and put upon half-time, will bear favourable comparison with the performances of other sessions, both earlier and later, when the Government of the day had no such just excuse to plead.

The session of 1853 cannot on the whole be termed inactive; but that of 1854 must certainly be set down as one of marked legislative failure. It would be beside the mark to dwell, in a mere summary like this, upon the causes of the weakness of the then existing Government; but of the fact, while we have the recollection of the session of 1854 before us, it is impossible to doubt. Education slept: Reform was snuffed out: two important measures of the ministry, one having reference to Scottish schools and the other to parliamentary oaths, were rejected on the second reading; and the Bribery Bill, which figured among the principal proceedings of the year, was as much or even more the work of distinguished members of the Opposition, than it was of Lord John Russell. Yet even this feeble year is strong, in comparison with those which have succeeded it. The Oxford Bill, after almost interminable discussions, became law, and virtually decided the academical constitution of Cambridge; the coasting trade was thrown open and Parliament found much of indispensable occupation in the financial and other measures connected with our transition to a state of war from the time when the land had rest forty years.'

And now we have reached the threshold of a period in which the clack of debate has been not less loud nor wearisome than heretofore, in which once more the absence or mitigation of party spirit has seemed to open a clear and broad field for vigorous legislation, and in which we have been assured with even greater confidence than is common that we had at last got the right man in the right place. But when we ask for the legislative results of the last two years, the query itself may almost be taken for an insult. Oh for some Caleb Balderston, who without materials could deck and furnish forth that board, which ought to be adorned by every variety of food from our legislative kitchen; or could rightly plead the thunner' which came down the broad chimney and spoiled them all. The mind reverts to the history of these sessions, if indeed they have a history, with a vague and uneasy sense of something like the tossing of a ship at anchor in a heavy ground-swell: there has been noise but no wool: motion but no progress: all the forms and figures of parliamentary life, Queen's speeches at the beginning and the close, men in wigs and men not in wigs, a beating upon green boxes, cheers rolling hither and thither much as usual, parchments and papers carried up by the hundred to the table from the bar, interminable lists of unintelligible titles for innumerable bills; the ordinary staff

of

of Honourable, Right Honourable, and Noble persons in office, everything in short that tongue can speak, mind imagine, or heart desire, except one thing, and that is the performance of work. For blunders, scandals, failures, and disgraces, official, political, constitutional, executive, and above all legislative, the session of 1855 perhaps exceeds all former precedent, but can hardly exceed them as much as it is itself surpassed by the session of 1856.

With a view of sparing wearisome details, we shall enter on no detailed consideration of the former of these years. We shall not attempt to present a full statistical account even of the second. That may be found in a return which was ordered at the close of the session on the motion of Mr. Disraeli, and the substance of it is contained in a speech which he delivered on the 25th of last July. We do not altogether adopt the view of causes which he offered, but as to his facts there can be no doubt. And now it will be our task in the first place to set in the scale the chief positive results of the session; and then to array against them some of the more conspicuous and strange of its miscarriages and scandals.

The chief positive results of the session are to be found, we believe, in the Cambridge University Bill, the Police Bill, the Bill to appoint a Vice-President of the Committee of Council on Education, and the Bill for the retirement of the Bishops of London and Durham. The first of these, although it went one stage further with respect to the admission of Dissenters to degrees, yet was, as we have said, in almost every important point a reprint mutatis mutandis of the Oxford Act of 1854; and consequently it went through Parliament in a small fraction of the time which that measure had consumed. The Police Bill was a measure originally framed in Brobdignag, but finally reduced to the dimensions of Lilliput, and, having in fact become by collapse nearly invisible, was allowed to pass. It simply provides for attracting all those counties which have not yet adopted the system of Rural Police, within the sphere of a central and united influence, by the bonus of a grant from the Consolidated Fund. It was termed by a statesman of the present century the most vulgar of all political expedients, to solve a difficulty by dipping into the public purse. It may be so we are not, however, aware that the case before us admitted of any other mode of treatment; and, though the Act be a small and partial one, we are far from treating it as otherwise than creditable to the Department or the Government which passed it. We cannot speak with equal favour of the two other measures, on which the session rests its claim to praise or to acquittal. The appointment of a Vice-President of

the

the Committee of Council for Education is highly objectionable. It is notorious to all the political world, that though the executive duties of that department are multiplied and serious, they are almost wholly summed up in the prudent and careful management of details. The political and parliamentary portion of them is almost infinitesimally small. They scarcely have invaded the dignified ease of Lord Granville; they do not prevent him from representing while we write the British Crown and people with his splendid suite as Ambassador Extraordinary at St. Petersburgh; they absolutely do not admit of division between that intelligent and popular nobleman, or any one who may hereafter fill his place, and a second in command. In its first aspect, therefore, this measure is simply the perpetration of a job by Act of Parliament in the creation of a highly salaried office without duty. But again this as a parliamentary office, and therefore as implying an addition to the official staff without necessity, is highly exceptionable on constitutional grounds. Lastly, we are always liable to this danger, that a public functionary whose appointed and regular duties do not bring him all the notoriety which he covets, may seek for fame through meddling and mischief: witness the meteoric career of Sir Benjamin Hall, whose Salmonean thunders made even the Duke of York's Column for a moment, though happily but for a moment, tremble upon its base. If a dull man is appointed Vice-President, we simply pay 20007. per annum for more snoring on the Treasury Bench, and for the addition of another uncomplaining sheep to the flock of an accomplished whipper-in. If an esprit remuant is put there, then our 20007. will go to pay him for concocting plans of public education on a scale of grandeur probably exceeding even the resolutions of Lord John Russell; in which case, if only to secure fair play, we ought surely to pay another 20007. to Mr. Henley for the use of his masculine sense, sharp penetration, and indomitable firmness, in overturning them. As, however, the President of the Council has now been for four months abroad, without the nomination of any Vice-President to supply his place, we confidently trust either that the Government will have the good sense to make no appointment under this silly Act, or that Parliament will, even in their teeth if necessary, have the good sense and patriotism to insist on its repeal.

Nor can we pass a more favourable judgment upon the Act for the retirement of the Bishops of London and Durham, of which Lord Derby, aided by Lord Aberdeen, in vain attempted to arrest the progress. Introduced and passed under circumstances of extraordinary indecency, its matter was not out of keeping with its manner. It has left upon record a scandal which we fear will

often

often and often make the hustings ring, and long continue to point the moral and adorn the tale,' to animate the rhetoric and excuse the venom, of Anti-church orators. It is much more likely, we believe, to bar than to open the path to the effective consideration of the question how provision may best be made for the discharge of the Episcopal Office where the bishop is disabled, for it has put out of the way the two cases which happened to offer peculiar facilities for adjustment, and which might have drawn others along with them, while it has left only unmitigated difficulty behind. With respect to this ill-starred bill, our principal consolation must be in the belief that those, whose names were most prominent in the arrangement, were in reality least responsible for its objectionable parts; and in the knowledge that the crushing illness, which prevented the Bishop of London from applying his own great capacity to a novel and thorny question, was simply due to the prolonged and exhausting labours of his apostolic charge.

Such is the legislative catalogue of actual performances for 1856; and in our view its demerits fully counterbalance its merits. But let us assume that this is matter of opinion and open to debate; the same can hardly be said of that far larger part of the proceedings of the year to which we are now about to turn, and from which we shall, in mercy to the reader, only make certain selections, characteristic however of the whole.

Shortly before the opening of the session the public had been startled by an announcement that Baron Parke had been called to the Upper House by the title of Lord Wensleydale, but that the Patent he had received limited his peerage to the term of his natural life. As that distinguished judge was known to have no son, and to be considerably advanced in years, it was evident, so at least all men thought, that this proceeding was one as deliberately taken as it was obviously important; that it contained a distinct announcement on the part of the administration that life peerages were necessary, that they were now to be systematically inaugurated, and that the prerogative of the Crown had upon full consideration been found clearly sufficient for their revival or establishment. Thus conceived as to its purpose, the proceeding adopted was obviously a convenient manner of trying the issue.

That word Prerogative, once so awful, is now tame and familiar to our ears. Formerly large and elastic, it has, in its application to almost all subjects, been gradually hemmed in by the boundaries of custom or of statute. But there remain certain spheres within which it is still watched with jealousy: one of these is the ecclesiastical supremacy, the other is that of the constitution

of

of Parliament. Even the invention of what is wholly new in these high matters could hardly be more culpable, than the revival of what has been dark and doubtful in its origin, and what has nothing clear and unambiguous about it except the fact of its utter desuetude. Nor is the fault and danger lessened, but enhanced, from the fact that an extension of the prerogative would not at the present day be the mere addition of a certain amount of force to the Crown-a power outmatched by its competitors in the state: it would be so much taken from the balanced system of the constitution and given to that single element which alone, humanly speaking, can ever seriously disturb it, namely, the majority of voices in the House of Commons of the day.

It was very speedily seen to be plain that the Government had reckoned without their host. A formidable opposition arose, led by Lord Lyndhurst, backed by Lord Derby and his party, silently approved by many among the usual supporters of the Government, loudly and authoritatively favoured by the liberal law-lords, Brougham and Campbell. Of Lord Derby it might well be said that he was in this case

'Magnum

Agmen agens Clausus, magnique ipse agminis instar.'*

But the hero of the day was Lord Lyndhurst. Though he had long passed the limits of fourscore, he stepped into the fray, nay, led the van with force and fire

'Ultra vires moremque senectæ ;'

and even his glance, his countenance, and his figure, were less remarkable than the undimmed brilliancy of his intellect, the lucidity and consecutiveness of his historical research, and the cogency of its application. His two speeches on this subject, taken in conjunction with his age, are, we believe, performances without example in Parliamentary history. The result was, for the House of Lords in its relation to the Crown, a sort of minor Magna Charta. The supposed prerogative was by repeated votes cast upon the ground and trampled in its dust and mire: and though it was well understood that life peerages by prerogative, which were thus ignominiously belaboured, meant life peerages at the command of the majority of the House of Commons, yet neither that House nor the country at large were dissatisfied with the manly and dignified resistance of the Lords, nor grudged them one tittle of the triumph which they won.

There has not been an occasion within the memory of this generation, when the Crown has suffered such defeat and dis

* Æn. vii. 706.)

paragement.