The Express.
London, England, 1853-04-05 00:00:00

NEW FOREST DEER REMOVAL ACT AMEND-

MENT BILL.
This bill passed through committee.
_ .
_. BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.

Lord J. RUSSELL stated that on Friday evening his
right hon. friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer would
explain the proposition of which be had given notioe and
after that, they proposed to go into committee of supply on
the miscellaneous estimates.
LAW OF EVIDENCE (SCOTLAND) BILL.
Thu bill passed through committee.
OATHS IN CHANCERY BILL.
' This bill was read a third time and parsed.
MERCHANT SHIPPING BILL.
_ . .

On the order of the daifortnesecond reading of this bill,
Mr. TURNER presented petitions item the tewn council
of Liverpool and the dock trustees, praying that the bill
might not pass.
The bill was then read a second time.

TILE WRIT FOIL CANTERBURY.
Mr. K. SEYMER moved the turther suspension of the
writ for the City of Canterbury till the 2nd May nest.
The hcuse then adjourned at a quarter to eleven o'clock.

DREADFUL ACCIDENT AT A POLITICAL DEMON-
STRATION.-Sir John Maxwell, Bart., was entertained with
a dinner by his tenantry, at the Crops Keys, Cannobie, on
Friday last. W. N. Hodgson, Esq., of this city, was among
the guests. A correspondent says :—" Before the arrival
of the carriage containing Sir John and Mr. Hodgson, the
tenants demeaned themselves by supplying the place of the
horses and drawing the baronet along bite beasts of burden.
Oite of them, Mr. John Ferguson (who also farms under
Sir James Graham), fell beneath the wheels, and sustained
injuries of so severe a nature that his life is despaired of.—
Carlisle ✓iurnal.

4he erprefigi.

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L' DON. TUESDAY. APRIL S.

DISENTANGLED from the historical and explanatory
remarks of Lord JOHN RUSSELL, the Government
proposition about education may be described
in very few words. In the first place, it is
not a plan for National Education, but only a scheme
for patching here, and improving there, the school
systems now in operation. It is a plan that will
require an additional vote of money from the taxes,
and that promises in some degree to render the many
local endowments of the country more available
for educational purposes than heretofore, but it
makes no attempt to give education to every child
born into a community, in which such child is
sure to be either a benefit or a nuisance in propor-
tion to his good or evil training. Following, to some
extent, the view that has been put forward in these
columns—in reference to local management and the
adaptation of local funds to really educational tares,—
Lord Jonx Itussr.u. proposes to give Town Coun-
cils the power of levying a rate in aid of voluntary
school payments. This recognition of the principle
of an educational rate is, perhaps, the must valu-
able part of the plan ; and, together with
the proposition for reforming the endowed schools,
gives the scheme some claim to support as an accept-
able instalment of Educational Reform. This rate
is only to be available where voluntary effort is active,
and where the children themselves are enabled to
contribute their " pence ;" whilst all the schools
so assisted by a rate will be to some extent
under the control of the Committee of Coun-
cil of Education, by having accredited masters. Thus
far this is only giving to local bodies a power
of self-taxation in something like the same cases
and in about the same proportion that aid was hereto-
fore obtainable on application to the Privy Coun-
cil from their fund. The rates, when raised, are
to be distributed by a committee of the Town
Council to schools of different denominations, whilst
in places where there is no Town Council to do this
work of self-taxation and distribution—aid is to be
still obtainable from the Privy Council. In other
words, the towns are to be allowed to tax
themselves, whilst the poor in rural places—the
tenants ;aid labourers of the squires,—will be provided
with schoolmasters out of the general taxation of the
country ; this system all the while being in no sense
truly national, but merely an extension, with some
improvements, of the present sectional and sectarian
arrangements. The part of the scheme that proposes
to deal with local charities will meet general ap-
proval. Everyone will agree with Lord JOIIN Rus-
SELL when be speaks of the uselessness of many
local charities—such as distributing six loaves ut
bread at Christmas, and so ou. Yet, on these now
wasted gifts is frittered away a large total sum of
money that may be very much better spent in giving
to youth the food of learning than to sturdy beggars
the bread of idleness. Besides the sum derivable
from useless charities, no less than 312,0901.
'a year has been bequeathed by benevolent and pious
persons for purposes of education. We have be-
fore now exposed the plunder and waste of
this important national fund ; and with groat
satisfaction, therefore, we now find at last a
Mini er proposing to deal with the abuse, and
intending to turn to purely educational uses,
funds bequeathed for national benefit. The
Committee of the Privy Council are to be vested
with power for securing the reform of these educa-
tional endowments, and they may win a large and
noble share of public gratitude if they deal with
the great work in a large, wise, and courageous spirit.
So far, then, as the partial concession to localities of
power to levy a rate is concerned, and so far also as
the proposition goes for reforming the educational
and special charitable endowments, the Government
are entitled to distinct commendation. But how small
this concession is—when compared with the great-
ness of the need—we only see when wo compare
what is to be done with what is to be left undone.
We ask for industrial training for those thousands
of human waifs and strays of our towns and
villages, who, when left to themselves, ripen
into " dangerous classes." We ask educational
training for classes specially needing it, and are'
offered a mere extension of present defective plans
—in which these thousands arc ignored. We need
really national instruction that shall include all—we
are to get a School of Science and Art. N e want
realities, and are offered makeshifts and ornaments.
It reminds us of the ploughmen, who, when starving
for lack of bread, were advised by a Duke to try curry-
powder. And hereon hinges another recollection.
The surplus fund of the Great Exhibition was
parasitically voted by those who held it that
a royal whim might be tickled by the esta-
blishment of a Valhalla at Kensington. This
doom of the surplus gave an excuse to Mr.
DISRAELI to get another large sum from the House
of Commons to be devoted to the Kensington scheme
—and now, when we ask for education for the
people, we find this Valhalla School of Art starting
np again, to be woven into any plan that Parliament
may sanction as an instalment of public education.
Schools for teaching every child to read and write and
cypher are not to be had because the Coalition Mi-
nistry are afraid to grapple with sectarian objections;
bat in offering science for those who are denied
the knowledge of A 13. C—there is no difficulty.
The outcasts may still be outcasts,—but we shall
see that Belgravia will get its Kensington Valhalla.
Good old stories are always finding new illustra-
tions. When the groans of a starving nation were
heard through the very windows of a palace, and the
wail was soil, "Bread, bread, or we die," "If
they can't get bread," said a pitying Princess, "why
don't they live on pound cakes?" So will some say
of Lord JOHN RUSSELL'S Educational speech. The
wail is for the bread of learning, for those utterly
destitute—for mental food to lift our Pariahs into
the ranks of intelligent men, and Lord JOHN says,
" Let them thrive on science and art at Marl-
borough-house." Science and Art are both admirable
things,—but what we want first is National Educe ,
tion. Give all the children in the land the weapons
of learning, and you will have men of Science and
of Art springing, more abundant than ever, from the
ranks, just as BRINDLEY ARK WRIGHT, FARADAY,
HOGARTII, sprung without the aid of Royal Com-
missions.

In speaking of these advocates for National Edu-
cation who see in the sectarian element the one
great difficulty blocking the road of progress, Lord
JOHN ItUsSELL did not behave quite fairly. They
are advocates of Education because they know it to
be the help and mainstay of morality and of religious
purity and elevation. They merely demand, for the
sake of society and of the individuals composing it,
that every child should be rescued from ignorance.
The tolerant men who would educate all are the best
friends of morals and of true faith. And with this
protest we may repeat that the Government Scheme
can be only accepted as an instalment which we
verily believe might have been much better worth
taking had we bad in this matter to deal only with
Lord JOHN RUSSELL, and not with a Coalition Whig-
Peelite Cabinet.

,
ITER MAJESTY, we learn from last Friday's
Gazette, has been pleased to ordain that Manchester
shall be ennobled—raised from the plebeian grade of
a borough to the dignity of a city. In the case of
individuals such announcements are usually followed
by a line or two in the report of the next levee or
drawing-room, intimating that suoh or suet& a', ono
was presented, by such or such an one, c be4,,,g pro_
meted to the rani: ot,—&c. But how e..• present a city,
and that city a Manchester, in tho B.eyal circle is a
problem that might pilule the most experienced
master of ceremonies—a Pulurdous himself, if Ham-'
Zvi had left him alive.

A still more interest'.ng matter of speculation is
what effect this inert..4sc of worldly dignity may have
upon the bearing and deportlnent of Manchester
itself. 'What amount of re.,,pectful deference will it
exact from its tit.igit'',our Salford, which remains as

before simply a borough? One consequence of the
change in the rank of Manchester we think we can
foresee. There,—as in the seaport town where
,Merest." It was the " gentlemanly
young Martin Chu:demi! and ilark Tapley Lintlei
that fort.::d the. main strength of
on thei.' return from America,—there is a
last election. Now, as the old c.. Ty-book line hark
iC"nagetleirtitislnte"ml)alMAN'S and Nrr.
.tAXII'S suntuArters at
it, " Honours change manners," the "elevation" in-
cident to men promoted from being mere burgesses
to being citizens is not unlikely to increase the num-
bers of the "gentlemanly interest." Will they be
ambitious of having one of their representatives, at
least, a lord ?

Again, how will the addition to the rank and
honour of Manchester be taken by other boroughs
which have been act:Warned to regard themselves as
at least its equals ? Liverpool believes more firmly in
its own superiority to Manchester in respect of gen-
tility than it dues in the Bible. Birmingham, which
before the days of the Anti-Corn-Law League looked
upon itself as the birth-place of its own Political
Union of the Reform movement of 1ti:;0, has ever
since the repeal of the Curet Law been strangely
jealous of the notoriety acquired by the birthplace of
the League, as eclipsing in sonic measure its own
more antiquated notoriety. Both will be apt to insist
that they have as good a right to be, and be called,
cities as Manchester, unless it,deed they affect—as
some old families among our country gentry afkct
to look devils upon new creations in the Peerage—to
despise the mushroom honours of Manchester. Even
Leeds, Slit tfield, and other places, with more slender
claims to rivalry with Manchester than Liverpool the
genteel, or Birmingham the stardy, may feel within
them stirrings of jealousy or envy at the promotion
of Manchester.
The path, however, which all as yet unennoltled
bornglis which may aspire to the rank to which
Manchester has attained, will have to pursue for the
fulfilment of their ambitious desires is plain enough.
Manchester has been made a city, not because of its
magnitude, or of its wealth, or of the genius thereiu
displayed for the invention and perfection of ma-
chinery and its applications ; no, nor because it was
the stronghold of Jacobitical Toryism in the north
before it was converted to democracy, nor because of
the power it has in these latter days shown itself to
possess of can-ying points upon which it has
set its heart in defiance of the banded effhrts of the
aristocracy and hierarchy of England—Manchester
has been made a city because etiquette requires that
the metropolitan seat of a bishop shall be a city.
So if Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, or
any other borough, wises to be, like Manchester,
transformed into a city, it has only to submit like
Manchester to be Bishoped.