IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT.

New Zealander, Volume XVII, Issue 1569, 1 May 1861, Page 5

IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT.

(From the •• Times," February C.)

Unlike the ordinary proceedings on the first day of the Session, the Debate on the Address was characterized by incidents of extraordinary interest. For the first time for many years an Amendment was moved and seconded, and a Division taken upon it ; but this, the main event of the evening, was preceded in the House of Commons by a discussion on foreign affairs which was itself of extraordinary interest, la a long and laboured, but very obscure speech, Mr. Disraeli developed his views on foreign policy, and censured the conduct of the Government, lie did not, indeed, reprobate the policy of non-intervention, nor suggest what line of action our Government ought to have adopted. To have done so would have been dangerous, as exposing him to crushing replies, and probably as showing the existence of opinions very different from his own within his own party, lie wanted not information, but explanation. What are the views of the Government as to the future of Italy ? Do they contemplate Italian unity, and are they prepared for its results ? Italian unity, says Mr. Disraeli, can only he effected by the sword of France, and the sword of France Mr. Disraeli thinks will not he, and ought not to be, drawn for the cause of Italian unity without adequate consideration. That consideration must he, he tliinks, the absolute submission of Italy to France, and the consequent increase of France by twenty-four millions of subjects. Upon this reverie wo may observe in passing that the F.mperor of the French seems to be of a different opinion, for we have no reason to believe that his persistent and inveterate opposition to Italian unity arises from a dislike to sec his empire increased by the addition ot so many millions of snl>jects. Moreover, the statement is not even a probable conjecture. If Italian unity is obtained at all, t will be obtained, not by the aid of France, which is Hostile to it, nor of England, which is pledged to nonintervention, but ot the Italian people themselves, who have the wish, if they have the power, to cdect it. So far from adding Italy to France, Italian unity would combine Italy against French influence, and this is precisely the”reason why the Emperor of the French is opposed” to it. Lord John Russell had no difficulty in vindicating the policy of the English Government, which has, indeed, received an approbation far more unanimous than that usually accorded to acts of State. Our policy has neither been union nor federation, but simply fair play tor the Italians —the allowing them to manage their own affairs in their own way, and to banish, depose, or retain their Sovereign, just as they think best. It this has ended in Italian unity, it is because unity is the wish of the nation, and only so far our doing as that we have done all in our power to give that wish validity.

But it was the latter part ol Lord John jKusscll’s speech, interestin'' and able as its treatment of foreign questions undoubtedly was, that the importance of tlic Uebatc entirely centred. For some reason or other •be It adieu 1 leaders shrunk from the task oi moving an Amendment to the Address, and left that duty .to be per termed by Mr. White and Mr, Digby Seymour, geutiemeu into w hose hand the great question 01 fieiorui has at hist degenerated, The speech of Lord

John Russell in reply was in every way a remarkable effort. It dealt with the question with a fairness and openness which have hitherto been novelties in the history of our party politics. Lord John llussell declared broadly, and even with a species of dry and caustic humour, that the Bill of last year was defeated more by the efforts of Liberal .than of Conservative Members ; that the constitucnts'of these Members had never felt it necessary to reprehend their Members for their conduct; and that, if the House of Commons was hostile, the country was at least indifferent. It the country disapproved the decision of the Government to go no further with the Reform Bill, they had the remedy in their own hands. A proper exertion of their power might remove Lord Palmerston from office and place Mr. White at the head of the Treasury, and then the triumph of Reform would be assured. “I,” said Lord John, “have no reason to be dissatisfied with the decision of the House and the country. For forty-one years I have been agitating the question of Reform, and thirty years ago I succeeded, under the auspices of Lord Grey, in carrying a measure through the House. It is not for me to repine if the people of England like my measure so well that they are unwilling, after thirty years of experience, to exchange it for another.” Mr. Bright followed, in a speech of much virulence ; but the Amendment to the Address was lost, in a thin House, by a majority of 128 to 40. The event is too recent for us fully to appreciate its importance. The absence of any mention of Reform in the Queen’s Speech was, after the proceedings ol iast Session, a matter of considerable importance, but that has been quite overshadowed by the plain and explicit declaration with which Lord John Russell concluded the Debate, its simplicity and openness arc exceedingly refreshing after the vast amount of insincerity with which the subject has been overlaid. The Government was, and, for aught we know, still is, willing to deal with the question of Reform ; but it awaits henceforth the impulse that is to set it in motion from without. The people have the question in their own hands, but then it must be the whole people, and not any particular section or coterie. Government has renounced the pretension to lead opinion on this question. It is content, and not unwilling to follow. We trust that in this resolution we see the grave of much political quackery. The people and the Government have both received a great lesson. The people have learnt that organic changes in the institutions of

tlie country, though they may be promised, arc no longer likely to be effected unless some strong, and not merely theoretical, inconvenience can be shown to exist, and that they will do more wisely to seek as their representatives men ol' capacity and integrity than those who bid the lowest franchise and most sweeping defninchisement for their support. The Government, and Members of Parliament generally, will think twice before they forfeit their freedom of action and injure their character by pledges at the hustings which the very demagogues and agitators who exact them often do not really wish to see fulfilled. From the commencement of this Session will probably date a different order of things from any we have seen since 1848. The formal renunciation of any sweeping and general measure of lie form docs not preclude —nay, if we mistake not, it greatly facilitates, particular measures for the improvement of the representation of the people. To all such attempts the prospect of a general lie form Bill has hitherto been a sufficient answer. It will be so no longer. Each measure must be discussed ou its own merits, and, as there is much room for practical improvement, great good may be effected. The division between parties is narrowed. One great cause of dispute between the more moderate Liberals and the Conservatives is removed, and men’s professions will be brought much nearer to their real opinions than they have hitherto been. The political atmosphere is cleared, and a great waste of time is henceforth prevented. The moderate man may congratulate himself that he has escaped what lie believes to be a great danger, and the more violent Reformer may console himself, like Mr. Bright, with the hope that a time may come when what is now refused may be imperiously demanded, and when the upper and middle classes of society, having been somehow intimidated by the lowest, may surrender into their hands that power which at present they seem so firmly resolved to retain in their own. The Lords have commenced the Session with an unanimity pleasant to behold. They give promise of affording for some time yet to come the spectacle of brethren dwelling together in unity. We arc not to suppose that it is to last for ever. Lord Derby only promised to bear arms of courtesy “ on this occasion;” lie only expressed his desire that general harmony should* reign “ at the commencement of the Session.” The time may yet arrive when he will send for those steel lance-heads which he has for the present left behind him; but on this first opening day, when the House of Lords is gay with colours and radiant with beauty, and when there are no challengers before him but two maiden knights, he is content to put aside all dire designs of stalwart blows and fatal thursts, and to break a blunt lance in a gentle and joyous passage of arms. So we see in the manner of this pageant nothing upon which all may not look pleasantly. .The Earl is welcomed into the lists with cheers from all sides, which arc indubitably sincere, and makes his play of fence so gently that we might applaud and go, if we did not believe we could tell, from remarking how his lance is pointed and where his blows descend, what will be the character of the attack when he comes to use sharp weapons and to strike with intent to harm. “ The Speech appears to me,” says Lord Derby, “to be quite unexceptionable;” and having indulged his generosity by this general admission, he immediately begins to take exceptions to it. As a Queen’s Speech, there is nothing to prevent the Peers around him from adopting it as a whole and reiterating it in an Address; and in the comments put upon it by tin; Mover and Seconder the Earl can find nothing which can provoke a departure from a decorous unanimity. But while Lord Derby recommends his brother Peers to stand at a distance and applaud, he himself proposes to go close up and criticize. As he draws nearer all the broad effects disappear, and he delivers oracular criticisims to his more distant friends, which would be justification for several amendments. The style is “ too colloquial for a Queen’s Speech.” We are afraid there is no answer to this, except that it is according to all precedent; but if Lord Derby were in office next February he would not be able to break through it. We arc afraid we must abandon all defence of the style of this unexpcctionablc document; but when Lord Derby compares it, upon other grounds, with the Speech of the Emperor of the French, he omitted to give to the English Speech the credit of being at least ungrammatically intelligible, while the Speech of the Emperor is at best elegantly elusive. 11c might have done our Queen’s Speech* this justice, for his own estimate of the effect of the Speech of our great ally is precisely that which we have ourselves already put forth. There is, undoubtedly, no condition of affairs under which the language of that Speech is not consistent with war. 11 France by the mouth of her Emperor, reserves to herself the right of putting in action her tremendous fleet and her unequalled army whenever she considers her honour affronted or her rights invaded, or whenever her sympathy is implored, this clearly amounts to no more than that she will go to war when she pleases. If with these words in her mouth she continues to increase her means of aggression, all her neighbours must either prepare to submit or work to keep pace with her. It is not a satisfactory position. Lord Derby wishes to know how long it is to last. Ho, also we doubt not, do Lord John Russell and Lord I’almcrston. So, certainly,,do all our Chambers of Commerce, and, indeed, all our tax-payers. Lord Derby truly says that “running a race of military preparation— France for aggression, and England for defence.” We are like a hawk and his prey in the air, each circling higher and higher, each exerting its full strength of wind. How glad would the harmless prey be to sink down and be at rest! How fatiguing to it arc these violent flights! It is very hard to be obliged to whirl away up into these unusual elevations. And, moreover, perhaps, the kite does not mean real mischief; perhaps he is only exercising his wings. But that, “ perhaps,” is too perilous to rely on, for if the hawk once get uppermost one swoop would be fatal, and so the two competitors go on until the weaker of wing will give in the contest from sheer exhaustion. Arc we for ever to play at this game, Lord Derby asks. Ho we all ask; but it is for the hawk, and not for the pigeon to reply. There is another subject upon which we cannot travel so sociably with the Conservative leader. In a sort of gala-day Speech such as this, when nothing was present to excite harsh thoughts, it is displeasing to find Lord Derby so ungenerous, and, as we think, even so unjust to Itlay. We find no fault with him for intimating that Garibaldi, though a very good soldier and a very honest patriot, could have been lawfully hanged or shot if he had fallen into the hands of the King of Naples. There can be doubt of this. Garibaldi, as every one admits, was acting against international law; and as international law has been made by Sovereigns, and not by insurgents, it is clearly against all insurrections, and would have shot Garibaldi as it would have shot William of Orange or Washington. But when Lord Derby denies that the later concentration of Italy has been a consequence of Laly having been left alone, and when he alleges the Sardinians and Garibaldians as instances of foreign intervention, he becomes more intolerant even than Mettevnich, and denies to Italy the poor gratification of being considered as even “a geographical expression.” Lord Derby may have no faith in Italian unity ; he may believe Italians to be all dogs together; but they have hitherto given him no facts to justify such a judgment, and there is nothing' in their conduct to

render it just for the leader of a great party to say olj the united races of of Italy that—

“ As shoughs, water-rugs, and demi-wolvcs arc doped i “ All by the name of dogs,” so “the same idea may with justice be applied to the difference which exists between the populations occn pymg the several States of Italy.” One ot the most wonderful circumstances of this most wonderful revolution is the manner in which their ancient dilh-ienccs of race and politics have been merged in the Italian nation. Have we board a word ol the ancient pietcnsions of Florence to be the salt ot the earth? Has not even Rome been protesting with inconvenient eagerness her desire to he annexed to Piedmont? Has Milan remembered her old feuds? For a year and n ; half this long disunited people have come together with a marvellous sacrifice of all little selfish objects, and with a hearty enthusiasm for liberty which we should have thought must strike the sympathies of n scholar, and could not fail to arouse the interest of a great statesman in free England. II the struggles ol a people against cruelties which Lord Derby lull}- admits, while he claims all our pity for their author, could not divert him from his attack upon Italy, he might surely have given her some credit for the example which she has just given to the world in the moderation of her elections. All these “shoughs and waterrugs and demi-wolves” seem to have been of one mind. They have returned moderate men of excellent charac ter, Constitutional Monarchists —and good Italians. Every salad wants its seasoning. What would otir own House of Commons be if it lost Roebuck? So there arc a few Republicans and Ma/.zinians in tiie new Italian Chamber; but these are not one-twentieth of the whole body. Lord Derby takes no note ot this, lie has been unjust to Italy, and his bold (injustice leads ns to suspect that thosecontests.'wliich he intimates as likely to occur at a latter period of the Session are not imminent, or, if imminent, are not so serious as mighi be implied from his language. A man aspiring to the immediate direction ol the foreign policy of this country would not speak tints ol Italy.