The Express.
London, England, 1866-11-17 00:00:00

OUR CONTEMPORARIES.

(MB DAY.)

The Times is enabled to state that her Majesty's
government have no present intention of referring the Ala-
bama claims to a royal commission ; what they really con-
template is to impower such a commission to inquire gene-
rally into the operation of our own neutrality laws, and to re-
port upon the possibility of amending them, so as to bring
them into more complete conformity with our interna-
tional obligations. This decision will be shortly carried
into effect, Lord Cranworth being probably the chairman.
The inquiry thus limited will in no degree, however,
preclude or prejudice any future step that may be taken
for the adjustment of the Alabama claims, which
are still under the consideration of the govern-
ment, and must be entertained upon their own merits.
The Times proceeds to express its doubts whether Lord
Russell's assumption that our international liability and
duty are measured by the municipal law of this country
was not a false one, and thinks it a misfortune that Sir
lL$ Palmer should have so early committed his great

authority to.this view.
The Attorney-General's speech the other day is described
by the Times is faulty in judgment and taste. The present
government are entitled to the candid consideration of the
country, but assuredly not on the grounds taken up for
them by the Attorney-General; not on the ground, for
instance, that they did not oppose the ministerial reform
bill, for everybody knows they employed all the artillery
of parliamentary warfare to defeat it. Such an
overstrained claim to fairness can have no
other effect than to remind us of the trensao-
tions of 1858, when Lord Derby gained office by
opposing the second reading of a bill for the first
reading of which he had spoken and his party had voted.
Credit is taken for Lord Derby that he assisted to carry
the Reform Bill of 1832, and that he established the
system of mixed education in Ireland, the fact being
wholly suppressed that his lordship lass entirely changed
the opinions under which he advocated these sad so many
other liberal measures. If such topics are recalled to
mind, Lord Derby has to thank his own Attorney-General
tor it. The conservative party needed not to be reminded
of the great loss they have sustained in the elevation of Sir
H. Cairns. Had they forgotten it, their memory on the
subject would have been refreshed by the political Mgt

of his succorer.
The Daily News remarks that the investigations of the
Jamaica Commission were not mere matters of curiosity,
but the:needful preliminary to future action, and the
efforts of the Jamaica Committee to procure a declaration
of the law applicable to the case of Mr. Eyre are made im-
perative by the issues at stake. To assert that Mr. Eyre
did only what was needful under the emergency is not to
attack the Jamaica Committee, but the royal commission
on whose report the former are acting. Mr. Disraeli has
declared the assumption of the illegality of Mr. Eyre's
proceedings to be matter of controversy, and Mr. Adderley
echoed the statement—erecting questionable acts into
pernicious doctrines, which those who love law and free-
dom have no alternative but to combat. Both the words
and the acts of Mr. Eyre's committee are ill-bred and un-
becoming. Patting aside their attempt to enlist the vo-
lunteer and militia organisation on their side, they now
argue that the Attorney-General's decision against the
retainer offered by the solicitors of the Jamaica Com-
mittee to Mr. ,Coleridge establishes the principle that
associations cannot prosecute. Were this so, impunity
would be insured to great political offenders, and a prin-
ciple dangerous to public liberty would be introduced.
The expenses incurred by the prosecutors in the case of
the Bishop of Salisbury against Dr. Rowland Williams,
and of the Bishop of Cape Town against the Bishop
of Natal, were paid by a set of men who united to
defray them. Was this illegal? If, in political cases,
in which bias is most natural, the government and the
House of Commons fail to do their duty, voluntary
associations could not set the law in motion, one
main security of the liberty of the subject would
be withdrawn. Probably the decision of the Attorney.
General rests on the technical ground that a retainer
should be given in the name not of an association, but of
s nne selected member of it. But there is nothing to pre-
vcnt others from aiding him. If the conjectural reasons
given for Sir John Rolt's opinion be correct, the retainers
of Mr. Edward James and Mr. Fitzjames Stephen are as in-
valid asthma of ftfrlC'oleridge. But argument is superfirns
where the facts will soon be apparent. If the Jamaica
Association cannot prosecute, it will not prosecute ; and
Mr. Eyre's friends need not be alarmed. We shall see
next term.
The Post applauds the speech of the Attorney-General,
and the Telegraph ridicules it. The Herald thinks the
suhjects of the speech were dealt with in a most masterly
manner, and remembers nothing more happy than some of
its allusions. His position is, indeed, an enviable one.
To have risen from the humblest to the higher sphere by
dint of patient genius and honest industry is a thing only
possible to very few men indeed.
The Star dwells on the importance of the great reform
_ _ . . .

banquet which is to be held at Manchester, invitations to
which have been accepted by some 40 members of puha,
mint. In another article it describes Mr. Stephens as the
coolest and most candid of invaders of whom it has ever
heard or read. His project, so absurdly proclaimed, is
either an elaborate swindle or a freak of insanity.