fr would be unfair to expect much of importance politically in the Christmas Week newspapers, and if we turn to the cartoon in Punch, and it is from Punch's cartoon that we can generally gather with [certainty what subject is uppermost in the minds of people at home, we find that the subject is "The Wassail Bowl," with its message of peace and goodwill. ' The chief parliamentary incident was the prorogation, with the inevitable Queen's Speech, of which the St. James's says The Queen's Speech is, of course, a cheerful document. Queen's Speeches nearly always are. In this case, we cannot deny that Min-listers have some cause for congratulating themselves. Their autumn session has been a failure; but otherwise they have a very fair twelvemonth's work to look back upon. "They have passed a great measure of internal reform; they have governed Ireland with vigour and success, and have done excellent work in vindicating' the supremacy of the law and shattering the influence of the agitators their finance has been good; as far as the country knows (we confess that it is not much) their foreign policy has been cautious and sound; and they have even done a little towards the reform of the administrative services of the country. As Conservative for it is obvious that their opponents have men they have reason to be satisfied lost ground during the last few months. The carrying the Local Government Act, the increasing weakness of the League in Iveland, the fizzle of Mr. Gladstone's recent demonstra: tion, the defeat of the revolutionary party in the London School Board election, the Union:
successes in Holborn, Maidstone, Colchester and Stockton, and the recent battle at Suakim, all go to the credit of the Governme ties. "Ministers Legin 1889 stronger an fter found than they were in January, 1888.
A somewhat different view of the Speech taken by the Saturday, which remarks that there is one characteristic which these documents always present; they are always more or less, and sometimes entirely oat of relation to what has passed in Parliament dunt.; the session to which they refer. Fictions of this kind are so abundant in our system of Government, that there is nothing wonderful in this one. The following extract from the Sutwrday's article is somewhat long, but its length will be forgi in view of the clear statement it cental of how Parliament ought to have spent, and how it really did spend, the recent session Ample illustration of these remarks is to be founded on the contents of the Royal Speech delivered at the ceremony of prorogation in the present week. Of the six subjects referred to in the opening paragraphs of this document, there is not one which is undeserving of the place accorded to it by the Government, or hich has received from Parliament the tion it deserves Her Majesty is made, first place, to refer to the failure of the Fisheries Convention, and to express her that the Convention she had concluded with the President of the United States for the adjustment of the questions which had arisen between England and America in respect t> this matter had not commended itself to the judgment of the Senate of the United States, in whom, according to the Constitution of that country, the power of ratification vested. No one deny, we should think, that the event here referred to is one of very respectable international importance. Yet we search Hansard in vain to discover that it has commanded any attention in the House of Commons. Much the same may be said of the conclusion of the Sugar Bounties Convention, an incident duly commented upon in the next succeeding: ph of the Speech.
Yet here, again, the Legislature, Judging from the record. f ite ings, would appear to differ widely from the Gov: ernment in their estimate of its importance. It has not been deemed worth so much as a night's discussion in the House of Commons though, if there had been any sincerity in the Radical cavils at the economical policy of the Convention, it would obviously have been the duty of some member of that party to call Parliamentary attention to its heretical errors. And so with the rest of the speech. Of the four other subjects referred to in it by Her Majesty, one only—that of the occurrences in the Sotdan—has appeared to lend itself guificiently to the purposes of faction to make it worth any one's while to raise a discussion upon it in Parliament; though there is not tone of them which is\ not infinitely more deserving of the honour than nine-tenths of the topics which have formed the actual subject-matter of debate. Indeed, it is interesting to speculate on what would have been the contents of the Royal Speech if it had kept close {to such actual subject-matter of Parliamentary debate, and had treated of its several heads with a fulness proportioned to the time occupied in discussing them in the House of Commons. The document would have been, indeed, a curious one. It would have contained a long paragraph about the wrangles over the Parnell Commission Bill, trid another about the wrangles over the extension of Lord Ashbourne's Act; and a third, a little shorter, about the wrangles over the Under-Secretary for Ireland, And the rest would consist of paragraphs congravulat-1g the House on the patient thoroughness with which it had investigated the case of Mr, Mandeville, the affray at, Mitchelstown, the shooting of' Kinsella, and the boycotting provocations at Killeagh. And that would be El. It is well that the public should be reminded, by a study of the real contents of the Speech, how remote is the relation of munch that occurs in the House of Commons to anything which can, even by a stretch of courtesy, be called the national interest.
One of the prominent articles in the Spectator is on the Panama catastrophe, all means to recover from which have up to the present failed. The Spectutor beg by expressing its belief that the Panama Canal will be cut, because it is wanted, Decause it has fired the imagination of two continents and because, though it may never pay the cutters, it will pay certain other powerful men." As to this we may remark in passing that our age cannot be such a very sordid and utilitarian one, if men are still to be found to contribute their money to cut for an idea" a canal which will never pay the cutters, and which is not the only practicable route. Some £75,000,000 of obligations have been issued already, and sume £56,000,000 actually subscribed in hard coin and expended on the task: how much of this has gone in actual work will never be known, but Frenchmen, themselves shareholders, have been heard to express their belief that of every 10,000 francs paid out by the Directors of the company, not more than 1,000 has gone in actual work. It is estimated now by competent engineers, that it will cost forty millions sterling more to complete the task. The Nicaragua canal will cost, itis estimated, only twenty millions altogether, and the work there is sure to receive " vast impetus from the Panama collapse. Our own opinion then is that the first practicable waterway between the Atlantic and Pacific will be the Nicaragua one, and that it wil be long before the great Frenchman's enterprise will be completed, if it ever is, The Spectator, after discussing whether the French government or the present shareholders will find the necessary funds, We believe all these ideas are illusory, and that M. de Les and his shareholders hav in the long-run, just two alternatives before them. They can straggle on for a year or two through a slow sale of priority bonds, Keeping the works half-alive, but hardly advancing the Canal, till some occurrence, probably the great war, compels them to suspend tions, and admit that they are face to fave with failure; or they can sell their cor cession and their works to Americans for a sum down, and a right to some rate of interest when the' works succeed, The Americans
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.