The Press. — London, England, 1853-05-28 00:00:00

74 servative into a Radical; and afterwards found Conservatism so strong that he has been obliged to creep into office under the skirts of a soi-dives/ Conservative Prime Minis ter. lie always mistakes the tone of the public mind and the bent of the nation. After the break up of —l6, irritated at the obstinacy of the country gentlemen in adhering to that industrial system, the policy and necessity of which no one had so strongly and painfully impressed upon them as himself, he fell rashly into all the schemes and dogmas of the revolutionary school, which would destroy the .just preponderance of the landed franchise in our constitution, in order to change the de positary of power in this country. In the conferences which took place during the inter regnum of —5O Sir JAMES GRAHAM impressed these views, and successfully, on Lord Jona RUSSELL. He persuaded Lord Joss RUSSELL that no strong Government could be formed until the wings of the landed aristocracy should be clipped, and that the most expedient method to effect this was to introduce the urban qualification into counties, and transfer the franchise from rural boroughs to trading towns. He wished to destroy that balance which he had assisted Lord GREY in 1880 to establish awl secure. Two years have scarcely elapsed, and the whole country views the elements and the conduct of the town consti tuencies with distrust and alarm, and clings to the present arrangement and distribution of the rural franchise as one of our best practical securities for pure and efficient government. It must never be forgotten that Sir Jams GRAHAM is at this moment a Minister only be cause Lord ABERDEEN has promised him " a " large measure of Parliamentary Reform," which large measure Lord JOHN Ressau.—a convert to Sir JAMES GRAHAM from the great Lord Gity, their common master—has pledged his personal as well as political ho nour shall be introduced at the commence ment of the next session of Parliament. To suppose that such men, in such a position, me ditate the evasion of their engagement is not merely to believe that grave statesmen have obtained power under false pretences, but that they have premeditatedly practised a hoax upon a nation. Yet what is their reform to be? Is Sir JAMES GRAHAM still of opinion that the introduction of the town franchise into counties is the best security for pure and free election ? as good a security as that process of secret suffrage which he once approved, but which he recently has discovered has pros trated the liberties of forty millions of human beings at the feet of a despot? Does he still believe that it is an impolitic arrangement which in a free country deposits a large por tion of political power in the hands of the pro prietors of the land, and of that considerable section of the middle classes who are con nected with the cultivation of the soil? Or has further reflection, at his mature period of life, convinced him that it may be well for a free country to have such a bulwark against the corruption of cities, as well as against their tumultuous passions and precipitate ca price? Is Sir JAmEs still prepared to strike at those limited but unsullied constituencies which, by securing that the minority, as well us the majority, should be represented, have mainly contributed to the continuous and be neficial working of our representative system? Is his large measure to be of the shape and colour of his secret project of 1851 ? or has it assumed altogether another aspect, with quite a different bent, and quite a contrary bias ? Experienced without being wise, ever schem ing without prescience, and always the first to fly from the consequences of his own rashness, what, in short, does this presumptuous states man mean ? The time has gone by when Parliamentary Reform can be a phrase with which trading politicians can palter ? A large measure of Parliamentary Reform means changing the chief depositary of power in this country, or it means nothing. Those who believe that public liberty depends upon the maintenance of our institutions in Church and State, and that those institutions, in their turn, depend upon power being distributed over the land, instead of being centralised in a huge and corrupt metropolis, with ready Ii THE PRESS. agents of its irresistible tyranny in the affi liated constituencies of a few large towns, will resist Parliamentary Reform, however pre- pared and willing they may be to extirpate that corruption which, from the time of Sir ROHE= WALPOLE, has exercised its pernicious influence in the towns to impair the authority of the landed aristocracy of this country. THE CHURCH-RATE DEBATE. THE HOUSE OF COMMON% on Thursday night, presented a scene exceedingly characteristic of the present phase of affairs. Indisposed to business, and uninspired by oratory, some three hundred members lounged, yawned, and gossiped on the benches—disappeared to dine, and returned to divide,—while, for seven mortal hours, the privileges of the Church and the wrongs of Dissent formed a subject of alter nate attack and defence. Mr. Puittamosx—in whose plan Ministers, by giving him a day, had signified, by anticipation, their general con currence—spoke from the Whig benches, but devoted all his energies to conciliate Conser vative support. Sir W. CLAY, his rival, ap pealed more openly to the feelings of the Liberal party ; but Sir W. CLAY is no orator, and the Liberal party, during the hour and a half which his performance occupied, was mainly represented by Mr. HAYTER and some half-dozen of the Ministerial flock. No suc ceeding speaker was much more fortunate. Neither the neo-Puritanism of Mr. MIALL, nor the somewhat antiquated Churchmanship of Sir R. INGLIS, could extract from an apathetic audience any sign of emotion, or cause a moment's cessation of the continuous buzz of vo ice s —that evidence of inattention, worse than all censure, under which DEMOSTHENES would have broken down, but which modern Ministers have not rarely to endure. Party spirit slept ; and, in the absence of party spirit, popular assemblies either lapse into torpor or require the stimulus of personal conflict to rouse them. Even Sir GEORGE GREY, with his clear accents, remarkable fluency, and habitual felicity of comment, failed to draw more than an occasional and feeble cheer. This eminent ex-Minister took a singular course. He began by finding fault with Mr. PHlLLlMORE—criti (need that gentleman's bill cleverly, but rather unfairly—thence passed on to Sir W. CLAY'S proposal, which he seemed equally to repu diate—expressed himself not very dissatisfied with the present state of affairs—and ended by voting with Sir W. CLAY, on the assurance of the latter that " he really had something to " propose, which he would tell the House, if " allowed to go into committee." But Sir GEORGE GREY'S vagaries were far outdone by those of his ex-colleague. Lord JOHN RUSSELL, the leader of the Il (am of Commons, dis played a perplexity which he had neither the frankness to acknowledge nor the art to con ceal. Mr. PHILLIMOUE'S arguments," he said, " had proved to him that Sir W. CLAY was " wrong. Sir W. Ci..tv, in like manner, had " exposed the impracticability of Mr. PHILLI " MORE'S scheme. Neither, he thought, would " answer; but the law undoubtedly required " amendment, and therefore"—he would amend it himself? No such thing—" He would " let one of the two bills be printed, and " take his chance of its being improved "in committee." Profound statesman !—in defatigable administrator! Well might Mr. BRIGHT ironically com;ratulate him on his re cently-acquired profit ; ,liey in the art of stand ing still. But even this supercilious inaction was not enough for the Whig chief. He went farther : admitting that the law was bad, he deprecated all efforts to improve it. " Church " rates," said the champion of civil and reli gious liberty, " are an outwork of the Church ; " touch them, and the citadel will fall next." In Lord STANLEY'S pamphlet, which lie quoted with a compliment., it had been argued that to tax men for the propagation of opinions in which they do not share is unjust. " That " argument," remarked the author of the ap propriation clause, is fatal to all endow " meats." As though taxes and endowments were the same—as though incomes drawn from land could be placed on the same footing with a fluctuating charge on personal pro- SATURDAY, perty—as though the Duke of BEDFORD held his estates oa the same tenure by which the CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER holds the in come tax The House did not share in the opinions of its chief: it received the quota tion with a cheer; the comment in freezing silence. So matters stand for the present. An irri tating question, of whieh Lord DERBY or Sir B. PEEL. would have disposed without diffi culty, remains still unsettled. Dissenters must continue to pay against their consciences, or to resist in defiance of law; moderate men lament the result, and the Editor of the - conformist triumphs. But Lord JOHN'S end is gained—he has invented an excuse for doing nothing. THE TARIFF.—MARBLE AND CORDAGE. WE are not disposed to question the obliga tion, conventional as well as political, under which Mr. GLADSTONE lies to carry to com pletion the free-trade policy of Sir ROBERT PEEL. But, whilst the reductions now in pro cess upon articles of consumiAion will be ac cepted as a boon by the many, there are some items in the amended resolutions of the CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER, bearing upon the handicrafts and manufactures of the country, the changes in which will be attended with keen suffering on the part of those now deriving a livelihood from the processes to which the articles in question are subjected on importation. For this, the course of events ought to have prepared the classes in ques tion, as but the gradual fulfilment and natural operation of a system which is in turn to bring within the sphere of " unrestricted competition " every branch of industry in these kingdoms. For the present, even Mr. GLADSTONE'S measure defers the inevitable day, in the instance of the silk trade and some others, which still derive encouragement from protective duties. But some minor sufferers have been selected for instant despatch, leaving to their survivors the comfort of Poly phemus in being the last devoured. Two instances suffice to illustrate the pro gress of the system. Hitherto hemp, as a raw material, has been admitted to entry free ; but yarns, the first stage of manufacture, have been subjected to a duty of three shil lings per hundredweight on importation. By this means the ropemakers of all our sea ports have been ensured an occupation for their enterprise and industry. But now Mr. GLADSTONE proposes to place the half-manufac tured article and the raw material on an equality : the duty on foreign rope yarns is to be abolished, and this branch of the rope trade is to be henceforth admitted free. The effect of this is formidable. The operation of converting hemp into cable yarns is effected by the simplest ma chinery ; and in Russia, with a command of economical power, the manufacture will hence forth be conducted by those who now send us only the unspun material. Russia will thus naturally monopolise a double profit, that on the growth as well as on the process. Not only this, but the conversion into yarn will give her an increased advantage in freight, inasmuch as it will facilitate the stowage of her produce ; hemp, from its bulky nature, being exposed to charges which will now be reduced en its com pression into yarns. It is no doubt true that the consumer of cordage may, in the end, be the gainer in point of its cost; but, meanwhile,what is to become of the English ropentakers ? This is a question which the prospect before them has caused to be anxiously asked at every seaport in the United Kingdom. But there is another class threatened with even a more signal bereavement of their accus tomed occupations—the manufacturers of sawn marble, and those whose capital has been in vested in establishments and machinery for its conversion into mantelpieces and monuments. Almost every great town in the empire has its workshops of this kind. And so strong is their claim, that, in 1842, Sir ROBERT PEEL, when he took the duty off rough marble, imposed an import duty of three shillings per hundredweight on marble sawn into slabs. The result was that our own masons continued their undis turbed pursuits, and employed their capital IMP