The Express.
London, England, 1851-03-14 00:00:00

LONDON; FRIDAY, MARCH 14.

THE bill fur the prohibition of English territo- 1
rial titles to be conferred by the POPE, and worn 1
by his agents, has certainly the demerit of being ,
scarcely a legislative act. In no monarchy. except 1
our own, in which the legislature participates in
so mans- functions of the executive, would the I •
1
national representation have been recurred to for I
sash a purpose. An edict of the sovereign I
would have annihilated and repelled these aggres- , I
1
sive acts of a foreign sovereign, by which the
QUEEN and her protestant subjects were hurt. '
The law, however, afforded no possibility of this,
as the cunning antagonists of prottstantism well
knew. So that a recurrence to parliament was un-
avoidable, either to enable the crown to repel the
insult, or to go further, if necessary, and place re-
strictions upon the arrogant and aggressive assump-
tions of an avowedly hostile, exorbitant, and menacing I,
power.
The decision of the government was to repel the
insult merely, and not to proceed to repression or
restriction, en the hopes that an act repelling the
assumption of titles, a merely formal prohibition,
implying neither hardship nor peraecution, would,
being unanimously carried in parliament, and sup-
ported in the country, have the salutary effect of
deterring the Pore and his agents from any of those
steps of ulterior aggression, which must call for
more severe and stnngent enactments to put them
down. To satisfy public feeling at home, warn
foreign antagonism abroad, to allay excitement, and
prelude the necessity of recurring to those express
laws of restriction and prevention which every state
in Europe, catholic as well as protestant, has been
obliged to throw up as entrenchments against the
Poee—thia was evidently the view and the aim of
ministers.
We regret to say, that this aim is not likely to be
attained. Instead a protestants and liberal catholics
rallying round the throne, and enabling the legisla-
ture to protect it, party feeling has cooly to mingle
with it, and converted into a political qu'stion what
ought not to have been treated as S u elk. The oh-'
jectors to the bill were, first of ;all, those who did not
' think it went far enough, and who wire anxious,
without waiting to give the l'ore. any lortm peni-
testis., to proceed at once to restrictions and serious
disqualification*. On the opposite side thaw, who
' objected to the bill, did so because they
viewed the established church with warmly
less jealousy than they did the church of
Rome, looking upon it not as one of the protestant
sects, or as the mint powerful protestant bulwark
against Rome, but as an obstacle which, if humbled
I and pulled down, the protestant feeling and organi-
! bonen of the middle classes in Eligland would be
more capable than before, of resisting the encroach-
mints
of the propaganda of Rome. We cannot hut''
' think this a most profound, a most deplorable, a
' most fatal mistake, being confident that it requires a
(*rebel union between every protestant element of
the churthea in this country to resist them.
The moat fatal enemies to the bill arc, however.

the professional politicians, the arr, or the would-b,
who eschew all legislation that is trouble-
some, and whose sole policy consists in either keeping
or getting office, doing everything that contributes
to that one great end, and carefully eschewing every-
thing that stands in the way of it. Such are the
Wades, the condottieri of modern political warfare ;
men who put on armour, and caracole, and go
through the semblance without the reality of war,
having no feeling hut for their profession. and no
policy but to get employed, and satisfy their em-
ployers by doing so much and no more tlian is neces-
sary. As to any religious or loyal feeling in such
men, it is a mockery to look for it. Protestants
though they he in their quality of tories, they would
not offend VisEtiss for the world, for they want
WNEM.oes band of voters to make up their ma-
jority. And they find it much more promising and
profitable to trucitle to Rome, and make their organ
in the press the Pores organ, alum to display ono
spark of loyal Wing fur the Qui.l::s, or of honest
sympathy for the Protestant cause.
Hence we regret to say, owing to the party views
of the torits, to the Puseyism of some of the Peel-
ites, and the dishonesty of the rest, owing to the
anti-church feeling of many liberals, the American
inditfrrence of others, owing also to the lulu-
warmness of many Whigs, who dislike difficulties in-
curred for conscientv-sake us much as the Peel-
ites, and owing to the position of many more,
who are Irish landlords, and who desire to obtain

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their rents under the tolerances of the priesthood,
that measure of warning and repression to Rome,
which. if unanimously carried, might have acted as
an efficient and definitive repression, is but too likely
to fail in its effect.
For this we blame parliament and its parties, not
Lord JOHN ltnissal- We have always thought his
Durham letter a noble one, expressing true English
feeling with all the warmth and frankness of im-
pulse. We confess that we even like it better
because of its very impolicy, and because of
its evincing a spirit so much above the time-
serving, tide-waiting prudence of our day, which
estimates a statesman by his cunning, and
his soul by his success. ft Lord ions had not
brought forward any measure, we will be bound to
say that the tories would have introduced one, and
that the Peelites would have helped and headed
them, and that both would have been now in place
together on the strength of it. Those who exclaim
against the present proposed legislation would do
well to remember what would have been the con-
sequence of no legislation.
This. however, is nut now the question. The
object now is- for we believe that no party desires
to overthrow the ministry and neceasitate a dissolu-
tion—how to repel the papal aggression in the way
best calculated to preclude a repetition or extension
of it, and to do this without indicting any real griev-
ance upon Roman catholic-. The present bill, as it
now stands, without the clauses referring to trusts,
would be an acceptable oue, provided it secured
unanimity, and was admitted by liberal catholies to
he no more than the unwarranted aggression of the
Pure. called for. But unfortunately the bill, as
mutilated by Sir GEORGE GREY, in that most logical
speech of his with its most impotent conclusion, fulfils
none of these conditions. The Roman catholics ex-
claim against it. The dissensions in parlia-
ment have rendered them triumphant ; and
nothing will satisfy them save Queen Vicrottia go-
ing,upon her knees to Pon Plus, or his nuncio, and
erring perrari. We °lliad most strenuously to this,
and fancy that the people of England are of our
mind. On the other hand. the bill thus denounced
by the Roman catholics is equally repudiated by the
Protestants. So that the passing of it would seem
to answer none of the purposes for which it was
intended.
We think, therefore, that it would be advisable
to restore the trust clauses to their place in
the bill, strictly limiting their operation to deeds or
wills hereafter to be executed. and declaring at the
same time that these provisions are to be inoperative,
wherever the prohibited titles may hare been used
through ignorance or inadvertence. Any educated
Roman catholic might henceforth devise his property
to the prelates of his persuasion. or to the Comm-
sioners of Bequests, quite as sately. wording the titles
according to the statute, as against the statute.
There is neither hardship nor persecution in such as
enactment; and we du think that the times require
no less.

Tur. Kaffir war of 18.700-31 differs materially from
all that havo prcvedtd it. As the Frontier 7', null
(Orahant's Town) of the 21st of January remarks,l
The present is not a cattle war." On all former
oepasion, titimeroui miniuding lauds sway all into
tlsepalony by every dri.ti . and spread. plundering as
they went over the greater part of Ow eastern dis-
tricts. On the present occasion, with a few excep-