The Express.
London, England, 1852-07-02 00:00:00

FRIDAY EVENING, JULY 2, 1852.

and to aigo-,ettd attest 'ft* smiler% the presence M the
said Mots the eleetees, and nth= such cortifleste into
our High Court of Chancery of Great Britain. And we do,
by this our royal proclamation, strictly Command and re-
quire the Provat of Edinburgh, and ell other the magis-
trates of the said city, to take especial care to preserve the
peace thereof, during the time of the said election, and to
prevent all manner of riots, tumults, disorders, and via.
knee whatsoever. And we strictly charge and command
that this our royal proclamation be duly published at the
Market Cross at Edinburgh, and in all the county towns
of Scotland, ten days, at least, before the time hereby ap-
pointed for the meeting of the said peers to proceed to such
election.

Witness ourselves at Westminster, this Ist slay of July,
1852, and in the 16th of our reign.

God save the Queen.

glie erairego.

were taken to put an end to it. It was not till slate
hour on Twa&y evening that the magistrat. s ap-
pear to hare interfered at all, though the fighting
continued to be resumed at intervals, and even then
they had to be sent for.
Of the character and composition of the Stockport
magistracy we knew nothing, and we speak of them,
therefore, without party bias. But this we do
know, that in every borough that has come under
our observation, all parties are systematically actu-
ated in their choice of magistrates, less (if at all) by
the consideration of their efficiency for the discharge
of the duties of local government, than by a desire
to strengthen the local parliamentary parties by
investing their leading. and influential members
with the dignity of magisterial office. This is a sad
and mischievous mistake. As liberals wo are not
insensible ta tho desirableness of having in the
magistracy men of liberal sentiments and enlight-
ened views ; but the duties of local administration
are important in themselves, and appointments to the
inagi,traey. ought not to be made subservient to mere
electioneering tactics. Men of energetic, active cha-
racters and great command of temper—men who
appreciate the importance of a well-administered
police, protective and searching—men prepared to
devote themselves to the duties they take upon them
—these arc the materials to make magistrates of. It
is not directly but indirectly that the exercise
of the elective principle in local administration
is to be made subservient to the keeping alive
in the community the spirit of liberty and love
of rational progress. Au improved organisa-
tion both of urban and rural districts with a
view

to the maintenance of an efficient police ;—a
_ just appreciation of the nature and importance
of local administration ;—a more just estimate of the
true dignity and responsibility of magisterial office
on the part of those who aspire to it; without these
we must make up our mind to have frequent recur-
rences of such melancholy and disgracetul scenes as
those which have just been witnessed at Stockport.
The burning of the Bull-ring at Birmingham during
the first Chartist movement— the affray at Birken-
head while tho Ecclesiastical Titles Bill was before
parliament—and many other similar deplorable
events, are attributable to our imperfect local police
establishments, and the want of an intelligent esti-
mate of the functions of local administrative insti-
tutions.

Another lesson—of less immediate urgency but
of perhaps even greater permanent importance—is I
afforded by the causes which gave rise to the Stockport '
riots. In their ultimate consequences they bear a
resemblance to the London anti-Catholic riots of
1780, that may well make the men of 1852 blush.
They had their origin in vague sectarian heats, but
they went on from bad to worse, till they ended in law-
less destruction, plunder, and death. When the Protes-
tant portion of the combatants were sufficiently mad-
dened by the fray, lawless plunderers led them on to
aid in actions from which, iu their calmer moods,
they would have shrunk in disgust. Wanton, in-
furiated destructiveness, was doubtless at play in the
wrecking of the Roman Catholic chapels and priests'
dwellings, and the destruction of furniture, but it is
apparent that plunderers were also at work in the
mob. Attempts were made to force open a large
iron safe in one of the chapels, supposed to contain
articles of silver, and fragments of silver articles
were found by the police, strewed on the floor, rem-
nants of what had been carried off as booty.
The Stockport riots of 1852 resemble the London
riots of 1780 in their origin as well as in their conse-
quences. The latter were utterly unprovoked: Sir
GEORGE SAVILLeIi bill could not have promoted the
propagation of Itomish doctrines; was no offensive
aggression on the part of Romanist& The Stock-
port procession of Sunday last was nut one of those
ecclesiastical displays which (whether justly or un-
justly, wisely or foolishly) arc prohibited by law. It
was an annual procession of the pupils of the schools
connected with three Roman Catholic chapels in
Stockport. There seem to have been no sectarian em-
blems carried in the procession—no priests in
robes of office took part in it. It was one
of those displays of the care and attention paid
to the education of the rising generation
by certain associated citizens in which all sects, and
man) useeeiatious cuuuccicd by nu sectarian tic,
habitually indulge. It was an expression of justifi-
able pride (vanity, if any one will so call it) in the
tidy and intelligent appearance of the children at-
tending the schools. It was one of those harmless
effusions of self-laudation which, having a tendency
to stimulate efforts to educate all the young, are in
themselves laudable and useful. It was a display
which, in a free and enlightened state, Romanists,
Protestants, and those who are neither (if such there
be), have an equal right to make. Such displays—
though transcendental philosophers may affect to
despise them—by rousing the emulation of different
classes of citizens, each seeking to produce the best
show of healthy, tidy, intelligent scholars, tend to
promote the diffusion of education, and deserve en-
couragement rather than repression', or outrage and
insult.

The Stockport riots are discreditable in their origin,
dangerous in their consequences. They betray a
lamentable confusion of ideas—perhaps a lack of
ideas—the necessary consequence of the deficient
provisions in this country tor the education of all
classes. It is because our rural and urban mobs
are abandoned to deplorable ignorance and rudeness,
that they cannot distinguish between superstitious
processions, and exhibitions of educational zeal and
activity. It is because they are abandoned to igno-
eases that they fancy they can promote religion by
lawless and brute violence. It is because they are
abandoned to ignorance that they intoxicate them-
selves mentally by their own violence till they
become blind tools to the hands of professional plun-
derers. The Stockport riots are a clamorous appeal
to the public, and to the legislature, to bestow upon
the masses the boon of intellectual culture, in order
that they may be raised above the condition in which
1 they are exposed to be thus misled.
One word as to the alleged cause of these riots—
protestant zeal and Roman Catholic aggression. We
are neither blind to the eager propagandism which has
of late animated the Roman priesthood and the mere
devoted lay membersof their flocks, norw Ming to under-
estimate the consequences. But it is not by awakening
a blind panic for Jesuits, or resuscitating old permed
animosities, that the progress of Romanism is to be
arrestedand driven back. Such appeals only awakes
blind anger and encourage recourse to lawless violence,
as at Stockport, or a relapse into penal legislation. To
prohibit processions likely to provoke quarrels and
violence, is necessary with our rude uneducated
masses; but it would be better to educate, and
thus render them superior to such provocation.
Romanism has flourished, and may continue to flou-
rish, in defiance both of legal and illegal coercion ;
but it cannot keep its ground against sound secular
education. The state has a right to educate the in-
tellects of its citizens, and thus it can arrest the en-
croachments of prieatcra t of every kind. Educate
the people, and you may laugh to scorn the arro-
gance and intrigues of ambitious and unscrupulous
priests. Education is the only efficient and legiti-
mate weapon to use against them : tolerance,
rightly understood, is due—and may safely be ex-
tended—even to the intolerant.