THE BRITISH PARLIAMENTARY SESSION.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5166, 12 October 1877, Page 3

THE BRITISH PARLIAMENTARY SESSION.

(From the Saturday Review.) The chief use of the session has been to give the Government an opportunity of defending, determining, and upholding its policy with regard to the Eastern question. There never was an occasion on which Parliament better served as the interpreter of the real wishes of the nation. It is highly to the credit of the Ministry that, amidst much irrationality, it has remained rational ; that it has not been led astray by passing gusts of excited opinion, and that, having determined on neutrality, it has practised neutrality honestly. It has learnt from the Opposition, at the same time that it has refused to be its slave, and it has managed to retain the devoted aid of supporters whom it has been obliged perpetually

to keep in check. It has successively established that peace should be valued at its just price ; that Turkey must be left to itself unaided by England ; that England would not join in the coercion of Turkey ; that scares about. British interests must be steadily discountenanced ; that the points where British interests are really touched must be clearly determined j that the Suez Canal must be maintained unimpeded ; that bringing demonstrations of power are futile, and that when,the final settlement comes we must be prepared to make England listened to with respectful attention. All this has been done somehow, and the main thing is that it has been done. No doubt the wisdom of the G-overu-ment was not the wisdom of men all of one mind, who, looking far ahead, see what is exactly the proper course to take. The Cabinet has evidently been swayed by conflicting impulses, and has only done the best it could as each set of new circumstances has presented itself. But it has in the main judged rightly, and it has constantly used the advantage which the session afforded it to test its conduct by the criticism of Parliament. On the whole, its policy has approached much more closely to that of the Opposition than to that of its Conservative supporters. If the ordinary Ministerialist had had his way, we should have been at war with Russia long before this. But one great use of Parliament is to make enthusiastic Ministerialists ask themselves what is the real wish of the constituencies ; and Parliament, as a whole, has during the session imposed on its members the conviction that England desired what the Ministry has given it.