The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1865-07-11 00:00:00

NOTES OF THE WEEK.

I.—Tirs QuaEw comes upon the stage as
prominent actor in the momentous transac-
tions now taking place throughout the
country, and the public has neither eyes nor
ears for anything else. Matters of more im-
portance will be done in the Queen's name
during the ensuing week than may possibly
again occur for the next six or seven years.
One day the papers contain the Royal
Speech, proroguing Parliament another
day they present us with the Royal procla-
mations dissolving it. The former document
is altogether superior in texture to the
wonted fabrications of its class. There
being no good cry with which "to go down
to the country, the next best thing was
necessarily a good address. In this respect
the Government, collectively, are only
copying the example which honourable
members have set, individually. And Lord
Palmerston, with his usual sagacity, has im-
proved the occasion by trying to follow suit.
The noble premier's intention of standing for
Tiverton had been so far doubted that, from
the non-appearance of any address from his
Lordship as a candidate, it was alleged that
the Tivertonians were looking about for a
suitable successor. It appears, however, that,
Sure of a renewal of their suffrages, (for
although there is a contest going on in
the borough it does not affect him) Lord
Palmerston felt it to be the etiquette of the
occasion to postpone making his bow before
them until the actual dissolution of Parlia-
ment. His address is dated from "94,
Piccadilly," on the very day and hour. We
gave Sir Bulwer Lytton's model address last
week—we cannot do less than give Lord
Palmerston's this. It reads like a series of re.
jected passages from the Queen's speech,
The noble premier claims some curious suc-
cesses for his administrttion, which we
enumerate, not for the sake of disputing, but
to enable our readers, who know as well as
we do, to judge for themselves whether they
are true. Three bad seasons in Ireland, and
a cotton famine in England, have succumbed,
it is said, before a "progressive prosperity."
Peace, it is said, has been preserved with
Foreign nations. [But somehow, we think,
there are, somewhere on the map of the
world, places called China, Japan, Northern
India, and New Zmiland.] And then again,
there are stated to have been a rapid increase
in the wealth, and great reductions in the
taxation of the nation. It is right and
proper that Lord Palmerston, in the name of
his administration, should lament the demise
of the Prince Consort—for that, we doubt
not, was a felt difficulty in their experience of
office. But what in the world can be the merit
attaching to Government for "the fortunate
and happy marriage of the Prince of Wales,
and the birth of two Royal princes !" The anti-
Penultimate sentence in Lord Palmerston's
epistle to his constituents is plausibly put.
"How long the ministry, of which I have the
honour to be a member, may continue to
direct the affairs of this great nation, must
depend upon the will of the Parliament now
about to be elected, but I think I may be
allowed to say for myself and my colleagues,
that a just judgment of our put administra-
tion will entitle us to the same measure of
good-will that has been extended to us by
the Parliament now dissolved." That, after
all, is modest. It is not asking for much.
There was no great good-will extended in the
matter of Lord Westbury resigned; and that
reminds us that the queen has got a new
keeper for her "conscience." Lord Oran-
worth has, however, held the seals before.
Why he ever was discontinued is best known

to the political necessities of party—the cir-
cumstance to which his second elevation to
the Woolsack is once more due, for to part
with Sir Roundell Palmer is more than can
be done in the present state of the Crown
Law Office; yet, what an immense accession
of popularity a ould not the elevation of such
a man to the highest dignity under the
Crown have procured for the administration!
The infant prince has been baptized George
Frederick Erneat Albert. The Queen was
present and received the infant into her arms
as representative of the Queen of Denmark,
one of the Royal sponsors.
11.—PaittlastENT has expired, only, like the
Phcenix, to spring again, renewed, from its ashes.
The life of the Parliament of 1859 cannot be
described as very eventful. And yet if we cast
our eye over its period of political history we
shall find in it many and various episodes of no
Blight interest and importance and of a singularity
little short of anomaly in the history of party.
Lord Derby's Government appealed to the
country on principles of reform, and it was
under such auspices that the late Parliament was
elected. In ordinary circumstances it must be
for the advantage of a party, as undoubtedly it
is now at the present moment for that of Lord
Palmerston, to have the elections thus nominally
carried through at their command. But in 1859
this proved the rock a-head of the administration
of the day, by giving them returns of sham
reformers who agreed only with the Govern-
ment ostensibly on reform, and, as it turned out
not even really upon that. The Parliament of
1859 made. its first start by confuting the
supposed object of its existence; and to this it
remained true to the end. Rejecting in 1860 the
£6 Franchise, it pronounced its final condemna-
tion on it so late as 1865. This is the Parlia-
ment which has suffered Earl Russell to compli-
cate the Italian question; which has witnessed
the cession of the lonian Islands to Greece and
the election of a juvenile king of the noble earl's
nomination to the throne of that Kingdom; the
Parliament which suffered Poland to be
sacrificed and Denmark to be betrayed. Truly
its origin has been worthy of its end, and its
actions of its origin. Placed in the trying posi-
tions which followed on the outbreak of the
world's last and most domestic convulsion—the
American civil war—the Parliament of England,
it is true, could do little other than look on. If
England, under its auspices, and those of a more
vacillating nature, the auspices of Earl Russel',
could not always preserve the lofty tone whim,
befits her, and if she more than once narrowly
escaped drifting into war—she did so far escape
doing so—and having compelled the surrender of
the Southern Commissioners seized under her
flag on board the Trent—she has now only to re-
nounce the preposterous demands for compensa-
tion on account of the exploits of the Alabama—
to have to say that she came out of that long
and painful ordeal tolerably well. It is this
Parliament which reads the constituencies a
moral, and tells them to make sure of
electing men of principle, and upon principle,
and then they will cease to meet with the dis-
appointment caused by those conducting the
affairs of the nation being content to tolerate
till the last moment conduct in the highest officer
of State, which no Parliament —not even the
recent one—could separate without leaving
censured.

lll.—Tere Cannon has gained ground in and
amongst the representatives of the people,
solely on account of the detection of the plot
formed against her by the notorious Liberation
Society, which is everywhere working dishonestly
to influence the present elections. It behoves
Churchmen to be, therefore, on their guard, not
only in relation to what is going on, however
covertly, around them; but in order to prevent
their receding from the vantage ground they
have gained. Thus whilst in 1834 there was a
majority of 116 in favour or Church-rates, there
was actually a majority of 74 against them in
1859; and in 1861 the balance either way was
almost even. Since then the feeling in favour of
the Church has continued to strengthen. But
nothinj, we repeat, has served to strengthen it
so much as the discovery of the great conspiracy
and league of the Liberation Society. This came
out in the evidence of Dr. Foster before a
Parliamentary committee, when the real objects
of the Liberation Society were proved to be the
confiscation of the whole property of the Church
—her tithes, glebes, parsonages, livings, schools,
endowments, nay, her very Churches themselves!
The plan of the Liberation Society is to proceed
step by step until the Church shall have been
robbed of all that belongs to her, in the name of
liberty of conscience. We ask Churchmen,
therefore, in these elections to tremble at every
vote given to a Liberationist. Doubtless the
timely exposure of this insidious enmity has
done much to defeat it. But its promoters are
at this moment engaged in expending a con-
siderable sum of money called "The Liberation
! Fund" to assist their ends.