A very considerable portion of the session was occupied by the affairs of Ireland. Under the section devoted to the concerns of that country such notice was taken of the proceedings in parliament bearing reference to her, as makes it unnecessary to enter at length into their record in this place. Early in the session the government requested the house to renew the act for the suspension of Habeas Corpus: it was granted. Measures bearing upon the poor-laws, and the commercial state of the country, were subsequently discussed, the government always succeeding in obtaining the support of the house. A bill for facilitating the transfer of encumbered estates was introduced on the 26th of April; its object was, chiefly, to amend a similar act of 1848, which had been found to a great extent impracticable, the usual fate of most whig measures. The new bill was carried; but while it did much good, it was sometimes an instrument of injustice, very imperfectly answered its own objects, and was not conceived or framed in a comprehensive or statesman-like spirit. The great changes which its abettors predicted it would create in the social condition of Ireland were not realized. The estates brought into the court were often purchased by their former owners, or occupiers, or by other Irish landowners, who borrowed money for the purchase at a heavy interest, on the credit of the estates themselves, which soon became as much encumbered as they had been before. English companies and assurance offices were also purchasers: their management was generally bad, expending large sums without obtaining an adequate return. Ignorance of the habits of the people caused much loss to such occupiers, and a species of quackery in cultivation sprung up which was injurious to the interests of the owners and of the country.
VOTE OF THANKS TO THE ARMY IN INDIA.
Votes of thanks to the troops engaged in the war of the Punjaub were proposed and carried on the 24th of April. These were advocated with eloquence, and conceded with enthusiasm. Sir Robert Peel passed an eloquent eulogy on Lord Gough, which was as just to the brave old veteran, after having served his country with honour for fifty-six years, as it was creditable to the impartiality, temper, and talent of Sir Robert.
MR. COBDEN’S MOTION FOR REDUCING THE ARMY AND NAVY.
The Whigs were not good financiers. Sir Robert Peel excelled his contemporaries, and more especially his opponents, in the practicability of his financial arrangements. The government had been placed in circumstances of great difficulty by events purely of a providential nature; but there existed a general impression that they did not meet the emergency with skill. A society called the Financial Reform Association grew into existence in consequence of this feeling. Its head-quarters was at Liverpool. Many important facts were brought to light by it, and much information extended, but there was a want of tact in the management which defeated these laudable and enlightened exertions. The society had a singular fatality for urging particular measures precisely at the juncture when there was least likelihood of gaining the ear of either the public or the legislature. Mr. Cobden made himself conspicuous in this agitation, and began that career of impracticability which gradually limited his public usefulness, and at last expelled him from parliament. When the whig budget came on for discussion, Mr. Cobden was agitating a scheme for returning to the expenditure of 1835, by which he alleged ten millions annually would have been saved. The state of Ireland and the continent rendered it unlikely that the country would consent to any very great reduction in its military and naval defences, yet it was in these departments Mr. Cobden contemplated his economical experiments. On the 26th of February he submitted a motion to the house embodying the principles for which he had contended at public meetings. The chancellor of the exchequer showed that no reductions which even Mr. Cobden himself dare submit to the house would reduce the national expenditure to the proposed extent, and proved that the defence of the commerce and independence of the country forbade any such reduction. Mr. Cobden only obtained seventy-seven to support him, in a house of three hundred and fifty-three members. This did not arise from any indisposition to reduce the public burdens, but from a conviction that Mr. Cobden rested his motion upon false data, and that his scheme was utterly inapplicable to the circumstances of the times.
THE BUDGET.
On the 29th of June the chancellor of the exchequer brought forward his budget. He estimated the ordinary income at £51,550,000, and the extraordinary income at £580,000. The expenditure he estimated at £53,287,000. He contemplated a surplus income for the ensuing year of about three quarters of a million sterling. The statement was received favourably, but a general impression existed that the chancellor might have carried retrenchment much farther. The supplies, however, were granted upon the basis of the statement offered.