The Press.
London, England, 1854-09-30 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

reduction of interest on Exchequer Bills with
advantage to the public, it has been after
maturely observing the indications of the
Money Market as evidenced by the state of the
funds, the rate of discount, the bullion in
Bank, and condition of our circulation. The
general laws which influence these matters
are applicable to Exchequer Bills—to seize a
favourable opportunity in conformity with
those laws indicates financial sagacity—to
run counter to those laws is a financial
blunder which would be inexcusable even in a
junior Lord of the Treasury.
In June, 1852, Mr. DISRAELI reduced the
rate of interest from ltd. to ltd. on 9,238,7001.
Exchequer Bills, being the amount then ex-
changeable, effecting thereby a clear saving to
the public of 35,0301. a year, without any
drawback or inconvenience whatever. Our
readers will find a statement of this in the
Paper 66 of last session. He had carefully
watched for and took advantage of the oppor-
tunity—the tendency of the funds for a consi-
derable time had been upwards. In March
they were 97 to 98; in June they were 100 to
101. The bullion in Bank, which in March
was 19 millions, had increased gradually to 21
millions; the circulation from 33 millions
to 35 millions. Exchequer Bills were at a
premium of 83 to 69 ; the rate of discount was
2 per cent. Had Mr. DISRAELI remained in
office, exercising the same caution, no doubt
he could, and would, have effected a similar
reduction in the 8 millions of Exchequer Bills
exchangeable in March, 1852, which would
have given to the public a gain in the charge
for the unfunded debt of nearly 70,0001. a
year.
Let us now examine the state of things and
the circumstances under which the reduction
of interest was made by Mr. GLADSTONE, and
the results of that operation.
It was made, as we have stated, on the 14th
of February, six weeks after he became Finance
Minister, and fixed the rate of all Exchequer
Bills, on the next exchange, to Id. a day, or
1/. 10s. sd. a year. This, we believe, was the
lowest rate of interest which Exchequer Bills
have ever borne. What, then, were the cir-
cumstances of the case ? Were they such as
to warrant the reduction ? We have stated
that, Exchequer Bills being liable to the same
laws and influences which are applicable to
all monetary matters, to contravene these laws
is an unpardonable blunder in a Chancellor of
the Exchequer, and must result necessarily in
financial derangement and loss.
The price of Consols varied—
In December, 1852, from 1011 to 101.
In January, 1853, front 100} to 991.
The bullion in Bank was—
In December, 1852, maximum 21,246,8901.
66 minimum 20,071,9271.
In January, 1853, maximum 20,071,9251.
66 minimum 18,665,5551.

The circulation was—
In December, 1852, maximum 35,246,8901.
minimum 34,071,9251.
In January, 1853, maximum 34,071,9251.
64 minimum 32,665,553/.
The rate of discount was raised by the Bank
of England on the 6th of January, 1853, from
2 to 21 per cent., and on the 21st of January
from 21 to 3 per cent.
Here we have taken the four most obvious
and unquestionable indications of the state of
the Money Market. It is impossible, we
think, for any one who will take the trouble of
examining these figures to avoid coming to
the conclusion that in February, 1853, there
were such unequivocal symptoms of an up-
ward tendency in the value of money as should
have induced any prudent man, to say nothing
of a Chancellor of the Exchequer, to foresee
the difficulties that were approaching, and
yet this was just the period chosen by Mr.
GLADSTONE to reduce the rate of interest on
Exchequer Bills from 21. ss. 7d. to 11. 10s. sd.
We shall deal next with the results.

NECESSITY FOR PROTESTANT VIGILANCE.
(From a Correspondent.)
IT is interesting to observe the using growth of
Protestant feeling. That Romanism has become
really formidable is now the conviction of hundreds

915

of thousands who recently viewed its advances with
the indifference of contempt. The subject is seen
to have the gravest political and religious impor-
tance. The peculiar aspects of the latter phase are not
within the special province of strictly-political consi-
deration. Public opinion concerns itself, in the main,
only with high social and constitutional issues; the
subtleties of mere polemical disputation must be
left to those charged with theological responsi-
bilities.

The progress of Popery can be best resisted by
the calm vigilance of Protestant public opinion. It
will not be enough, however, to indicate danger
when the state vessel is on the breakers unless the
crew attend to their duties. The most eloquent
speeches, the most brilliant essays, fail of effect in
politics unless public opinion endorse their views
and enforce their purposes. We were much struck
by the replies of Mr. DISRAEII to some of the various
addresses recently presented to him. The Hight
Honourable Gentleman truly stated " that the
" power of a public man to effect good for his coun-
" try depends on the support given to him by
" opinion." The common sense and financial know-
ledge of WALPOLE, the dazzling genius of BOLING-
BROKE, the sublime eloquence of the elder, and the
lofty character of the younger, PITT, would be of no
potential efficacy in politics unless the moving power
of public opinion gave their designs and speeches
the force of representative reality. Statesmanship
in resisting rash, or promoting u'eful, projects must
work with the aid of social convictions developed
amongst various orders of the community at large.
And such must be the case with reference to the
timely and calmly-judicious views put forward by
Mr. Disnizu. The conviction is rapidly growing
that we must defend our Protestantism ; and, if the
free public mind of England be kept thoroughly alive
to a vivid sense of its worth, and to a keen appre-
hension of the insidious dangers of priestly theocracy
and religious absolutism, we shall not fear for the
result.

But, in this as in other instances, to be forewarned
is to be forearmed; and it is of great importance to
mark the limits where the plea of the inviolability of
internal liberty spuriously put forward as a shield by
the Church of Rome should end. The maxim that
under a free Constitution the Legislature should not
meddle with a sectinternally is true ; but it is true, like
any principle in moral science, with qualifications. If a
sect contain within itself an incendiary principle of
singularly expansive force ; if it have secret societies
ruled by directors in foreign countries, and a clergy
in the closest intimacy with a vast external confe-
deracy not subject to our national authority ; it is
quite plain that, in this particular case, such a sect
(though its individual members are fully entitled to
their personal liberties) can never be dismissed from
political scrutiny with the apathetic toleration given
to the Quaker, the Anabaptist, or the Unitarian.
Heterodox theology may be safely left by the Legis-
lature to polemical refutation. WARBURTON in his
day silenced the small Deists of his time; Hoasixr
derisively exposed "the small Latin and less Greek"
of the Socinian PRIESTLEY; PAI.EY and WATSON gave
most effective replies to the audacious flippancy of
PAINE. An act of Parliament could not in those
cases have refuted the fallacies or exposed the su •
perficiality of socinian sciolists or deistical declaim-
ers, empty of religion and energetic in proclaiming
it. But, when the Deists and Socinians of 1793
entered into a close " corresponding " alliance with
foreign incendiaries, very effective and repressive
legislation was applied to their particular cases by
Mr. PITT, and most eloquently defended by Mr.
BURKE. Unitarians became gravely obnoxious to
the power of opinion, not so much for their bad
theology as for their vicious citizenship, at once anti.
monanhical and anti-English. Since then Unita-
rians have carefully avoided foreign politics, and are
treated like other Protestant dissenters, while their
tenets on the Trinity are left to the victorious reason-
ing of WATERLAND and MAGEE. A Conservative
Administration, of which Lord LYNDHURST was the
Chancellor, passed for them that " Dissenters'
Chapel Bill" commonly called after their particular
sect.

But let us now suppose that the Unitarians of
England and Ireland were subject to the spiritual
supremacy of a foreign potentate, also proclaiming
himielf "the Vicegerent of Chiist upon Earth," and
that a secret Unitarian Cabinet in a distant land had
its concealed emissaries scattered throughout En -
land, using foreign gold for the erection of anti-
English churches, and pulling the wires of two
scores of Socinian puppets in the House of Com-
mons, gradually erecting a formidable imperium in
imperio, and artfully corrupting by extraordinary
means the religious teachers of Oxford,--supposing
that they mesmerised degenerate statesmen, perverted
orthodoxy and extinguished English feeling, influenced
episcopal heads with a reeling tendency hitherto be-
lieved peculiar only to the heels of opera-dancers,—
in that case, would Unitarians, with foreign gold and

016

foreign purposes,with anti-English objects and secret
arts, be tolerantly regarded by our public opinion
Now, we have been putting no merely hypothetical
case. We have, on the contrary, understated the
analogy. The Unitarians could have no celibate
clergy, wholly intent on Socinian propagandism,
bestowing absolution on tremulous Deings on their
knees before pictures of FAUSTUS 80CINUS. A
" holy society " of the " Fratres Poloni " could not
be expected to rival the arts of the followers of
LOYOLA, and it would be idle to seek for convents
full of fair anti-Trinitarians, confessing themselves
with the eremite W. J. Fox, or presenting braided
vestments to Cardinal BELSHAM, Lord Archbishop of
Alsatia and the Temple. The frigid theology of
Unitarianism could never influence the ardour of
millions of credulous devotees. It might misguide
individual minds, but it could not directly produce
the revolutions of a theocracy that shuts up the
Bible and opens the miracle-shop•—has its spy-
confessors upon kings and queens—marshals for one
purpose its sacerdotal legions and its " dark and
deadly" body-guard of Jesuits, Unitarianism (with
even its most grievous errors) could never become a
Church like that of Rome—universal monarchy for
its politics, and the extirpation of biblical religion
its master-passioli and chief inspiring purpose.
We have made these remarks to indicate the con-
stitutional difference between the internal political
character of the Church of Rome as distinguished
from the relationship of our own dissenters to the
State. In that inherent difference will he found a
cause for the vigilance of the Protestant mind. How
to utilise the energy of deeply-felt Protestant convic-
tions, without encroaching on the personal liberties
of sincere Roman Catholic religionists, will be a sub-
ject for future consideration.

PROVERBIALLY fond of money as we are, it is a
question whether there exists another capital city
where the public answers so readily a reputable
appeal to their pockets. The magistrates of Wor.
ship-street during the past week, through the public
reporters, called attention to the low condition of the
funds of the poor box, and the urgent necessities of
the district from the effects of the epidemic. Al-
ready upwards of 350/. has been sent to this police
court for distribution, in sums varying from 301. to
one shilling. There is no means of administering
relief more surely above suspicion than this of the
paid metropolitan magistracy, accustomed as they
all are to d.stinguish real from fictitious cases of
distress.
THE Fazycts ACADEMY has to congratulate its
members on the acquisition of a large quantity of
MSS. of Arago, which the members of his family
have presented to them. A committee has been
nominated to minutely investigate and arrange these
papers previously to their appearing in the " Me-
moires" of the institution. There are no less than
73,000 magnetic and galvanic experiments, elabo-
rately illustrated with notes and memoranda of
derived results, principally in the philosopher's own
handwriting.
Otot of the faithfullest adherents to the elder
branch of the French Bourbons died on the 10th inst.,
Andre Marie Hue, aged premier ancien valet to
Louis XVIII. and Charles X. He was the only son
of M. Hue who accompanied Louis XVI. and his
family in their flight when it was interrupted by the
postmaster Proust, and subsequently attended the
unhappy Dauphin up to the time of his being handed
over to the merciless Simon, the shoemaker.
IN concurrence with the suggestions by the presi-
dent of the British Association at Liverpool for the
development of all the facts and circumstances con-
nected with navigation, the Board of Trade are about
to establish a department of record which shall pre-
serve and arrange the tables of tides, temperature,
latitude, variations of the wind, and meteorological
observations of sea voyages, which all trading and
royal vessels will be for the future obliged to
supply.
THE EXPORTATION OF COIN AND BULLION from the
United Kingdom in the year 1803 amounted to
8,274,935 ounces of gold coin and bullion, of which
589,298 ounces were British coin, and 2,085,037
ounces foreign coin and bullion. The total export
of silver in the same time was 279,208 ounces of
British coin, and 24,940,091 ounces of foreign coin
and bullion ;in all 24,019,899 ounces. The export
for the half-year ending July 4, 1854, was 09,800
ounces of British gold coin, 65,314 ounces of British
silver coin, 2,353,503 ounces of foreign gold coin and
bullion, and 13,190,454 ounces of foreign silver coin
and bullion.
THE Mode, a journal conducted by Viscount d'Ar-
lincourt and a little 'mad Legitimists, has been sus-
pended for two months for a violent article against
Lord Palmerston. A delicate attention of this kind
must be rather embarrassing to his lordship, since,
with the best wishes to support the entente cordiale,
he can hardly expect to see such a revolution in
England as would enable him to return the compli-
ment in 144.

THE PRESS.

THE WAR.

EXPEDITION TO THE CRIMEA.
Ampler details of the disembarkation, and various
surmises respecting future operations, constitute the
whole additions to our intelligence from the Crimea
received during the past week. The main body of
the combined forces landed, not at Eupatoria, as had
been at first announced, but at a place called Old
Fort, situated nearly half way between Eupatoria
and Sebastopol, and about thirty miles in a direct
line from the latter fortress. The successful coa►-

pletiou of the debarkation was announced by a
telegraphic despatch from Lord Raglan received on
Sunday night by the Duke of Newcastle, and dated
the 16th inst. It states that the allied armies ar-
rived at the place of disembarkation, near the Old
Fort, in latitude 45 degrees, at the break of day on
the 14th, and before night succeeded in landing
nearly all their infantry and part of their artillery.
On the 15th the swell on the shore considerably
impeded operations, but some progress was made,
and the exertions of the fleet, under the immediate
cointnand of Sir Edmnnd Lyons, excited the admi-
ration of the army, and were, in fact, above all praise.
The surf continued on the 16th (the day on which
the despatch was written), nevertheless the disem-
barkation of the horses and baggage was proceeding
with the utmost rapidity.
Another despatch was transmitted on the subse-
quent day (17th), from Marshal St. Arnaud and
Lord Raglan jointly, to Omer Paella, and by him
telegraphed to Lord Westmoreland, at Vienna. This
account reports that the whole of the allied army had
lauded, with the baggage, the munitions of war, and
the artillery. The army, in the highest spirits, had
commenced its march upon Sebastopol, and the
Tartar population of the country were manifesting
sympathy in the undertaking, and supplying the
troops with provisions.
A deputation of submission and obedience from the
native population is stated by another account to
have appeared in the allied camp.
The locality of the district wherein our troops have
entered is thus described by the Constltutionnel:—
" Old Fort, where the landing was effected, is, according
to the best maps, forty-five kilometres (twenty-eight and au
eighth English miles) to the north of Sebastopol, and twenty-
three kilometres (fourteen and three-eighths English
miles) to the south of Eupatoria, a little above the River
Boulganack. This position is indicated, in some maps,
by the name of Traktir. It will be seen that the troops
had advanced immediately by the roads of Simferopol and
Baktchi•Sarai ; but perhaps nothing is meant but bodies of
troops intended to observe the enemy. The pelt of the
expeditionary army which proceeds along the coast will
meet with four streams of water before they arrive at the
little arm of the sea which is at the north of Sebastopol.
The country is wooded and mountainous, but that incon-
venience is compensated for by the facility of having wood
and water, which would be difficult to find in advancing
further into the country. The streams of water are Boul-
ganack, the Alma, the Katcha, and the Belbek. This last
river being passed, the northern fort and the Fort Con-
stantine are right in front. The northern fort is a regular
work, which it will be necessary to attack by land, and
probably according to all the rules of the military art. As
to Fort Constantine, the example given us at Bomarsund
leads us to believe that it may be reduced by an attack
from the fleet. Once masters of these two points, Sebas-
topol is ours. With an enemy able to defend the ground
foot by foot, the distance between the landing-point and
Sebastopol might be difficult ; but, to judge by the language
of Marshal de St. Arnaud and Lord Raglan to Omer Pasha,
the generals iu chief do not appear to expect any great
resistance before arriving at the end of their march."
The latest intelligence from the Crimea was
brought by the Ajaccio despatch-bout, which sailed
thence for Constantinople on the 19th. It announces
that on the following day (the 20th) the allied army
was to march against a Russian force of 25,000 men,
who expected a reinforcement of 15,000. It was
thought that an engagement would take place imme-
diately, before the arrival of the Russian reinforce-
ments.
The weather was still magnificent. Not a single
accident occurred at the disembarkation. The in-
habitants continued to show the most friendly dis-
position towards the allies.
The Copirte Zeitung learns from despatches re-
ceived via Bucharest and Belgrade, that the disem-
barkation of the troops at Eupatoria was at the rate
of from 4,000 to 5,000 men an hour, which is about
3,000 less than was at first expected. The allied
armies marched in two grand divisions on Simferopol
and Burluk (or Curcul), a seaport to the south-west
of Simferopol. The result of the numerous recon-
noitrings of the coast of the Crimea proves the
Russian charts to be entirely false. Where cliffs
and mudbanks are marked down in these charts,
neither the one nor the other were to be found; and
on the other hand, where a good anchorage is marked,
there the coast was found to be dangerous.
The whole of the promontories of the Crimea are
provided with telegraphs. The motions of the
troops and ships at Eupatoria could be plainly seen
from the inights of Simferopol, and their arrival and

SATURDAY,

landing were no doubt telegraphed from thence
to Sebastopol.
_ . _

Respecting the movements of the Russians, very
imperfect and contradictory accounts havo arrived.
One despatch, sent via Vienna, on the 26th, states
that Prince Menschikoff had advanced with his troops
to Burliuk, on the river Alma, and taken up a position
there, awaiting the attack of the allies, and expecting
reinforcements. Another fixes the locality of the
Russian entrenched camp on the river liat,clia, and
a third report declares that it was the allies who were
entrenching themselves on the bank of that river,
while Menschikoff appeared to intend falling back
step by step upon Sebastopol, retaining every strong
position until forced to retreat, but risking no serious
engagement until 'ne had arrived beneath the walls
of the fortress.

There has been a landing at Eupatoria, which was
occupied by 2,000 Turks, with one English and one
French regiment. The garrison offered no opposi-
tion, and retreated before the allies reached the town
but 400 Russian soldiers were taken prisoners.
The reserve at Varna received orders to embark for
the Crimea on the 18th, under the command of Gene-
ral Levaillant. The Scots Greys sailed on the 19th
on board the Himalaya.
The inhabitants of Anapa have been since the
beginning of the month in daily expectation of a
bombardment. It was known at Batoum on thellth
that Anapa was blockaded by a squadron of eight
ships-of-war, viz., three frigates, three line of-battle
ships, and two brigs. Admiral Lyons, who commands
this squadron, was only waiting orders from Admiral
Hamelin to bombard the town.
The Moniteur states :

" Letters from the Black Sea announce the Russian troops
which had embarked at Tangerod on board guu•buata fur
the Crimea met on the 4th September with a severe gale,
which sank eight or nine of them, with 200 men."