The Press. — London, England, 1854-08-26 00:00:00

794 tion be broken up. Its divided councils de prive the country of the advantage of a direct and united Cabinet, at a time when firmness and vigour are imperatitely deu4t/ded. It is vain for Lord ABERDEEN to suppqie that b a few smooth words heead dispel the distru excited by his past eitteet. The slave an tool of Russia for forty yekrs, cad we "suppose that the Czar find in him iibw an active and determined dOPoneiii? The country sighs for loftier aims and purer principles in public) life. It is tired of the selfish vacillation of little minds, and de- Mends that statesmen shall be honest, if they cannot be great. The system of compromise, by which the highest interests of the natioh are sacrificed to its basest ends, cannot, we imagine, last much longer. We can now estimate at their true value the purity of NEWCASTLE *and GLADSTONE, the disinterestedness of Lord JOHN RUSSELL and the GREYS, and the pa triotism of Sir W. MOLESWORTR and Sir B. HALL. There can be few men so credulous as to believe that these personages are united in office solely from their regard for the public service. In the general confusion of politics, the Conservative party alone has preserved its character. It has steadily fulfilled its duties to the Crown and country, and has shown admirable capacity for government, without manifesting eagerness for place. Whatever changes may occur in the political world must tend to strengthen it in numbers and in fluence. Among the members of any great party a wide range must be allowed for in dividual opinion, but it would be great weak ness in any man to suffer such differences to prevent him from affording his cordial support to that party which he believes in his con science to be best fitted to assure the safety, and advance the prosperity, of the country. IXAVE WE A PROTESTANT CONSTITUTION?" Rama accounts from the United States describe the anti-Papal feeling there to be steadily on the increase. It seems that when Popery was seen pursuing its old practices in the Far West the national spirit of the Americans took alarm. Of Anglo-Saxon an cestry in the main part, with a pure religion and popular institutions, the Americans have not received Romish aggression with the frigid indifference professed by Lord ABER DEEN and the Duke of NEWCASTLE. They have shown very plainly that against all the craft of the Vatican they are prepared to main tain the Constitution founded by WASHINGTON. So strong an anti-Romish spirit has burst up through the States that the more intelligent of the Romanists in America have uttered warn ing notes to the zealots of their creed to desist from their jesuitical designs and ultra montane conspiracies. When American nationality is thus found so antagonistic to Romanism, we are justified in regarding with jealousy our own present relations with the Papacy. Upon this subject Mr. DISRAELI recently stated some facts de serving particular attention, and by an eloquent address (that will be found elsewhere) we per ceive that the " Protestant Working Men's Association " of Liverpool have enthusiast' tally echoed the sentiments of the Right Hon. Gentleman the Member for Bucks. In the course of the last discussion on Maynooth Mr. DISRAELI reminded the House of Commons how its time was encroached upon by polemical de bates, and, after enumerating the variety of forms in which the Roman Catholic contro versy is intruded on the Legislature, asked the significant question , " Have we a Pro " testant Constitution or not ? " That is a political query which the country must solve before long, though certain Ministerial friends of the Court of Rome will practise all their wiles to stifle a discussion in which they anti cipate defeat. If we were to accept the present Govern ment as an authority on that most important question we conld not answer the query of Mr. DISRAELI in the affirmative. Replying to Mr. SpooNtn on the subject of Maynooth, the THE PRESS. CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER intimated that the people of Ireland should be " consulted" tt on the subject. oes Mr. GLADSTONE wish to treat our natio lelfeltt as a "mere Irish" questio 9 Is i i ' CcakEtution of England td be aiiiitt aor efflifirided by the voices of till feprese ives tit thtt priests, and ought ii 6 kccount 18 be taltd di iof e feelings of the people 6T Englagiff and. 4 theit,t4turch ? We cannot, gen if fk wished; OM! tftese questions forcert upon us by the confinilditslfaggressive course of the Papal power. They must be decided one way or the. othei. They are far too im portant to be treated as indifferent, for, as Mr. DISRAELI observed, " our Protestant Con " stitution is the guarantee for the civil and " religious liberties of the country;" and the most marked features in the Romanist de bates is the implied denial by the Peelite casuists that we have a Protestant Constitu tion in any intelligible sense. They would at best admit it verbally and deny it practically, and employ their logic of evasion to escape from the recognition of the constitutional Protestantism of the land. For e that the Constitution of England is legally and morally, de facto and de jure, Protestant no Englishman can doubt. It is proclaimed in the Act of Settlement, and the monarchs of England attest Heaven to the fact in the august cere mony of their coronation. By virtue of Pro testantism the House of Brunswick is seated on the throne. Our Church is an " estab lished " one, and munificently endowed, to prevent its ecclesiastics from catering to the erratic fancies of the crowd. The oaths taken by our legislators register the sentiment of the framers of our Constitution on the "idola trous " character of Romanism. The places and guarded privileges assigned to our clergy in our social organisation demonstrate that the Constitution of England is at once anti Papal and anti-Infidel. Protestants, not from indifference, but choice, we have established the clerical order to preach salvation iu the name and through the blood of CHRIST. The nation protests against a jarring anarchy of sects as well as against what Mr. MACAULAY has called " the gorgeous and fascinating " superstition of Popery." Our Constitution rejects a theocracy, abjures infidelity, and asserts with solemnity the revelation of the Bible. And to these great truths the people of England are the witnesses. Their public spirit, their free assemblies, the frank speech of their journals, their public ctoms, and their private manners, proclaim us that the nationality of England is inspired by purer religious sanctions than can be imparted by the servile creed of Rome. The Anglo-Saxon races abhor priestly shackles, and march in the front of civilisation professors of Protes tantism and pioneers of progress. In both hemispheres men of English blood who speak the English tongue, differing in many things, ar e profoundly sympathetic in spurning an Italian religion, and in scorning to be the sub jects of the Vatican. England will not recant its religious faith ; and, when its religion is practically ignored by the Romanists and their Tractarian allies, it is time, in the words of Mr. DISRAELI, that the matter should be placed beyond dispute, and "that Government " should declare by legislation what are the " attributes and being of the Protestant Con - " stitution." 'ti- I THE INDIAN DEFICIT. WHEN the business of the session was virtually over,—when many of the leading members had quitted town,—and it was extremely difficult to collect a "house," Sir CHARLES WOOD brought forward his Indian Budget, exhibiting a defi ciency on the year of nearly a million sterling. But this is not all. The deficit, according to his account, must go on increasing. He tells us that the expenditure must be largely aug mented instead of being diminished, while taxation has already been carried to that point which leaves no possible hope of any addition to the public revenue. In short, he admits that India under his government is bankrupt, and likely to continue so, and, as far as his words SATURDAY, apply to his own administration, and India's prospects under it, we are prepared to accord him implicit credence. His only lettenlittb ltiOti ate feeling on the art of , tB6 public that vust naturally be eateltby flitch a Otate of things consisted in mpiikg u the deficit of itto last year with ome tdith Iphis oh the tik years preceding, • jd tliiiii s ng an tiiemi6. But it would be ust id feiefitable t 8 stag an average of the masa% msed in difiVient sessions of Parlia ment by different Ministries as to strike an Indian revenue average of this kind. It would not be more absurd to take to measures passed by Lord DERBY'S Government in 1852 to qualify the Ministerial failures of the session just over, than it is to appeal to Mr. HERRIia 4 Indian surplus as a justification for the deficit of Sir CHARLES WOOD. Indeed, if there ever was a year in which a large Indian surplus might have been fairly looked for, the year which Sir CHARLES WOOD'S Budget embraces was the one, for in it took place the reduction of the Five per Cents. to Four per Cents., which must have brought into the Treasury nearly a million sterling. There were the revenues from Burmah, which the friends of annexation there tell us come to about two hundred and seventy thousand pounds more ; there are the temporarily sequestered districts belonging to the Nizam, amounting to another four hundred thousand; there are the revenues of the lapsed State of Nagpore, which must be nearly as much ; there is the country taken from Meer Au NERIAD, a hundred thousand; the Jhansi ter ritory, some fifty thousand ; there are innu merable Jagheredas' estates, which must in the interim have been sequestered or lapsed; and there is, besides, Lord DALHOUSIE'S own pet Punjaub, which we were told was to prove a second California, and give us an available surplus annually of more than half a million sterling. Yet, with all these enormous con quests, confiscations, and windfalls—notwith standing all the boastings of the Ministerial journals at the commencement of the session —in spite of all the vast mass of wisdom brought to bear on Indian affairs in the person of the Marquis of DALHOUSIE, aided by the superhuman talent for finance exhibited by Sir CHARLES Woon—we have a deficit in India of nearly a million sterling—a deficit wbieh, under the present Administration, Sir CRARLES WOOD himself admits to be incapable of dimi nution ; indeed, he most distinctly prepares us for its continuous increase. If this be a matter which the English public deem but slightly to concern them, they never were more mistaken. Our existence as a first rate Power depends on our retaining India; and the inevitable deduction from that fact is, that if the Indian revenues become inadequate to the carrying on the public service there, as they are now declared to be, England will itself be in the end compelled to make good the deficiency. Those who remember what took place at the time of the imposition of the income tax will bear in mind that the then deficit in India was urged as one of the argu ments for its necessity by Sir ROBERT PEEL. In the same way, if this new deficit is allowed to continue. the deficiency will, in some way or other, have to be made good by the people of England. Indeed, we have reason to know that the idea, if not officially developed, has beeu for some time under consideration, of doing this in a very insidious but in a very effectual manner, by retransferring the charge of a large number of the Queen's troops now in India to the Crown. That with so rich, so fertile, so magnifi cent a dependency as India to deal with there can be any real necessity for such a d e fi c it existing is a position too absurdly self-evident to make any refutation of it on our parts necessary. With proper manage ment, India, in the hands of an enterprising an d commercial nation like Eng land, might at no distant period become the richest country in the world. But , befo re it can be so, the government of it must be transferred to other hands, the administration of it must be con ducted on other principles than those which prevail at present. Its rulers must be pre pared to deal with it in a manner consistent w ith common equity and common sense. They m ust give up all idea of " mysterious 1•••mminE11111.11411 . \ MOW