The Express.
London, England, 1858-06-16 00:00:00

SPORTING INTELLIGENCE.

A SPECIAL EDITION of the " EXPRESS,'
soatainkag the remits of the day's Races, is pub-
lished every evening during the Sporting Season, at
six o'clock.

To shot our eyes to a danger serves only to in.
new it. It would be presumptuous folly to build
toe much on the majority of 260 to 185 which
affirmed the Resolution that " with a view to the
efficiency and independence of the Council [for
" India] it is indispensable that it should be
" partly nominated and partly elected." That this
Resolution should have passed, even on the under-
standing it did, against the combined weight of
Lord PALMERSTON and Lord Joins RUSSELL, and
in 'pite of the timid and conceding spirit in which
the battle of a constitutional and independent
Government for India has been :fought, proves
that notwithstanding the ignorance respecting India
islet the infatuated party spirit which pervade
the House of Commons, the perilous experiment
with our Eastern Empire which now seems inevitable
might have been averted had there been leaden cou-
rageous enough to afford the common sense of the
country an opportunity of rallying round them.
Of all our old recognised Parliamentary leaders,
none (for Lard STANLEY has still his spurs to win)
has evinced a real spirit of statesmanship in these
Indian debates except Mr. EDWARD ELLICE, men.,
Bir JAMES GRAMASI, and Mr. °LAWTON,' j and the
first of these, from an inveterate habit of working
underground, and the other- two from a too
cautious desire to feel their way, have only dis-
played their standard at the eleventh hoar, and that
in a timid spirit t►at has gone far to neutralise the
effect of their demonstration.

We abide by oar often reiterated declaration that
the proposal to revolutionise the Home Government
of India was brought forward by Lord PALMED.
:SION, partly to divert attention from the question of
Parliamentary Reform, and partly to strengthen the
hands of the Ministry for the time being by an in-
crease in the patronage at its disposal ; that
it was wantonly made at a moment when
a revolt in Hindostan made any change
perilous in the extreme; and that it has been made
with ludicrous and fulsome protestations of respect
and admiration for the Government which is sought
to be deposed. The only plausible reasons for any
change are the greater expedition which it is alleged
may be imparted to the transaction of business by
vesting all authority in one Minister, and the effect
that may be produced on the imaginations of the
natives of India by making the English Crown the
avowed, as it is the real, seat and centre of sovereign
authority. Both objects might have been com-
pletely attained by the simple process of causing
all public business in India to be transacted
in the name and behalf of the Sovereign ; by retain-
ing the Directors elected by the East India Com-
pany (the Company's constitution being modified so
se to suit existing circumstances) as the Senate by
which India was t•r be ruled; and making the Indian
Minister of the Crown its President, with powers
analogous to those vested in the Board of Control.
Even yet it does not appear to us too late to fall
back upon such an arrangement. The division of Mon-
day night shows that the House of Commons is
awakening to a sense of the responsibility it will
laver by rashly revolutionising our Indian Govern-
ment. If Sir JAMES GRARAII and Messrs. Ellice
and Ountrota would act with decision, and if the
Directors of the East India Company (in and out of
Parliament) would think a little leas of their chances
of being nominated Councillors ender a new system,
and a little more of what they owe to India, the
battle is not yet desperate. We frankly confess,
however, that our hope of any adequate display of
spirit in either quarter are the reverse of sanguine.
And afraid of risking everything by attempting too
mask, we are contented to remain doggedly on the
deleaelve, on the ground of an (in part at least)
Kleetive Council.

The objections which were urged on Monday
evening against the recognition of the elective prin-
ciple in the constitution of the Council for India
were futile and frivolous in the extreme. It was
said to be a fundamental principle of the monarchy
that all executive power is exercised by the Crown
through its Ministers. This is simply untrue. Even
in this country a very considerable amount of exe-
cutive and judicial authority is exercised by Corpo-
rations independent of the Crown. Even in the
appointment of the Ministers of the Crown the House
of Commons takes a part not the less real that it is
indirect. In the Colonies, since the concession of local
self-government, the part taken by the Crown in
the exercise of executive and judicial authority is
little more than nominal. All that is asked for our
great Indian Dependency is that in so far as circum-
stances admit it shall be placed on an equally advan-
tageous' footing with the Mother-Country and the
Colonies. This may be done by subjecting the
exercise of the Crown's authority to the check of a
constitutional body different from, and independent
of, those bodies which act as checks upon the
arbitrary rule of the Crown as regards England.
Various reasons are assigned for the non-recogni-
tion of such a body. In the first place, it is alleged
that even if It be granted that an Elective Council
is Preferable, it will be impossible to And in ;mob-
.
jectionable c'Z'Astituency. Why, it is admitted on
all hands that the East India Company's selection of
Directors for more than a century has shown
it to be a tolerably good constituency. We admit
that the present Company is not for India what it
once was. It at one time embodied nearly

the wnole commercial enterprise of Enghar
that cultivated India as a field of remu-
nerative industry. It is now no more than
the gate proprietary of a put • of
4 the t debt of India. But it may be rendered
some
even
bats; than 0 weal by incorporating
into it( additieit to its pavement members, all
English traders .to India, 'nil all civil and
military servants of the Indian etoveniment. The
constituency of the Council for India would thus
comprise all Englishmen who have a pecuniary
interest it, the well-being of India ; and all English-
men who have a direct personal acquaintance with
India. The objection that the difficulty of canvassing
en wide a oonstituency would deter the best men from
offering their servioes, if worth anything, would strike
at the root of our English Parliamentary Govern-
ment. It is not the purest, the subtlest, the most
original intellects and characters that find their
way into Parliament. These fastidious beings act
upon public opinion in a different way. It is the
rough, sturdy, self-asserting, practical men who be-
come our Legislators and Ministers, and carry into
effect what they have learned from the less obtrusive
teachers of the whole community. No doubt it would
be much more agreeable, even for members of the
House of Commons, could they obtain their seats
without taking the trouble to win the good will
and good opinion of constituencies; bat a
more effeminate and less practically efficacious
Legislative Body would be the result. India itself
proves our proposition. No part of the Empire has
been so fertile in distinguished public servant' as
India; and yet how few old Indians have been able
to keep their ground in the House of Commons
against the more robust athlete trained in the arena
of popular contest.
As long as there is one scintilla of hope we will
keep the flag of an Elective Council for India flying.
When the last hops has faded it will be time to
entertain the suggestion of Sr James GRAHAM.
Even that, however, although we admit that it is the
only feasible substitute that has been proposed,
can only be accepted u a pia•aller. Nay, more, it
mast be more definitely elaborated before it can be
entertained. For example, some security must be
given that the three candidates for any vacant seat
in the Council submitted to Government shall be all
Sofia fide, eligible candidates ; otherwise the Council
may send in the names of one real and two
_fudge
candidates. Again, the power of nominating the
three candidates ought to be vested exclusively in
the Council. If the Minister is to have a voice in
the matter it will soon come to be the Minister
naming three candidates, of whom he is himself to
choose one ; for every one sees that an appeal to the
House of Commons would be a mere nominal check
on appointments.

Tai Bill for the Abolition of Property Qualification
has passed the Lords; and only waits the Royal Assent
to become the law of the land. Henoeforth it wil
be no more necessary for English and Irish members
than it has been for Scotch members to commence

their legislative career by a legal fiction, which im-
posed trouble without insuring respectability, and
created an apparent exclusion, without furnishing •
single additional guarantee. Now that the thing
is put an end to, the only legitimate source
of surprise is that it should have been allowed
to go on so long, and there is something bordering
on the ludicrous in its having survived so many
Liberal Administrations, to fall at last under an in-
terregnum of the Tories. It is no doubt clean against
all the traditions of Whiggery to get Whig measures
passed in a manner so irregular. It is very shock-
ing that the country should be so indifferent about
it; very wrong to look on contented and amused
while the accustomed clap-traps and the well-worn
properties of the old managers are thus recklessly
being used up by their successors. At this rats,
what sort of stook in trade will the legitimate per-
formers have to commence their new season with?
Here is the County Franchise going and the Pro-
perty Qualification gone. This is very reckless.
Pare Liberal Administrations have ere now lived for
many sessions on the mere promise of the measures
thus heedlessly thrown away. If things go on at
this rats pure Liberal Administrations will be hard
put to it. They will have to subsist by performance,
not to cohere by promises. For plausible gentle-
men, fond of political ease and family rale, the
prospect is not a pleasant one. And then the
country is so strangely supine. The Time, with
all its thunder, cannot etirtlie the milk of human
kindness with which an apathetic British
public watches the prolonged experiment of
this DERBY, Administration. We ought all to be
very frightened and very anxious, not quite easy
about our funds, or our fleet, or our great Ally, or
anything else, as long as PALMERSTON, that saviour
of his country, sits on the wrong side of the House
But somehow or another we are not what we ought
to be. We take things as they come, and upon the
whole venture to fancy that we might be worse off.
That compensation for WAIT and PARK,
for instance, seems to have been almost
ea well managed as it would have been
by PALMERSTON and CLARENDON. There is to
be a compromise, too, about the Jews, we are told
spite of Lord CHELMSFORD; and we are now abso-
lutely and for ever rid of Property Qualification
In spite of the Times, and in hardened disregard to
all the finer sentiments of political partisanship, the
British public seems inclined to go on taking all it can-
get for a time from the present possessors of power
The House of Commons is very rightly resolved
to show that abolition of Property Qualification is
not to imply any lowering of the standard of Parlia-
mentary respectability. Mr. TOWNSEND, the bank-
rupt member for Greenwich, has been incapacitated
by resolution from sitting and voting in the House
until such time as he shall succeed in superseding
the adjudication that has now for the second time
been recorded against him. There can be no doubt
that the law has, in this case, been rightly enforced ;
an adjudicated bankrupt is not fit to act u a Legis-
lator for the British Empire. If he shall succeed in
superseding his bankruptcy, the law provides that';
his legislative rights shall revive: till that time
they ought to remain suspended.