49.') 



THE LORDS AND THE COMMONS. 



Cue worst fears are more than realized. The predictions to which 

 we gave expression last month are already fulfilled. The two Houses 

 of Parliament are at this moment in collision. What the issue will be 

 is a point on which we are unwilling to express an opinion. All we 

 shall say is that we devoutly hope our gloomy expectations may be 

 proved, by the event, to be groundless. 



The Municipal Corporation Bill for Ireland has met with that 

 fate in the House of Lords, which we so confidently anticipated. 

 It has been mangled and mutilated to an extent which renders it im- 

 possible for its authors to recognize in it a single feature it possessed 

 when it came from their hands. It is, indeed, no longer the same 

 measure ; every quality it possessed when sent to the Upper House 

 which recommended it to the people has been taken from it by the 

 hereditary legislators, and new features — features from which the 

 country turns away with dissatisfaction and abhorrence — have been 

 imparted to it by the Lyndhurst party. 



It is in this condition it is returned to the Commons. In that 

 House it remains until after the holidays, which will be over by the 

 time this article meets the public eye, when the " Amendments" of 

 the Upper House, as by a glaring perversion of language they are 

 called, wiU be submitted to the people's representatives. 



The doom of the Bill, as amended, is, as already intimated, inevi- 

 tably sealed. Out it goes, without even the ceremony of a polite 

 ejection. It will be treated as an intruder; it will at once, if we may 

 use the expression, be ordered about its business. 



Aye, but what then } What will accompany the mangled handi- 

 work of the Lords, when the Commons indignantly spurn it from their 

 presence ? The opinion of their conduct to which expression is 

 sure to be then given, both within and without the walls of St. 

 Stephens, will be such as must not only be unpalatable to the here- 

 in. M.— No. 6. 2 



