The Express.
London, England, 1848-11-14 00:00:00

restage, &c., are fixed on a proportionate male, in
oiler that they may be sufficient to reward the hangers
es of British ministers, whs of course ape the habits
and expenditure of their patrons. It is only in be-
half of its own nominees that Do ' -street insists
upon sack exorbitant salaries; the are left
tree to pare down the WOMEN of all other public see-
vents. They may multi' the scanty emoluments of
curates, bat they are not to teach the inmate of
rectors t they may »dose the salary of the reamer-
general, but not of the Governor. They may pat
upon duet &Bowsaw all hard-working men whose
reenmeratio• is barely adequate to their support;
bat they mast not deduct a stiver from the excessive
salaries of sentioinecurista. They may be stingy to all
wham they themselves electoot of their own
ta;rplemt they may not retrench at the expense of
stranger whom government sends to amass fortunes
by living a few years among them.
The Colonial-office takes Its ground upon a com-
post. The Sitgoeks, whom it has sent out, claim
Heir pounds of bosh in virtue of a bond. The civil
list is said to have been voted till 1833. The colo-
nists argue in vain that since they voted that civil hat
their property has been deteriorated—their means of
paying taxes diminished—by measures of the home
government to which they were not, and were not
asked to be, consenting parties. They say that
government has no right to hold them to a
in which it has disenabled them to fulfil. it is
less to enter into this controversy ; for it is suffi-
eiently apparent from the a7ts of govern • cut that it
only pleads the compact to gain time, and has no in-
tention to allow the salaries in question to be reduced
oven when its term expires. Earl GREY has told the
Combined Court that they are at liberty to reduce the
Governor's salary when a vacancy occurs. But when
Earl ORET wrote this he had before him the request
of the Court of Policy that all the salaries on the civil
list might be reduced 25 per cent. That request was
transmitted to him long before Governor LIGHT TO-
tired. Governor Lions's successor has not yet been
sworn in, and yet Earl ORET insists that the salary
shall be kept op at the old exorbitant amount.
These colonial appointments are notoriously made by
ministers of all parties rewards for political partisans.
lithe preen t Governor of Van Diemen's Land had not
apsndtdlarge sums in contesting a county. would he
ever have been sent to fill an office foe which he is so
palpably incompetent ? Was it to their own merits,
at the political influence of themselves or families,
that men lika Lord FALKLAND OT NIL FITZROY owed
their nominations? Government fights far the civil
list in the colonies, in order to retain the means of
eserapting members of parliament and influencing
elections. The commnnitw of the mother country have
as great an interest as Guiana or any other colony in
seeing the enormous salaries of the colonial civil lists
reduced to a reasonable amount; in seeing the civil list,
like the rested the colonial estimates, left to be adjusted
by local elective legislatures.
This is not the only reason why it is our interest
here at home to see what is called the civil list placed
upon the same footing ea the rest of the local
colonial expenditure. In Guiana there is not one
resident who does not disapprove of the conduct
of government on the present occasion. With one, or
at the must with two, exceptions, the non-oflicial
members of the Combined Court are resolute to main-
tain the attitude they have assumed. We shall be
told that they represent the aristocracy of the colony,
not the inhabitants at large. It is tree ; but the
issrehants are paying the duties imposed by the
Governor under protest. Would an elective legislature
sleeted by any more extensive and direct suffrage
than the present be more manageable on the
seam of the civil list ? The one or two
members of the Combined Court who dissent
from the course pursued by the majority, the two
newssepers which argue against that course, are as
lone. in their condemnation of the conduct of govern.
meat as the majority; they only despair of emcees,
and fear being engaged in an unavailing struggle.
The Governor and the other officials on the civil list
stand alone in the colony ; the net of the population
consists either of active opponents or discontented neu-
trals. Government can only exact its civil list by co-
ercion ; and Guiana may not be long an isolated
sample of active or passive resistance to government.
The next mail may bring us news that the Assembly
of Jamaica has refused to vote the sup-
plies. The mail after that may inform um that
Trinidad, emulating the sister colonies, has refused to
pay the taxes imposed by the nominees of the crown.
When Englishmen resident in our colonies see Ger-
mans and Sclavonians claiming the right to tax them-
selves, is it to be expected that they will submit to
pay any taxes but what themselves impose? Our
home government stands to the colonial populations
in exactly the same relation that the kings of the con-
tinent do to their subjects. If the people and parlia-
meat of Great Britain support government in its con-
test with the inhabitants of British Guiana, they must
count upon being put to the expense of a fruitless
attempt to govern the West Indies by coercion.
It is not in the West Indios alone that the example
of Guiana is likely to be followed. The civil list is a
grievance of our Australian colonists also. New-
foundland complains of being governed by an irre-
sponsible council. The Cape of Good Hope is writh-
ing under clique rule. Bat we are trenching on the
general questions of local responsible government, and
of self sepporticg government for the colonies, sub-
jects which are ample enough to require being dia-
mond by themselves.

Ws are much too intent on benefiting the town of
Sunderland and the Church therein, now that there is
an opportunity, to allow the Express to fall into
a controversy as to the mode of achieving that object
with the local organ of the Durham clergy; more es-
'easily as it means what it does not say, and says
what it does not mean; and as we have no resc for
that seal which slept whilst its patrons were B-
ing the church whose ministers they were, and which
is now lively only for the purpose of scattering objec-
tions on the only plan of comprehensive improvement
that has been suggested.
The town and borough of Sunderland are an unity;
and to allow imaginary lines of parochial demarca-
tion therein to prevent all its inhabitants having
equal spiritual advantages according to the means
there poessesed by the church of England, is, we
assert without fear of contradiction from any reason-
able being, an net of great injustice to that part of the
town on which any such disadvantage is imposed.
But further, we say that now the rectory of
Bishop Wearmouth is vacant, and that the op-
portunity of equalizing the spiritual advantages
of the church throughout the town is there-
by afforded to the Bishop of Dottaaa, the
prolongation of the existing inequality will not only
be an dot of great, but of unmeresrary and areQath
injuetioe; far which, in the sight of man at least, that
prelate will henceforth be entirely responsible. If be do
perpetuate it, to him and to hie memory will have to be
ascribed the increase of dissent and the augmentation
civics and ignorance in that town. We implore Dr.
MALTBY, tbri, to think on what he is about to do ; to
look at the matter he has now in hand in •
tersapreliensive spirit, to disregard the influences
which the power to bestow rich livings creates,
to conquer the petty difficulties of the case, and to
act worthy of that church which has given him so
princely winsome. His reputation, his good am%
his future fame, are all at stake. The into-
nate pecuniary terms he made on his besides
from Chichester to Durham, poorly and inadequately
recompensed to the church by the 2.0001. a-yeee he
has at last returned to the Ecclesiastical Commission;
the bestowal of the beet li • in his gift that has be-
come vacant during his incum or the see on his
own son ; the ill-advised arrangement which, to the
pecuniary benefit of his patron's soli, be recently made
at Houghton-le-Spring ; his patronage of whig noble-
men's relatives to good livings, to the exclusion of north
osuntry el men; widths indifference with which he
has the ecclesiastical wade perpetrated by his
clergy have all, liberal though he be, tended to de-
prive him of the confidence and respect of thorn who
desire to have the church reformed on church prin-
ciples. And another false step taken by him at Sun-
derland (more particularly if it advance the temporal
interests of another whig aristocrat) will be perfectly
intact title. The trebling of all his local charities
(and we are not in the least disposed to undervalue
their present amount) will form no palliative cr ex-
e for the
_perpetration of a job at Sunderland.
Hive a are, Dr. MALTBY ! have a care!
There is literally no excuse beraid the defective
state of the law (which can easily be remedied by the
enactment of a statute applicable to this particular
ease), for hesitating to give equal epiritiial advantages
to the whole town of Sunderland. There are, for the
present at lewd, funds enough; and there is an oppor-
tunity which, %meted, may not recur for the next