fifty-two hours have been consumed in a hundred and fifty-three sittings, on an average of ten hours and a half
every day for four days of the week, and that at least a hundred and eleven bills have been passed into law, out of
the two hundred carried through a first reading; still the question is to be settled of the value of the work done,
and this unhappily is quite independent of the number of bills enacted or the hours consumed. The vice of
too much legislation is the unavoidable result of careless legislation. That bills "No. 1," "No. 2," and "No. 3,"
should indicate the blunders of a session discovered in time for remedy, would import little; but it matters
much more that each successive session should supply a supplement of correction to the blunders of its
predecessor so large, that the statute book is loaded past the limit of endurance, the efficacy of every kind of
Iegislation obstructed, and the future administration of our laws rendered more and more confused. Judged,
however, simply by its predecessors, the session has been of average utility. The Woods and Forests are
still mismanaged, the Window Tax unrepealed, the Jew disqualified, needless Oaths insisted upon, Savings
Banks unprotected, the Law of Settlement unsettled, Railway Audits mismanaged, the English Franchise not
extended, the Stamp Acts little better than they were, Ceylon still a mystery, the lonians unredressed.
Chancery not reformed, Smithfield not abolished, and the people unprovided with Education; though the new
Duke of Cambridge has been provided with twelve thousand a year, and the young Prince of Wales has got
five thousand pounds for stables nine years before he wants them. But these are not worse than the average
no-doings and misdoings of a session; whereas there is unusual merit in the Extramural Interments Bill,in
the Bill for Australian Self-government, in the principle of the yet imperfect Bill for extending County Court
Jurisdiction, in the intention of the somewhat crippled Bill for a reconstruction of the Ecclesiastical Commission,
in the Bill for correction of scandalous Church Abuses in Manchester, in the Brick Duties, Charitable
Trusts, and Mercantile Marine Bills, in the discomfiture of the Sabbatarians as to Sunday trading and Sunday
letters, in the greater facilities given for the establishment of popular Museums and Libraries, and in the
issue of the Royal Commission for taking evidence as to the state of the Universities.

The failures of the session most to be deplored are in the still hapless direction of Ireland. The Bill for
the Elective Franchise has indeed been passed, by the exact compromise anticipated in our last Narrative, but
so far maimed in a very vital member; and though six desperate attempts in the Lords to strengthen the
land against the peasant, in so many bills introduced by Irish landlords, have been defeated in the lower
house, yet not the least advance to a better system has been made in the all-important direction of landlord
and tenant; while the working of the Encumbered Estates Bill is still hampered by the delay of the Security
for Advances Bill, and the power and authority of the Lord Lieutenant has received a serious check in the
premature disturbance and unsettlement of the question of the Irish Viceroyalty. Nor while these mistakes
of Parliament are recounted, does any set-off appear in the condition of the country itself, or in the policy of
agitation there. There seems no apprehension of a less than average harvest; but the most dreadfvd
evictions continue, as well as the savage murders they occasion; and though it is impossible to doubt the importance
of a movement which enlists the resolute Presbyterian of the north in a co-operative league with the ardent
Catholic of the south, it is to be said of what has hitherto transpired of the Dublin conference on the subject
of Tenant Right, that a series of more manifestly impracticable propositions could hardly have been looked for
out of Bedlam. Nor is this the only Irish conference from which evil is just now to be apprehended. A
Catholic Synod is assembled (while we write) in the Tipperary market-town of Thurles, not simply for the
purpose of reviving gorgeous Catholic ceremonies unwitnessed in these islands for centuries, but with the
more grave intention of restoring stricter monastic observances, of reimposing canonical practices and saints-
day observances, of forbidding marriages between Protestant and Catholic, of separating the two persuasions
in burial and fast as well as in festival and marriage, and finally of pouring out the vials of Papal wrath on
the Government colleges lately built and endowed in the hope of educating Catholic and Protestant together.
Let not the reader smile as he reads this, and dismiss it as an amusing piece of insolence. A glance at what
the last month has elsewhere brought forth will not be inappropriate here, and will enable him the better to
understand what is now proceeding in Ireland.

In truth, by far the most remarkable feature of the time, and that which, sooner or later, will lead to the
most decisive results, is the unblushing revival, abroad and at home, of the most insolent claims of the
Roman Catholic Church. While political parties on the continent have been tearing each other to pieces,
dominant priests have been quietly repiecing pretensions shattered even centuries ago; and now that the
laymen are exhausted with their struggle, the churchmen are canying off the spoils. The Jesuits have again
got admission to the schools in France; the Prussian priests, not long ago, had the insolence to refuse the
oath to the constitution; advantage has been taken of the helplessness of Austria to obtain such safe
guarantee for popish domination as the right to punish priests, to impose ecclesiastical deprivations, to receive
the dictates of the Pope, and to compel the observance of Catholic saints' days, independently of the civil
power; and a quarrel now rages in Piedmont wherein the whole question is stirred to its foundations.

In that kingdom, till within a few months, exclusive clerical jurisdictions existed, irresponsible of the civil
tribunals; but one of the first acts of the new king, and his new representative chamber, was to abolish this
injustice, and make all Piedmontese without exception subject to the regular law. Upon this the Archbishop
of Turin, Cardinal Franzoni, refused obedience; was imprisoned for fourteen days; and since his release has
vented denunciations against the civil power from every Sardinian pulpit, in the shape of appeals to Austria,
and invocations of Rome. In the midst of these the minister Santa Rosa, most obnoxious for his support
of civil rights against ecclesiastical privilege, was seized the other day with mortal illness; when Franzoni
forbad the clergy of his parish to administer the dying rites without previous confession of penitence for
his acts as a minister, and Santa Rosa, declaring with his dying breath that he knew how to reconcile his
duty to his country with his duty to his God, died unshriven; whereupon, by the same interdict of Franzoni,
the rites of burial were refused, and then the people, suddenly awaking to the monstrous tyranny, rose in
a mass against the recusant convent, compelled one priest to perform the burial offices, drove out the rest,
and made the show of popular wrath so formidable that Monsiguor Franzoni was next day under escort to
a distant fortress, and his too obedient monks under sentence of banishment from Turin. Then came, at that
very instant, the answers of Austria and Rome to Monsignor's original appeal; Austria demanding prompt
banishment of a moderate newspaper editor opposed to Franzoni, and Rome declaring broadly that no
Catholic state has a right to alter its domestic institutions, so far as education or worship is concerned,
without previous assent from the Holy See!