MEETING OF PARLIAMENT.
Parliament was opened by the queen in person on the 6th of February. The speech referred to the discontents in England and Ireland and the insurrection in Canada, and recommended improvements in the law, and reforms as the remedy for this state of things, while it expressed a determination to maintain the authority of the crown.
The addresses in the lords and commons were, as usual, the occasion of long party debates, in which all the irritating topics of the day were made the most of by the opposition. The affairs of Ireland and the East occupied the greatest prominence; next to these, Chartism and the general distress; while Canada and the Iberian peninsula afforded fertile subjects for the opposition speakers, with which to annoy the government. Free-trade, and the duties on the importation of corn, became a subject of important debate at this juncture. In the commons Sir Robert Peel threw himself, acrimoniously, and with all his energy, into this controversy, and used all the exploded arguments of the protectionists with the air of one who for the first time urged them upon the house. Mr. Villiers severely chastised the protectionist champion, showing how unscrupulously he played the part of a plagiarist even in the sophisms he employed. Mr. Duncombe had the bad taste to move an amendment, which he knew there was no hope of carrying, or of finding a tolerable minority to support, thus impeding the public business without any counterpoising benefit.
When the address was brought up, Mr. O’Connell animadverted in strong language upon the transfer of Limbourg and Luxembourg to Holland: it was one of the greatest cruelties ever committed that the five powers should impose such terms on Belgium. In reply, Lord Palmerston observed that by the treaty of Vienna Limbourg was annexed to the Seven United Provinces. Luxembourg, by the same treaty, was constituted a separate sovereignty, as a grand duchy, to be held by the same individual who should be king of the Netherlands; but by a separate title, and transmissible in a separate line of succession. The kingdom of the Netherlands went to the heirs general of the king, while Luxembourg would descend to the heirs male only: the king of the Netherlands in that character was not a member of the Germanic confederation, but he was a member as grand duke of Luxembourg; and when the grand duchy was formed, it became subject to the federal constitution, and to the regulations which bound the members of the confederacy. When the revolution broke out it extended to Luxembourg, and the king of the Netherlands applied for aid to the five powers. It was ultimately found that the only way of arranging the difficulties between Holland and Belgium was a separation; but the five powers did not feel themselves competent, nor were they competent according to the treaties which governed the relations of the states of Europe, to deal with the question as regarded Luxembourg. In the progress of the negociation the Belgian government expressed a strong desire that a portion of Luxembourg and Limbourg should form a part of Belgium; and the five powers had no objection to this, provided the consent of the Germanic confederation, which had full liberty to re-establish the grand duke in his rights, could be obtained. The diet gave permission, on condition that some equivalent portion of territory should be ceded by Belgium in return for what was detached from the duchy of Luxembourg. To these terms the Belgian government consented, and an arrangement was made, by which it was agreed that for the incorporation of a part of Luxembourg in the kingdom of Belgium an equivalent should be provided by the latter state. This arrangement formed part of the twenty-four articles; and it was perfectly true that these articles, as Mr. O’Connell had said, were accepted by Belgium, and not by Holland. When, however, these articles were incorporated into a regular treaty between Belgium and the five powers, then that treaty became a binding instrument on the contracting party: the five powers were entitled to keep Belgium to the terms of the treaty, and Belgium in turn was entitled to claim their observance of it. The Belgian government had, indeed, on various occasions appealed to the treaty as the charter of its rights; and it was preposterous that, after so regarding it for eight years, they should finally declare to all Europe, because it suited their convenience, that the fundamental articles of the treaty were of no obligation to them. His lordship concluded by saying that, so far from its being an injustice in the five powers to refuse to add Luxembourg to Belgium, it would have been an act of the grossest oppression if they had consented to make a violent seizure of that territory for the purpose of transferring it: all that was done was to leave the matter as it was settled at the congress of Vienna.