increase in the strength of the free-trade party, and the debate a great decrease even in the confidence of their opponents. Mr. Disraeli not only disapproved of the motion, for which nevertheless he thought himself bound to vote, but openly repudiated monopoly in favour of reciprocity, declared that his quarrel was not with low prices at home but with high duties abroad, and denounced protection for the benefit of a class as little better than plunder. If the "horses and men" should ever turn out, therefore, as Mr. Chowler promised at the Crown and Anchor, it seems probable that the leadership on the occasion, with whatever "punches on the head" may be contingent, will fall to Mr. Grantley Berkeley rather than to Mr. Benjamin Disraeli.

Objecting thus strongly to the benefit of a class as the basis of legislation, Mr. Disraeli had not scrupled, however, a few evenings before, on the occasion of Mr. Henley's proposition for a reduction of official salaries and wages, to argue in effect that because wheat had sunk to below forty shillings a quarter, the wages of public servants should be reduced in the same proportion. But the result of the debate very clearly showed that erroneous notions prevail generally as to the remuneration given in the public offices; and that, whatever may be the conclusions arrived at by the committee now sitting to hear evidence as to the higher official, judicial, and diplomatic salaries, the salaries of the working classes of public servants are more decidedly under than above the mark of the duties, and of the probity and ability evinced in their discharge. On this ground Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Roebuck met in perfect agreement, and some of the stoutest financial reformers voted against the proposition; though on the other hand, Mr. George Hudson, who had formerly tried the experiment of an indiscriminate reduction of wages (to "make things pleasant") on his various lines of railways, gave the benefit of his experience and support to Mr. Henley. But quite apart from this question of "wages" (which has really a very confined range), is that of the general cost of what are called the Civil Services, on the actual condition of which the appearance of the annual estimates throws timely and curious light. Here we at once perceive that steady and progressive reductions are undeniably at work in the salaries and expenses of public departments; but less cause for congratulation presents itself in the items of increase in other directions. The expenditure upon crime is fifty-five thousand pounds more than it was two years ago; and the money required for public buildings exceeds what was asked for, last year, by nearly ninety thousand. In other words, while our prison and convict administration is in the least possible satisfactory state, the country is paying two thousand pounds a day for it; and we are asked to contribute forty-five thousand pounds more than was voted last year to the building of the Palace of Westminster, within the same month in which we hear of the House of Commons having been actually built so small that it will not accommodate its members! Crime, for the most part the result of ignorance, costs us seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year; and for the removal of ignorance we are asked to give something less than a hundred and fifty thousand. The cost of the single convict establishment at Van Dieman's Land is larger than the whole national expenditure for the purposes of public education; and the entire sum that we pay, not alone for the extension of education, but also for the encouragement of science and art (government being here kept fully in countenance by ultra-liberal House of Commons majorities who think it decent to refuse a thousand pounds for three pictures by Mr. Edwin Landseer), is decidedly less than the solitary charge for keeping up that anti-slave trade squadron on the Coast of Africa, of which the principal effect is to exaggerate the horrors of slave traffic. The last item claiming notice is an increase of nearly twenty thousand pounds upon last year's estimate of Colonial and other Foreign services; and this may recal us to the legislative labours of the month, and the third reading of the Australian bill.

Mr. Gladstone and Sir William Molesworth have been the principal opponents of this measure, and they continued their hostility to the last. Yet it is to be hoped that it may receive no material damage in the Upper House, for, though it has unquestionable defects, it is a vast improvement upon the existing system, and offers stronger inducements than have yet existed to that higher kind of emigration which has long been desirable, and is now become essential. It has provoked opposition chiefly because it does not abolish the imperial veto, and because it does not give double legislatures to each of the colonies; but it secures absolute self-government to the colonists in all local affairs, and it leaves the mother country only so much general power as may be justly claimed in right of her connection and concessions, and exercised with advantage to the colonies themselves. Mr. Gladstone made an attempt to graft upon the bill a sort of legislative Convocation for the church independent of the local legislature; a convocation which would have been constituted of the laity as well as clergy, and so far inviting support from the more liberal of the church parties; but containing provisions too plainly indicating the intention of the mover not to render its defeat desirable. One of the clauses practically nullified the lay element in the proposed ecclesiastical legislature, by making the assent of the Australian bishops essential to the efficacy of the acts of convocation; and judging from the results of episcopal administration in our old world, it would have been hard to deliver over our new to the like tender mercies. In the month of which we present this record, the existence of an ecclesiastical sinecure of fifteen thousand a year, and its appropriation by the English primate for the benefit of his son, have startled economical as well as religious people not a little. Nor has the shock been greatly abated by the primate's explanation that he had presented his son with express submission to the power existing under a recent act, of lowering the salary and increasing the duty, if the legislature should be so inclined; or by the Bishop of London's palliation of the enormity by the greater enormity of an episcopal predecessor, who had appointed a son of six months old to a similar office, and so secured him its enjoyment for full seventy years! It is the disclosure of facts of this nature which has given personal bitterness to the discussions on the still pending Ecclesiastical Commission bill; and which indisposes the most easy and tolerant of church-goers to listen, with any sort of patience, to such further discoveries as that a million and a half of personal property has been left by the twenty-six bishops deceased during the last twenty years. It is a little comfort, in connection with so painful a subject, to have to record the final success in the House of Commons of the Manchester Rectory Division bill. The object of this most just and necessary measure is to apportion some forty thousand a-year of church property existing in Manchester, to the spiritual wants of four hundred thousand Christian souls also existing there; instead of devoting it to the comfortable maintenance of half-a-dozen church sinecurists, who openly profess themselves neither obliged nor disposed to discharge any clerical functions. Yet a minority of sixty members were found to oppose the third reading, headed by the members for both Universities! To the accomplishment of this act of justice we have to set off an unsuccessful attempt by Mr. Hume to abolish pluralities; but the attempt at least facilitated a less energetic move in the

same direction, and a clause was carried to enforce residence in all but the poorest livings, which will strip plurality of not a few of its charms.

Ireland has occupied a good deal of legislative attention during the month; and in connection with the Irish Chancery Reform bill (which has now passed the Lower House), we may glance at the extraordinary revolution which the sales under the Encumbered Estates Act are silently effecting over the whole face of that country. The predictions which attended the passing of this act, as to its clearing Land of litigation, and turning into a blessing what for two centuries had been associated with little save suffering and crime, are in a steady course of gradual fulfilment. The prices obtained are reasonably good (eighteen and nineteen years purchase); the native bidders are more numerous than was expected; and additional inducements now held out by Sir John Romilly's Security for Advances bill, a most statesmanlike measure, will have the effect of attracting to Ireland still more of unemployed English capital than has yet had courage to venture there. The object of this bill is to facilitate the borrowing of money on the absolute security of the land bought by the borrower under the Encumbered Estates Act, to the extent of half the amount of the purchase money; thus guaranteeing the safety of such investments; and it is in contemplation, we believe, even to empower the Bank of England to lend money on mortgages thus secured. Another question very essential to any hope of continued peace in Ireland, has passed the lower house after a striking debate; and the new Irish Reform bill is in the House of Lords. Sir James Graham's emphatic warning against resting national institutions on a too narrow electoral basis, drawn from the recent example of Louis Philippe, produced a strong sensation; and it is no insignificant tribute to the spirit of the time that the same sagacious statesman should have expressed his readiness to see the principle of household suffrage generally adopted in parliamentary representation. Of the intolerable grievance to be remedied in Ireland no doubt whatever exists. Though the majority for the bill was only sixty-eight, in a house of four hundred and forty members, it was not denied in the debate that the Irish constituencies have been gradually dwindling away ever since the Act of '32; that the electors, for a population of eight millions, do not now amount to fifty thousand; and that whereas twenty-nine per cent. is the electoral average throughout Great Britain, two per cent. is the average in Ireland. The struggle in the Lords will mainly be to raise the franchise, and this will be led by Irish proprietors; nor will even the bill to abolish the universally admitted nuisance of the Irish vice-royalty, and to create an additional secretary for the Home Department, lately introduced by Lord John to the House of Commons, be permitted to pass without a considerable Irish opposition. Meanwhile Lord Ellenborough has revived, with perhaps more spirit than wisdom, the question of payment for the priesthood (who are reported to be starving amid those villages of the south and west which emigration and mortality have depopulated); and petitions have been presented both to Lords and Commons, during the month, as well for the appropriation of Protestant church revenues to the better accommodation of Catholic church parishes, as for the surrender of ill-filled Protestant churches to the use of over-filled Catholic chapels. But these modest suggestions have not yet begun to attract attention.

Other questions not directly political, but involving interests of the highest importance, have been brought in various ways into discussion. The Metropolitan Interments bill has made no further progress in the House of Commons, but it is to be hoped that the courage and resolve of its friends will not fall short of the desperate and eager activity of its opponents. The latter have done what they could to strengthen their case, by a foul riot at a meeting supposed to be unfavourable to them; when an organised body of "performers" in the solemn and gentle offices of the dead, went through a more congenial performance of ruffianism to the living, overpowering speakers on the platform, insulting and terrifying ladies who were present, and finally clearing the room. Lord Ashley has withdrawn his opposition to the government proposal for giving practical efficacy to the Ten Hours Act; and though Mr. Richard Oastler, but the morning before he did this, had been indulging a dream at Broadstairs of "Her Most Gracious Majesty sending for Lord Ashley to form a Ministry," all the more rational of the Ten Hours champions have since signified acquiescence in the compromise. When the bill shall have passed, factories will be worked from six to six on five days in the week, and between six and two on Saturdays, with perfect leisure after two on the latter day, and with an hour and a half for meals and leisure on each of the former. A measure not less deeply interesting to masses of the most industrious part of the population, is the scheme for securing more direct responsibility in the management of Savings Banks, and for extending the power of government to grant annuities and life assurances of small amounts through the medium of those institutions (the latter, as it seems to us, a most important step in legislation for the interests of working men), which is now before the House of Commons for discussion. Another measure, the discussion of which is likely to continue keen in proportion to the number and magnitude of the interests involved in it, is the County Courts Extension bill; members complaining that their very coats are torn off their backs in passing through the lobbies by parties eager to compel their advocacy of it, organised committees of merchants and traders assisting and memorialising as fiercely against it, and the Attorney-general and the Home Secretary by adroit adoption of it having already very nearly amended it "off the face of the earth." The month has brought announcement also of other law reforms. A Commission has been issued, preparatory to a reform of the system of special pleading, which will no doubt be of special benefit, though it has too much the appearance of a move in aid of the Higher against the County Courts; Lord Campbell has introduced a bill to simplify criminal pleadings, and prevent the lamentable and too notorious defects of justice on small technical points; the same active dignitary has declared, in judgment on a case in the Queen's Bench which has hardly attracted the notice due to its importance, that the intervention of an attorney is not essential in the employment of a barrister, but that the latter may receive his instructions directly from the party to the suit, though such a course is the reverse of commendable; a spirited attempt is in progress, by Mr. Keogh, to reform the Ecclesiastical Courts in Ireland; and the Lord High Chancellor Cottenham has at length roused himself to a part of the work so long expected from him, and has issued a series of Orders which will have the effect of dispensing, in a large class of suits, with the formality of bill and answer, and of providing for the reference to the master on a mere observance of certain very simple forms. It is a clear and decisive step in advance, and worthy to have been the last official act of one of the greatest lawyers that ever adorned the woolsack; but it is to be hoped the next step will go beyond the master's offices, and venture into the penetralia of the High Court itself.

A glance into lower law courts, before we close, may not inaptly conclude this month's review.

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Remarkable social disclosures are made there, and social problems receive often strange solutions. Before Vice-Chancellor Knight Bruce, for example, there has been the case of a most foolish and frantic member of a ridiculous and not very decent sect, who has been refused the control and custody of his child, not for one of the many reasons that might fairly have been admitted to operate in support of such refusal, but because the Vice-Chancellor apprehends "that in England a man who holds the opinion that prayer, in the sense of entreaty and supplication to the Almighty, is superfluous, who considers moreover that there is not any day in the week which ought to be observed as a sabbath, or in any manner distinct from other days, must be deemed to entertain opinions noxious to society, adverse to civilisation, opposed to the usages of Christendom, contrary (in the case of prayer at least) to the express commands of the New Testament, and disqualifying the man who avows and practises them for the education and guardianship of an English child." These words are quoted literally; and they revive the worst and most dangerous doctrine of the days of Eldon; though, in the general disgust and contempt inspired by the Agapemone doctrine, the judgment against one of its professors will probably escape the condemnation due to it. Passing from Chancery to the Court of Queen's Bench, we find a criminal information very properly refused by Lord Campbell in a case of dispute between the Electric Telegraph Company and a very active news-agency house in Liverpool, which had opposed with considerable spirit the company's pretension to exclusive "trading in news;" but the peremptory refusal of even a rule nisi in a case affecting the character of a foreign exile, and the as peremptory disposition to make one absolute in a simple case of error very amply atoned for (we allude to the application against Mr. Murray, and to that in behalf of Miss Sellon), do not strike us in so impartial or just a light. Turning away into the Court of Exchequer, we are warned by the result of an action involving the responsibility of a railway company for the acts of its officers, that the duties of these officers are now held by law to be determined at the pleasure of their employers; and that if any one of them transacts a duty to which he has not been privately named by such employers, and in the course of it falsely accuses, maltreats, and wrongly imprisons a traveller on the railway, the unfortunate traveller has no remedy against the company, though the wrong could only have been done under cover of its authority, and by the express privileges with which parliament has invested its servants. Descending a little lower, into the Insolvent Debtors' Courts, we perceive, in such contrasted cases as Mr. Pritchard's and Mr. Delafield's, how, in the present constitution of English Society, one man may build up out of nothing a ten-thousand-a-year business in six years, and another spend every shilling of a hundred thousand pounds' gain of business in six months. Descending somewhat lower still, and entering the Thames Police Court, we discover that no man of colour, be he Englishman, Frenchman, or of what country he may, is permitted to approach the shores of the slave-holding states of America, without at once surrendering his freedom, delivering himself up into custody, and consenting to live in gaol until those who brought him are not only ready to take him away, but prepared to pay for his imprisonment, or to be mulcted in their property for it! The reader can hardly expect us to tell him anything more remarkable than this; or than Lord Palmerston's avowal in the House of Commons, not only that there is no help or remedy for it, but that the unhappy human beings thus outcast from all social protection have at least the benefit of fair notice that such really will be their fate! Here, therefore, we conclude: leaving him to meditate on the nature and claims of freedom, political and social, monarchical and republican.

NARRATIVE OF PARLIAMENT AND

POLITICS.

THERE was no business of importance transacted in the HOUSE OF LORDS till the 2nd of May, when an Address of Congratulation to Her Majesty on the Birth of another Prince, was moved by the Marquis of LANSDOWNE and unanimously voted.

The Duke of RICHMOND presented above a hundred petitions complaining of Agricultural Distress; as a proof of its existence he called attention to the appearance of sixty advertisements in a Northumberland Newspaper of sales of farm-stock; and he complained of the undue pressure of the Income Tax on the farmers. Earl GREY observed that numerous sales of farm-stock always take place at this season; and that he himself had objected to the Income Tax as unjust to the farmers, but had been overruled by the leaders of the agricultural party.

On Monday the 6th, the Archbishop of CANTERBURY explained a transaction respecting the Registrarship of the Prerogative Court, which had been referred to in the House of Commons on the 30th of April, (as will be found below). It had been imputed to him that he had nominated his son to the reversion of a valuable sinecure. "My Lords," he said, "the case is so as regards the reversionary office; the case is not so as regards either the value or the sinecure. In the session of 1847, an act was passed which placed the Prerogative Court of Chancery under the control of Parliament in respect to all future nominations; and the office of Registrar, if ever held by my son, which is very uncertain, not to say improbable, will be performed in person, and its salary regulated according to the duties and responsibilities of the station. The value, according to the doctrine of chances, would be scarcely equal to the stamp on which the nomination is recorded.

It was not until the close of the autumn of 1847, a few months before the death of my venerable predecessor, that the act passed which took away the sinecure. It took away the sinecure, and it limited the value; but the office must remain, and must be filled: wherever there is a diocese there must be a registry, and where there is a registry there must be a registrar. And I trust that in nominating, prospectively, that registrar, I shall, in the judgment of your Lordships, have exercised a privilege to which I was both legally and morally entitled, and have done nothing which, when explained, can subject me to the charge of nepotism; an imputation which I hope neither has been nor ever will be the characteristic of my official career." This explanation was received with general cheering: and the Bishop of LONDON mentioned, as a proof of the Most Rev. Prelate's disinterestedness, a case in which, when Bishop of Chester, he had at his disposal a valuable office which he might have given to his son, but did not.

On Friday the 10th, Ministers were worsted on a Colonial question. The Duke of ARGYLL revived the claim of Mr. Ryland, (formerly clerk of the Executive Council in Canada) for compensation for the loss of his appointment through the abolition of the office, which he had not obtained, though it had been officially promised. The DUKE moved resolutions declaratory of Mr. Ryland's right to compensation.-Earl GREY moved the previous question, on the ground that the claim was a matter for the Colonial Government to settle; but the original motion was carried by 22 to 19.

On Monday the 13th, the presentation by Lord BROUGHAM of a petition in favour of University Reform, gave occasion for some remarks on the subject by him, and the Duke of WELLINGTON. Lord BROUGHAM said, he believed that both the Duke of WELLINGTON and Lord LYNDHURST concurred in deprecating any rash interference with the universities, in which great im

proposed to place these officers in the appointment In the HOUSE OF COMMONS, on Thursday the 25th of Government, and to make Government responsible April, the Australian Colonies Bill was proceeded with for their acts. Fraud is frequently occasioned by the in Committee, and its remaining clauses were passed with treasurer or actuary receiving monies at his own house. little discussion-Mr. Vernon SMITH objected to the It is intended that the treasurer alone shall receive money, clause establishing a Federative Assembly, as being use- and he shall attend at certain stated times for that less and uncalled for by the opinion of the colonies; and purpose. The Government will generally appoint a local Mr. ROEBUCK (Mr. DISRAELI concurring) objected to banker to fill the office; and the duties shall no longer this measure as being contrary to the principal of feder- be wholly unremunerated. It shall be a midemeanour ation-the equality of the constituent parts.-Lord John for any other person than the treasurer to receive money RUSSELL defended the proposition as being practically as a savings-bank deposit. Daily accounts shall be useful.-Sir W. MOLESWORTH supported Mr. Roe-rendered to the Commissioners of the National Debt;