and to mitigate the severity of so virulent, appalling, and destructive a malady."

Lord Effingham also censured the conduct of Government in the matter.

The Earl of Winchilsea considered that Government had forfeited the confidence of the country, and ought to be expelled from office.

Earl Granville defended the course adopted by the Ministers, and described the exertions made to stop the progress of the cattle plague. The Commissioners were, he understood, about to issue a further report, containing valuable information, though unaccompanied by any recommendations; and a Bill would be introduced into Parliament on an early day for effecting certain alterations in the law which the Government thought would be useful.

The Earl of Carnarvon held the Government responsible for the spread of the disease, and censured them for not having called Parliament together on an earlier day.

The Marquis of Abercorn dilated on the Fenian conspiracy; but whilst commending the manner in which the prosecutions had been conducted, blamed the Government for delaying the trials until after the general election.

Earl Grey said, that Ministers, by shrinking from responsibility, had incurred the very responsibility which they wished to avoid. They ought to have called Parliament together in November, and Parliament would, no doubt, have supported their recommendations. The intentions of the Government might have been good, but they had evidently displayed great want of judgment; and in a Government want of vigour and want of judgment were faults that could not be too highly condemned. On the question of Reform, the noble earl remarked that, in undertaking to deal with that subject now, Lord Russell was deserting the principle he had avowed in 1832-namely, the principle of finality, and was pandering to Mr. Bright and the ultra-Radical party.

The Duke of Argyle suggested that the discussion of the cattle plague might as well have been postponed until Ministers had introduced their promised measure on the subject, expressed his approval of the steps which had been taken, and argued against uniformity of action and the suspension of imports from abroad.

The Earl of Derby, after paying a tribute to the ability shown in the speeches of the mover and seconder of the Address, proceeded to review the various subjects of the Royal Speech. In most of these he concurred, but took strong exception to the conduct of the Government towards Mr. Eyre, which, he contended, was not only unjust and ungenerous in the highest degree, but imprudent in regard to the colony with reference to both its white and black population. Such a course would never have been pursued had Lord Palmerston been alive, for if that great statesman had an error it was an error on the bolder and nobler side of defending his sub

ordinates to the very last. What the Government had now done was to send out a roving Commission that had no real power beyond that of picking up the gossip of the island and collecting irresponsible evidence on which Mr. Eyre might be tried for his life. He quite agreed with the opinions which had been expressed from all sides of the House as to the most serious remissness of the Government in all relating to the check and prevention of the cattle plague, though even more dangerous, even more mischievous than this was their negligence in not earlier dealing with the Fenian conspiracy, when the Government had all the proofs of the guilt of its leaders in their possession. Too much leniency had been shown in overlooking these repeated overt acts of treason. Lord Derby then proceeded to descant on the subject of Parliamentary Reform, referring with much humour to speeches made by Earl Russell in 1859, when his (Lord Derby's) Government were in office, and were taunted for their backwardness and hesitancy in not being prepared with a Reform Bill at the beginning of the Session. Well," continued Lord Derby, "the noble earl is now at the head of the Government, and I do not gather that they have their measure ready. I infer from Her Majesty's Speech that they have not yet made up their minds what their measure should be. If the fact be otherwise, they certainly have done themselves great injustice, because they say that inquiries are now going forward with reference to the rights of voting in the election of members to serve in Parliament,' and that' when that information is complete, the attention of Parliament will be called to the result thus obtained,' &c. Now, my Lords, the Government are proceeding either without information, or with the intention of making the information they may procure square with their foregone conclusions; or, again, they may be gifted with a superhuman prescience which enables them to know infallibly beforehand what will be the precise result of these inquiries, whereas we poor ordinary mortals must be content to wait until all those promised statistics are laid before us which are to prove the wonderful skill and dexterity of the Government in framing a measure in anticipation of the information on which it is to be founded. Well, my Lords, imitating the wise caution of the noble earl, I will express no opinion upon their measure until I have seen it. I hope it will be such a measure as I shall be able to support that it will be a reasonable and satisfactory settlement of this grave and important question, which I believe it is desirable to settle, and settle once for all. And I promise the noble earl another thing-that his Bill shall have fair play, that it shall not be thrust aside by any underhand methods, that there shall be no factious movement or combinations against it on the part of those who can combine for nothing else; that it shall be dealt with on its merits; that if we can approve of it we shall give it our cordial support; but that, on the other hand, if we disapprove of it and think it is imperfect, inadequate, or dangerous, and,

above all, if we think it one leading to future agitations within a brief period of a perilous character, then, with whatever means we may possess, we shall do our best to throw it out by fair debate and honourable opposition.'

Earl Russell vindicated the conduct of his Government upon the points on which it had been impugned by Lord Derby, especially with reference to the Jamaica insurrection and the question of Parliamentary Reform.

"As to the first," he said, "the question is, not whether Governor Eyre was right in repressing the rebellion, but whether he was right in adopting the means he did to suppress it. It is one thing to support an officer who may have committed some errors of judgment; but when it comes to a question of the lives of 500 of our fellow subjects, I do not think it right to say we do not care whether 500 persons have been put to death without necessity, but we will support the Governor whether he was right or wrong, and we care nothing about those persons' lives because they happen to be black. We determined that inquiry should be made. The question then before us was, whether the inquiry should be instituted with Governor Eyre at the head of the Government. There was this obvious objection, that the Governor could not maintain his authority when that authority would be shaken every day if the inquiry proceeded. There was this further objection, that if Governor Eyre retained the supreme authority no one would have believed that there would have been a fair inquiry, or that the truth would be permitted to be told when the person accused retained that high office. While, too, an apparent stigma was cast upon Governor Eyre, he would be liable to the imputation of suppressing the evidence, and not allowing it to go fairly before the public. For these reasons it was determined that the head of the Commission should be supreme Governor of the Island, and I venture to say that we could not have chosen a man of higher honour than Sir Henry Storks, or one more fitted to inspire respect, or to support and maintain authority in the island. We have associated with him Mr. Russell Gurney and Mr. Maule, and no two persons are more likely to take correct view of the law of the case. We are aware that the Commission cannot take evidence upon oath. Directions, however, went out that the Legislature should be called together to enable the Commissioners to take evidence on oath, and Sir H. Storks has called that Legislature together to give him authority to examine on oath. It was clear to us that it was impossible to refuse inquiry, from the case made out by Governor Eyre himself. It was equally impossible to have a satisfactory inquiry if he remained at the head of affairs, and therefore the only justifiable course is that which we took. As to the other question, that of Parliamentary Reform, I have not much further to say. I think, however, the Bill of the Government will be brought in quite as soon after the meeting of Parliament as was that of the noble earl.. Some of the information

has been very lately supplied, and there is a portion of it of which the correctness is doubted, and that has been sent back. I do not doubt, however, that by the end of the month the Government will be ready to propose their measure. The noble earl has some complaint against me as to the manner in which his own Bill was met, and that makes it necessary for me-though I should otherwise have postponed my remarks on this subject-to state that I entertained very grave and solid objections to that Bill, which made it impossible for me to agree to the second reading. My first objection to the noble earl's Bill was, that it took away a right that had been enjoyed, not only from the time of Henry VI., but from the very earliest time of our Parliamentary history-namely, the right of freeholders to vote for the counties in which they reside. That right was an essential part of the Constitution, so essential, in my opinion, that when the late Earl Grey told me it was very likely that a provision would be introduced in the House of Lords into the great Reform Bill, taking away from freeholders the right of voting for the counties they reside in and confining them to vote in boroughs, I told Earl Grey that if the Bill came down with that alteration I should consider it so vitiated that I would myself move in the House of Commons that the Reform Act, with all its good and great provisions, should be rejected. There was another provision in the noble earl's Bill which proposed to restore nomination boroughs. According to the Reform Act many of the smaller boroughs, in which there were 10 or 12 voters, were enlarged by 10%. voters, so that they contained 300, 400, or 500 electors, whereby they were enabled to send men of their own opinions to Parliament. Now, the noble earl's Bill had a provision by which freeholders of counties would have voted for those boroughs. Besides this, there was a further provision that these votes might be sent by post, so that any noble lord or right hon. gentleman in some distant country might send by post the votes of 300 or 400 tenants, who never went near the place, and thus carry the election. That struck me so much that I stated my objection to a gentleman who sat near me when the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed his measure to the House of Commons. These provisions, with the absence of any adequate extension of the franchise to persons occupying houses under 107. a year, made the Bill so bad that it was impossible to support it. The noble earl, when First Minister of the Crown, introduced two measures -one a Budget imposing a very large tax upon houses, and another a measure for the Government of India. I consider they were both exceedingly bad measures, and both were rejected by Parliament. But much worse was the measure which the noble earl introduced under the name of a Reform of Parliament. I objected to that Bill, and I stated my objections fully and fairly. That Bill was defeated by no underhand proceeding, but by open and fair opposition. As to the objections raised by the noble carl to a measure of Reform, because it might be regarded in the light

of a stepping-stone to other more extensive reforms, I have only to say that the late Mr. Hume said the same of the Bill-of 1832, and voted for it on that ground. But though Mr. Hume said he intended to go much further than the Bill of 1832, that did not prevent the late Lord Grey and his colleagues from carrying that important measure, nor should the fact of the same being said now prevent the present Parliament from carrying a measure commensurate with the requirements of the time."

The amendment of Lord Feversham was not pressed, and the Address was agreed to without a division.

In the House of Commons, as in the Upper House, the cattle disease formed a very prominent subject of discussion. It was naturally a matter of great interest in the various localities affected by it, and it is not therefore to be wondered at that members of Parliament meeting together from the various districts in which it formed the leading topic, should come up charged with the subject which in the eyes of their constituents appeared paramount to all other questions in which the nation was concerned. On the first evening's debate, consequently, little was heard of except this engrossing calamity, and much fault was found with the Government for not duly estimating its importance or anticipating its ravages. The Address to the Throne was moved by Lord F. Cavendish, the newly-elected member for the West Riding of Yorkshire, who in a promising maiden effort passed in review the various subjects touched upon in the Royal Speech. From the language used by Her Majesty on the foreign transactions referred to, he concluded that the foreign policy of the present Government would be identical with that of the late Government, which had been emphatically approved by the country at the late election. With regard to recent events in Jamaica, Lord F. Cavendish quoted from a despatch of Sir C. Darling to show that the outbreak must have been totally unexpected, and expressed his opinion that when it broke out all the white inhabitants believed it to be part of a general design, and that nothing but severe measures would prevent Jamaica from becoming a second Hayti. He contended that Ministers could have taken no other course than that which they had taken in justice to Mr. Eyre and to the honour of England, and that no slur was thereby cast on the Governor. He next defended the Government from the attacks which had been made on them for not taking on themselves at the first appearance of the cattle plague the responsibility of preventing all movements of cattle, pointing out that even now eminent agriculturists doubted whether such a course would not do as much harm as good. While rcgretting that Ireland formed an exception to the general prosperity of which Her Majesty had spoken, he maintained that the course taken in reference to the Fenian conspiracy had met with the unanimous approval of the country, mentioning, as a proof, the late meeting at Dublin. He expressed a hope that the Govern