THE FIRST NIGHT.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XVII, Issue 1000, 11 June 1862, Page 2

THE FIRST NIGHT.

• ' [fkom the ' satukday eeview.'] If legal restraint ought always to follow on a proved incapacity to manage one's own affairs, the House of Commons should lose no time in preparing itself for a commission de kmatico. On Thursday night it assembled with the best intentions in the world. The circumstances were peculiar and unexampled. A great great grief had fallen upon the Queen, and her subjects sympathised with a universal and rare sincerity in her sorrow. It was I'elt that the occasion when Parliament met for the first time to couch this sympathy in words was not a fitting opportunity for the conduct of any great party fight, or for the reopening of any of the petty squabbles which are dignified with the name of business. It was recognised that a succession of funeral orations was the only becoming species of debate at such a time. It was tacitly agreed on all sides to express the genuine feelings of the House in all the decorous Parliamentary formulas of grief. The moderation, and mutual courtesy, and abstinence from exciting topics which are symptomatic of a depressed condition of mind, were duly assumed by those to whom an active share in the pageant was assigned. As far as the leaders of the House, and indeed the generality of members, were concerned, the part was admirably played. The House was stripped of its secular appearance, dismantelled of its warlike apparatus, and reduced as far as possible to the severe solemnity befitting the occasion. Inconsolable woe seemed to depress the Ministry —decent grief was stamped on the faces of the Opposition. Mr. Bright and Mr. Cobden, conscious that their presence would be incompatible with feelings of a peaceful and solemn cast, withdrew themselves to an obscure retreat below the bar. The Speaker read the customary forms in a subdued voice, which might be ascribed, according to the charity of the spectator, either to sleepiness or to emotion; and Mr.White, for this occasion only, abstained from cheering. The House admired and imitated this remarkable display of self-restraint. A slight burst of applause could not be restrained when Lord Palmerston entered; but it was repressed with ease, especially as Mr. Gladstone made his appearance a few moments later. The Royal Speech was read through in solemn silence. Even the mention of the affair of the Trent failed to elicit any expression of approval. Only when the promise to bring in a measure to simplify the transfer of land was read a confused idea that the proposal was an attack upon the country gentlemen overcame the virtue of the Radicals. The supposed discomfiture of their old antagonists betrayed them for a moment into an involuntary cheer. But otherwise the decencies of the occasion were admirably maintained. Mr. Wood, indeed, the seconder of the Address, appears to have been judi- #; ciously selected with a view to the peculiar' nature of the ceremonial. The House is happy in the acquisition, for such occasions, of so funereal an orator. If the Hibernicism may be pardoned, he spoke exactly like a mute. He is gifted with that peculiar kind of copious but inanimate fluency which is so fatal to a speaker in the House of Commons. The intonations of his voice, though faultlessly regular, was not unlike that of the seedy but enthusiastic apostles who may be heard under the trees of St. James's Park on a Sunday afternoon. A preaching tone of voice exercises a remarkable spell upon the House of Commons. They immediately imagine they are in church and begin to go to sleep. The timely application of a narcotic was of great service upon the Radical benches, where the members were beginning to chafe under the uncongenial restraints of decorum, and their native combativeness was becoming irrepressible. Fortunately, Mr. Wood lasted for a good half-hour; and when it was all over, all petulant and wanton tempers were effectually tamed. Mr. Disraeli followed, and was very influential in maintaining the spirit of the scene. The curious mosaic of broken metaphors and poetic adjectives in which he indulges on these great occasions, though it is apt to excite critics to irreverent remarks, has a wonderful effect on the back benches of the House of Commons. Lord Palmerston was also comparatively successful. He certainly was more at his ease in pointing out and explaining the precedents upon which the Government had framed the form of condolence, than in actually condoling; but he prospered better than he did on a recent oc- ! casion, when he began his consolatory remarks with the observation that it was quite in the course of nature that mothers should die before daughters. But this impressive commencement was destined to a lame and impotent conclusion. All these good intentions did but serve as pavement for an Irish row of the most unedifying type. Up to this point the House of Commons had behaved worthily of itself and the occasion, and everybody hoped that the curtain would fall upon it while it was still in this serious and becoming mood. When Lord Palmerston sat down, the general impression was that the ceremonial was at an end. Members were just congratulating each other that the corps of bores had been cowed into silence, and that the difficult task of couching Parliamentary grief in the proper and decorous formula liad been performed without a single breach of good manners and with far more than the usual average of good taste, when a familiar but unwelcome sig'ht stopped them short in their congratulations. Mr. Hadfield rose. The effect was electric upon the House. No one attempted to cry him down, for his obduracy has been tried in a hundred debates, and is proof against even the most persevering vociferation. Nor did any one attempt to listen to him; for except to those , who sit very near him, the feat is a physical impossibility. A shrill sound, like the dissonant wail of an oilless door, is all that meets the ear. So the members betook themselves to the only remedy that was left them. But if he had been a general in French uniform, announcing that a French array was encamped at Blackheath, or another Cromwell taking away the new bauble or even an errand boy shouting "fire" he could not have produced a more general rush

■■■■»■—n—n—M—wii 11 in i iiibihih— towards the door. This untoward interruption entirely broke the charm. The dignity of the evening was at an end. Mr. Hadfield did not occupy the House for long'. He had only l'isen to express one sanguinary desire; and in the very act of expressing it, his heart relented or his courage gave way. Following the modern instincts of the Radical party, he rose to call for penal laws against newspapers, and their editors. u I wish that there was a law to hang"—he began, and then stopped short. The startled looks of his audience reminded him that the disclosure of such aspirations was a little premature; so he contented himself with a milder penalty—" at least, a law to burn by the hands of the common hangman the detestable articles," &c., &c.— and in that form the reporters kindly recorded his desire. But even this outpouring of his benevolent heart, brief though it was, was quite sufficient to break through the decorous reserve which had hitherto confined the debate to the recitation of the proper number of official declamations. The charm was broken, and the profane vulgar rushed in. The Irish members thought it was an admirable opportunity for paying off their autumn scores on Sir Robert Peel; and Sir Robert Peel thought that a fitter occasion could not possibly present itself for giving a piece of his mind to the Irish members. Accordingly, by a transition which was as grotesque as it was unseemly, the House found itself, passing suddenly from polished and. laboured periods of high-flown eulogy upon the illustrious dead to a tart squabble upon the question whether the Irish Secretary had taken three days or more than three days in travelling three hundred miles, and whether that expeditious voyage of discovery had or had not been performed upon a low-backed car. Sir Robert Peel enlivened the affray by giving some specimens to the House of the service which he intends rendering to the Government during the session. It is particularly important to the Government not to offend the Irish priesthood needlessly, and, in the present state of our relations with America, it is especially desirable that their public expressions in reference to Mr. Lincoln's Government should be studiedly courteous. Sir Robert Peel had the address, in the course of a speech of ten minutes, to taunt the Federal Government with their unsuccessful campaign, and to insinuate that the Irish priesthood made it their business to stir up the peasantry against their landlords. The soberer members of the Government winced obviously under the ordeal to which their nervous systems were being exposed; and they did their best to bring the debate to a conclusion. Mr. Vincent Scully, who followed the Irish Secretary, was not the man to be silenced by a thin House or a reluctant audience. But his oration made the close of the debate a matter of still more urgent importance, for under the spell of his eloquence the most courageous audience will dwindle away; and at one time there was imminent risk that the Address of condolence would evaporate in a count-out. Fortunately there are not many men in the House keen for the distinction of answering him; and the Speaker was able to take advantage of a momentary pause to avert the scandal and close a disreputable scene.