The Press. — London, England, 1857-11-28 00:00:00

1148 means. In them the student sees a definite something to be grasped, devoured, and digested. He can register each step of his progress, and has certain fixed, unmistakeable standards by which to test its consummation. The value of this process is inestimable. The scholar so formed has thereby habituated his mind to the highest ideal of knowledge. All subsequent pursuits he endeavours to assimi late to this. And if it cannot save him —as, of course, it cannot—from alarge amount of igno rance, it saves him from all that makes ignorance formidable—unconsciousness of it. Let a man once learn how to distinguish between the bottom of a subject and the top— between knowing it, and knowing about it — and education has done half her work. Now, it is obvious that the system inaugu rated by the University of Oxford will dimi nish the number of this sort of men in the country. In the first place, parents who would not rest satisfied with the old-fashioned mid dle-class school, made an effort to put a pro mising boy to Rugby or Charterhouse ; and many a young genius was in this way rescued from the counting-house, sometimes to adorn a profession and sometimes to save an empire. The better style of instruction henceforth to be obtained at middle-class seminaries, with the dignity of A.A. looming in the future, will be a temptation to parents to relax their efforts at procuring the highest education for their children ; and the proposed boon, instead of an incentive to excellence, will thus turn out to be a premium on mediocrity. In the second place, young men themselves will cease to prize university honours as formerly, when their exclusiveness has been diluted by an infusion of " Associates in Arts"; and not prizing them, will not labour to attain them. Whether such feelings be magnanimous or not is nothing to the present question They are natural, and they are inevitable ; and we require that the public do not give their final and general approbation to so important a movement without having all its consequences before them, and one of them undoubtedly is that " the crowd of thoroughbred Grecians" will be considerably thinned. The retort to which we lay ourselves open is of course obvious. Would you, it may be asked, perpetuate a system which sacrificed the many to the few ? Would you deprive five men out of six of their legitimate mental cul ture that the sixth may turn out a Johnson, an Eldon, or a Blomfield ? And even if you would, is the system any longer possible? Venienti occurrite morbo. Is not Oxford merely anticipating the results of an aggression that would sooner or later have taken place, and submitting to inoculation to avoid a worse danger? Now, we would not for a moment deny that these considerations possess great weight, and we should wish to express ourselves with all due diffidence in opposition to them. But, after all, how far is it correct to say that uuder the old system the many were sacrificed to the few? If a man's career began, continued, and ended with himself, no doubt such was the case. But we know that it does not. And this very question is pre-eminently a question of influence. To solve it we must ascertain the comparative advantages of a dozen scholars and a hundred " well-informed " men to the community at large. We must find out whether a few first-class examples of excel lence, with a knowledge of the process that produced them, be more or less beneficial to the national character than a greater number of fourth-class ones. For unless the latter alternative be proved, the modern system is but the sacrifice of the many to the few on a larger scale, and a more insidious method. The question of course may be answered either way. But it does not admit of that off hand arithmetical solution which some people seem to imagine. Again, on the hypothesis that Oxford has adopted middle-class examinations from purely prudential motives, it may fairly be doubted whether any measure tending to weaken her sti ong points can prove eventually conser vative. Is she not rather acting the same foolish part towards her own independence which a great political party was once charged THE PRESS, NOVEMBER 28, 1857. with adopting towards liberty, and allowing it to be undermined for fear it should be over thrown ? DOCTOR CULLEN AND THE UNDER CURRENT FROM ROME. THE information which we gave our readers, three months since, about the new movement in the Roman Catholic Church is now mani festly correct. Every incident that has since occurred has testified to the fact that the ecclesiastical rulers of the Church of Rome are most anxious to intensify the politico religious feelings of the Roman Catholics in Ireland, while at the same time the laity of the same persuasion are decidedly averse to a sectarian movement being commenced to gratify Doctor CULLEN. It is an unpropitious moment for Jesuitry to attempt exciting a fanatical feeling in the Irish Roman Catholic community. There are four Roman Catholic Judges on the Bench ; two of the chief Judges in Ireland are of the same persuasion ; the Attorney-General and the Counsel to the Castle (Mr. CORBALLIS), are also of the same creed. Such facts are visible confutations of the assertions idly put forward by Doctor CULLEN to the effect that bigotry and illiberal feelings are shown by the authorities to mem hers of his Church. Doctor CULLEN has now come forward with a lengthy address of five columns on the subject of what is termed Catholic grievances. Why is the present time selected for ripping up (alleged) injustice in the distribution of the Crimean Fund? We will tell our readers the " reason why." It is simply because the cry now raised is only a pretext. Any other ground might be taken just as well by Doctor CULLEN. A movement must be got up somehow, in order to mark the social distinction broadly between Protestantism and Roman Catholics. It is thought that the present would be a good moment for a " cry," and hence Dr. CULLEN comes forward. If his (alleged) facts be true, it is really wonderful how long he has been silent about them ; and it is rather singular that the Roman Catholic laity in Ireland, an extremely shrewd body, never made any noise about the matter. This latter fact is enough to show that the present de monstration derives its origin entirely from Rome. Doctor CULLEN'S attempt at an answer to Lord ST. LEO NARDS' excellent letter of October the sth is a decided failure. Five columns are spent in reply to a third of a column. Lord ST. LEosaans well asked in his letter— "ls this a moment to add a drop to the cup " of bitterness between the two Churches ? " • . . . I cannot believe that any sub " scriber has considered whether his subscrip " tion would relieve a Protestant or a Roman Catholic." But in order to exculpate him self from the charge of advancing loose accu sations, Doctor CULLEN assails Lord ST. LEONARDS about the " Irish Church "! He quotes a writer whom he does not mention by name to prove that the Irish Church is the worst of all possible institutions. The writer from whom he quotes is Lord MACAULAY, but that distinguished person may be quoted on both sides. In his " History of England " LOI d MACAULAY has branded the religion of Doctor CULLEN'S Church as " a gorgeous and " fascinating superstition," and he has also de nounced the Church of Rome "as labouring " for the last three hundred years to stunt the " progress of the human mind." Lord MACAULAY has further stated in the most emphatic terms, in the last volume of his His tory, that the policy which led to " Catholic Emancipation" resulted in disappointment. Doctor CULLEN certainly seems to be well suited for controversy. If he has a right to cite Lord MACAULAY as to the utility of the Estab lished Church in Ireland, others have a right by the same rule to ask for Lord MACAULAY'S opinion on the character of the Roman Catholic Church. The raising of such questions shows that Doctor CULLEN has no case, but that he wishes to make one, and that he hopes to excite pre judices upon the subject. He boasts that he has been charged with the Pope's personal subscription to the Relief Fund. Then, if that be so, why did Doctor CULLEN in his letter (dated Rome, Sept. 25th) write in such a damaging way about the manageme n t o f t h e Relief Fund? That Doctor CULLEN has damped the collection for the Fund in Ireland is unhappily true. The great cities in Ireland cannot be said to have done their duty on this occasion, influenced, of course, by the feelings of sectarianism excited by clerical authority. We take for granted that Doctor CULLEN believes that he is quite right, but it is to be regretted that Doctor CULLEN did not follow the course of Lord 13ku.Ew, .an eminent Roman Catholic peer, who generously said— " Aid the distressed in the first instance, and " after you have relieved the misery you can " then settle the sectarian question ; " and to their honour many other Roman Catholics in Ireland have followed the example of Lord BELLEW. These and other facts have additional im portance as showing how the undercurrent from Rome is beginning to flow in new chan nels. Lay agitation is now given up; priests and curates are " not to interfere in politics," but bishops, cardinals, and Jesuits will work the telegraphic wires betwen Rome and Dublin with more energy than ever. INDIAN FINANCE-CREDIT. IN our last issue we gave a brief descrip tion of the Indian currency, and the measures required to put it on a satisfactory basis; and we shall now proceed to explain the causes which have deteriorated Indian Credit, irre spectively of all considerations arising out of the present crisis, and the mode in which alone its vigour can be restored. In early times the Company was compelled to keep down its debt, from the impossibility of obtaining funds to any considerable extent. The chief mode then of acquiring the addi tional means that it wanted for the purposes of Government was, by trenching on the funds set apart for the commercial investment, or the plunder of such native princes as fell within its grasp. These means, however, were gradually exhausted, and then it took to bor rowing the accumulations of its own European servants in the East. But the enormous in terest that wac paid for the accommodation made this anything but a profitable transac tion to the borrower, and the system was put an end to as soon as the purely English pro. prietary began to predominate over the Anglo- Indian in the Court of Proprietors at home. The next phase of the loan system was of a wholly opposite description. The principal contributors to the Indian loans were still for the most part servants of the Company, but comparatively poor and uninfluential ones, for the days of the Nabobs were gone. These the Government screwed down to the lowest possible point, and though their savings were still generally invested in the loans of the Company, this was chiefly owing to their desire to have their money on the spot. The constantly decreasing means of making for tunes in India, however, lessened greatly the amount of accumulated capital among this class ; and latterly a large portion even of what they had was transferred to other invest ments, offering interest at a higher rate. For a long period, therefore, though the supply thus obtained had been sufficient to cover the