The Press. — London, England, 1857-09-19 00:00:00

THE PRESS, SEPTEMBER 19, 1857. 906 fall on the illustrious family that fills so worthily the Throne of these realms, and to whom it will leave a beggared exchequer, and a Crown of which the splendour will be dimmed. These are the great interests that really are in pail; it is by their united action alone that the nation can be saved. It is by them that an end must be put to the mis government and its fruits that are now agita ti,.g England and desolating the plains of Hindostan. Soldiers are the fitting instru ments to deal with the miscreants who have mutinied ; but words of justice will have more effect than armies on all the rest of the millions, whether princes or peasants, that are subject in India to our Sovereign's sway. The natives of that country may be led, but they can never be driven ; and Mr. DISRAELI, in his speech of the 27th of July last, pro claimed the orly course by which our power can be effectually restored. " Let it be an " nounced (said he), in an authoritative manner, " from the highest authority of this country, that " you will no longer sanction the violation of right, " that you will respect your engagements, and take " care that those who are your subjects shall " enjoy their just privileges, and rest assured that " you will do more than all the devices of all the "masterminds to secure the tranquillity of "India" THE REFORM QUESTION FOR 1858. A WELL-INFORMED Liberal journal, the Liver pool Albion, states that the Parliamentary return of the relative property and population of the boroughs of the United Kingdom, and of the counties exclusive of the boroughs, moved for by Mr. DISRAELI, appears to have been in such demand that " not a single copy " was procurable at four o'clock on the day of "the issue." We can understand that the anxiety to procure the copy should have been very great, for a more valuable statistical document has not been published for a long time. It will serve to open the eyes of many, and we particularly solicit Conservative atten tion to its important facts. It must be observed, also, that a weak and plastic Cabinet cannot peremptorily decide, like a strong Government, as to the adjourn ment or otherwise of such a subject as " Re form." Lord PALMERSTON, against his own judgment, rapidly reduced the army and dis banded the militia. Then he obeyed an im pulse in another direction; and as to what kis " appendages" could do upon the adjourn ment of " Reform," we (knot place confidence in their resolution, and neither Parliament nor the country have faith in their political power. A large portion of the Liberal party is notoriously most anxious to push on the Reform question; and, although many of the aristocratic Whigs are extremely hollow in their affected zeal for further electoral changes, there is a powerful family clique amongst them who are desirous that the management of " Reform" should not get into the hands of Lord Jottw RUSSELL. It is an "open secret" that the Noble Member for London is unpopular amongst the patrician Whigs; and if there be any doubt upon that point, let some Radical member move for a return of the number of times that Lord JOHN RUSSELL has been seen at Brookes's in the last two years, and the doubt would vanish. Another se:ition of the subordinates of the Ministerialists would prefer that " PALMERSTON" settled the question, and that " Cambridge-house," not " Woburn Abbey," should be the temple 'where real Reformers were to bend their steps. Thus a variety of causes may contribute to compel the Ministry into action next year upon the Reform question. We again, in the most respectful manner, suggest to the Con • servative body at large that it is imperatively necessary to be forearmed on this great sub ject. As we scan the returns obtained on Mr. 'DISRAELI'S motion, we are convinced more than • ever that the deepest injustice has been in flicted on the property and political interests of the Conservative party,and care must be taken that further wrongs in the name of " progres sion " be not committed by the enemies of the institutions of the realm. Before elucidating the important bearings of those returns we shall pseface our illustrations by some remarks reminding the Conservatives of the way in which the present electoral system was pro duced. In his speech on the Reform Bill in 1831 Sir ROBERT PEEL stated:—"This is the first " Parliamentary Reform brought forward by " Ministers of the Crown for four hundred " years." Our Parliamentary system, as it existed up to 1830, was certainly very ancient, and depended much upon prescription, though social changes had .often altered its vital nature. It was powerfully influenced by the Unions with Scotland and Ireland, by the rise of the commeicial classes in the days of WAL POLE, and by the new wealth and massive for tunes of the East and West Indian interests. The word " Reform " is of old date; and in his " History of the Great Rebellion," the cautious and rather timid CLARENDON has frankly recorded his opinion that the then existing system required change, and the Conservative historian rather applauds than censures CROMWELL for his designs about introducing Parliamentary Reform. The vicissitudes which this great question has undergone are most curious, and deserve patient consi deration. For example, it might be a cause of astonish ment to many persons that a system so full of anomalies as the old Parliamentary system should have stood so long without change or positive disapproval. The explanation is easy. After the Restoration the great political ques tion was only another form of the sanguinary controversy in the da3 s of CHARLES I. The question up to 1688 was as to the power of the Crown and the nature of the Cabinet ; and the introduction of the word and thing called Cabinet was a virtual Parliamentary reform of no ordinary importance. After 1688, and down to the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, we had a dynastic question which absorbed all the attention of the country. The Septen nial Act was a sort of coup-d'etat to defeat the Jacobites ; and while the Stuart dynasty was plotting for the recovery of the Throne elec toral controversies would have been out of time and season. The ascendant Whig party, when the House of Hanover was firmly enthroned, was too satisfied with its power to venture on the perils of innovation ; and it is both amusing and instructive to listen to Ministerialists in our own days saying, "We have a great majority as we stand, " and why should we look for more reform, " which might possibly let in the Tories ?" Jn the middle of the last century the great Whig families mainly monopolised the borough interest, and, having a decided majority in the House of Peers, they dictated to the Crown. Lord CHATHAM, when he was the " great commoner," nobly struggled against the oli garchy, appealed to public opinion, threw himself on the " City," which played a great political part in the last century, as Liver pool, Manchester, Birmingham, and other vast centres of activity were unknown in those times. Simultaneously %% ith, and subsequent to, the American war, there was a great general feeling in favour of Parliamentary Reform. Associations were organised in Yorkshire ; the printing press groaned with pamphlets, and the subject was discussed repeatedly in Par liament. 13uaicE and Lord NORTH were op posed to Reform ; CHARLES Fox and his imme diate followers professed to be in its favour. But the difficulties attendant on any practical solution were found to be immense. Amongst the first of these was the question, " Whether rotten boroughs were private pro " perty 7' And, curiously enough, this question was interwoven with " new men." Great merchants had founded families by means of nomination seats ; and the first PITT entered Parliament by means of his family borough. To wards the close of the last, and at the commencement of the present century, a great blaze of reputations were associated with the nomination boroughs. Even Lord MACAULAY, in our own time, entered Parliament for Calne, a seat under the control of the Marquis of LANsoowNE. The hungry sages from the North who used occasionally to pause on their busy forks at Holland-house to admire the dull wit of their host, and imbibe the brilliant champagne of his plenteous board, owed much to rotten boroughs. CANNING became an enthusiastic champion of the close system. " He flashed," said COLERIDGE, " such " brilliancy about the Constitution as it stood, " that its ruins , were not discernible amidst " the blaze of his genius." And in our own opinion the finest eloquence of CANNING was in defence of the system by which he rose to fame tend power. , , While the perional, successes and the glory of ambition were,thus ailiweiated with rotten boroughs, the reantion used by the French Revolutinn added to the force of existing prescription, and almost placed the borough system on a level with the sanctity of private property The cause of Reform fell, also, into bad hands; and the state of the country after the battle of Waterloo, the transition from war to peace, the reduction in prices, the discontent of the working classes, the fury of their leaders, and the factiousness of the ultra- Whigs, compromised the character of Reform, and stopped its progress. But in 1826 " Reform " assumed a new shape. There is a traditional story that Mr CANNING pronounced the statement of LorJ JOHN Russell. on " Moderate Reform," in that year, as the best speech on that question ho " ever heard." From that date down to 1832 the Conservative party endured heavy losses, and had to submit to some disasters. The strategy adopted rather injured the fortunes of the Conservative body, and on another occasion it will be our duty to illustrate how those mishaps came about. The great cause of them was, we have no hesitation in declar ing, attributable to the fact that, from a variety of causes, the Conservatives had not made up their minds in time abouthow far change might be introduced. It will be necessary to under stand this clearly, in order to grasp tho roughly the facts relating to the present system, which has just as many anomalies as the old one. We do not in the least blame the great Con servative statesmen of that time. Their famous memories and vast talents we hold in the highest reverence and honour, and even in indicating their errors we shall recollect, as the Duke of WELLINGTON said of Sir JOHN MOORE'S campaign in Spain, that we are criti cising after the event. If there were some mistakes made by the Great Duke and his justly celebrated associate, Sir ROBERT PEEL, those miscalculations were splendidly com pensated for by the decisive triumphs which they afterwards gained over the Whigs and Radicals, whom they prostrated so signally in 1841. EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE. THE ordinary middle-class Englishman is apt to consider himself a most exemplary religious character. His estimate of other nations is, in this respect, highly unfavourable. He thanks GOD he is not as they are. The French, in his opinion, are atheists, the Ita lians idolators, and the Germans metaphysi cians who believe in nothing but abstract terms spelt with capital letters. He likes that his religious institutions should be in unison with the character of his creed—sound, solid, and substantial—ancient, respectable, and wealthy. He supports, therefore, an Estab lished Church, at which he is continually railing, and with treble the revenues of any other ecclesiastical body in Europe. If you ask him why he does so, he cannot give you a very good definition of his reasons ; it is, as we have indicated, rather a matter of feeling and of taste than anything else. But he will not confess this ; and there are, of course, a large class of Englishmen whose reasons for supporting the Church of England are of a very different kind. If the clergy, however, would study to retain and strengthen their hold upon the popular affection, they must be observant of all classes, and conversant with all reasons for which the people are attached to them; and we cannot but fear that the pro ceedings of certain English clergymen, at the recent meeting at Berlin, will have a tendency to lower their position in the minds of all their adherents. There are, in the main, two causes fur the support of episcopacy in this country. The / I 1/