NEWS OF THE WEEK.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VIII, Issue 653, 5 November 1851, Page 4

NEWS OF THE WEEK.

[From the Spectator, June 28.] The House of Lords has been tolerably busy this week. W useful measure* the Registration of Assurance Bill, has been passed through all its stages ; leave has been given to Lord Redesdale to introduce a bill, much needed, to regulate the election of Scotch Peers; and Lord Truro has brought in a bill to establish a permanent commission for the supervision of charitable trusts. The Chancellor’s plan elicited expressions of approbation from Lords Brougham and Stanley, and deserved them. One great fault of Lord Cottenham’s bill was that it constituted the commission a special tribunal, or nest of tribunals, with jurisdiction in all cases of abuse in charitable trusts; Lord Truro’s confines their functions to investigation. When a case of abuse is made out to their conviction, they are to hand the matter over to the law officers of the crown ; and the legal proceedings are to be instituted, when the charities exceed a certain sum, in the Court of Chancery—when below it, the agency of the County courts is to be employed.

In “ the other place,” the Chancery Reform and Jews Bill have each been advanced a stage, sub silentio. The dreary discussion on the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill has made such progress that there is now a prospect of its reaching the Lords this session. The St. Alban’s Bribery Commission Bill has been read a third time.

The Protectionists appear to be struggling between a conviction that their honor required they should have another field day before the close of the session, and their sense that the” have no available battle-field. Mr. Herries, with philosophical equanimity, submits to repeated postponements of his motion on the Navigation Laws ; and Mr. Disraeli has found it very difficult to show that his motion on the finanvim resolutions he is to move on Monday next means anything. The Scotch educational reformers in the House of Commons appear destined to approach as near to victory as it is possible to

do without achieving it, r 7", Educational Bill was rejected bv a jortty, and Mr. Cowan’s for Ik i-v r °* ttu gious tests in the Scotch uX!.'-'-’ B '* thrown out only by a majority "f ft, is tant.lt.tng, and, co „ sl d eti „ y ' »»•■ profess to approve of both measure’ 7 intelligible. ures s quif e Mr. Bouverie has given n n .: than four bills, and other members few * measures to introduce; for what n ,ls » difficult to imagine, seeing that shewing their bills one after * John Russell has given the House » torl stand pretty clearly that the Wood ° "'“kr. ests Bill is not to be pressed thi» “ Por< — 1018 session,