The Express.
London, England, 1860-02-21 00:00:00

them. With the burden of

oa his bock, tiro osoccooor of

PM.
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meekly.

bore

honours and his responsibilities . fa hie to
i there was neither levity, nor bitterness, nor heat, bat
ysther the premeditated slowness and sad-
ames of a. Vindicator of ancient principles
is evil days. With an injured air of
ershearr.aes and forgiveness, Mr. Menai.' he-
the Government to review the • peesedeetc"
Gleaming for an instant at "a wiggler case" in the
" distant period " of Queen Anna's reign, he passed
wit► swift and easy flight to the treaty omelette"
with the Ling of Seam um. And thence be stepped
back seventy years or so to the memorable and now
familia/president of Mr. hers Treaty of Commerce
with Frame, which, as oar Tory friends should
hopefully remember, was destined to be cat off in
the flower of its existence by circumstances beyond
even Mr. Pirr'e control. Really, the constitu-
tional purists on the Tory ride of the House should
take courage at least from that ill-fated precedent-
Mr. Disitur.i is one Rome, and Lord Dalin in
the other, by a fortuitous concurrence of ideas, were
raising at the same woman the same objection to
theme& in which the Treaty of Commerce with
Frame and the Budget were about to be presented
by the Government. To go into Committee on the
Customs Acts first, and to consider the Treaty after-
wards, was in the opinion of both the uncombiniag
Chiefs, sot only to put the cart before the home, bat
prestioaily to withdraw the Treaty altogether hom
the "impious* sad criticism of Parliament." Lead
Dias and Mr. DISRAELI—the latter more partieu-
lariy--entreited oat the great precedent of 1787
with elaborate sad exhaustive minuteness. And
it the precedent meant anything more than •
mounding name, it meant that SO Mr. PITT gave the
country six or levee mortal months to read, mark,
leant, and digest the Treaty; as he negotiated it
i• September and published it in October, brought
it ap " by command" in February, sod Galled upon
the House to take it into eoneideration ten days
later, and then, after ample debates, adjournments,'
" sad divisions' on twenty " large and general " rem-
lations, sent it to the Lords —not to mention among
other things "a speech of the highest class from the
" first Marquis of LANSDOWNE,"ands joint addressed
both Houses to the CnowN-10, too, in like manner
Mr. GLADSTONE should keep Leeds and Huddersfield,
Bradford and Coventry, and Leicester, and the
Liemsed Victualler* and the South African sherry.
makers, sad fifty other rag* interests, on short
crimsons, whilst the House, ender proper oonstitn-
, timbal pilotage, was pottering over constitutional
charts, or working out the dead reckoning of Mr.
Pert. AM this is effective enough from the High
Art point of view, but in oar gross, unfeeling, sordid
days, vulgar people, whose minds have not been
east in that antique mould which historical students
are said to acquire, will be meanly asking—Does it
pay? Unforturately for Mr. DISRAELI and his
constitutional precedents vulgar people have found
not only a shrewd man of busmen, but a rare clas-
sical scholar to clothe this bald and trivial question
in the finest rhetoric and the most convincing argu-
ment. There was something painful in the em•
phaais of Mr. DISRAELI'S professions of forbearance
and regret contrasted with the irrepressibly
contemptuous exultation of the Quantum". of
the EXCIIZQVER'S tone in reply. If Mr.GLADSTONVB
eloquence flowed like a stream of hooey on Friday
week it rushed like a torrent of lava last night,
►earing down tricky pretences and pompons
sephistrier, and carrying devastation and destruc-
tion far and wide into the haunts and fields of fac-
tion. Pitiless and resistless, Mr. GLADSTONE dealt
about him with a slashing vigour a, d a ja-
smines almost savage. No Indian chief ever
shelled or scalped an uninvited stranger with a
heartier zest. "No quarter given or asked for,"
was written on his shield, sad with no affecta-
tion of reluctance or regret he disdained on the
pail of the Ministry to fall with the " dignity "
prescribed by the eminent posture-master of the
Opposition. Mach less oould be accept the equivocal
condonation of "inadvertence," for was he not there
to defend the Treaty and the Budget, form and sub-
stance, in the spirit and the letter ; and to stand
or fall with them ? Mr. DISRAELI bad with
characteristic adroitness laid a trap for honest
national prejudices, and for the wholesome jealousies
of the House of COIRIMORS. But Mr. GLADSTONE
showed conclusively that the House would
have ample opportunities of asserting the complete
independence of its constitutional privilege', though
the commercial interests of the country should be
saved from the horrors of sultenes. No clause
la the Treaty subject to legislative sanction could
fairly escape the criticism of the country, or the
NeViSiell of Parliament. The lawyers who followed
on either side added nothing but lawyerlike
and very wordy phrases to Mr. GLADSTONZ'S
decisive onslaught; and, when in a House of 620
members Mr. Dlsaazi.z's Resolution was rejected by
a majority of 63, it was not so much that Mr.
DisitAxm had failed to make the beet of a bad case
as that Mr. GLADISTONI had fought s fair stand-
op fight, and fought to win. Mr. Du caNrs resolu-
tion is now reduced to its native and harmless sim-
plicity ; and the way is clear for the Committee on
the Customs Aots. We believe we have enough of
the old bulldog Roglish feeling to resent as keenly
as Mr. DISRAELI himself any foreign dictation or
any encroachment from above on the rights
of Parliament, and we candidly confess that
we would rather see the Treaty and the
Budget torn to pieces than that the House
should renounce an iota of the free, full right
of al/cession and revision of its terms. But is there
say real danger of the House of Commons aspiring
es the silent hamar of a Corps Legislatif ? Not, we
vesture to think, with a GLADSTONR in the Ministry
fan to feat with a DISIAILI; and this is why we
are disposed to say well done to both sides. These
are not the days when silent acquiescence is the duty
of the British Parliament—the Parliament of
ifarope.

IMPORTS or COTTON.—A parliamentary Warn
inesed this morning giro the gemitities of co:ton Imported
lei° Great Britain during Ike porde:vier years as talons :
h 1814, 638,722 efts.; 1816, 8111,189 own'. ; 1844, 5.768,851
owls. ; 1868, 9,235,198 owls.; and last year, 10,946,331 cirm.
Of the letter eneatity 8,486,672 mats. cams from the United
&mei; 300,706 cvta. free Basil; 6,288 cwt.,. from British
Wen India Islands end British Oakes; 2,149 cots. from
*a West Coast of Akins; 19,697 vote. from British pm-
masioes in &nth Aides; 11,804 earls. from the Mauritius;
1,717,240 cute. from the British East Indies ; 336,313 owls.
Amin 8.673 i; mid 66,373 meta. from ether countries. In
1814 the supply from America ass tae than from either
Bread or the British Went ledie Wends.

MILITARY SAVING& Bdee.—We learn from the
perlieneetary men, leased to-day, that the twat amount
of the feed foe military savings batik% lIP to the °°rn-
atenesset of the present math, le 227,2/11. 101.
LANDO) EIITATII6 COVIRT (IlltLiteD).—A par-
Ifsesiwitery mem head to-day, mater that 416 petition le
at has he premalset for sale in the Leaded East(' Cone,
Was& ism the date of It. Methadon to the presses ems.
Thirlrfser 'Mem. (isoledeas semprislag • testa of
am HAIM is year, trash hes hem dismissed by order r 4
the sett) have bee presselef he the seis of property shows
the vales of 10,00 W , W spgraelsres capita vase boles
1,177,9301 Den heedesd end elshSpfsre miaow were
for Ur sae of papety ea attetelhei the voile of 10,1001.,
the appreciates aellei vase hides 164,316. The number
of pommel kit asaloalks Os Ode WM/ 612.