unhappily Lord Malmesbury, who appears to have
felt this at last, did not feel it at first; and not
having felt it at first, he is now trying to repair his
original want of apprehension, and all the grievous
blunders that have followed it, by threatening to
recall our minister from Tuscany. Not a step has
the Mather case made since our last, therefore, even
in the direction of the polling-booths. It has
retrograded, not advanced.

The end to the lamentable imbroglio, indeed, no
one can at present foresee. But it somewhat oddly
happens that the recall of an English minister from
Tuscany—a thing now made probable by Lord
Malmesbury, and at all times, one would have
thought, an infinitesimally unimportant thing—would
unquestionably, at this moment, be inconvenient
and unwise. For the first time these many years,
an English representative has positively business in
Tuscany. Austria happens to be now using the
most strenuous efforts to extend her tariff, and
form a large Customs Union, of which, over Italy on
the one side and Germany on the other, she is to
have undisputed control. To effect this, the Grand
Duke has been placed under violent pressure; to
which he so reluctantly yields, that the steady
support of an English minister would in all probability
give him the requisite strength to make even yet a
successful resistance. Now, there is an old saying
about the folly of cutting off one's nose to spite one's
face; and if Lord Malmesbury succeeds in making it
the issue of the Mather affair, that English
commerce, with English influence, should at so critical a
moment be excluded from the Italian peninsula, he
will have added a notable illustration of that ancient
saw to those other diplomatic efforts which bid fair
to make his foreign administration memorable.

The history of the past month, deadened by these
dull intrigues of electioneering politics, would have
been nearly blank of life and interest but for a
remarkable trial between two renegade priests. Dr.
Newman, who made one of the earliest steps from
Oxford to Rome, libelled Dr. Achilli, formerly a
Dominican monk in Italy, now an Evangelical preacher in a
small chapel in London, and Achilli brought an action
against his accuser. The charges were, if proved,
of a character to blast the prospects of any minister
of any sect; some of them were so gross that the mere
report in the newspapers of the details sworn to is not
calculated to improve public morals. The verdict of
the jury went against the accuser, and, technically, in
favour of the accused.

The Colonial-office has had a busy month of it.
Besides the New Zealand Bill, they have had to deal
with a list of grievances from Australia: a blacker list
of wrongs from Jamaica; and one or two troublesome
evidences of tyranny in the Ionian islands. Emigration
goes on, not "steadily" (for that hackneyed adjective
is now quite worn out as applied to emigration), but
frantically. It has become a mania. Gold is, of
course, the main attraction; but the diggings
themselves appear to have, when people get to them, a
repellent power. One successful "prospecter" writes
that several new comers, peeping into the holes
whence the precious metal is dug, and seeing the
gold-seekers working up to their middles in water,
have immediately turned back without further
experiment or consideration.

      NARRATIVE OF PARLIAMENT AND
                        POLITICS.

On Thursday, May 27th, the Earl of MALMESBURY
(in answer to Earl Fitzwilliam) announced the termination
of Mr. Mather's case. The outrage had not
been prompted by any anti-English feeling on the part
of the Austrian officer, and Mr. Mather had received a
pecuniary compensation, as large as the damages he
would probably have recovered in an English court of
justice.

On the following day the Case of Mr. Mather once
more gave rise to a discussion, owing to the publication
of some correspondence on the subject in the papers of
that morning.—The Earl of MALMESBURY stated that
the letter purporting to be addressed to him by Mr.
Mather, sen., complaining of the course which had been
adopted by the government, and which formed a portion
of the published correspondence, had never been
received by him, either at his official or private
residence. As the case was now concluded, he would lay
the whole correspondence upon the table of the house,
and would leave their lordships to judge whether they
had or not acted as became the honour of the country.

The house adjourned for the Whitsun Holidays.

On Monday, June 7th, the Duke of NEWCASTLE put
a question to the government on the subject of the
Constitution to be granted to the Cape of Good Hope,
and after strongly intimating his opinion that the raising
of the franchise in that colony from £25 to £50, which
had been proposed and carried by the Colonial Secretary,
was impolitic and injurious to the interests of the colony,
he asked whether her Majesty's ministers intended to
disallow or to sanction the alteration? He also wished
to know whether the Cape was to have an elective or a
nominee upper chamber?—The Earl of DERBY said
the ordinances had not yet been received in this country,
and the government had suspended their opinion on
the subject till they could have the advantage of
revising them along with the observations of the new
Governor-General Cathcart.

On Tuesday, June 8th, the Earl of MALMESBURY
moved the second reading of a bill to carry into effect
the articles of the convention between England and
France for the Mutual Surrender of Criminal Offenders,
and explained that the measure did not extend to
political offenders.—The Earl of ABERDEEN concurred
in the general principle of the bill, but took exception
to many of its details.—Lord CAMPBELL complained of
the novel principle of making the mere warrant of the
French authorities and identification, without proof or
reasonable suspicion of guilt, sufficient evidence for the
surrender of persons from under the protection of
English law.—Lord BROUGHAM and other peers joined
in the objection, and the LORD CHANCELLOR promised
to consider the point in committee.—Lord CRANWORTH
was of opinion that the bill was wrong in principle, and
that no change in detail could render it tolerable.—
After some further discussion the motion was agreed
to.

On Thursday, June 10th, Lord BROUGHAM presented
a petition complaining of the Distressed State of Jamaica,
from the judges and bar of that island.—Earl GREY
protested against that part of the petition which declared
that the effect of the measures of 1846 and 1848 had
been an increase in the slave trade.—The Bishop of
OXFORD on the other hand, asserted that the effect of
those measures had been a large increase in that traffic.
—Similar petitions having been presented from the
islands of Antigua and the Mauritius, and from British
Guiana, the Earl of DERBY said that he had received
not a petition, but a memorial from clergymen of all
denominations in Jamaica, bearing witness not only to
the distress which prevailed in the colony, but also to
the barbarism into which a large proportion of the
coloured community were rapidly relapsing. In his
opinion, the only effectual remedy for colonial distress
would be to stop the progress of the reduction in the
differential duties on sugar, for, in spite of the assertion
of Lord Grey, he believed that it was not possible to
produce sugar by free labour to compete on equal terms
with slave labour. At the same time he confessed
that he entertained great doubt whether the public
mind of this country was prepared to satisfy the
economic interests which might be involved in such a
proposition.

On Friday, June 11th, the Earl of DERBY, in reply to
a question from the Marquis of Lansdowne, stated that
a minute had been agreed to in privy council for the
purpose of admitting to a participation in the Grants for