The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1867-01-01 00:00:00

NOTES OF THE WEEK.

1.-Ii THZ DZAZTH ot home topics, our
foreign intelligence is by no mains uninterest;
lug. The political moves at Rome have all
thc charm of an exciting game, of which the
stakes ire high, and the issue still very
doubtful. The Cretan insurrection, too, is by
no means dead; but it is now kept up chiefly
by foreign adventurers, of whom it is said
that there are some 6,000 in the island
nearly 2,000 being Garibaldians, the rest, of
course, chiefly Greeks of the mainland. It is
rather curious, with reference to these
Garibaldian sympathizers with the Greeks,
that, just as Turkey is compelled to remon-
strate with King George for allowing his
subjects, and even soldiers in the Greek
uniform, to take an active pert in the Cretan
revolt, Victor Emmanuel should be demand-
ing from the Porte satisfaction for an insult
offered by a Turkish war vessel to an Italian
Government mail steamer. What if both
difficulties should respectively result in war
What an opportunity for the Italian army
and navy to retrieve their laurels at a small
cost, and for Italy to play the magnanimous
cheaply toward. a smaller "oppressed nation-
ality," There are more unlikely things on
the cards; and if Italy should push matters
to extremes, who is to interfere? No great
power except Russia, since they are all too
busy with their own affairs; and as for
Russia, the Montour assured us the other
day that her fleets in the Black Sea and the
Caspian are at once to be reduced to a few
gunboats, which looks more like economizing
than renewed intervention in the East. There
are more unlikely things, therefore, than even
an Italo-Greek war against Turkey, sup-
ported as it would be by traditional sentiment
and practical interest on the side of the allies.
Should such a contingency arrive, would 1867
provide us with a more startling surprise
than 1866 in the alliance of Prussia and Italy
against Austria?

IL—IN LTTTLI MORE THAN • MONTH
from the present time, Parliament will meet
for dispatch of business. February sth is to
be the opening day, ma settled at the Council
last Friday, when the late Lord Mayor of
London, and the present molicitor-geueral
(Mr. Karslake) received the honour of
knighthood. In the meanwhile, political
speculation is anything but lively, as we have
scarcely recovered our activity after the
Christmas holidays. Besides Reform, the

chief home political topic, is now transferred
from the region of debate to that of action.

The extreme demands of Reform agitators

have taken all the interest out of discussions

on £5, £6, or £7 qualifications, fancy
franchises, redistribution, At. ; and we are
now s siting as patiently as we can, to see how
ministers will propose to satisfy the agitation
in the first place, and how Parliament will
receive their proposals in the second.
noun MAE COME (AND owls)
but not the man! James Stephens has
found it either impracticable or inexpedient
to keep his word, plighted to the American
Fenians, that he would be in Ireland at the
head of an insurrection before Christmas.

People believed to the last that some
abortive attempt would be made at a rising;
but it is now evident that the brotherhood is
really is powerless against the wise pre-
cnutions of the Government as Mr. Millen
intimates in his recent attack upon the
"Head Centre." Now that the crowd of
Yankee adventurers, who found Ireland so
inconvenient a resort for them, have gone
back to disseminate in America their views
on the state of things, it is considered that
Fenianiam, like previous Irish conspiracies,
will soon be "wiped out," as the Americans
say; and that Ireland being found impreg-
nable, it will be thought useless further to
annoy Canada.

IV. —Los]) Dorisits, in his letters
to the Times respecting the state of Ireland,
maintains, among other things, that emigra-
tion has been necessary and good for a
country that was greatly over-populated with
eight millions of inhabitants. A writer in
the Pall Nall Gazette, while endorsing the
noble lord's views as to the necessity of a
reduction in the population, points out never-
theless that if the exodus uf men and women
in the prime of life continues at the present
rate, the decrease in the number of inhabitants
in another generation or so will be something
enormous, through the failure of births to
recruit the population. Still he can propose
no remedy for the anticipated evil; but we
should hope that the inducements to emigrate
will soon have become so much less as to
prevent this threatened depopulation of the
Emerald Isle.
V.—Tea &Ram. or OXFORD, a short time
ago, in a charge to his clergy, approved of
the use of the surplice in preaching, because
the black gown was a monkish invention,
nnknown until the rise of monastic orders,
and inherited from the by our university
graduates and students. Acting upon this
suggestion, several correspondents of the
Nosansformist now call upon the ministers
of the Independent denomination to abandon
their black Geneva gowns. This is carrying
matters to extreme& In fact we never could
understand the surplice and black gown
controversy, or why those who oppose the
use of coloured vestments in lieu of the white
surplice, should insist upon the substitution
for it of a black gown in preaching. Black
gowns originally came into use in the Church
of England, as the garb of clerks who were
not in holy orders, but who were still allowed
to preach; but this does not make the white
surplice wrong for ordained ministers, unless
their congregations refuse to hear them
preach in such, and would have them simply
lecture as academicians in their university
dress. But trifles like these always obtain
undue prominence in controversies that
originate on great principles.