THE QUEEN'S SPEECH.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XI, Issue 29, 16 November 1883, Page 27

THE QUEEN'S SPEECH.

(Dublin Freeman, Sept,l.) The Queen's Speech, was of course substantially a Ministerial review of the Session's work, and that it was a rose-coloured view need scarcely be added. We also give our review. The Boyal utterance deals with the great questions of foreign relations, the navigation of the Danube, Egypt, Madagascar, and South Africa. It discourses about the Revenue, agriculture, Ireland, legislative progress, tenants' improvements in England and Scotland, corrupt election practices the protection of inventors, the reduction of the National Debt, and migration as well as emigration for this country. It is not by any means an insignificant table of contents, and although it shows far short of the promises of the Queen's Speech that inaugurated the Session, still it is a fair record of work thoroughly carried on to operative issue during the year's sitting. We have already expressed our estimate of the Session's character for work, and looking at the almost unanimous verdict of the English Press of Saturday, we find that a very general consensus of both Government and Opposition organs confirms our adjudication. We hold that while there was a deplorable waste of energy in the proceedings of the Senate, and a painful sacrifice of promised, useful, and half-carried measures, still it has been historically and constitutionally an important Session and its contributions to the Statute Book have been signal and pregnSjt of great future moment. The portions of the speech which least .cofcrince one are those dealing with foreign topics, and inside this demesne we cannot see how the Government is to be congratulated. There is nothing to exult in about Egypt — the Boers are in open and confessed defiance, and the Franco- Madagascar affairs are, to say the least, replete with vexation. The Queen's Speech of course does not say it, but what can be more mortifying to English pride than the facts connected with the conduct of the French, and with the late and reluctant French amende ? France at Tamatave wantonly did to England what France would not dare to have done in the days of Chstham or Nelson or Palmerston and for a long time, in a supercilious way France dawdled alwut making any sort of reparation. Last week Bismarck's warning to France appeared in the Noi>th German Gazette, and within two days the French Ministry was most submissive to England, and anxious to propitiate her. It seetns, therefore, as if the Queen's declaration as to the continuance of good relations with all foreign Powers in fact depended on the German Chancellor's message to France. The Royal utterance about Zululand is scarcely more satisfactory when read between the lines and in connection with its surroundings. There is no use in attempting to deny that tie Zulus have been grossly mismanaged, and that the Boers have openly trampled on the chief articles of the Convention. The Royal comments on Ireland are of the stereotyped kind. The Land Act is according to its authors, working splendidly, the combination against contracts has been broken up, and murderous associations have been checked. We do not think that the Land Act is at all doing what it ought to do. We give a hearty accord to the sentence in the speech which refers to the migration provisions in the Tramways Act, and more than that we recogoise the legislation itself as an instance of a desire to deal fairly by this country, and to consult the people's wants and wishes in measures ostensibly framed for their welfare.