and day, with the murders of Burke and Hare in Scotland, with the law of divorce and crim. con. trials in England, and “a Poor-law which has taken millions from the necessities of the destitute to add to the luxuries of the wealthy.”  The Governor dissolved the Assembly, but that which succeeded re-adopted the resolutions of its predecessor, and the ministers, in consequence, brought in a bill “to suspend the existing constitution of the island for a limited number of years, and to provide that during that interval its legislative functions should not be exercised by a Governor, a Council, and a House of Assembly, but should reside in the Governor and Council alone.”  The emergency was too great and undeniable, the remedy proposed was also too unprecedented in its stringency, to be dealt with without the gravest deliberation; and the House of Commons accordingly gave the matter the patient consideration which became both it and themselves.  They allowed the island to appear by counsel against the bill, and listened for many hours to an elaborate defence of the conduct of the Assembly, which if it failed to change the intention of the ministers, convinced Sir Robert Peel and his party that their measure was doubtful in its justification and impolitic in its severity.  He pointed out that “the bill was neither more nor less than one for the establishment of a complete despotism—­one which would establish the most unqualified, unchecked, unmitigated power that was ever yet applied to the government of any community, in place of that liberal system which had prevailed for upward of one hundred and fifty years.”  And, though he did not for a moment question the power of Parliament to pass such a measure, he greatly doubted the policy of such an exertion of it.  A somewhat similar measure affecting Canada they had been compelled to enact in the preceding year, and he feared lest “it might seem to be coming to be a practice of Parliament to suspend a constitution every session.”  And he quoted a speech of Canning, delivered fifteen years before, in which that eloquent statesman, a man by no means inclined to a timorous policy, had declared that “no feeling of wounded pride, no motive of questionable expediency, nothing short of real and demonstrable necessity, should ever induce him to moot the awful question of the transcendental power of Parliament over every dependency of the British crown.  That transcendental power was an ordinance of empire, which ought to be kept back within the penetralia of the constitution.  It exists, but it should be veiled.  It should not be produced on trifling occasions, or in cases of petty refractoriness or temporary misconduct.”