THE THREE KINGDOMS.

THE principal event of the month contributes another illustration to Swift's Essay on the important ends
which have had contemptible beginnings. A difference which mainly originated in the question of how
much a certain ill-treated gentleman had lost by the loss of sundry wines and pickles, upholstery, china,
jewels, and silver soup-ladles, has resolved itself into the question of whether England shall be governed by
free-trade ministers opposed to despotic repression on the Continent, or by ministers committed against
free-trade and in harmony with the cabinets of Vienna and St. Petersburg. It will form a curious chapter in
some future history of parties, if, at the very time when such combinations were supposed to have lost all
power, the force of party and personal influences on this particular question should succeed in investing that
section of the House of Commons which is least influential in numbers, ability, popular sympathy, or
official aptitude, with the power which a stronger section in that House had not been able to hold, though
backed by the favour of the Sovereign and the good wishes of the people, and engaged in a series of highly-
important measures.

The bill prohibiting Intramural Interments, and giving power to the Board of Health to buy up existing
cemeteries, to establish new ones, and (with due regard to individual feelings and wishes) to regulate the
general management and expenditure of burials, has passed the House of Commons without any material
change. There has also been fairly brought before the country, in the form of detailed reports submitted to
the legislature, a scheme for the establishment of a Metropolitan Cattle-Market, advising the total extinction
of the ancient nuisances of Newgate and Smithfield; and a project for the Supply of Water to the Metropolis
from the neighbourhood of Bagshot Heath, of which the realisation would place London, in respect to such
advantages, above every past or existing city in the ancient or modern world. But to these benefits and
promises of social legislation, present or prospective, we have some important set-offs to make in our record
of the month's proceedings. The bill to provide instruction for such of the poorer classes of the people in
England as are excluded from the advantages of all existing schemes of education, has been rejected by a very
large majority; and a bill somewhat similar in its object with regard to Scotland, supported by the Free
Church, and having in view the relief of parochial schools from general Church control, and the nationalisation
(so to speak) of Scotch education, has been rejected by a very small majority. These divisions indicate the
growing strength of a party which it somewhat misuses a noble historical name to call Puritan. To

                                                        "Compound for sins we are inclined to
                                                        By damning those we have no mind to,
                                                        Still so perverse and opposite
                                                        As if we worshipped God for spite"—

is to dishonour by the mere pretence of imitation the stern self-denial of the enthusiasts of the seventeenth
century. They would not have voted with Lord Ashley to shut the post on a Sunday, yet hesitated with him
to put an interdict on Sunday travelling. They would not have struck from the poor all means of kindly and
needful communication with their friends for nearly a third of every week, yet left it as a privilege to the
rich to put carriages and messengers into requisition at their pleasure. The complaint of the leading Sabbatarian
organ, that Lord Ashley's band of followers had been thinned by the attractions of Epsom, was an egregiously
simple exposure of the real truth of the matter, side by side with that assumed cant of it which rules the outward
conduct of so many. But perhaps it will not ultimately be matter of regret that the chief experiment should
have been made, even at the cost of all the discomfort it involves, and though it was clearly not the duty of a
government to have yielded to what they knew to be evil, on the surest calculation that good might come
of it. The House of Lords has meanwhile been emboldened to pass a bill for the prevention of Sunday trading,
which will deprive the poor man of all access to articles of food or domestic requirement on a Sunday, with
the exception of meat and fish up to nine o'clock for the four summer months, while it will insure to the
rich man a morning delivery at his own house, all the year round, of whatever fish, meat, poultry, or game
he requires; which will fine or imprison a barber who shaves after ten o'clock in the morning, and similarly
punish a newsvender for selling anything that is not stamped, while it overlooks the newsvender who sells
anything that is stamped, and leaves the publican and sinner to shave himself if  he can. But it is hardly
conceivable that a majority will be caught in the lower House for this ridiculous bill, even at the dangerous dinner-
hour—when small knots of conspirators carry questions by sudden storm, and ministers are made to stand and
deliver on every conceivable subject, from stamp acts and triennial parliaments to letter-carriers and British
distillers.

The bill regulating the hours of Factory labour has passed the Commons unmutilated, and the Australian
bill has narrowly escaped mutilation in the Lords, its most distinctive feature having been retained by an
infinitesimal majority.  The County Courts bill has reached the upper house in too weakly a condition
to be able to make any very effective stand against the fate which is said to await it there. Another important
measure has got into the clutches of a somewhat equivocal committee in their Lordships' house, and the
Bishop of Salisbury is doing his best to nullify the Manchester Rectory bill. We have also to record that the
Railway Audit bill, as amended by the Lords, has since been rejected by the Commons on the ground
of interference with privilege; but, however unfortunate it may be that existing facilities for fraud