ENGLISH NEWS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume I, Issue 49, 13 December 1851, Page 2

ENGLISH NEWS.

PARLIAMENTARY INTELLIGENCE. [From the " Homo News," July 24.] On the Sth of July, the .Earl of Shaftesbury (Lord Ashley) moved, in a most eloquent.and convincing1 speech, the second reading of his Lodging- Houses Bill, which, after many complimentary remarks from all sides, was agreed to ; and thus the legislative sanction is given to the principle that clean and comfortable dwel-ling-houses are important to the education of "the poor, condemning entirely the false principle that the removal of low neighbourhoods in cities, and supplying their places with large and elegant houses, without any adequate accommodation for the poor families turned out in the process, is improvement. On the 11th, Lord Brougham presented and advocated a petition from Mr. Paxton, praying that the Crystal Palace should be maintained in situ, and converted into a perpetual garden. Lord Campbell opposed it, on the ground that the security of the Palace itself required that it should be taken down, and re-built. Lord Bedesdale moved for a copy of petitions presented to. the two Houses'of Convocation from clergymen of the Diocese of Canterbury, for the restoration of Convocation, as the Government of the Church. The Archbishops of Canterbury and Dublin, the Bishops of London and Oxford, Lord Lyttelton, the Duke of Argyle, and the Marquis of Lausdowne, took part in the discussion, and the motion for the return of the petitions was agreed to. On Monday, the 13th, the Bishop of Oxford, in defence of the Bishop of Bristol and Gloucester, moved that copies of the correspondence on the Horfield Estate, between the Commissioners (Ecclesiastical and Copyhold) be produced, and in an elaborate and eloquent speech showed that the Bishop was far from deserving the imputations cast upon him by Mr. Horsman. The Bishop of London, Lord Campbell, and Lord Sandon, said that the defence was most complete, and that the assertions of the accuser were malignant and unfounded. The Marquis of Lansdowne moved the first reading of the Chancery Reform Bill, and Lord Brougham opposed it, contending, however, that a much more thorough reform of the court would be necessary, and that it was better to give way than to yield, to the shock of a violent revolution, which would be the alternative. The Lord Chancellor said this was. only the beginning of a series of reforms, and he was glad of the noble lord's approval, and would be mindful of his warnings, and the bill was read a first time. On Thursday, the Jew Bill was proposed by the Lord Chancellor for a second reading, who said the main object of the measure was to emancipate the Jews, and allow them to sit in Parliament when duly elected, simply by removing from the oath to be taken at the table the words "on the faith of a Christian man." The motion was strongly opposed, and the bill thrown out on the motion of the Earl of Nelson, by 144 to 108 (including move proxies than the lords present,) and the measure for the relief of the Jews was therefore lost by a majority of 36. On Friday, the House Duty Bill was read a second time, after some little opposition from Lord Monteagle, and the House adjourned. On Monday and Tuesday of the present week the Peers were engrossed with the discussion of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, which, having approached its second stage, a lengthened debate took place, for there was just so much opposition as to justify the word. After the Marquis of Lansdowne had moved the second reading, which he earnestly recommended, and the Earl of Aberdeen had, in sequence of an eloquent condemnation of the Ministeri.il measure, moved as an amendment that the bill be read a second time that day three months, equivalent to throwing it out, the debate commenced in earnest. The Duke of Wellington and Lord Lyndhurst decidedly supported the second reading. The Marquis of Clanricardu and the Lord Chancellor, in the absence of Lord Brougham, would also vote as thfjy had spoken in support of a measure rendered necessary by the character of the Court (ji'Rome, by the nature of the aggression, and by the perspus selected to carry it out. Lord Vaux, the E;irl of Wioklow, and the Earl of St. Germans, mildly deprecated the course of severity resolved on, and speculated on the danger to religious liberty and the peace of Ireland, to be expected from this measure: when the House divided there appeared for the second reading ;

Peers present 146, proxies 119—265; against, present 26, proxies 12 —38 : majority for the second reading 227. The bill was read a 2nd time. On the night of the 7th Lord Duncan asked Lord Seymour if damage had not been done to the foundations of crown property by the opera-: tions of the commissioners of sewers in Westminster. Lord Seymour answered, " Indeed there has." He warned them last year, they neglected his warning, and now the Exchequer Bills office, United Service Museum, Lord Liverpool's and Alderman Thompson's houses were undermined, and would have to be rebuilt, and the Commissioners must pay the damage. On Friday, the i lth, tlie Church and Education supplied the topics of the debate; in the committee of supply, on the vote of 150,000/. for public education, Lord John Russell stated, that the balance in hand of last year's grant was 99,5862. out of which he meant to add so much to the present grant, that the'actua'l' expenditure for this present year would be 186,381/. ; stipends would be given to pupil teachers, salaries of masters and mistresses would be augmented, and the schools improved in usefulness. He still looked forward to a more extended system of national education. On Friday, the house was unusually tilled at four o'clock. Mr. Alderman Salomons, introduced by Mr. B. Hall and Mr. J. A. Smith, approached the table, on the invitation of the Speaker, and the clerk handed him the New Testament, but Mr. Salomons said, " I demand to be sworn on the Old Testament, because I think that the most binding on my conscience.' The. honourable gentleman then repeated after the clerk the words of each oath, except those in the oath of abjuration, " Upon the true faith of a Christian man," and then said, " I have now taken the oaths in the form and with the ceremonies that I declared to be binding on my conscience, in accordance with the statute 1 and.2 Victoria, cap. 106. I now demand to subscribe to the oath of abjuration, and to describe my property qualification." (" Withdraw, withdraw." " Order, order.") The honourable member for Greenwich continued undaunted to read on till the close and then sat down. The speaker, in a pause of the storm, said, "the hon. member has omitted certain words from the oaths, which is tantamount to not taking them at all, and it is my duty to tell him to withdraw. The hon. member sat still ; the storm redoubled. The Speaker, speaking through the noise, explained that the oaths must be taken entire, and that the member must withdraw. Mr. Salomons retired below the bar, amid the cheers of the opposition. Sir B. Hall attempted a statement, but was put down. Sir F. Thesiger rose to order. " The worthy alderman was still in the House." Sir W. Molesworth, and other friends, tried to persuade him to retire, but he would not, and the Serg-eant-at-Arms appearing could only prevail with him to retire to the back seats under the gallery, appropriated to peers. Sir B. Hall said, the hon. gentleman was anxious to try the right of the elected to sit in that house, and he begged to ask, if he returned to his seat, whether Government would institute a prosecution, so that the question might be tried! The Chancellor of the Exchequer, the only minister present, proposed that the question should stand over until Monday. On that day, Mr. Salomons first occupied a ilace beneath the bar, then advanced at a signal from his friends, and sat and voted, daring all the penalties attached to this breach of order. By a legal, and also a lay friend, the honourable member asked if the Government would prosecute him, so as to bring the question under the cognizance of a court of law! The noble lord, the prime minister, answered that there was no intention of doing so: and afterwards, being more earnestly urged, he answered that if the honourable alderman was so very anxious to be prosecuted, he would easily find some one to prosecute him. The noble lord gave notice of a motion, in the very words of his motion last year in the case of Baron Rothschild ; and as the question took a personal nature, the Alderman said, addressing the House, that having voted six times, he would now withdraw, but without the least compromise of his rights. He had previously disobeyed the direct order of the speaker, and retained his seat even until the Sergeant-at-Arms actually approached, and laid his hand on his shoulder, when he immediately rose, and by leave took his seat below the bar, while his friends stated that he had determined not to give up his right to sit on any condition short of coercion.— Wellington Siwctalor, Nov. 29th.

The arrival of the " Cornwall" enables us to continue the parliamentary news to the proroguing of Parliament on the 9th of August. In IJer speech on proroguing Parliament, the Queen, after the usual set phrases, referred in congratulatory termsj to the considerable I diminution which had taken place in the Afri. I can and Brazilian slave trade, to the repeal of | the window tax, the measure framed for check- % ing the undue assumption of ecclesiastical titles conferred by a foreign power, and the reforms in the administration of justice in the courts of law and equity, which had occupied Parliament during the session. * ;' w At an early sitting of the House of Commons in August, the Speaker announced that he had received an intimation from Mr. Salomons that two actions at law had been commenced against him for his breaches of order in sitting and voting without taking the oaths. Sir B. Hal] moved " that the electors of Greenwich be heard by counsel at the bar of this House," which notice was however lost. Mr. Anstey's proposition that the House should alter the wording of the oaths in favour of Jewish candidates was also lost. The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill passed its third reading in the Lords. . The Commons agreed to a motion for recommending to Her Majesty the retention of the Crystal Palace until the Ist May next, in order to prove its capabilities for any purpose of public advantage and utility. The Select Committtee upon the Newspaper Stamp duty had reported to the House of Commons. The result is an unqualified condemnation of the tax. Mr. Anstey had made another fruitless attempt to move the cessation of transportation to Van Dieman's Land, the house being counted ■ out during his remarks. Canterbury Association. —An Act had been passed to amend the Canterbury Association's Act. The principal features aye, that it gives power to the Association to constitute a managing Committee in the settlement, with "delegated authority to act. It empowers them to grant licenses for cutting timber, to appropriate land for public purposes, to prepare for occupation the unappropriated land of the settlement, and to determine disputes respecting the enjoyment of pasturage and other licences. Any further grants of land will be made subject to prior provisions respecting the settlement. The bill was read a third time and passed in the Commons on the 4th August, passing the Lords on the 6th. We shall print the whole bill at the earliest opportunity. New Zealand Settlements. —An act of Parliament had also been passed to regulate the affairs of the settlements established by the New Zealand Company. The first clause of the bill proposed to place absolute power in the Governor-in-Chief to dispose of the waste lands at Wellington, Nelson, and New Plymouth, in any manner and at any pvice he pleased. This clause was altered, and upon Mr. Gladstone's motion, the price of the waste lands is to remain unchanged. The second clause, placing similar powers in the crown with respect to Otago, was omitted. Clauses 3—lo, which now stand first in the act, regulate the management of the Nelson Trust Fund, vesting it in the Commissioners of the Treasury, and appointing seven trustees for its management at Nelson. . This bill originally contained the obnoxious and unfair proposition to which we have already called the attention of the New Zealand settlers, viz., the settlement of 200,000/. of the N«w Zealand Company's debt upon the general revenue of the colony. Notice of opposition to this bavin J been given by Mr. Gladstone in the House of Commons, and by the Duke of Newcastle in tlie House of Lords, that part of the measure was withdrawn, Lord Grey feeling it impossible to pass it if opposed. On the motion for the third reading ah: Gladstone was absent, but Mr. V. Smith objected to the haste with which the bill hw been passed through its previous stages. I" Committee of the Lords, the Duke of Newcastle inquired of Earl Grey whether the contributions for special purposes, which in some settlements were included in the payments per acre, would equally with the actual price of the land be secured from alteration at the discretion of the Secretary of State. Earl Grey replied that the power of dealing with these contributions was effectually restricted. . We have been kindly permitted to publish

the following extract from a letter from the Duke of Newcastle to Mr. Godley, in which these two measures relative to New Zealand are commented upon. " You will no doubt receive by the vessel which sails to-morrow a full report of all that has passed ; in the Houses of Parliament and in Downing Street i since your last advices, in relation to the ' New ; Zealand Settlements Bill,' and the ' Canterbury \ Association Bill.' "The latter, though shorn of its money clauses, Will, I hope, be found a useful measure. " The former is, I hope and believe, now unobjectionable, though how far it will confer any bent-fit _upq,n the colony I am perhaps hardly qualified to form an opinion. The great object with me and others who take an interest in the prosperity of New Zealand was to prevent the Bill as originally proposed becoming law, —and I think you will concur with us in the opinion, that to have transferred the debt of the New Zealand Company from the Land Fund to the General Taxation of the Colony would have involved a principle which strikes at the root of those maxims of Government for which all our colonies are now contending. To deal thus summarily at the close of a session with the revenues of a colony, when the great question of its constitution must come under consideration as soon as Parliament meets again, appeared to Mr. Gladstone and myself to justify the most determined opposition, but fortunately opposition would, from want of time, have been fatal to the whole bill, and the clauses were thrown over. " On the second reading of the' Bill in the House of Lords I urged upon Lord Grey to endeavour at the commencement of next session to settle—not one by one, but at the same time—the three great questions of the Constitution, the Sale of Lands, and the claims of the now extinct New Zealand Company. He made no answer to this appeal to him, —so that I can form no opinion whether he will make the attempt, —but I added, that if the Government did not lay bills on the table at the beginning of the session, I should feel it my duty to call the attention of the house to the state of New Zealand—especially in reference to the Constitution. I had at one time intended to do so in the session which has just closed, and if the clauses in the bill to which I have adverted had been pressed I must have done so. Looking, however, to the position of the Government here, and their utter inability to command a majority on any question, and the consequent paralysis of all parties, and indeed of all politics, I think I have consulted, the permanent interests of the colony best by postponing as long as possible the agitation of this embarrassed and anxious subject."

A large body of teetotallers visited the exhibition on the sth of August. Their numbers were variously estimated ; the teetotallers themselves guessing fifteen thousand, and sceptical police officers doubting if there were much more than half that number. It is at least certain that they constituted the largest " teetotal " array which the cause of temperance has ever yet collected together in this country. They consisted chiefly of the working classes, their wives and children, neat, clean, well dressed, happy, and. healthy-looking, and indicating in every way those orderly habits which, beyond question, distinguish the devotees of " total abstinence." Arrived at the Crystal Palace, they soon distributed themselves among its departments, to revel in its wonders ; refreshing themselves con amove, at intervals, at the transept fountain. Besides these there were the usual crowds of excursionists from the country, and throughout the day the building had the appearance of being well filled. The police numbers give the attendance as 68,069.

Mr. E. H. Baily, 11. A., has just completed the clay model of the statue of Sir Kobert Peel. The statue measures 10 feet in height, and is to he. executed in bronze, and to be erected in the of Bury. Every one is familiar with the easy and masterly chisel of this sculptor. This statue is equal to any of his former efforts. The late Sir Robert is represented addressing the House of Commons, and those familiar with the attitude of the speaker have borne witness to the likeness. The head is spirited and life-like, and is chiefly taken, as it must more or less be, from Lawrence's well-known portrait. The pedestal is to be adorned with designs, emblematic of commerce, agriculture, &c. In the early part of July the weather was extremely hot and forcing-; "yet, as the soil had not lost much of its previous moisture, vegetation made rapid progress in all parts ol the United Kingdom. Throughout the forward districts, haymaking became general about the sth. The progress, with the exception of two or three days, was marked with much rapidity, and the fields were speedily cleared of their pro-

duce somewhat earlier than usual. The quantity of hay stacked this year in the neighbourhood of the metropolis, and in most of the midland counties, is unusually large, and in excellent condition. Of course much yet remains to be done in the north, but our accounts on this head are very favourable*