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    THE SESSIOTST OP 1850 . The collective wisdom of the nation having broken up for the season , and dispersed itself among German watering-places and those Highland solitudes where the solemn rites of " the grouse ramadhan " are annually performed , the earnest , thinking portion of the community begins 'to ask what has been accomplished between Februarv and August ? Mr . Bright assures us that Parliament has worked harder during the last six months than any set of day-labourers in the kingdom , and we believe him . But what has been the result of all their labour ?

    Six hundred and fifty men , selected by the people of Great Bintain and Ireland to consult together as to the best and speediest method of removing or alleviating our social evils , ought surely to have done something worthy of record . Alas ! when we turn to the closing speech of Lord John Russell and his colleagues , as delivered by the Queen , on Thursday , we see that the six months' hard work of Parliament must have been mere treadmill industry , that sort of military exercise called " marking time "—an active demonstration of movement , but no progress .

    The Queen is made to compliment Parliament on the assiduity and care with which it has applied itself to business . This is merely another version of Mr . Bright ' s observation touching the hard work of the session . The question still arises , what has all their hard work produced ? It has passed the Australian Colonies Bill and the Mercantile Marine Bill ; the latter a measure of very questionable utility , the former reconciles the fears excited by its execrable constitution-making with the internal evidence of impracticability .

    It has also passed the Metropolitan Interments Bill , the only substantially valuable measure of the session ; although , after all , a mere instalment of what is imperatively required in the single department i'f sanitary Reform . As for any of those other measures of reform which men talk about , and sanguine persons expect to see accomplished speedily . Lord John Russell has given us a scale whereby we

    can calculate in what part of the Nineteenth Century they are likely to be carried . In his speech on Monday evening , replying to Sir Benjamin Hall ' s complaint of the way in which good measures have been abandoned this session , he described at great length the course of a bill for county court reform , — a measure for cheapening and facilitating justice , — which was introduced into the House of Commons

    in 1823 , and in 1846 , after some twenty-three years' discussion , became law . Since this case was quoted by Lord John as an illustration of the great wisdom and discretion of Parliament in the reform of abuses , we infer that he does not intend to move any faster so long as he remains in office . A . t this rate , therefore , we may reasonably conclude that the Jew Bill will receive the royal assent about the middle of 1873 , and that at the close of the same session , the venerable Queen Victoria will be made to congratulate Parliament on having passed the Savings Bank Bill .

    But it is for their foreign policy rather than for any amount of domestic reform that Ministers seek for the applause and approbation of the country , and they have already received that applause from the Reform Club : the rest of the nation is waiting to see what is to come out of Lord Pnlmcreton ' H union with the Northern despots to enforce the King of Denmark's despotic will in h

    te Duchies , before they give their approbation . As regards the position of parties , we can remember no period , since 1830 , in which they were in a more chaotic state—the disorganization of : lebility . The Protectionists have been very busy hiring the session ; and , with so much agriculural distress as the raw material , they might have jeen able to dictate terms to Lord John , if they tad only known what to ask . But they have

    striven to rub on without accomplishing the difficult work of bringing the conflict of their own opinions to an agreement upon some one settled purpose : they are impotent and unfeared . If wheat should rise to forty-five shillings per quarter by Christmas , they would disappear altogether . Of the Peelites , or moderate Conservatives , it is sufficient to say that they have lost their leader . than

    The Radicals are scarcely stronger they were at the beginning of the session , because they have not yet devised for themselves a definite line of policy . They feel that they must act boldly in order to obtain the support of the People , and they dislike to make the plunge . The Irish Land Movement will perhaps assist them in arriving at a prompt conclusion as to the first great step which they ought to take .

    All other parties , then , being weaker than they were at the opening of Parliament , the Whigs ought to be stronger . Are they so ? Their long stay in office , exposed to all the terrible tests of every power and facility to fulfil their professions , has only the more and more exposed their bareness—as the bare skeleton , lying open to the blessed elements and the genial sun , grows whiter and whiter in sterile decay . The life has gone from them : there is no resurrection for them , no action , no useful purpose : a decent burial , the sooner the more decent , is their best promotion . They occupy the room that belongs to life .

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    ROYAL DITTIES AND ROYAL SAVINGS . The leading journal seems to have been led by the Drengus into the political quagmire of the Civil List question , -and by the mouth of a supposititious demagogue confirms the story to which we gave publicity last week : the demagogue is made to denounce savings " beyond the supervising power of Parliament , and to be used for purposes foreign to and wholly unconnected with the common weal of England . "

    The Sovereign , argues the Times , cannot have private property ; if he be paid too much to support the dignity of his state the saving should go into the national pocket ; especially in these days , when " every man , " even "the landowner , " is obliged to curtail his expenditure to pay the taxgatherer . But this argument makes no allowance for the greater or less skill of the royal profession : one Sovereign may execute the pageantry , &c , quite as well as another , and save something out of' the allowance ; and if you revoke the profit you destroy the well-known inducement to industry .

    We regard the transaction in this light : the nation at present desires to have a Monarchy with its due pageantry ; a certain sum is allowed to the actual Sovereign for supplying that pageantry ; and until it is shown that the contractor has failed in supplying an article at least equal to the standard , in quantity or quality , we do not see that the contract can be disturbed . Indeed , the nation would gain nothing by it : let it be understood that all petites economies are to be refunded , and of course there would be no petites Economies—all the money would be spent ; and the contractor would be without inducement to

    zeal . The pageantry would degenerate into " royalty supplied on the usual terms , " and we all know the value of a routine article supplied " on the usual terms . " On the other hand , it is felt that the actual Court does supply the article in the best possible style ; so that John Bull gets his full value for his money , and we want to know what more he would have ? Open up this question , and you will never draw the line before you slide into a Republic—a contemplation not so shocking to us as it might be to others who are so indiscreetly mooting these matters .

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    THE TENANT-RIGHT MOVEMENT . " Ireland 1 ms near seven millions of working 1 people , the third unit of whom , it appears by Statistic Science , hns not for thirty weeks each year as many third-rate potatoes as will suflice him . It is a fnct , perhaps , the most eloquent that was ever written down in any language , nt any date of the world ' s history . Was change and reformation needed in Ireland ? Has Ireland been guided in a wise and loving manner ? A government and guidance of white European men , which has issued in perennial scarcity of potatoes to the third man extant , ought to drop a veil over its face , and walk out of court under conduct of proper officers ; saying no word , expecting now of a surety either to change or die . "— Carlylc ' s Chartism .

    Most people are tired of this everlasting discussion of the wrongs of Ireland . They have heard of little or nothing else for the last twenty years . Why must we be always talking about Ireland ? Have not Englishmen enough to do in discussing

    their own affairs ? Unquestionably they have ; but is not this land question quite as much their affair as it is that of the Irish peasantry ? No class of the community has a deeper interest in the welfare of Ireland than the working men of England , and the only way by which that welfare can be effectually promoted is by placing the tenure of land on a perfectly secure basis . They talk of the evils brought upon almost every trade—reduction of wages and want of employment—by the application of machinery ; but what are all these to

    that continual influx of pauper labourers from Ireland , which has been going on in such an accelerated ratio for the last twenty years ? " The Milesian , " says Carlyle , " is the sorest evil this country has to strive with . In' his rags and laughing savagery , he is there to undertake all work that can be done by mere strength of hand and back , for wages that will purchase him potatoes . The Saxon man , if he cannot work on these

    terms , finds no work . " Among the lower class of English labourers the result of this desperate struggle for employment is most apparent . Where strength of hand and back are chiefly required , the price of labour in England is gradually forced down by the deadly competition of Irish pauper labour to the Irish price . To stop that competition before it has brought the English labourer down to perennial scarcity of potatoes , the industry of Ireland must have free access to the land .

    The people of Ireland are now thoroughly alive to all this , or are rapidly becoming so . The agrarian agitation , which has _ at last assumed a definite , practical shape , will soon swallow up all other agitations . Whatever there is of earnest endeavour and clear insight among the Irish people will join the Tenant Right League , and the result will be a great social revolution . Old fashioned political economists of the M'Culloch school prognosticate numberless evils from any attempt to regenerate Ireland by the creation of a peasant proprietary

    class . But public opinion is fairly against them . Political philosophers of the first class tell us that one of the earliest steps to the reformation of Ireland must be securing to the farmer the fruits of his industry ; and this can never be done so long as he is left at the mercy of the landlord . Fifteen years ago Von Raumer , a sensible German , pointed out the cure for Irish misery and Irish disaffection , in very plain terms . After enumerating several instalments of justice to Ireland , which ought to be granted at once , including an

    effective Poor Law , and equal provision for the schools and churches of Protestants and Catholics out of church property , Von Raumer proceeds to say that all this would do very little for the removal of Irish distress , unless it were accompanied by another measure : " That measure , " he adds , " is the complete abolition of the system of tenants-atwill , and the conversion of all these tenants-at-will into proprietors . " Here was a proposal from a sober German statesman ; one who always

    manifested the utmost horror at everything revolutionary ! At the time when he wrote his book—England in 1835—such a proposal could have excited nothing but ridicule among most people . Yet now , in the summer of 1850 , an Irish convention , assembled in Dublin , makes up its mind to demand that very revolutionary measure . The sequel is in the hands of Fate—and of the popular will : it is clear that , in some way or other , Irish labour must have free access to , and full enjoyment of , Irish land .

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    THE SOURCE OF GREATNESS . Lord Brougham continues his persecution of the Court , but his zeal has betrayed him into proving too much . He continues to harp upon the roval savings out of the Civil List , and has vented nis displeasure at not having succeeded in calling the Queen and her husband to account , by recording a protest on the journals of the Peers . In this protest Henry Brougnam discovers " the legitimate source of political power" where Radicals and Chartists have forgotten to look for it—in the purse . " The spirit of our constitution , " he says , requires the

    Monarch to be dependent upon Parliament for the revenue by which his state and dignity shall be supported "; going upon an old notion that when Princes are beggars they are pliant . This is a po-Sular fallacy . One example often cited is King ohn , from whom the Barons exacted Magna Charta . Now , in the first place , we have got beyond the Barons and Magna Charta ; secondly , it was not extorted from John because he was a beggar , but because he was a coward , doubly—in the guilty conscience of a traitor ; and in the

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    SATURDAY , AUGUST 17 , 1850 .

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    There is nothing so revolutionary , because there is nothing so unnatural and convulsive , as the strain to keep things fixed when all the world is by the very law of its creation in its eternal progress . —Da . Arnold .

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    492 SC&e QLtatteV * [ Satubday ,

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 17, 1850, page 492, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1850/page/12/