The Press. — London, England, 1858-10-30 00:00:00

THE PRESS, OCTOBER 30,, 1858. nothing but ridicule, the murder of the Queen's subjects will certainly not do that. If insult fails, intimidation must be tried instead. Under the influence of these feelings, and exasperated at the reception which their etlUrt at a great effect has met with, the Romish clergy in Ireland have fallen back on their ancient weapons. GOD grant we may prove to be mis taken! But we fear it is only too true. If such turn out to be the case, Orangeism becomes once more a necessity. We had been sanguine enough to hope that all these abnormal appliances for the preservation of life and order had become obsolete. We still do not despair that prompt and v igorous measures on the part of the Imperial Government may supersede the necessity of class associations. But Orange societies are at least open and public. Ribbonism is secret and stealthy. The one professes adhe renceto the law; the other is called into existence contessedly because the law is obnoxions. We have gloomy forebodings of what the ensuing winter may bring forth among the wild and reckless populations of Kerry and Donegal. The Mayor and principal inhabitants of Newcvstle-upon-Tyne have presented an address to Comte DE Mautcouirr, condoling with him on the annoyance to which he has been subjected by the recent proceedings in connection with the Northern Daily Express. Our own opinion upon this transaction we expressed pretty freely last week. We do sincerely sympathize with the Count himself, whose well-known character should have protected him from the indecent attack which he experienced. At the same time, we cannot extend that sympathy to the behaviour of his son. Mr. MANTON was, doubtless, much to blame. lie either allowed him self to be the dupe of a designing person, or he knowingly propagated an untruth. But capital punishment is in this country reserved for cases of murder. Nor do we think that Mr. Mayrox's behaviour, under the imminent threat of being left " a moist, unpleasant body" to the gaze of his wife, at all such as to deprive him of our sympathy. When a writer pens a libel, he does it with his eyes open. Ile knows what the penalty is, and no private individual has a right to augment that penalty at his own discretion. The aspersions of the Northern Daily Express have not done M. DE MARicouscr the slightest harm. If fatal, their exposure was certain to be complete and instantaneous. And we still :feel that the young gentleman who seemed so desirous of conferring on the Newcastle ed►tor the celebrity of M. PENE, should have paid rather dearer for his pistol than he did. The test of respectability seems to have dwindled down from a gig to a gold watch. The fortunate possessor of this article seems at once to become in the female eye et pukher et acer—in fact irresistible. A " party," whose real name has not yet turned up, but whose initials, G. G., seem to have been expansive enough for all emergencies, has succeeded, in virtue, as it seems, of this one piece of property, in marrying just as many young women as he chose to ask. There seems indeed to have been a touch of humour in G. G. which, if anything could, would have induced us to look leniently on his transgressions. " He states that his vessel is at Southampton, and that he makes short voyages," his voyages on the stormy sea of matrimony being usually very short indeed. But we find evidence, also, of a disposition which seems not quite so purely humorous, in the fact that he was repeatedly found studying medical works, and that he once acted as an accoucheur. As, however, none of the young ladies who have succumbed to the attractions of the gold watch have as yet any worse charge to bring against him than that of inconstancy, per haps we ought to stifle our suspic:ons in the birth. The only means by which the proceedings of this general lover, and voyager of short voyages, have been brought to light, was by repeated inquiries for G. G. at the office of the Re g i s t rar f or S eamen i n Adelaide-place, London-bridge. 'I he inquiries, it is stated, have " invariably been made by females, who " refuse their names and addresses, but whose object in coming to the " office appears in each case to have been marriage." Unfortunately, however, for them, the object seems rather to have been the recovery than the discovery of a husband, the marriage ceremony having already taken place. The gold watch which, together with 51., G. G. had received for saving a life, had, in most cases, done its work, and the dupe was beyond hopes of recovery. Such are the outlines of a case which came before the Lord Mayor on Wednesday last, and as an example of male heartlessness and female credulity is, perhaps, unri valled. The particular complainant in this case was a lady whom G. G had married in the name of GEER, a young and pretty woman, of whose charms his Lordship a pp eare d t o b e f u lly sensible, indulging at the same time in a vein of moral reflection which must have been as novel as refreshing t o hi s auditory. " Ile was most anxious," said the lady, "to "have all the property settled upon me, in case he should prove a bad `' husband." "It is on ly men o f b a d h ear t," said the Lord Mayor, " who commence in that strain." All praise to our City Rochefoucault, and to he al) art young ladies bent upon matrimony at any price take his words . The vacancy for l Alancliester seems at present likely to be filled up by the election of Mr. THOMAS BAZLEY. That gentleman has issued an address in which he avows himself a disciple of the genuine Manchester school, which seems to show that after all this particular school of politics has not lost ground in our great manufacturing metropolis. Mr. COBDEN, at was stated, would not solicit the suffrages of the electors, having de clared that he would offer himself as a candidate for no other place than Rochdale. Notwith s t an di ng t h e remar k s o f M r . G. Pa rma , w h o sa id th a t 3 1° 0 0 more votes would poll for Mr. BAZLEY than Mr. COBDEN, we are at at lois to see the great difference between the opinions of these two gentle men. But it seems clear that Mr. COBDE-N has lost ground with the PJPular constituencies , and we fancy we might venture on a prediction that he is not destin e d to rega i n i t. W e b e li eve we ma y s t ate th a t i t _ not Lord S TANLEY ' S intention to offer himself as a candidate for ganchester. 1057 The "Financial Position" of the Metropolitan Board of Works has this week been given to the public. The cost of the works to which the Board is immediately and prospectively pledged is something over seven millions, and they not unnaturally ask the question where is the money to come from. To raise it by direct taxation from the ratepayers of London they seem to think impossible. Mr. Dourrom, the speaker on this occa sion, seemed to indicate that, in his opinion, some portion of the revenues of the Corporation should be devoted to the purposes of the Board ; and unquestionably, unless it can be shown that a portion of this revenue is devoted to a similar purpose by its present receivers, there is some reason in the proposal. How far any general system of indirect taxation would be relished by the metropolitan public, we cannot undertake to say ; but if these improvements are carried out, we must dip our hands pretty deeply into our pockets at one time or another, and the sooner we get used to look the prospect in the face the better. Colonel Far. em has addressed a letter to the Times, in which he asserts himself to be an injured individual, and seems to imply that he could clear up everything and pay everybody twenty shillings in the pound if he chose. We have heard of children playing at banging just to see how it felt; of blasi; rakes taking to the backwoods ; but of all the odd species of curio sity, and of all the extraordinary methods of creating a new excitement, Colonel WAUGH'S is certainly the strangest. Pretending to be a bankrupt and a swindler just to taste what obloquy and execration meant ! Sated with adulation, the Colonel took a fancy to being cursed. His jaded appe tite required some unnatural stimulant, and he certainly cannot complain that he has been disappointed. But there is something absolutely Chli..; ; in this excess of unnaturalness. It is as if a man should slice off and eat his own flesh, this battening on his own dead character ! To say nothing of the fact that the misery which this little freak has occasioned is perfectly true—and that widows and orphans have been starved by the score that the Colonel might try a new sensation. We do not think he has bettered his case. One of our Universities has at length turned to bay. In recom mending that the Fellowships at St. John's and Trinity, Cambridge, should be open to the competition of the whale University, the Commissioners have acted on the same principle which governed their proceedings at Oxford. But the enormous power which the two colleges in question can bring to bear upon any academic controversy has enabled Cambridge to be successful where the sister university failed. The two proposed changes which have excited such violent opposition are these—that College Fellowships should no longer be filled up from among members of the college exclusively, but from the whole University; .and that the Fellowships themselves should be tenable for only ten years instead of for life. Now, practically, we know that the colleges at Cambridge seldom have recourse to the alternative open to them of electing men from other foundations. They profess to be guided solely by the verdict of the schools, and simply require that a can didate for their Fellowships should have attained a certain position in the public examinations. Now, mind, we are not in the least degree quarrelling with the system. But what we maintain is, that the class of candidates is thereby just as much narrowed as under the close-fellowship system at Oxford. It is seldom that any college cannot find among its sixty or seventy members some one who has fulfilled the required conditions. But of all the first classmen of his year there is nothing to prevent his being the worst. If it is true, as is said of Cambridge, that as a rule the best men did get the fellowships always and everywhere, we reply that it was equally true of Oxford. There were exceptions in both cases, but not more in one than in the other. A first clansman was as rarely left without a Fellowship at Oxford as at Cambridge, if he wanted one. But what is effected at the latter University by the system which is now assailed was effected at the former by the system of 'close Fellowships. The pressure of competition was relieved, and men who, albeit first classmen, might have been beaten in any open contest, were secured the reward of their three years of labour. The benefit of such a system on society at large is incalculable. For the encouragement of learning and the promotion of mental culture brilliant prizes for the few are of far less importance than a reasonable success for the many. The best man of his year at Oxford or Cambridge is a man whose fortune is assured. He will neither remain at the University as a teacher nor settle down in the provinces as a minor centre of refinement and cultivation. He " soars far off amid the swans of Thames." But what the country and the University require are just the class of men we have described, and the prospect of a Fellowship is just the kind of incitement which stimulates such men to work. Such was the use of close Fellowships at Oxford—such is the use of the existing sys tem at Cambridge. We cannot help thinking that in the long run the changes which have taken place at Oxford will prove injurious to the in terests of learning and mental culture. We are aware that predictions of this kind can seldom be verified, because we are all interested in denying their fulfilment. Nations, like individuals, are rarely conscious of the steps by which they sink from one stage of degeneracy to another. The laudator temporis acts belongs to a class that will probably never be ex tinct, but is after all not very numerous. The bulk of mankind are wor shippers of the present ; and whoever ventures to insinuate that in any one particular we have changed for the worse, must expect nothing but the contumely of his contemporaries. Should it come to pass, therefore, in fifty years time that classical learning in Oxford had fallen below the monkish standard, we doubt not many flourishing leading articles would be written to show that it was all right, and that ROGEIi DE HOVEDIVI was II better model of Latinity than CICERO Or TACXTUS. I