The Press. — London, England, 1858-07-10 00:00:00

652 THE PRESS, JULY 10, 158. " son for ships departing for Calcutta," it will be observed, were put in on the motion of Mr. DANnY SEYMOUR, the late Secretary of the Board of Control, and were adopted by a majority of the Committee, evidently for the purpose of letting the Government and Mr. purpose of letting the Government and Mr. DANBY SEYMOUR himself down a little easier than the Resolution would have done in its original form. We believe the true conclusion, then, to be plain, and we infer that it is also that to which the Committee came, and that which they wish indirectly to convey to the public. The late Government, either from recklessness or from incapacity, or from a mischievous cunning, would not look the state of India in the face, and in spite of the urgent representations of the Court of Directors, persisted in refusing to recog nize the gravity of the events which took place at Barrackpore, Meerut, and elsewhere. A foolish idea of concealing from the public the amount of mismanagement and maladministration made them shrink from grappling at once with the difficulty, and they refrained from the prompt application of strong remedies from fear their exhibition should reveal the extent of the disease. Like Sir Anthony Absolute in the comedy, in the midst of his patents and devices of all kinds, with the house on fire, they fell back on the silly hope that perhaps the fire might go out of itself. Alas ! the soil of India covers the bodies of thousands of gallant men and heroic women who have fallen victims to that unhappy delusion, and to the vacillation of the Minister of the Crown who has sought shelter under those " political considerations" which have so puzzled and impeded Sir DE LACY EVANS'S Committee. unbecoming declaration, that from the first " his " spurs had been in the sides, and his reins on the " neck, of the Court of Directors," a slow and unwilling horse. With regard to the late Government, the Com mittee speak less clearly and decisively; but the contrast between the explicitness of all the other Resolutions, and the laboured obscurity of those which relate to the Cabinet of Lord PALmEtts- Tort, leads us to the conclusion that the obscurity is the result, not so mach of a want of distinct ness of opinion, as of a desire upon the part of a Committee, the majority of whom had been strong supporters of Lord PALMERSTON, to let their old friends down easily. They give us a faint idea of their opinion, but avoid expressing it in plain terms. _ The Committee, after examining all the best authorities upon the subject, are of opinion that for the future steamers should always be made use of as far as possible in urgent cases. They are con vinced also that if they had been used in greater numbers, the reinforcements would have reached India more quickly than they did. The Com mittee have no doubt that the overland route is by far the best for occasions of emergency ; and they consider that, apart from the political consi derations which have been advanced as a defence by the late Government, " It is much to be re " gretted that the steps which were taken in Sep " tember (nearly four months after the intelli gence was received which induced Lord ELLEN BOROUGH to call the attention of the House of Lords to the insufficiency of our forces in India) " were not resorted to at an earlier date." The value of the pleas put forward by the late Government in Parliament, and by Mr. VERNON Smrru before the Committee, depends, there fore, entirely upon the reality and gravity of the political considerations. With these we are unacquainted. Their character even has never been communicated to Parliament, and the Committee felt themselves precluded from pressing Mr. VERNON Smrru to explain them. Tie question then naturally occurs—Were there really any such considerations at all ? Hid they ever any existence, or were they not called in for the occasion to serve as a convenient shelter ? Where are we to look for them ? In Turkey, or in Egypt ; in France, or in Russia ? We profess we are utterly unable to see in our relations, actual or possible, with any of those countries, any political cont►ngencies whatever sViich should make us hesitate at any time to take advantage of the Overland Route for the transmission of troops in or out of uniform. It would be perfectly absurd to talk of Turkey h wing any voice in the question of the uses to which the Pacha of Eovvr may put his railway, and as regards himself we may depend upon it that the greater use we make of it the better pleased he will be. His railway is not a political device, but a commercial speculation. Neither was any jealousy evinced by any other Euro pean power upon the subject. They were not so foolish. On the contrary•, they contemplated the Egyptian railway as the resource to which we should naturally have recourse for the trans mission of our troops upon an occasion in which ti nc was everything; and many of the conti nental journals have expressed their surprise that we made no larger use of it. We do not believe in those political considera tions which have been put forward so pertina ciously and so mysteriously. Neither, it is evi dent, did the Committee; although the remains of attachment to the ex- Premier prevented them from giving full and explicit expression to their opinion. What do they say upon this point ? They say : "3. That the Committee cannot judge of the validity of those political objections as they felt themselves precluded from inquiring into theru; but that they ceased to prevail in the first week of September, when the more serious character of the war and the lateness of the season for ships departing for Calcutta led to a formal requisition from the Court of Directors, and to a compliance with it on the part of the Cabinet." The political considerations, be their nature what it might, the Committee were not ac quainted with ; but be it what it might, these considerations ceased to prevail when the more serious character of the war was, in Sep tember, four months too late, recognized by the Government. The words, " lateness of the sea- THE STATUS OF THE CLERGY. IN his speech on the Church-rate Bill, the Arch bishop of CANTERBURY made some very perti nent observations on the social status now en joyed by the clergy, pointing out in few words the effect which it would have upon that s tatus if the clergy were converted into collectors of money for keeping in repair their churches. It cannot be doubted that the social position which the clergy of the Established Church occupy is owing very much to their indepen dence of their people, and their freedom from all mercenary motives in the discharge of their duties. Once make them either pensioners of the State, or dependent upon the favour of the people, and much of their self-respect, founded upon the dignity of their office, is gone. With dependence comes subservience, and its usual concomitant, meanness. It is one of the evils, we think, connected with many of our suburban district churches that the minister has to preach to please the people, not only for his own support (his income being dependent upon pew - rents), but also to obtain the means of sustaining the fabric in which he officiates. This must interfere very much with his independence of feeling and consequent faithfulness, especially in his official dealings with the rich. There is as much truth as wit in SYDNEY SMITH'S amusing description of the effects of pauperizing the clergy. Take, he says, "an " average, ordinary, uninteresting minister; " obese, dumpy ; neither learned nor ignorant ; " striding over the stiles to church with a second " rate wife, dusty and deliquescent, and four pa " rochial children, full of catechism and bread " and butter ; or let him be seen in one of those " Shem-Ham-and-Japhet buggies, made on " Mount Ararat soon after the subsidence of the " waters, driving in the high street of Edmonton, " among all his pecuniary, saponaceous, oleagi " nous parishioners. Can any man of common " sense say that all these outward circumstances " of the minister of religion have no bearing upon " religion itself?" There cannot be a doubt that they have a bearing, and that, being degrading, they are de leterious to the man and his influence. It may sound all very well to talk of apostolic poverty being the proper condition for the clergy, but he must be very ignorant of human nature who does not know that poverty is never likely to induce respect. Make the clergy generally poor and dependent, and, in the present state of society, they will inevitably be despised. It is not sufficiently remembered that, in the apostolic age, the whole Church consisted of the poor. The Apostles themselves, indeed, were rich in gifts, and this gave them a commanding influence ; but the great body of people among whom they " went in and out" were of the hum blest classes. But the whole relation of the Church to the State (that is, to the whole mass of the people) is altered now. Manners and modes of life have altered; in our own country especially, the whole character of society has changed from what it was in ancient times, or even so late as the days of WILLIAM 111. This involves the necessity of a corresponding change in the relative position of the clergy. We shall believe those who prate about apostolic poverty, and would bring back the clergy to that condition, to be honest enthu siasts—not, as now we think them, cheats and impostors—when we see them throwing their own goods into common, and submitting their own persons to the self-denying poverty of the early Church. But the clergy of the Church of England, as was truly observed by the Archbishop in the debate referred to, do not fear poverty : what they dread is dependence. They will submit (thousands often do submit) cheerfully to small means and straitened circumstances—to be located in disagreeable districts, among smoke-spouting factories and a begrimed sooty class of people, far from the haunts of finery and fashion—if only they be recognized as holding a recognized position, and feel they have authority to minister among them. There is a spirit of self-respect en. gendered by this which never can attach to men who know themselves to be absolutely dependent for the very power to exercise their office upon an order of people far inferior to themselves. Most of the clergy of the Church of England, too, are born gentlemen, and their influence as such must be of an elevating character in all the neighbourhoods in which they dwell. Those who would lower the social position of the clergy little think how much injury they would thereby inflict upon society at large. To send such men round with the begging-box for means to sustain their churches would be to make men dicants of them : it would be to produce a race of mean and mercenary ministers (for, under these circumstances, an inferior class only would go into the Church) who, like the Romish priests and begging-friars, would seek to make capital of and profit by the weaknesses, the vicious habits, the sins and follies of their fellow-crea tures. All who would uphold the social eleva tion of their country will, upon these grounds, feel it to be their duty to uphold the indepen dence, the respectability, the dignified social position of the clergy, as an order of men who ought specially to combine the character of the gentleman with that of the Christian. But while we thus argue, we cannot refrain from noticing that a marked degree of change is passing over the clergy, as a body, from other causes. Formerly, none but gentlemen, or those who, through a regular University education, had acquired the habits of gentlemen, entered the Church. These might be the days of " high and dry " orthodoxy, and of general inefficiency; but the Church, it must be admitted, as represented by the clergy, stood high in credit in those days with the nation. It is moat important that it should so stand. But