The Press. — London, England, 1854-09-23 00:00:00

890 in the undergraduate world, partly because he was a gentleman, partly because he was not a " Don." The Bishop showed much forethought and tact in the men he brought into is dioces e, his and at least as much in those he pt out 9( l AS I I it. Among the latter waa his brot ? who* (as Vicar of East Bre 44 left f i g a gacy to future Bishops of B and We . he new Bishop took to hi* Riliy ? appoints 4 him iii succession Arcilleacon df Taunton and ex amining chaplain. And now GEORGE ANTHONY seems to have entered on public life with an impression that his Christian names pledged him (beyond their ordinary obligations) to a faithful following of the somewhat question able saints, his namesakes ; and thenceforward dragons and evil spirits (ecclesiastical) have come as thickly in his way as ever they did in the path of ST. GEORGE or ST. ANTHONY. The great education question, the great Hampden question, the great Gorham question, the great Convocation question, have all been suc cessively swollen into preternatural propor tions by his unrelenting loquacity In print he has been (what CAMPBELL once called) the great " paper-stainer ;" viva voce, the great bel lows' blower of the factions of the day. He appears throughout to have looked upon the Church as a sort of gigantic " Dons' Union," a fine broad arena for speechifying and eccle siastical uproariousness in general. Trout and salmon, and such like, are hooked in still waters, but flat-fish are only to be caught in a storm; and GEORGE ANTHONY devoted himself to the (somewhat inglorious) flat-fishery. With what success we pretty well know. Edu cation is, happily, much where it would have been, had he let it alone ; " Hampden" is Bishop of Hereford ; " Gorham" is Rector of Brampford-Speke ; and convocation would have had a much better chance of its embryo existence if the world at large had not imbibed an unsatisfactory impression that it was likely to be a debating club for Elliotts, Coxes, Denisons, and noisy people of miscellaneous persuasions. Latterly, the Church, weary of all this ever lasting speech-making, has been so pertina ciously peaceful, that the Archdeacon's occupa tion has been where Othello's was. Even the odd escapade of the Oxford election of 1853, when the Archdeacon and Mr. BENNETT be came Protestants for once, and supported Mr. PERCEVAL, failed to excite a sensation. The powder was wet ; the thing " hung fire" alto gether. The committee at Magdalen-hall felt, like LIVY'S old friend in his grim old pun, " Magis oneratus quam honoratus," by their company : something else must be started. We heartily wish he had made " game" of something less sacred than the subject he has chosen, of which, in this connection, we for bear to treat. Hereafter, much more seriously, it may be ow duty to recur to it. For the present we content ourselves with referring him to a person, as full of bonhommie as himself, and bearing quite as grand a name, Mr. MARE TAPLEY, of happy memory. To him was "no credit to be jolly " in cheerful life and a " public ;" so he went to the back woods and to work. Can the Archdeacon be persuaded to follow his example, avoid " the public," and go to work? There is plenty to be done, even in " the pleasant vale of Taunton, " without embroiling the Church, or embittering the last days of a kind and indulgent diocesan. • DIRECTORIAL JOBBING IN APPOINT MENTS FOR INDIA. fins duties of the Legislature and the V.,sactitive are essentially distinct. It belongs to the former to make laws, to the latter to see that they are faithfully obeyed ; and those 'Ministers of the Crown incur a heavy responsi bility who suffer not only the plain intentions !lout the direct enactments of the Legislature to be disobeyed or corruptly evaded. To Sir CHARLES WOOD, as President of the Board of Control, was confided the duty of seeing the recent India Charter Renewal Act fairly carried into effect, and he is answerable for permitting, through negligence or favour, its e?Epress provisions to IN3 invaded in one very important respect. THE PRESS. At the time of the passing of this act the directors of the East India Company appeared anxious to remove the suspicions which their previous admi ' ration of the enormous patronage at eir fill oral had le ft on the pubj inipd. lie ng tism alleged against them h i Lor E 14.11 sneouott was denied, though Iciis loffiship d fairly appealed to the Ind militify and twin lists in confirma tion of Il le chargo : ,& mot damaging petition on the subject, aignM by many of the most influential men conneOpd With India, was by directorial influence patieured to be withdrawn, and the public at last, beginning to grow weary of the discussion, consented for the present to take the directors, to a great extent, at their word. Two very important items in their patronage, however, were by the act, as it finally passed, struck off. The one the nomination of students for Haileybury, or, in other words, members of the civil service; the other the nomination of assistant-surgeons. These were the branches of the service in respect to which previous abuse of patronage was most clear, and in which any abuse of patronage must at the same time prove most injurious; and, therefore, the Legislature en acted that in respect of them the power of appointment should cease in the directors as regards all vacancies which should occur after the thirtieth day of April, one thousand eight hundred and fifty-four. The meaning of the framers of this act, it is plain, was that with the date on which the new law came into operation all appointments by the directors to vacancies in these two branches of the public service should cease. The previous mode of leaving such appoint merits in the hands of the directors had been formally condemned by Parliament as incon sistent with the welfare of the people of India, and that method had as clearly been ordered to be superseded the very moment that the existing charter act should have expired. Such being the act, and such clearly the inten tion of the framers of it, great was our surprise at learning that the directors were evading it by wholesale, and appointing up to the present date an endless list of sons, nephews, and connections to Haileybury. Nay, more, we found that this patronage had not been confined to the existing directors, but that those who were struck out at tha expiry of the old charter had been allowed to carry with them into private life a large share of these appointments. It thus happens that men no longer holding office—no longer responsible to the public—men much more unfit to exercise this patronage than the actual directors—are thus allowed to continue to job away offices, the gift of which, on any ground but that of merit, the Legislature had on public grounds enacted should cease. That such a flagrant violation of the intentions of the Legislature can have no motive of public good to recommend it is clear. We must, therefore, be content to view it as a proof of the extent to which the directors are prepared to set both law and public opinion at defiance in the conversion of all the patronage they can possibly lay hold of to the private benefit of themselves and their friends. So swamped has the civil service been by these illegal nominations, that there will not, we under stand, be any chance of an appointment falling to the public under the new law for nearly the next two years. It may be asked how the directors could possibly manage to get over the terms of an enactment apparently so very clear. They have done so by Sir CHARLES \Vocal's conni vance : he has allowed them to evade the law in a manner which no other President of the Board of Control would tolerate. Their plan was this : the law deprived them of appoint ments to vacancies occurring after the 30th of April, but at the same time fixed no limits to the existing numbers of the civil service. The directors, therefore, deelared as many appoint ments as could be absorbed in the ensuing three years to be vacancies before the 30th of April, for the purposes specified in the act, and divided the nominations so created en masse among their body, leaving each director to give or job away, from time to time at his pleasure afterwards, the appointments so created, until the handsome bonus in the shape of a &nal division of patronage should SATURDAY, be all expended. In this way the objects of the Legislature are defeated, Parliament laughed at, and the public tricked ; and in this way' Ipdian eiyit appoiptments are still procurable, and will be fur mapy a long day if the public 4 not iptpyferp t by any one who pan giyp, it+ the Oqpe of fottronage or other wise, ap eqpivaient for the boon. We cannot, however, think that pithey the Parliament or the pqblic iyill be eontept to be the victims of so trapspavent a trick as this ; for every ap pointmeilt thus gained by the directors is taken from the country at large against the precise and plain direction of the Legislature. We wish that we could rest here, but other considerations arise out of this discreditable bu siness ; for if such be the mode in which the directors grasp at patronage intended to be removed by law from their control, in what manner are they likely to employ that which still remains to them ? Common sense forbids us to think that they would in dispensing it postpone private interests to the promotion of the public advantage. A second consideration that arises is the question how far such adepts at evading the intentions of the Legislature, when opposed to their private interests in England, are likely to be more observant of them when dealing out justice between them selves and their native fellow-subjects in India. The whole business bears such a taint about it of selfishness and dishonesty as leaves us little hope for India so long as men like Sir JAMES HOGG and company are allowed to rule that country otherwise than under the strictest and most watchful control of the President of the India Board. THE RAILWAY OUTRAGE AT ENNISKILLEN. Iv is long since we read of a more atrocious crime than the horrible attempt to upset the excursion-train between Derry and Ennis killen. The cruelty of the diabolical project was only to be equalled by its dastardly cowardice. The desperado that takes to the highway, and commits his crimes in the light of day, and within the surveillance of the police, may be a criminal, but even still he remains a man. But what must be that fiendish nature which, out of the reach of peril, plots for the mangling and mutilation unto death of hundreds of human beings of both sexes, then secretly skulks off to contem plate the chances of the wholesale carnage which it demoniacally contrived ! On such atrocity there can only be one sentiment amongst all men, and we trust that the criminals will be made to answer for their awful outrage. It adds to the wickedness of the design that it seems to have been planned in the most deliberate malignity. No polemical provocation, no recollections of former feuds, could offer any justification of such utterly nefarious and cowardly criminality. We are sorry to see that the opportunity has been eagerly seized on for vilifying the excursion- ists, as if they had really given cause for tempting persons to plot their destruction. Now, the facts appear to have been that the excursion was essentially one for friendly in tercourse between the citizens of two ancient towns, bound together by heart-stirring recol lections that can fade only with English history. One half of the excursionists were not Orangemen at all, but even if they had been, what crime was it that they should have visited their friends in Derry? In the address of the citizens of the latter place to the inhabitants of Enniskillen we observe with pleasure that they expressly disclaim any " intention of invading or interrupting the legal " rights and privileges of any class or denotntna " tion of their fellow-subjects." And we are bound to say that all their proceedings appear to have been moderate, and not calculated to give offence. The conduct of the Earl of ENNISKILLEN was worthy of the gallant family of which he is the head. In order to prevent any party-proceed ings he went with the exeuraiouists, and he bravely exposed himself to danger by travelling on the engine-carriage, in order to moderate the speed when it appeared that peril was apprehended. The heartlessness of the