The Press.
London, England, 1854-08-26 00:00:00

794

tion be broken up. Its divided councils de-
prive the country of the advantage of a direct
and united Cabinet, at a time when firmness
and vigour are imperathely deimeHtled. It is
vain for Lord ABERDEEN to suppote that b
a few smooth words he calf dispel the, distru
excited by his past Cifieet The siOe an
tool of Russia for forty years, earl we suppose
that the Czar will finck 311 him flew an active
and determined o`pPonefto
The country sighs for loftier aims and purer
principles in publio life. It is tired of the
selfish vacillation of little minds, and de-
'Minds that statesmen shall be honest, if they
cannot be great. The system of compromise,
by which the highest interests of the nation are
sacrificed to its basest ends, cannot, we imagine,
last much longer. We can now estimate at
their true value the purity of NEWCASTLE • and
GLADSTONE, the disinterestedness of Lord
JOHN RUSSELL and the GREYS, and the pa-
triotism of Sir W. MoLEswowrii and Sir B.
HALL. There can be few men so credulous
as to believe that these personages are united
in office solely from their regard for the public
service.
In the general confusion of politics, the
Conservative party alone has preserved its
character. It has steadily fulfilled its duties
to the Crown and country, and has shown
admirable capacity for government, without
manifesting eagerness for place. Whatever
changes may occur in the political world must
tend to strengthen it in numbers and in
fluence. Among the members of any great
party a wide range must be allowed for in-
dividual opinion, but it would be great weak-
ness in any man to suffer such differences to
prevent him from affording his cordial support
to that party which he believes in his con-
science to be best fitted to assure the safety,
and advance the prosperity, of the country.

DAVE WE A. PROTESTANT
CONSTITUTION?"
RECENT accounts from the United States
describe the anti-Papal feeling there to be
steadily on the increase. It seems that when
Popery was seen pursuing its old practices
in the Far West the national spirit of the
Americans took alarm. Of Anglo-Saxon an-
cestry in the main part, with a pure religion
and popular institutions, the Americans have
not received Romish aggression with the
frigid indifference professed by Lord ABER-
DEEN and the Duke of NEWCASTLE. They
have shown very plainly that against all the
craft of the Vatican they are prepared to main-
tain the Constitution founded by WASHINGTON.
So strong an anti-Romish spirit has burst up
through the States that the more intelligent of
the Romanists in America have uttered warn-
ing notes to the zealots of their creed to
desist from their jesuitical designs and ultra-
montane conspiracies.
When American nationality is thus found
so antagonistic to Romanism, we are justified
in regarding with jealousy our own present
relations with the Papacy. Upon this subject
Mr. DISRAELI recently stated some facts de-
serving particular attention, and by an eloquent
address (that will be found elsewhere) we per-
ceive that the " Protestant Working Men's
Association " of Liverpool have enthusiast
Bally echoed the sentiments of the Right Hon.
Gentleman the Member for Bucks. In the
course of the last discussion on Maynooth Mr.
DISRAELI reminded the House of Commons how
its time was encroached upon by polemical de-
bates, and, after enumerating the variety of
forms in which the Roman Catholic contro-
versy is intruded on the Legislature, asked
the significant question, " Have we a Pro-
" testant Constitution or not? " That is a
political query which the country must solve
before long, though certain Ministerial friends
of the Court of Rome will practise all their
wiles to stifle a discussion in which they anti-
cipate defeat.
If we were to accept the present Govern-
ment as an authority on that most important
Question we could not answer the query of
Mr. DISRALLI in the affirmative. Replying to
Mr. SPOONER on the subject of Maynooth, the

THE PRESS.

CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER intimated that
the people of Ireland should be " consulted "
on the subject. oes Mr. GLADSTONE wish to
treat our natio Bti as a " mere Irish "
question 9 Is Cdr tution of England td
be annut or ethifirtria by the voices of tHE
fbprese ives, tfff
tilts tribsts, and
the pe ought n
account tti be takefi o feelings of ople
bf Entail and, thea t,urch ? We cannot
een if **wished; OMB iftse questions forcell
upon uti by the continiftifislf-aggressive court
of the Papal power. They must be decided
one way or the. othei. They are far too im-
portant to be treated as indifferent, for, as
Mr. DISRAELI observed, " our Protestant Con-
" stitution is the guarantee for the civil and
" religious liberties of the country ;" and the
most marked features in the Romanist de-
bates is the implied denial by the Peelite
casuists that we have a Protestant Constitu-
tion in any intelligible sense. They would at
best admit it verbally and deny it practically,
and employ their logic of evasion to escape
from the recognition of the constitutional
Protestantism of the land. For, that the
Constitution of England is legally and morally,
de facto and de jure, Protestant no Englishman
can doubt. It is proclaimed in the Act of
Settlement, and the monarchs of England
attest Heaven to the fact in the august cere-
mony of their coronation. By virtue of Pro-
testantism the House of Brunswick is seated
on the throne. Our Church is an " estab-
lished " one, and munificently endowed, to
prevent its ecclesiastics from catering to the
erratic fancies of the crowd. The oaths taken
by our legislators register the sentiment of
the framers of our Constitution on the " idola-
trous " character of Romanism. The places
and guarded privileges assigned to our clergy
in our social organisation demonstrate that
the Constitution of England is at once anti
Papal and anti-Infidel. Protestants, not from
indifference, but choice, we have established
the clerical order to preach salvation iu the
name and through the blood of CHRIST. The
nation protests against a jarring anarchy of
sects as well as against what Mr. MACAULAY
has called " the gorgeous and fascinating
" superstition of Popery." Our Constitution
rejects a theocracy, abjures infidelity, and
asserts with solemnity the revelation of the
Bible.
And to these great truths the people of
England are the witnesses. Their public
spirit, their free assemblies, the frank speech
of their journals, their public customs, and
their private manners, proclaim that the
nationality of England is inspired by purer
religious sanctions than can be imparted by
the servile creed of Rome. The Anglo-Saxon
races abhor priestly shackles, and march in
the front of civilisation professors of Protes
tantism and pioneers of progress. In both
hemispheres men of English blood who speak
the English tongue, differing in many things,
are profoundly sympathetic in spurning an
Italian religion, and in scorning to be the sub-
jects of the Vatican. England will not recant
its religious faith ' - and, when its religion is
practically ignored by the Romanists and their
Tractarian allies, it is time, in the words of
Mr. DISRAELI, that the matter should be placed
beyond dispute, and " that Government
" should declare by legislation what are the
" attributes, and being of the Protestant Con-
., " stitution.'
;ti-
I

THE INDIAN DEFICIT.
WHEN the business of the session was virtually
over,—when many of the leading members had
quitted town,—and it was extremely difficult to
collect a " house," Sir CHARLES WOOD brought
forward his Indian Budget, exhibiting a defi-
ciency on the year of nearly a million sterling.
But this is not all. The deficit, according to
his account, must go on increasing. He tells
us that the expenditure must be largely aug-
mented instead of being diminished, while
taxation has already been carried to that point
which leaves no possible hope of any addition to
the public revenue. In short, he admits that
India under his government is bankrupt, and
likely to continue so, and, as far as his words

SATURDAY,

apply to his own administration, and India's
prospects under it, we are prepared to accord
him implicit credepee.
His only ittteni#oB jAbii the feeling on the
part oi , tile pubic that gnat naturally be
reateff by such a tits& of things consisted in
some MO urplui oh the tlito years preceding,
find dial s nd an rii6psdb. But it would bo
just a 4 fesstiftable i.B so+ iffi an average of the
measufbe msed in different sessions of Parlia-
ment by different Ministries as to strike an
Indian revenue average of this kind. It would
not be more absurd to take to measures passed
by Lord DERBY'S Government in 1852 to qualify
the Ministerial failures of the session just
over, than it is to appeal to Mr. HERRIig
Indian surplus as a justification for the deficit
of Sir CHARLES Woon.
Indeed, if there ever was a year in which a
large Indian surplus might have been fairly
looked for, the year which Sir CHARLES WOOD'S
Budget embraces was the ono, for in it took
place the reduction of the Five per Cents. to
Four per Cents., which must have brought
into the Treasury nearly a million sterling.
There were the revenues from Burmah, which
the friends of annexation there tell us come to
about two hundred and seventy thousand
pounds more ; there are the temporarily-
sequestered districts belonging to the Nizam,
amounting to another four hundred thousand;
there are the revenues of the lapsed State of
Nagpore, which must be nearly as much;
there is the country taken from Meer ALt
NERIAD, a hundred thousand; the Jhansi ter-
ritory, some fifty thousand ; there are innu-
merable Jagheredas' estates, which must in
the interim have been sequestered or lapsed;
and there is, besides, Lord DALHOUSIE'S own
pet Punjaub, which we were told was to prove
a second California, and give us an available
surplus annually of more than half a million
sterling. Yet, with all these enormous con-
quests, confiscations, and windfalls—notwith-
standing all the boastings of the Ministerial
journals at the commencement of the session
—in spite of all the vast mass of wisdom
brought to bear on Indian affairs in the person
of the Marquis of DALHOUSIE, aided by the
superhuman talent for finance exhibited by
Sir CHARLES Woon—we have a deficit in India
of nearly a million sterling--a deficit wbieh,
under the present Administration, Sir CHARLES
Woon himself admits to be incapable of dimi-
nution ; indeed, he most distinctly prepares
us for its continuous increase.
If this be a matter which the English public
deem but slightly to concern them, they never
were more mistaken. Our existence as a first-
rate Power depends on our retaining India;
and the inevitable deduction from that fact is,
that if the Indian revenues become inadequate
to the carrying on the public service there, as
they are now declared to be, England will
itself be in the end compelled to make good
the deficiency. Those who remember what
took place at the time of the imposition of the
income tax will bear in mind that the then
deficit in India was urged as one of the argu-
ments for its necessity by Sir ROBERT PEEL.
In the same way, if this new deficit is allowed
to continue, the deficiency will, in some way
or other, have to be made good by the people
of England. Indeed, we have reason to know
that the idea, if not officially developed, has
been for some time under consideration, of
doing this in a very insidious but in a very
effectual manner, by retransferring the charge
of a large number of the Queen's troops now in
India to the Crown.
That with so rich, so fertile, so magnifi-
cent a dependency as India to deal with
there can be any real necessity for such a
deficit existing is a position too absurdly
self-evident to make any refutation of it on
our parts necessary. With proper manage-
ment, India, in the hands of an enterprising
and commercial nation like England, might at
no distant period become the richest coantry
in the world. But, before it can be so, the
government of it must be transferred to other
hands, the administration of it must be con-
ducted on other principles than those which
prevail at present. Its rulers must be pre-
pared to deal with it in a manner consistent
with common equity m
and comon sense. They
des-
must give up all idea of " mysterious