The Express.
London, England, 1867-09-16 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, MONDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 16, 1867.

CHURCH AMPLIRR.

Apart from anything which it may accomplish,
the Conference at Lambeth Palace will be remarkable, the
Daily News observes, if only for its composition. No
account is made of the civil and legal status of the bishops,
and many are, in fact, as much officers of voluntary bodies
as the president ofd the Wealeyan Conference. Examining
their programme for this change in the usage of the church,
we find, despite the sorrow expressed at the divisions of
the church, there is no word of sympathy in any of the
resolutions which can be taken to refer unequivocally to
non-episcopal churches. It is rather in a vast extension of
episcopal authority that the means of attaining their object
appears to them to be. For the rest, it is sufficiently clear
that the managers of this conference contemplate the in-
troduction of a more stringent system of government by
bishops than any which Englishmen have borne for gene-
rations. It remains to be seen whether the episcopal polity
can bear the very great strain which it is thus proposed to
put upon it.
Commenting upon the circumstances which have
led to the cloning of the archiepiscopal library at Lem-
betb, the Times censures the conduct of the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury. One fustification of the large
income of 15,0001. a year was originally found in the fact
that Lambeth,with its library and its historical associations,
would be kept up. But, one after another, the later
archbishops have attempted to relieve themselves of all the
incidental burdens of the office, and to the present arch-
bishop, the Times believes, in personally due the transfer
from himself and his secession to the Ecclesiastical Com-
mission of the burden of maintaining the towers of Lam-
beth. The commissioners, being charged to draw up a
scheme for the maintenance of the library if they shall so
think fit, have very properly taken time to consider what
should be done. Meanwhile the Times suggests that the
library be taken from Lambeth altogether, and be tram-
ferret' bodily to the British Museum, where the books
would be consulted ten times as often as at present. It is
true that the next step might be to find a cheaper site for
the archbishop's own residence ; and thus it might happen
that, though the economy of the archbishop would be
temporarily successful, it would bring upon the polity of
which the archbishops are the chief officers irreverent
treatment from irreverent men.

I 8 TOPICS.

The Time: again refers to the Genevan Congress and the
various theories which the orators propounded. Nothing
but a world-wide war suggested itself as a certain means
to prevent war. Just one good, thorough, wholesale
slaughter of everybody who might happen to be obnoxious
to anybody else, and then the Millenium would set in.
The assembly was like an orchestra in which every man was
tuning hie own instrument, attending to it alone, and
making himself as deaf as possible to the jarring din
►round. It was a melancholy and ignoble charirari, and
enough to make the very name of "peace" a byword
among men.

The Herald says that peace may have been promoted by
the congress, but it will be only by the exposure of the
extremely martial proclivities of those who took part in it.
The Standard assures us that the authorities in India
and at home have gathered masses of information relative
to Abyssinia from the most trustworthy sources, are in
possession of reliable itineraries and maps,thave schemed
their commissariat and carriage arrangements under com-
petent advice, and have not taken a single step in the dark.
They have tried all in the interests of peace, and if it must
come to the arbitrament of war, they will bear in mind
the counsel of one great soldier to another, frappet site et
f►appe_ fort.
The Tdettrayli finds it impossible to say whether the
failure or the success of Garibaldi's proposed invasion of
the Papal Staten would be most dangerous to Italy. If
Garabildi should succeed, a crusade undertaken, in his own
words, " for the destruction of Popery, the most perni-
cious of sects," would probably lead to the interference of
catholic Europe in the affairs of the Peninsula, and would
certainly create a most bitter and unhappy dissension in
Italy itself. If Garibaldi should fail, the result would
simply be to give the Papacy a new lease of life.
The formal approval given by the British Aasociation to
the desire that the storm signals of the Board of Trade
should be again transmitted to our ports, and exhibited
for the information of mariners, will compel the wholo

subject, the Daily Newt says, to be now reoonsidwed. It
will not do to deny to our seamen and shipowners informs-
Yon which, as practical men, they say they have found of
value for the saving of life and property, merely because
sonic very learned persona in London say that such infor-
mation cannot yet be given with absolute a amity. Ana
it is quite useless to prove to practical men that the infor-
mation is unreliable, when they retort will ithe answer
that they have found it valuable.