The Express.
London, England, 1867-03-26 00:00:00

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Tare EvEareo, DAVID (T.11tH1i.717. Mears. &Ahern, Buck-
abal. , I hip., IA de. lingers, Clark, kc.; Nle.lumea )...re, Chip-
pendale. —IIIE al.:1114)1:1 FAMILY. Nieman. Buekstotle,
Mole, Koren, ar.—Aua Allis Burke.

ranicmra

Twig gyring°. NO 1, KO( Ni) TOE CORNER. Meows.
Slot. 3..1 I,•.re,ler —And IS NEVLII 700 LATE TO
M Ls. It 1,. Villiers, Verner, Shure, C.llllllllll,
and . Ilisses Page and Rodgers.

LY( KI 1.

la%lßlioLLiNi:. Mr. Price and Miss Kate
THE 1)1.K 'TIM. Sir. redder, Messrs.
J..rd‘iii. Emery, I•rice, Fitzpatrick, &c. ;
Eke, rtliy, Gr.itton, and Parl.dte, Ceder 1.

EvEN so NIARRIIa7DAIT:IfTERA AND YOUNG BUS-
RA NI., Ei:.%1.1)A Ott, THE SENSATION GOAT. Messrs
von, and 1 tat 111.4. : Mexlantes Swanborough,
Ncwtou. Weathersby, &c.—end A BUIT 011

HOLBORN.
Tms EVEICIIIO, MY TURN NKXT. Mr. Delmore: Mew
Foote and Lennox—And FLYING SCUD. Hearn Neville, Bel-
m Blake, Voltaire, dm. Mesdames F. Joeopha, C. Saunders,
&nolo Foote, Ftdde., Lennox, Raymond, Ac.

BILITANNLIL
Turn EncelNG, Mn.s Lane and NfeadameakEdivin,
Javoh,. awl It .oth. -After which THE TICKET OF LEAVE.
Itcyno.ds, Cranford, Drummond, Ditorood, and Elton :
and Duo S. Mlles.

1110 H WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE
TRW DAT —Morning. 512. aim..--Lfterbooo, sb. Mm.
To-Moisow—Morning, 83 Um......Atternooa, G. Vas.

LONDON, TUESDAY, MARCH 26.

IN 11/Ailing, perhaps, is the sure and delicate
tact of constitutional statesmanship more conspicu-
ously manifest or wanting than in the framing of
a "gracious answer" from the Crown to an address
of the House of Commons praying fur the discre-
tionary exercise of the prerogative, whether for
the appointment or revocation of magistrates, the
redress of a grieviuice, or the removal of a scandal
against which the Howse has recorded its protest.
Without the least inclination to be unduly punc-
tilious or pedantic about the precise syntax of
these solemn forms, we may take the liberty
to demand in them the severest simplicity
and sincerity. This is a subject on which
it is better not to insist. Enough to glance
at it and pass on. Anyone who has examined
the niceties of the mechanism of our Con-
stitution will at once understand how care-
ful the moat experienced workmen should
be in setting it in movement. It cannot
be said that the present Government has
been happy in the ordinance of these ceremo-
nious relations between the two Estates. In the
Speech from the Throne at the opening of the
Session, there was put into the mouth of her
MAJP.STY a passage concerning the representation
of the people, of a somewhat singular and cer-
tainly unusual design. Six times has a Reform
Bill been announced from the Throne and recom-
mended to the attention of successive Parliaments,
but never before in the tone of admonition and
of scarcely disguised reproof, which was remarked
in the composition of Lord Diaav's Cabinet, de-
livered with such appropriate elocution and em-
phasis by the LORD CHANCELLOR last month.
" I trust," her MAJESTY was advised to say to her
faithful Commons, " that your deliberations, cm-
" hi a virit of mailtratian aml mutual fur-
" &limner," .kc. The novel and striking cha-
racter of this appeal did not pass unobserved, and
the leader of the Liberal party, who was a Cabinet
Minister but yesterday, and will be again to-
morrow, marked it with a momentary and not
admiring criticism, as though it were the
breach of a custom more honoured in the obser-
vance. With our present Conservative Cabinet,
however, what seemed an exception open to
regret, appears to have become a deliberate
departure from the old ways.
Yesterday evening Mr. WALPOLE stood at the
bar of the House of Commons with that habitual
dignity of mien which was surely not intended
to perform the leading business in a State
burlCsone, and delivered a " gracious answer "
to the address unanimously agreed to on Tues-
day last, in pursuance of the amendment of
Mr. BENTINCR to Mr. P. A. TAYLOR'S motion.
The member for Leicester had been content to
move a humble address to her MAJESTY praying
for the removal of Mr. Caurtenwatte from the
commission of the peace for Dover, to which he
had recently been appointed by the LORD CHAN-
CELLOR, on the ground that the appointment of a
person who had been reported by a parliamentary
comtnittee guilty of bribery at an election was
poisoning the fountain of justice. In order to
rescue one notorious offender under the cloud
of a general accusation, Mr. Bewristee proposed
an amendment to the effect that the address to the
Crown, instead of being directed against any par-
ticular case, should apply to all magistrates who
had been found guilty of or privy to corrupt prac-
tices at a parliamentary election.
This stratagem was only partially successful;
the motion, indeed, was technically negatived by
a majority of twenty; but the amendment, in
spite of a protest at the last minute from the
CHARCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER against "a resit- ,
" lotion of so extensive a character," was put'
and carried rem. (wt. In the course of the
debate the SECRETARY for INDIA distinguished
himself as the leader of the new Tory chivalry,
exclaiming that to strike at poor Mr. CHURCH-
WARD, Mr. TAYLOR and his puritan followers must
pass over his body, and declare him, Sir STAY-
Foßn, attainted also by the committee which
had sat upon and condemned Mr. CHURCH-
WARD. Earlier in the evening the Crus-
t:Eu.oa of the EXCHEQUER, who had an-
nounced, on the part of the Government, a

aepaple Bill for the prevention of bribery
and corruption at elections (having last year
joined with all lig colleagues in supporting Sir R.
lOwarrtsv's attack upon Mr. GLADSTONE'S Re-
form Bill, because it did not contain clauses
dealing with bribery and corruption), might have
been !Seen and heard gaily and jauntily, /110/1!
rsfo,f;,o, replying to a question from a private
member of his own party as to the identity of
certain members of Parliament and magistrates
with persons of the same name who had been
charged with bribery and corruption, and treating
the accusation and the possible truth of it
as a good joke. Even the amiable but
sedate Mr. WALPOLE—in connection with whom
we should be sorry to recall the qualifying
epithet applied by one French statesman to ano-
ther who bore a reputation for austerity—has
been, we will not say jesting and playing, but
fencing with questions concerning the appoint-
ment
of Mr. CIIVECHWARD to the commission
of the peace. And now we find hint—yes, it
is actually Mr. WALPOLE, who, by a cruel irony of
fate, is destined thus early to expiate at the bar of
the House his comparatively venial attempts at
levity and scoffing by appearing in person, and
reading the following gracious answer from her
MAJESTY to the address so vainly deprecated by
Mr. DISRAELI, so sternly supported by Mr. (i LAD-
STONE on Tuesday last, and carried by a majority
of the House, surprised into virtue in its own
despite :
I have received your address praying that I will give
directions for the removal of all persons in the commis-
sion of the peace of any county, city, or borough who
have been found, either by committees of the House of
Commons or by royal commissions, guilty of or approving
or assenting to corrupt practices at parliamentary elec-
tions. Concurring with you in the propriety of discoun-
tenancing all such corrupt practices, I will take into my
serious consideration how that object may best be
accomplished. (" Hear, hear," and much laughter.)

The loyal British public will find in this
extraordinary document the Tory idea of a Royal
response to the prayer of the faithful Commons
for the proper punishment of magistrates found
guilty of corrupt practices at elections, as a
warning and an example to the rest of her
31s.)Esrv's subjects. We beg our readers to
note with what reserve and delicacy our Con-
servative Ministers commit the gracious wisdom of
the Crown to something very like a sublimated
fraiis of Mr. WALPOLE'S painful levity and Mr.
DISRAELI'S more sententious mockery. Her MA-
J F-STY'S gracious answer was received by the House
with much laughter. It is only the CrisNcEmAm of
the EXCH EQCER'S last joke about briberydescending
upon the House from the Fountain of Honour ! Her
MAJESTY'S Ministers wink at bribery ; so they
make their Sovereign wink a little harder. If this
is your conservative respect fur the monarch and
for Parliament, we "the mere mob," who, of
course, need not be so fastidious asCabinet Ministers,
can only wonder what horrors "the democracy "
(personified by compound householders in rural
boroughs) are expected by timid Tories to per-
petrate when theycome into power. It is often said,
and justly said, thatit is dangerous for monarchies
to treat ceremony in too philosophical a spirit,
and to forget that there are institutions from
which if you take away the ceremony, you leave
nothing but the cost. If it be dangerous in abso-
lute monarchies to trifle with ceremony, it is
at least imprudent and indecorous in constitutional
monarchies to unveil the personality of the
Sovereign, and to expose it to " much laughter."
The present Government has not only inverted
the natural and constitutional order, and, not con-
tent with advising the Crown, used the Crown
as an adviser in its own behalf ; it has brought
down the Sovereign to the House to be received
with "much laughter." Not only trodidit dis-
retatiumibui ; but Plum rhlibumhint atque
hilureih hoc add' zit!

OUR CONTEMPORARIES.
(THIS DAY.)

THE BLOOM RIADING OW THE PHNOM BILL.-LAST
MOUTH DEBATE.

Describing Mr. Gladstone's speech as charac-
terised by • spirit of moderation with which no one
could quarrel, the Tiara proceeds to urge that reform
has reached • stage at which it becomes essential to inquire
whether there can be any advantage in proceeding further
without more complete information from the minis-
try. Mr. Hardy's speech 'lmply conveys the impression
that the administration has adopted the policy of " no sur-
render." Inthematterof compound householders, however,
Mr. Gladstone's argument that they would have to pay a
fine in order to become voters, appears fallacious in
presence of Mr. Hardy's assurance that the government
had always intended that the compound householder
paying his rates should be empowered to recover them
from his landlord. The 40th clause of the bill, to which
Mr. Hardy referred, certainly would not effect this inten-
tion, but after Mr. Hardy's statement we may wait for a
new clause embodying it. We should thus arrive at •
household suffrage in all boroughs where the Small Tene-
ments Act had not been put in force, and in the rest a of.
rating franchise with a vote to every householder below
this limit who chose to take the trouble to make • claim.
As far as a settlement of the borough franchise can be
considered apart from other considerations, the Tines
cannot deem this wholly unacceptable. Without a
lodger franchise, which was last night left almost
untouched, the prospect of • settlement is hopeless.
Let us have no more higgling about points like this and
the dual vote. Nothing more degrading to the character
of the bowie as • deliberative assembly can be conceived
than that it should enter into committee not knowing its
own mind, sad so leaving the issue to be the sport of
chance.

The refund of the government to offer explanations is
likely to prove, in the opinion of the Daily Nears,
their anal mistake—the last of their long aeries
of blunders. Mr. Disraeli spoke with an affection of
hauteur, and Mr. Hardy abandoned the arena of argu-
ment for defiance. Like all weak persons, ministers
are obstinate at the wrong time and in wrong drawn.
stances. After yielding when they should have been
resolute, they are resolute when they should give way,
from mete dread of the imputation of, indecision and sub-

servience. The new strategy does not promise to be very
successful. Mr. Roebuck who eulogised the bill and
abused Mr. Gladstone, was Kr. Roebuck the convert from
reform, and not Kr. Rasher& the reformer ; and two new
recruits were gathered into the tory cave. The sudden
obstinacy of ministers has added another to the serious
embarrassments of the situation. It perplexes the oppo-
sition ; and throws doubt on the course which those who
dislike the bill, but wish for a speedy reform, ought to
take. A little momentary triumph of this sort is pre-
cisely in Mr. Disraeli's way ; and he seems ready to sacri-
fice to it the interests of the country and the character of
the government, of his party, and of parliament itself.
The Pod says the ministry have not yet made up their
minds what their bill shall be, nor can we expect to learn
what it is until we have Mr. Disraeli's speech at the coo.
elusion of the debate. They are at present simply fishing
for information. Every consideration points to the nears.
sity of preventing the Speaker from leaving the chair in
order to go into committee upon the measure, and the
arguments by which that court* is supported are such sa
will probably command a majority composed of members
from both sides of the house.

The Herald regards the debate as very satisfactory, as
promising that a considerable portion of the liberal party
will honestly help the government to carry the measure.
Excepting as to the dual voting, a larger redistribution,
and a larger extension of the county franchise, the
Stundard trusts the government will refuse Mr. Gladstone's
demands. A direct lodger qualification would open the
road to manhood suffrage. If by conceding the points
named they are able to carry the measure—well and good.

If the bill inuAt f.ll, let the mini.try fall with it. The one
thing that cannot, and must not, ►nd will not be, is that
they should remain in office to carry out the policy of
others, the slAves and tools of the right hon. gentleman
the member for South Lancashire.

If Mr. Hardy's speech is taken to mean that the go-
vernment stand by all the provisions of the bill, the Tele-
imsph submits that all true liberals must oppose it directly
on the next stage.
The Stir has never believed that the " checks" in the
bill would be yielded; and, in the cont:ction that they
and the measure would go together, has opposed the
various fruitless respites which have 'Well granted.
The ministry are played out at last. The notices by
Earl Grosvenor and Sir K Loring are further taken by
the Stir to mean that the cave of Adullani is to be let.
A principle which the great hulk of the liberals, and even
the advanced ones, would be content to accept, is pro-
bably foreshadowed by the amendments which propose
a 51. rating suffrage and a liberal lodger franchise. So far
as the notices of but night indicate that the faction of the
Cave are anxious honestly to undo the unfortunate work
of their bands, these amendments are welcome.