The Press. — London, England, 1858-06-26 00:00:00

T gigantic power of the Church of Rome. No thing but our Established Protestant Church can ever present a sufficient bar in this country to the advances of that colossal system. Over throw the Established Church, and Popery has a clear field. At least, the petty obstacl e s of dis senting sects would no more impede its progress than the bushes in a country the march of a victorious army. Dissent owes much more indirectly to the Es tablished Church than it is willing to acknow ledge. Possessing, as the Established Church does, a highly-educated and independent clergy, she obliges by her example even Schism to be comparatively learned and decorous, while she forces even Superstition to be comparatively tolerant and pure. Her ministry is open to the sons of Dissenters as much as to others, and the more talented and respectable of them are con tinually being drafted into her ranks. To at tempt, therefore, to deprive her of her dignity is only to cut off the head of every one among themselves who is a head taller than his fellows, and to dwarf the whole population. This Re publican spirit may pollard the nation, but it cer tainly will not improve its appearance. It would give it only the frightful uniformity of a forest of firs. But it is on public rather than on private grounds that we would argue in favour of the pre scriptive mode of upholding the Established Church by a general rate levied from the whole people ; or rather, in favour of this as the only safe means of upholding a National Church at all. A National Church is a general blessing. It pro • ides spiritual instruction and comfort for the two classes that most require it, and who either cannot or will not receive it elsewhere—the igno rant poor and the miserable great. By having an independent clergy, who are neither slaves to the populace nor stipendiaries of the State, it be comes the great safeguard of liberty. But this it can continue to be only by the fixed nature of its property—from its enjoying the protection of law. Once throw it upon the Voluntary prin ciple for its support, and it loses some of its best and most salutary elements. The conclusion we arrive at then is, that it would be as foolish as it would be im politic _ to trust the great religious interests of the nation, as a whole, to that to which we trust no part of our civil, or military, or public service—that is, to the fickle and pre canons contributions of individuals. SISTER MEASURES. THERE is more likeness and sisterhood than might at first have been thought, between the two measures for widening the doors of Parlia ment that have recently been proposed. The Property Qualification has been given up, and the main argument relied upon by those who proposed and those who supported the change, is of the same kind as the one pressed into the service of the Jews. ,At „was said that many members sat who had not a real qualification—why not do away with it altogether? Many, not real Christians, get into the House—why not abolish the Christian test ? If this argument, however, be good for anything, it is good against all laws ? Many murders are committed in the course of the year—why not let murder go unpunished ? You can't put it down by law. But this argument was specially inapplicable to the property qualification ; for there was a great deal more value in this so-called fictitious qualifica tion than would appear at first sight. We do not say it WM 01404 A its a real one ; but assuredly it was not wholly fictitious. A gentleman had not sufficient property of his own to make up the re quired amount, and he applied to a friend to make up the deficiency. Now, the man who can find a friend who has such entire confidence in his honesty and integrity that he will consent to hand over to him. trusting to his honour, a very considerable amount of property, furnishet a guarantee to the State, certainly very little less to be depended on than the man Who possesses himself the necessary amount. This is the prin ciple of bail : the real security that the prisoner E PRES will be forthcoming at the appointed time is not his own recognisance, which in order to es cape personal punishment he may be ready to forfeit, but his being able to find persons of credit and respectability who have sufficient con fidence in him to become his bail. This so called fictitious qualification is not, therefore, so fictitious as it has been represented. The real remedy, therefore, for this irregular transaction was, supposing that a property quali fication is desirable in itself, to alter the law, and to allow that which was done irregularly to be done legally. But is a property qualification desirable ? This point was little discussed. We readily admit, however, that property will neither make a man clever, nor endow him with a sound judg ment, nor render him eloquent, nor give him many other qualifications calculated to make him a useful and patriotic member of Parliament ; but there is one quality which money does give, and which nothing else can give—namely, independence. We do not say that money necessarily confers this quality on its possessor— far from it ; but we do say that without a suffi ciency for his station no one can be independent. It is not the amount which signifies : a day labourer, having sufficient for his wants in the condition of life in which he is placed, may be an independent man ; but a member of Parliament with an insufficient pittance will necessarily be exposed to temptations which must be fatal to his independence and his honesty. Such a man, however admirable may be his intellectual ability, has no right to devote his time and talents to public matters ; his mind must inevitably be too much occupied with his private affairs, and his object is sure to be, not what will benefit his country, but what will benefit himself. Now, if we were called upon to say what we considered the most striking defect in the com position of the present Parliament, it is that so many of those who enter it do so with a view to advance their own private interests, and not with a view to promote the public weal; for it too often happens that those who boast the loudest of their own extreme disinterestedness, are the very men whose whole political conduct is really guided by selfish motives of personal gain. What honest clamour exists for Parliamentary Reform arises out of the prevailing and too just belief that this is so. lor a remedy some propose the ballot, some a great extension .of the suffrage; others desire annual Parliaments and pay ments of members; and some propose or con sent to the abolition of that property test, which in a worldly sense serves to make a member independent. They are also seeking for the abolition of a Christian test, which, at any rate, fastens upon the member the obligation to legislate on Christian principles, whether he himself be or be not a believer in Christianity. Should, therefore, either of the Jew Bills, now before the Lords, unhappily become law, the strange result of the session, with a Conservative Administration, will be this—that the doors of the House of Commons will have been opened wide to paupers, atheists, infidels, and Jews. Conceited and shortsighted people may call this progress, but wise ones will call it retrogression. The representative assembly which governs the nation is admitted by all to have lost much of its prestige for disinterested ness, faith, and public spirit. There is a general :r d y raised on all sides that, in order for its renovation, new life must be infused into its composition ; and the new life, which, in the first instance, in the plenitude of its wisdom, it selects for the infusion, is sought for, not amongst the better and wiser portion of the nation,r,but amongst the lowest and the vilest : pauper blood, infidel blood, atheist blood, Jew blood, is the kind of new blood which it would inject into its veins, in order (strange notion) to restore the confidence of a despainng people ! If to this it be replied that atheists, infidels, and insolvents, were already to be found on the benches of the House of Commons, the answer is:—" True; but if the House meant to im " prove itself it should have adopted measures " to weed out these tares ;—not measures to 'en " courage their growth ; and to sow a crop of " new ones." Hitherto these kind of men have been exceptions to the rules, but henceforth they will come within them ! 605 THE MEMBER'S DIARY. HOUSE OF LORDS. MONDAY. LORD MALMERBDRT, replying to a question asked on Friday, stated that Ministers did not propose to bring forward any Resolutions re specting the government of India, as a prelimi nary to the Bill which might presently be ex pected "up" from the other House. In assign ing reasons for this course, the Foreign Secretary was too polite to mention the chief one—namely, that the procedure by way of Resolution was adopted "elsewhere," not on account of ha abstract utility, but as affording the best means of baffling the factious manomvres of the Oppo sition. In their Lordships' House there were no factious enterprises to disconcert, and therefore no need to preface the real debate on the measure by a sort of undress rehearsal, apropos of a string of Resolutions. Everybody saw the force of this argument, and agreed that it was much better not to embark into any discussion on the Bill before they saw what the Commons would finally make of it. This event Lord AiALMEMBURY hoped might occur during the second week in July. he Marquis of LA,CS- DowNE, Earls GRANYn.a.r and GRaY, and Some other Opposition peers made brief replies, all bearing for chorus that Hope sometimes told a flattering tale; but no one ventured any objection to the course which her Majesty's Ministers had elected to pursue upon the question. Having exposed the mote in the Spaniard's eye, in his denunciations of the Cuban slave trade, on a previous evening, the Bishop of Oxronn, to-night, recommended his fellow-countrymen to cast the beam out of their own. An article denominated Coolie emigrants had been of late years largely imported into various British colonies from India and Chills, which, as the Reverend Prelate apprehended, would prove, if examined, identical with the immoral and con traband commodity of slaves, under a merely colourable disguisement. Lord CARNARVON pm mised some correspondence on the subject, which would show how far the apprehensions expressed by Dr. WILBERFORCE were well Ibunded. Mean while, he gave him an assurance that, so far as re gulations went, there was rather more care taken of Chinese emigrants when embarking at Canton, than of the English or Irish emigrants who embark at Liverpool. The ugliest fact that has yet trinspired relating to this affair is the awfhlly high rate of mortality bn board the pas senger vessels. Ten per cent. seems a low pro portion of deaths among the Coolies daring the single voyage from Hong Kong to the Mauritius. That such loss of life should occur at a time when whole regiments can be conveyed round the Cape from England to India without losing a man, shows the existence of frightfid mismanagement some where. By way of explanation, it is said that many, Df not most, of these Chinese emigrants, are ad or ill when they embark. This means, of course, that, like the Irish in the famine year, they stuck by their country until they were either unfit for work or on the brink of starvation. So far as this excuse is valid, it discountenances the idea of trickery or compulsion in the embarka tion of these Coolies, since kidnappers—as was shown on the Guinea coast—would pick out none but the young and sturdy. We know, be sides, that the Celestials, as a nation, do not object to work and are very fond of wages, and will wander far in search of both. They flock in even inconvenient multitudes to the Californian and Australian gold diggings, where they aggra vate their Anglo-Saxon neighbour, by showing that while they can extract the golden grains as successfully as himself, they also contrive to keep them better. Evidently on the China seaboard there exists a vast quantity of the raw material of labour, seeking only to be "used up" pro fitably. This labour is just now an artier Of prime necessity in many British colonies, where it would be eagerly bought up almost at any price. This living and active continence of sup ply and demand cannot be paralyzed by evoking the old-hou phantom of an extinct slave trade, even though WILBERFORCE and BROCORAM com bine to perform the incantation. TUESDAY. Nothing of importance was done. The consi deration of the two Oaths Bills (LYNDBURBT'i