It spoke with confidence of the condition of Ireland. The Message from the Throne further promised the introduction of Bills for the amendment of the laws relating to patents for inventions, and for conferring on the county courts an equitable jurisdiction in actions involving small amounts. A Bill for inquiring into English public schools was promised, and her Majesty directed that a commission should be issued to inquire into endowed and other schools in England. Lord Derby, though he bore traces of suffering from repeated attacks of gout, was able to speak with fluency and power, but the debates on the Address, it must be admitted, were not interesting, nor did they evoke any material opposition. Discussions took place upon the condition of the Irish peasantry, emigration, the tenure of land, tenant right, and the Established Church. The approaching triumph of the Northern States in the American Civil War was plainly foreshadowed by the increasing civility of Lord Russell’s references to the Federal Government. In a discussion on our foreign relations, he vindicated the neutral policy which his Administration had pursued towards both belligerents, but towards the conqueror his neutrality was now obviously benevolent. He pointed out how Confederate agents were continually employed either in building vessels in this country, or in buying merchant ships which might afterwards be sent to France and other places that they might be fitted out as armed cruisers against the commerce of the United States, and this he now discovered gave rise to the “natural irritation” of the United States against England. The Americans, he said, saw a number of ships, which had come in some way or another from English ports or English rivers, afterwards equipped as men-of-war for the purpose of destroying their sea-borne commerce. It was to be expected that they should wax angry with us in consequence. Still, Lord Russell urged that the Government had done everything in their power to prevent this country from being made the basis of warlike operations against the Federal Government.