The Press.
London, England, 1856-04-26 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

SATURDAY,

pitlous policeman, and kept back on the platform till " all danger had
passed." Then, what a succession of blunders filled up the day!
The trains were all hours after their time. Of the two steamers appro-
priated to Lords and Commons, one was under-manned and could not
get the anchor up without the help of its passengers, while, to make
things more pleasant, the stokers let the fire out, just as the thunder
of the fleet's guns broke upon the fretful ears of Lord GRANVILLE and
his Peers. As to the Perseverance and the Commons, it got to the
review just in time to see the end of it and go back again, a feat it
achieved with the manifest advantage of some four hours time over
the Upper House vessel, Transit, which broke down, ran over a
gunboat, and kept Lords, Ladies, and Bishops between the
Nab Light and Southampton from six to ten p.m., in Transit-u.
Never were sightseers beheld in so deplorable a condition.
And to crown the whole affair, nothing but beer and soda-water, with
insipid cold chicken, had been provided for the refreshment of our
hereditary and elected legislators by their economical Admiralty.
The mismanagement of the whole affair was gross to a degree, and Sir
CHARLES NVOOD cautiously lost himself in Portsmouth until the edge of
legislative indignation had been partially blunted against the Premier.
But his attempt last night to excuse the intolerable mess he had made
of the business, by attributing it to tidal phenomena, was the worst
joke of all.

The Government has been defeated in both Houses of Parliament
this week. It is at the mercy of every challenger. Ministers only
stand up to be beaten. Where is this to end ? The times are past
when an Administration felt bound to resign in consequence of an
adverse vote. It is necessary, as one result of the Reform Bill, that
the range of open questions should be extended, and that greater
latitude should be allowed to the expression of independent
opinion yet it appears very questionable whether a Govern-
ment should retain office which is unable to command a majority
in either on strictly governmental business. The first
defeat of the week was on the Church Discipline Bill.
When !the present LORD CHANCELLOR was plain Mr. Baron Rolfe he
had rather a good reputation on the Bench. He was considered a fair
lawyer, and one or two of his charges are still quoted as specimens of
such addresses. What can have induced him in his character of Lord
Chancellor to undertake a crusade against the British Constitution in
Church and State, we cannot imagine. Defeated in his attempt to
revolutionise the House of Lords, he has sought to console himself by
cogitating how he may best undermine the Church of England.
Lord CRANWORTH, we presume, thought to seduce the Primate by the
offer of a species of Papal authority over the Diocesan Bishops, while
a snug little bit of patronage was created to be divided between the
four Primates of England and Ireland and the Bishop of LONDON.
Four Chancellors were to be appointed at salaries of 3,0001. a year for
the trial of clerical offences, an arrangement which seems to imply
that the clergy of the Established Church are about a million times as
wicked as the rest of the community, there being only 20,000 of
them to be tried, and four judges to try them,while there are but fifteen
judges for the entire population of England. All the wiles of the Lord
Chancellor were, however, thrown away, and his bill defeated by a
majority of eight. We should advise him to desist from these attempts
for the future. He has succeeded in damaging the present Govern-
ment to no small extent. But one or two more such efforts would
destroy his own reputation for ever, and bring discredit not only on
his sagacity but his honesty. The beating experienced in tho Lords
has been rapidly succeeded by another even more decisive disaster in
the Commons. Lord GODERICH has proved himself more than a match
for the whole collective strength of the Government. It is in course
of dissolution, and that weariness which the Merry Monarch of our
history supposed the attendants on his last moments must feel is
veritably experienced by those who watch its expiring throes, feeling
that some apology is required for its being such " a long time In
dying."

In one of the most brilliant of his essays, Mr. MACAULAY, speaking
of the intellectual superiority of one age over another, compares the
progress of humanity to the motion of an animal ; where the head and
tail, though each successively occupying a more advanced position,
still always preserve the same relative distance. The controversy on
the moon's motion, which has been raging for nearly three weeks in
the columns of the Times, would seem to suggest a doubt as to the
applicability of this comparison. Certain, as all educated persons
now are, of the actual existence of the moon's rotation, the majority of
those who have thought themselves capable of offering an opinion on
the subject hare generally supported Mr SYMONS'S remarkable) error,
the head may have gone forward, but the tail, in this instance, cer-
tainly remains in its old position. Yet the question involves no
refined conceptions, either of geometry or dynamics; once let the
meaning of the phrase " rotation about an axis " be clearly under
stood, once let the common property—in virtue of which that part of
the moon's motion which astronomers call "rotation" and " rotation
" about a fixed axis " are called by the same name—be clearly per-
ceived, and the conclusion of scientific men must follow inevitably.
Mr. SYMONS and his school express much astonishment that one
phrase should be applied to describe two motions, so distinct as that
of the moon and that of a body about a fixed axis passing through its
mass. The application is their own. They have first misrepresented
scientific languages, and then fallen foul of scientific men for creating
difficulties which they themselves have originated. Mechanical phi-
losophers have always described such a motion as that of the moon
as a compound of tiro motions, one of revolution about the earth, the
other of rotation about an axis fixed in the moon's mass, and executed
in the saute time as the revolution itself.

APRIL 26, 1856•