The Press. — London, England, 1858-11-13 00:00:00

the on . gentle' there c orrob mony for the r ented care& libert3 whate tempt+ succut chial fully 1 Lose those warde allege churc were serve howe' cemet used; corps( civiliz Even the IN and it has ui ceedit the J in th( turn ment the n the a sign prop( is at ultim it ha: ram great ginal mark The ter, c nitioi exer( of ge a ye studi rem( an c The after Wha ()CCM vital milli far ' carri who' And pub] Ron will and othe also ture all elici viev prof sup' WO on obs( kee l into on THE PRESS, NOVEMBER 13, 1858. only cause of it whiih they are qualified to comprehend—viz., intoxica . .IChe second point we would impress upon all chivalrously-inclined Alemen is this—to take very good care that, if they interfere at all, , s h a ll be Witnesses on the spot able and willing to come forward and borate the true version of the story. In the absence of such testi ly the magistrate has no option, and the prisoner cannot blame him t he result which a little forethought on his own part might have pre ited. We trust our hint may be attended to. If the public were more careful of themselves, the police would be more careful of them, and men's Away and character no longer lie at the mercy of a class of men who, -lever their natural virtues, cannot be expected to rise superior to Iptations to which even gentlemen of honour and position too frequently succumb. We hesitate to pronounce an opinion upon the conduct of the paro authorities of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields until the facts are more before us. But certainly the statement laid before the Bishop of LONDON by Mr. STurrros on Wednesday last seems to promise one of those revelations which have brought the names of guardians, church -ardens, et hoc genus omne, into sadly bad odour with the public. The leged facts admit of being very briefly stated. Some years ago, when the turchyard at Charing-cross was closed, some of the bodies therein buried removed to a cemetery at Camden Town. which was henceforth to :e as the burying-ground for the parish. The march of improvement, towever, has followed even the dead to their last resting-place. The metery is now so surrounded with houses that it has to be dis -1; and the authorities of the parish are anxious again to move on the corpses interred there as the Red Indian is moved on by the advance of *yilization, and to let the soil of the cemetery for building purposes. yen now the act of desecration has commenced, and the exhumation of bodies has been proceeded with under circumstances of great indecency impiety. The result of the application to the Bishop is that the latter undertaken to request the pre?er people to abstain from further pro ceedings till the whole case has been heard before Dr. TRAVERS Twiss, Judge of the Consistory Court. We don't wish to prejudge this case the least, but we can only say that if half Mr. SmErros's allegations out to be true the offenders in the case are deserving of severe punish tt for their evasion of the requirements of the law, to say nothing of mode in which their late proceedings have been carried on. It was Sir CUARLES TREVELYAN, if we mistake not, who first suggested adoption of the Roman characters to express the various sounds de signated by the native alphabets at present in use throughout India. The proposition is so unprecedented, and even romantic, that the imagination once enlisted in its favour, while the judgment, though more slowly, Itimately arrives at the same conclusion. Since the invention of letters has not entered into the heart of man to devise any machinery in refe- ice to human speech so entirely original in itself, or pregnant with such great results. Of the three branches into which the human race was ori ,:aally divided, the Western branch made to itself a set of characters re markable for their simplicity and severe adaptation to the end in view. Eastern, indolent and imaginative, chose a flowing picturesque charac , of exceeding beauty, but difficult of formation, and not easy of recog ation. Careless or forgetful of the real purpose of these symbols, they exercised their ingenuity in converting them into objects of art rather than f general utility. Learning, therefore, became a possible attainment for very small section of the community, who had leisure to prosecute .adies impeded by artificial obstructions. The great mass of the people remained illiterate, and consequently ignorant, and in that state became , easy prey to the cupidity and ambition of the lettered class. The natural result is the want of a popular literature after the lapse of so many centuries of comparative refinement. i‘ hatever literature there is, is of a barren, lifeless, speculative character, occasionally diverging into flowing platitudes. It is now proposed to g itahty to this ancient tongue, and to bestow upon one hundred and fi awns of human beings the advantages enjoyed by their brethren in the 1% est. Truly, a g rand and noble conception, and one that, judiciously carried out, will assuredly have the effect of imparting a genuine and aolesome civilization to the teeming population of our Indian empire. And this effect will be produced far more rapidly than the British public may be disposed to imagine. At first, the introduction of the Doman characters will probably be viewed with some suspicion, but this Will gradually wear off, when no evil consequences are found to ensue, and the temptations of office and employment will soon overcome all ether considerations. An acquaintance with the European alphabet will also greatly facilitate the acquirement of European languages and litera ire, and thus lead to the diffusion of sound useful knowledge throughout - classes in the empire. The reply which the article in the Times has elicited from Mr. JAluurr, though interesting in a philological point of view, does not seem to contain any valid reasons for abandoning the proposed change. It shows that the native alphabet is simpler than was ipposed, but it does not show that the substitution of the Roman one could not be a great improvement. The Clothing Commissioners arc still proceeding with their labours. Saturday last Mr. TURNER signalized himself by some inquisitorial observations addressed to Quartermaster TAYIAM on the subject of his seeping racehorses ; though what right the Commissioners have to pry to any one's private life is more than we can tell. The statement made that day, to the effect that our men borrowed great-coats from the 1109 French in the Crimea, was subsequently rebutted by Mr. GORDON, who said he knew the French got much more from us than we did from them. On Monday some statements were put forward by Mr. HOWELL and Mr. SIM, Government broker, in relation to the purchase of timber, tending to exculpate the War-office at the expense of the firm of Messrs. Rola and BROCKLEBANK, who, it was said, had written to offer a cargo of timber to the Government, which had not yet arrived in this country. This excuse, however, for the neglect of the department in not inspecting what proved to be first-rate wood, and was sold elsewhere at ss. a load more than the Government was asked to pay, was completely upset by the evidence of Mr. ROLT on Wednesday, who proved that the timber was actually lying in the docks at the time. So that another pompous dictum of the Coin missioners about the honour of commercial men has totally missed its aim. We have yet to hear Mr. Sim's explanation of his extraordinary assertion last Monday. But if this is a sample of the practices by which those interested in the system of brokerage are endeavouring to bolster it up, we predict that this pretty bantling of Lord PANMURE will not have a very long lease of existence. During Wednesday's investigation nothing very objectionable was discovered, although we have to notice a curious discrepancy between the opinion of Mr. SELFE and Mr. (formerly Cap tain) GORDON, military storekeeper in the Arsenal, on the subject of quartermasters' allowances. Mr. DOLAN, an army clothier, had stated that it was a general custom in the trade to allow a certain per-centage to quartermasters, though whether for their trouble in taking care of the goods which were not issued to the troops, or as a commission upon those that were, did not very clearly come out. Mr. GonDoN's remark upon this practice was couched in terms of military decision :—" If it came under " the notice of the commanding officer, he did not see what he could do " but place the quartermaster under arrest." The Chairman, on the other hand, did not see anything very bad in it. About the practice itself we say nothing, but what we do see something very bad in is this—that any practice should exist in the army, either by the connivance or the igno rance of commanding officers, which, if brought into the light of day, would involve such results as Mr. GORDON speaks of. These regular irre gularities, and the official blindness which permits them, are some of the worst legacies transmitted to us by a bygone regime. Their demoralizing effect is undeniable ; and we trust they only require to be discovered to be at once removed. The inquiry is for the present adjourned till next Wednesday. We are sorry to see there is some probability of the Turks being sent to the wall in the matter of the district of Grahovo. No one even pretends to deny that Grahovo is Turkish territory. It was seized by the Montegrins in the late war under aggravated circumstances of treachery and cowardice ; and unless certain underhand designs exist for establishing a European station somewhere upon that coast, we are totally at a loss to comprehend what object any Western rower can have had in urging such a point. Simply to weaken Turkey can hardly be the aim of a Conference assembled for the express purpose of strengthening her. We have reason to believe that the turn which affairs are taking is highly distasteful to the representative of the Sultan in this country ; and, candidly, we think he has cause for discontent, not with England, but with those who have professed to co-operate with England while in reality serving their own purposes. The speech delivered last Monday to his Lambeth constituents by Mr. WILLIAMS is valuable as affording an insight into the actual ways of thinking peculiar to the class which he belongs to. His ideas of political economy, in the broad sense of that term, evidently extend no further than the management of a retail shop. He has voted for every thing under the sun that has a tendency to make things cheap. He would cheapen Parliament by repealing the Septennial Act and freedom from arrest ; cheapen religion by abolishing Church-rates ; cheapen Ireland by abolishing the Lord-Lieutenancy ; cheapen honesty by introducing the ballot; and cheapen, finally, the army and navy, by reducing the estimates to such a point that the services would become con temptible. Yet there was one thing—and very well worth noting it is— which the Hon. Member for Lambeth was not inclined to cheapen, and that was the exercise of his franchise by the voter. Quite aware that he himself has nothing to expect from votes brought up from any distance, he was able to afford a great show of purity at a very little cost. As for poor voters who have to travel many miles to exercise their right, this friend of the people and guardian of the poor man's interests was sternly opposed to relieving them. This is CANNING'S friend of humanity over again to the life. " I give thee sixpence ! I'll see thee damn'd first." Mr. WILLIAMS'S address, indeed, throughout reads more like a parody than a serious speech. But if, indeed, there is any numerous body of people in this country who arc such lovers of the cheap and nasty as Mr. WILLIAMS, we would ask them, do they really carry the system out even in their own private affairs ? Do they get their clothes from Mons ? Do they never indulge in amusements ? Do they teach their sons nothing but arithmetic ? Do they buy no books but account books? Do they subscribe to no societies for objects which they rarely see realized, for something they call principle ? In one word, do they never expend one single penny upon aught not immediately productive ? Do they believe that good " means simply good to be eaten " ? And that beauty, and truth, and faith, are ridiculous phantasms ? We know very well that they do not, and that if they ever had done, England would not have been where she now is. Yet this is actually the view of government which poor Mr. WILLIAMS boasts of entertaining ! , , '