The Press. — London, England, 1856-10-11 00:00:00

980 Napier then alluded to the destiny of England, which be believed was to send peace and prosperity throughout the world, and concluded with an eloquent peroration in favour of a Christian co-operation of every class to attain this great end:— I have endeavoured, inadequately I fear, but not un profitably I hope, to point out the combined claims of labour and knowledge in alt the departments of industry. Spiritual, moral, intellectual, manual, the claims upon every class—the clergy and the laity; the manufacturer and the mechanic ; the peer and the peasant; the student and the operative—each has his post of duty in the battle of our national life. In what I have criticised or con demned it has not been in a censorious spirit; it has been with a view of remedy—just as in our late campaign the ascrifices occasioned by a system of administrative incom• p -tence and neglect forced upon us, from the instinct of self-preservation, the duty of rectifying the qrrors which were so graciously and opportunely exposed, and have been to a great degree remedied. Let us apply the lesson of wisdom to other departments where, in a financial aspect, nothing is so expensive as duty neglected. I would suggest, moreover, that the war of classes, now past and gone, I hope, may leave behind a like lesson of remedial activity. There is in every class a disposition to look at the extreme to which the opposite class is liable, rather than to reflect upon and avoid that to which itself may perilously tend. Each class has a real interest in the in creasing prosperity of every other. Oar blessed Lord spoke but few admonitions with a political application. One, however, should never be forgotten—" A kingdom divided against itself shall be brought to desolation." How fearful is the sin, the desolating sin, which foments the strife and schism of factious division. Class arrayed against class, section striving for mastery over section, while ignorance, distrust. jealousy, pride, mammonism go forward to do the work of social disorganisation. But when fellow-citizens unite, with common sympathies—Saxon spirits and Christian hearts—encouraging every legitimate occasion of kindly or profitable intercourse; diligent in the several departments of labour, wisely distributed; in a rivalry not of the thorn and the briar, which shall show the sharpest prickle, but of the vine with the olive, which shall bear the richest fruit, then may this Christian co-operation be well compared to the beam of heaven, with its rays of distinct colours, which by their intimate coalescence give light and war.nth to the world. Go on in this spirit—may this institute be an instrument of increasing usefulness, not only in imparting special instruction, available to many, but aiding in what is more properly called educa tion, by which good habits are formed, good feeling cherished, good sense nurtured, and the temper of charity, which is greater than faith or hope, maintained in its Christian fuhiess. Party politics are wisely excluded, for here your country is your party ; controversial theology is excommunicated, for here Christianity is your religion— Christianity in its divine and comprehensive simplicity, as it shines in the beams of the. Sun of Righteousness when he arose upon the nations with healing in his wings —a system of love and of saving grace, with few doctrines to be believed, but many duties to be performed—Christianity pure and simple as it gushes from its divine fountain. Can I, then, despair of our working classes, while society is seasoned by this saving salt? The eye of the prophet turned instinctively to Him who is the great source of life, to quicken and reanimate the dry bones spread out before him in the vision of the valley. May the breathings of that Almighty power quicken and sanctify every agency working for and with our working classes ! May the gra. cious Spirit who at first breathed into man the breath of life ever stir the soul and animate the heart and spirit of England, and bind up her destiny with the hopes and the happiness of the whole human race ! An adequate notion, adds the correspondent of a contemporary, of the oration delivered by the learned gentleman cannot be given in a condensed report. The variety and beauty of his metaphor, the aptness of his illustrations, the eloquence of his phrase, and the earnestness of his manner frequently elicited the warmest expressions of admiration and concurrence from the audience. THE FRENCH IN ALGERIA. THE French in Algeria are thus noticed by the occa sional correspondent of the Times : The absolute success of the conquerors with the indi- Ones leaves nothing to desire. The Turks, who, when their supremacy was upset, must have been as uncom fortable in Algiers as blind dogfish in the sea, are either going into exile or are Spahis in the service of France. The Arabs are as tame as a half drowned mouse. There is no religious fanaticism. The French have judiciously left the Mahommedans their mosques, and have forbidden the Jesuits to preach to them. The missionaries are only allowed to force Christianity upon the attention of the Mahommedans by dint of deeds of charity and love. The Turks were bat a small number, and it is an advantage to all sects and classes in Algiers that the French have taken their place. They are certainly not more tyrannical, and, moreover, they have named and lit all the streets, numbered all the houses, and established the most perfect security for life and property. The Jews, who used to be worse treated in Algiers than any other State, hold up their heads, and the Jewesses continue to wear their black garments, but no longer as a disgrace and a coin. pulsion. The Moorish maidens, although they still veil their faces, do so rather to hide the marks of the smallpox wherewith too many of them are scarred than in deference to any commands of the other sex. Perhaps the French officers who sigh at their feet (and if Dr. Duchesne tells true, seldom sigh in vain) think their khol-strained eye brows and huge black eyes their m o st fascinati n g p o ints. So far as liberty within the city is concerned everybody is & gainer; but the Presence of a concourse of adventurers THE PRESS; and of a large army had done its work. Public decency is, however, protected with a most successful rigour. Speaking of the labour question, the vital one of an infant colony, the writer observes that native labour is scarcely to be obtained, and if ever ob tained might prove dangerous in the end. At present French law only permits European labour to be employed : The press of Algeria is now discussing the propriety of abrogating this condition ; but I doubt whether such a re lazation would be either wise or effectual. At present when a colonist can get Arab labour for work upon which an Arab can be profitably employed he makes light of the condition, and the authorities shut their eyes to the infrac tion. I have already mentioned seeing herdsmen and shepherds and a few farm servants with swarthy limbs and white bournouses. The instances, however, are not nume rous. There is still a strong antipathy among the Arabs to serve a French master. The Arab who does so incurs the displeasure of his chief, and loses caste among his tribe. To the want of labour is added want of capital : There is no opportunity for great capitalists because there is no labour, or, rather, no labour suitable to be had at prices that would make the results remunerative. Nearly all the colonists who came out with capital have failed. The little men who settle and clear their plot do so with their own hands; they are often waiters at cafés, or workmen on the roads, or disbanded soldiers, who have scraped together a few hundred francs, and, in spite of the Jardin d'Essai and the Imperial prizes, their first crops are of a very indifferent character. They have to learn their trade. The Abd.el-Kader of 1856 in the Metidja is the dwarf palm tree. If Louis Napoleon is prepared to clear six hundred square miles of forest—for the roots are as bad as those of forest trees—he will get rid of one great ob• stacle to the establishment of a European population in this plain. This is a somewhat more arduous task than Changarnier or Lamoriciere accomplished, for you cannot drive away 10,000 wild palms by cutting down a few hun- dreds of them, and a razzia of fire and smoke among the jujubes won't prevent their reappearance next spring. When this has been done he must go further if he would produce cotton or tobacco in large quantities. He must build reservoirs in the hills, and dig canals through the plain. The rains which fall from October to March may sufficiently saturate the earth to carry a corn crop through the heats of summer and up to a July harvest, but nothing but artificial irrigation will cover the Metidja with cotton and tobacco. If this were done, and a quarter of a million of French men were at work tilling the land and tending the mills, the Metidju would doubtless be a miracle of wealth. But a miracle is required to fulfil these conditions, and it is yet unwrought. France has done wonderful things in Africa. Cities, and military roads, and bridges, and vast draining dykes rise into active being wherever her armies set their foot ; per• haps she may even do this. But if it is to be done within the next hundred years, it must be done by the Govern ment. With us the energy of the people does everything, and we ask no more of our Government than to give us security and freedom for its exercise. The French have not the spirit of colonisation, and at present, although every industrious colonist is thriving and healthy, coloni sation makes no progress. The probable late of Algiers is hinted at by the same correspondent. Describing the city, he writes : Moorish Algiers consists of passages that we should never think of calling streets. Wych-street or Holywell street, diminished in breadth till the protruding first floors nearly touched each other, would best exemplify them. Little beams of wood perfect the contiguity ; so that the whole of the upper city forms a connected mass. It would take a great deal of shaking to bring all this down, and it has, in fact, withstood some very sharp shocks. Not so the new French town. At the first tremble 'nest de ler►e it would all fall to pieces like piled cards. The Place du Gouvernement, being built upon arches, would certainly share the general ruin, and in ten minutes the whole of the French town, with the bronze Duke of Orleans, and the column of the eagle, would be as utterly demolished as the dominion of the Turks. Now, there is a tradition in Algiers that an earthquake happens every sixty years. It is just fifty-eight years since the last great Algerine earthquake took place. Blidah some time ago fell, with the destruction of 1,500 people. A tremendous catastrophe of this kind has within the last few weeks occurred in the province of Constantine. Collo and I)jedjelli were nearly shaken down, and many lives were lost. But the French official papers, out of tenderness for the nerves of coming colonists, say little or nothing of this matter. Philippeville is even now undergoing a succes• mon of small secousses. it is by no means impossible, or even extremely unlikely, that within the next two years the whole of the French town may be a heap of rubbish. ADVANTAGE is to be taken of Mlle. Piccolomini's passage through town, at the end of the month, to give two performances at Her Majesty's Theatre. Selections from Don Pasquale and La Figlia del Reggintento constitute the attractions of one night, and the other will of course be devoted to La Traviata, which, now that it is pronounced " o dreadful," must be witnessed by those who have not hitherto had that advantage. CREIIORNE GARDENS have closed after a most suc cessful season. The patronage of the Queen and the various members of the Royal Family, have raised these gardens on flower show days to a posi tion in which they may fairly compete with the Regent's-park or Crystal Palace. SATURDAY, gorrtspoullente. ELECTORAL INEQUALITIES. TO THE EDITOR OF " THE PRESS." Sir—lt is one thing to attack a political system which has grown up gradually in a country on the ground of a real or supposed discrepancy between its practice and its theory, and quite another thing to make the same objection against a system which has just sprung spick-and-span from the brain of a set of doctrinaires. In the one case it may be supposed that the manners and customs of the country have adjusted themselves to the anomalous system, and therefore any extensive change may, by disturbing the prescriptive balance, produce unforeseen disas i trous consequences ; but a new system always rests its claim on the public upon its theory, and therefore it is only asking its promoters to carry out their project honestly, to insist that the practical working and the theory should be in harmony. Besides, when an old constitutional system is to be removed and a rationalistic one substituted in its place, the logical carrying out of the theory is, on the whole, the best thing within our reach. Hence it appears to me that a Conservative who deprecated the Reform Bill is quite entitled, without any loss of consistency, to call upon the Reformers to carry out their prin ciples, and to reform their Reform Bill. Now, it is not difficult to prove that the Reform Bill, es it stands, is nothing more or less than a great political hoax. It gives practical expression to none of those principles of equity by which the Reformers professed to be actuated, but is in direct opposition to them. The cardinal principle of the Reform Bill was equal representation—that is to say, that different localities should return members in proportion to the numbers of their constituencies. I don't enter into the question here of the suffrage, that I may also hereatter demonstrate to involve injustice ; but it is undeniable that the Reformers held that, the qualification being fixed, the right of election should be distributed in a just proportion among the electors. Indeed, that it was not so under the old system was the principal argument used by its assailants; and that argument, and terror, mainly contriouted in effecting its overthrow. Old Garton and Old Larum were difficult anomalies to justify, as it did not very clearly appear how an omnious full of freeholders should return a member of Parliament, when Birmingham, although she manufactured idols for all Polynesia and buttons for the United Kingdom, bad not the same privilege. But are matters so much better now? Just turn to the almanac, and see how the purists have carried out their principle. I am somewhat versed in mathematics, and have tried with all my might to find a series or a curve which could let me in to the numerical relation between the number of electors in different places and the number of members they return, but without effect ; and I doubt not that Babbage's machine, with its million of millions of circulating decimals, would fail to solve the problem. The fact is, there really is no principle in the matter except one, and it is a principle of glaring, undeniable injustice. This principle of injustice is the monstrous dispro portion between the number of members returned by the towns and by the counties. According to the almanac, there were in 1855, in England, 482,38; electors for counties, representing a population of 9,770,210. These returned 144 members. Now, the number of electors for the English towns is nearly the same, namely, 418,785, but they represent a population only of 7,151,670, which itself is a palpable injustice : but the iniquity of the case consists in this, that the towns return 319 members. In Wales, 38,342 county electors return 15 members, while 11,520 town electors re turn only one less. In Ireland, 149,854 county electors return 04 members, while 29,634 town electors return :39 members. In Scotland, just as if to prove that the Reform Bel is not even consistent in its injustice, 49,149 county electors return 30 mem bers, while 49,044 town electors return 23 members. But this approximation to fair play is so small as to leave the aggregate injustice untouched and inde fensible ; for, taking the whole United Kingdom, the figures stand thus,-508,989 town electors return 395 members, whereas 719,732 county electors return only 253. Therefore, by the rule of three, it follows that if the counties were to return members in the same proportion as the towns, there would require to be an increase of 305 county members. Now, I think it full time this injustice should he put an end to. lam not aware that the voters in towns are a superior race to the voters in the country. I do not believe they are more virtuous, and I am convinced they are more liable to democratic pas• sions, and therefore the less safe to be intrusted with a preponderance of political power. If there is to be any partiality, it would be safer, for the sake of steady government, to exercise it in favour of the county constituencies. I argue, however, for IR) injustice to either class, but simply for equality. I ask the Whigs to carry out their own princi plea,