The Press.
London, England, 1858-06-26 00:00:00

SISTER MEASURES.

THERE is more likeness and sisterhood than
might at first have been thought, between the
two measures for widening the doors of Parlia-
ment that have recently been proposed.

The Property Qualification has been given up,
and the main argument relied upon by those who
proposed and those who supported the change, is of
the same kind as the one pressed into the service of
the Jews. ,At „was said that many members sat
who had not a real qualification—why not do

away with it altogether? Many, not real
Christians, get into the House—why not abolish
the Christian test ? If this argument, however,
be good for anything, it is good against all laws ?
Many murders are committed in the course of
the year—why not let murder go unpunished ?
You can't put it down by law.
But this argument was specially inapplicable to
the property qualification ; for there was a great
deal more value in this so-called fictitious qualifica-
tion than would appear at first sight. We do not
say it WM 01404 A its a real one ; but assuredly it
was not wholly fictitious. A gentleman had not
sufficient property of his own to make up the re-
quired amount, and he applied to a friend to
make up the deficiency. Now, the man who can
find a friend who has such entire confidence in
his honesty and integrity that he will consent to
hand over to him. trusting to his honour, a very
considerable amount of property, furnishet a
guarantee to the State, certainly very little less
to be depended on than the man Who possesses
himself the necessary amount. This is the prin-
ciple of bail : the real security that the prisoner

E PRES

will be forthcoming at the appointed time is not
his own recognisance, which in order to es-
cape personal punishment he may be ready to
forfeit, but his being able to find persons of
credit and respectability who have sufficient con-
fidence in him to become his bail. This so-
called fictitious qualification is not, therefore, so
fictitious as it has been represented.

The real remedy, therefore, for this irregular
transaction was, supposing that a property quali-
fication is desirable in itself, to alter the law, and
to allow that which was done irregularly to be
done legally.

But is a property qualification desirable ?
This point was little discussed. We readily
admit, however, that property will neither make
a man clever, nor endow him with a sound judg-
ment, nor render him eloquent, nor give him
many other qualifications calculated to make him
a useful and patriotic member of Parliament ;
but there is one quality which money does give,
and which nothing else can give—namely,
independence. We do not say that money
necessarily confers this quality on its possessor—
far from it ; but we do say that without a suffi-
ciency for his station no one can be independent.
It is not the amount which signifies : a day
labourer, having sufficient for his wants in the
condition of life in which he is placed, may be an
independent man ; but a member of Parliament
with an insufficient pittance will necessarily be
exposed to temptations which must be fatal to his
independence and his honesty. Such a man,
however admirable may be his intellectual ability,
has no right to devote his time and talents to
public matters ; his mind must inevitably be too
much occupied with his private affairs, and his
object is sure to be, not what will benefit his
country, but what will benefit himself.

Now, if we were called upon to say what we
considered the most striking defect in the com-
position of the present Parliament, it is that so
many of those who enter it do so with a view to
advance their own private interests, and not with
a view to promote the public weal; for it too
often happens that those who boast the loudest
of their own extreme disinterestedness, are the
very men whose whole political conduct is really
guided by selfish motives of personal gain. What
honest clamour exists for Parliamentary Reform
arises out of the prevailing and too just belief
that this is so. lor a remedy some propose the
ballot, some a great extension .of the suffrage;
others desire annual Parliaments and pay-
ments of members; and some propose or con-
sent to the abolition of that property test,
which in a worldly sense serves to make a
member independent. They are also seeking for
the abolition of a Christian test, which, at any
rate, fastens upon the member the obligation to
legislate on Christian principles, whether he
himself be or be not a believer in Christianity.
Should, therefore, either of the Jew Bills, now
before the Lords, unhappily become law, the
strange result of the session, with a Conservative
Administration, will be this—that the doors of
the House of Commons will have been opened
wide to paupers, atheists, infidels, and Jews.

Conceited and shortsighted people may call
this progress, but wise ones will call it
retrogression. The representative assembly
which governs the nation is admitted by all to
have lost much of its prestige for disinterested-
ness, faith, and public spirit. There is a
general :rdy raised on all sides that, in order for
its renovation, new life must be infused into its
composition ; and the new life, which, in the
first instance, in the plenitude of its wisdom, it
selects for the infusion, is sought for, not amongst
the better and wiser portion of the nation,r,but
amongst the lowest and the vilest : pauper
blood, infidel blood, atheist blood, Jew blood, is
the kind of new blood which it would inject into
its veins, in order (strange notion) to restore
the confidence of a despainng people !
If to this it be replied that atheists, infidels,
and insolvents, were already to be found on the
benches of the House of Commons, the answer
is:—" True; but if the House meant to im-
" prove itself it should have adopted measures
" to weed out these tares ;—not measures to 'en-
" courage their growth ; and to sow a crop of
" new ones." Hitherto these kind of men have
been exceptions to the rules, but henceforth they
will come within them !

605

THE MEMBER'S DIARY.

HOUSE OF LORDS.
MONDAY.

LORD MALMERBDRT, replying to a question
asked on Friday, stated that Ministers did not
propose to bring forward any Resolutions re-
specting the government of India, as a prelimi-
nary to the Bill which might presently be ex-
pected "up" from the other House. In assign-
ing reasons for this course, the Foreign Secretary
was too polite to mention the chief one—namely,
that the procedure by way of Resolution was
adopted "elsewhere," not on account of ha
abstract utility, but as affording the best means
of baffling the factious manomvres of the Oppo-
sition. In their Lordships' House there were no
factious enterprises to disconcert, and therefore
no need to preface the real debate on the
measure by a sort of undress rehearsal, apropos of
a string of Resolutions. Everybody saw the
force of this argument, and agreed that it was
much better not to embark into any discussion
on the Bill before they saw what the Commons
would finally make of it. This event Lord
AiALMEMBURY hoped might occur during the
second week in July. he Marquis of LA,CS-
DowNE, Earls GRANYn.a.r and GRaY, and Some
other Opposition peers made brief replies, all
bearing for chorus that Hope sometimes told a
flattering tale; but no one ventured any objection
to the course which her Majesty's Ministers had
elected to pursue upon the question.
Having exposed the mote in the Spaniard's
eye, in his denunciations of the Cuban slave trade,
on a previous evening, the Bishop of Oxronn,
to-night, recommended his fellow-countrymen
to cast the beam out of their own. An article
denominated Coolie emigrants had been of late
years largely imported into various British
colonies from India and Chills, which, as the
Reverend Prelate apprehended, would prove, if
examined, identical with the immoral and con-
traband commodity of slaves, under a merely
colourable disguisement. Lord CARNARVON pm-
mised some correspondence on the subject, which
would show how far the apprehensions expressed
by Dr. WILBERFORCE were well Ibunded. Mean-
while, he gave him an assurance that, so far as re-
gulations went, there was rather more care taken
of Chinese emigrants when embarking at Canton,
than of the English or Irish emigrants who
embark at Liverpool. The ugliest fact that has
yet trinspired relating to this affair is the
awfhlly high rate of mortality bn board the pas-
senger vessels. Ten per cent. seems a low pro-
portion of deaths among the Coolies daring the
single voyage from Hong Kong to the Mauritius.
That such loss of life should occur at a time when
whole regiments can be conveyed round the Cape
from England to India without losing a man, shows
the existence of frightfid mismanagement some-
where. By way of explanation, it is said that
many, Df not most, of these Chinese emigrants,
are ad or ill when they embark. This means,
of course, that, like the Irish in the famine year,
they stuck by their country until they were either
unfit for work or on the brink of starvation. So
far as this excuse is valid, it discountenances the
idea of trickery or compulsion in the embarka-
tion of these Coolies, since kidnappers—as was
shown on the Guinea coast—would pick out
none but the young and sturdy. We know, be-
sides, that the Celestials, as a nation, do not
object to work and are very fond of wages, and
will wander far in search of both. They flock
in even inconvenient multitudes to the Californian
and Australian gold diggings, where they aggra-
vate their Anglo-Saxon neighbour, by showing
that while they can extract the golden grains as
successfully as himself, they also contrive to keep
them better. Evidently on the China seaboard
there exists a vast quantity of the raw material
of labour, seeking only to be "used up"
pro-
fitably. This labour is just now an artier Of
prime necessity in many British colonies, where
it would be eagerly bought up almost at any
price. This living and active continence of sup-
ply and demand cannot be paralyzed by evoking
the old-hou phantom of an extinct slave trade,
even though WILBERFORCE and BROCORAM com-
bine to perform the incantation.
TUESDAY.
Nothing of importance was done. The consi-
deration of the two Oaths Bills (LYNDBURBT'i

and LucAN's) was again postponed, because Lord
DERBY was still absent. A Bill amending the
Matrimonial and Divorce Act of last session being
on the paper, Lord Rm'DESDALE took occasion to
notice that in the new Court lately nine divorces
had been granted in one day, or at the rate of
one in eleven minutes. This express-train speed
in unmarrying couples argued, in his opinion,
either carelessness in the Court or collusion be-
tween the parties. Lord CAMPBELL wrathfully
rebuked this attack upon a judicial tribunal, and
in the eagerness to defend his " order" as a judge
overstepped the limits of order in the House, and
was in consequence obliged to shut up at the very
moment when his eloquence was in the highest
state of ebullition. _ _ _

Afterwards, the Earl of CARLISLE presented a
petition from the Society of Friends against
Church-rates. A new " whip," it appears, has
gone forth for a popular prununciamento on this
question, en atlendant the debate now fixed for
Friday next. The "Friends," in responding to
this stimulus, had acted with a consistency for
which they deserve all credit. Intending to at-
tack the Church, they showed a corresponding
disregard of reverence to the other estates of the
realm, and in their petition refused " humbly"
to pray the Peers to comply with their request.
As this particular irreverence happened also to
comprise an informality, the Broadbrim petition
was ignominiously rejected.
TiitrasnAr. 'j.-•,-ft t•tr, *JO),

ii

• Last week much talk had occurred, in Par-
liament and the papers, respecting the case of the
Regina Cali. This was a French vessel, en-
gaged in conveying a large number of negroes. as
free labourers, from Africa to one of the French
possessions in the West Indies. On the voyage
an emeute had taken place, in which the Blacks
had massacred the officers and crew, with a single
exception, and afterwards surrendered the ship,
which they did not know how to navigate, to an
English cruiser. In alluding to this transaction
in the House, Lord Guar had carefully paraded
his opinion that the French officers and sailors
on board the Regina Cali had not been mur-
dered, but simply "killed" by the niggers—
implying, of course, that the Blacks were
perfectly justified in employing any violence to
release themselves from proximate slavery. As
the Noble Earl contended, it was a clear case of
"killing no murder." To-night Lord MALMES-
BURY produced some official documents proving
that the negro labourers had been taken on
the ship with the full consent of the Liberian
Government, and that the subsequent outbreak
on board the vessel arose altogether from a casual
squabble between some of the emigrant pas-
sengers and the black cook.
Lord BROUGHAM afterwards explained, in a
long speech, the legal machinery of his Transfer
of Real Property Bill; but ended by withdraw-
ing the measure for the present session. This
result was not unexpected. For many years past
his learned and eccentric Lordship has laid on the
table a regular series of bills, designed to reform
the law from top to bottom, from the tribunals
of Equity to the County Courts. Incessant tin-
tinnabulation has been consequently produced;
but the Legislature have learnt to regard with
proper insouciance these mere runaway rings.
FRIDAY.
Lord ALBEMARLE asked the House to affirm a
truism, which his Lordship has more than once
before in previous years expended much elo-
quence in explaining and advocating. The reso-
lution placed before the Peers set forth that a
large infusion of British-born settlers in Hindos
tau would improve the revenue, and promote the
prosperity of this country, and provide a useful
barrier against future insurrections. Of course
it would. But the preliminary problem remains
unsolved. How are they to be governed ? In
the hundred years that have elapsed since the
victory of P..ney, the normal
_proportion of
Earopean residents attracted to Hindostan has
been far beneath the number of inhabitants in
the single city of Melbourne, of which the first
atone was laid barely thirty years ago. The
Noble TAM recommended unanimous assent
to bibl"itttroposition that English settlers
wonld ast very beneficial in India, but
forgot to butention by what gentle persua-
sion he hoped to induce a sufficient colony
of bold Britons to locate themselves amid the
burning plains of Ilindostan. This omission
somewhat marred the utility of the resolution.
which was in other respects unexceptionable.