The Express.
London, England, 1867-05-15 00:00:00

11114CELLANZOI9 TOPIC 4.

The release of Jefferson Davis is commented upon by
several of our contemporaries. The Times cites the
leniency of the American government in this case, and in
all similar ones, and the good effects which this policy has
produced, as additional reasons why we should deal for-
bearingly with the Fenian prisoners. To send these men
to penal servitude will be a wiser course than to give
their memory the dignity of death in a political cause. If
• commutation of the sentences could be safely decreed in
Canada it can hardly be necessary to execute them here.
The Pug loudly extols Mr. Davis, and declares that he
will carry the confidence of the Southern people with him
to the grave.

The Ease does not share in this enthusiasm for Mr.
Davis, and reads the many proofs he gave of his detests-
tion of the principles of human liberty as applied to the
negroes. An ignoble peculiarity of nearly all Davis's
manifestoes was his virulent denunciation and coarse sown
of his enemies. Even civil war became more odious in his
hands. He proclaimed the Northerners to be "a people
devoid of every mark of civilisation ;" "disturbers of the
peace of the world;" " miscreants ;" "dirty Federal in.
waders;" "wretches whose atrocious cruelties have
stamped infamy on their government ;" " whipped spa-
niels," and so forth. If brag and brutal abuse could
have won success for the Southern Confederacy, Jefferson
Davis would now be the conquering hero of the South.
_ .

Reviewing the proceedings of the late annual meeting of
the National Society, of which it gives some fresh par-
ticulars, the Daily News state that every bishop in Eng-
land, in spite of the disclaimer of the Bishop of Oxford, is
committed to a line of policy by which one set of sup-
porters is encouraged to interpret the terms of union to
mean, as Sir John Coleridge has pronounced that they do
mean, that all the children are to be instructed in the
catechism and formularies of the church ; while another
set of supporters is allowed to hold that the " discretion"
reposed in them by another of the terms allows them to
exempt some children from such instruction—the other
side meantime sneering at these fur laxity of con-
science in so interpreting them. However, with
the outspoken declarations at the meeting from
churchmen of very different shades of opinion, and
men who are not likely to be satisfied with speeches, Mr.
Chester may be congratulated on having procured a real
contribution towards a settlement of what has long
hindered, and threatens still further to retard, the pro-
gress of popular educatifin, the rupture between the repre-
sentatives of the church of England and the education
department of the state.
There is one circumstance which leads the Herald to
augur most hopefully of Mr. Hardy 's qualifications for the
Home Secretaryship, namely, that "he has been known
for years as perhaps the best chairman of quarter sessions
in the kingdom."

Last year 187,519 marriages were celebrated in
England end Wales. The births in the year were 73,188,
and the deaths .-.00,933. The number of males born was
slightly in excess of the females, being 384,742 against
368,44 G. There were also 12,776 more deaths of males
than females. By far the greater number of marriages
were registered in the December quarter. The greatest
number both of births and deaths were in the March
quarter.