The Press. — London, England, 1858-09-18 00:00:00

THE PRESS, SEPTEMBER 18, 1858. are under inspection, and it is pretended that there is complete impartiality between the two religions. Englishmen may, however, rest as sured that this is all pretence. They are hotbeds of Popery ; and, moreover, they have been set up as rivals to Protestant schools, the Board doing all in its power to oppose and destroy the Bible schools of the Established Church. But although this is the real truth about the National system in Ireland, we are constrained to confess that we see at present no hope of its amendment. What, therefore, we ask for, and what we rejoice to think the most influential members of the present Government are pledged to, is this—to withdraw the ban from the Bible schools, and not to refuse to those schools a share of the public grant for no other earthly reason than because the Bible is read to all the scholars who frequent them. If the Protestants of England really under stood this question—if they knew that really 200,0001. a year of the public money is spent in educating Irish youth in Popery the most unmi tigated, and that not one single farthing of that large sum is devoted to aid a Bible school—we feel well assured that years ago this folly and in justice would have been rectified. But the pre sent system has been bolstered up by the grossest misrepresentations, and by an artful appeal to rules which " kept the word of promise "to the ear and broke it to the hope." We ourselves well remember, in one of the debates in the House of Commons, a member (who was then a Cabinet Minister) getting up and making a series of assertions utterly false, and which it was a disgrace to him that he did not know them to be false. We trust, however, we are now on the eve of better days. We want to see Ireland continue happy and contented ; and we are quite sure that in a country with a Protestant sovereign, in which a Popish priesthood is treated by its rulers as a power to be feared, and, therefore, to be un duly conciliated and allowed to defy the laws, happiness and contentment will not and cannot be of any permanent duration. that doubtless it would be treated with open ridicule by those who in their hearts would feel most strongly its significancy. It is this. Let all letters addressed to the Romanist prelates, g iving to them their illegal territorial titles, be sent either to the dead letter-office or the Pro testant prelate of the see, whose legal title is usur ped. This step, we know, would be repre sented as miserable and contemptible petty spite. It would be nothing of the kind : it would simply have the effect of letting the people of Ireland know that the constituted authorities would no longer be parties to a breach of the law. It seems a very small matter, but it is a very large one ; for it would have a powerful effect in counteracting the mischievous notion that eccle siastical is superior to the civil power. It would be felt through the length and breadth of the land ; and if the mind of the poor Papist be capable of being influenced by the display of a cardinal's pomp, it is not incapable of being in fluenced by the priest's suggestion that the Go vernment dare not refuse to acknowledge the illegal titles. "Try," says the priest, "if there be not such a person as the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin. Direct a letter to him, and see if it does not reach him." The experi ment is accordingly tried, and, of course, being successful, it is accepted as a proof that the pre late is stronger than the law. There is another matter in the government of Ireland which we trust will occupy the serious attention of the Lord Lieutenant and his ad visers. We want to see the dissolution of the Orange societies ; but still more we want to see the Government in a position to ask them to dissolve. But the Government can only place itself in that position by being able to say to the Orangemen—" We have effectually suppressed Ribbonism. The inadequate protection afforded you by the Government against those murderers and disloyal conspirators called you into existence. They exist no longer. We ask you to disband." Whenever the Irish Government can address this language to the Orangemen, their request, we are sure, will be complied with. Until they ran, they have no right to make it; for, be it ever remembered, the Orange Society is a legal corn- CONSERVATISM, AND THOSE WHO binatiou against the most violent outrages of MISREPRESENT IT. illegal conspirators. Now there cannot be the smallest doubt but THOSE who, like the Whigs of the last gene that the Romish priesthood are friendly to ration, see in the matter of the government of Itibbonism, and that they might have extin- the country no higher object for aim than the guished it years and years ago, had they been so minded ; but it has been a useful engine to keep ascendancy of a Parliamentary Party or of a up priestly power. Let, then, the present Ad- Family Confederation, or who, with the more ministration suppress it root and branch. That violent Radicals, look upon questions of policy it can be done, need not be doubted. Is it to be only as so much capital, by aid of which they believed that the nation which was able to crush may float through a brief and turbulent exist- Thuggee in India, is really unequal to the infinitely lesser task of crushing Ribbonism in ence, are evidently puzzled at the opinions Ireland ? British subjects in India amount to which the members and adherents of Lord upwards of a hundred millions; its superficial DERBY'S Administration have expressed with area is 1,250,000 square miles ; the distance from regard to changes in the organization of the England 4,000 miles. On the other hand, instrumentality by which the Government of British subjects in Ireland are about 6,000,000; the country is carried on, and thoroughly the superficial area is only 32,000 square miles, alarmed at the position which they have as and the distance from Great Britain only sixty sumed, and at the support which the country miles. What the British Government has accom- is manifestly disposed to give them in it. How plished so successfully in the midst of such an can a Conservative be a Reformer ? The two enormous population, scattered over so vast a expressions are antagonistic, and so must the territory, at such an enormous distance, assuredly men be to the end of time. How can Mr. can be accomplished in Ireland, close at hand, HENLEY be a party to the amendment of the even at our doors, amidst a comparatively small Reform Bill of Lord Joiirr RussEi.r, which he population, occupying so small a territorial area. opposed ? or how can he continue to designate This then is a task to which we have no doubt the himself or his friends by the title of Conserva present Government will vigorously apply itself. tives, when the word Conservative no longer Let Lord EGLINTOUN be able proudly to boast represents the same things or the same ideas that, in his administration, Ribbonism was rooted that it did when it was originally introduce d as out, and th a t O range Societies thereupon dis- a distinctive name for a political party ? solved themselves ! These are the grave objections which are One thing more is necessary for the welfare of gravely, and, as those who proposed them appear Ireland —but to that the members of the present to think, justly and forcibly, advanced against the Government a re pl e d ge d— an d th a t i s , that the Government of Lord DERBY in their second year Protestant schools in Ireland shall be no longer of office, putting the country in actual possession discouraged by the Government. For ourselves of what the Whigs have been exhibitin* through we have no hesitation in saying that we believe out the existence of successive Cabmets in a that for the r ea l an d permanent welfare of Ire- peep-show at the end of a long-drawn perspec land there ought t o b e a complete change in the tive. It is hard upon this effete Federation of present sy stem of the National Board. We say Families, we admit, to have the so long easily so because we k now th a t it i s a s y s t em res ti ng on earned bread of their political lives taken out of a_ falseh oo d— t h at i t i s not w h at i t preten d s to b e. t h e i r mou th s w ith suc h unexpected decision; and We care n o t what are its rules—we only know bitter it must be to see their own familiar friends, what are their resu lt s . W e k now th a t p rac ti ca lly like Mr. LANGSTON, not only standing by , but the great majority of the National schools are expressing openly satisfaction at the process. under th e comp l ete di rect i on o f P op i s h pr i ests; Th e answer t o the objections is simple and in they are established for the culture and preser- controvertible. There is no antagonism between vation of Popery in Ireland. It is true that they Conservatism and Reformation, nor need there 891 be perforce any incompatibility of co-operation between those who are marked by the one desig nation or the other. The Constitution of a country may be preserved from generation to generation fundamentally intact, but the organi zation of the machinery by which it is put into active operation must of necessity be subject to perpetual changes. Some are stealthily introduced by agencies imperceptible to the ordinary ob server; others are created by special alterations in the laws, sometimes steadily and thoughtfully made, but oftener devised impulsively and carried violently. Both are often anomalous ; both are often in a wrong direction ; and those which are effected by imperceptible progression not infrequently tend to the introduction of abuses and of negligent, if not corrupt, ad ministration. That it should be so is not the consequence of defects in the principles upon which the Constitution is founded, but the result of the corrupt nature of man, and of the social system which man has constructed. It is the special duty of a Government to watch these changes, to make themselves ac quainted precisely with their character and tendency, and to apply from time to time re medial measures which shall reform the organi zation of the State, by encouraging the pro gress of those changes which are in the right direction, and by pruning and repressing those which appear to tend to mischief or to the retardation of the country and of its people. This is to be a Reformer. It is the honest and energetic performance of those functions which constitute the progressive Statesman. It is the mere agitating by the instrumentality of the phrase that degrades a man into the posi tion of a political Trader. There is nothing that we can see in the former political life or even political language of Mr. HENLEY, and those who act with him in the Cabinet of the Queen's Council, or in the Parliament of the country, to prevent them from discharging with perfect consistency, perfect faith, and perfect efficiency, the functions of true Reformers. Neither is there any reason why men like Mr. LANGSTON, sincere reformers and mode rate though earnest politicians, should not unite heartily with them, in order, to use Mr. LANGsTos's own words, "to give to the country " a better Reform Bill than that which was " passed under the auspices of the Whigs, and to " carry by the united efforts of all parties a really " good and generally beneficial measure." The greater part of those men who have been long accustomed to gather crowds round them by a cry, and to obtain political command by lead ing Class against Class, have evidently been blind to one great and material change which has been in course of gradual but steady and unceas ing accomplishment for many years, and by which the strong line of demarcation that had by various circumstances been drawn between town and country, between commerce and agri culture, is being rapidly obliterated. Mr. NEWDEGATE, at Tamworth, in the able speech with which he prefaced his proposal of the toast of " the house of Lords," pointed out this phase in our political and social progress in clear and well-timed language to the manufacturing popu lation among whom the farmers of Warwickshire had come to hold their anniversary meeting, to tender the hand of friendship to their neighbours of the town, and to give their best wishes for the cordial co-operation of agriculture with com merce. Mr. NEWDEGATE is perfectly right in his per ceptions. This obliteration and the daily increasing amalgamation of the moneyed capitalists and of the territorial proprietors is one of the most real and the most influential reforms in the social and political system of the country which has ever been effected. More than any other circumstance, it has deprived the clamourer for great organic changes of the resting-point for his lever, and it has totally changed both the relative positions of the different classes who attach value to political power and the views of all men as to the character and extent of the reforms which the present contrition of the country renders desirable. Above ,all things, it brings reform of our constitutional organization, the pruning of excrescences, and the encourage ment of new and healthy growths, eminently within the reach of the Conservative Statesman, and renders him in truth the most proper and most safe man to whom the country can intrust the task.