Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 144.djvu/316

personal convenience by the reflection that they have placed upon the statute-book Acts of Parliament upon subjects which have been long and anxiously considered by the country, and which, after having been played with and dawdled over by successive Liberal Governments, have found their solution by means of the ability and perseverance of a Tory Ministry. When we take into account, apart from and beyond the measures to which we have alluded, the financial proposals of Mr Goschen and the salutary reforms in the procedure of the House of Commons, we may congratulate ourselves upon the fact that, in spite of the necessary abandonment of bills which we have had as usual to deplore, yet, even if the performance has fallen somewhat short of the promise, an amount of good legislative work has been achieved which puts to shame the performance of many a past session which has commenced under more favourable auspices than that which we chronicle today. It is a wise proverb which tells us not to "whistle" till we are "out of the wood"; but the period of the year at which we have now arrived, and the general aspect of political affairs, entitle us to consider the Unionist Government as beyond the reach of parliamentary disaster for the rest of the session, and the Unionist majority as compact and united as at any previous time since the lapse of Mr Gladstone into the Home Rule heresies which have destroyed his prestige and shattered his party.