The Express.
London, England, 1867-08-15 00:00:00

THE PARKS REGULATION HILL.

The infatuation of Mr. Hardy on the question
of Hyde•park must in charity, the Daily Nrus thinks, be
looked upon as a species of fatality, a weakness transmit-
ted by Mr. Walpole, or caught by him as an infection from
sitting in that respectable statesman's administrative chair.
Whatever complexion Mr. Hardy may put on his untimely
and untoward " firmness" in this business, • " firmness"
which !coke so much like obstinacy, and even violent obsti-
nacy, is but another, and not a better, sort of weakness.
It is solely and simply because the government have
committed a series of gross blunders, setting the
example of ignorance of the law, of transgression of
the law, of alternate defiance and abdication, that to vin-
dicate their own dignity, or rather to revenge their own
stultification, they are actually making themselves • sorry
spectacle to gods and men at the fag end of a weary and
exhausting session, whipping up a jaded pack of languid
and perspiring parliamentary functionaries to force this
ugly Parks Regulation Bill through the " ghost of a
house," to rob the Reform Bill of half its healing efficacy,
and raise a popular sore, to rankle and fester under the
skillet manipulation of agitators and demagogues during
the recess.

The principle upon which the Royal Parks Bill is
founded—if principle it can be called—has shared, the
Port says, the fate of many other principles which have
had the misfortune to be taken up by the present govern-
ment as the basis of a measure, for it has been loot and
cast out altogether, and not enough of it remains to
leaven the measure which was in the first instance based
upon it. In short the Parks Bill has been completely
emasculated by the abandonment of its one important
clause, and being henceforth powerless either for good or
for evil, there is no more reason for, or objection to, pass-
ing it than there is for or against any other inconsequential
step that the House of Commons may choose to take.
The Herald can only express its deep regret that the
government has made any change in the bill. The ques-
tion had become a conflict between mob will and authority,
and men like Beales and Bradlaugh had already inflicted
sufficient humiliation upon authority. However, the
government ought to be the best judges of what is due to
themselves and to the position they hold. If they are con-
tent, it is not for the Herald to cry out. But it must say,
that, having divested the bill of all the pnrpoee forwhich it
was brought in, they would have done better to drop it at
once in its entirety. If we ere to surrender at discretion
to Mr. Beales let the full extreme of the concession be
known and appreciated, and do not let us add to the
enactments of a session which has really achieved grand
work a bill which can only be a provocation and a failure.
The Standard also thinks it would have been more dig.
nified on the part of the government to withdraw the bill
altogether than to go on a .th it after the omission by Mr.
Hardy of the only clause which made it valuable.
Hardy's concession is doubtless well meant, and the
relegrapA %Add gully saxpt it ; but compromises are
seldom satisfactory, and the present offer seems limaliarly
open to criticism. Mr. Hardy clearly sees that his origi-
nal position is untenable ; he sees alm that he will have
to face • degree of opposition on which he did not count ;
and hence he would have acted with much more dignity
had he withdrawn the measure for the seuion.

At first eight tho '• concess•on" of Mr. hardy may seem
to be only a parliamentary method of throwing up the
sponge and confeuing hMhelf beaten ; but the Star is
compelled to regard it as a dexterous effort to delude par.
liament with a view of getting substantially all that was
desired while seeming to gi‘e way out of deference to
public opinion. The practical effect of the amended bill
will be to put it in the power of ber Majesty's ministers
and the Duke of Cambridge, as Langer of the Park, to
prohibit public meetings, and as the royal duke is Com-
mander-in-Chief of the Army, be can order out all the
troops to support his regulations as Ranger. If the bill
was bad, an•Engliab, intolerable before, it is a thousand
times worse now.

lUR TOPICII.

The Times, after complaining of Mr. Alderman Law-
rence's attempt to defeat the bill for the regulation of the
traffic of the metropolis by speaking against time for two
hours in the House of Commons yesterday, expressesa hope
that if not all at least a great portion of the measure will
become law this session. That the traffic in general must
be placed more under the control of the police, and the
heavy traffic thrown into the earlier or later part of the
day, is an established principle, and the Timm trusts it
a:11 be put in force without further delay.
Treating of the subject of ships and guns brought before
the House of Commons on Tuesday by Major Anson, the
Times says the question is not whether a new Woolwich
gun at 7501. is • better bargain for the country than a
Palliser gun at 2501. or even 5001., but whether the Pal-
liser gun would not be an enormous improvement in both
our ships and forts upon the now useless 68-pounder. We
have got these old guns actually in store by the thousand.
At a moderate cost, and in • comparatively short time,
we could render them almost, if not quite, as effective as
the newest specimen of cannon. Yet this, it seems, our
War Minister hesitates to do, partly because the saving,
according to his reckoning, would be only 1401. • gun, and
partly because a sun of five tons is a little "livelier" than
• gun of six tons and a half.

Tag REPRZSENTATION OP STROCD.—The appli-
cation for the Chiltern Hundreds by Mr. Poulett Scrope,
on Monday, has taken all parties in Stroud by surprise,
although it was known that the hon. gentleman oontem.
plated retiring as soon as a Reform Bill had been finally
carried. On Tuesday morning Mr. Scrope issued a fare-
well address. Immediately afterward an address to the
electors was issued by Mr. Henry Self, PageWinterbotharn,
a member of the Chancery bar, and of a local family, who
has been before the constituency for the last six months,
and whose candidature was accepted eta large meeting of
the liberal party held in December last. In the afternoon
of the same day the conservative party held a long private
meeting at which it was resolved to support Mr. John
Edward'Dorington, jun., a resident magistrate. It was
debated whether he should be brought forward as a con-
servative or as a neutral, and after anxious consideration
the latter course was decided on. Yesterday morning a
third candidate appeared in the person of Mr. Charles
Holbrow Stanton, barrister-at•law on the Oxford Circuit,
a gentleman also of local connexion, who announces him-
self as a liberal. Two other local names are mentioned as
aspirants for the seat. The nomination is expected to take
place as Tuesday or Wednesda7 next. The division of
the liberal party, if persisted in, may render the issue
doubtful.

------
CONEPOUNDINO FOR RATES. —The Liverpool Se-
lect Vestry, in view of the passing of the Reform Bill,
have unanimously resolved to confirm the following reso-
lution of the Finance Committee :—" That it be recom-
mended to the general board to direct that efforts be made
to collect from the occupiers the full rates due in respect
of all property in the parish, and that notice be given that
for the future part payments by owners will not be re-
ceived as a full iiseParge of the liability of the occupier."