The Express.
London, England, 1866-10-01 00:00:00

THE MILE ?AVM.

Praising the meeting at the Mansion-house last Friday as
showing a happy combination of discretion and zeal, the
ran• goes on to accuse the Indian officials—and more
especially the Bengal government—with the most culpable
apathy, or at the very leant with unstatesmsinlike want
of foresight. So far as last October there were indications

-.^.11.mr-

of famine, sad by April the lelistiSon had set sharply in,'.
yet daring all the time not thti. slightest preparation
=to have been nada
' govillarnelth must
hive ruffererhat most • and alniet Enlmps
long prieffge in go eyes of itseildects, and are Arr
stinnore if it be driven to appeal to the English for
support. Lord Cranborne is in no immediate tof
funds, but money in Chespaide is a very different com-
modity from money in °rims. Rice is of no use without
the means of moving it from place to place, and we reed
of 1,500 bags of rice being thrown away because it was
im-
possible to land them, althoughat the moment in one station
peeplawere dying at the rate of thoueseds • week. Yet the
famine, with all its homes, may prove a blessing rather
than a curse if it forces upon the government a solution of
the most important of all Indian questions—that of
irrigation. The bbetructive policy of the Calcutta govern-
ment in this matter stands emphatically condemned by
public opinion both here and is India. It is in the power
of the gentlemen who met at the Mansion-house to force
this question, if aeceeeary, upon the attention of parlia-
ment, but it is to be hoped that the necessity will not
arise. The Secretary of State for India has the matter in
his own hands, and Lord Cranborne cannot better add to
the reputation which he has already earned by his speedy
settlement of the much-vexed military grievance question
than by showing equal promptitude in grappling with the
wont evil against which India is called on to contend.
The Herald sees a party advantage in the matter. The
late administration, it says, bad done nothing upon any
comprehensive stale to relieve the common distress; no
orders worth mentioning had been sent out, and although
the calamity had been predicted and was foreseen, not
a single step was taken to encounter it. Under these cir-
cumstances it is properly felt that the govehimeat, being
largely responsible for the general suffering, should beer
the chief burden of mitigating it. Happily for British
India a set of statesmen are in office who appreciate their
responsibilities.
The Telegraph despairs of conveying to the pub'c an
adequate account of the misery and desolation which pre-
vailed in the country at the date of the last intelligence.
Ralasore was feeding twenty-five thousand paupers a day,
Pooree five thousand, Cutts& four, Midnapore tea, and
Nuddea, a rich indigo tract, eleven thousand. At Bala-
sore, a thousand a week were dying, and sines the
living were too weak to burn or bury the dead, the
town, in the plain language of one account, "began to
stink," and by-and-bye frightful fevers will slay the
emaciated people. The price of such rice as remained was
a rupee for half • seer—two shillings a pint ; and, with
very many of the °oriels, a rupee is as much a • week's
wages. The cattle perish for want of pasture, so that milk
fails the people. In Bellary alone we hear of 2,E37 houses
abandoned by the despairing peasants in search of help;
and in Calcutta thirty wretched creatures were unshed in
the crowd of applicanta who gathered to receive a beboo's
gift of food at the " shraeh," or " death annivenszy" of
hie brother.

ICS TOPICS.

The Times regards it as impossible that at the prevent
tariff the Atlantic cable should be used for the transmission
of news or ordinary messages. Let the charge be brought
within moderate limits, and the business of the company
amid not but increase enormously. Our contemporary
trusts it may not be long before the two cables between
Ireland and Newfoundland are as useful and as much em-
ployed as those between England and France. The truth
is, it is daily more evident that the practice of telegraphy
is as yet extremely immature. There is no reason why
the business of our telegraph companies should not be a
hundredfold greater than it is now. The present scale of
charges is universally far too high.
Apropos of the pastoral letter from Archbishop Man-
ning on the temporal power, the Daily New describes the
kind of men who are selected by the court of Rome as the
fittest instruments of the conversion of England, as honest
and devout theologians who know nothing of Rome but
its select ecclesiastical society, and who speak and
think of the Papal court as though it were an ante-
chamber of Heaven. Yet it is often impossible to account
for their language respecting the temporal power. In
their controversy they mingle together the attributes and
sover&lnties of the temporal and spiritual powers, finding
this course a convenient and convincing mystification. It
stupefies the intelligence of the largo majority of the
faithful and spellbinds the susceptible conaciences of women.
The history of the Papal States and of the temporal power
is surpassed by no other record of eat thly sovereignty in
fraud and violen,.e. We are told that the object of the
temporal power is the perfect freedom of the sp'-itoal
office. This freedom is considered per:ect when the Holy
Father is maintained on his temporal throne against the
disounteut of his people by a foreign gai.ison, and when
his 'eerier administration is the scandal of the civilised
world.

The Post assrmes from Mr. Bright's late speech that
compulsory secular education would be one of the first
measures of a refoi.ned parliament, and that this is con-
templated on the principle that the state is the common
parent. Consequently the proposition aims a blow at the
national chrrch.

Commenting upon the Earl of Devon's explanation re-
specting the appointment of Mr. Lawrence and Mr. H. T.
Wilson to the magistracy at Liverpool, the Star says these
promising acquisitions to the magistracy will have to be
thrown over, not for flooding Lancaster with corruption—
that is one of their claims to the commission of the peace
—but because there is a noise about the affair in the press
and they must be sacrificed lest the system should ex.
plode. Flagitious partisanship is still the road to tory
honours, but an occasional sacrifice to the proprieties—
which is neither here nor there—must be made in order to
keep things quiet and pleasant.