revisiting Chancery under any other name. The
ministry has promised to tell the House of Commons
at no distant day, whether or not clergymen who are
known to hold every doctrine of the Church of Rome
may also be permitted to hold profitable benefices in
the Church of England. The engineers' dispute has
ended in what must be regarded substantially as a
surrender of the workmen. And finally there are
committees now proposed in both houses of the
legislature for the purpose of inquiring, before a new lease
be granted, into the administration of the last lease
given to the directors sitting in Leadenhall-street for
the government of the hundred millions of various
races who constitute our Indian empire.

NARRATIVE OF PARLIAMENT AND
POLITICS.

IN the House of Lords, on Monday, the 29th of
March, the Earl of ELLENBOROUGH moved for papers
connected with the Forfeiture of the Territories held by
Prince Ali Morad, on the ground of his having been
guilty of forgery and fraud in obtaining possession of
them. He reminded the house and the government
that this prince had been a useful ally in some of our
wars, and contended that, supposing the decision to be
correct, the sentence was excessive.—Lord BROUGHTON
defended the act of the governor-general of India, by
which Ali Morad was deposed. Going into a great
mass of details, he showed that Ali Morad had been
guilty of manifold crimes, besides the particular one of
forgery which was inquired into by the special tribunal.
In fact, to the machinations of that wicked man had
been due the ruin of his own brother, and our war with
the Ameers of Scinde, which ended in their destruction.
He had been deposed as a man already fallen through
his own bad actions, as an enemy to the British power,
and as unworthy of the headship of his family and
country.–The Earl of DERBY accepted the defence
made by Lord Broughton as complete, and took on his
own government the responsibility of the acts
impugned. In the course of his speech, Lord Derby stated
that the case of the Ameers of Scinde has had such a new
light thrown upon it, that an inquiry has been
directed, to learn how far they acted under the influence
of Ali Morad.—The motion was agreed to.

On Tuesday, the 30th, Lord CAMPBELL asked the
noble Earl at the head of her Majesty's government,
what the government intended to do with the Crystal
Palace?—The Earl of DERBY could only say that Her
Majesty's Government, having taken into consideration
the report of the commission appointed to inquire into
the subject, were of opinion that the building, having
accomplished all the objects for which it was erected,
should disappear, and that the contractors should be
called upon to remove it.

The Earl of  DERBY, in reply to questions from the
Earl of Minto and the Duke of Newcastle, respecting
the intended Duration of the Session, denied having
pledged himself to advise a dissolution of parliament at
any specific period, or that after the assembling of the
new parliament, a prorogation would take place this
year. What he had stated was, that he expected that
the new parliament would have an opportunity of
pronouncing, in the course of the coming autumn, an
opinion on certain questions which it was important to
decide before parliament meets in 1853.

On Friday, April 2nd, the Earl of DERBY moved for
a select committee to inquire into the operation of the
act 3rd and 4th of William IV., chapter 85, for the
better government of Her Majesty's Indian territories.
Lord Derby took an historical view of the origin and
growth of the East India Company from the time (two
hundred years since), when it was so insignificant a
trading community, that it refrained from landing a
single battalion of troops in its settlement from fear of
exciting the jealousy of the neighbouring princes, to the
present day, when, having dropped its entirely
commercial character, it has attained political empire over a
country extending over twenty-eight degrees of latitude,
and embracing a population of 150,000,000 souls—not
so much by its army of 285,000 soldiers, as by a wise
government and an enlightened humanity. He
explained the constitution of the Company; distinguishing
the Proprietary, which has scarcely any function
beyond that of receiving the dividends on its stock;
and the Court of Directors, which has been stripped by
the Imperial Legislature of all political power except
that due to its ability to recall any and every officer in
the Indian service from the governor-general
downwards, but which has intentionally been intrusted to
retain nearly all the patronage of the Indian service.
Then he exhibited the machinery of the Board of
Control, which now has the whole political power and
administration of the Indian Government in its hands.
He showed the nature of the Secret Committee, a body
compounded of the Court of Directors and of the Board
of Control, for the management of negotiations with
the Indian princes. Then he explained the details of
the local government in India, in its separate political
centres at Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, but under
the general control of a council presided over by the
governor-general. From the political framework of
government, he went into the dispensation of religion,
the administration of justice, and the execution of public
works; showing how the first is more abundant under
the influence of three bishops and 130 chaplains; how
the second is more pure under the administration of
English judges, while at the same time the natives are
trained to the greater participation in judicial offices
which is daily more and more opened to them; and how
the third has become munificent and beneficial, under a
government whose revenues have now reached a yearly
amount of £25,000,000. sterling. The whole of these
subjects would come under the inquiry of the
committee, that they might consider and report on them all;
but practically the great questions would be, could the
government of India be administered without the
intervention of the Court of Directors? Would it be better
that the nominal power should be exercised solely by
the body which now exercises it really? Lord Derby
expressed his own opinion to be in favour of retaining
the Directory.—The Earl of ELLENBOROUGH pointed
out many alterations which ought to be made in the
India Board, and suggested that the patronage of the
Company should be diminished by transferring the
chief appointments from the Board to the Government.
—The motion was then agreed to.

In reply to a question from the Earl of Albemarle,
the Earl of DERBY said it was not the intention of the
Government to make any alteration at present in the
law relative to the Grant to Maynooth; but he must
say that the conduct of the Catholic clergy in Ireland,
and the course pursued by the Court of Rome, increased
the difficulty of defending a grant given for the purpose
of making the people loyal and content, having, in fact,
no other object but conciliation.

On Monday, the 5th, the Earl of ELLENBOROUGH
called the attention of the house to the War with Ava,
which had been commenced, and which he viewed in a
very serious light. He recalled the circumstances of
the last war, that the magnitude of the present crisis
might be seen. In that war we sent a force as large as
the army which Bonaparte took with him to conquer
Egypt—40,000 men. Of those, 7000 were Europeans.
"Of the European troops, two regiments, the Thirteenth
and the Thirty-eighth, left Calcutta in April 1824, 1800
strong; and in January 1826 they had not 500 men left
fit for service in the field. I doubt much whether at
the end of that war 10,000 men out of the whole 40,000
were fit for duty in the field."  The army landed at
Rangoon on the 11th of May, and it was not able to
move till the 11th of February—eleven months!  "The
troops lived entirely on salt provisions. No fresh
provisions were to be had in the country; and when
bullocks were sent them, every bullock sent from India
cost in freight £10. Notwithstanding the great amount
of the force sent to Ava, I believe that the general in
advancing on the capital of that country had never more
than 5,500 men under arms, and I know that on the
24th of February 1826 he had with him only 4000 men."
It was true, we had now advantages that we did not