The Press.
London, England, 1853-10-29 00:00:00

LONDON, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1853. PRICE SIXPENCE.

No. 20.—VoL. I.

ttt Vrtss.

LONDON, SAT LTD.II; OCTOBER *29, IM3.

CONFIDING imaginations have composed a new
episode to be incorporated in the epic of
European destiny. Iler MAJESTY'S Ministers
are again congratulating themselves on a pre-
sent escape from their perplexities, by a pos.
Bible solution of the Eastern question. Their
when, their where, and their how are not
revealed beyond privileged limits ; or ►ether,
we should say, with candid accuracy, it is
assumed that their p►esent hypothesis of hope
is exclusively confined to themselves—and
Providence.
It is not for us to doubt that Dispen-
sations may compensate for the efforts of
human fatuity, or that what is loosely termed
the force of events may not save those who
are inco►npetent to save themselves ; but, ex-
clusive of that agency which Mr. 6LADsToNE
would call Divine, and Sir WILLIAM MOLES-
mourn fortuitous, we may question the confi-
dence which is based on negotiations only.
The English public will not forget that a
similar confidence was created by the antici-
pated consequences of the Vienna note, and
that in that instance the consequences were
miscalculated, and the confidence without
foundation.
If it be true that up to this moment "no
communication has been made to the Porte,
assuring it of England's support," in the war
which has commenced ; if 4.‘ no offer has been
made to it of the services of our fleet, either
for the purpose of agg►ession or defence ;" if
no one of the schemes propounded fix•
pacific settlement of the cont.►oversy involves
a suspension of hostile preparations by
Russia ; ' if, at the same time, Lo►d CLAnEx DoN
feels " no hesitation " in assuring the terrorists
of Finsbury that " a peaceful solution of this
question has been Ow object of her MAJEsTY's
iovernment ;" if the g►eat organ of the Cabinet
is still commissioned to write up peace at all
hazards, and almost at any price, then peace
is, by suchagencies, indefinitely prorogued, and
we have certainly in the interval unmitigated

war.
As we await the next despatches from the 1,
Danube, or the report of hostilities from that
more distant frontier where war is not inter-
cepted by an aeeident of nature, we have the
satisfaction of knowing that Lord ABEUDEEN,
hi his cabinet, is striving to prejudge the con-
sequences of an engagement. Under these
auspices he is again occupied in attempting to
procure the SUMO result which he could not
accomplish by the Vienna note, after the ex-
planations of the contending parties with re-
spect to that note have shown their views to
be substantially irreuoneilatble. In any event,
he can only attain his end by compelling
Russia to recede from the pretensions it
has explicitly put forth, or by depriving the
Porte of some material guarantee against them.
Of these two avenues which alone are open to
hun—the sacrifice of Turkey, or the humilia-
tion of the Czar—we can be certain which his

predilections would prefer. but doul►tful to
which his despair may impel him; or, even if
we possess a Chit' 10 his choice, we may
question whether either will conduct hint to
his end.
Gr►►nting that at some indefinite ►lute, by
shifts and quibbles, by meek flatteries, by
much labour, and some shame, he tan persuade
Russia for a season to relax her grasp upon the
prey to which she was elsborately invited—
supposing " the Eastern question." with its
paramount and enduring importaee, solved
in a superficial sense—besides the permanent
inducements which au obsequious timidity
has offered the Czar to reopen this question
at the first opportunity, Lord AnBaDERN
Will
yet be acconutnl►lc to his eountry for the in-
terval which has elapsed, and which must
yet elapse. between the first errors which pro
yoked a war and the final saerifiees which may
procure a reset.. In other words. should he
attain his object, he is accoui►tal•b' for inter
mediate perils, losses, and anxieties which, if
he foil, are as ,atbordinnto item in the calami-
tous crash which he has been preparing for
Europe.
While the wheel of Fortune i►t thus upon
the turn we may hazard coujeetures
as
to the disposal of her favours which are
altogether beslde the, merits of the expect-
ants. The Ministerial "organ. with a naive
affectation of surprise, taunts us with ac-.
counting fin• the present complication
of
affairs on the ground that " Lord ABERDEEN
and his colleagues have come into power."
We retort upon its implied doubt with a pre-
cise allegation to this unwelcome effect :—That
concrete anomaly, " Lord ABERDEEN and his
colleagues," hats not only, as we have re•
peatedly shown, been the provocative as well
as the catspstw of Russian aggrandisement,
but Russian pretences would have had no play
with the Government which Lord ABERDEEN,
by his intrigues, supplanted. As a foundation
for this presumption we may meal a fact..
During the administrat; of Lord I►E:nuv, a
power 104 ambitious as Russia developed cer-
tain designs upon our American fisheries.
The Nesselrode of the United States used me-
nacing language, which was seconded by the
organs of "Lord ABERDEEN and Isis colleagues,"
depreciating with lively sareasuss the subject
of eontention, and imputing forwardness and
rashness to Lord M Eslit sir. The Enyliah
M i itter (for we may thus distinguish
him) persevered. Our ships received a
prompt and intelligible cominissitm, and
" the difficulty " vanished. Since then the
fisheries in question Lore yielded flan-fish!
to British subjects, and the Western► is iso
longer like the Eastern question,—a criterion
for the pusillanimity of " Lord ABERDEEN and
his colleagues." The two ambitious which
hereafter may convulse the world have been,
stud are, susceptible of two modes of treat-
ment, and the usensures of two antagonist
Cabinets thus afford Englishmen an opportu-
nity of selection.

EDUCATIONAL FRANCHISE.
A unix tract which was put forth with the
above title, some three months ago, attracted
a good deal of notice at the time of its coming
out, and the sugget4ti 111 l s which it embodied
have been approved, in part at least, by the
ex-organ of Whiggery, the Edinburgh Rerietr.
Hence, though it is quite on the cards that the

Refinin Bill of I srit may never see the light,
we think it desirable to inquire a little into dm
remarkable and novel proposition whieh has
been no largely entertained.
That proposition is, in few words, to nuke
education, knowledge, professional skill, in
itself a qualification for the suffrage, indepen-
dent of, and apart. from, pecuniary manta or
soeial station—to confer on retired naval and
military otlieers, on clergy of all denomina-
tions, medical men, barristers, and graduates
of the universities, the right of voting as
such, and to form them into distinct COO-
tittletielet4. Hot less than seventy in number,
each cimstituency extending over a certain
t Met of country, Me t ltu ing persons,
so qualified, who may chaneeall
to reside
within it.
That this prglect sl ttttt bl eommand Mien-
t• aunt engage sympathy, ;s not strange.
We have, as a nation, long been accused, and
not. untruly, of neglecting the claims of itind
lest to respect, when unaccompanied with
more adventitionli distinctions. That Nome
reaction sl ttttt ltl take place against thin prejw
(WO seollls not only natural but just. Again,
the very fact of an educated gentleman being
excluded front that franeltise whieh is enjoyed
by multitudes of the ignorant and unin-
structed is an indisputable anomaly in theory,
and practically il tint' Sttbieet of regret. But
neither the existence of this feeling, nor its
apparent reasonableneas, go far to help us in
solving the problem. " How is knowledge to be
represented in Parliament ? "
Our first objection to the 4,lim in question is
its absolute novelty and dissimilarity, not in
detail, but in principle, to anything actually tit
thin 1110Ukellt existing in out political system.
The i.xanipie of the universities is constantly
cited and rested upon ; but cited. OH it seems
to Os, 1110 St, . pliroprildel.what grounds
do Oxford and Cambridgey return members?
As seats of learning? No; but as distinct and
independent. corporations, whose officers have
for limb privileges of their own, and which
1 writ to this day possess n shadow of their
former separate jurisdiction. They are repre-
sented ill virtue, not of the intellectual qualifi-
cations of their component inliit blinds, but of
the importance, the wealth, the power, unit the
former numerical preponderance of the villa-
notilities themselves. When, thcrefiire, it is
proposed i whieli is nut. Vere) to gist' to literary
or seientifie bodies it participation in the frau-
chisse, the I►r6ectors are merely misled by IL
tilitte Ittilliogy. They are intnaltwing into the
constit tit' an element wholly new and
foreign, not enlarging one which already
exists. We do not wish to lay exaggerated
stress on this objection ; tart an objection, pro
Nolo. it is. No task more hopeless than that
of arranging the representation of a country
without any basis of prescript' to start

from. i
Secondly, we would ask, what elass or
interest is supposed to be represented by a
Meter( geneotts electoral body eoroporo.tl ft( the
members of all learned professions? Where,
to begin with, is even the educational test ?
Ministers of all religious denominations are
admitted. 6,,,1 ; but what constitutes a
minister 1 There is nothing in our law,
nothing in our social system, to prevent the
most untaught loon, whose brain has been
turned by &nativism and vanity, from drawing
together thangon of men even more
ignorant himself, if Ito can find such.

We have only to read the history of Mormonism
in England to know what kind of persons may
claim and till the office of spiritual instrue
tore. is every idle and illiterate artisan who
may chance to find preaching more profitable
than working a " minister of religion "? If
not, where are you to draw the line? Are
cone but the clergy of the Establiehment and
the Roman Catholic priesthood admissible?
This cannot be. Neither, on the other band,
eau it be tolerated that admission to a pro
feseedly intellectual constituency should be
conferred _on every bell-taught and self=

- -
appointed lecturer.
That the educational test, to a certain ex-
tent, exists in the othe of lawyers and medical
men we freely allow. Retired naval and mili-
tary officers. again, though not usually deeply
eonveraant with boks, nor habituated to the
study of civil affairs, have lived a life of action
and reepunsibility—have obeyed and com-
manded—know, or ought to know, something
of the way in which men are managed, and
pusses* at least that degree of practical edu-
cation and experience which a varied and
eventful life affords. With their admission,
therefore, we do not quarrel ; although it
must be observed, first, that their profession.
Su long as they continue actively engaged in
it, excludes them from polities ; and next, that
there is a wide difference between saying that
they shall be admitted to a share in the frau
shise, and admitting them to form part of a
special constituency limited in number, there-
fore individually powerful, and professing to
rest on the claims of intellect alone.
But it is to the last, and possibly most nu-
merous, -class that the objection we have
raised applies in the greatest degree—" Who
are the graduates of universities ? " Or ra-
ther, who has ever failed to graduate at a
university, save one in a hundred, from want
of sufficient knowledge? The ordinary degree
even of Oxford or Cambridge is barely an evi-
dence of anything beyond the most ordinary in-
telleetual proficiency. The same may be said,
iu an even greater degree, of literary, acientifin,
nud artistic societies—on which it is also pro-
jected to confer the franchise, Few of these
institutions require from their members any
certificate of proficiency : admission to them is
sometimes a pecuniary purchase, sometimes
au unmeaning honorary distinction
We deny, then. that the suggested educational
suffrage is really such in any true and high
sense of the word. More—we doubt whether
such a franchise be capable of being created.
No privilege could be more invidious—none,
probably, more unjust in regard of those whom
it included and those whom it shut out. Nor
is this theory one easily reconcilable with the
idea of a representative system. The House
of Commons is not composed upon the prin-
ciple of bringing together men of talent as
such. Were this the theory of its composition
the object might be attained by other and
simpler means. But the public requires from
its legislators neither subservient delegates
uu the one hand, nor self-representing teachers
on the other. Those who take their seats in
its popular assembly must do so in virtue of
representing, at least, some section of the
people What is meant by a representative of
education'.' We know what is meant by the
representatives of town and country, of agri-
culture and commerce, of recognised classes
and material interests. But to say that law-
yers and clergy, officers, doctors. and univer-
sity graduates. are to be separated as such from
the mass of the community, represented apart.
and entitled to send to the Commons' House
nearly a ninth part of its members, is to confer
on them n distinction which they probably do
not desire, to which they cnn assert no claim.
and which, like all exaggerated pretensions.
could only end in injury to those who put them
forth.