The Express.
London, England, 1858-06-09 00:00:00

THE EXPR

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LONDON. WEDNESDAY JUNE 9.

Plus ultra! The Garet-Rata Abolition Bill has
pissed the Pillar' of Mercyles. It has left behind it
the familiar sea ethos House of Commons—in which
it has experienced alternately baffling plea and
favouring breues--and steered out into the unknown
Atlantic of the Lords. There was little that wan
noteworthy about this last debate, but the division.
Sir JOHN TILELAWNT, who has throughout played
his part with tact, skill, and firmness, did not feel
tumult called upon to make any extraordinary
'effort in a pro tonne parting discussion, the result of
which was known beforehand. Sir JAMUL'S GRAHAM
growled out "A prosperous voyage—aims I cannot
stop it I" and Mr. OLADSTON a was delivered of a Foes
nonedy. Friends and foes mastered strong to ex-
press their muttered leanings by a silent vote.
There appeared, for the third reading, 266 ; against
it, 203 ; a majority of 83 in a house of 471—tellers
included.

And now the time has come fer the friends of the
Church-Rates Abolition Bill to be up and doing.
Far some time back they have been straining like
greyhounds in the leash. Though adjured by the
leaders of the movement to abstain from petitioning
until the Bill had got into the Lords, they have
actually sent more numerously signed petitions in
support of it to the Commons than an active canvass
on the part of its opponents has been able to get
up against it. They ought now to give their activity
fall swing. Let them give the House of Lords un-
equivocal intimations of how the hearts of the people
Mead in regard to this question. The table of the
novae ought to be covered with their petitions, before
the time for the second reading of the Bill arrives.
Their prospects are good. The Duke of Bowmen
has agreed to undertake the management of the
Bill in the House of Lords. All who recollect his
Othee's masterly style of cross-examination (when
Lewd fierstorn), in the Sebastopol Committee of
the Home of Clemons, must feel convinced that
the Bill has been entrusted to the hands
of a consummate man of business. And the
Doer is not one of those who have waited till the
last moment to become sensible of the necessity of
petting an end to this mischievous controversy.
He voted against the Abolition of Church Rates
till 1833; bat since that time he has firmly and
unwaveringly supported the proposal. There are
many other noble lords who have, like the Dues
come to view this question in its true light It is
not merely that they feel the undignified and nn-
Christian attitude assumed by the Church in strug-
gling vehemently to retain a tribute, paltry in
its amount, but degrading to the Nonconformists,
inasmuch as they feel that its payment implies
on their part a surrender of principle. There are
many members of the Upper House who have dis-
covered that Church Rates are an unequal imposi-
tion on not a few Churchmen quite as much as upon
Dissenter*. All sitters in Proprietary, District,
and similar Chapels, have, in addition to their con-
tributions to the expenses of their own pleas of
worship, to bear those of the Pariah Church.

It is but fair to give the House of Lords credit
for the average shrewdness and spirit of fair-play
of English gentlemen. There is nothing iu the
Bill that is now about to be submitted to them
that can or ought to be more repugnant to them
than to any member of the un-titled landed
aristocracy of England—and many of this latter
body acknowledge the justice and necessity
of the measure. If the friends of the Bill are true
to themselves, the Lords will soon have unequivocal
proof of the store which the great mass of the people
set by it. Petition, petition, petition—in firm and
uncompromising, but in passionless and unexag-
gerated, language. Let us hope for the beet ; and
act so as to ensure the realisation of our hope.

We had hoped that the marked expression of
public dissatisfaction at the late misuse of Ministerial
power in appointments to the magistracy, would
have had its effect upon Her Ma'am'. present ad-
rimers ; and that a sense of policy u well as of duty
would bare saved the public the necessity of further
protest in the matter. If the purport of prevailing
rumours be correct, however, they, is reason to ap-
prehend that neither Lord CHIUMSFORD nor Mr.
MAPIZR have been as yet made to feel the
error of their initiatory proceedings in this respect ;
and that whatever semblance of restraint they may
put upon the exercise of their justice-making pre-
rogative during the remainder of the Parliamentary
season, the autumnal vacation, stould they remain
in offiee, will witness numerous detrimental additions
to the magistracy on both aides of the Channel.
Once and for all we must's. these highly judicial,
but eminently injudicious, personages to consider
gravely the consequences of what they are
about—not to their party, that is their affair
not ours, but—to the permanency of the sys-
tem with whose practical working they are
showing a disposition so recklessly to trifle. If the
accidental advent of a Tory Cabinet to power is to
be held a sufficient warranty for the tossing up any
umber of the mere thinning. and brambles of
party underwood, and prominently encumbering
therewith the bench of summary justice throughout
the kingdom, it will obviously be impossible to
pnumt Whig Chancellors of the Cia.moarn and
Luny stamp frees doing the like whenever their
tarn emus. IA the hypocritieal hue and cry
mutually raised apse the point we have sever joined.
sad saver shall. But for the sake of the great
elegise of society whose interests both of property
and person are left to the mercy of the local tri-
bunals thus constituted—and for the sake of society
at large, whose peace and well-being is so much
involved in the ocateutment of the working multi-

tai's--w1 new remonetfrate urgently against tY
%sufferable game arising from the soindalous dog
trine and, when convenient; sated on by
both the lary factions in the Stale, that the
Commission of the Pesos is to all intent' and pur-
poses the right of every man who has been a useful
or respectable adherent of tire party that happens to
be in power.
It is no use denying the fact. Everybody knows
that it is so. Everybody has heard indignant re-
proaches levelled at this or the ether forgetful or
supercilious Chancellor for omitting this man or the
other, " who had always supported the party" in
the borough or county, as the case may be. The
magistracy has long been, and is more than ever re-
cently become, the cheep and depreciated decors- ,
tion conferred by the potentates of party on then
adherents. Were it a decoration merely, it would
not matter; but unfortunately there is appendant
to the vulgarised insignia of judicial rank the
perilous and pernicious attributes of judicial
power ; the power of favouring subordinates and
mtainere—the power of frowning down complaint
—the power A jobbing where licenses to trade
are sought; and the power of crushing competition
wherein rentals and fixed capitals belonging to
brethren of the Quorum would be damnified ; the
power of being discretionally lenient where rigour
would be the fate of the nnreoommended or un-
known ; and the power of being inexorable even
unto ruin, where the object is one obnoxious for
any personal reason to " Sir MAILMADI3[6," or
"My Lord." Far be it from us to say or
to insinuate that every imputation muttered
among the crowd against the partiality of the
unpaid and irresponsible bench, is just. If it
were so, the system weald not have endured as
it has dons unto this day. But we feel deeply
the growing weight of popular distrust and
discontent of which it has boom= the object. We
emamot shut oar eyes to the fact that beneath the
thickening volumes of smoke there are daily increas-
ing masses of half-smouldering fire. We perceive that
with every new addition of green and worthless stuff
that is wantonly heaped there, the air becomes more
and more darkened, and the crackling of the thorns
under the cauldron of social grows sharper
and louder. We cannot ahut our ears to the ominous
iteration of the alternative which centralised bureau-
cracy never oeases to suggest—a stipendiary system.
And because we look with jealousy and misgiving
upon the general substitution of that system far that
which now exists, we look with sincere regret and
disappointment on the infatuated course pursued
regarding it by the present Administration.