The Express.
London, England, 1851-02-15 00:00:00

TO COBRESPONDZIIITO.

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LONDON, B.I7I'I:DAY, FEBRUARY 15.

MR. lbstt %EU Is nut making progress. Ili. mi-
nority af 251 votes last year against 273 has swelled,
to one 4 267 against 281. But of these 267, a scare
or more were the vetoes of Irish malcontents. who in,
supporting Mr. ',ISRAELI Were in nowise thinking,
of either free trade or protection, but. some of them,
at least, well assured that the former would take,
care of itself, swelled Mr. Itisast.t.i's numbers'
merely to punish Lord hurt RUSSELL fur extending
his anti-papal legislation to Ireland.
Such vote and sack conduct were scarcely fair on
the part of these Irish gentlemen, who thus
jeopardied the policy of England's best statesmen,
p
achieved and followed out for years. in order to
stow their power and indulge in a temporary pique.
The policy, too. whirl' they thus did their utmost to
reverse and to destroy. was that of the best friends of
Ireland, of Roman catholic emancipation, and of Irish
equality. The policy was that of liberals and whigs
and mialerate eonsenatives, of in fact every shade
and degree of progress. and by throwing all of whom
into a minority. these Irish members avowedly risked
their ejection front office, and their being replaced by
the most inveterate enemies, of Ireland, of toleration,
and of Roman catholicism.
We fear much that the Irish liberal members,
although they fortunately failed in this their strenuous
efforts to bring their hitchrate enemies into power,
will have produced ulterior results highly prejudicial
to themselves. The large majority of 395
against 63 fur the Anti-Eapal Bill is the first
result. It cannot but sink into the English
mind that if the industrious classes of this country
have been saved from a relapse to dear corn and
scanty provisions in Isdl, they owe them to a nar-
row majority of fourteen, their Irish brethren, who
hitherto supported the good cause, having been
found ready to abandon it, in order that Father
14.11 tie might sign himself Tuam, and Car-
dinal Cuu.rst enjoy the spurt of proscrib-
ing Irish education front the chair of an epis-
copal synod. It is lung since we declared that
the cause of free trade—however secure in the
country, that would never give it up without a
struggle - was still by no means consolidated in par-
liament. And we have all along urged an extension of
the franchise. and a fairer apportionment of it amongst
the industrious classes, as the only way of procuring
a parliament directly representsz public opinion
Lard
and in full sympathy with it. Jowl RUSSELL
and his colleagues have too long trifled with this real
and clear necessity. They have preferred leaning
on the unstable votes of Irish members, who
must make their obeisance to the idol of Rome'
instead of trusting what is so much an English ques-
tion to the fairly enfranchised masses of the English

people.
hot only, in truth, has this lukewarm liberalism,
this stationary policy of the whips, put it in the
power of a wore of Trish defectionists to jeopardise
the whole policy of the counter, but it deprived the
free-trade cause in the hour of danger of several of
its natural defenders. We noted some stanch liberal
names in the list of the minority, flung there by no
tenderness for the Pore, but in the belief that free
trade had of late been converted into a mere cloak
for convenient conservatism. The wonder, indeed,
is, that more liberals were not flung into fatal re-
sistance from the same disgust.
We must do Mr. DtsitAELl the justice to say that
he angled adroitly for them, that he at least did his
utmost to display his motion as anything but a pro-
tectionist maticeurre. No one could have more
frankly flung overboard the superannuated nonsense,
of his party. No one could have promised fairer to
most Weald antagonists on the ground of inquiry
mad mind ansawkipi. Whilst so poor was the CM IS

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