The Express.
London, England, 1848-10-18 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, WEDNESDAY EVENING, OC MEER 18, iBO.

inure men of weak rands and maid tempers.
Bairn °Barn woo, both PI public and
on personal grou•Ade, a discontented man. The
policy of progressive amelioration far Ireland,
for which he had long and laboriously toiled,
had altogether failed tailed even of giving hint per-
sona infismes or position. He, too, readily learned
Isig ascribe both rebate to one common cause, and t"
Identify popular resentments with his own. Then
aims its *olefins of O'Cutensu. Would he but
j bin in demanding " the repeal," imam was
ennlem—lreland woad be saved! To the neglected,
slighted, and uncheered man, the words of the
ebereser were as an elixir of new life. The pre-
sumptuous dream. of boyish ambition caws back
mess more. Fascinated by the eye, and intoxicated
►y the sweet flatteries of trenatteth, his vanity ex-
panded; his half-forgotten claims to ancestry revived,
and bursting with condescension and patriotism, he
agreed at last to ooaleace with O'Currtrehh. and thus
lame the final redemption of his country. For months
O'Cusiatht suffered him to strut about in the stipu-
lated capacity of joint kingship, and the poor fellow
actually believed in his perfect parity with that ex-
traordinary man until weary of his pedantry and
presumption the mockery was tut an end to by his
summary expulsion, in company with all who more
immediately adhered to him.
But not even this, nor other useful and pitiable
falls which subsequently awaited him, could dispel
the loved illusion. Pelted at B:lfast, and beaten at
Limerick by the populace, " in whose affection," as
he used to tell the world, "he felt unspeakably
proud," he still reamed on,—at Cork reproving
persons for prematurely saluting him es " King of
Munster," and at Mullinahone offering to take
the police "into his pay!" His monomania
cents to have consisted in the notion, that with a
military cap on his head and a sharp-pointed pole is
his hand he and a few hundred miserables like him.
self. cinild dethrone the Queen and separate Irelaad
from England. Sometimes he raved about establish-
ing a republic ; sometimes a cu•ious dreamy notion of
a Celtic monarchy in the restored line of the Bons.
mums appeared to haunt his imagination. But all
was alike, incoherent, impotent, and illusory.
We feel confident that government has all along
felt the strongest disinclination to spill the blood of
so vain and foolish an individual, even after the vain
defiance which he flung to the court and to his sove-
reign on his last appearance before his judges, an act
of semi-lunacy, like all the rest of his acts, at variance
with the tone of his defence, damaging to himself, and
still more damaging to his comrades awaiting their
triaL No advantage is to be derived from rigour.
SMITII O'BRIEN has fully made of himself an example.
Foolish as he is, his mad extravagance was but the
exaggerated consequence of a feeling very general in
Ireland, a feeling which dwells in minds too honour-
able and patriotic not to be rooted deeper by vindic-
tive rigour. Mercy in the present instance is policy,
as well as magnanimity.

ter of a °eatery ago. Thee, a man might
spring from the bar, or from the hunting saddle, or
the university, and give vent at once to a stream of
eloquent° on the political topic of the day. But now,
polities have become a tedious and complicated sci-
ence, with • library to be preliminarily read through
sod mastered,ahnost as tinge and dry as the lawyers'.
Political eminence mast now be the r. suit of study,
not improvisation. And great experience acquired
either by study, by aloe, i. business, or in lung con-
verse with one's fellow man, can alone entitle any
one to rise and act the politician. The teak is too
much for the occupation of the barrister, and too se-
rious for the listlessness of the squire. The press it-
self has become a very difficult study and
profession, in which declamation, or diatribe,
or ringer appeals, . can co longer suffice. The
quart Waters of political experience is no longer
enough for it. And, far from thinking with either
the t imes or Lord BROUGHAM, that the power of the
press can be easily procured, or likely to be wantonly
exercised, and therefore desirable to be rendered insig-
nifirsot or anonymous, we rather imagine that the
profession will become more difficult, more respected,
and more important. Ass long as, like the Times and
Lord BROUGHAM, the world refuses due respect and
importance to journalists, they will try to escape
from their position, or essay to make it • stepping stone,
as in France, to political influence. But If, on
the contrary, any intellectual profession be re-
spooned and remunerated, as it ought, those who
follow it will stay in it and display that gravity
of c induct and steadiness of prisciple generally
wanting in those who fling down the pen to
address the senate, and who, when at their des.s,
neglect conscieutiousneas, dignity, and truth, in their
anxiety to force their wey into public notice, office. or
emolument.
The press, however, is a small part of a very great
question, the question of how statesmen are to be
reared snd political talent supplied. As it hi, we are
lamentably deficient in both, so deficient that,
instead of jealously forbidding this or that profes-
sion to furnish the requisi.° combination of
brains and experience, we should gladly grasp at
every particle of statesmsnlike skill that can be
tout d. One thing is evident, which is, that the aris-
tocracy can no longer furnish the supply. If to.yism
was effete twenty years ago, whiggism is still more
effete how. Neither of the great parties have the
requisite quantum of talent to adniiiiiiiter the affairs
of the country, and it is doubtful if even they could
command enough by coalescing. In the meantime
the envious shade of this same aristocracy has pro.
vented the growth of popular talent and a truly
popular party. It is for the people and the middle
clam a of England to look to this, and get rid of some
of their prejudices. F.T as long as the opinion pre-
vails, such as that wt job dominates the good people
of Liverpool, that stateemanlike talent can only be
found in conjunction with a title and high birth, so
long will the country have the present aimlessness of
general policy, incapacity of particular administra-
thins. and hopaleskness of financial retrieval.

LORD BROUGHAM and the Times are at issue u to
the most effectual means of rendering journalists in-
significant. His lordship thinks tha', in order to the
attainment of this des rable end, it is merely necessary
for the writers to name themselves. The 'limes, on the
contrary, thinks that their wholesome obscurity is
best preserved by the anonymous.
Singular to say, each champion is a striking illus-
tration of the failure of the procription in both cases.
Lord BenVOIIAM, throughout his whole life, has been
nothing but • very active journalist, a writer by
the day and hour, thrusting his pen and its
diurnal products into the face of the public
in an hundred shapes, and gleaning hie tithe of fame
from eaeh of his effusions. Lord Ban GUAM has
gained lettered renown front no book." His first
great book on colonial policy is eiefli.cee and common-
place; and all the books which ho has written since,
including his French "Life of Voltaire," and the novel
which he cancelled in shame, are of the lowest grade
of literary mere. It is by essays and speeches, made
prop,s, on the business of the hour, that Lord
BROUGHAM has risen. His genius was diurnal, emi-
nently so; and it was by putting forward day after
day the notorious penmanship and physiognomy of
HENRY BROUGHAM that he reacher some sixteen
years ago the trirneoce, whit'. his friends found to be
undue.
Lord BROUGHAM, however, is able to escape what
he considers the stiginn of being a journalist, by the
facilities afforded him of coming before the public as
an orator and • quarterly essayist. This, however,
should have rendered him more lenient towards the
French, whose entire at men have had no other mode
of approaching or addressing the public than through
the daily press. Let it be recollected that in France
there has always been a law in forte against associa-
tions, that one could not collect a score of friends at
dinner or breakfast hour to address them, without
being seized and cast into prison perhaps by the
police. Louts PHILIPPR would not al.ow opposition
deputies to dine together; nay, he would not allow
an itinerant preacher to addrees an audience. A group
in the street, • gathering in a garden, a club for
reading and lecturing, was illegal. Add to this, that
there existed no provincial bar of any consequence, as
in theolder times of the monarchy; the revolution and
the empire had centralised everything, and destroyed
those nurseries of oratorical and political talent which
furnished the members of the Gironde, and so many
eminent provincials to the Convention. Any youth
with the consciousness of talent had no resource but
to his to Paris and enter the only lists open—those of
the public press.
A question may here suggest iiselt—was not the
French bar open to a man of popular talent, like
HENRY BROUGHAM—at least, the bar of the metro-
polis? But no, the bar in Frames led to nothing. All
the official places of the law, from the Attorney-Gene.
ears substitute to the highest judge, were filled, not
by men who distinguished themsi Ives at the bee, but
by men bred to their official functions. The rieepisirre
lure formed a class apart. The bar was &vulgar, pro-
fitless, and aimless profession. In few instances was
there a jury to adieu. No functionary could be
prosecuted for any act. In short, the bar was no
avenue to public lile, and eves a professorship at the
university was considered a better opening into
public lite.

Tne questions which appear at this moment to
engross most of the public attentira in Canada are
electoral reform and the postal relations of the British
empire with the United States. There is nothing in
either that can endanger the permanence of the con-
u. :ion of Canada with the mother-country, if the
true principles of colonial government are adhered to.
But if the ultra-centralisation system of our bur. au-
cracy, and the subordinatiote of col meld interests and
a point of f..lsc national honour guide our rulers,
ho'h or either may materially weaken that connexion.
The question of electoral reform, as we have re-
peatedly
argued, is one which concerns the people of
Canada alone, and ought to be left entirely to their de-
cision. The qualification for welcoming the elective fran-
chise. and the beat mode of exercising it may mosteafely
be lift to their judgment. They know feelingly the
psi 'sure of interests, and the distribution of power in
their society, and are, therefore, beat able to devise an
electoral constitution adapted to them. Whatever
reform bill may pass the Canadian legislature ought
at once and wi bout qua,ification to be sanctioned by
the ministers of the crown. We would not have it
inferred from this that we feel confident that the first
reform bill passed by the Canadian legislature will be
II Perfect, but that it will be more exactly correspondent
to the existing state of public opinion in the colony—
more likely to be acceptable at the time than any
that can be devised here. And whctever defects it may
have can be remedied when felt by a second reform bill
Any substitute that the home government might adopt
as framed with a lees intimate knowledge of local re-
Amiens, would certainly prove lees workable, and the
attempt to cram it down the throats of the reluctant
eolohists would be sure to engender disaffection.
The doubt we have here expressed as to the pro-
bable value of the &et Canadian Reform Bill does not
arils. from the strength of the anti-reformers in the
oniony, but from the diversity of opinion which pre-
vails among the reformers. A keen controversy is at
present waging between two able and staunch organs
of liberal opinion in Canada—the Toronto Exa-
miner, and the Montreal Pilot, on a fundamental
principle of electoral reform. The Pilot argues
that an equal number of representatives should
be apportioned to Upper and to Lower Ca-
nada respectively. The Examiner argues that
no distinction ought to be recognised between the
provinces, and that the representation should be die-
tributed in proportion to the population. Abstractedly
considered, the view maintained by the Examiner is
correct. The proposal to allot an equal number of
representatives te each province is a concession to
the nationality of the habitans, and objectionable as
tending to perpetuate two distinct and antagonistic
races. A repreeentatioe based strictly upon the pope-
la' ion woad promote the fusion of the French and
English races, and would at the same time leave the
minority ample power to avert forcible suppression of
it. peculiarities. But it may be that, in the present
distribution of parties in Canada, a reps-
siltation based upon papule ion alone may
be unattainable. Perhaps the French reformers,
rather than accept of a reform bill based upon that
principle, would join with the anti-reform minority to
throw it out. The Canadians must be contented, not
with the best possible reform bill, but with the beat
that can be carried by legitimate means in the present
state of public opinion. The F.xaminer admits that
the present House of Assembly (though by an acci-
dent) represents truly the majority of electors. The
bill which passes an Assembly so constituted will,
therefore, of necessity, be such as 'the majority of
electors wish. We have indicated above the
bad consequences which would ensue from the
imperial government's putting itself in open and
avowed opposition to the will of the Canadian
people as expressed through their legislature,
and rejecting the Reform Bill ; any clandestine
unavowed attempt to prevent such a bill paining by
tampering with members of the French and conser-
vative t artier, u it would be itfinitely more discre-
ditable, would be also infinitely more mischievous.
The question of electoral reform in Canada is one
in which every sound principle of colonial govern-
ment prescribes a passive policy to the imperial
administration. The question ot the postal arrange-
ments between Great Britain and the United States
is, on the contrary, one in which the imperial severe-
went ought to act, and that promptly. The United
States Post-office has increased the postage from New
York to Liverpool on every half-autos letter
from 26 cents. to 48 cents , and on every news-
paper from 5 cents. to 8. cents. The @assignees*
is that the Canadian mails from itailisjde whisk
formerly came by New York or On, rose
now by H The Canadians have to choose be-
tween the more lengthy and the most frequently in-
tetrupted route or an exorbitant postage. And foe
this they are indebted to the British government, for
the increased rates of the Amelican post office are
simply retaiirory for the extra charges imposed by
the British post-office on letters brought from America
by the United States (keen ate mars. An article
from the New York Journal of Commerce, which 1,11
insert in another column of this day's publicat as,
shows that some Americans at least are fully aware
of the suicidal character of such retaliatory policy.
But the British government ought not to leave
its Canadian subjects to obtain redress by the slow
process of such sound opinions acting opon the
American government through the convictions of the
legislature. Neither would it be wise for the British
government to allow the Canadians to obtain redress
for a grievance, which its own short-ighted jealousy
has entailed upon them, from the sagacity and mesas
of justice of the American givernmenL Not a ma- I
meet ought to be lost by our ministers in initiating a
more equitable and mutually bent ficial postal ar-
rangement with the United States. The general com-
mercial interests of the country require this, and such
a step by showing the Canadians that the imperial