Neue Oder-Zeitung.
Nr. 325, 16. Juli 1855.
Mittagblatt

X. London, 13 July. (From Parliament.) Those uninitiated in the mysteries of jurisprudence find it difficult to comprehend how, in the simplest legal case, legal questions unexpectedly arise that owe their existence not to the nature of the legal case, but to the rules and formulas of procedural law. The handling of these legal ceremonies makes the lawyer, just as the handling of church ceremonies makes the Brahmin. As in the development of religion, so in the development of law the form becomes the content. But what procedural law is for courts of law, the order of the day and rules of procedure are for legislative bodies. The history of the agrarian laws proves that the old Roman oligarchs, the inventors of chicanery in legal procedure, were also the first to introduce procedural chicanery into legislation. In both respects they have been surpassed by England. The technical difficulties of putting a motion on the order of the day, the various metamorphoses a bill must undergo in order to be transformed into a law; the formulas which allow the opponent of a motion or a bill to keep the former out of the House and the latter from getting out of it – all this constitutes an inexhaustible arsenal of parliamentary chicanery, pettifoggery and tactics. No other English minister before Palmerston, however, has so completely given the House of Commons the appearance, tone and character of a Court of Chancery. Where diplomacy is insufficient, he takes refuge in chicanery. Under his hand every debate on an invidious motion turns into a preliminary debate on the day on which the debate is really to take place and the case is to be pleaded. So with Milner Gibson’s motion, so with Layard’s motion, so now with Bulwer’s motion. With the order of the day overcrowded at the end of the session, Bulwer knew how to bring forward his motion only on a day when the House resolves itself into a Committee of Supply, i.e. when the Ministry presents demands for money to the House of Commons.

Friday is usually set aside for this business. It depends, of course, on the Ministry when it demands money from the Commons, and hence when the House resolves itself into a Committee of Supply. Palmerston at once declared to Bulwer that he would not go into Supply this Friday, as the technical expression goes, but would proceed with the bill on limited liability in trading companies. Bulwer might look for “his own day.” Disraeli therefore gave notice last Tuesday that he would appeal to the House the following Thursday (yesterday) to remove this chicanery. Palmerston forestalled him. He rose at yesterday’s sitting and declared amidst general laughter of the House that it had certainly not been his purpose to delay the debate on Bulwer’s vote of no confidence and to prevent the honourable House, through technical difficulties, from delivering its judgment. But the additional documents on the Vienna Conference could not, despite all efforts, be laid before the members of the House before tomorrow, and how were they to pass judgment without taking cognisance of the documents in the case? He was prepared to set aside Monday for the discussion of Bulwer’s motion. Disraeli pointed out that “the additional documents” had absolutely nothing to do with Bulwer’s motion. The bill on limited liability in trading companies was quite important in its way. But what the nation now wanted to know was: “whether the Cabinet is jointly and severally responsible for its acts, or whether the principle of limited liability also applies here”? She wanted above all to know the conditions under which the associates of the firm of Downing Street conducted their business? Bulwer declared that he would accept Monday as the day of the debate. Russell, on his side, took advantage of this incidental episode to make a futile attempt to tone down and twist the meaning of his statement of last Friday. But the second, improved edition comes too late, as today’s Times conclusively demonstrates. For several days, moreover, The Times has been exerting all its arts to save the Palmerston cabinet at Russell’s expense, persistently supported in this by the simple-minded Morning Advertiser, which every time recovers its entire faith in Palmerston as soon as Parliament threatens to lose it. Palmerston has in the meantime gained a few days’ respite for a manoeuvre. How he exploits every such day was proved by the Irish row which occurred yesterday in the Lower House. For two years, as is well known, three bills have been dragging themselves through Parliament which are intended to regulate the relations between Irish landlords and tenants. One of these bills defines the compensation which the tenant, if the landlord gives him notice to quit, is to be entitled to claim for the improvements effected on the soil. Hitherto, the improvements effected by Irish tenants (almost all yearly tenants for one year) have only served to enable the landlord to demand higher rents after the expiration of the lease. The tenant thus either loses the farm, if he is unwilling to renew the contract on too unfavourable terms, and with the farm the capital he has laid out in improvements, or he is compelled to pay the landlord interest for the improvements made with his capital, over and above the original rent. Support for the above-mentioned bills was one of the conditions that bought the votes of the Irish brigade for the Coalition Ministry. They therefore passed in the Lower House in 1854, but were postponed in the Upper House, with the secret co-operation of the Ministers, until the following session (that of 1855), then so remodelled that their point was broken off, and in this mutilated form sent back to the Lower House. Here, last Thursday, the main clause of the compensation bill was sacrificed on the altar of landed property, and the Irish found, to their astonishment, that votes partly belonging to the Ministry and partly directly connected with it had turned the scale against them. Sergeant Shee’s fierce onslaught on Palmerston threatened a riot in the “Irish quarter” of Parliament, the consequences of which were just at that moment serious. Palmerston therefore mediated through Sadleir, ex-member of the Coalition and broker of the Irish brigade, and arranged for a deputation of 18 Irish parliamentarians to wait upon him the day before yesterday with the inquiry whether he would use his influence to reverse the parliamentary vote and carry the clause through the House at a fresh division? He naturally declared himself ready to do everything to secure the Irish votes against the vote of no confidence. The premature explosion of this intrigue in the Lower House gave rise to one of those scandalous scenes which characterise the decay of the oligarchical Parliament. The Irish dispose of 105 votes. It turned out, however, that the majority of the deputation of the 18 had not been given a mandate. In general, Palmerston can no longer make use of the Irish in ministerial crises quite as he did in O’Connell’s time. With the dissolution of all the old parliamentary fractions, the Irish quarter, too, has become fissured and splintered. At any rate, the incident proves how Palmerston uses the respite he has gained to work on the various coteries. At the same time he is expecting some favourable news from the theatre of war, some small event which can be exploited parliamentary—if not militarily. The submarine telegraph has snatched the conduct of the war from the hands of the generals and subordinated it to the dilettantish, astrological whims of Bonaparte, as well as to the parliamentary-diplomatic intrigues. Hence the inexplicable and unparalleled character of the second Crimean campaign.