PROSPECTS OF THE SESSION. [From Punch.]

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume III, Issue 200, 30 June 1847, Page 3

PROSPECTS OF THE SESSION. [From Punch.]

A SONG FOU LORD JOHN RUSSELL. With one thing and another, what anxiety and bother, What perplexity and trouble, and confusion I am in ; I seem all hurry-skurry, in a flurry and a worry, Now the session Parliamentary is going to begin. The work of Legislation will be such a complication, That how I shall unravel it I'm puzzled how to think: We shall be so very busy, the idea makes me dizzy, And from the undertaking I am half inclined to shrink. There's the Sanatory question for discussion and digestion, There's the smoke-prevention measure — there's the Duty upon Tea : I've to settle Church Preferment, and to regulate Interment, And the Malt- tax abolition must be grappled with by me. On the Buildings' Act revision I must come to some decision, And waggon-loads of Railway bills must manage to get through : With t! c press of business matter, and the talking and the chatter, Upon my life I can't conceive whatever I shall do. Then the Window-tax repealers have been put ting forth their feelers. And I shall have to answer them, or yield to their demand ; Whilst distracting my attention — oh, most horrible to mention ! — There'll be both Free Trade Extension and the Burdens upon land. And the diplomatic kettle I offish shall hare to settle, And all I know about the Spanish Marriage to reveal; — Oh ! humbly as a spaniel, let me beg my dearest Daniel, In this trying situation not to plague me with Repeal. Then a scheme of Education I must furnish for the nation, T Which Inglis will be trying to cut up in imtthereens; And amid all these transactions, and the cavillings of factions, I shall have to set to work about devising Wayi and Means. Worst of all, the monster question there remains, whose bare suggestion Makes every hair upon my head to bristle up on end, I can't shirk it, I must meet it — who will tell me how to treat it? — With Ireland and her evils I am called on to contend. Oh, haw badget'd, bored, and haras3*d, how cross-question'd and embarrass'd, How banter'd, teas'd, and taunted, and tormented, I shall be !

Tub American Presidknt's Message. — Tf.ere are two ways of making the best of a bad case. The one is to put in the foraground some admitted principle or undisputed truth, and to effect a retreat under cover of this position, with the assistance of the embellishments of rhetoric and the subtleties of argument. The other course is to present a complete battle array of lies, so enormous in magnitude and so inexhaustible in numbers,, as to defy analysis and exhaust contradiction* Mr. President Polk has in his annual message to the Congress of the United States boldly adopted these tactics of offensive warfare. He has laid it on so thick as to form an inexpugnable edifice. His pyramid of mendacity is bombproof. It is formed of lies upon lies, so imbedded in one another, that as iong as on<> sentence remains in conjunction with its fellows, it will be found to contain a deception or to misstate a fact. Nothing short of a verbal scrutiny of the whole document,, extending over nine closely printed columns,, could enable us to dispose of the perversions and falsehoods it contains ; and here its own prolixity saves it. If any one sentence or passage which it contains had been given to. to the world by the American government by itself, we should have endeavoured to expose its inaccuracies ; but to controvert Mr. Polk's assertions is the thirteenth labour of Hercules — uno avuUo, non deficit alter. We therefore leave the whole work standing as a monument of what a democratic chief magis' rate can dareto state to a democratic community in defence of an unjust and onerous war, caused by the folly and wickedness of his own administration ; and if such a thing exists in the transatlantic archives as a complete collection of the messages of American presidents, those of Mr. Polk will not fail to convey to posterity a correct idea of his character, his veracity, and his statesmanship. The first causes of complaint given by the race of sheep to the race of wolves had occur-, red, as we are told in the fable, long before the birth of the unlucky lamb against whom •these charges were^pigtlerred by his fa.ven.ou.* .

enemy. And so it appears that the' offences of Mexico against the United States" preceded and accompanied the dawn of her political existence. Mr. Polk is only the tardy avenger of wrongs which General Jackson ought to have resisted and Mr. Van Buren to have punished. The causes of war were amply sufficient to justify it fifteen or twenty years ago, and, in the desperate attempt to cull materials for his present manifesto, Mr. Polk has not disdained to put forward all the petty matters which his predecessors passed over at the time they occurred in a more dignified silence We know not what value is attached to political language or political honesty hi the United States, but we confess we have seldom met with a more gross abuse of the one and violation of the other than Mr. Polk's solemn dedeclaration that, " Sincerely attached to the policy of peace, early adopted and steadily pursued by this government, he has anxiously desired to cultivate and cherish friendship and commerce with every foreign power." This is from a man who, in a two years' tenure of office, has brought his country to the verge of a frightful collision with the most powerful maritime nation of the earth, from which calamity the two nations were rescued solely by the wisdom of the British ministers ; whilst the only other state which shares with the American Union the territory of that continent has been plundered, invaded, and insulted by every outrage which overbearing power can inflict on a weaker and less united people. Mr. Polk's performances are strangely at variance with his desires ; and if it be true that he is ardently attached to the policy of peace, he has signally failed in his exertions to realise it. Every line of this document attests the absurdity and falsehood of such pretences, which are an affront to the spirit of those who founded the American commonwealth, and to the common sense and discernment of mankind. It is the first time that the American people are called upon to thank the " Gracious Giver of all Good" for " the vast extension of their territorial limits" by a dishonest diplomacy and an aggressive war. It is the first time that the hollow phrases j with which the conquerors and oppressors of foreign nations are wont to mask their policy and to palliate their crimes, are used to swell the rhetoric of a President's message, and to pervert the judgment of the American people. The whole language of this message towards Mexico is that of insatiable tyranny and injustice. The effects of such enterprises as this war are already visible in lowering the 1 whole tone of political morality in the United States. Five years ago the annexation of Texas was rejected and denounced by the learned and eloquent men of the nation as the basest of political crimes. At the present hour, not only is that measure consummated and defended, but it is made the basis of further aggressions and the pretext for more extravagant claims. The restraint of law, duty, and good faith being demolished, no further resistance can be offered to this career of injustice ; and we learn, without amazement, that an extent of territory fully equal to that of the thirteen original members of the Union, has already been added to its dominions, which it is proposed to hold by a competent military force until the definitive arrangements of the peace. This peace, however, Mr. Polk does not venture to promise, or even to predict. The sole chance on which he seems to rest his hopes of obtaining it is in the return of Santa Anna to the country, which the American government avows that it connived at in the confident expectation that he wonld betray the Mexican people by accepting peace on the American terms. The publicity now given to these expectations is a sufficient proof that they have not been fulfilled ; and Santa Anna is, if possible, to be discredited amongst his own countrymen. The financial calculations of Mr. Polk, and the reports of the Secretary ac War and of the Navy, disclose his real anticipation of protracted war, unless he be allowed to buy a peace which it is not easy to conquer. A loan of 23,000,000 dollars is already announced, and an increase of taxation contemplated. The effects of the new tariff are as yet unknown, as it has just come into operation ; but Mr. Polk firmly upholds the principles of a liberal commercial legislation, and in this respect he doubtless promotes the joint interests of the United States and of Great Britain. Yet the tone in which he adverts to the great changes in the commercial policy of England is neither dignified nor generous. It is the narrow spirit of a vulgar democracy, carping at instiiutions only known to it by the misrepresentations* of its own leaders, or seen through the medium of intense self-conceit ; and we seek in vain in any part of this message for a sentiment or an argument of any kind which can give lustre to war, or justify the extension of territorial conquest, or place the policy of the government of the United States on that lofty eminence to which it once aspired. They have conquered solitudes, they have expended millions, they have crashed the weak,

they have chaffered, and borrowed; and bought and sold — and 1 on these grounds alone Mr, Polk claims the support of his countrymen and the approval of the world. — Times.

Timber : sawn plank, per per 100 feet .... .0- 0. 0 .. 0 8 0 Scantling do 0 0 0.. 0 6 0 Furniture wood do 015 0.. 110 0 Staves: N. Z. per 1200 20 0.. 2 10^ 0 Shingles: N.Z. per 1000 0 0 0.. 0 8> 0 Whalebone: per ton .. 0 0 0 ..140 0 0 Finners 40 0 0 .. 50 0 0 Wheat: per bushel .*.. 000.. 036 Wool: N. Z. per lb.'.. 0 0 8.. 01 0 Do. Lambs' .... 0 010 .. 0 1 0 IMPORTS. Ale: p.hhd.Whitbreads' 0 0 0 .. 6 0 0 per doz 011 0 .. 0 13' 0 Arrack: per gallon .. 0 3 6.. 046 Blocks: each, 0 0 6 .. 013 6 Beef: Sydney, per tierce 310 0 .. 4 10 0 Prime India, do. 410 0.. s*o 0 Blankets: per pair .. 10 0.. 200 Brandy: First quality, / per imperial gal. .. 0 8 0 .. 010 0 Maxell's 0 9 0 .. 0 11 0 Brown Stout : per hhd. 610 0.. 7 0 0 per barrel 5 0 0. . 0 0 0 Blacking: per doz. ........ 45., Bs., and' l2a. Cigars: Manilla, No. 3, perlOOO 4 0 0.. 4 10 0 N0.4 0 0 0 .. 0 0 0 No. 5 0 0 0.. 000 Coffee: per lb 0 0 0.. 0 0 7 Candles: Sperm, per Ib. 0 2 6.. 000 Mould 0 0 0.. 008 Dips 0 0 0.. 006 Flour : per ton- 11 0 0 . . 13 0 0 Gin : Hollands, in cask per gallon 0 5 0 .. 0 6 0 Case, 2gall-8 .. 0 0 -0 .. 011 0 Ditto 4 gall. 1-4.. 0 0 0.. 140 Mustard: Per dozen .. 015 0 .. 1 6 0 Oil: Linseed, per gal... 0 6 0 .. 0 7 6 Pork : Irish, per barrel 0 0 0. . 0 0 0 Porter: By ass', inbot. per doz Oil 0.. 014 0 Pickles : Assoited, per 1 doz.. quarts .. 0 0 0 .. 1 5 0 Prints . per piece .... 0 12 0.. 016 0 Pitch : coal, per barrel 0 0 0.. 100 Paints : white lead, per cwt 1 15 0 .. 2 0 0 Black 1 8 0.. 1 12 0 Rice: Per cwt ,0 18 0 .. 1 4 0 Rum: B. P., per gal. ..046.. 066 Sugar: Mauritius per lb 0 0 0 .. 0 0 0 Refined loaf, per lb 0 0 0 .. 0 0 9 Manilla per cwt. 1 8 0 .. 1 12 6 Salt: Liverpool, per ton 3 0 0 .. 4 0 0 Coarse 0 0 0 .. 3 10' 0 Slatfs : per 1000, according to size .... 3 15 0 ..' 6 15' 0 Soap : Hawes's London, per cwt 0 0 0.. 0 0 0 Liverpool 0 0 0 „. 0 0 0 Sydney 0 0 0 1? 1 10 0 Sacks : Corn and Flour, -f each ► 0 2 0.. 0 0 0 bTARCH r Per lb 0 0 0 . . 0 0 7 Sheet Lead: per ton.. 28 0 0 .. 30 0 0 Tar . Coal, per barrel. . 10 0.. 000 Stockholm, 115 0.. 2 0 0 Tea : Hyson skin, per chest 3 10 0 .. 4 10 0 Congou 6 0 0.. 7 0 0 Tobacco : Negrohead, perlb 0 0 6 .. 0 0 8 Turpentine: per gal... 0 0 0 .. 0 8 0 Vinegar: per gal 0 2 6.. 036 Wine: Sherry, per doz. 0 15 0 .. 2 0 0 Port, per doz. .. 018 0 .. 2 0 0 Whiskey: 0 0 0.. 0 10 0 Cordage: English, per cwt 210 0 .. 3 10 0 Canvass: per bolt .... 2 10 0 .. 2 15 0 Iron : English bar, per ton 0 0 0 .. 15 0 0 Hoop, per ton .. 0 0 0 .. 23 0 0 Oil Butts: Gordon's or Mills' per imp. tun 2 10 0 .. 3 5 0 Cows: Milch 8 0 0 .. 12 0 0 Mares: Brood 25 0 0 .. 35 0 0 Working Bullocks: per pair 16 0 0 .. 22 0 0 Sheep: Each 0 17 0 .. 1 0 0