contending Parties, although hitherto | and that the Revenue of the past unsuccessful, have been unremitting. Year has been more than adequate to I will not fail to persevere in these the Demands of the public Service. Endeavours; but as the Continuance "I RECOMMEND to your Considerof the War may deeply affect the In-ation a Bill which I have ordered to terests of this Country and of Europe, be framed, for opening the Coasting I think it requisite to make a further Trade of the United Kingdom to the Augmentation of My Naval and Mili- Ships of all friendly Nations; and I tary Forces, with theview of support- look forward with Satisfaction to the ing My Representations, and of more Removal of the last legislative Reeffectually contributing to the Re- striction upon the Use of Foreign storation of Peace. Shipping, for the Benefit of My People.

"I HAVE directed that the Papers explanatory of the Negotiations which have taken place upon this Subject shall be communicated to you without Delay.

"COMMUNICATIONS have been addressed by My Command to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, with reference to the Improvement which it may be desirable to effect in

"Gentlemen of the House of their Institutions. These Communi

cations will be laid before you, and Measures will be proposed for your Consideration, with the view of giving effect to such Improvements.

"THE Establishments requisite for the Conduct of the Civil Service, and the Arrangements bearing upon its Condition, have recently been under Review and I shall direct a Plan to

be laid before you, which will have for its Object to improve the System of Admission, and thereby to increase the Efficiency of the Service.

"THE recent Measures of Legal Reform have proved highly beneficial, and the Success which has attended them may well encourage you to proceed with further Amendments. Bills will be submitted to you for transferring from the Ecclesiastical to the Civil Courts the Cognizance of Testamentary and of Matrimonial Causes, and for giving increased Efficiency to the Superior Courts of Common Law.

"THE Laws relating to the Relief of the Poor have of late undergone much salutary Amendment; but there

Labour, and if this Restraint can with Safety be relaxed, the Workman may be enabled to increase the Fruits of his Industry, and the Interests of Capital and of Labour will be more firmly united.

is One Branch to which I earnestly | volved upon me, I most earnestly solicit direct your attention. The Law of your sympathy and indulgence for my Settlement impedes the Freedom of unpractised and untried efforts, whilst I venture to call your Lordships' attention to the consideration of the Address which I shall have the honour of proposing in answer to Her Majesty's most gracious Speech. Arduous as such a task must always be for any man to be the first to break the silence in such an assembly as this, it seems to me that present circumstances throw double difficulties upon me, when I recollect the perplexed aspect of foreign affairs, and the vastness of the question upon which England is called to arbitrate. But although in this point of view there is much to excite apprehension, there is also, no doubt, much to gladden us in the retrospect of past years--much to cheer us in the vista which lies open before us, in the prospect of national prosperity and social improvement. It is now nearly forty years that we have enjoyed ings attendant in its train. Gradually the fulness of peace, and all the blessduring that period our colonial possessions and our Indian empire have been enlarged

"MEASURES will be submitted to you for the Amendment of the Laws relating to the Representation of the Commons in Parliament.

"RECENT Experience has shown that it is necessary to take more effectual Precautions against the Evils of Bribery and Corrupt Practices at Elections. It will also be your Duty to consider whether more complete Effect may not be given to the Principles of the Act of the last Reign, whereby Reforms were made in the Representation of the People in Parliament. In recommend g this Subject to your Consideration, my Desire is to remove every cause of just Complaint, to increase general Confidence in the Legislature, and to give additional Stability to the settled Institutions of the State,

"I SUBMIT to your Wisdom the Consideration of these important Subjects; and I pray God to prosper your Counsels, and to guide your Decisions."

HER MAJESTY then retired.
House adjourned during pleasure.
House resumed.

in India, Scinde and Burmah have been added to our sway, and even the exclusive cities of China have thrown open to us their gates; whilst the same success which has crowned our efforts abroad has smiled on our efforts at home. But now, after nearly forty years of peace and prosperity, at last it seems that we must gaze on war face to face. But if this be so indeed, we may console ourselves with the manly con

solation that he comes to us an unbidden and unwelcome guest-that every effort has been strained to avert the catastrophe; and that we do not draw the sword till diplomacy has exhausted every art, and until forbearance would no longer be a virtue. But if our forbearance has been unprecedented, unprecedented, too, are the resources with which we are prepared to meet the emergency. Our patience, even if it has been abused, has not been thrown away; for we stand acquitted of all precipitancy or eagerness for war, not only before the great tribunal of the nations of the present day, but in the eyes of future generations when they shall review this page of history. Nor need we THE EARL OF CARNARVON rose apprehend that the delays which have into move an humble Address to HER MA- tervened can be attributed to any unworthy JESTY, in answer to Iler gracious Speech motive; for I am convinced that it has from the Throne. The noble Earl said: proceeded from an honourable reluctance My Lords, in discharging this evening the to initiate a sanguinary and bloody contest responsible obligation which has been de-a reluctance which is alone the preroga

ADDRESS IN ANSWER TO THE SPEECII. THE QUEEN'S Speech having been reported by the LORD CHANCELLOR,

tive of a great country conscious of its own strength. And if, eventually, these delays should be crowned with the success they deserve, and a lasting peace be the reward of our endeavours, then the efforts which we have made for the continuance of that peace will be amply rewarded by the gratitude of the world, and we shall exhibit in history a second example in which a Fabian policy has been the restitution of the State. But should it be otherwise decreed, England is prepared to throw her whole heart into the war; and it will then be shown that a long peace has not relaxed our national vigour, any more than it has exhausted our national resources. Whatever the occasion may be, England is still rich enough to produce a second race of heroes equal to the past; and it will be seen that she is not wanting in another Wellington and another Beresford, another Exmouth and another Nelson, to shed lustre on her victorious arms; for wars there must be

-"erunt etiam altera bella,

anxiety, it is the union which has been firmly cemented between England and France. The sympathies and interests of two great nations, which have long been alienated by the animosities of centuries, have happily, I fervently hope, now been cordially united and blended together by the widely-extended chain of European civilisation and commerce. Long may this union continue to be inseparable by open violence or by secret intrigue! And if there be found a party whose fallen condition we may pity, but whose conduct we must censure-who seek to conciliate their own differences by a union against the harmonies of England and France, we can rejoice that the good sense of both countries has unequivocally rejected such designs, and has recognised the principle that the petty fusion of families must yield before a greater fusion of confederated nations.

I have trespassed, I fear, too long, my Lords, on your indulgence on this topic, Atque iterum ad Trojam magnus mittetur Achilles." while reviewing the aspect of our foreign I cannot believe that the energy which affairs; and I hasten to pass on to the made them victorious in the past, lies sentiments of those domestic topics which buried in the tomb of the great captain are alluded to in Her Majesty's Speech. whose loss we even yet deplore the I am sure your Lordships will be happy army which he trained, the discipline to re-echo the sentiments of general which he organised, the precepts which congratulation which Her Majesty has he gave, yet live among us. Amongst expressed with regard to the prosperity those precepts there is none which de- of the country during the past year, in serves fuller consideration at the present spite of many drawbacks-a prosperity moment than his well-known maxim, greater than the most hopeful could have that 66 a great State cannot afford to anticipated. The prospect of war has, wage a little war"-which teaches us indeed, clouded the more hopeful anticipanot to waste our strength or to exhaust tions with which the last year was inauguour resources on petty and insignificant rated. The failure of the harvest and the enterprises; and that it is only concen- rise in the price of provisions have, unquestrating our power and resources by ener- tionably, caused much distress, while the getic action and signal undertakings, that strikes among the operatives in many of we can hope to secure that lasting peace our manufacturing towns have been prowhich is so much to be desired. And let ductive of injury and of loss of capital. us here remember that in such a contest But, if these strikes have been injurious, we do not draw the sword from any ambi- we may reflect with pleasure on the conduct tious motive of our own, or from any punc- of the men in their self-imposed privations tilious scruples of honour, nor even to that it has been singularly free from redress the wrongs of an Asiatic empire crime and from lawless violence; and we whose power some suppose to be now can only wonder that with so much rectitottering to its ruin; but that we are tude of purpose such deep error of judg contending for the highest of all objects ment should be combined. So, again, if that we could pursue for the indepen- the failure of the harvest has been great dence of nations, the maintenance of treaties, and of the stability of that balance of power upon which our own preservation, and indeed civilisation itself, depends. And if there be one cause which

can

more than another inspire us with confidence in such a moment of doubt and

and depressing, we may admire the energy with which the agricultural classes have prepared to meet the emergency, and by calling in the aid of science have shown themselves to be capable of surmounting those difficulties which not unnaturally beset a period of transition from restricted to

an open system of trade. And, thanks | cised. And, seeing the magnitude of these also to the energy of that noble Lord whose results, it ought to impress upon us the vigour and talent have been equally con- duty of carrying out still further those prinspicuous in the Home Office as they were in ciples upon which that commercial system the Foreign (Viscount Palmerston), many is based; and it is with the view of carryinternal improvements have been effected: ing out the principles that Her Majesty, as a more extensive system of drainage, the She has announced in Her gracious Speech, removal of intramural burials, and the has directed a Bill to be framed with the establishment of sanitary commissions in view of opening the coasting trade to the various towns to promote the public ships of all friendly nations. The existing health. The success of these and fur- laws with regard to the coasting trade ther measures in contemplation, for the are, as your Lordships will remember, consumption of smoke, and generally for the only remaining part of the old Navithe purification of our towns, promise re- gation Laws, which were repealed a few sults no less conducive to the physical years ago. Since the period of that rethan to the moral well-being of the people. peal, the career of our commercial navy Neither can I omit to remind your Lord- -as I have already observed-has been ships of the rapid increase of the last year's eminently successful. There has been a revenue, the flourishing condition of our more than proportionate increase in the mercantile marine-where the supply of tonnage of our shipping, and in the anships has hardly equalled the demand-the nual imports and exports; whilst the comgreater efficiency of the Army and Navy, petition of steam navigation, apparently the improved distribution of the prize at first sight a hindrance, has been genemoney to our sailors, and the improve- rally considered to have given a fresh ment in their prospects-a measure which impulse and stimulus to this branch of our has been dictated not as a mere expedient trade. Under these circumstances, it canfor temporary purposes, but which has not but seem natural that the spread of been adopted from a sense of justice, and our commerce and the desire for greater from an impartial consideration of their uniformity in our commercial system, should claims. While the amelioration of our laws call for an alteration in these remaining and of the condition of all classes and in- laws, which have not only lost all connexterests has been great at home, the pros- ion but are absolutely at variance with pects of still further improvements from the existing code. abroad are equally encouraging. In China, which already employs beneficially between thirty and forty millions of our commercial capital, a gigantic empire is crumbling away, to give fuller and freer scope to Anglo-Saxon energy and enterprise. In the West Indies a faint dawn of improvement glimmers above the political horizon of those ill-starred colonies. In India, the vigorous measures which have been adopted for the construction of railways, inspires a hope of internal improvement and a more general diffusion of knowledge among the subject millions entrusted to our rule. In British Canada never was there greater prosperity; while in Australia and New Zealand, the abundant resources of those regions have been so rapidly developed under the system of colonial self-government, that will probably play no unimportant part in the world's history. These are the results of the moral predominance of the Government of England over distant countries-results which may, I am convinced, in no small degree be attributed to the sway which the commercial policy of this country has exer

My Lords, Her Majesty has directed your attention to the condition of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. University reform is a question of deep importance, for it relates to institutions with which there are few, I would fain believe, in this country who do not sympathise. They are interwoven with our history and eonstitution-with institutions which are calculated to affect our most vital interests, and they form the noblest monuments which the piety and the learning of bygone ages have transmitted to our care. For my own part I owe so deep a debt of gratitude to one of those Universities, that I can never approach the subject with any other feelings than those of reverence and affection; and it is because I so regard Oxford that I earnestly trust she may ultimately co-operate in the enlightened views which were suggested to her not long ago in the circular addressed to the Chancellor by the noble Lord the Secretary of State for the Home Department. New and higher duties are required of us all as individuals in these days, and corporations-especially those whose purposes may

this subject, will, I doubt not, meet with universal acceptation by your Lordships and the country.

But there is one more subject of reform to which Her Majesty has referred, and one of peculiar public importance—I allude to Parliamentary reform. Reform, in the highest and best sense of the word, and abstracted from party significance, is an essential of a State which is possessed of vitality, and, consequently, of progress. But that State is happiest where legislators in their reforms aim at following out the analogy of nature, and strive rather to reproduce and develop than to break up and remodel existing institutions. Fortu

be said in some degree to extend beyond the sphere of this world-cannot be exempted from such a righteous demand. At the same time, much as I desire to see them throw open their arms yet wider, and to extend their invaluable privileges to a larger class than at present participate in them, deeply should I regret if, in the effort to widen the range of scientific studies, confessedly valuable as they are, that teaching, which I hold to be equally important, and without which no education, in the widest sense of the term, can be sound, or pure, or useful, should be in any degree overlooked; or if, in imitation of foreign practices, they should lose their peculiar English character, and aban-nately for us, we are called on to legislate don the religious basis upon which they were founded, and to which they owe their endurance, and the awe and veneration of all who have felt their kindly and protecting influence.

I turn now to another topic of the Speech from the Throne. I allude to the subject of legal reform. Few of your Lordships, I apprehend, will be prepared to deny its necessity or advantages. During the last few years many improvements have been introduced, especially in the Court of Chancery, with the view of simplifying legal proceedings, to divest the law of many useless and cumbrous shackles and technicalities, and to diminish that cost and that delay which are still so much the subject of complaint. And if in such reform be comprehended an alteration in the Ecclesiastical Courts, which are a remnant of an antiquated jurisdiction, such a result will, I doubt not, meet with your Lordships' hearty concurrence and approval.

There is yet one subject of legal reform to which Her Majesty has alluded in a special manner. I refer to the Law of Settlement. This law, which owes its origin to the reign of Charles II., certainly cannot be said to have effected the end for which it was intended. The continual discussions that have arisen from it, and the incessant litigation with which it has been rife, the numerous variety of qualifications and of settlements, including now ten distinet descriptions, together with the appeals upon appeal, and the transference of the case from one tribunal to another, with many other difficulties connected with the system of casual poor relief, show that legislation has not as yet touched the point in question, or devised a remedy to meet the evils of an extended pauperism. A well-considered and digested measure on

on this subject under peculiar and generally favourable circumstances-when there is no external pressure from public opinion to influence our calmer and more dispassionate judgment, and when the evils we complain of, and the remedies of which we are in search, are indirect in their nature, and consequently do not involve any sweeping and violent changes, which are so often attendant upon popular excitement. At the same time I do not deny that the lapse of nearly a quarter of a century since the passing of the Reform Act calls for many material changes, which are not only necessary, but absolutely expedient and just, and will be conducive to the durability and perfection of our constitution. Some towns have fallen into a comparative decrease, while others have sprung up with marvellous rapidity, their populations having extended far beyond their original limits, and including many persons who deserve and would appreciate the possession of the franchise. Welcome under such circumstances would be a wise and moderate measure of reform, which should eliminate the corrupt influences which at present too largely affect our electoral system--that, in extending the franchise to any classes beyond those who at present possess it, should give security, at the same time, for the respectability of the constituency and the independence of the representative which should provide by ample safeguards and precautions for the independence of the voter, and which should be free from the tendency of the present system to depress the intellectual element of the community, to make mind subservient to matter, to make those who labour the rulers of those who think. At all events, we have every guarantee in the well-known principles of the noble Earl at the head of Her Ma