The Press.
London, England, 1855-01-13 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

" party " of a high constitutional school is
preserved. Nor does Mr. Homersham Cox
seem to be aware that the time of the Legisla-
ture is actually economised by party arrange-
ments. Abolish its institution, and instead
of great parliamentary battles fought under
chosen leaders identified with definite views,
you will have a teazing, vexatious system of
guerilla politics, under which disconnected
skirmishers will harass the public attention
until it becomes indifferent to great aims.
Those accustomed to political transactions will
apprehend the force of these considerations,
which have more or less influenced the reasons
why all our English statesmen, from Walpole
and Bolingbroke to Lord John Russell and
Mr. Disraeli, have strongly supported the
institution of government by party.

In Lord Nugent's " Memorials of Hampden"
the origin of our system of political party is
referred to the reign of James 1., when some
leading members of Parliament occupied
themselves with exposing the delinquencies
of high officers of State. The passage is worth
quoting, in opposition to Mr. Cox's extremely
narrow and partial views :
It is to this period, and to these men, that we trace
the formation of the system of parliamentary party,
and the first workings of that spirit of political union
on which it depends—a spirit plainly, and in the
highest degree important to liberty, and which it has
therefore been ever since the great business of arbi-
trary politicians to discredit in the estimation of the
country. A system of association, founded not upon the
surrender of principles, but upon the compromise of ex-
treme opinions, and which, while it affords to the people
the only effectual defence against the corrupt influences of
a Government, raises up for the sovereign the only lasting
security against those violent enterprises which, where
Parliamentary party is unknown, are the ordinary and
only effectual checks upon regal power.—p. 21.
The ballot is a subject of which people are
weary, and philosophical arguments in favour
of secret suffrage are read with impatience on
a question utterly exhausted, and involving
no appeal to national associations of a gene-
rous kind. The author does not perceive that
the " Know-Nothing Society " in America,
with its powerful influence, proves clearly
that ballot is a complete failure. According
to English modes of thinking, a secret society,
however worthy may be its objects, is decidedly
unconstitutional as to its means, and it would
not be difficult to show that the adoption of
the ballot would give a quasi legitimacy to the
organisation of secret political societies.
Neither does Mr. Cox perceive that the power
of " fashion " could virtually repeal a statute
in favour of secret voting. When gentlemen
of spirit would wear their colours in their
hats, we may be certain that other classes
in the community would soon follow their
example.
On the nice questions involved in " delega-
tion " and " representation " the essayist
writes with ability, but he is evidently not
familiar with parliamentary life, of which he
has only a casual spectator's knowledge. He
does not seem to be aware that if constituen-
cies often press on their members too impera•
tively, on the other hand their representatives
have considerable reciprocal influences to
bring to bear. After five years an intelligent
member of Parliament ought to know the
county and city for which he sits better than
any other individual in it. On particular
questions gentlemen are often sent into Par-
liament in a style partaking of delegation, but
on imperial subjects they are practically free.
It is manifest, however, that the danger of
mere delegation is to be apprehended from
self-constituted democratic societies, such as
we have seen more than once in the last sixty
years.

Many parts of this essay are written with
fluency of rhetoric, and as a specimen of his
more popular manner we shall select Mr.
Homersham Cox's tribute to an English news-
paper :

An English newspaper is certainly a marvellous produc-
tion. The immense amount of intelligence which issues
every morning from the press has, for the most part, been
collected from innumerable sources in all parts of the king-
dom but a few hours before. From the senate, the forum,
and the mart, from the highways of commerce by sea and
land, from the thronged streets and crowded ports, from
every great haunt of men, every seat of political events
throughout the globe, and by the most refined mechanical
means, the information of the daily sheet has to be col-
lected. How many agencies, political, material and intel-
lectual) are at work to produce it 1 and every one of them

SATURDAY,

I

is a condition essential to its production. An English
newspaper is an example of the combined effect of free in.
stitutions ; for were nut the national institutions free, free
criticism, the very life of the press, would be impracticable .
—of immense energy ; for the powers mental and me•
chanical, which are at work the livelong night to produce
the morning newspaper, are taxed to their utmost ;—of
division of labour; for unless the labours of reporting,
editing, and printing, were divided according to a system,
carried, apparently, to the pitch of perfection, the most
vigorous mew, and the most robustpowers of endurance,
would be inadequate to the accomplishment of the re.
quired task ;—of the resources of vast capital ; for of every
part of the civilised world the news is collected, digested,
and recorded ;—of extensive learning; for nearly every
branch of history, law, political economy, literature,
esthetics, ethnology, statistical lore, and constitutional and
moral philosophy, is laid under contribution ;—of me-
chanical genius ; for the most subtle contrivances are tie.
cessary in order to effect the printing with sufficient
rapidity ; and, lastly, an insatiable public appetite for
political knowledge ; for it is this universal demand which
alone sustains the exertion of those energies by which a
newspaper is produced.
If the author had practical knowledge of
journalism he would have dwelt on the exces-
sive rapidity with which at the latest hour
important matter must be treated. Little do
readers of newspapers know the pressure upon
the mental powers demanded in producing the
English journal. We recollect how Lord
Lyndhurst once paid a public tribute of his
admiration to the versatile and ready talent
which the Loudon journalists display.
We had marked some other passages for
extract, but want of space compels us to
pause. Mr. Homersham Cox will probably
not rest content with his present performance.
We think that he is better suited for scientific
than popular subjects; his habits of thought
have apparently been acquired in the closet,
and we doubt whether politics are most appro-
priate to his powers. Much of Blackstone's
work is now obsolete, and Stephen's commen-
taries are, by their expensive price, removed
from popular circulation. " Blackstone on the
British Constitution," including the whole of
the first and the conclusion of the fourth
volume, would be a useful popular work, if
edited with competent literary illustration,
partaking of a legal character. Mr. Cox's
reading has lain amongst our political text-
writers, and he would be equal to editing
such a volume. But in that, or any similar
production, he should be more sparing of
quotations from Lord John Russell, whom he
has cited almost as deferentially as the noble
member for London would upon quoting from
" my Lud Somers, sir."

A Month in the Camp before Sebastopol. By:a.

Non-Combatant. London : Longmans.
Ix a hundred and twenty-five some what
widely• printed pages our Non• Combatant gives
a simple, unpretending, honest sketch of his
experience of camp life for a month before
Sebastopol, and in turning over its pages we
find neither pretence nor speculation, but
cheerful common sense, good English, and
no small amount of sagacity in the remarks.
Our Non-Combatant, who is a Templar (but
not Mr. Kinglake), left England in September
for the vacation, and bent his way (not with-
out forethought for kit and contrivances) to-
wards the seat of war, which he reached on
the 3rd of October. The first introduction to
the " enemy's country " and Balaklava harbour
he tells us will be forgotten by no c e who
had a sense for the noisome ; dead horses,
bloated bodies, and fragments of animals in
every stage of decomposition were floating
about the harbour, sticking starkly up and
smelling accordingly. " Tis a pity,' remarks
Non-Combatant, because here are main-
" tained two hospitals fur poor fellows from
" the camp ! " Balaklava is a straggling,
filthy town, and not above the level of general
wretchedness is Lord Raglan's house ; and
here he sees the first campaigner, in the shape
of the sentry at the door:—
Before the door paced to and fro a sentry, whose get•up
was not at all out of keeping with his situation. He had a
soiled red coat ; its ragged worsted tags were the reverse
of ornamental, and its open collar showed neither stock nor
shirt. His rusty black trousers gaped vainly here and
there for buttons, and were tucked up unceremoniously at
the heels to keep dry. His boots were the colour of the
dust they trod on ; so were his Saxon locks, and sunburnt
face. Nevertheless, there was that about his quiet, honest
bearing, which would, 1 think, have proclaimed him, even
without the distinctive red, a British soldier.

Being a lucky man, with many friends, he
gets up to camp the same day, and meets with

T

!

JANUARY 13, 1855.

such hospitality that he exclaims loudly in
favour of "John Bull under canvas," and
certainly not without cause. His dinner with
General Sir is very well told ; everybody
was, of course, in working dress, with caps on,
and muddy boots:—

A single wax-candle, placed on the ground, lit the interior.
Canvas forage-bags, cloaks, and waterproofs spread around,
hid the bare earth ; and on them reclined, more antique,
the general and his staff. I alone enjoyed the dignity of a
seat, viz., on a portmanteau. No such thing as table,
chair, bed, bedding, or couch was visible
Fortunately, however, for my un-Spartan appetite on the oc-
casion in question, it does happen that the general, having
to feed three lusty aides, keeps a French chef; and this in-
comparable artist, though he cooks al fresco, is said to be
capable of doing anything short of transmuting ration-pork
and biscuits into soles au gratin. A very good dinner was
followed by coffee, and by tobacco for the juniors.

Meanwhile his traps and tent arrive, arrange-
ments are made for the night, and he turns in,
tired and weary, for a good sleep, but about
half-past three he is disturbed by distant
musketry. In another minute he hears his
friend the aide galloping off to ascertain the
cause :

Away went his horse's hoofs in the direction of the firing,
whence, after a few minutes, they as quickly clattered back
to the general. " Fall in !"—" Get under arms I" now buzzed
along the lines, followed by a heavy trampling of feet, as
the men ran from their tents to their firelocks. I had been
forewarned that these " alarms " were constant, and had
nothing necessarily alarming about them ; but, being
dressed and booted, I could not resist going out to see
what was doing. There, in their grey great-coats, and
already formed in line, stood the soldiers of the divi-
sion. Three minutes before they were in dreamland.
The musketry had ceased, but no more sleep was in store
for them that morning. The " alarm" had, in fact, occa-
sioned a turn-out half an hoar before the period (four a.m.
till sunrise) considered to be the most likely for attempts
at surprises ; and which is, therefore, in obedience to a
standing order, always passed under arms. It was now
bright moonlight and bitterly cold. So, shivering both for
myself and them, I ran back under cover, and dived under
the pile of lining—feeling, T confess, a good deal like a
Sybarite, who has no business to be so comfortable.
" It certainly has a strange effect," he says,
"to wake from some dream of England at
" midnight in the camp, and suddenly become
" conscious that you are upon the Czar's land
"without leave."
We have been accustomed to hear so much
about the martinetism of Sir George Brown,
that his name and stiff stocks are synonymous,
but after this sketch of the formalities of
parade report no one will ever accuse the
gallant general of formal particularity :
Both stood outside Sir George's tent, and I was one of a
fumigating group not far off. The colonel's black trousers
hung in folds over his spurs, for lack of braces. His red
coatee was fastened with three buttons, and showed to ad-
vantage a chocolate-coloured flannel shirt. The long ends
of a silk neckcloth, tied in a sailor's knot, dangled over the
coatee ; and over all was a dilapidated great-coat, which had
certainly not been brushed for the occasion. One hand he
kept in his fob ; the other held a well-browned meerschaum ;
and with many vigorous pulls thereat, he told his story I
As regards the medical department of the
army, although our Non-Combatant considers
that medical men were wanting, yet he
believes that hospital assistants were wanting
much more. Many an officer had his life
saved by the rubbing or mustard-plaister
efforts of a friend ; " but who," asks Non-
Combatant, " could do this for the soldier ? "
In curious illustration of this he tells us a
painful but characteristic story. After the
repulse of a sortie a poor soldier lay in the
trenches apparently in the last stage of
cholera :
A couple of men passed by with a stretcher, exclaiming
that there was clearly no use in picking him up. " Don't
you be in a 'uny," gasped the poor soul, " I'm not dead
yet daresay I should do well enough, if I could only
get something 'ot" So strenuous an appeal was irresistible,
and they carried him off. But I hope his recovery did not
depend on the speedy administration of the treatment he
himself indicated ; for, pending the demand at that
snoment for the scalpel and the saw, something 'ot" was
.he last thing he was likely to get.
The whole of our author's suggestions are
founded upon good practical sense. It is quite
true, as he says, that soldiers while describing
their wants and sufferings are restrained by
professional stoicism from telling one half of
them, while habit dulls their consciousness of
the other half ; but the whole system of do-
mestic economy in the army wants more or
less reform, from that wooden canteen with
which every man is afflicted as a water-flask,
and which dates from the days of Marlborough,
down to the green coffee and mouldy biscuit
which is:daily served out.

THE PRESS.

The opening of the bombardment of course
took place during our Non-Combatant's stay,
and he saw also the battle of Balaklava. His
account of a battle is that it is little else to the
eye than a review :
How anyone, who has not somebody in the secrets of the
generals by his side to explain the movements, can wider-
stand an affair of the kind, is to me a mystery. Haman is
in the melee, he only sees that. If, on the other hand, he
is at a sufficient distance to take in the whole field,he sees
an array of dark sparkling masses—now moving, now sta-
tionary—covered with smoke, or emerging from it. Finally
he sees certain portion of the whole marching away,
perhaps in very good order. We will suppose at such a
Juncture that, by goood luck, he really does know that the
fight is decided, and which party it is that is retreating
and that he rejoices, or laments, appropriately. Neverthe-
less, as regards all the sudden emergencies, the daring
movements, and sagacious plans—all, in fact, that give the
battle its historical interest—our spectator comprehends
no more of them, believe me, than you comprehend of the
manceuvres of a review.
But he admits that he was on the wrong side
of the ridge for seeing the most interesting
feature of the engagement. Although just on
the point of leaving for home, having. in fact,
sold his traps and gone on board a ship in the
harbour, he yet witnessed the terrible battle
of Inkermann. The day was thick and foggy,
and it was a seven-mile uphill trudge, but he
started off, cut across country, and was not
long in meeting signs of fight :
The fog prevented one's seeing far ahead, but the sharp
reports of musketry and the roar of artillery were quite
enough to mark the direction, even without the stream of
French and English soldiers bearing on their backs and on
stretchers the wounded to the rear. I did not stop to
question these men, but tried to read in their faces the
fortune of the day. They all looked grave, and behaved
with a silent manly propriety, in good keeping with their
sad office ; but quite at variance with the stories one reads
of the conduct of soldiers when relieved, as they were here,
from surveillance.
On reaching Sir George Brown's quarters he
found the gallant old man stretched out faint
and bleeding; but to show how completely
our epigastrium overcomes our finer feelings,
he tells us how the seven-mile walk had
so famished him that, in spite of all the horrors
which surrounded him, he longed for a piece
of ration biscuit :

I felt the incongruity of asking for food at such a moment.
I would have given anything to have been able to weather
the day without. But I had taken a long walk, and (if not
knocked on the head between whiles, which I did not anti-
cipate) should have to take another. So, being famished,
I asked and was satisfied. I record the fact, because it
illustrates the humbling truth, that hunger is as callous as
Launce's cur.
The battle by this time was nearly over,
but he had a narrow escape from a shell, which
burst close to him. However, he smoked his
cigar and watched those impenetrable Rus-
sians marching past, with arms shouldered
and in good order, although they were being
pounded into by two long eighteens and a Lan-
caster gun, which cut lanes through them at
every shot. He visited the field of battle, of
course, and remarks, in singular corrobora-
tion of the reports from the field of Alma,
that the attitudes of the dead were most
startling. " Arms stretched upward bo-
" dies half raised—the head bent forward—
" the nether-lip bent in—the eyes open—but
"for the glassy stare andmarble feet you might
" have thought them springing at your throat."
As he returned from the field, he passed a few
hundred prisoners being taken in to Balaklava,
and upon whom our men were venting the
most bitter maledictions and abuse for their
cruelties on the field. Our Non Combatant
paid a final visit to the camp, stopped a few
days at Balaklava, and then started on his
journey home. We cannot conclude, however,
without giving one anecdote of Sir George
Brown, which we cordially recommend to all
croakers. After his wound at Inkermann, Sir
George remained on board the Agamemnon,
and:—
The first day that he was well enough to come to table,
somebody (I forget who) happened to be talking very lugu-
briously about various things and the campaign in
particular, and at length exclaimed, " kh, war is a terrible
thing !" " That's what in) wife says," cheerily pat in the
general,and settled the croaker!
There is in these ten letters so much honest
truth, fresh from the Crimean hills, without
any pretence to fine writing or to technical
description, and such perfect pictures of camp
life (in fine weather), that we are sure the
reading public will agree that the Non-Com-
batant's time was not wasted in the Month
before Sebastopol.

43

The Table-Talk of John Selden. With Notes
by David Irving, LL.D. Edinburgh : Con-
stable and Co.
THE breaking up of the ice in which the long
domination of the Church of Rome had bound
the mind of Europe was signalised, like all
sudden accessions of intellectual liberty, by a
considerable amount of reckless speculation.
The opposite of the old order of thought—if
thought it could be called—was frequently
assumed to be truth for no better reason than
that it was such opposite ; and the proverbial
theological hostility was for once driven be-
yond all previous bounds by finding a swelling
popular sympathy attending it. From theo-
logy this tendency of the public mind had not
far to change to politics, and thus the thinkers
of the age talked, like Selden, oftenest of
" matters of weight and high consequence,
" relating especially to religion and State."
And religion and State were the two ques-
tions which, while affording the greatest field
for speculation. were the least safe and the
least settled of the time. The Tudors, while
repudiating the popedom, had no inten-
tions of consulting the popular will in the
religion that was to follow; but the cha-
racter of the first Stuart, added to the
nature of his education, encouraged an
amount of rambling inquiry as to faith and
government that, in the midst of a multitude
of shallow flatterers and pretenders, produced
some sound theorists and commenced that
public opinion which has since grown with
accelerating rapidity.
Selden was in theory a bold speculator
—a fact the more remarkable that he was
by profession and by reading a man of
precedents and authorities. But his use
of precedents was peculiar. It was by a
plan something similar to that which a certain
class of churchmen have during the last
twenty years adopted the expedient of
quoting antiquity to support innovation. In
the Church in the time of Selden the great
question was episcopacy and presbytery. On
one side and the other divine right was freely
claimed and an importance accorded to a
point not strictly doctrinal which more vital
subjects could not command. Naturally, the
fragments of Selden's conversation preserved
by Milward, and called his " table-talk," are
taken up in a great degree by the question of
Church government, but discussed iu a spirit
showing plainly that the great lawyer was
rather the opponent of the assumption of the
clerical order in general than the partisan of
any particular Church. Throughout Selden's
conversation, indeed, there is a prevailing
want of reverence where matters ecclesiastical
are brought in question, and an equally prevail-
ing want of that curious learning with which his
books and, by Clarendon's testimony, his con-
versation were so diversified. With the excep-
tion of an assertion—which, notwithstanding
Selden's great authority, is not entirely true—
viz., that the bishops do not sit in Parliament
in right of their temporal baronies, we find
only the following piece of antiquarian know-
ledge collected on the subject of clerical legis-
lation in the " Table-Talk " :
Whether had the inferior clergy ever anything to do in
the Parliament ? Ans. No ; no otherwise than thus :
there were certain of the clergy that used to assemble near
the Parliament, with whom the bishops, upon occasion,
might consult; but there were none of the Convocation, as
'twas afterwards settled, viz., the dean, the archdeacon, one
for the chapter, and two for the diocese, but it happened
by continuance of time, to save charges and trouble : their
voices, and the consent of the whole clergy, were involved
in the bishops ; and at this day the bishops' writs run, to
bring all these to the Parliament; but the bishops them-
selves stand for all.
The style of the period of Bacon had not
much altered in Selden's time, and we find in
the latter as in the former the same indefinite
mode of laying down authoritative statements.
Thus at what time the few clergy assembled
near the Parliament to advise the bishops
became the regular Convocation is here not
mentioned. There is no doubt that in the
earliest assemblies to which we can give the
name of Parliament churchmen took a large,
if not the most active, part in the proceedings,
and that these were by no means confined to
the episcopal order only. It is therefore
likely that the clerical assembly was formed
into order much as the lay Parliaments, by the
necessity that arose with the progress of time,

and that the Convocation was not the creature
of accidents any more than the remainder of
the Legislature.
Another form of discussing Church matters
in which Seidea indulged was that of tracing
similarities to heathen rites—a dangerous and,
as the French school of sceptics proved it, a
mischievous exercise. Thus he says of Christ-
-1112.8

Christmas succeeds the Saturnalia, the same time, the
same number of holydays; then the master waited upon
the servant like the lord of misrule.
Our meats and our sports, much of them, have relation
to ehurch works. The coffin of our Christmas pies, in
shape long, is in imitation of the cratch ; our choosing
kings and queens on twelfth•night hath reference to the
three kings. So likewise our eating of fritters, whipping
of tops, roasting of herrings, Jack of Lents, &c., they were
all in imitation of church works, emblems of martyrdom.
Our tansies at Easter have reference to the bitter herbs ;
though, at the same time, 'twits always the fashion for a
man to have a gammon of bacon, to show himself to bo
no Jew.

In the same way he finds a fanciful compa-
rison between the Christian doctrines of the
future state and that of the Turks' :
The Turks tell their people of a heaven where there is
sensible pleasure, but of a hell where they shall suffer
they don't know what. The Christians quite invert this
order; they tell us of a hell where we shall feel sensible
pain, but of a heaven where we shall enjoy we can't tell
what.
Here, however, the supposed transposition
fails, for the teaching of the Turks as to Hades
is much similar to the Christian doctrine of
outer darkness and despair ; nor was Seldcn
justified in describing the Christian doctrine
of Heaven as at all indefinite or " we can't tell
what." That it is not set forth by the sole
authorities of Christianity—the sacred writ-
ings—as material, or fitted for existences who
place their chief enjoyment in sensuality, is
perhaps the great distinction between all
pagan notions of future bliss and the Chris-
tian's " sure and certain hope of a blessed

" immortality."
No art seems to have been so long in im-
proving as that of recording the sayings of
learned and able men. The early specimens
of such reports, of which Milward's collection
of &Aden s opinions is one, are so bald and
meagre that it is hard to believe in their cor-
rectness. They still retain enough, however,
to show how valuable had been a. more
ample report of what they profess to
give. The chief omission is in instances and
examples. In the following dissertation on
Parliaments, for instance, no doubt the events
of the passing time were distinctly pointed

at:—
All are involved in a Parliament. There was a time
when all men had their voice in choosing knights. About
Henry the Sixth's time they found the inconvenience ; so
one Parliament made a law, that only he that had forty
shillings per annum should give his voice, they under
should be excluded. They made the law who had the voice
of all, as well under forty shillings as above ; and thus it
continues at this day. All consent civilly in a Parliament;
women are involved in the men, children in those of per-
fect age ; those that are under forty shillings a year, in
those that have forty shillings a year, those of forty
shillings in the knights.
• • • • •
The Parliament men are as great princes as any in the
world, when whatsoever they please is privilege of Parlia-
ment; no man must know the number of their privileges,
and whatsoever they dislike is breach of privilege. The
Duke of Venice is no more than Speaker of the House of
Commons; but the Senate at Venice are not so much as
our Parliament men, nor have they that power over the
people, who yet exercise the greatest tyranny that is any.
where. In plain truth, breach of privilege is only the actual
taking away of a member of the house, the rest are offences
against the house: fur example, to take out process against
a Parliament man, or the like.
The Parliament party, it' the law be for them, they call
for the law ; if it be against them, they will go to a parlia-
mentary way ; if no law be for them, then for law again :
like him that first called for sack to heat him, then small
drink to cool his sack, then sack again to heat his small
drink, &o.
With but little alteration these remarks
might still be made as to the " Venetian Con-
stitution " of our Government, as Mr. Howard,
the attorney, and the Sheriffs of London could
have testified in the affair of privilege.
The theory that every class is represented in
the other is excellent abstractedly, but. since
the attempt to pass the feudal power to mere
money, has ceased to apply to our representa-
tive system. It is always grateful, however, to
the legal mind to find a fitness upon paper,
however practice and facts may ignore it, in
the same way as the judge of the Prerogative
in the time of Lord North asserted in the
House of Commons, that " he, for one, con-