The Press. — London, England, 1856-11-15 00:00:00

NOVEMBER 15, 1856. Sir William Williams, Captain Milne, and the Lord Chancellor respectively returned thanks for their several professions. The LORD MAYOR then plop 'sed her Majesty's Ministers : We are honoured especially by the presence of the Prime Minister, who has guitbld the councils of the State, and who was called upon to give his valuable services to the Sovereign when the country was in great need of them. At that time we were engaged in a sauguinary war with a powerful enemy ; but that war is now happily over, and I have no doubt that the Prime Minister and his colleagues in the Government will turn their attention to measures of domestic legislation. Lord PALMERSTON replied, thanking the Lord Mayor for the honour. He then spoke of the foreign policy of this country in allusion to the late war and the peace : At the commencement of this year this country pos. sessed the finest army, the most magnificent fleet, that ever stood forward for the defence of the honour and the rights of England. The spirit of the people was roused to as high a pitch as was ever witnessed in the former annals of the country. We had every prospect that, if the war had continued, future successes would have been obtained, equal at all events to those which had crowned the arms of the allies. But when we found that we could obtain, by negotiation, terms of peace which would satisfy our just demands, which would secure the future peace and independence of Europe, we thought it our duty to sheath the sword, and, in conjunction with our allies, to put an end to the hostilities which at that time were going on. We were convinced that the people of England would willingly forego the prospect of future military and naval glory when they felt that the objects of the war had been substantially accomplished. It now remains that the condi tions of that peace should be faithfully executed—th they ahould be faithfully executed and honourably observed —and then I trust the peace of Europe will be placed upon secure and permanent foundations. (Great cheer ing.) The noble lord barely touched upon the question of domestic policy : Gentlemen, I can only wish that this great city, which is, I may say, the centre of the commercial wealth and enterprise of the world—which regulates the commercial affairs of almost every country on the face of the earth—l can only express my fervent wish that this great city may continue for the future to flourish as it has done in the past—that it may continue to be the heart, I may say, of this great country, contributing not only to the wealth and prosperity of England, but tending also to promote the blessings of peace and civilisation in every country of the habitable globe. After the health s of the foreign Ministers, responded to by the Minister of Brazil, had been drunk, the LORD MAYOR proposed " The Commons and the Chancellor of the Exchequer." The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER, in his reply, alluded to the charge of the " declining efficiency" of Parliament:— What are the charges which are now made against the House of Commons? We are told that it has fallen into a state of inefficiency. The complaints are not that it is too active, but that it is too indolent. I think I may appeal with safety to the conduct of the House of Com mons of late years, as a sufficient answer to those accusa tions. The House of Commons has nut merely the super intendence of the legislation of the country, but also the supervision of its administrative affairs. During the last two years that a great war has occupied the attention of the community, the House of Commons was engaged in the superintendence of the conduct of that war and in voting supplies for its prosecution. Now, happily, a peace has been concluded on honourable terms, and the House of Commons can devote i•s entire energies to those sub jects to which the voice of the people directs its attention ; and I doubt not that it will hereafter, as at all former times, show that it deserves the confidence of the country, and th4t it is the true representative of their wishes and interests. (Cheers.) A few more toasts concluded the entertainment, when the company retired to the bail-room. SOME INTERESTING RELICS OF THE STUARTS, con sisting of a collection of antique jewels and arms, &c., which have belonged at different periods to various members of the royal house of Stuart, have just been purchased in Rome for L' rd John Scott, from the late Cardinal York's gentilumno, to which officer of his household his eminence bequeathed these family relics. The collection, for which the purchaser has paid about 1300/., comprises several rings with family portraits in cameo. Amongst them the ring worn by the Pretender on his marriage with the Princess Clementine Sobieski, and the marriage ring of his son, Prince Charles Edward, inclosing a beautiful little miniature ; a gold ring with a white r).e in enamel, worn by King James 11. and James III.; a ring with a cameo portrait in ivory of James It.; Charles Stnart's watch seal; seal, with the m itto " Chacun a son tour;" Cardinal York's seal, with the royal arms; an enamelled medallion of the Order of St. George, formerly worn by King Charles I.; the blade of John Sobieski's sword; a jasper handled dagger, taken by Sobieski Irom the tent of a Turkish bey at the siege of Vienna; a pair of richly ornamented pistols belonging to the Sobieski family; a portrait of the Duchess of Albany's mother; a dial and compass mounted in silver, formerly belonging to Charles Stuart. These articles are now being carefully packed to bo forwarded to England. THE PRESS. Curt ano lastion. The Court continues at Windsor. Their Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Brilliant took leave of her Majesty on Monday. Prince Frederic William of Prussia is at present on a visit to the Queen. His Royal Highness Prince Leiningen, half-brother to the Queen, is still seriously ill. Several Court festivities have wen postponed in consequence. His Royal Highness Prince Alfred is at present at Coblentz. The Marquis of Lansdowne arrived at Lansdowne house on Monday, from Bowood-park, Wills, in order to attend the Cabinet Council. Viscount and Viscountess Villiers have arrived at Upton-hall, Warwickshire, from visiting the Earl and Countess of Jersey, at Middleton-park, near Bicester. Sir Charles and Lady Mary Wood arrived at the right hon. baronet's official residence at the Admi ralty on Monday night, from Hickleton-hall, York shire. Volitttal. CABINFT COUNCILS have been held on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday this week. The Ministers present were—Viscount Palmerston, the Lord Chan cellor, Earl Granville, the Marquis of Lansdowne, the Earl of Harrowby, Sir George Grey, Earl of Clarendon, Mr. Secretary Labouchere, Lord Pan mure, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Charles Wood, the Right Hon. R. Vernon Smith, Lord Stanley of Alderley, the Right Hon. M. T. Baines and the Duke of Argyll. PARLIAMENT was further prorogued on Thursday, until the 16th day of December. The proceedings were merely formal. The words •' then to meet for the despatch of business " were not included in the commission. PRINCE Claus', the Neapolitan representative at this Court, has received an intimation from her Majesty's Government that his excellency's passports are at his service. SIR CHARLES NAPIER AND MR. APSLEY PELLATT addressed their constituents at Southwark on Monday evening. Mr. Pellatt first addressed the meeting. The lion. member congratulated his constituents upon the return of peace ; be congratulated them also upon the prosperity of the country, and he con gratulated the country upon the state of its foreign alliances. The French alliance was a new fact, and our relations with America were most satisfactory. With respect to our foreign policy, it should be one of non-interference. Since Waterloo that had been our policy, and that policy ought to be continued, without any attempt to force constitutions upon unread) or unwilling nations. As to King Bomba, and such tyrants, let them be driven from their thrones by the indignant uprisings of their subjects, but without our interference. Alluding to home matters, Mr. Pellatt reviewed the course of the last parliamentary session, enumerating the number of bills, private and public, which had been passed, and glancing briefly at their leading characteristics. He then advocated the principle of voluntarism in religion, expressing his firm conviction that the Church would do better without the aid of the State than with it. He read quotations from the Times and other newspapers, and one from Chambers's Journal, alluding to himself and " men of that stamp" as phantoms, who haunted the house after midnight, as being full and sufficient proof of his close attention to his parliamentary duties; and alluded to his bill upon crossed cheques, his Dis aentt.rs' Marriage Bill—which had become the law of the land—and the Smoke Bill, which Lord Pal merston had placed in his charge, and which after 1858 would, as far as possible, do away with all un necessary smoke in the metropolis. Glancing at the question of education, he opposed State interference, and attributed the failure of Lord John Russell to his introduction of a rating clause. The bill for the abolition of imprisonment for debt it was his intention to proceed with next session. The principle of his bill was to give to the insclvent debtor, whose debt had not been caused by any criminal act of his own, the same protection which was at present given to bankrupts. He was of opinion that the income tax was not at present equally assessed on the agricul tural and manufacturing classes. The mode of assessing farmers on their rentals gave them oppor tunities of evading the tax, and this ought to be set right without delay. The hon. gentleman then briefly expressed himself in favour of the new line of communication between Southwark and Westminster, and, after congratulating the meeting once more on the superior position occupied by this country in material resources, agricultural improvements, and 1087 ';. manufacturing intelligence in comparison with the other nations of the world, resumed his seat. Sir CHARLES NAPIER followed. The gallant admiral explained his votes of last session. He had voted against opening the British Museum on Sundays. not because he thought there was any harm in the proposal, and he had voted in favour of Mr. Spooner's Maynooth motion, although he thought it very unwise to attempt now to raise the question, but in both cases he preferred to be guided by the opinion of his constituents than to follow his own convictions ; and although he had voted against the Maynooth grant, he took care to vote against all other religious grants, so as to do equal justice to all parties. He was in favour of Lord Goderich's civil service motion, and would support a similar motion for the army and navy. He was in favour of secular education. With respect to our foreign relations, he was not quite sure whether the French alliance was good or not : He hoped the French nation would always be with us for good purposes, but it certainly gave him some mis givings to see a nation which was free fighting along side of a nation which was nut free. Louis Napo leon was a great man and a clever man, or he could not have done all he had done. Had he not got rid of a troublesome Parliament, for instance ? (Laughter.) He thought Ministers' work would be much simpli fied if something of the same sort were to be done in Engla'id. Parliament now was of no use except to vote supplies : Legislation seemed to be brought to a deadlock, and unless some new arrangement were devised for the trans. action of business it would be impossible to get on. The house ought to be divided into large committees before which different bills could be discussed in their details at the same time, and the whole house might afterwards have the opportunity of deciding on the merits of each. In this way there would be a chance of doing something. The gallant admiral then fell back upon that standard work, " the Baltic campaign :''— He would not now go into the question which had been settled, as far as it could be settled at present, in the House of Commons. lie had told there a plain, straightforward story, every word of it true. though it could not be expec ted that he, who was unused to debating, could wake head successfully againet Sir James Graham—a moat unscru pulous man—not to use a harsh word—(laughter)—who could make black white and white black, at his pleasure. (Laughter.) Since the conclusion of peace he had been to Crunatadt, to satisfy himself whether he had done right or wrong in not attacking it. He found the fortifications stronger even, he confessed, than he had believed them to be when he was there with the fleet. In fact they were perfectly and entirely impregnable. The Grand Duke Constantine hail granted him an interview, and had shown him all his plans of defence, and, certainly, more judicious and more proper plans never were conceived. He was a man of great talent and ability, and had spoken to him in a perfectly honest, plain, straightforward way. His remark to me ( said the gallant admiral) was " If you had attempted to come in there would have been nearly 1,0(5) guns bearing on your fle±t, there was not water enough for your large ships, the channel was narrow, and it was so thickly filled with infernal machines that our own ships going in and out were afraid of beng blown up." "Will you allow me," said 1, "to speak plainly to you? Why did you not come out to meet us at Kiel ? We were then badly manned and badly disciplined. If you had come out I don't know what the consequences might have been " " Ah," said the Grand Duke, If I had had screws I should have come out to meet you. 1 did not know you were so badly manned until it was too late." And, 1 think (added the gallant admiral), it was lucky he did'ot come. Not that there was an Englishman there who would not have fought to the last drop rather than retreat; but after all, ships without disciplined men are no better than fortifications without soldiers. People are fund of talking about the British navy being unconquerable; but the British navy is men, not ships. The gallant admiral then proceeded to allude to the late correspondence between himself and Sir R. Peel. That, he said, was not yet concluded. H• had written to Lord Palmerston, desiring him to lay his case before the Cabinet, and, not having received any answer to that letter, he had written a second time; and, until he had received an answer from the noble lord, it would only he right in him to maintain a due reserve on the subject. He was not afraid of having his conduct investigated. He had demanded an investigation, and if the Government did not grant it, it would go far to prove that they were afraid that something would come out which would preju dice them in public opinion. The gallant admiral then sat down amid loud cheers. MR. HADFIELD AND Mn. ROEBUCK each addressed their constituents on Wednesday at Sheffield. Mr. Hadfield, in a speech of minute detail, explained the nature and number of his votes last session, with every particular relating to his attendance in the house. The tax on life assurance and paper he should endeavour to get repealed. He especially no ticed the education question, objecting to State control, and supported the abolition of ecclesiastical courts, the oath of abjuration, and church endowments. With regard to the late war, he deplored the misery which A it had occasioned, and declared himself in favour of • the policy of non-intervention ; he was utterly averse to that secret system of meddling in Euro-