The Press. — London, England, 1855-02-24 00:00:00

182 parliamentary duties, that the liberties of Europe suffered from Lord Castlereagh's place being filled by the Duke of Wellington, who was more partial to the absolutist powers. LORD STANLEY AT LYNN. ON Thursday week Lord Stanley addressed his con stituents of Lynn in a speech of great ability, and embracing a comprehensive range of topics. Assum ing that it was "the duty of the Government to initiate legislative measures," he blamed the late Government for not having carried all the measures ... _ promised in their early programmes. He then adverted to his own course on some important ques- tions, and defended his vote on church rates as having been given in support of a principle that must inevitably be of general application—namely, the principle of self-support fur all our institutions. Lord Stanley afterwards referred to the questions of national education and parliamentary reform, de claring upon the latter point that the extension of the franchise was one of time and degree. Referring to the war, he declared that the Emperor of Russia bad been deceived by the English Ministry into a belief that England would not oppose the dismem berment of Turkey. Proceeding to notice the allega tion that the failures in the management of the war had arisen from our parliamentary system of Govern ment, the noble lord said : The complaint commonly made is this —that under this system all power and authority are monopolised in a few hands, and that talent, without connection, does not find proper scope. Now, the question to ask ourselves is, whether that is true or no ? Is it the fact, that in the present day and during the present century high adminis trative offices have been usually filled by incapable men, having no merit except that of connection? Take the facts as they stand. Take the House of Commons as it is actually constituted; take each party in the House of Commons, and consider who, in those parties, are the leading men. It is invidious to mention names ; but I will undertake to say that if any one takes the lists of the House of Commons as they are at present constituted, he will find that a clear majority of those who are or who hate been in the highest offices, or who have filled a large place in the public eye, are men who have made their way, not through connection, not through family influence, but simply by the exercise of their own faculties and powers. (Hear.) I am not defending our parliamentary system as by any means perfect. It has great faults ; but its faults lie, I think, in the contrary direction to that now urged. The fault of our parliamentary system is, that it does injustice to men who, with considerable power of labour and with considerable administrative talent, do not possess the faculty of debate. If there is any class to which it does injustice, it is that class. It certainly is the case that in the House of Commons, as in every popular assembly, the mere power of public speaking, the mere facility of reply in debate, is a talent more valued than properly ought to be. (Hear, hear.) But that is not a fault on the side of an aristocratic or exclusive system ; that is not a fault which tends to throw a monopoly of power into the hands of a few persons and families. That is a fault which, if it is inherent in our Government, we share, and share in pretty equal proportions, with the Republican Government of America. (Hear, hear.) Whatever the defects of the system may be, it certainly has this merit—no man absolutely without talent or capacity can hold a high parliamentary office or represent an im portant department. Our army, Lord Stanley observed afterwards, might be deficient in the practice of united action, and our military system had faults arising from the limited number of our troops : But, after all, it is not the military system, it is not the organisation of the arm) which is responsible for most of the errors which have been committed. It was not the fault of the military system that, after we had twelve months' notice of a war impending, the English army was sent out from this country destitute of the means of moving. (Hear, hear.) It was not the fault of the mili tary system that when that army had been sent out it was despatched to the moat pestilential quarter that could be found on the shores of the Black Sea, and there detained in inaction many months. It was not the fault of the military system that that army, scantily provided with materials for a siege, and decimated by disease, was sent to undertake the siege of Sebastopol, Government nut having apparently taken the trouble to inquire what was the strength of the place, or whether it had a garrison of 20,000 or 100,000 men, and that that army was sent out at a season when the operations of a protracted siege had be come impossible. ( Hear.) Again, it was not the fault either of the military or of the naval organisation that our largest and heaviest line-of-battle ships were sent to the Baltic to attack forts within reach of whose guns they could not possibly come. All these errors are distinctly chargeable upon individuals--upon the late Cabinet—upon those who had the conduct of the war in the late Cabinet. They are indisputably the faults of Ministers, and not the faults of any system. ( Hear.) Tun. QUEEN has just given 1001. towards the erec tion of a girl's school for the children of mechanics, artisans, and upper class of labourers in and near Windsor. The school was established seven years ago, and supported wholly by the family of the late Dean of Windsor, the Hon. and Very Rev. Dr. Neville Grenville. It having been proposed to build a school as's house, collections were made, and an . laid before her Majesty, who hab thus responded to it. THE PRESS. TAXES ON KNOWLEDGE. THE Society for Promoting the Repeal of the Taxes on Knowledge held their annual meeting on Wednes day at Exeter hall, when Messrs. Milner Gibson, Cobden, and Bright successively addressed a numerous assembly. The first-mentioned hon. member, in congratulating the association on its ap proaching triumph, adverted to the bill brought in on the previous evening in the House of Commons by the "late " Chancellor of the Exchequer Thu bill (he said) was designed to abolish the com pulsory stamp on newspapers and entitle all printed matter up to the weight of four ounces to be transmitted by post at the charge of one penny. The measure would also abro gate the security system, and all those odious gaing statutes passed in the dark days of the Castlereagh Admin istration, and known by the name of the " Six Acts." it likewise contained a concession to the vested interests of the existing newspapers—namely, the right of retransmis sion through the post during a period of seven days after publication, without any additional charge, for such por tion of their impression as they chose to print on stamped paper ; and this privilege was to be continued for a period of ten years to one metropolitan journal, which they all knew exceeded the prescribed weight of four ounce. ("Oh! " ) Such were the leading features of Mr. Gladstone's bill, which instead of inflicting an injury confers a positive boon on the established press ; and he could only account for their opposition to the measure on the supposition that they apprehended the competition of penny newspapers. That association wished t, see daily newspapers brought within the reach of the humblest classes of the community, and not confined to the affluent; and they believed that the repeal of the stamp duty would have the effect of in suring the cheap and expeditions diffusion of intelligence of all passing events, as well as of extending the influence of the best intellect engaged in journalism among the great mass of the people, and thereby mitigating the evils arising from the want of a comprehensive system of national education, which the dissensions unhappily existing among different sects of religionists rendered impossible in this country. Mr. COBDEN regretted Mr. Gladstone's retirement, but did not believe that what had occurred would endanger the safety of the bill. These sudden and kaleidoscopic changes in the Government, however, could not but excite one's wonder and surprise. We were, it was true, engaged in a war, but really war appeared to be nowhere carried on with such vigour as in our own Cabinet; and, if our statesmen were to go on slaying each other in that way, we must soon resort to a Foreign Enlistment Act to secure a Ministry. (Laughter.) With respect to the bill before them, he, for one, would not quarrel with the few compromises and tem porary conditions that were comprised in its provisions. He cared not whether the carriage of half an ounce more or less for a period of ten years was allowed to an existing newspaper so long as the main object of that association was gained ; and, indeed, he would be glad to buy off the opposition of a powerful journal upon these terms. Mr. BaronT went through soma calculations re specting the per centage of taxation at present im posed upon newspapers, which he declared to he exorbitant, and then proceeded to remark upon the social aspect of the question : By the measures they advocated they were doing more than could be accomplished by any other means to incor porate the great body of the working classes with the mind, intellect, progress, and life of the country, and to give a wider power, and wiser direction to public opinion than we had witnessed in past times. (Hear, hear.) Lord Stanley has addressed a letter to the Northern Whig, in reply to some strictures offered by that journal on his recent letter, published in THE PRESS, advocating the remission of the newspaper stamp and other changes in the law. His lordship says : As the question is about to be debated in Parliament, and as Mr. Gladstone has, in fact, conceded the chief point in dispute, I shall not attempt a reply to your argu ment. You are mistaken in supposing that there is any necessary connection between the repeal of the stamp duty and the grant of a copyright in news. The latter question would probably, under any circumstances, have been mooted, and the removal of the stamp can only a little hasten its consideration in Parliament. You appear also to think that the copyright suggested would be unlimited in point of time. That has, I believe, never been proposed ; the limit of time usually mentioned is twenty-four hours. If a news paper has gone to great expense in obtaining information from exclusive sources, I confess I do not see on what ground the right to derive an exclusive profit from such in formation can be disputed. In defining and limiting such right, difficulty may occur ; but similar difficulties may occur and are overcome in the case of copyright in books, and still more in that of patents taken out for inventions. This, however, is a question altogether separate from that of the stamp. You assume an absolute identity of opinion between my views on the subject of the newspaper press generally, and those of the other members of the Asso ciation for the Repeal of Taxes on Knowledge. Here again you arc in error. I have always objected to the use of the term " tax " as applied to the stamp, believing that charge, though an unjust and unequal one, to be a postal charge, and not a tax, in the usual sense of the word. The distinc tion is carefully drawn in the pamphlet from which you quote extracts. Neither have I, in the present state of finance, pledged myself to the repeal of the paper duty, which is one of the principle demands of the association. I do not wish to make other members of that body respon sible for my views, nor to become responsible for theirs. I have thought that so much notice of your comments was due in reply to your letter. In what manner you consider SATURDAY, the liberty of the press endangered by the alleviation and equalisation of a fiscal charge now pressing upon it, you may, perhaps, be able to explain. Without explanation, the connection between the two is not easy to understand, any more than your expressed fear lest trial by jury, which is found sufficient to protect all other classes and interests in the community, should prove an inadequate defence of the interests of j our nalism. STANLEY. London, Feb. 17,1856. and mistree application gradonaly 11 MR. LOWE AT KIDDERMINSTER. Ma. Lows, on Thursday, attended a meeting of his constituents for the purpose of rendering an account of his official administering, having, as he observed, not resigned, but declined, to reaccept the same functions upon the reconstruction of the Ministry. He first adverted to his own department, the India Board, and claimed credit for himself and his chief, Sir C. Wood, for the reforms that had been accom plished in the civil administration of India, and espe cially in their having thrown open all the official appointments to general competition. He added I believe that the people of England will soon require that all appointments, not only in the civil service in India, but all public appointments requiring ability and knowledge in their discharge, shall be thrown open to full, free, and fair competition. I cannot but regard this as a step in the right direction, going to the root of evils, and destined to become more and more popular in this country. Adverting to the causes of his own refusal to con tinue in office, Mr. Lowe remarked: — It was not from any dissatisfaction with the Government just formed, which I am most anxious to support, and which I believe upon the whole to be the best that could be found under existing circumstances, but I thought that I had held office long enough*for the purpose for which I took it—that was, to gain an insight into official life, and fit myself for any higher office hereafter. Moreover, I did not see that anything more of importance remained to be done, and was not disposed any longer to surrender my privilege of free speech as an independent member. Afterwards he referred to the conduct of the war, attributing much blame to Lord Raglan, and still more to the vicious system of patronage which he believed to pervade every rank and departmentof the public service. On the latter point he said : The cankerworm which has caused the failure of this campaign, and which pervades every department of the civil and military service, is the vice of public patronage. (Cheers.) Merit is not promoted ; the only thing con sidered is personal connection and favour. Russia has the great advantage in war of having only one head, whose interest and that of the public, so far as the success of his armies are concerned, are entirely at one. He recall any general who displeases him without the slightest hesitation, and if he does anything wrong punishes him with the utmost severity, without mercy and without remorse. But our statesmen stand in a different position. They are not identified with the public interest. In filling up offices the Emperor of Russia looks only for servants who will best execute his wishes, and the public of this country look for that, too; but the statesmen in whose hands the gift of these offices is, look rather to their own profits orthat of their friends, or their parliamentary influence, than to the interests of the i.eople. It is no use in talking of any kind of reform till you get this altered. Respecting the remedial measures that had been proposed, Mr. Lowe found serious objections both to the commissions which Lord Palmerston proposed to issue, and to the committee of inquiry as voted in pursuance of Mr. Roebuck's motion. Of the latter he observed : A committee of this kind was most objectionable, be cause it really transferred the duties of the Executive to the House of Commons, always a most dangerous thing ; and lastly, such an inquiry as was proposed would certainly involve statements respecting the French army which the Emperor of the French was desirous should not be known, and would probably weaken our alliance with that country. His own proposals for the better management of affairs in future were limited to the single suggestion, that whenever any officer failed in the performance of his duty he should be instantly recalled. THE following statement of the debts by the prin cipal States in the world, corrected up to a late period, is contained in Ayres' edition of " Fenn on the English and Foreign Funds," just issued : Austria, amount of debt, 211,000,0001.; Baden, 7,000,0001.; Bavaria, 14,117,0001.•, Belgium, 26,000,000 1 . ; Bolivia, 521,00014 Brazil, 12,392,0001.; Buenos Ayres, 2,500,0001.; Chili, 1,784,0001. • Columbia, 6,625,9501. ; Cuba, 311,2301.; Denmark, 13,069:0001.; Ecuador, 3,817,000 1 4 England, 778,923,0001.; France, 233,000,0001.; Granada (New), 7,500,0001.; Greece, 8,250,0001.; Guatem ala, 594,5001.; Hamburg, 4,000,001.; Hanover, 5,174,0001.; Holland, 102,451,0001.; India (British), 48,000,000 1 . • Mexico, 10,000,0001. ; Peru, 9,953,8001. ; Portugal ' , 19,122,0001.; Prussia, 33,500,0001.• Roman States, 17,152,0001. • Russia, 66,000,0001. • Sardinia, 23,000,00 01 .; Saxony, 6,223,0001. • Spain, '70,000,0001.; Sweden, 450,0u01.; Switzerla nd, 160,0001.; Turkey, 5,000, 000 i4 United States of America (Federa), 10,000,0001.; Vene zuela, 3,789,0001.; Wurtemburg, 4,850,000/.; total, 1,736,229,5501. Loan LucAx bas been recalled from the Crimea, in consequence of differences which took place be tween him and Lord Raglan, differences which ren dered it impossible for them to act together on the same station. I