The Press.
London, England, 1858-10-30 00:00:00

THE PRESS, OCTOBER 30,, 1858.

nothing but ridicule, the murder of the Queen's subjects will certainly not
do that. If insult fails, intimidation must be tried instead. Under the
influence of these feelings, and exasperated at the reception which their
etlUrt at a great effect has met with, the Romish clergy in Ireland have
fallen back on their ancient weapons. GOD grant we may prove to be mis-
taken! But we fear it is only too true. If such turn out to be the case,
Orangeism becomes once more a necessity. We had been sanguine enough
to hope that all these abnormal appliances for the preservation of life and
order had become obsolete. We still do not despair that prompt and
vigorous measures on the part of the Imperial Government may supersede
the necessity of class associations. But Orange societies are at least open
and public. Ribbonism is secret and stealthy. The one professes adhe-
renceto the law; the other is called into existence contessedly because the
law is obnoxions. We have gloomy forebodings of what the ensuing
winter may bring forth among the wild and reckless populations of Kerry
and Donegal.

The Mayor and principal inhabitants of Newcvstle-upon-Tyne have
presented an address to Comte DE Mautcouirr, condoling with him on the
annoyance to which he has been subjected by the recent proceedings in
connection with the Northern Daily Express. Our own opinion upon
this transaction we expressed pretty freely last week. We do sincerely
sympathize with the Count himself, whose well-known character should
have protected him from the indecent attack which he experienced. At
the same time, we cannot extend that sympathy to the behaviour of his
son. Mr. MANTON was, doubtless, much to blame. lie either allowed him-
self to be the dupe of a designing person, or he knowingly propagated an
untruth. But capital punishment is in this country reserved for cases of
murder. Nor do we think that Mr. Mayrox's behaviour, under the
imminent threat of being left " a moist, unpleasant body" to the gaze of
his wife, at all such as to deprive him of our sympathy. When a writer
pens a libel, he does it with his eyes open. Ile knows what the penalty
is, and no private individual has a right to augment that penalty at his
own discretion. The aspersions of the Northern Daily Express have not
done M. DE MARicouscr the slightest harm. If fatal, their exposure was
certain to be complete and instantaneous. And we still :feel that the
young gentleman who seemed so desirous of conferring on the Newcastle
ed►tor the celebrity of M. PENE, should have paid rather dearer for his
pistol than he did.

The test of respectability seems to have dwindled down from a gig
to a gold watch. The fortunate possessor of this article seems at once to
become in the female eye et pukher et acer—in fact irresistible. A
" party," whose real name has not yet turned up, but whose initials, G. G.,
seem to have been expansive enough for all emergencies, has succeeded,
in virtue, as it seems, of this one piece of property, in marrying just as
many young women as he chose to ask. There seems indeed to have
been a touch of humour in G. G. which, if anything could, would have
induced us to look leniently on his transgressions. " He states that his vessel
is at Southampton, and that he makes short voyages," his voyages on the
stormy sea of matrimony being usually very short indeed. But we find
evidence, also, of a disposition which seems not quite so purely humorous,
in the fact that he was repeatedly found studying medical works, and that
he once acted as an accoucheur. As, however, none of the young ladies
who have succumbed to the attractions of the gold watch have as yet any
worse charge to bring against him than that of inconstancy, per-
haps we ought to stifle our suspic:ons in the birth. The only means by
which the proceedings of this general lover, and voyager of short voyages,
have been brought to light, was by repeated inquiries for G. G. at the
office of the Registrar for Seamen in Adelaide-place, London-bridge.
'I he inquiries, it is stated, have " invariably been made by females, who
" refuse their names and addresses, but whose object in coming to the
" office appears in each case to have been marriage." Unfortunately,
however, for them, the object seems rather to have been the recovery
than the discovery of a husband, the marriage ceremony having
already taken place. The gold watch which, together with 51.,
G. G. had received for saving a life, had, in most cases, done its
work, and the dupe was beyond hopes of recovery. Such are the outlines
of a case which came before the Lord Mayor on Wednesday last, and as
an example of male heartlessness and female credulity is, perhaps, unri-
valled. The particular complainant in this case was a lady whom G. G
had married in the name of GEER, a young and pretty woman, of whose
charms his Lordship appeared to be fully sensible, indulging at the same
time in a vein of moral reflection which must have been as novel as
refreshing to his auditory. " Ile was most anxious," said the lady, "to
"have
all the property settled upon me, in case he should prove a bad
`'husband." "It is only men of bad heart," said the Lord Mayor, " who
commence in that strain." All praise to our City Rochefoucault, and
to he al)
art young ladies bent upon matrimony at any price take his words
.

The vacancy for lAlancliester seems at present likely to be filled up
by the election of Mr. THOMAS BAZLEY. That gentleman has issued an
address in which he avows himself a disciple of the genuine Manchester
school, which seems to show that after all this particular school of politics
has not lost ground in our great manufacturing metropolis. Mr. COBDEN,
at was stated, would not solicit the suffrages of the electors, having de-
clared that he would offer himself as a candidate for no other place than
Rochdale. Notwithstanding the remarks of Mr. G. Parma, who said that
31°00 more votes would poll for Mr. BAZLEY than Mr. COBDEN, we are at
at lois to see the great difference between the opinions of these two gentle-
men. But it seems clear that Mr. COBDE-N has lost ground with the
PJPular constituencies, and we fancy we might venture on a prediction
that he is not destined to regain it. We believe we may state that it
_ not Lord STANLEY'S intention to offer himself as a candidate for
ganchester.

1057

The "Financial Position" of the Metropolitan Board of Works has
this week been given to the public. The cost of the works to which the
Board is immediately and prospectively pledged is something over seven
millions, and they not unnaturally ask the question where is the money to
come from. To raise it by direct taxation from the ratepayers of London
they seem to think impossible. Mr. Dourrom, the speaker on this occa-
sion, seemed to indicate that, in his opinion, some portion of the revenues
of the Corporation should be devoted to the purposes of the Board ; and
unquestionably, unless it can be shown that a portion of this revenue is
devoted to a similar purpose by its present receivers, there is some reason
in the proposal. How far any general system of indirect taxation would
be relished by the metropolitan public, we cannot undertake to say ; but
if these improvements are carried out, we must dip our hands pretty deeply
into our pockets at one time or another, and the sooner we get used to look
the prospect in the face the better.

Colonel Far. em has addressed a letter to the Times, in which he asserts
himself to be an injured individual, and seems to imply that he could clear
up everything and pay everybody twenty shillings in the pound if he chose.
We have heard of children playing at banging just to see how it felt;
of blasi; rakes taking to the backwoods ; but of all the odd species of curio-
sity, and of all the extraordinary methods of creating a new excitement,
Colonel WAUGH'S is certainly the strangest. Pretending to be a bankrupt
and a swindler just to taste what obloquy and execration meant ! Sated
with adulation, the Colonel took a fancy to being cursed. His jaded appe-
tite required some unnatural stimulant, and he certainly cannot complain
that he has been disappointed. But there is something absolutely Chli..;;
in this excess of unnaturalness. It is as if a man should slice off and eat his
own flesh, this battening on his own dead character ! To say nothing of
the fact that the misery which this little freak has occasioned is perfectly
true—and that widows and orphans have been starved by the score that
the Colonel might try a new sensation. We do not think he has bettered
his case.

One of our Universities has at length turned to bay. In recom-
mending that the Fellowships at St. John's and Trinity, Cambridge, should
be open to the competition of the whale University, the Commissioners
have acted on the same principle which governed their proceedings
at Oxford. But the enormous power which the two colleges in question
can bring to bear upon any academic controversy has enabled Cambridge
to be successful where the sister university failed. The two
proposed changes which have excited such violent opposition
are these—that College Fellowships should no longer be filled up
from among members of the college exclusively, but from the whole
University; .and that the Fellowships themselves should be tenable
for only ten years instead of for life. Now, practically, we know
that the colleges at Cambridge seldom have recourse to the alternative
open to them of electing men from other foundations. They profess to be
guided solely by the verdict of the schools, and simply require that a can-
didate for their Fellowships should have attained a certain position in the
public examinations. Now, mind, we are not in the least degree quarrelling
with the system. But what we maintain is, that the class of candidates is
thereby just as much narrowed as under the close-fellowship system at
Oxford. It is seldom that any college cannot find among its sixty or
seventy members some one who has fulfilled the required conditions. But
of all the first classmen of his year there is nothing to prevent his being
the worst. If it is true, as is said of Cambridge, that as a rule the
best men did get the fellowships always and everywhere, we reply that it
was equally true of Oxford. There were exceptions in both cases, but not
more in one than in the other. A first clansman was as rarely left without
a Fellowship at Oxford as at Cambridge, if he wanted one. But what is
effected at the latter University by the system which is now assailed was
effected at the former by the system of 'close Fellowships. The pressure
of competition was relieved, and men who, albeit first classmen, might
have been beaten in any open contest, were secured the reward of their
three years of labour. The benefit of such a system on society at large
is incalculable. For the encouragement of learning and the promotion of
mental culture brilliant prizes for the few are of far less importance than a
reasonable success for the many. The best man of his year at Oxford or
Cambridge is a man whose fortune is assured. He will neither remain at
the University as a teacher nor settle down in the provinces as a minor
centre of refinement and cultivation. He " soars far off amid the swans of
Thames." But what the country and the University require are just the
class of men we have described, and the prospect of a Fellowship is just
the kind of incitement which stimulates such men to work. Such was
the use of close Fellowships at Oxford—such is the use of the existing sys-
tem at Cambridge. We cannot help thinking that in the long run the
changes which have taken place at Oxford will prove injurious to the in-
terests of learning and mental culture. We are aware that predictions of
this kind can seldom be verified, because we are all interested in denying
their fulfilment. Nations, like individuals, are rarely conscious of the
steps by which they sink from one stage of degeneracy to another. The
laudator temporis acts belongs to a class that will probably never be ex-
tinct, but is after all not very numerous. The bulk of mankind are wor-
shippers of the present ; and whoever ventures to insinuate that in any one
particular we have changed for the worse, must expect nothing but the
contumely of his contemporaries. Should it come to pass, therefore, in
fifty years time that classical learning in Oxford had fallen below the
monkish standard, we doubt not many flourishing leading articles would
be written to show that it was all right, and that ROGEIi DE HOVEDIVI
was II better model of Latinity than CICERO Or TACXTUS.