SHIPPING.

Auckland Star, Volume V, Issue 1248, 5 February 1874, Page 3

SHIPPING.

London, Jan. 24. H.M. s. Clio has arrived at Portsmouth,

DISSOLUTION OF THE IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT.

The Queen has accepted the advice of the Ministers to dissolve Parliament. The elections are to take place immediately, and the new House is to assemble for the dispatch of business on the sth of March. Mr Gladstone, in an address to his con^ iituents at Greenwich, has stated that since their defeat on the subject of Irish education the Ministry has not possessed sufficient authority .in the Commons to carry any great legislative measures. The experience of the recess was not such as to foreshadow any improvement, and the members of the Administration thought that a dissolution was the proper remedy for the unsatisfactory state of things which had arisen. His address points out the advantages of a dissolution at the present time when the Estimates were so far advanced as to enable him to promise a surplus of five millions. He intends to abolish, the income tax, to revise local taxation, and to repeal the duties on certain articles of consumption, and he mentions several matters which are likely to come before the new Parliament for adjustment. Among these are bills to amend the Education Act; for the improvement of the system of local Government; for the amendment of the Game, Land, and Liquor laws. In conclusion^ hope is expressed that there may he a speedy assimilation of the county with the borough franchise. Nt Disraeli, in his address, criticises the conduct of the Ministers in advising a dissolution. He alleges that they adopted this policy iii order to avoid explanations relative to the course they had pursued in regard to the Ashantee war. He characterises the programme of Mr Gladstone as indefinite, and takes exception to his statement in regard tohis promised surplus. Every Ministry, he says, having a surplus, promised to apply it to the reduction of taxation. The Uonservatievs had always favoured the abolition of the income tax and a reduction of local taxation, but in this they had always been opposed by the Liberal party. He maintained that Mr Gladstone ought to show moro energy in regard to his foreign policy, and not confine his programme to home legislation so much. Conservatives, though not afraid of the result, so far as their party was concerned, would hesitate to sanction an assimilation of the county and borough franchises because it would involve the disfranchisement of all boroughs comprising less than 40,000 inhabitants.