The Press.
London, England, 1857-01-24 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

attempt at fraud—a violation of the spirit of the law
—would, if made, receive his most strenuous opposi-
tion. Other speakers followed, and, the resolutions
having been passed, a petition was adopted, which
Mr. Forster was requested to present to the House
of Commons.

An influential meeting was on Friday night, the
16th inst., held in the Town•hall of HAvEnvoubwEsr.
The chair was taken by the mayor (Mr. Rees), and
the meeting was fully attended. Several speakers
addressed the audience, and resolutions were passed
to the effect that the property and income tax im•
posed on the country for the support of the war
more than one year after the restoration of peace
wirs inconsistent with the spirit of the Act of Parlia-
ment and a breach of faith with the public ; and that
the tax in its present form was unjust in principle
and oppressive in practice. A petition embodying
the resolutions of the meeting it was agreed upon
should be drawn up and forwarded to their member,
Mr. J. Phillips, with a request that the same be pre-
sented by him to the House of Commons.
A meeting of the inhabitants of DONCASTER Was
held at the Guildhall on Tuesday evening, at which
the following resolutions, and a petition embodying
the same, were unanimously agreed to, the speakers
all condemning the inequality and obnoxiousness of
the tax :

That this meeting, considering that the necessity for the
additional income tax of ninepence in the pound to meet
the expenses of the late war has ceased, shall petition the
House of Commons to take off the additional impost at
the close of the present financial year. That, moreover,
the petition shall pray the house to take into consideration
the manner in which the income tax is levied under Sche-
dule D, with s view to its equitable adjustment ; and that
in the event of their not being able to devise any fairer
mode of imposing the tax, it shall be entirely repealed.
Mr. Edmund Denison, M.P., was requested to pre-
sent the petition and to support its prayer.

A special meeting of the Town Council of NORWICH
was held on Tuesday, at which the income tax was
discussed. A petition to Parliament praying that
the additional 9d. be removed on Aptit next was
agreed to, and ordered to be placed in the hands
of the city members for presentation.
Mr. J. H. Foley, M.P., presided at a great meeting
at STOURBRIDGE to petition Parliament against the
income tax. After some discussion a petition to
Parliament was agreed upon, protesting against the
continuance of the income tax.

At WELLS a petition to Parliament, praying for relief
from the additional lad., and for the entire revision
of the mode of levying the tax, was agreed upon at a
crowded meeting held on Tuesday last.
At the meeting of the MARYLEBONE Representative
Council on Saturday, held at the Court-house, Mr.
Greenwell, the vestry clerk, brought up from the
committee appointed to consider the subject of the
present obnoxious income tax, a petition to Parlia-
ment, praying for an immediate repeal of the acts
which increased the tax from sevenpence to sixteen-
pence in the pound, and that early measures to
secure a more equitable adjustment of the tax and
an improvement in the mode of assessment, or a
total repeal of it upon trades and professions, should
be taken. Mr. Taverner moved that the petition be
adopted as the petition ef the vestry. Mr. Wingfield
seconded the motion, and it was carried.
A very full meeting in reference to this subject
was held in CARDIGAN last week, when it was
resolved to petition Parliament against the present
objectionable form of the income and property tax.

SIR EDWARD BULWER LYT TON
AT GLASGOW.
THE installation of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, Bart.,
M.P., as Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow,
took place on Thursday week. As early as twelve
o'clock large numbers of students had collected at the
college gates, and reinforcements kept pouring in till
about half-past one o'clock, when the doors were
thrown open and the area of tho Common hall was
speedily filled, the galleries being previously occupied
by ladies.
Principal 11PFAnr.afiE having opened the pro-
ceedings with prayer, the statutes relating to the
appointment of Lord Rector were read by Professor
Weir; and, Sir Edward having taken the oaths, the
Principal called upon Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton,
Bart., M.P., who on rising was greeted with loud and
prolonged applause. On its subsiding,
Sir EDWARD delivered a long and eloquent inau-
gural address. He said :
I am sure that no student who has honoured me with
his vote, from agreement in my political opinions, will
misunderstand me when I say I am well pleased to believe
that it is less as the politician than as the man of letters
that you this day reward my labours and dignify my name.
I would fain link myself in lasting fellowship to every
student amongst you—and politics can but join us for the
day; literature uuites us throughout the age. I think that
I am the more justified in assigning your kindness to this
bond of assosiation, because the candidate who was not un•

reasonably preferred by some of you, a young nobleman,
whose vigorous intellect and brilliant promise would have
done credit to your choice, happens (no matter what diffe-
rences of opinion on isolated questions may or may not
exist between him and me) to belong with myself to that
great party of which his own father is the acknowledged
chief. It is not to men who have matured their full renown
—it is not to your acknowledged chiefs of erudition and
science that I could presume to offer suggestive remarks
or persuasive counsel. Here it is my duty to address to
that other part of this audience, which, comprising their
pupils, represents, as it were, the generation of their own
children. How cautious should be he who would animate
the exertion of youth not to discourage the audacities of
genius, nor, on the other hand, to shrink from enforcing
the sober doctrine that t• all genius labour is essential ; that
the genius which would realise the palace of Aladdin must
still be the genius of the lamp. Above all, students of
Glasgow, he who addresses you should have a spirit so
warmed by sympathy with the generous aspirations of youth,
so embited with the remembrance of what your fathers have
been before you, that his mind may escape from every
sentiment unworthy the ears of that young chivalry which
Scotland rears and sends forth to the battle of human life,
with her lion at their hearts, and her white cross of St.
Andrew on their shields. (Great applause.)

Referring to the great agencies of science, philosophy,
and literature which had been at work during the
present century, Sir Edward Lytton observed :
But how and where have these benignant agencies of the
nineteenth century been the most manifestly at work?
Howe Not by the disrtipture of their old social ties, but
by their renewed cement. Where ! Not in those lands in
which, to borrow Danton's despairing cry, " Revolution,
like Saturn, devoured its own children." No. But on
this stedfast island, where liberty has not violated order,
nor philosophy presumed to depose religion. Look back at
the commencement of this century—contemplate the work
of that generae.on which you are now rising to succeed.
See what your Scottish fathers have done to snatch the fire-
brand from the hand of those drunkards of knowledge who,
reeling here and there amidst palaces and temples, fancied
that they illumined society by the conflagration of its fabrics.
That brand your fathers snatched, not to extinguish its
living flame—no, but to place it, aloft and calm, upon
stately watch-towers, a guiding light, and not a consuming
fire.

Sir Edward Lytton then alluded to the influence of
the Scotch metaphysicians, who had paralysed or
" the ..bald builde►- of the atheistical

Aspersed • riL _ ouilders
Babel" of the last century; and, having eulogised
the labours and the works of many eminent Scotch-
men, and compared them with the literature of con-
tinental Europe during the early part of the present
century, he remarked :

The first great literature produced by this century, which
spread over the civilised nations, thrusting back into dusty
shelves the verse without soul and the prose without muscle,
which had joined the circulating library of Europe—the
first great literature that strode forth to civilise and to
conquer, restoring the ancestral past to its due place in
human reverence, recalling from exile truth and virtue,
binding man to man in the genial chain of character and
humour, refreshing this work a•day world with a joyous
holiday of romance ;—the great first literature which poured
its own young blood into the century, and, rushing over
Europe, found a home on every heart, rose in these islands,
and, paramount in that literature, gave our countrymen in-
fluence not less beneficent than supreme, towers your im•
mortal Walter Scott.

Sir Edward Lytton then at considerable length urged
upon his hearers the importance of classical litera-
ture ; and he argued that its study was useful from
its very difficulty and the cont;nuous and symme-
trical exercise of the faculties which the contest with
that difficulty requires, and from the discipline of the
powers of mind, whatever be our calling in after life.
Sir Edward then impressed upon the students the
value of a "definite purpose"
Having cnce chosen that calling which then becomes
your main object in life, cling to it firmly—bring to bear
on it all your energies, all the information you are elsewhere
variously collecting. All men are not born with genius,
but every man can acquire purpose, and purpose is the
backbone and marrow of genius—nay, I can scarcely dis-
tinguish one from the other. For what is genius ? Is it
not an impassioned predilection for some definite art or
study, to which the mind converges all its energies, each
thought or image that is suggested by nature or learning,
solitude or converse, being habitually and involuntarily
added to those ideas which are ever returning to the same
central point, so that the mind is not less busily applying
when it seems to be the most released from application.
That is genius, and that is purpose—the one makes the
great artist or poet, the other the great man of action.
And with purpose comes the grand secret of all worldly
success, which some men call will, but which I would
rather call earnestness. If I were asked, from my expe-
rience of life, to say what attribute most impressed the
minds of others or most commanded fortune, I should say
" earnestness." Take, for instance, the House of Commons
as the highest type of a popular assembly. What is the
preat secret of success there ? You all remember that
Demosthenes placed the threefold art of the orator in de-
livery. I think the word he used was acting or stage play.
Hut though delivery, no doubt, is the appropriate excellence
of the mere orator, the threefold gift of the parliamentary

speaker is earnestness. Have but fair sense and a comp;
tent knowledge of your subject, and then be thoroughly in
earnest to impress your own honest conviction upon others,
and, no matter what your delivery, though your gestures
shocked every rule in Qutntilian, you would command the
ear and influence the debates of the most accomplished, the
/UM fastidious, and, take it altogether, the noblest assembly