On this page
- Departments (1)
-
Text (4)
-
Untitled Article
-
Untitled Article
-
THE CLOSE OF THE SESSION.
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
At the termination of the first session of the Reformed Parliament , a radical reformer , hearing some one make the complaint , so often made at that period , that the session had accomplished nothing , made answer , ' Do you call it nothing to have completely discredited the Reform Ministry ? Could this , in the course of nature , have been accomplished in a shorter time than one session V
Subsequent events have proved that this reformer did not err in his estimate of the great step which was achieved in the session of 1833 . Another session has now concluded ; and the cry is even stronger than before , that in this session also , nothing has been accomplished . We hold that in every session something is accomplished ; and in this one in particular , more than in any other since the Revolution , save only that which witnessed the birth of the Reform Bill .
In measures of actual legislation the present year has not been fruitful . If reforms were not to be weighed but counted , the first / session of the Reformed Parliament was a prodigy of activity compared with the second ; for during it the Parliament did a greater number of things ill , than have been done well by all the Parliaments of the present century . The present session has realized
no more than one measure of any note , the Poor Law Bill : that , however , is of far greater practical importance than all the Slave Bills and East India Bills of the preceding session , and was , moreover , distinguished from them all in this , that what was intended to be done , was done ; there was no bungling , no botching ; the subject was not trifled with : the whole of what was needful to be done , and not a part only , was aimed at , and the means chosen were really adapted to the end . Even if the value of a session consisted solely in its positive enactments , the session which has produced only this great measure has not been ill spent . We had no such expectation from the Reform
Bill , even in our most sanguine moments , as that in two years from its passing into a law , one of the greatest social reforms which this country needed , or for which any country could be indebted to its government , —one , too , which was not clamorously demanded by public opinion—would be , so far as depends on legislative enactments , completed . *
But in these days of Movement , the place which any session , J > any single event , will occupy in history , depends not upon the mtrinsic importance of the event , or value of the Acts of Parliament which have passed during the session ; but upon the far * We say this not without considerable misgivings a * to the Bastardy Clauses . " * more we reflect on this part of the subject , the more we regret that the expert * J * * was not first tried of merely postponing the inquiry into jiatenaity until after 7 ^» and limiting the de mand upon the putative father , to the actual mmmtemamc ^ of
Untitled Article
605
The Close Of The Session.
THE CLOSE OF THE SESSION .
Untitled Article
flo . 93 . * 2 X
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1834, page 605, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2637/page/1/
-