The Press. — London, England, 1858-11-06 00:00:00

grants amount to 626,1011., or not quite 411 for every 1001. subscribed ; while e po'n the 1 71 , 8401. contributed b y p romoters ofNonconformist schools, the grants amount to 92,4531., or nearly 541. for every 100/. so contri buted. Nor do even these figures sufficiently re present the extent of the share which the Church takes in the education of the masses; for it is notorious that, in consequence of the at tempts made by the Committee of Council to break down the distinctive doctrinal teaching of the Church, many Church schools have, during the period specified, been erected or enlarged without aid from the Parliamentary grant, of which the different classes of Nonconformists round little or no difficulty in availing themselves, owing to the conciliatory spirit in which they were met by the Committee of Council. Looking at these unmistakeable indications of the position which the Church holds in England and Wales—for the educational statistics include the latter, —it is difficult to describe, in " Parlia mentary language," the audacious misrepresenta tion that " in England only one-third—in Wales " only one-fifth—of the people have any con nection whatever with the Established Church." That a gentleman capable of giving utterance to such a misrepresentation, in what pretends to be a statesmanlike review of the position of the country and of the principles on which it ought to be governed, should, under the joint inspira tion of Radicalism and the ecclesiastical traditions of GEORGE Fox, indulge in virulent invective against the Chief Ministers of the Church, can sur prise no one. To describe the Bishops of the Church as " creatures of monstrous, nay, of adul "terous birth," may serve to raise a laugh in a mixed assembly such as that whose ear the Honourable Member for Birmingham did his best to tickle with that basest of appliances, vulgar and un measured abuse of men in place ; but it is un worthy of a man of Mr. BRIGHT'S pretensions, and, we will add, of the position to which his abilities and earnestness of purpose have raised him in public estimation. Political delinquencies of this kind bring, as the Honourable Gentleman will find to his cost, their own punishment with them ; to do more than call attention to them would be a waste of words. With this remark we might, if the Hon. Gentle man affected no other role than that of tribune of the people, whose object it is to curry favour with the multitude by a turbulent assertion of so-called "popular rights," have taken our leave of him ; but since he is bent upon playing the statesman, and makes a parade of his wish "to abide almost " religiously"—whatever that may mean—" by " the ancient landmarks of our Constitution," he must pardon us for the suggestion that speeches like that on which we have commented, ill become the lips of one who lays it down as an axiom that " every man who writes an article in " a newspaper, and every man who stands up on " a platform to address his countrymen "—even as he himself did at Birmingham,—" ought to do it " under a so l emn sense of responsibility." To the moral of that axiom—which we are very far indeed from disputing—the Hon. Gentleman has been too sadly wanting in his recent speech, the aims of which are as unfair as its assertions are untrue; and he will do well to get rid of this beam in his own eye, before he again offers to meddle with the motes which he fancies he dis cerns in our Constitution in Church and State. IRELAND'S TERRITORIAL REVOLUTION. ON this subject,—incidentally introduced by us into a former article on the law of real property, — we were favoured last week with a communica tion from a correspondent whose strictures, on account of the high respect which his name justly Commands, we cannot pass over in silence. At the outset we think we have some reason to .complain of a seem i ng — an d , we f ee l qu i te sure , uni ntentional —misrepr esen t a ti on . Th e wa y in which our correspondent has worded his reference to our remark s i s ca l cu l ate d to convey t h e im pression that we represented the change made in the Irish law of property, by the establishment of the Encumbered Estates Court, simply as "a change ;, " he himself qualifying that " change „ 414 'enormous," and addi ng , as if b y wa y of' cor rection, in a parenthesis, " revolution is a more varrect word." This is scarcely doing justice to THE PRESS, NOVEMBER 6, 1858. the terms in which we ourselves had spoken of that "change ; " seeing we described it as " a " mighty change—amounting to something nearly " approaching a revolution—in the Irish law of " property." Why we do not conceive the change, "however great in itself and extensive in its "operation," to be " obnoxious to the reproach " which the term revolution" (suggested by our selves in connection with it) "implies," we went on to explain; and what we so said in explana tion constitutes the gravamen of our correspon dent's censure. We said,—and we now repeat,— that "it was brought about neither in pursuance "of abstract theories nor as the result of a " forcible subversion of the established order of " things, but was called for by an imperative "necessity, as a remedy for acknowledged evils "of the most serious character, and carried into " effect with a due regard for existing rights." It is against this last assertion that our correspon dent, while admitting in other respects the cor rectness ofour statement, " emphatically protests." The retort courteous is,at all times, a disagreeable form of argument ; and we cannot, therefore, help regretting that it should be our obvious defence in the present instance. Our correspondent calls in question the "accuracy" of that portion of our remarks against which he protests; in reply, we put it to him whether the reasoning by which he supports that protest is not itself altogether de ficient in "accuracy." For all that he alleges— and far be it from us to gainsay it—as to the hardships, the injuries,—the substantial injustice, if he will have it so,—which the operation of the Act inflicted on the landed proprietors, is not in consistent with the perfect truth and " accuracy " of our statement that "the change in the law was " carried into effect with a due regard for existing " rights." What, as touching " existing rights," was the state of the case ? At the time when, to use the language of Lord Chancellor NAPIER, "it be " came in Ireland a matter of great public policy "to have encumbered estates purchased by " solvent proprietors, who might be expected to " discharge the duties correlative with the rights " of property," there were in Ireland, in refer ence to this class of property, two distinct " existing rights "—viz., the rights of the landed proprietors, the mortgagors, and the rights of the mortgagees. It is by an exclusive attention to the rights of the former, and an entire forgetful ness of the rights of the latter, that our corre spondent has been misled. The right of the landed proprietor, the mortgagor, consists in the power which he possesses of retaining the property so long as he can pay the mortgagee his interest, and the principal if demanded, or satisfy him that he runs no risk in allowing the mortgage to continue. Beyond this the mortgagor has no right. He has no right to retain the property while obliged to confess his inability to discharge his obligations towards the mortgagee ; nor has he any right to require of a mortgagee who may have, or think he has, reason to suppose his property endangered, from whatever cause, by the continuance of the mortgage, that he shall abstain from enforcing his right as mortgagee. The right of the mortgagee, on the other hand, consists in the power which he possesses of de manding, in addition to the payment of interest, the return of the money he has advanced on mortgage. or, as the alternative, the surrender of the property, which he is entitled to sell as clearly as if it had been originally his own pro perty, subject always to an account to be ren dered by him of any excess of the produce of the sale over the amount of his claim, and subject, for this purpose, to the interference of a Court, which was, at the time in question, the Irish Court of Chancery. Beyond this the mortgagee has no right. He has no right to seize and to sell the property, or to require the mortgagor to sell it, while the latter is prepared to pay off the IllOrtgage. Now we contend—and we doubt not that our correspondent will, as everybody must, admit— that the establishment of the Encumbered Estates Court did not, in the slightest degree, interfere with either of those " existing rights." What it really did was to facilitate the enforcement ofthose rights on either side. The machinery of the Irish Court of Chancery, considering the delays which it oc casioned and the expenses which it entailed, proved an obstruction, rather than a help, to the enforcement of them. The proprietor who wished • to proceed to a sale with a view to clear off is- 1075 cumbrances, and free the remaining portion o his estates from a burden which they were not able to bear, was deterred by the prospect of in terminable difficulties and ruinous costs. The mortgagee who wished to call up his mortgage, and, in default of repayment of his advance, to bring the mortgaged property to a sale, in order to secure himself from loss, was deterred by the same prospect. To remove the obstruction thus offered by the existing law to the enforcement of " existing rights," was the simple effect of the Act which established the Encumbered Estates Court ; and under ordinary circumstances it would have proved a boon to both mortgagor proprietors, and mortgagees. It would have been a consider able, but it would also have been a decidedly beneficial, " change" in the law of real property. The term " revolution " could never have been applied to it, directly or indirectly. But the circumstances of the time were far from ordinary ; and the result was " a mighty change, amounting "to something nearly approaching a revolution," although not properly obnoxious to the reproach implied in that term ; for this very reason, that in reality it only rendered " existing rights" operative, which, through the vice of the law, had become practically inoperative. It will scarcely be contended that if that state of the law afforded a practical protection to the insol vent proprietor against the just and lawful claims of the mortgagee, this protection consti tuted part and parcel of the " existing rights " of the mortgagor. Justice, substantial justice, assuredly did not require that the mortgagee should be exposed to the loss of the money advanced by him, in order that the insolvent mortgagor might still shelter himself under a state of the law which rendered the enforcement of the rights of the mortgagee inconvenient, hazardous, and possibly unproductive. The real hardship—that which assimilated the "change" in its results to a "revolution" —arose, rot from any intrinsic injustice in the change of the law establishing the new Court, but from the calamitous position of affairs in Ireland at the moment when the change was made. It was precisely this calamitous position of affairs, however, which rendered the change imperative as " a matter of great public policy ;" and it is reasoning in a circle to say that the cause which rendered the change imperative was a reason for not making the change. This is, in fact, what the argument of our correspondent amounts to. There was no " due regard," he says, " for " existing rights." But the fact is that it was a " due regard for existing rights "—viz., to render their enforcement possible—which suggested the change in the law, and made it a matter of urgent necessity. It would, doubtless, have been better if Par liament had made the change in the law, as our correspondent suggests, " some ten or twelve " years before the time when it was actually " enacted" ; when, as he himself admits, " it " would have been, beyond a doubt, a very great " boon to all." But conclusions founded on ez post facto wisdom are seldom just. It is easy, but in another sense it is hard, to blame Parlia ment for not having foreseen the rapidity with which ruin was about to overtake alike Irish proprietors and Irish mortgagees, more especially since that ruin was greatly accelerated by a visi tation of PROVIDENCE which no human foresight could anticipate. Granting, however, that Par liament might have exercised greater prevision, it does not follow that, when the necessity for a, change in the law, acknowledged to be beneficial in itself, became pressing, the change ought not to have been made, because the same circum stances which imperatively demanded it, were likely to cause it to operate, in some respects, the reverse of beneficially. What, then, was that state of things which rendered the establishment of the Encumbered Estates Court at once so imperative and so dis astrous? Proprietors deeply involved by as accumulation of incumbrances were suddenly called upon to meet, by virtue of " those duties " which are correlative with property," an un usual demand upon them for the relief of a starving peasantry. The natural result was the immediate ruin of some, the impending ruin of others, and a general panic as to the value of Irish landed property. There was not only the present difficulty of an enormous poor-rate ; there was the prospective difficulty arising from scarcity