country and
climate, and includes under its powerful, yet mild and beneficent
sway, tribes of every colour of skin, and of every shade of religious
belief. Such a survey, in fact, tends to impress one more fully and
immediately than could well be fancied, with the magnitude of the
business of the British legislature, and the consequent weighty
responsibilities imposed upon its members. But, great as the burden
is, it is distributed over so many shoulders, that it appears to press
heavily, and really does so, only on a few who support it at the more
trying points.

The session 1851 is the latest of whose labours, as they appear in the
form of parliamentary records, an account can be given. By the
admirable system of arrangement we have referred to, each
parliamentary 'paper,' whether it issues in the shape of a bulky
Blue-book--that is to say, as a thick, stitched folio volume, in a
dark-blue cover--or as a mere 'paper'--an uncovered folio of a single
sheet of two or four pages, or several stitched together, but not
attaining the dignity of the blue cover--is marked as belonging to a
certain class; and when the issue of the session is complete, a full
set of 'Titles, Contents, and Indexes' to the whole is supplied, so
that they can all be classified and bound up in due order with the
utmost ease and celerity. The _Titles, Contents, and Indexes to the
Sessional Printed Papers of Session_ 1851 are at present before us, in
the shape of a folio Blue-book about an inch and a half thick, from
which we think we may pick some facts of interest.

It must be premised, that the session 1851 was considered by
politicians a peculiarly barren and unfruitful one, as the Great
Exhibition, in conjunction with ministerial difficulties, and the
monster debates on the Ecclesiastical Titles' Bill, tended greatly to
impede the ordinary business of the Houses, and gave an air of tedium
and languor to the whole proceedings. Nevertheless, the papers for the
year amount to no less than sixty volumes! Of these, the first six
contain Public Bills. A bill, as most of our readers must be aware, is
a measure submitted to the consideration of parliament with the view
of its being adopted into the legal code of the country, for which it
must receive the sanction of both Houses and the assent of the crown.
When a bill has 'passed' through the Lords and Commons, and received
the royal assent, it becomes an 'act'--that is, a law. A bill, in
passing thr