The Press. — London, England, 1853-10-29 00:00:00

We have only to read the history of Mormonism in England to know what kind of persons may claim and till the office of spiritual instrue tore. is every idle and illiterate artisan who may chance to find preaching more profitable than working a " minister of religion "? If not, where are you to draw the line? Are cone but the clergy of the Establiehment and the Roman Catholic priesthood admissible? This cannot be. Neither, on the other band, eau it be tolerated that admission to a pro feseedly intellectual constituency should be conferred _on every bell-taught and self= - - appointed lecturer. That the educational test, to a certain ex tent, exists in the othe of lawyers and medical men we freely allow. Retired naval and mili tary officers. again, though not usually deeply eonveraant with boks, nor habituated to the study of civil affairs, have lived a life of action and reepunsibility—have obeyed and com manded—know, or ought to know, something of the way in which men are managed, and pusses* at least that degree of practical edu cation and experience which a varied and eventful life affords. With their admission, therefore, we do not quarrel ; although it must be observed, first, that their profession. Su long as they continue actively engaged in it, excludes them from polities ; and next, that there is a wide difference between saying that they shall be admitted to a share in the frau shise, and admitting them to form part of a special constituency limited in number, there fore individually powerful, and professing to rest on the claims of intellect alone. But it is to the last, and possibly most nu merous, -class that the objection we have raised applies in the greatest degree—" Who are the graduates of universities ? " Or ra ther, who has ever failed to graduate at a university, save one in a hundred, from want of sufficient knowledge? The ordinary degree even of Oxford or Cambridge is barely an evi dence of anything beyond the most ordinary in telleetual proficiency. The same may be said, iu an even greater degree, of literary, acientifin, nud artistic societies—on which it is also pro jected to confer the franchise, Few of these institutions require from their members any certificate of proficiency : admission to them is sometimes a pecuniary purchase, sometimes au unmeaning honorary distinction We deny, then. that the suggested educational suffrage is really such in any true and high sense of the word. More—we doubt whether such a franchise be capable of being created. No privilege could be more invidious—none, probably, more unjust in regard of those whom it included and those whom it shut out. Nor is this theory one easily reconcilable with the idea of a representative system. The House of Commons is not composed upon the prin ciple of bringing together men of talent as such. Were this the theory of its composition the object might be attained by other and simpler means. But the public requires from its legislators neither subservient delegates uu the one hand, nor self-representing teachers on the other. Those who take their seats in its popular assembly must do so in virtue of representing, at least, some section of the people What is meant by a representative of education'.' We know what is meant by the representatives of town and country, of agri culture and commerce, of recognised c lasses and material interests. But to say that law yers and clergy, officers, doctors. and univer sity graduates. are to be separated as such from the mass of the community, represented apart. and entitled to send to the Commons' House nearly a ninth part of its members, is to confer on them n distinction which they probably do not desire, to which they cnn assert no claim. and which, like all exaggerated pretensions. could only end in injury to those who put them forth. RAILWAY REFORM. So far as the public safety is coneerned. it is surely high time that some attempt should be made to diminish the number of accidents which are daily taking place throughout the kingdom. The following returns for the lest four years will ►:how the progressive dangers of railway travelling in that short interval. THE PRESS. They appear in the last report of the Parlia• mental", Committee published a few weeks since :- 1.50. iiksl. 1.52. Mileage open 6031 6,0:1 u,stoo 7,3.14 Number of passengers killed and injured It is obvious from these figures that the gradual increase of railway accommodation will not enable us to account for the rapid in crease of insecurity. Augmented traffic, false economy, and other causes, have been assigned for this. But the evil is admitted, and the question of the day is, how to cure it? Upon this point, one of the witnesses examined before the Committee affords some important information. We have heard many complaints of late as to the harassing duties imposed upon the engine-drivers ; and, considering that the safety of railway travellers depends entirely upon the competence of these men, the subject demands the fullest attention. In the meantime we would point out the very unsatisfactory mode in which these officers appear to be selected. The locomotive en gineer of the Great Northern, a person of great experience in railway management, describes it as follows : " The driver of a locomotive is generally " first the cleaner of an engine. A sharp. " active cleaner is promoted to be a fireman, " and, after firing three, four, or five years, ho is " made a driver. That is the ordinary routine " education of probably two-thirds of the " drivers in the kingdom." The same witness says :—" I think it would " be a very groat point that the engine-drivers " should be gradually better educated, and a " better class of men generally. If it were " possible by any means to do this, it would " increase the public security in the driving "of the engines." He adds :—" I have no " doubt that many accidents have happened from the negligence of the driver, mainly " from his not feeling thoroughly the responsi " bilities attaching to him, and not keeping eon " tinually a look-out, so as to see signals." Considering the source whence they come, these admissions are remarkable. the wit ness who makes them is an eulogist of railway management in general, and, like most offi cials, opposed to change. He speaks with caution, if not reluctance, as to the defective training of the engine-drivers, upon whose steadiness and skill the lives and limbs of so many of us frequently depend. We sincerely trust, therefore, that the testimony of this in telligent witness will not be thrown away upon his superiors. The public have a right to insist that every possible precaution should be taken to ensure safe travelling ; and, in order to remedy this glaring evil, we would suggest that every passenger-train should be compelled to carry, in addition to the driver, a person whose sole duty it should be to keepa con stant look-out throughout the journey. We learn now, upon unquestionable authority, that the driver is frequently incompetent ; and we know that, in addition to this, his faculties, both bodily and mental, are often overtasked. A case was cited the other day by a contemporary of a man who had been on the move some seventeen or eighteen hours at a stretch, and who arrived at his journey's end more asleep than awake. And yet upon him alone, during the whole of that time, de volved the double task of attending to his engine and keeping a continual lookout. The exhaustion attending this harassing duty, es• neeiully in wet or stormy weather. is well known ; and hence we would furnish every engine with a pilot. to divide the responsibili ties of the driver, and who should be qualified to take his place in case of need. The project might not have the effect of increasing divi (lends, but we are convinced that it would materially diminish the number of accidents, and thus remove from our railway manage ment a reproach which now most justly attaches to it. SATURDAY, THE AMENITIES OF MODERN WARFARE. Tim heroes of HO3Oll, as every schoolboy knows, swore at each - other lustily on entering a campaign ; but the note in which OMER PACIIA tells Prince GORTsCHAKOFF that he had received orders from his Government to attack the Russian invading army, unless—within a limited time—it withdrew from the provinces it had entered, is a model of polite military correspondence. So far from holding out a threat, OMER states that, as a proof of its pacific disposition, the Sublime Porte suggests, through his intervention, the evacuation of the principalities—allows the Prince ample time to consider his answer—and concludes with the expression of his high personal esteem for the Russian general. The answer of the Prince, though short, was to the purpose, and perfectly polite—viz., that, having no instruc tions to attack, ho should act entirely on the defensive. Such, then, is the wide interval between the ancient Greek and the much-disparaged Turk of the nineteenth century. Nor is the spirit that dictates these modern courtesies confined to matters of form. It may be remembered that, in 1840, during the Syrian campaign at the bombardment of Beyront, a boat with a flag of truce came off to the English ships : it bore the Indian mail which had just arrived, and which was thus, without a moment's delay delivered to Sir ROBERT STOPTORD. The cour tesy acknowledged, the firing recommenced. It is less surprising that, in the Spanish war between the French and the English, little friendly dealings and kind acts should have been common. Thus the Duke of WEI.. LINGTON never made a general attack without first sending notice to the French outposts " for all those fellows," the pickets and sen tries, "to be off." But the French and English, besides being the two most highly-civilised nations on earth, had, in addition, a respect and esteem for each other founded on a re cognition of a common valour, proved in many a desperate contest. It is amusing to read in Mr. LARPEXT'S journal that when the ships bringing hay and other stores for the English army then in the Pyrenees were cast away on the French coast, and wrecked, near Bayonne, the French sent to the Duke to say that " the English hay was sweet and very good," to which the Duke replied, " that he should be very happy to buy some ;" and that then a bargain was made and carried out between the friendly enemies. " Chivalry," says BURKE, "by taking " away from vice all its grossness has deprived " it of half its evil"; and, what ancient chi valry did for vice, modern civilisation has done for war—stripped it of its worst atroci ties, and so deprived it of half its evils. We hear no more of embargoes suddenly laid, in apprehension of war, on ships lying securely in ports which they had entered in the confi dence of peace; on the contrary, when war is imminent, and, humanly speaking, inevitable —indeed when, strictly speaking, it has com menced—the Sultan hastens to declare that the Russian ships in the Turkish waters are free to depart, and that the Dardanelles shall be open to the commerce of the world ; whilst the Emperor of RUSSIA assures the British merchants at St. Petersburg that their pro perty shall be unmolested, if the property of his subjects is similarly treated by England — nay more, a Russian frigate in want of repairs actually enters Portsmouth harbour, and is there refitted. It may seem that, while the spirit that prompts these acts exists, war, real war, is impossible ; that to refit the Russian ship the Aurora one week in an English naval arsenal and docky ard, and to lay an English ship alongsideher a fortnight afterwards, to sink her by the tire of a concentrated broadside in the Baltic, is a practical paradox too startling to occur ; yet it is not so in reality. Recog nising wars as dread necessities, there is no reason why we should not enter into them, and carry them on, in the spirit of civilisation , instead of that of barbarism. The ferocity of the middle ages, or of a later period, w ill no more prevail in international warfare. No