The Express.
London, England, 1867-06-13 00:00:00

MISCELLMICOUB TOPICS.

The Times thinks the letters of its Florence correspon-
dent cannot have failed, of late, to produce a painful im-
pression. The nine Bureaux of the Lower House have re-
jected Signor Ferrara's Bill for the extraordinary tax on
ecolesiaatinal property, and with it also necessarily the con-
vention with Messrs. Erlanger, Fould, and Oppenbeim for
a loan of 439,000,000 fr. It is true that the committee ap-
pointed by the Bureaux is busy drawing up a counter-pro-
ject to the ministerial project ; but it is by no means sure
that they rosy bit upon • measure acceptable both to
the ministers and to the Chambers, and, on the other
hand, were even government and parliament driven to the
necessity of • compromise, there may be serious doubts as
'to ►ny national or foreign financial company being any
longer disposed to listen to their proposals. In the mean-
while legislation is at a standstill. Not a single item has
been voted of the two budgets for the present and the
coming puts. No new tax has been discussed ; liabilities
are running up daily at • terrific rate. The administration
fall. into hopeless confusion, and the old scourges of the
country—brigandage and beggary—are recovering their
wonted ascendancy. Six years are but a short spell in •
nation's life ; but Italy has managed even in that space of
time to move at an alarming rate on her downward way.
Commenting upon passing events in France, the Daily
News remarks that if the late attempted assassination of
the Czar has provoked • momentary revulsion of public
feeling there in favour of the oppressor of Poland, and
drawn the Emperor of the French nearer in sympathy, it
has not done more and worse than this. h has not made
tyrannicide respectable, or a Russian alliance with France
against liberal ideas a possibility. It has given the Czar,
who enjoys the reputation of all the generous acts he does
not perform, an opportunity of doizg an easy thing, it is
true (out of Poland), but a humane thing anywhere—of
preaching by example the abolition of the scaffold for
political offence&
The Standard attributes to Mr. Gladstone, and to Mr.
Gladstone alone, the abolition of compounding,—his object
being to introduce a radical vice into the Reform Bill.
He now proposes that the franchise should be wholly dis-
sociated from the direct payment of rates, and the logger
tion should suffice to disgust and alienate all the sobriety
and sense that is still attached to the liberal party, or
recognises Mr. Gladstone as its leader.
The Post thinks a reaction is setting in in favour of
the system of composition for rates. In all the parishes
where it has hitherto been carried on, the change in the
Reform Bill will bring with it a loss nearly equal to the
whole rates that have hitherto been got in from the entire
body of compounders. What make, it more annoying,
too, is that there was no real necessity for anything of the
sort, and that it is only in consequence of the Reform
Bill having at the outset contained clauses which were
intended to exclude compounders altogether.
Discussing the professed reform of the House of Lords,
the Star assumes that the one cardinal reason why that
house can never be allowed to have the full direction of
. auy great branch of our public affairs is that they are not