The Press.
London, England, 1858-11-20 00:00:00

THE PRESS, NOVEMBEA 20, 1858.

1126

of our best officers, Admiral Sir Michael Seymour, when
captain of the fleet in the Baltic :—" If there are ships the
commanding officers of which have complained of their
crews on their first landing, a modification of such opinion
has t►ken place; and, though there are some ships better
circumstanced and inure efficient than others, we know of
no ship that would not accomplish good service in operation
against an enemy." Let Lord Hardwick° go to Harry
Keppal, H dl, Paget, Codrington, and fifty other men; they
would tell him the true story. They never sent him a
complaint, but, on the contrary, gave the highest praise to
both officers and men. He could, however, understand a
Cabinet Minister saying these things, because he wished
the country to grant larger supplies for the maintenance of
the navy. He agreed with the noble earl that the navy
must be increased ; lie %vas not satisfied that it wa3 large
enough; but what the) had would defy competition with
any other navy.

LORD BROUGHAM ON THE WRONGS

OF WOMEN.

AT the great meeting at York, on the 12th instant,
Lord Baonotwa made the following remarks on the
Wrongs and Hardships of Women," which were
received by the meeting with deep intaest, and at
their conclusion with loud applause :
Another objectionwas taken to our proceedings at Liver-
pool, and that was by persons of great distinction, in•
eluding some from the Continent of the highest rank of
all—l mean by some upon the throne—and this objection
was, that we did not at that Congress sufficiently attend
to the wrongs and hardships of women. The two branches
to which our attention has been directed by those who
thus chide us for the omission are most important matters
—are which has been somewhat cultivated in this country,
and another which, I grieve to say, has not been attended
to at all. rite one that has been cultivated is this—the
eitsblishment of what the French call Sisters of Charity
—persons who, in that country, being a Catholic country,
are Nuns, and bound by what we in this Protestant
country hold not only cheap, but hold in very great dislike
—namely, vows, and vows to restrain them from leaving
the establishment ; but in other countries, where there
are Protestant establishments, and no vows at all, the
same institution has taken place with the same most happy
—I
will add most blessed results. They are the comfort
of the hospitals; they are the great consolation of the
prison as well as the hospital; they are the persons who
make up, who distribute, who administer all the medicines ;
they are, as I can answer from my own knowledge mai-
catty in the matter, as well acquainted with the chemical
preparations as the professional men themselves, and
neglecting rest, utterly careless of reward—(for reward
they have not and cannot have by the laws of the institu
tion )—all their time, often by night as well as by day, is
thus devoted to the pions performance of these most pious
works. I have said this has not been altogether neglected
in this country, though unhappily our attention at the Con•
greaa at Liverpool was not eutticimtly attracted to it ; but
it has been well discussed in a most able tract by Mr 4.
Jameson, which she has printed and circulated lately ez•
presaly upon that subject. The other branch to which our
attention has, by the remarks which have fallen from high
quarters, been directed, I am sorry to say, has received no
attention whatever in this country. Nothing is so lament-
able as the position of unhappy maidens and gentlewomen,
often of considerable position, who happen, on the death
of a parent, not having been married, or by the death of a
husband, whence they come into widowhood without
ample provision—nothing is more wretched than the lot of
unhappy gentlewomen of this description. Well, then,
they have established chapters abroad—sometimes in
Catholic countries, but just as often in Protestant countries,
into which—sometimes from royal foundations—some-
times by the gift of the charitably-disposed humbler indi-
vidnale—sometimes by subscription judiciously levied—
sometimes by a kind of insurance during the life of a
parent or during the life of a husband—after their decease
presentation is secured, and the entry into these establish•
ments is provided. The happiest results have followed
from these admirable establishments, and we have been
chidden—we of the Association at our Congress have from
these high quarters been chidden—for not having our at-
tention drawn more particularly to this subject. My
answer has been that no sooner has it been suggested than
I deemed it my duty, as the president of the Association, to
bring the matter forward. lam not the president, for my
noble friend, Lord John Russell, has been appointed my
successor; hut the council still persist that t shall be
designated the president of that institution. The commu-
nication of so interesting a nature from abroad, which I
made to my brethren, was very cordially received, and I
hope we shall very soon see something like a plan for
carrying out the object to which I have referred. I know
that great difficulties may arise from various quarters, and
among others a difficulty may ue experienced from the
very natute of our admirable countrywomen—from the
nature of Englishwomen, in some respects higher and
better nurtured than any other women in the world; but
in this respect they are not exactly adapted for
such establishments, as there is a kind of self-will about
them which we all of us sometimes have occasion to know.
There is that amount of self-will about them which would
prevent our experimenting, except on a very small scale,
because I feel the managers would not always find it per-
fectly easy to make them live amicably together. These
difficulties we don't disguise ; but we meet them in front.
We shall endeavour, with the blessing of Heaven upon us,
to overcome them, and I hope we shall be successful in
obtaining this great boon and benefit to our fellow-country-
WORM.

of the great leading organs of opinion in the country_.
although they were
.anxiously seconded, as every Govern.
ment had been, by the public spirit of the House of Com-
mons, yet he maintained with confidence that the feeling
out of doors among the working claws, the middle
classes, and almost all other classes, was rather that they
ought to have gone to war sooner than that they went to
war too soon. But although he was anxious to preserve
peace, he did not admit that all our former wars, anv more
than the Russian war, had been wicked or destructive wars.
He believed that man) of the wars which this country had
waged had been wars as necessary iu their origin as they
were glorions in their result. And he thought that we had
great cause for gratitude and pride as a nation, when vra
looked back at what we had achieved fur our own liberties
and for the liberties of Europe by a generous and manly
use of the sword. It was one of the many evils of violent
language that, acting by irritation upon the minds of some,
and by timidity upon the minds of others, it induced some
men to doubt the end and others to mistake the way; but
he saw in such evidences as the present meeting clear
proof of the social progress of the people; and he held
that the reality of social progress was the great and the
only guarantee for the perfect safety of political reform.

THE PROROGATION OF PARLIAMENT by the Lord
13th furthero
p
Chancellor and the Commissioners appointed to act
for her Majesty the Queen took place in the Rouse
of Lords on Thursday. Mr. J. C. Lefevre read the
Royal commission, commanding the Commissionersprorogueinpatrhleieuniaemute
unlit present, of hlerThMuarejedsetyy:
thteo
f
January, 1850. As nothing was said about the
" despatch of business," the proceedings on that day
will b 3 formal. Prior to that time, however, it will be
officially made known on what day Parliament will
reassemble.
Stn E. BULWER Lyrrole has been a third time
elected to the Lord Rectorship of Glasgow University,
the numbers being for Sir E. B. Lytton, 210; for
Lord Shaftesbury, 203 ; for Mr. Dickens, 08. This
is the first instance of a similar honour having been
done to an Englishman.
THE LORD CHIEF JUSTICE Of the Common Pleas is
again so seriously indisposed as to be unable to attend
to his judicial duties.
THE HON. FREDERICK BRUCE, brother to Lord
Elgin, who mewl as secretary to him during his ern-
base)! in China, and brought home the treaty of
Tiensin, has been appointed the first Ambassador to
Pekin under the provisions of the treaty. Mr. Braze
was attachtel to the late Lord Ashburton's special
mission to Washington in 1842. was Colonial
Secretary in Hong Kong from 1844 to 1840, was
appointed Consul General in China in 1847, Chargé
d'Affaires in Bolivia in 1848, at Montevideo in 1851,
and Consul General in Egypt in 1853.
THE REV. C. F. WRIGHT, M.A., Mathematical
Master at Shrewsbury, and Fellow of Corpus Christi
College, Cambridge, has been appointed to the
Mathematical Master:hip of Wellington College.
The college will open in February next for 100 boy,
of whom eighty-one will be on the foundation.
A DESPATCH of Sir John Young to Mr. Labouchere,
dated June 10, 1857, treating of the policy of England
in the lonian Wands, has been published. It alludes to
the restoration of comparative tranquillity, and advises
in the plainest terms that the protectorate over five
of the islands—Cephalonia, Zanthe, Ithaca, Santa
Maura, and Cerigo—shall be given up, and the
islands declared part of the neighbouring kingdom
of Greece. In return for this concession to the
desires of the people, he thinks that we might
convert Corfu and Pain into Crown colonies, with
forms of administration best fitted to places retained
only for military purposes. In reference to this matter
an official letter from the Colonial-office, signed by
Mr. H. Drummond Wolff, states that " the recent
publication of two despatches from the Lord High
Commissioner of the lonian Islands took place without
the knowledge or sanction, direct or indirect, of her
Majesty's Government, and that from the time of
their appearance strict inquiry has been in progress
into the manner in which they became public." The
Daily News adds that the documents were sent to
them in an official envelope with a request for pnbli-
cation, giving a name and address, which they
ascertained to be genuine. Other documents of equal
importance transmitted to the same journal have
been given up to the Colonial-office.