LAST WEEK.
THE BARREN SESSION.
The Session of 1860 is at an end. Our legislators have not much in the shape of definite results to show for the labour of seven months. In publications more especially devoted to the discussion of political events, the Session which has just been brought to a close has been already stigmatised as the Barren Session. Towards its close prayers might well have been put up in our churches for laws, as they have been offered for rain. For months and months nothing was heard of but fruitless discussions upon a Reform Bill, concerning which not even John Bright was in earnest.
Some thirty years ago, or thereabouts, Lord John Russell carried a Reform Bill when the alternative was a revolution, and therefore he thought it his duty to carry a Reform Bill in 1860, when the alternative was to let it alone. Fifteen years ago the late Sir Robert Peel carried the Repeal of the Corn Laws, and a general change in our commercial system from Protection to Free Trade; therefore, in 1860, Mr. Gladstone endeavoured to burn up the last rags of Protection, and to make a complete end of the task which the great English statesmen had taken in hand in the years 1845-46. Again, more than thirty years ago, Catholic Emancipation became an acknowledged fact; in other words, the nation solemnly decided that religious opinions should not, in any way, affect the political status of British subjects. From that time, down to the present, there have been spasmodic attempts made in Parliament to emancipate the Jews from the miserable restrictions which savoured of the Ghetto, and the yellow gown of the middle ages. Of these, too, there is an end; but it is only in the Session which is now concluded that the oath administered to a Jewish member has been placed upon a footing which relieves him of all humiliation when he takes the seat to which he has been elected by the free choice of a British constituency. Here, then, are three great principles which were not acknowledged in our statute-book without three solemn struggles which shook the structure of English society to its very foundation. They were carried in fitting order: First, there was Religious Freedom; secondly, there was Political Freedom; thirdly, there was Commercial Freedom. In the days when these great matters were at issue—matters which stirred men’s hearts and made their blood leap madly in their veins—naturally there was great turmoil and contention within and without the walls of Parliament. In those days a political Dilettante was out of place. You would as soon have expected to find a lounger of the St. James Street clubs in the ranks of Cromwell’s Ironsides. Fathers turned aside from their sons if they “went wrong,”—that is, if they fell off from the political traditions of their family, whatever these might be. The Whigs and Tories carried on their party-strife with an inveteracy which was greater than the hatred of private life. They ranted against each other on the hustings—they dined against each other at Pitt and Fox dinners. Country-gentlemen, in order to carry country-seats, ruined themselves, or at least, saddled their magnificent estates with burdens from which they would never have been relieved but for the improved value communicated to their estates by the introduction of steam. Railroads have been the panacea for the political unthrift of the last century. Old George Stephenson, and that brave band of mute Paladins, who clambered up behind him from the darkness of the north country mines, to the light of day, have been the true saviours of the Squirearchy and territorial aristocracy of England. The party-contests, which had been for awhile suspended, by the imminent dangers of the war between Europe and the first French Empire, were renewed with increased bitterness in 1816. Between that date and 1846 we saw the fullest development and the extinction of party strife. Whigs and Tories carried on the war as though they were born to be each other’s natural antagonists. A Radical was a mad dog to be hunted down by the Attorney-General and his law beagles, amidst the general applause. In those days the late Earl Grey was a probability; Lord Eldon a possibility; William Cobbett a necessity. We could not, if we would, handle again either the rapiers or the bludgeons with which our elders ran each other through the body in a gentlemanlike way, or broke each other’s heads in a rude but thoroughly efficient manner. Now-a-days we should think of Earl Grey as Polonius; of Lord Eldon as an intelligent Druid; of William Cobbett as a “rough.” There is a great gulf between the England of 1815 and 1860. There are no longer struggles for the three great principles of Religious Freedom, Political Freedom, Commercial Freedom. Our heads are upon the pillows which our fathers have made smooth, and it is only in dreams we can take part in the gigantic struggles of opinion in which they were engaged. When we meddle with such matters we are but feeding upon the scraps which have fallen from their table. We are crossing their t’s, and dotting their i’s. We are wearing their old coats, and writing postscripts to their letters. We are painting their lilies and gilding their gold.
Does this therefore mean that we have no struggle before us?—and that because our fathers toiled we can fold our hands in sleep, and give ourselves up to disgraceful lethargy? Not so. We have our appointed task as they had theirs; but our task is different in kind. Let us, however, see what it is, and not, because we mistake the Past for the Present, say that there is nothing left for us to do. We might as well whine over Stonehenge, as lament over the decay of parliamentary strife and the decline of party spirit. What if the life and brain of England have passed from Parliament into the nation, is that any great loss? Our elders fought for thirty years that this very result might come to pass. Of course we shall not henceforward have as many gladiatorial displays within the walls of the two Houses, but we shall have more magnificent achievements performed by the nation collectively—and by the individuals of whom it is composed. Here we have a nation of 30,000,000 of energetic people—leaving India and the colonies out of the question