ought to be abandoned.—Lord PALMERSTON said he
would not waste the time of the house by a discussion
now so idle, feeling sure that protection is dead, and
that the people will act the part of registrar-general of
deaths over its venerable corpse at the coming election.
He had read with anything but satisfaction the Mather
correspondence. The whole case seemed to him, not a
comedy, but a tragedy of "All in the Wrong." There
was much to criticise in the conduct of all parties but
Mr. Mather and his son. The late government was
wrong—the present government was wrong—and Mr.
Scarlett was also wrong. Taking the conduct of the
present government first, he backed the assertion of
Lord John Russell, that Lord Malmesbury was very
wrong in asking Mr. Mather to assess the damages; and
again incomprehensibly wrong, both in conduct and
feeling, in stating to the Tuscan government that Mr.
Mather had made an "exorbitant demand." He was
again wrong in confining the formal demand of redress
to the Tuscan government; for he well knew of the
convention between Tuscany and Austria to which Mr.
Osborne had referred; and he knew that so strictly had
that convention been acted on, that when some drunken
Austrian soldiers insulted the grand duke's family by
hauling them out of their carriage in order to replace
them by a staggering comrade, redress was only granted
through the trial and punishment of the men by their
own officers. The lesson read to Tuscany was a good
one—that if they gave themselves up to a great power,
we would not acknowledge that step, but would say we
did not care a pin for it; and would insist on their own
responsibility, and make them pay another time. But
it would have been more impressive if we had gone to
the greater power, and said to that state, that responsibility
attends power; if we had taken the handy mode
of saying, "If you overbear this weak country, we will
have reparation from you for the outrages of your
garrison, instead of from the weaker power you have
overborne." Lord Malmesbury seemed also to have
been most wrong and hasty in disavowing Mr. Scarlett
for surrendering the principle of Tuscan responsibility;
for Mr. Scarlett expressly adhered to it. In his reply to
the Duke of Castiliagno, on the 11th April, he said:—
"I accept your arrangement; but as you have thought
right to reaffirm your principle as to the non-responsibility
of Tuscany, I think it right to refer you to my
note of the 18th March, in which the principle of the
British government is laid down that you are responsible;
and I tell you that the British government maintains
that principle in all its integrity." Upon the point of
the tone assumed to the Court of Vienna, the late
government was open itself to criticism; for Earl Granville
expressly said to the Earl of Westmoreland, "I
have no instructions to give you;" and no application
was made to the Austrian government. That was an
error; for primá facie the Austrian government was the
party from whom redress should have been demanded;
and if they had shown us proofs that the officer who cut
down an unarmed man had done so in obedience to the
rules of their service, then we should have been entitled
to say to them—"You may make what regulations you
like, provided they are not attended with injury to a
British subject; but when a British subject suffers by
those regulations, they become improper, and we expect
that you shall at all events make an apology." The
great error of Mr. Scarlett, Lord Palmerston thought,
was his acceptance of the two young Stratfords as part
of the damages for Mr. Mather; because Lord Palmerston
had himself, while in the Foreign office, shown the
Tuscan government that their trial by Austrian
court-martial was illegal, and their imprisonment informal;
and accordingly their release had already been promised.
But this error of Mr. Scarlett only produced another
error by Lord Malmesbury:, who seemed to think he
must adopt all the acts of his authorised agent; whereas
in diplomacy you may always disavow your agent if he
diverges from your instructions. Lord Palmerston
concluded with some remarks on the lamentable unexampled
system of cruelty, tyranny, and violence of every sort,
existing in the Neapolitan and Roman states; and on
the serious international importance of the continued
occupation of Tuscany by Austria and of Rome by
France,—a state of things to which he gravely besought
the earnest attention of a British government on terms
with the two governments mainly interested in a decision
upon the matter.—The CHANCELLOR of the
EXCHEQUER, going over Mr. Mather's case, amplified
and extended Lord Stanley's defence of Lord Malmesbury.
Turning then to Lord John Russell's strictures
on general policy, he made a general rejoinder. The
attack, he said, had been made early; and then again.
He supposed this was the last forlorn hope: but the
drum was muffled, and the fire had slackened; and he
might say confidently that the citadel would not be
yielded. Taunts had been thrown out that the credit
of Chancery reform was borrowed: to whomever that
credit was due, it was a credit to be proud of; but
if it was not due to the present government, it had
also been disclaimed by the late government; for when
it was mentioned in the list of government measures,
after the new ministry came in, Lord John received it
with a derisive scoff. There were also taunts of using
religion and education for party purposes: Lord
John remembered "the Appropriation-clause," and
shrunk in horror from the repetition of such manoeuvres.
Mr. Disraeli defended his Buckinghamshire
address. He defied the exposure of one word ever
uttered by him to the effect that the corn-laws were
for maintaining rent; but he argued, that if rents
have been considerably diminished by hasty and
unjust legislation, there is a just claim for redress. He
contended with lengthened argument, that his position
and principles on commercial policy are now what they
have ever been. He denied that at any time after the
corn-law and sugar-law legislation of 1846 and 1847,
much as he condemned that legislation, had he ever
maintained a recurrence to the same laws that
regulated those matters before. "I say now, what I said
before in this house, that I will not pin my political
career or any policy which I think may be necessary
to this great and prosperous country, on what is,
after all, not a principle, but a measure; and it is
possible that, as a measure of finance, I should be
glad as a financier that there should be a moderate
fixed duty on corn. But if I find—by circumstances
which I do not wish particularly to describe—by acts
which I have no wish to denounce—that a fiscal
proposition is invested with so much popular odium that it
would be one of the unwisest things a minister could do
to propose a tax which the people dislike, whether
rightly or wrongly, I cannot say I feel myself bound in
honour to make that the basis of my policy, and the
only measure which is a panacea for a suffering
community. Our wish is, that the interests which we
believe were unjustly treated in 1846 should receive
the justice which they deserve, with as little injury to
those who may have benefited more than they were
then entitled to benefit, as is possible for human wisdom
to devise. Our object is to do justice to those classes to
which we believe you acted unjustly in 1846; and we
wish to do that without disturbing the system which is
now established."—After some remarks by Lord D.
STUART, who strongly censured Lord Malmesbury's
conduct in the Mather case, the debate terminated.
After some other business, which occupied the house
till near three in the morning, the adjourned Maynooth
debate came round to its turn. Mr. SPOONER insisted
on going on with it then, or on dividing. But such a
proposal was strongly opposed.—Mr. Roundell PALMER
said, he was desirous of expressing his views on the
question; and there were indications that other speakers
would rise if there were another opportunity. A
motion to adjourn was made, and being pressed
to a division, was carried by 103 to 29.—Mr. SPOONER
intimated that he should take that division as
the index of the feeling of the house on his original
motion.

On Tuesday, the 15th, at the morning sitting, the
Maynooth Question was resumed.—Mr. KEOGH
inquired whether Mr. Spooner intended to replace upon
the votes the order for resuming the adjourned debate,
which, by the abrupt adjournment of the house at three
o'clock that morning, was left in a state of suspended
animation.—Mr. SPOONER replied that he was content
to let the division already had be a decision on the
main question.—Along and somewhat angry discussion