The Express.
London, England, 1867-03-12 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, TUESDAY EVENING, MARCH 12, 1867.

is above two. But even here we must be on our
guard against a like objection. It we ' were to
adopt the principle, in a three-cornered 'constitu-
ency, of giving every voter three votes, with
liberty to accumulate, we should find that (MC-
fourth could return one member out of the three,
seeing that one-fourth, multiplied by three, is equal
to throe-fourths. But fur the reasons given
above, it would never do to let one-fourth
possess a third of the representation.
Again, the suggestion that each voter should be
allowed only one vote, is equally hostile to
fairness, for in this case also one man above a
fourth would be able to secure a third of the re-
presentation to his party, since the remainder
being barely three-fourths, could not divide them-
selves into three majorities for three candidates.
Earl RUSSELL'S Bill of 1860 avowed this difficulty
by allowing each elector in such circumstances to
give only two votes, in which case the minority
would need to be slightly over one-third to secure
one member out of the three. No other method
than this, then, appears to be tolerable as a system
of cumulative voting.
But when we examine its alleged advantages of
a practical nature we shall find no very great
reason to anticipate benefit from its adoption.
Some of its advocates allege that it would
diminish the frequency of contests, and
the tendency to bribery, because contests
and bribery only are to be found where numbers
run close. They forget that there will, in the new
circumstances, be quite as many fights for the
third seat, since till the polling no one can be sure
whether the minority is or is not quite up to the
mark that would enable it to secure one scat out
of three. The real advantage seems to be in the
system rather extending than limiting the uncer-
tainty of the result, and so leading to the healthy
interest of a contest, even in cases where at pre-
sent the majority is so decided that it reigns un-
disputed. But we must be careful again that in
&ming at this result we insist on the system being
applied on so large a scale as to have no plain in-
fluence on party politica. If Mr. DISRAELI dis-
franchises a cumber of small boroughs in which
Whig and Tory interest is pretty equally balanced,
in order, by giving a third member to large
boroughs, to enable his party to secure a repre-
sentative where they cannot do so at present, a
party use will be made of an alleged constitutional
improvement. If constituencies are equalised all
over the country, the principle will probably work
fairly enough. But, applied on only a small
scale, it will open an arithmetical door for a great
deal of party jobbery', in which no one but the
jobbers will have the smallest idea of what is really
being done. _

OUR CONTEMPORARIES.
(THIS DAY.)

owns to be regarded. The bill is construoted upon •
distinct plan, sitsich admits at expansion or restriction
speoraing tq invariance; aid it is to be hoped it will
now pass without ►ny material alteration.

POLIT jL MEETING'S.
It is said that yi portant meeting of thsaup-
Porten of the be of Derby will take place el l'riday
next at his lordship's official residence in Downing-
street. It is also expected that a meeting of the liberal
party will take place at Mr. Gladstone's residence on
Carlton-house-terrace, on Tuesday or Wednesday next.

Mr. A. J. Herestord Hope, M.P., writes respecting the
meeting at the Carlton during the week before last:—
" Whether household suffrage be or be not the best solu-
tion of the reform problem, it is undoubtedly certain that
the meeting came to no conclusion whatever upon that or
any other question. Some M.P.'e spoke in favour of it,
othersegainst it ; motions and counter-motions approving
or disapproving household suffrage were suggested and
withdrawn. At length, by universal consent, the meeting
broke up, with no other resolution than one proposed and
seconded by M.P.'s who had respectively made themselves
prominent on the two sides, and carried by acclamation, of
cordial thanks to the excellent baronet who had acted as
chairman. This plain statement of what took place suffi-
ciently disproves the impression th►t the feeling of the
meeting was in favour of household suffrage. I could not
detect any predominant feeling either way."

LIEUTENANT BRAND AND THE ADMIRALTY.

The following is a copy of recent correspondence
between the Board el Admiralty sat Lieutenant Brand,
it. N. :

" Lieutenant Brand, R.N., to the Secretary of the
Admiralty.
" 9, Bedfonl.place, Feb. 2, 1067.

. .
"My Lord,—l have the honour to report my arrival in
England by the mail steamer Seine, the passengers from
which were released from quarantine this day. This being
the first opportunity of doing so, I beg to offer a few re-
marks upon the causes which led to my supersession in
the command of her Majesty's ship Delight.
" I. I regret exceedingly that by writing in a moment
of great excitement, and under circumstances to which I
ought to have been superior, because I could afford to be
so, a letter to Mr. Buxton, M.P., I should so far have
committed myself as to have fallen under the displeasure
of their lordships. I feel this the more acutely that their
lonlehipe were pleased, no further back than the 6th July,
1866, to exprera their approval of my conduct, under those
circumstances in which Mr. Buxton aspersed it, and by
their approval confirming that of the naval and military
officers under whose immediate command I served in Ja-
maica, and notably of the commander-in-thief, who fully
rewarded me for the exertions I was called upon to make.
In the unfortunate position in which I find myself, it is
some satisfaction to know that it was not in the direct
course of duty, but in a matter apart from the service,
that I have offended.
" 2. The circumstances under which I wrote to Mr.
Buxton were these :—Being in the Delight, at Annette
Bay, in August last, the mail from England brought re-
ports of the debates, and Mr. Buxton's motions on Jamaica..
In the report of Mr. Buxton's speech, I read statements
respecting myself which stung me to the quick, accusa-
tions of inhumanity, want of personal honour, and sug-
gestions of levity and unfairness in my conduct as presi-
dent of the court martial, which, woken in the most pub-
lic place in the world, where I could not answer him, in
my absence, and under circumstances of great popular
excitement, wounded and irritated me to such an extent,
as to make me overstep the bounds of propriety, and to
resent what I should have left unnoticed. It might be
said that conscious of not having deserved these strictures,
and strong in the approval of my superiors, of
the commander-in-chief, of their lordship', and of
all the authorities, civil and otherwise, in Ja-
maica, I might have allowed time to do me jus-
tice, and could have afforded to wait until an
undeserved storm had blown over. But these very facts
drove the statements, with a deep sense of the injustice of
them, home, and I smarted under a sense of injury which
I could not stills). In defence of the letters themselves, I
cannot offer a word. lam very sorry that I wrote them,
and I frankly admit they were improper both in tone arid
substance. Let me, however, mention, by way, not of
justification, but of extenuation, that I was ill and suffer-
ing at the time I wrote, that I was alone without anyone
to ask for a disinterested view of the position, or toadvise
me what course to take.

":1. Under all the eircumatances of the case, I trust
their lonlships will see that, though I have admittedly
acted with indiscretion, it has not been without great pro•
vocation, and that, in considering their attitude towards
me at the present time, they will not forget my past
services, and th►t the point in which I have erred is one
outside the service, which I have ever sought to further
and uphold to the very utmost of my ability, and with
the approval of officers like Sir H. Seymour and Sir James
Hope.

"4. With these remarks I venture to appeal to their
lordships' consideration, and to hope they will be pleased
to consider my heavy punishment in being superseded, as
sufficient to meet the exigencies of the case, which I shall
ever remember with regret.—l have, &c. (signed),
"H. BRAND, Lieutenant, R.N.
_ _

" Lord H. Lennox, M.P., Admiralty, London."
" The Secretary of the Admiralty to Lieutenant Brand,

" Admiralty, Feb. 5, 1867.

" Sir,—l am commanded by my Lords Commissioners of
the Admiralty to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of
the 2nd instant, repotting your arrival in England on being
superseded from the Albacore ; and I am to acquaint you
that this letter, written in the becoming terms in which
it is couched, has been received by their lordships with
satisfaction.—l am, &c.,
(Signed) " W. G. Rowan:.
" Lieutenant 11. C. A. Brand, R.N.,

9, Bedfonl•place."

Leave of absence is to be asked in the House of
Commons this afternoon, to Lord Eustace Cecil for three
weeks, on account of ill-health, and to Mr. Laing fur a
week, for the same cause.

Mr. Akroyd, on Thursday, will ask the Secretary
of the Treasury if his attention has been called to the very
incomplete state in which the British portion of the Paris
Exhibition is now placed ; and whether he intends to have
it completed in " a manner worthy of the commercial dig-
nity and importanoe of this country."
On Thursday Colonel Sykes will ask the Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer whether it is the purpose of the
government to bring before the house this session a reform
bill for the representation of Scotland ; if so, whether the
principles of representation to be adopted in the Reform
Bill for England and Wales will be applied to Scotland ;
and whether any attempt will he made, to a grestei or
less extent, to adjust the number of representatives in
Scotland to the present wealth and population of the
country. _

On the consideration of Metropolitan Poor Bill,
as amended, Mr. Mill will more the following clause :
" That the Poor-law Board may, if it shall see fit, direct a
central committee to be appointed, in part composed of
members elected or delegated by each local or district
board, or any two or more of them. as may he prescribed
by the Poor-law Boani, and in part of members, not ex-
ceeding a third of the whole, nominated by the said board;
which central committee may he charged with the super-
vision, or the executive direction, of any rule or measure
applicable to the administration of relief in the whole of
the metropolis."
Mr. Lowe intends to move, on the 6th of next
month, " That this house dissents from so much of the
minute of the Committee of Council on Education se pm-
vides for an increase of the grant. now made to primary
schools."

Mr. Candlish intends, in committee on Offices
and Oaths Bill, to move the omission of those portions of
the bill which relate to the office of Lord Lieutenant of
Ireland.

THE GOVERNMENT.—The changes in the govern-
ment, necessitated by the secession of three Secretaries of
State from the ministry, are now complete, the Earl of
Tankerville having been appointed Lord High Steward in
the room of the Duke of Marlborough. now President of
the Council. The Right Hon. H. T. L. Corry took his
seat at the Board of Admiralty on Saturday, for the first
time since his appointment as First Lord of the Admiralty.
THE IRISH LORD CHANCELLOR. —We regret to
say that the Lord Chancellor has been in a feeble state of
health fur some time past. On making inquiries at a late
Lour last (Sunday) night, we were informed that there was
no change in his lordship's eondition.—Thrtlia Express.
A deputation from the guardians of the East London
Union, consisting of Mr. O. Cuthbert (chairman), Mr.
Hudson, Mr. D. Smith, Mr. Buildrueic, Mr. Barber, Mr.
Find, Mr. Woodley, Mr. Wanton', Mr. Peake, Mr.
Phillips, Mr. Brunton, Mr. laybourne, and Mr. Baylis
(clerk), had an interview with the Hight lion. Gathome
Hardy, at the office of the Poor-law Board, Whitehall,
yesterday.

:"

LATEST INVOLLIGENCE.
•
r:RIIIMA AND'_ EASTERN QUESTION.
"e following is the text of the last of the four
despatches from Prince Gortchakoff to Baron
Brunnow, ambassador of Russia to the English
court, relative to Eastern affairs, published by tho
Journal de St. Petersboury, as announced by tele-
gram :

St. Petersburg, Dee. 5.

We do not think that the simple desire of adjourning
and appeasing, the desire of the English cabinet which we
share, is sufficient to dispel the actual complications.
The dispositions, I will say even the =excitation,
among the Christian population, menace too pres-
singly the tranquillity of the East. By content-
ing themselves with the platonic and sterile ex-
pression of a wish, the cabinets which have at heart
the general peace do not dissipate the dangers which may
menace that peace. Like the English ministers, we also
wish that complications from without should not aggravate
the internal difficulties. Like them, we wish for Russia
the peaceful development of the great reforms put in action
by the Emperor ; but we think that an absolute abstention,
a philosophical indiffereatismc (sic), are far from answering
the present exigencies. The ground we always took, and
upon which the cabinet of Vienna seems disposed to-day
to rejoin us—the development of the internal well-being
of the Christian population under the sultan's rule,
and even their autonomy with a vasedage bond, that
autonomy being the only guarantee which would impart
confidence to those populations, has been always deemed
by us the better practical mcins of solving the Eastern
problem without any hosttile conflict, without any general
conflagration, and meantime on a basis of humanity and
equity. If I study the actual physiognomy of Europe, I
believe I may venture to say that that order of ideas seems
to me to enter into the general disposition of the thought-
ful, and especially of those who hold that shortsightedness
in politics is the most dangerous of shortcomings and that
the perils of the f uture can only be avoided by the more largely
embracing the horizon of the present. But should it be the
ease, a theoretical adhesion would not suffice. The
great cabinets ought resolutely to set themselves to work,
and ought to find in their accord the strength of realising
without violent shocks the views of practical justice and
wisdom which cannot fail them, asd the success of which
would contribute to prolong the only form of political ex-
istence left to the Muuulmen power in Europe. We ask
that accord with all our wishes, and our august master
would lend to it his most loyal assistance. This day I
have touched but slightly that grave question. But I
think I have said enough to indicate the principle around
which we invite the great powers to rally themselves. It
will depend upon them to develop that idea, and most cer-
tainly we shall not refuse to bring oar quota.