The Express.
London, England, 1856-02-19 00:00:00

LONDON, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19.

AT a moment when such evidence is peculiarly
valuable, the Commons of England are affording to
the world a convincing proof that a popular assembly
is not necessarily the mere battle-field of party strife
or the arena of self-seeking ambitious. With a
moderation equally wise and dignified the represen-
tative. of the people have agreed by common consent
to leave the Crown in the undisturbed exercise of the
highest, but most undoubted, of its prerogatives.
With vigilant attention, but without useless and
irritating interference, the House of Commons
awaits the approach of those momentous negotiation.
which are to decide for Europe the great issue of
peace or war. The House, like the Nation, awaits that
issue not indeed without anxiety,bot without distrust.
Iu the hands of Lord PALMERSTON the honour of the
country, at all events, is felt to be sate; a permanent
and honourable peace all wise nations are always
ready to welcome ; no nation was ever better pre-
pared than England new is foe the other alternative
of a vigorous and, we believe, en inevitably victorious
war.

Hitherto the war and the preparations for war, so
far from having exhausted, have not diminished by a
single throb the vigorous pulsations of the national
life. Never, even in seasons of profoundest peace,
has England been more sedulously alert to those
questions of social reform and internal improve-
ment, the interest of which proverbially declines
when the energies of a people are absorbed in
war. Silent loges inter arms is an expression
u old as Cicano, for a troth as old as society. But
what is the case in England now ? What is the
case in the House of Commons, which at this
soonest reflects accurately the paramount mood of
the national mind? Have "the laws been silent"
or the lawyers?—has there bees any inattention or
indifference to those admitted evils which Dave for
generations tried the patience, and vexed the souls,
and burdened the life of a people who have been at
ones the wonder of the world for their political free-
dom and the enigma of the world for their social
soomeliesP We are in the 68th year of the nine-
teenth century, and still suffer the Ecclesiastical
Courts to retain that jurisdiction over willa anddivoroe.
which they exercised in the days of the mediaeval
darkness; we still prefer having our Statute law
spread over forty volumes to condensing it into one;
we still delight in groping for the oracles of our un-
written law through the dust and darkness of libra-
ries which few can purchase and none peruse, in
place of having them concentrated into a code the cost
of which all pocket could aftird and the meaning of
which all intellects could grasp. We, whose chief
boast it is that we have freed trade from the fetters
of the past, find that we are still subject to that worst
form of commercial restriction, which, by placing an
insurmountable barrier between the intelligence that
wants capital and the capital that wants intelligence,
keeps talent poor and wealth unproductive, and has
done more to check the social Improvement and free
development of the operative classes in this country
than any other barbarism which meddlesome lawyers
have devised or paternal goverment' enacted.
It is greatly to the credit of the Huss of Com.
moss that ere the menden is three weeks old all the
social abuses jut enumerated have been made the
subjects of vehement and, in ocean at least, of roc•
onsfal attack. As we cannot suppose that the
House of Lords will again allow themselves to be
made the organ of the great capitalists, and sacrifice
the interests of the millions to the jealous fears of the
millionaires, we shall venture to regard the reform of
the Law of Partnership and Joint Stock Companies as
an accomplished fact. We wish we could feel the same
security as to the proposed transfer of Testamentary
Junction= from the Ecclesiastical Courts, and the
expurgation and classification of the Statute-book.
Quits apart, however, from all considerations of the
success or nonusecess of any perticnlar measure, the
iacressing teadesoy of the House of Commas. to re-
cognise the high importance of these and other
cognate questions, is a source of real and legitimate
gratification. Another promising sign of the
times is the reforming seal of the lawyers.
As long as this powerful body of men were
seder the impression that they had an interest
separate from that of the public in measures
of Law Rehm program in this direction
was necessarily hesitating and slow. Alwsys name-
roes in the Home of Commons, and naturally re-
garded by non-legal members as the depositaries of
a certain systmions knewledge, giving them a pre-
ternatural foresight of the evils involved in change,
the lawyers, until the days of their enlightenment
arrived, were inseparable obstacles in the path of
improvement. Now all is changed. The result of
the law reforms already introduced has convinced
the wet sceptical of the professional obstructive.
that their interests and those of the public are sub-
istentielly identical. "With this fear gone, goes
all their fear," and we mow use the legal
members of the Haan hotly pressing forward, quite
irrespective of party distinctions KiLLY and
NATI= panting side by side with Ham= and
CoLuza—in the now F opolu race of law reform.
This is se it should be; mai be eloquest father of all
living law reformers told the Huss of Commons just
30 years ago-0 The course is open before you, the
MOO Is glorious to TOO.' That of which HINIT
Haotimum in 1828 had bat a sort of Pisgah vision
is now in a fairer way of being realised than in any
Parliament which has sate in oar time. Let the
Home of Commons only coatinue the erasion as they
have command it, and we may find the 19c111
and 20th of VICTORIA one of the mat satisfactory
volumes in the Statate•book.

THE CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER is to move,
this evening, that his Civil Service Superannuation
Bill be referred to a Select Committer, which is to
be empowered to examine witnesses, and to go iato
the whole cam of the Civil Servants of the Crown.
This case is in substance a very short one. We bare
stated its principal points before, but now that there
is a prospect of its being thoroughly investigated,
we may as well, perhaps, state them again, in
order to impress the Committee with a due sense of
its Importance. As far as regards the super tioo
question, the functionaries in our various public
Aloes may be divided iato two classes: those ap-
pointed before 1829, who receive a higher scale of
sap tion a:loneness, and have no dedostions
made from their salaries for the superannuation fund ;
those appointed since 1829, who receive a lower scale
of allowanees, and have deductions made from their