The Press. — London, England, 1858-05-22 00:00:00

sive kith taxation--setting aside, as I have said, the case of those who are excluded from the franchise. Let the con stituency be somewhere in the metropolis—say Finsbury or the Tower Hamlets. There is a great capitalist who possesses an enormous revenue—say of 200,0001. a year— and pays taxes in proportion. It would not be difficult, apprehend, to append several names to this description. This capitalist possesses a single vote for each representa tive of his borough ; he can possess no more. He is sur rounded by twenty or five and-twenty thousand ten•pound householders; any one of these possesses as much in fluence in the councils of the nation as he does ; auy two of them, though they be publicans not making 501. a year between them, are more powerful than he is. Setting aside the measures which originate in our religious dis putes, Parliament exists almost exclusively for the purpose of regulating taxation and guarding property, as any one may see by turning to the statute-book of any single ses sion. And yet 501. may possess more influence in Parlia ment than 200,0001. It may be proposed to abolish Customs and Excise, and to exempt a large section of the smaller incomes from direct taxation. Of course the capi talist would resist such an attempt to lay the burden of the national expenditure on himself and his wealthy fel lows, but he would be outvoted and overborne by the grocer and the publican next door. Or it might happen that the country was cursed with a wasteful or a warlike Minister, and all the capitalists in the City might groan in concert over a commerce stifled by some punctilious quarrel, and their own enormous payments to the Exche quer squandered in costly armaments; but they would be outvoted and overborne by thousands of ten-pounders, who, with little to lose whatever might chance, and few taxes to damp their vicarious courage, would merrily throw up their caps for " a vigorous and energetic prosecution of the war.' And this superiority of two men with 501. to one man with 200,0001. is not confined to any single category of wealth. 'rhe landholder and the manufacturer, though disturb ing causes to which I shall presently advert have secured to their wealth its due consideration in the Legis lature, are, according to the theory of the Constitution, as much in the hands of the poor ten-pounders as the capitalist or the merchant. The poor voters are numerous, the rich voters are few ; and the few voters are absolutely and entirely at the mercy of the many. On the other hand, a very large proportion of the taxes—it is impossible to tell how large—is levied frrm the rich. Therefore, as the theory stands, it is the poor man who levies the taxes and spends the taxes, while to the rich man is reserved only the privilege of paying. It is poverty that settles how property shall be bled. The State is a joint stock com pany to all intents and purposes. It is the combination of a vast number of men for well-defined objects—the preser vation of life and property. But it has this monstrous and unheard-of peculiarity, that it is a joint-stock company in which the shareholders vote, not by shares, but by heads. True, that every one has invested, so to speak, his life in the concern, and that the lives of all are equal ; but, over and above this, every one has invested hie property, and properties are not equal ; and the legislation, to carry on which the votes are given, is almost entirely concerned with the security and rights of property. That the share holders should vote by numbers, and not by their share in the concern, is a principle which any man of business would at once dismiss as iniquitous and absurd. No joint-stock company could adopt it without an absolute certainty of failure. And yet it is the principle on which the existing theory of the Constitution proposes to raise equitably r revenue of sixty-four millions, and to guard the property of the richest nation in the world. Lord Robert Cecil's argument against the school of " Symmetrical Reformers "—the men, namely, who ground their demand for Reform on the anomalies of our present system—is, that at pre sent one anomaly counteracts another, and that to remove one without removing all would destroy the equipoise which does confessedly exist now. For instance : That an inhabitant of the obecnre town of Thetford should in reality be the most powerful voter in England —that he should alone be more powerful titan eighty-two Manchester voters, or eighty-four Liverpool voters, or one hundred and twenty-nine Tower Hamlets voters—is. no doubt, very startling But it will not be hard to point to anomalies and changes in the other direction which are quite as glaring, and which, to say the least, fully rectify the balance. The most notable of these are of two kinds—those which affect the relative positions of counties and towns, and those which affect the relative position of the wealthy and the poor. Lord Robert then proceeds to give that mon strous disproportion between the town and county representatives with which all readers of THE Pt{Kas are familiar, and afterwards proceeds as follows: Ilitt the political defencelessness to which property is reduced by the uniform suffrage is a far greeter anomaly, and one that more than outweighs any advantage that property may derive from the irrcAulnrities of the franchise. Property is very unequally divided in this country : those who are in easy circumstances are comparatively few ; those whose struggle for a livelihood is close and constant, are the large majority. Many legislative questions, but, above all, that of taxation, give frequent opportunities for one class to ease itself by the spoliation of the other. As the needy are ever the readiest for plunder, and the rich are the most tempting victims, it should have been the special care of the law to protect the rich from the inroads of the needy. Nor would snail a protection be a reflection upon the poorer classes any more than the institution of a police. The law has no right to leave open the path to crime, in the generous confidence that THE PRESS, MAY 22, 1858. it will not be used. It is its business to presuppose that all human beings may be wicked, and to guard beforehand against the wrong that their wickedness may du. There fore the Constitution, if it rightly performed its functions, should have guarded against the possibility of the poor making use of the powers of legislation to satisfy their own needs at the expense of the superfluities of the rich. In stead of taking this precaution, it has given to each of the many poor voters the same power as to each of the rich few , in a contest where victory is to the majority. The result is that, according to the theory of the Constitu tion, the rich are left absolutely and helplessly at the mercy of the poor. - - - - - The remedy for this state of things is to be found in— The " influence " which, in one way or another, pos sessors of property have been able to exercise over voters —in some few cases cases based on neighbourly attach• went, but more generally resulting from actual dependence —bas, from the time that the House of Commons emerged into importance until now, largely tinctured its conatitution, and neutralized the mere representation of numbers. If this influence were abolished the danger would remain without the antidote : If, therefore (says his lordship), the law is to be altered, let it be reconstructed altogether; if that is impossible, let the equipoise remain as it stands. To remove one anomaly and leave the other—to destroy the influence of the rich without cutting down the overwhelming numerical superiority of the poor—is to strip property of the single bulwark which secures it from the power of impoverished and uninstructed masses. To show what the sentiments of " the masses " on this subject may be fairly assumed to be, Lord Robert votes, very appropriately, the lectures of Mr. Ernest Jones, delivered two years ago to the working men of London : His proposition was, simply and without any circum locution, to seize the estates of some of the largest land. owners, and to divide them among the sufferers. This is not reassuring as to what his conduct would be it he was Chancellor of the Exchequer under the new regime. As this gentleman is said to enjoy considerable popularity among the classes who would rule us if manhood suffrage were adopted, there is nothing chimerical in saying that a new Reform Bill would place the rights of property in issue. We have now, we hope, conveyed to our readers a tolerably fair impression of this young nobleman's views. We need scarcely add., that they receive our cordial assent. We have ab stained from inserting any arguments or observa tions of our own, as other and fitter opportuni ties will arise for doing so; but we would wish the middle classes of England to ponder well on the simple common sense expressed in these pars, while there is yet time to control popular opinion, and guide it in a safe channel. The real honest working man, be it remembered, has usually a respect for property ; but he surrenders his judgment to men whose trade is agitation, and who, as they could not sink lower, so naturally hope to rise h►gher, by any convulsion of society. We find that we must defer the consideration of Mr. Goldwin Smith's paper, together with Sir A. Grant's and Messrs. Phillimore's, Dasent's, and Pearson's, until our second notice. We may say briefly that we do not like the tone of Mr. Smith's article. It is sneering and sour; and gives us only too much reason to believe that the apprehensions we expressed on the occasion of his appointment to the high post which he now occupies were only too well founded. ( To be continued.) Russia and the Jesuits from 1772 to 1820. By Henri Lutteroth. Translated from the French. London : Seeleys. ALTHOUGH Russia does not now attract as much general interest as two years ago, still there are abundant reasons why the thrtunes of so great a power must always be regarded with attention. As her future development will probably he influenced by commercial considerations, Englishmen may expect to meet her either as a friend or rival; and whether her practice of trade will eventually turn upon reciprocity or reprisal is even now a question of intense interest to many capitalists in our great seats of trade. The interest in Russian politics and diplomacy has, for the time at least, much diminished, on account of the results or the Crimean campaign, but there will be notch general and moral regard felt in the social pro gress of so great a State with such extraordinary resources. Its religious aspects, and the attitude maintained by the Greek Church towards the Papacy, will also be of considerable importance. It is computed that Russia has about fifty mil lions in her national Church, and all these, in the eye of the Papacy, are " schismatics." The Rus sian Church shares with the Roman in many corrupted tenets and superstitious Practices, hut it rejects the " unity " of the Papacy, and it has no connection with the College of Cardinals or the Propaganda. Our eminent controversialist, Leslie, in his " Dialogue between a Rom an Catholic Nobleman and a Protestant Divine," lays great force on the fact that the boasted " unity" of Rome was never heard of in the Greek Church ; and though Rome appeals to " tradition " in favour of " unity," the Greek Church appeals also to tradition against the pre tensions of the Papacy. It is too often forgotten that the Greek Church joins in the cry of " No Pope," in spite of its many superstitious prac tices. Hence the Jesuits would gladly toil to reduce the Church of Russia, and to bring it within the fold of Rome. " Russia and the Jesuits" is a spirited sketch of the proceedings of the wily members of the " Society of Jesus" in relation to the religious affairs of Russia. Banished from several coun tries in Europe, and suppressed in 1773 by Cle ment XIV., it was a singular circumstance that, for a time at least, they found protection in Russia, from which their intrigues again com pelled their exclusion. M. Lutteroth has illus trated by authentic documents the proceedings of the Jesuits in Russia, and their conduct is certainly very well deserving of study. After the Pope and Roman Catholic princes had shaken them off, it was a strange destiny that they should have found protectors in Frederick the Great and Catherine ll.—in the scoffer against Christianity and in the habitual violator of morality! Let us look at some of the unim peachable facts here narrated by M. Lutteroth in this valuable historical tract. When Catherine gave protection to the Jesuits, their number was very small. M. Lutteroth says : The exact number of Jesuits existing at that period is not known ; but according to the statistics taken some }ears before in relation to the diocese of Mohilew, it appears that the society in Russia in 1788 consisted of 178 members, of wh mn 98 were priests, 32 students, and 48 lay brothers. The bishop of this diocese, Stanislas Sestrenzewitch, autho rized the conservation of this opler in the empire, notwitte standing the sentence of the Pope. We cannot exactly say whether such a service merited much gratitude, but however small the debt due to him might have been, it was greater than that which the prelate obtained, for there is no man of whom the Roman Catholic organs of this day speak so ill. Not only did the schismatic Empress allow the Jesuits, notwithstanding the dissolution of their order, to retain all the possessions they held in the governments of White Rests* but she liberated them from all manorial taxes, and opened to all Jesuits residing in other countrie3, who chose to accept of it, a sure asylum in this province ; but while thus favouring them, she expected in return that they would confine their labours exclusively to the educa tion of the young Roman Catholics. Few though they were, the Government of Russia experienced considerable trouble from them. We should like to know how many Jesuits there are in England at the present time, for the numbers at Stoneyhurst, Ascot, and Clongowes Wood in Ireland, and the Jesuits College in Dublin, give no real clue to their strength. When a mere handful of Jesuits caused such religious discord in Russia, we may be assured that they could do even more in England, on account of the freedom of our laws ; and their industry in fomenting religious strife has been unhappily experienced by us in recent years. Even if we had nothing but the facts in this tract to guide us, we should be fully justified in dreading the Jesuits. It is remarkable that Peter the Great, on his return from his travels, closed the existing Col lege of Russian Jesuits. They had first estab lished themselves in Russia between 1560 and 1580, and had toiled hard to bring the Russian Church under the See of Rome. They excited pretenders to the Throne of Moscow, and had caused the' false Demetrius to be crowned, and then the Polish Prince Vladislas. They were then forbidden access into Russia, but they found moans to insinuate themselves (as they have done iii England since 1829), and in 1705 these un tiring secret religious conspirators established a college in Moscow. In 1719, Peter the Great, after returning from his travels, closed the college by a ukase, which is very striking It was," he said, " after having learned from the evi deuce of his own eyes the course of action pursued by the Jesuits in foreign countries, and the astonishment he felt that other sovereigns still tolerated them, that ho had de termined to interdict their sojourn in his states As M. Lutteroth observes, Peter made a gre at distinction between Jesuitism and Homan Catbo-