The Press. — London, England, 1858-08-07 00:00:00

756 THE PRESS, AUGUST 7, 1858. THE WEEK. With the past week the labours of Lord DERBY'S Administration have come to a close. It would be affectation in us to deny that we have felt, to some extent, a peculiar satisfaction in watching the career of the second Derbyite Cabinet, from its small beginnings of success to the full stream of popularity which it now enjoys. This slight display of exulta tion is we trust pardonable. To contrast th tnooise the Conservative party five years ago with that which it occu pies at present cannot fail to be singularly gratifying to those who have supported it throughout. The reason is that it is not the party which has changed, but the public opinion of that party. We have now the same men in office ; and at length a reluctant Opposition and a bewildered public has been led to acknowledge that their former estimate of Conservatives was fundamentally erroneous, and that the promise given in Lord DERBY'S speech of 1852 has, now that an opportunity is afforded, been fulfilled to the letter. Social Reform was what he promised in his first Premiership. Social Reform is what he has given us, or is prepared to give us, in his second. At all events, whatever may be said of the Conservative party from any other point of view—however much they may have fallen short of what was expected from them by influential sections of their supporters, one thing at least stands out clearly in their favour. Their administrative ability is now established beyond question. This fact is all the more important because, with all the admiration that was accorded, however grudgingly, to the genius of their leading men, Opposition writers always assumed that they were on safe ground when they questioned the practical talent of the Con servatives. That doubt is now for ever set at rest. It has been shown decisively that men under seventy and not connected with the oligarchy that has struggled for supremacy since Pin', could conduct the business of the country, not only with credit, but with illustrious success ; that these "new men " could, in fact, do what their predecessors, grey in the traditions of office, couldn't do ; and that hence forward, whatever other objections might be raised to a Conservative Cabinet by a Whig clique, the charge of administrative inefficiency must be dropped for ever, or only recoil upon the accusers. Alas ! for the shortsightedness of mere pen and ink politicians. But six short months ago we remember in a quarterly periodical, which, though the youngest of the quarterly family, already yields to none in the literary ability it displays, a statement to the effect that in another session the Conservatives would be no more ! With that practical knowledge: of politics which experienced journalists know how to obtain, a celebrated weekly contemporary observed at the same time that the party of Lord DERBY was the strongest and best organized in the House. We trust that the position of affairs on this 7th of Auugust, 1858, may be a warning to all political prophets to abstain from such ridiculous utterances as the first mentioned without some real authority to back them. The language which many Whig or Radical periodicals have employed towards the Conservatives durin* the last four or five years has, we have always thought, been spiteful ; it is now shown to be contemptible. The Conservative party has held together for the last five years like the British infantry at Waterloo. Every kind of attack has been tried against them in vain, and now at last it is their turn to come forward. In another portion of our columns we have enumerated the principal measures they have been suc cessful in passing, which fairly entitle this session to be considered one of the most progressive within the memory of the present generation. The county of Galway is at present interested in the promotion of an enterprize to which it would argue a great want of generosity not to wish every kind of success. Fortune proverbially is on the side of the brave, and if that fickle goddess has not as yet given in her adhesion and for warded her name for a number of preference shares in the Galway under taking, it is from no want of zeal on the part of the natives to pay her proper court or to win her favours. Fortune has smiled upon the Galway gallants by land, in ladies' chambers has often pleaded their suit, and even galloped with them to the great entirety of their neck across a rather rough bit of country, but invariably disregarded and discountenanced with more than her wonted disapproval a number of efforts they have made by sea on the Atlantic. Galway hitherto has exhibited the spectacle of a courageous county struggling with adversity upon an adverse element. Everything has been against her. She has had to contend against old ships, head winds, and a pilot who ran their first vessel on a rock, and then expiated either his ignorance or wilfulness by suicide. The passage of the Indian Empire, which Galway despatched as a trial-steamer across the Atlantic, would have been an excellent passage but for a series of contrary circum stances. As it was, it will be only mentioned among disasters at sea, regis tered, perhaps, among hapless marine occurrences. But Galway is not to be daunted. Her marine misfortunes all arise from the fault of the ships, the fault of the engines, the fault of the pilots, or the fault of the somewhat arbitrary Atlantic. What is wanted to insure the Galway Steam Company com plete success is the want, by no means peculiar to Galway, of a little Go vernment money. On Wednesday last a deputation of Irish Members, merchants, shipowners, and gentlemen interested in the town and harbour of Galway, waited upon Lord DERBY with the view of representing to his Lordship the native undertaking, as far as possible, in a national light. At the head of the deputation was the Rev. PETER DALY, who pointed out the bearings of Galway on a map, and strenuously advocated the cause of his county. He urged that "the port of Galway had been selected from its " position and its great facilities and advantages as the best in the three " kingdoms for the American traffic; but that its efficacy was greatly " marred by want of a breakwater and pier," costing only 1.52,0001., which sum the Galway people, a number of merchants, and pecuniary men in general, hoped Lord DERBY world grant, the enterprize being, as they all considered, in every sense a national one. The colloquy which ensued between the Premier and Mr. DALY was most amusing, and elicited much happy retort on the part of the Minister. Upon the superior claims of his native town Mr. DALY affirm e d that all classes were agreed, and expressed the confidence of all classes that the enterprize was a national one. Lord DERRY. That, of course, is a commercial speculation. The Rev. Mr. DALY admitted that it might be called so, but remarked, never ! passenger trade , theless, that in the enterprize, though commercial, the country took a general interest. All that was wanted to carry out the Gal p w as a:r t, schemes was merely a grant of public money. Passengers, freight, a dividend of ten per cent., trade, general prosperity would all ensue up on the receipt of public money. Rem, da, modo, rem. Lord DERBY conceded to the advocate the probability of a but had doubts on other points. There was freight, for instance. Besides, could not a Company which paid a dividend of ten per cent. give any security for the use of so large a sum as 152,0001. The humour of the dialogue calcinated at this point, the Rev. Mr. DALY rnakinz a rep l y national " entirely." "If the Government," he said, " will accept my own personal security, there will not be the least difficulty in giving it"--a pro position which produced general laughter, in which Lord DERBY heartily joined. We, too, join. However readily disposed to shorten the pas sage to America, we should not like to accept Mr. DALY'S personal security for all the commercial advantages which his enthusiasm prompts him to hope would result from the bestowal of a Government grant ; nor do we think that the Galway Steam Company, which proposes to pay ten per cent., has established a greater claim to public money than the Oriental Company, or the Glasgow Company, or the Hull Steam Company, or a hundred other Associations which would doubtless send up deputations, and consume a Prime Minister's time, if a grant to Galway were established as a precedent. The Honourable Member fbr Oldham has lately been spouting e " Publicola" to his admiring constituents. It is really grievous to see a man of any intellectual calibre stooping to the arts which Mr. Fox stoops to, or guilty of the ignorance of which Mr. Fox is guilty. "In his young " days," says Mr. Fox, " France gave the watchword of Liberty' to the nations, and was the apostle of liberty, equality, and fraternity to all " countries. Now she was the enemy of freedom and equality, and had " little fraternity with anything noble that existed in Europe. Then she " struggled for her independence against all Europe in arms ; now she up " held despotism wherever it existed, and trampled out the sparks of the " dom wherever she could set her foot." It is really time we heard the last of this kind of twaddle. The idea of Revolutionary France being really the apostle of liberty ! It is, in fact, the Revolution of 1788 that is the legitimate parent of the despotism of 1858. But even Mr. Fox, who professes to instruct so many of his fellow-countrymen, has yet to learn that in the large communities of modern times liberty is only to be main tained through the agency of a constitution, and can never be purchased by the destruction of it. In another portion of his speech Mr. Fox errs most eFrefiously. The "people" of this country did not pass the Roman Catholic Emancipation Bill. Nothing is better known than that the majo rity of the nation were opposed to it. And here, therefore, is an admirable refutation of Mr. Fox out of his own mouth, and a proof that it is from their governors, and not from the people themselves, that his own kind of measures are to be expected. We are sorry to see an old man still so enslaved to puerile prejudices. Having nothing to gain from either party, Mr. Fox might just as well make a virtue of necessity and become impartial ; as it is, no one can read such an address as that delivered last Wednesday without a mingled feeling of contempt and pity. It is considerably more than a year since we called the attention of our readers to the iniquities of Whitecross-street Prison. We are happy to observe that the new Governor, Captain Blocs, has already addressed himself to the removal of one most serious grievance to which the helpless debtor is subjected. The class of low solicitors who hang about the purlieus of debtors' prisons and insolvent and bankruptcy courts are a pestilent and abominable race. They have been favourably described by Mr. DicaENs in his character of Solomon Fell, the confidential friend of the Lord Chancellor; and few people, perhaps, except the unlucky expert: of Whitecross-street and the Queen's Bench have any definite idea of their actual mode of conducting business. Captain Hicxs's report, however, has now done much to make public their systematic style of fleecing—and we hope it may act as a caution to the friends and relatives of prisoners not to supply them with money for legal expenses without previous inquiry. But the real truth is that our whole law relating to debtor and creditor demands careful revision. If imprisonment for debt be continued, the sponging-house is an institution that ought at once to be extinguished. The nefarious profits of these establishments are a scandal to the age; and whatever the loss to fast novelists and " screaming" farce-writers, such places should at once be declared illegal. It would almost seem as if it had been a matter of careful contrivance that as soon as a man was arrested for debt, he should at once by a multiplex system of extortion be pre vented from ever getting free. The officer's fees, the sponging-house tariff, the prison solicitor, &c., speedily eat up a great deal more tha n many a debtor is confi ne d for. The money painfully scraped together to satisfy his creditor is swallowed up by the harpies that surround him; a nd with the hop e o f a di sc h arge skilfully dangled before his eyes, the dupe continues his exertions till his last resources are exhausted, and beggary and misery await him. Such is the end of many an unfortunate debtor, who, but for our iniquitous system, might have returned to society an honest citizen, an d h ave li ve d and died respected. Despite of sinister auguries, and the real obstacles interposed by stormy weather, the Atlantic telegraph cable has been succes.shilly At six o'clock on Thursday morning the Agamemnon anchored in Doulas Bay, off Valentia, bringing her end of the coil, whose other extremity — a s the "all-right" signals kept pleasantly informing her curious crew—