The Press.
London, England, 1858-07-31 00:00:00

THE PRESS, JULY 31, 158.

ported by Scotch Presbyterians, Irish Romaniste,
English Dissenters, and by the Socialists, with
ROBERT °WILE at their head. The Conserva-
tives defeated the Liberals on the question of
the Church, and the victory of 1841 was a
triumph. The aggression of Cardinal Wisrmax
frightened even the Liberals and political free-
thinkers, but since then the rulers of the Romish
Church have entirely changed their tactics.
They have bent all their attention to the grasping
of the education of the Irish people. They have
got Maynooth with 30,0001. a year for their clergy,
and not le2B than 200,0001. per annum is voted
for the " National Education System," which is
virtually in the howls of the Roman Catholic
priests. In nearly every town throughout Lein-
ster, Connaught, and Munster, the tourist is
astonished with the sight of some large eccle-
siastical building, which he is told is " the Con-
vent," and if he visits the adjacent schools, he
will see by a printed notice that the school is
under " The National Board," and when enter-
ing it he will be surprised to find Nuns presiding
over the various classes. And this in a country
where scriptural schools receive no assistance
from the State !
A few years ago there existed several convents
in Ireland, whose inmates ministered to the edu-
cation of the children of the gentry and the
middle classes, but the highest ecclesiastical
influences in the Church of Rome have now
declined to patronize convents " without poor
schools." The consequence is that no convent
now-a-days is without its poor school, in a great
number of instance aided by the funds of the
" National Board," which was founded by Im-
perial money for the extension of " Non-Sec-
tarian " education in Ireland ! The influence
produced by this development of conventual
progress, and its consequent absorption of popular
education, is of prodigious importance.
In short, the plain result of the Whig
and Liberal mode of governing Ireland
since 1829 is to create a vast Roman Catholic
political interest, to intensify its action,
to enlarge its resources, and to fortify its tradi-
tional power over the peasantry. And, by a
strange retribution, the Whigs have lost about
forty seats in Ireland, which have been grasped
by the Roman Catholics; so that in the year
1858 the Whigs have really no staunch Parlia-
mentary balances beyond their immediate friends
returned by their family boroughs and by some
constituencies where Whig estates prevail. The
great mass of the " Independent Liberals " recal-
citrate against the families, and in the long run
the Whigs have found that their active
championship and zealous patronage of the
Roman Catholics has contributed to sink them
in English estimation. It is not wonderful that
under such circumstances the Whigs should
begin to meditate deeply as to whether they
should plunge deeper into "the Serbonian bog,"
where their Irish friends invite them to follow.

But whatever the Whigs may resolve upon the
question, it is plain that the Roman Catholics
have determined to push forward their interest
more vigorously than ever. Mr. JOHN D. FITZ-
GERALD (the ex-Attorney-General for Ireland)
has given notice for bringing in early next
session a " Roman Catholic Relief Bill," and the
same learned gentleman is also to move for " a
uniform Parliamentary oath." an oblique mode
of repealing one of the Protestant securities of
1829. Mr. FITZGERALD is a Roman Catholic bar-
rister, who has filled the offices of Attorney and
Solicitor General in Ireland, and he seems very de-
sirous of effacing from the minds of his co-religion-
ists the memory of the speech made by him in pro-
secution of Father CONWAY, in which he alluded
to " the superstition" of the Mayo peasantry.
Mr. FITZGERALD was one of the leading counsel
also in the prosecution of the Redemptionist
Father, for burning the Bible at Kingstown.
That prosecution also failed, but it will be for
the Protestants of England to take care that Mr.
FITZGERALD does not succeed in removing one of
the Protestant securities from the existing Statute-
book. The " Catholic Oath " is now of nearly
thirty years existence. It has been taken during
that time by the leading notabilities of the
Roman Catholic persuasion, by the " Agitator"
himself, and his sons, by Mr. SHELL, and by
several legal personages, like the late Master of
the Rolls in Ireland (Sir Michael O'LounLAN),
by the late Chief Baron WOOLEN., by the present
Chief Justice MONAHAN, and others, along with

the Roman Catholic Peers of England. It is
very suspicious, after such eminent persons, many
of them with the highest character for privafe
honour, taking that oath again and again, that
an attempt should now be deliberately made by
a candidate for the Judicial Bench to repeal this
security. But the object is transparent. Let
the Catholic Oath " be taken away, and one of
the principal securities against ascendancy will
be removed.
In the last speech made in Parliament by the
celebrated GRATTAN for " Emancipation,' the
orator said—" Our opponents argue that if the
" Relief Bill were passed it would be Protes-
" tant England, Presbyterian Scotland, and
" Roman Catholic Ireland," and what the Roman
Catholics arc now aiming at is to effect that latter
purpose. Hence they urge on their leading
M.P.'s to get the "Catholic Oath" altered;
hence they would have the Dublin police exclu.
sively " Catholic," and hence they rejoice in the
Jesuits undertaking the spiritual direction of the
police (including the detectives); and hence
there are such extraordinary efforts to keep the
education of the peasantry under the special care
of the priesthood. M. GUIZOT, in his " Memoirs
of Sir R. Peel," has given his opinion that the
designs of PITT in carrying the Irish Union,
along with the policy of WELLiso•rox and PEEL
in 1829, have failed ; and Lord MACAULAY, also,
has, in the last volume of his brilliant history,
lamented the failure of " Catholic Emancipation."
But there are still persons who would wish to
make it a success by going further and further
in the same downward direction, and the ques-
tion is now whether the Whigs will continue to
espouse the claims of the Pope, and to abet his
further efforts to extend his dominion. Circum-
stances will compel a plain and emphatic answer
to that question. The Roman Catholics loudly
boast that their losses, incurred ten years since
by famine and emigration, have since been re-
dressed by superior organization, and by closer
connection with the " centre of unity at Rome."
It is at such an interesting period that the ex•
Attorney-General of the Whigs has given no-
tices for further " Relief Bills, and it is at such
a critical time that it is anstainced that "ha
" Eminence Cardinal Wises* will visit &Ansi
" in the autumn" ! woo-v.l4n 1

HAIL ! BRITISH COLUMBIA I
BY a series of circumstances we cannot look oa
as fortuitous, England is called upon to consider
the noble and heroic work of plantation. Until
recently colonies have been regarded as mere im•
posthumes upon the State, the consequence, it
was alleged, of an evil or overfull habit of body.
Mr. COBDEN hnd other reducing operators have,
from time to time, strenuously recommended the
excision of these unprofitable appendages, assur-
ing the friends of the Constitution that an opera-
tion was absolutely necessary----that it might be
rendered painless if not agreeable by a mode of
insensibility peculiar only to themselves,--and,
moreover, that the relief would be like getting
rid of any debt, national or otherwise, but which
at present they did not press, quite surprising.
Somehow or other, in spite of this pleasant
moral doctrine, England did not detach her
colonies. She found them a convenient outlet
for a good many hot and rebellious humours.
Legislation was chiefly interested, and rather
perplexed, about the easiest and best mode of
getting rid of her waste population, and was
grateful, meanwhile, to any portions of that
population who got rid, in any way they thought
most convenient, of her or of themselves.
Annually from our impoverished lands and seeth-
ing towns is discharged across the Altantle a
turbid human current., with as little national care
or foresight as we turn every day into the
Thames some thousands of tons of sewage. The
one may come back to us in the form of cholera,
and the other revisit us in the form of war, but
we did not make ourselves uneasy with any such
contingency ; our anxiety was not for the future,
but for the present.
A large and steady demand for the skins of
beaver and fox and opossum setting in through-
out Europe, it was thought necessary to confer
exclusive power and privileges en a CompaaY,
in order to keep a largo tract of country In a

II

state of thorough idleness, and, through the ne-
cessities of fur and the peculiarities of luxury and
climate, to bar the inroad of civilization. Strange
as the incident may appear, it is no less an his-
torical fact. For two centuries the Hudson's-
bay Company have occupied a vast territory,
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, in extent almost
as large as Europe, and have there done their
best to preserve foxes and beavers. We do not
think that any blame ought to attach to the
Hudson's-bay Company. The fur-bearing ani-
mals were a sort of final cause to it ; in fact, it
was a society of trappers and traders feral defen-
dere nata, since the days of the Merry Monarch.
The Company has done so for 150 years, and
might have done so for 1.50 years longer if it had
not been for the " accident " of gold. That
powerful metal is likely to open the Hudson's-
bay territory, 400,000 square miles of which ap-
pear not to have been meant for fur-bearing
animals and a fur-seeking Company exclusively
as much as for mankind in general. Opposite
political luminaries are in bland conjunction on
this point. Mr. ROEBUCK and Mr. GLADSTONE
are agreed that the old signs of the Hudson's-
hay Company, "No Thoroughfare " and "No
" Admission on any Kind of Business," should
be removed, and an eager and industrial
immigrant world admitted. The debate upon
the Bill for giving a political organization to the
new gold district, and the subsequent discussion
upon Mr. ROEBUCK'S resolutions respecting
the rivileges of the Hudson's-bay Company,
are full of significance. On both occasions the
new Colonial Secretary handled the matter in a
spirit of wise and large statesmanship. Without
committing himself to Mr. ROEBUCK'S resolu-
tions, Sir EDWARD BULWER LyrroN indicated
the policy of the Government with respect to the
present occupiers and the aboriginal possessors of
the soil in words no less significant than they were
eloquent :

"It is my sincere wish and hope that arrange-
ments may be effected in a spirit of reasonable
conciliation to all parties concerned, and that we
may thus lay the foundation of a civilized com-
munity upon the principles of humanity towards
the red men, and of honour and honesty to-
wards the white, which our civilization should
carry with it, wherever it extends, as the
colonizers of old carried along with them a
fragment of their native earth, and a light from
the altar of their council-hall."

Upon these broad and somewhat oldifashioned
principles, a Bill has been introduced, and has
passed a third reading in the House of Lords, for
the organization of a colony upon which her
Majesty has been pleased to confer the title of
British Columbia. The Bill provides for the
infant colony what colonies in a state of infancy,
surrounded by rather wild and boisterous neigh-
bours, have most need of—the tutelage of a
strong executive government. It is, in fact, a
Bill to obviate the necessity of a Vigilance Com-
mittee, or the establishment of a Band of' Regu-
lators, or any other popular mode of provisional
government. The Bill creates a governor for
four years, to be intrusted with full and absolute
powers, dependent, however, upon the will
of the Crown, who may, if it think fit,
at any time establish a freer government
and more liberal institutions. Power is
also conferred upon the Crown at any time,
upon the joint address of the two Houses of
ancouver's Island, to annex that island to the new
colony. Thus the nucleus of a group of colonies
has been formed, in which we may see, as Sir
EDWARD BULWER forcibly expressed it, " a rampart
"against any hostile inroads from the Amencan
"frontier, and an essential arch, as it were, to
"that great viaduct by which we hope one day
`• to connect the harbours of Vancouver with the
"Gulf of St. Lawrence." Part of this unsettled
territory has been offered to Canada, and in the
event of her refusal to avail herself of it, such
Part of the fertile tract which seems to invite the
labours of men and oxen we shall at once take
into our own hands, groove with railroads, and
intersect with canals, leaving only the colder part
of the earth to the allotted work of the Hudson's-
baY Company, and to be a hunting-ground for
red men—" a portion for foxes."
British Columbia at present is as full of motley
contrasts as California was ten years ago. There
is a universal " stanpedo " northward. The
streets of San Francisco " are alive with red, blue,
and grey-shirted men, ranging about in squads