The Express.
London, England, 1866-09-01 00:00:00

THE WEEKLY PRESS.

The Saturday Reviews unable to see in the
peat meetings at Birmingham any fresh reason in favour
of the expediency of abolishing the British constitution by

the preetioal

et the edtteated and middle

elaniies. Mr. Bright cannot possibly believe what he says,
and there is something contemptible as well as hateful in
his malignant epigrams. It is scarcely worth while indeed
to examine his arguments, as outside the House of Com-
mons he invariably appeals by implication to physical
fere. ; bet however alarming the enema of agitators
in promothir discontent, Bagliah freedom secured by
parliamentary government is still worth a struggle. i
The House of Commons, which Mr. Beale. im-
pudently calls an unconstitutional parliament, is not
yet fallen so low as to !accept the dictation of a
Hyde-park mob. In spite of all difficulties, • well-con-
sidered Reform Bill may be passed in the next session
either by the present government, or more probably by the
liberal party. The errors of the past ought to serve as
warnings for the future, so that no excuse may be fur-
nished to demagogues for representing parliament as hos-
tile to the people. Mr. Bright has thrown his politic
fortunes on the cast which will decide whether all elec-
toral power is to be transferred from the present consti-
tuencies to the multitude. His speech at Birmingham
will have separated him from the liberal party, and per-
hap. it may even have startled Lord Russell and Mr.
Gladstone.

Under the heading of " Butter" the Saturday Resins
treats of two or three remarkable after dinner puffs
which have been witnessed during the last couple of
months ; the most splendid instance being that of Professor
Kingsley, on ex-Governor Byre. On that occasion the
Professor buttered his country and his anthems, and
right gloriously did he butter the Rouse of Peers. If he
had been chaplain to a duke—which, indeed, for anything
we know, the famous professor may be—he could not have
spoken more nobly or more feelingly of that great body,
and of what we owe to them, and of how greatly it is to be
wished that Mr. Eyre could only be turned into one of the
order. A common-sense and unromantic butter manu-
facturer would have bees alarmed at the idea of depicting
the aristocracy at one and the same time as sticking (what-
ever they may mean) to its ancient blood, and yet
taking cheerily and heartily to new blood as well. Stick.
lag to old blood might seem to vulgar minds Inconsistent
with the notion of the adoption of new. Mr. Kingsley,
however, thinks that even such a feat as this can be per-
' formed by the nobility of Great Britain, of which he saw
bright representatives around him in the persons of Lord
Cardigan, Lord Hardwick., and the Earl of Shrewsbury.
The Rouse of Peers, according to Mr. Kingsley, has got
"all" the genius, talent, and virtue of the country, and
"nearly air the beauty ; and any one who has the pluck
to utter this remarkable sentiment in a mixed audience,
with an air of moral exaltation, is the way man to be made
purveyor of butter to the royal family and to the nobi-
lity and gentry of the greatest nation on the globe.
After all there is a professorial savour about butter of this
description. Mr. Kingsley's panegyric of Mr. Eyre really
strikes one as valueless for all critical purposes. so far as
the conduct of Mr. Eyre is concerned, and as chiefly useful
to impress on the British public the gallantry and chivalry
of Professor Kingsley. All this we are trained by Mr.
Kingsley's books to be willing, for the sake of argument,
to admit already ; and to have it all over again in the
shape of exaggerative laudations of a gentleman whose
faults have been both patent and pernicious, and in Pin-
daric odes about the British aristocracy, seems a waste of
time.

The Examiner has seldom read an unwiser or unworthier
document than the report of the select committee ap-
pointed to inquire into the working of the Master and
Servant Ast. While admitting that " the law as it now I
exists is objectionable," the only modifications it recom-
mends are the concurrence of two unpaid magistrates as
necessary toe conviction, or the adjudication of a atipen.
diary magistrate ; th►t an alternative of fine or distress
should be given before imprisonment, unless their
worships shall otherwise determine ; that the court
may compel the delinquent to find security for •
resumption and fulfilment of the uncompleted contract ;
and that in Scotland arrest of wages in liquidation of
fine should be discontinued. But the committee dis-
tinctly refuse to allow that the amused workman should
in any case be admitted as a witness in his own case, and
recommend that he should still be liable to be indicted and
punished es a criminal upon the unrebutted oath of his
employer. The pretence set up in the report for this in.
suiting and iniquitous recommendation is that in ordinary
cases of summary jurisdiction the criminal law does not
permit the culprit to be sworn in his defence. The
plain English of this dictum of Lord Elcho and his
colleagues in the select committee is that because there
is a legal prejudice against tempting pickpockets,
dogstealers, drunkard., and other ragamuffins to commit
perjury, the artisans of England are to be classed with and
treated like them. " Violent, venal, and vile" was Mr.
Lowe's excuse for refusing them political rights ; " Un-
safe to be believed on their oaths when in conflict with
rich men" is Lord Elcho's reason for refusing them the
preliminaries of common justice in a matter of civil con-
tract. Here is one of a thousand reasons why the men
are in the right who thronged at Birmingham on Monday
to that great peaceful assemblage, which, by its very
numbers, order, and earnestness, showed of itself not only
that our working-classes really want more representation
in the legislature, but that they deserve it.
The Spectator assumes that the Prussian liberals have
earned much of the splendid fruits of the present crisis.
The German parliament will contain • body of men who
have waged • long war, and on the whole won it, against
the royal prerogative, and who are yet satisfied to limit
and check rather than abolish that prerogative, and to use
it as the centre of unity and kernel of administrative
strength for Germany. Them men, we may be sure, will
command immense weight. The parliament which is to

meet will be no mere debating club of wild oratory, such
as sat at Frankfort seventeen years ago. Saxony is already
fretting at the arbitrary decree which separates her fate
from that of the rest of Germany. Even in Baden and
Wurtemburg there are popular meetings to demand unity
with Prussia. On materials such as these the German par-
liament, ably led by Prussians who have the fullest con.
fidence of the people, will work with no insignificant result,
we may be sure. And thus not only for what has been
already achieved, but for the extension of those achieve-
ments in the future, Germany is beholden certainly not
less to the noble party of Prussian liberals, who through
ill report and good report stuck to their principles in the
faced' all Count Bismarck's threats and temptations,
I than to the genius of the minister who has found the
physical means for breaking down the rotten party wills
between state and state of the great German nation.
Treating of the Holborn evictions, the Spectator says
that the poor outcasts cannot but contrast their own
summary removal out of the way whenever they seem to
delay for a moment the march of improvement, with the
tender consideration for the rights of property which
parliament shows when one duke complains that the con-
struction of the Thames Embankment will disturb hie
rest and shut out the prospect from his windows, or when
another duke persist, in keeping his town house where it
ought not to be, not because he wants it, but apparently
for no other possible reason than that it is a pleasure to
him to display his power by spoiling the approackee to the
greatest public work that has been attempted in London
for eentur ies.
As far as the Economist can draw a positive conclusion
from so difficult and embarrassed a matter, it expects a
low rate of interest for a time, but with our foreign and
especially with our Americus trade in so active sad ex-
pansive a condition, we cannot long have very cheap
Emmy.

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