338 The Progress of the Session. 



general's bill for abolishing imprisonment for debt (which has been 

 twice strangled by Lord Lyndhurst), introduced on Feb. 6, is still 

 in committee, and the same learned gentleman's Registration-of- 

 Voters' bill, brought in at the same time, is not yet committed ; the 

 Irish corporation bill the bill of the Melbourne ministry which in 

 the Commons has elicited more talent on both sides than any other 

 question during the Session, has not yet been reported ; the Prisons' 

 regulation bill, introduced Feb. 12th, has been withdrawn ; and the 

 Irish poor-law bill of Feb. 14th has not yet been read a second 

 time. Of bills subsequently introduced, it would be unfair to make 

 mention ; but surely the delay in passing six important ministerial 

 bills (all of which must inevitably encounter a sturdy opposition in 

 the Lords' House, and be discussed by hereditary wisdom at an al- 

 most interminable length), makes some complaint of their dilatoriness 

 quite excusable. The country have no grounds for expressing want 

 of confidence in the intentions of Ministers; but their friends may 

 well be allowed to spur them on to exertion in the good cause, 

 especially so far as regards one very much injured portion of his 

 Majesty's Britannic subjects, the people of Ireland. The masterly 

 historical developement of government abuses in Ireland (which 

 have existed ever since the treaty of Limerick in 1691, the Magna 

 Charta of that country), with which Lord John Russell introduced 

 the Irish municipal bill, will contribute greatly to his fame as a 

 statesman ; and Lord Morpeth's speeches display a great knowledge 

 of the practical bearings of the question : indeed by these two only, 

 all the arguments of a very talented opposition, chiefly composed of 

 Lord F. Egerton, Sir James Graham, Sir R. Peel, and Mr. Maclean, 

 were at once refuted and exploded. The votes give every hope of 

 success in the Commons: let the Lords give their opinion warily and 

 after mature reflection. The Poor-law bill for Ireland, a country 

 which, with all its distresses and amidst all its persecutions, has not 

 yet possessed any code of poor-laws at all, and where no eleemo- 

 synary provision whatever is made for the suffering population, 

 ought likewise to be put forward with all decent dispatch, in order 

 to prevent the fate which awaits many bills sent up to the Lords at a 

 late period, viz., a postponement sine die. A weekly contemporary 

 has well said that the passing of this bill " concerns the physical ex- 

 istence of millions." Those legislators who pride themselves on their 

 support of a religion whose greatest feature is mercy, cannot consist- 

 ently refuse demands grounded on common justice. The Church- 

 rates bill involves the consideration of a subject in which the vested 

 rights of the Church of England are said to be concerned ; and we 

 are not at all surprised that the sticklers for High-church Orthodoxy 

 should have enlisted the largest possible number of supporters for the 

 division on the 16th of March. The dissenters, however, who were 

 so deeply injured so foully wronged by the Act of Uniformity in 

 1662 arid by the Test Act in 1673, are now become a very powerful 

 body, and have so many supporters among the more liberal and 

 justice-respecting Churchmen, that this bill, however strongly resisted 

 for a time, must keep its ground and become eventually the law of 

 the land. So much for the Government bills and our remarks 

 thereon. 



We shall now proceed to the motions and bills introduced by the 



