London, July 13. It is difficult for those not initiated into the 
mysteries of jurisprudence to understand why it should be that, in 
the most straightforward lawsuits, unexpected legal problems arise 
which owe their existence, not to the nature of the lawsuit, but to 
the rules and formalities of legal procedure. It is the handling of 
these legal ceremonies that makes your lawyer, just as it is the 
handling of ecclesiastical ceremonies that makes your Brahmin. 
Just as in the course of development of religion, so in the course 
of development of law too, form becomes content. But what legal 
procedure is to courts of law, the agenda and standing orders are 
to legislative bodies. The history of agrarian law proves that the 
old Roman oligarchs, the originators of chicanery in_ legal 

proceedings, were also the first to introduce procedural chicanery 
“into legislation. In both respects they have been outdone by 
England. The technical difficulties involved in tabling a motion, 
the various metamorphoses that a bill has to go through before it 
can become law; the formalities which permit the opponent of a 
motion or a bill to prevent the former from entering the House 
and the latter from leaving it—all this.provides an inexhaustible 
arsenal of parliamentary chicanery, pettifogging and tactics. But 
no English Minister before Palmerston has so thoroughly lent the 
House of Commons** the appearance, tone and character of a 
Court of Chancery.2, Where diplomacy does not suffice, he has 
recourse to chicanery. Under his guidance every debate on an 
objectionable motion is turned into a preliminary debate about the 
day when the debate shall actually take place and the case be put. 

So it was with Milner Gibson’s motion, so it was with Layard’s 
motion and so it is now with Bulwer’s motion.’ So overloaded were 
the orders of the day at the close of the session that Bulwer was 
only able to bring in his motion on a day when the House went 
into a Committee of Supply,” i.e. when the Government puts its 
financial requirements before the House of Commons.” Friday is 
generally set aside for this business. However, it depends, of 
course, on the Government when it asks the Commons for supplies 
and hence when the House goes into a Committee of Supply. 
Palmerston promptly told Bulwer that he would not, to use the 
technical term, go into Supply that Friday, but proceed with the 
Bill on the limited liability of trading companies, and that Bulwer 
might “fix a day for himself.‘ Last Tuesday, therefore, Disraeli 
gave notice that he would appeal to the House the following 
Thursday (yesterday) to set aside this piece of chicanery. 
Palmerston forestalled him. He rose during yesterday’s sitting and 
declared amidst the general laughter of the House that it was 
certainly not his intention either to delay the debate on Bulwer’s 
vote of no-confidence or, by placing technical difficulties in the 
way, to prevent the honourable House from forming an opinion. 
But, he went on, despite every effort, the supplementary 
documents relating to the Vienna Conference could not have been 
laid upon the table of the House of Commons before the 
following day, and how could the House form an opinion without 
having seen the documents of the case? He was, he said, prepared 
to set aside Monday for a discussion of Bulwer’s motion.“ Disraeli 
pointed out that “the supplementary documents” bore no relation 
whatever to Bulwer’s motion; the Bill on the limited liability of 
trading companies was quite important in its own way, but what 
the nation presently wanted to know was: 

“whether the Cabinet is collectively liable for its actions or whether the principle of 
limited liability is also applicable here. Above all, it wanted to know the conditions 
under which the partners of the firm in Downing Street © conducted their business.” 

No. 22103, July 11, 1855.—Ed. 

Bulwer said he would accept Monday as the day for the debate. 
Russell, for his part, took advantage of this incident to attempt to 
tone down and distort the meaning of the statement he made last 
Friday.* But in vain; the second, amended version arrived too late, 
as is patently evident from today’s Times. Indeed, for several days 
The Times has been using every artifice to save Palmerston’s 
Cabinet at Russell’s expense, wherein it is steadfastly supported by 
the simple-minded Morning Advertiser, which regains its whole- 
hearted faith in Palmerston each time Parliament shows signs of 
losing it. Meanwhile Palmerston has gained a few days’ respite in 
which to do some manoeuvring. How he exploited each of those 
days is evident from the Irish row” which occurred yesterday in 
the House of Commons. 

For two years, as everyone knows, three bills have been drifting 
through Parliament, their purpose being to regulate the relations 
between Irish landlords and tenants. One of these bills lays down 
how much compensation the tenant is entitled to claim on 
improvements effected on the land, in the event of his landlord | 
giving him notice to quit. Hitherto the improvements effected by 
Irish tenants (virtually all of whom hold a one-year lease) only 
served to enable the landlord to demand a higher rent on 
expiration of the lease. Thus the tenant, should he not wish to 
renew the agreement on less favourable terms, either loses the 
farm and, with the farm, the capital he has laid out on 
improvements, or he is compelled to pay the landlord interest, 
over and above the original rent, for improvements effected with 
his (the tenant’s) capital. Support for the above-mentioned bills 
was one of the conditions with which the coalition Cabinet bought 
the vote of the Irish Brigade.”*” Hence, in 1854, they were passed 
by the Commons, but deferred by the Lords, with the connivance 
of the Ministers, until the following session (1855), when they 
suffered such drastic revision that all their teeth were drawn, and 
in this mutilated form were returned to the Commons. There, 
last Thursday, the main clause of the Compensation Bill was 
sacrificed on the altar of landed property and the Irish were. 
astonished to discover that the scales had been tipped against 
them, partly by the votes of members of the Government, partly 
by the votes of its immediate allies. Serjeant Shee’s furious 
onslaught upon Palmerston portended a riot* in Parliament’s 

2 July 6, 1855.— Ed. 

“Irish Quarter”, something which might, at this particular 
juncture, have serious consequences. Palmerston therefore, 
through the medium of Sadleir, ex-member of the coalition and 
broker to the Irish Brigade, arranged for a deputation of eighteen 
Irish Members of Parliament to wait upon him the day before 
yesterday with the request that he use his influence to have the 
parliamentary vote rescinded and to carry the clause through the 
House in another division. He, of course, declared that he was 
ready to do anything so as to secure the Irish votes against the 
motion of no-confidence. The premature exploding of this in- 
trigue in the House of Commons gave rise to one of the rowdy scenes 
typical of the decline of an oligarchic Parliament. The Irish dispose 
of 105 votes. However, it transpired that the majority had not given a 
mandate to the eighteen-strong deputation. For that matter, 
Palmerston can no longer make quite the same use of the Irish in 
Ministerial crises as he was wont to do in O’Connell’s day. With the 
disintegration of all the old parliamentary factions, the Irish Quarter 
too has split up and become fragmented. At all events, the incident 
demonstrates how Palmerston is exploiting the respite he gained to 
manipulate the various coteries. At the same time he 1s awaiting 
favourable news of some kind from the theatre of war, a minor event 
of some kind capable of parliamentary—if not military-— 
exploitation. The submarine telegraph has taken the conduct of the 
war out of the hands of the generals and subjected it to the 
amateurish astrological whims of Bonaparte and to parliamentary 
and diplomatic intrigue. Hence the inexplicable and completely 
unprecedented character of the second Crimean campaign.