The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1865-05-09 00:00:00

NOTES OF THE WEEK.

-
MAJESTY has performed a graceful
,at of sympathy in addressing ~an autograph
letter to Mrs. Lincoln " as a widow to a widow."
Officially through her Ministers, she has
replied to the addresses of Parliament on
1 the subject of President Lincoln's assassination,
lin these words :—" I entirely participate in the
sentiments you have addressed to me on the
assassination of the President of the United
States, and I have given directions to my
Minister at Washington to make known to the
Government of that country the feelings which
you entertain in common with myself and my
whole people, with regard to this deplorable
event." And we are perfectly sure the Queen
is fully justified in saying so by the pervading
and prevailing sentiment throughout the length
and breadth of this land. We observe, by the
way, that a Canadian paper essays to account
for this outrageous act of assassination by at-
tributing it to revenge for the execution of the
Canadian raider, Captain Beale. But no con-
ceivable connection of the assassin, Wilkes
Booth, with that unfortunate officer being
adduced, and a long letter of the miscreant
written altogether prior to the events of Beale 's
capture and execution being published to prove
that the contemplated attack on the President
was no new thing with Booth although enter-
tained with the view of capture rather than of
murder, we cannot for a moment allow a
romantic palliation of the atrocity which has
convulsed the civilised world with horror to be
whispered or sustained.—The French Monarch
has arrived at Algiers; and has been enthusiasti-
cally received with public homage; but unless
we are misinformed, he will discover fighting
going on with the Kybles in some adjacent parts
of these Colonial dot:names. The Empress mean-
while holds the reins of State, and presides
over the Imperial Councils of the Tuilleriea,
under an act of Regency, which is by some re-
girded as implying a more protracted absence in
, Algeria on the part of the Emperor than has yet
been given out.—The Italian King is expected
in Florence. Signor Vegezzi's mission to the
Papal Court is supposed to have failed.
ll.—Peitiisminrr has during the past week
been occupied in discussing very many and
very miscellaneous questions such as "Public
Schools," which, in the House of Lords was
referred to a select committee, comprising the
Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London,
Earls Granville, Derby, Devon, Stanhope,
Powia, Ellenborough, Harrowby, Carnarvon,
and Clarendon, and Lords Eversley and Strat-
ford de Radcliffe, so that we shall have another,
and we may anticipate a very able report on that
matter ; as also "Grievances of Indian Officers,"
which in the other House resulted in a Ministerial
defeat. The great debate, adjourned till
Monday evening, was on Mr. Baines' £6
franchise bill, which produced a very remark-
able speech in defence of middle class legislation
from Mr. Robert Lowe. Mr. Lowe has shown
himself to be none afraid of the bugbear of
unpopularity —as we all remember from
the decision of character, a hich, right or wrong,
he evinced on the Education Question and
the Revised Code. But certainly, as a Liberal
all his life long, few were prepared for a speech
from him of three and a half hours duration,
culminating in the loud cheers of the House
and against extension of the franchise. —The
business of the week, in which the public are
more peculiarly interested, was the passing of
the Budget Resolutions on Thursday. They
did not altogther escape modification, and were
by no means exempt from criticism and animad-
version. With regard to the proposition, for
instance, that the duty on tea from the 6th of
May until the Ist of August, 1866, be 6d. per
lb. • Mr. Moffat complained, as we last week
hinted, that the immediate reduction would be
attended with great and unnecessary hardships
to the trade, and moved to alter the time to the
let of June; and to this the Chancellor of the
Exchequer assented, though with a very bad grace,
protesting against the House allowing a retail
trade to stand betwixt it and the concession of a
great public boon. We cannot see, however,
that Parliament should summarily insist on
doing evil that good may come. Several traders
have told us that do what they will, the first
effect of the alteration will be to pick their
pockets of frOm alt to twelve or even twenty
guineas; and multiplied by the number of tea-
dealers in the country, this is surely a serious loss
and tax upon trade' and one to which no claas of our
shopkeepers ought to be subjected for the benefit
of the rest of the community, since it is always
easy for a Chancellor of the Exchequer to time
and adjust his drawbacks so as to avert such
wrongs. More firmly but even less logically
Mr. Gladstone resisted the retie Wed appeal for
remission of the Malt Tax. Mr. Henley stript his
Budget speech of its entire pretences for evading
that concession and even taxed the Chancellor
with discourtesy to the deputation that had
waited upon him early in the year, promising
that the next election would furnish him with
ample information as to the feeling in the
country on this question, for the agitation would
never cease until the grievance was removed.
But the Chaneellor stolidly and doggedly, and
unlike him, reiterated his assertion that all the
reduction he could have made would only have
taken that memorable farthing off the quart;
and nothing remained but to pass the remaining
resolutions granting Income Tax at the rate of
4d. in the £ and fire insurance duty at the rate
of is. 6d. per Cent. with a penny stamp on the
policy. And so stand the fiscal arrangements
for the year.
111. —Tua MAY MEETINGS may be taken to
represent the annual revival of religious effort.
The focus of British zeal on these occasions in
the Metropolis, or more commonly, though not
MOTO correctly speaking, "Exeter Hall 1" for
the Propagation Society last Thursday met in
the more aristocratic regions of St. James's-
hall, Picdadilly ; and the Church Missionary
Sctiety_ln Eteterliall ; ithiLit the " Iriberiticth
sodiety" of the Disilentere *Mit right do*n GSA
altogether to the most redoubtable of all the
sites; of political agitation—Freemasons' Tavern.
—The venerable Society for the Progagation of
the Gospel in Foreign Paris met, as recorded in
another column under the presidency of His
Grace the Archbishop of York. Its revenues
for the year, we are happy to say, were reported
• eter 2100;000, partly &tieing, , however,
from Mudd specially appropriated. ltiefer Waal
there a more striking or apposite remark
than that of the Most Reverend chairman I
'that the society had risen from a mere charity
to a great institution. So lately as 1839 its
' aggregate income was less than £17,000 per
annum. The most important announcement
was Made tit the intentitin te reorganise the
society, that it may be rendered suitable to the
wants of the present time. It will, amongst
other arrangements, be divided into three de-
partments for promoting respectively,—Home
interest in Foreign Missions—for the General
Business of the Society—and for Foreign work.
The Church must recognise in this great organ-
isation its propaganda •, and cannot but respond
heartily to the Archbishop's appeal to assist,
through its extended and well-ordered agency,
in promoting and establishing the pure faith
throughout the world. --The Earl of Chichester
presided over the Church Missionary anni-
versary, This earnest and energetic body has
an annual income of £144,454 18s. 9c1., and it
has not hesitated to expend £3,539 16s. 6d.
more chiefly or entirely on increased missions,
the special Indian fund being, however, available
to supply the deficiency. Its stations number
116, its English clergymen 201, native clergy-
men 77, European lay agents, schoolmasters and
mistresses 30, and native born catechista as
many is 1,983—a most powerful wing of the
great army of the Church Militant, assuredly.
This meeting also was graced by the presence of
an Archbishop, though not in the chair. The
Archbishop of Canterbury moved the adoption
of the report. The eloquent Canon M'Neill,
of Liverpool, in a long speech seconded the
motion, delivering some trenchant and smiting
blows on Esscsys and Reviews. And the Lord
Bishop of London with characteristic ardour
then advocated the claims of the heathen world on
Christian consideration.—And now for the other
side of the question, The Liberation Society as-
senibled its seven hundred delegates from all
park of the United Kingdom in Freemason's
Hall to advocate the annihilation of that very
Church which is putting forth the preceding
efforts for the Evangelisation Of the whole world.
Great and growing as we are apt to consider
those exertions of our Enghah Church, they are
as nothing in comparison with those that are
almolutely needed to help 'fbrivard by the help
and blessing of Gorl the redoMption of the earth.
• yet it void 1110% th,areeuto be found
• Ai tree pi an* Os lank Opti Po.
•

fession of religion would abstract the little
leaven that is even now employed in the
endeavour to leaven the whole lump. This
mischief is moreover not to be attempted
by sacred but by secular means. The
unhallowed deed is to be done not by religion
but by politics ; and the coming elections are to
be the scene of a vast and varied conspiracy to ,
subvert the Church of England and erect a barren I
voluntaryism in its stead. Truly has Dean
Swift enunciated the sarcasm that some men
under pretence of weeding out prejudices,
would eradicate virtue, morality and religion.
Without advancing one word in favour of what
the Church does at home parochially, terri-
torally, as the open door of worship, kept free
for the humblest, the poorest, and most abject
in the land; were there no other question than
this—How, if you destroy or even injure her
and her resources, if you wean the attachment of
her people, and secularise and level down for
political and wordly considerations her place and
office in this kingdom—how, by what, or by
whom are these great mission systems of her
two great sections of zealous teachers to be
reorganised and replaced I That question alone
might make the most rampant of her enemies
pause in mid career, and hesitate to lift a finger
against her, against whom we are told the very
gates of the evil place shall not prevail.
IV.—Tris New PRESIDIINT of the United States
ban accorded to our new American Minister a recep-
tion at once courteous and conciliatory. It was fated
that Sir Frederick Bruce was never to establish
relations with President Lincoln, and the expressions
of good will and reciprocal confidence made by the
successor, by whom he has been so suddenly replaced
equal or exceed all that could have been anticipated.
Mr. Seward, too, would seem to have done this
country a servioe in putting our Government in
possession of all the facts relating to the Fenian
conspiracy, which he appears to have been at some
pains to ascertain.
V.—IN a lengthened document the Committee on
the Edmunds or Westbury scandal have reported to
the House of Lords, and again the rumour runs that
the Lord Chancellor has placed his resignation in the
hands of his colleagues. Lord Brougham is
acquitted, we rejoi,e to may, of all knowledge or
complicity in the questionable and more
than questionable jobbery betwixt Mr. Edmunds
and his brothers. Lord Westbury cornea
not so well out of the ordeal through which
he must needs pass to gain acquittal for having re-
commended for a pension of £BOO a year a person
known to him as having been guilty of mal variation
of office. He escapes however with a mere censure;
and that most narrowly it appears, since a majority
of one, composed entirely of bin own colleagues in
office, in opposition to his opponents, alone pre.
eluded the stigma of a sentence more condemnatory.
As it is, few more painful things could have occurred
to checquer our parliamentary history than an impu-
tation of such a kind on the fountain of justice and
judgment. Lord Bacon's peculations were never
forgotten amidst the blaze of a genius second only
to that of Shakespeare; and it is perhaps in vain
that Lord Westbury should expect that the stain and
reproach will ever be effaced from the memory of
his Chancellorship.