a council to consist of not less than 12, nor more than 18 members. Mr. Roebuck had at the last meeting of the committee opposed the appointment of a council altogether, and his ■amendment to the effect had, therefore, a logical precedence of all other amendments such as .'Mr. Gladstone's, which related merely to the composition or functions of the council. The ..■obvious course was first to determine whether ,^there should be a council, and next to decide 'upon its elements and its objects. The House, -liowevev, had already so distinctly made up its •wind to the establishment of an advising body -of Rome^ kind to be attached to the Indian ■Secretariat that it insisted upon taking Mr. ••^Gladstone's amendment at once, leaving Mr. JLtoebuck's "to be disposed of afterwards.

The intention of Mb, Gladstone's proposal -•for the appointment of the Court of Directors ■ -as. a temporary council till the end of the next -session of Parliament, was simply to gain time -■"for the more mature consideration of the .-.whole subject. Mr. Gladstone's argument rairiounted to this: that a comprehensive mea--sure could not ! be perfected with the necessary 'deliberation in the present session, that the substitution of the_ Queen's authority for that of *the Company being determined upon by a resolution of the House, the main object was .already settled-.; and that it was desirable by fie of a provisional instead of a permanent council, to obtain time for a careful legislation on the^ details. To 115 members of ■the Commons, this appeared a reasonable argu--nient; but 261 thought otherwise, and it was, consequently., rejected. Lord Stanley had little 'trouble in replying to Mr. Gladstone's i-emon-•stranees, for he carried the assembly with him •in every sentence-; and had, in fact, nothing •move to do-fchan to reiterate the fact that the ~2lou.se had already declared for immediate

legislation, and that the amendment was directly in the teeth of that declaration affirmed on two . different occasions. Mr. Roebuck's amendment required even less resistance from, the Minister, and was negatived without a division. A subsequent amendment, moved by Mr. Lindsay, to the effect that the first council should consist of the present Court of Directors, was also negatived without going to a division. A desultory discussion then took place as to the number of which the council should consist, and j the House appearing to be in favor of fixing it at 12, Lord Stanley expressed his willingness to adopt that number, but the chairman reported progress, upon the motion of Mr. Disraeli, before the point was decided. The resolutions, | therefore, at the close of the sitting remained exactly as they were at the opening. Another evening was spent on the same question. It was at length determined that the number of the council should not be less than 12 nor exceed 15. 13ut a more important conclusion was arrived at a few days afterwards, when the constitution of the council was token into consideration. Ministers proposed that it should be partly nominated and partly elected. Lord J. Russell, supported by Lord Palmerston, contended that it should be wholly nominated by the Crown. The proposal of the Government was carried by a majority of 65. Amongst the recent achievements of Parliament, the passage through the Commons of Mr. Locke King's Property Qualification Act, or rather Abolition of Property Qualification Act, supported strenuously by Mr. Walpole, is, on raai)3 r accounts, the most remarkable. The i land-marks of the old Tory party may be truly | said to be disappearing, when one of the chief members of the Conservative Government, in the face of opposition from some of his own colleagues, treats the property qualification of members returned to Parliament as a sham, and a hindrance to the free expression of the desires of the people, and when, under such circumstances, Mr. Drunimond, earnest and brave in his faith to the last, pronounces the following mournful cry over the defection and treason of his friends :—" The House have now," exclaimed that honest, deserted gentleman, " adopted one of the five points of the Charter, which has been supported by a Conservative Administration. After this I hope we shall hear no more about the pride of having a Conservative party, and that we shall arrive at the honest conviction that there is no such thing left." This very closely resembles the lament of Lord Eldon over the "last Protestant House of Lords," when Wellington and Peel, yielding to a demand which it was impossible to resist with safety, carried the act of Catholic Emancipation. Such incidents mark emphatically the irresistible progress of opinion, against which prejudice and expediency strive in vain. The Jews Bill, which is at pressnt hung up between the two Houses, afford another example of this onward march. Upon both questions the present Administration have given way with a facility which would be perfectly inexplicable, if it did not look so very like bidding for popularity. The passage through the House of Commons of the Bill for the Abolition of Church Rates, which was read a third time, and passed, by a majority of 63, on the Bth of June, is also a memorable illustration of the spirit of the time. Mr. Berkeley's annual motion on the ballot was on the same occasion defeated by the small majority of 97, having been supported by nearly 200 votes. The fact that Ministers withheld their support from these measures, renders the results in both cases the more significant of the state of public opinion in respect to them. The ballot is unquestionably gaining ground every session, although the manifest objections to it are felt as strongly as ever. It is now put forward on the grounds of political expediency, even by persons who are opposed to it upon principle. The ordinary course of Parliament has been diversified by an episode of rare occurrence in these days. An editor of a country newspaper, bearing the two ominous names of Washington Wilks, had intimated in his journal that Mr. CHve, the Chairman of a certain railway committee, had exhibited, in a certain case, a strong " leaning " towards one railway in preference to another, imputing to him in so doing corrupt motives; and Mr. dive, in vindication of his honour, had Mr. Washington Wilks called to the bar of the House, and consigned to the custody of the Sergeant-at-Arms. The issue was not calculated to vindicate anybody's honour, Mr. Washington Wilks having been discharged from custody upon withdrawing the offensive article, (which, it may be presumed, he would have done without pressure from the House of Commons) and paying the heavy costs attending the hospitality of the Sergeant-at-Arms^ This process of imprisonment and liberation not only leaves the case where it stood, but has rendered it rather worse, by opening a discussion upon Mr. Olive's conduct as chairman of the committee, which develops strong and contradictory assertions and opinions on both sides. So long as the calumny tvas confined to a provincial paper it really did no great mischief, but now that it has become a topic of debate all over the kingdom, one cannot see the end of the mischief. A great triumph in the foreign diplomacy of the present Government was made known in both Houses of Parliament on the 11th of June. The Earl of Malmesbury announced that the King of Naples had agreed to give £3,000 as compensation to Watt and Park, the engineers; and that he had unconditionally. surrendered to her Majesty's Government the Cagliari and her crew. The same announcement was made to the Commons by Mr. Disraeli, and was followed by long and loud cheering. There is some probability that the Mormon troubles are at an end in America. This plea-

sant intelligence is somewhat dashed by the uneasy state of our own relations with the United States. Mr. Dallas has officially communicated to our Government a complaint on the subject of certain seizures and visits effected by our naval officers in the Gulf of Mexico, on the coast of Cuba, and on the west coast of Africa. Lord Napier declares that ho knew nothing about these proceedings until he saw them mentioned in a public journal. That the matter will be finally " accommodated " admits of little apprehension; but it significantly illustrates the difficulty of persevering with the suppression of the slave trade single-handed.

The principal features of European and English domestic intelligence at the latest dates are: the withdrawal of Mr. Cardwell's vote of censure on the Government, of which we have been already informed; the rejection of Mr. Berkely's annual ballot motion in the Commons by 264 to 197. In France, continued prostration of trade and industry. In Italy, a great eruption of Mount Vesuvius. In America, continued social disturbances, a flight of the Mormons from Utah to the White River Mountains, and, most important, complaints against the over activity of officers of British cmizers, in searching and seizing vessels under the American flag in the Gulf of Mexico, the coast of Cuba and the West Coast of Africa. In Ireland, it appears that there have been farther sanguinary riots in Belfast on the 30th of May and 2nd June, between the Orange party and the Catholics, women as well as men taking part in the affray. Rioters, Constabulary, and Magistrates suffered; but, it appears, in no case seriously. The Military quieted the last outbreak, and till the middle of June no further riot had taken place. The Derby was run on May 12th; Sir Joseph Hawley's Beadsman, ridden by Wells, was the winner, against Toxophilite, The Hadji, and Eclipse. The obituary contains the names of the Right Hon. W. C. Peel on the 15th June, Sir E., N. Buxton, on the 11th June, and Sir Philip Crampton, Surgeon-General for Ireland, on the 10th June.

" There is now little doubt," says the' Court Journal,' " from the state of the negotiations between her Majesty and King Leopold of Belgium, on the subject of a family alliance, that the affair will be speedily communicated to both Houses of Parliament.

A petition has been addressed by the woolcombers of Bradford to the Colonial Legislatures, stating their unfortunate and distressed position, and praying for the extension of their immigration regulations so as to include able-bodied men of this class. The petition states :—" Your petitioners have watched with interest the progress of the Australian colonies, and regret that your regulations preclude them from aiding their prosperity, and especially as experience proves the woolcotnbers to be a class well fitted for colonial life. In proof of this, they refer with pleasure to the uniform success of upwards of thirty families, who, through the liberality of theEmigrationCoromissioners, were favoured with free passages to Sydney in the summer of 1856. Your petitioners believe that in your colony there are many occupations to which they could successfully apply themselves, such as sheepkeeping, wool and flax cleaning and packing, and unskilled labour generally; they therefore pray that your honourable House would issue such instructions to your agent here, to pass such woolcombers, as may be found to be intelligent, sober, able, and industrious."

Her Majesty's Government have given a formal assent to the subdivision of the diocese of New Zealand, and the creation of a new Bishopric, the seat of which shall be at Wellington. The Yen. Archdeacon Abraham, 8.D., formerly Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and assistant-master at Eton, will be the first Bishop of Wellington. The rev. gentleman is now in England, and will be consecrated so soon as the formal preliminaries can be arranged. A bishopric will be formed as soon as possible, the seat of which will be at Nelson, and a third at Tauranga, an exclusively Maori district. The Yen. William Williams, Archdeacon of Waiapu, will be the Bishop of Tauranga, and the Rev. Edmund Hobhouse, M.A., Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, has been nominated to the bishopric of Nelson. New Zealand will be erected into a province, over which Dr. Selwyn,, the present bishop, will be metropolitan. On the 15th of June, a large party of members of the bar connected with the various law journals entertained Sir Adam Bittleston, Knight (late of the Midland Circuit), recently appointed puisne Judge at Madras, and Alexander J. Johnston, Esq., (late of the Northern Circuit), recently appointed puisne Judge at Wellington, New Zealand, to an entertainment at the Brunswick Hotel, Blackwall, on the ocfiasion of their respective appointments, and in recognition of the honour conferred on them as members of the body of law reporters. The chair was occupied by Mr. Charles Clark (of the Home Circuit), reporter to the House of Lords, and the vice-chair by Mr. G. Scott, reporter to the Court of Common Pleas.