OPENING OF PARLIAMENT.

New Zealander, Volume XV, Issue 1365, 18 May 1859, Page 1 (Supplement)

OPENING OF PARLIAMENT.

Parliament opened on the 3rd, and the Legislature were informed on the first night ot the session that the New Reform Rill was for the present postponed. The subject forms the last paragraph hut one in the Queen’s speech, hut the allusion to it is sufficiently distinct. “ Your attention will he called to the laws which regulate the representation of the people in Parliament, and I cannot doubt that you will give to this great subject a degree of calm and impartial consideration proportioned to the magnitude of the interest involved in the result of your discussions.” The words in italics do not certainly appear in that form in the original, but it seems very extraordinary that what her Majesty and her Ministers declare to he a £< great subject” is left for consideration to some future day, probably until half of the session has been consumed and the chapter of accidents has left the present batch of Ministers without portfolios. Alluding to this unexpected delay, the London Times of the 4th—no friend to Lord Derby—says :—“Mr. Disraeli’s excuse is the quantity of regular business which has to be got through; but, with Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell, we must confess ourselves unable to see what rou-

tine business there is to stand in the way of such extraordinary legislation. The same excuse might have been made any session this hundred years. On the last occasion, the new Parliament proceeded immediately to discuss the bill thrown out by its predecessor, and did not intermit till the bill became the law of the land. The House evidently feels that a postponement till after Easter is, in fact, to tiie Greek Kalends ; and that if by the middle of May next Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli find the Estimates are got through, the money granted, and the business of the nation well over, they would gladly let the House amuse itself with the petty details and Highly generalities of Reform till the Dog-days and grouse-shooting put an end to the session. If wo are to have Parliamentary Reform this year, it must be immediately, for six months will be hardly sufficient for the very important and d.licate discussions raised by a Reform Bill. A Reform Bill there must he, and it can only lie a Ministerial measure. Whether it, proceeds from one party or the other, ami whether it he a moderate instalment of Reform or a now charter, depends on her Majesty’s present Ministers.” It is remarkable that the present incumbents of office, via warned by the fate of Lord Palmerston last year, are pursuing the same suicidal course. He, too, promised a Reform Bill, and, meeting Parliament without it, was hurled from power without sympathy or warning. What can be the object of Ministers iu the delay ? Are they waiting for Mr. Gladstone to tide them over the stream? Have they not had time during the six months which have passed since Parliament was adjourned to perfect the details of the measure ? Are they anxious to see how the House will receive Mr. Bright’s project ? Do they expect that the ardour of the country will be cooled by procrastination ? Or do they believe that a Continental war will supervene, and distract the nation’s attention? These questions all force themselves on the mind, but receive no satisfactory solution as far as the ordinary channels of publicity are concerned. Yet there must be a reason, and a strong one, for incurring the odium of the delay. Two such experienced politicians as the Ministerial leaders cannot have come to this conclusion without a motive, if we only knew what it is. At all events, these repeated promises from high-places, and these repeated failures iu the performance, will only whet the popular appetite when the long-expected dish is prepared and duly laid before it.

We are inclined to believe that the Government, better informed than others, see in the preparations of the Emperor of the French a speedy rupture of the peace of Europe, during the continuance of which they believe people’s minds at home will be too unsettled to follow the Parliamentary struggle about “ the great question.” This was Mr. Roebuck’s view a few weeks back at Sheffield. If the postponement be based on this assumption, iljwwill, we suspect, prove a very erroneous one. The nation was put aside with this excuse in 1854, when Lord John Russell introduced his Reform Bill, at the time when Lord Aberdeen was at the head of affairs, and the delay was submitted to impatiently, although wo had to buckle on our armour to light Nicholas of Russia; and as public opinion is now all but unanimous in favour of a policy of non-intervention, should France and Austria come to blows, the lestlessness of the great mass of the people at these repeated proofs of broken faith will probably rise to a height which may prove very humiliating to the pride of a party so long excluded from power, and which refuses to accept the very best means which are ever likely to occur again for strengthening their position and popularity. There can he little doubt that if the Ministry of Lord Derby were to produce a Reform Rill at all lair and reasonable, it would go far to neutralise that popular antipathy to Toryism which has confined the party to the cold benches of the opposition for the greater part of twenty years. Most of the old questions which formerly divided classes in England are now settled, and the Tory party, if they really studied their own interests, have as much to gain by a good and sound Reform Bill as the Whigs. This is understood to be the opinion of Mr. Disraeli, Lord Stanley, Sir John Pakington, and the more liberal section of Lord Derby’s Cabinet, and it seems something akin to political suicide, now that the chapter of accidents has brought the ball to their feet, that they should doggedly and pertinaciously refuse to kick it, in the right direction at the right time. Lord Palmerston this time last year was a far more potential Minister than Lord Derby is over likely to become; but look at his humiliation and isolated position now llis hands cannot fail to be materially strengthened by the course which the present Government is pursuing, and Lord Derby it is not 100 much to say, is rapidly disgusting the 100 or so of independent members who transferred thCr allegiance iu the curly part of the last ses*

sion from the ex-Prcmier to himself. Mr. Disraeli, to calm the rising storm, has agreed to promise his Reform Rill on Monday next. The speech of Lord Derby respecting the present perilous position of Europe was more reassuring as regards a pacific settlement of the points at issue between France and Austria than that ot his lieutenant in the other house. Mr. Disraeli described the state of affairs as most critical, although he hoped that diplomacy would he framed equal to the complication, and this gloomy view of the future gives additional force to the conclusion at which we have arrived, that to this embarrasment may be traced the postponement of the Reform Rill. In other respects, the debates in both houses were much more harmonious than usual. The Premier alluded to the present depressed condition of the shipping interests, which, however, he only looked upon ns temporary, and he showed that crime was decreasing, while the deposits in the Savings’ Ranks wore considerably on the increase. He relieved Mr. Gladstone from the imputation which had been most ungenerously and illiberally cast upon him of going out to displace Sir John Young, and showed that affairs had been brought to a dead-lock in the lonian Parliament under the rule of that functionary. Mr. Gladstone had remained to introduce his reforms, and would only stay until his successor arrived out and relieved him.