THE THREE KINGDOMS.

A SESSION which closes with a financial year exhibiting a surplus of three millions, and on the eve of a
harvest of unexampled abundance, is in some degree independent of criticism. But on other grounds also
the past session may claim exemption from ordinary critical tests. Not for what has been done in it, but
for a large legacy of unavoidable work which it has left to its successor, the parliament of 1851 may claim to be
memorable. To its discussions will be largely due the measure of Reform now certainly impending over the
English Church. Amendment of the Law has begun in real earnest. Even Chancery reform has advanced
a step. There is little probability of further successful resistance to that measure for a General Registration
which, for more than twenty years, has baffled every statesman who took it in hand. The laws affecting
Newspapers are, at length, to undergo revision. The entire subject of Parochial Assessment is to be taken in
hand by the home minister. It is no longer possible that even the Income-Tax can be permanently passed
without an endeavour to give it a more equitable operation. The first minister of the crown has declared
against a Property Qualification for members of parliament; several leading members of the government
(including both the law officers of the crown) have voted in a majority for the Ballot; and the future
existence of a great party is now staked on a new Parliamentary Reform Bill.

Here is much promise to set against such performance as we find; and though, in amount, that
performance has been singularly small, in quality and significance it has not been so. Never was legislative
act apparently so unequal to the occasion, never act of any kind attended by so many sorry vicissitudes and
seeming blunders, as the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. Early in the discussion its friends withdrew its most
stringent clause, and on the very eve of its enactment it received from opponents its most operative provisions.
It has overthrown a ministry; it has paralysed the power of two parties in the state whom the Queen had
summoned to her service; and it has had the effect of re-constructing more firmly the ministry which it overthrew.
It was discussed as though its enactment must crush on the instant the free agency of all whom it affected,
and it had not been enacted for twenty-four hours when it was openly defied and disobeyed. All this
shadow to so little apparent substance would seem to show that the substance is not really quite so small as
it appears. In short, it will probably be found that in principle the act is one of the most important passed
in modern days. It is confessedly the commencement of a struggle which will have to be carried out to
the end. It is an expression of resolute resistance to that Power in full agreement and concurrence with which
all the tyrannies of the continent rest their present hope of sustainment. Inadequate as it is, thwarted as it
is likely to be, and fraught with all mean and pitiful consequences in its direct legal operation, its mere
enactment has yet carried comfort and encouragement wherever foreign peoples are suffering in conscience
or struggling for civil rights. But yet, more than this. The act has brought in issue, in our own country and
elsewhere, the compatibility of any kind of claim to ecclesiastical domination with the rights of political
equality; and, to the questions it has raised there can be no hope of satisfactory settlement till it becomes finally
determined to what extent the organisation and development of what is called religious freedom can,
with safety to political freedom, be permitted to continue. It is idle to suppose that the bill affects
merely the Roman Catholic. Many who supported it for fanatical reasons will in this respect, sooner or
later, undergo bitter disappointment. It is just as idle to call it the offspring of a particular statesman, or
to threaten any party in the state with its responsibilities. Such as it is the Whigs designed it, it was made
more efficient by the Tories and Irishmen, but the English People passed it. Nor, when its more vital
consequences shall hereafter have begun to show themselves, will it be remembered without a certain
curious interest that such a bill should have been passed in a session that had witnessed nine defeats in the
House of Commons of the ministry by whom it was introduced.

As little are the ministry to be held directly responsible for the two principal acts of law reform by which
the session has been distinguished. Still, though the act for the Amendment of the Law of Evidence, and that for
the Improvement of Criminal Administration, were respectively introduced by Lords Brougham and Campbell,
both were heartily supported by government, and the attorney-general took special charge of the first in its
passage through the lower house. Its scope and probable consequences have already been described in this
Narrative; and there can be no doubt but that the degree of effect thus given to the principle for which
Bentham, and the other leaders of law reform, have had to struggle for the most part of a century, will bring
with it other simplifications of legal practice as an almost immediate result. The admission of both parties
to a suit as witnesses on their own behalf, in which is necessarily involved their inability to resist giving evidence
also on behalf of their opponents, will work its rational way into every part of our legal procedure; and will
prove in all probability the most efficient protection that has ever yet been devised, against dishonest plaints
on the one hand and fraudulent defences on the other. It is to be regretted, we think, that the operation of
so excellent a measure should have been limited in the case of husbands and wives. Here a difference arose
between the upper and the lower house, both agreeing that it would be best to exclude the evidence of wives
for or against their husbands in criminal cases, but the Commons holding that the same exclusion should not
exist in civil cases, which, nevertheless, the Lords declined to agree to. Lord Campbell's bill has been less
popularly canvassed than Lord Brougham's, but it contains clauses of remarkable value; and, above all, its