The Express.
London, England, 1867-02-26 00:00:00

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LONDON, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 26.

CONCTSENERR in a parliamentary speaker, and
especially in a minister, is simply the result of
having something to say. Nair/pour lie rice dire,
is always a long and laborious operation. Mr.
DInKLELI scarcely exceeded one hour last evening
in saving what he had taken more than two hours
not to say a week before in the same place and on
the same subject. Yesterday, after a very brief
preface, he proceeded to disclose the features, nut
of his still-born Resolutions, but of his un-born
Bill. Of course such a Bill could only resemble
what in surgical phrase is called a "prepare-
" tion," and the miraculous powers of the House
will be severely tested by the experiment of
putting life into it. We all, it is said, erect our
follies into systems and our errors into philo-
sophies ; and the CHANCLLLOR of the ExcuEQuis&
seems ready to persuade the House, though he
is probably unable to persuade himself, that the
last fortnight has been usefully spent in accus-
toming physiological Reformers to the contem-
plation of arrested developments, with several
heads and no stomach.

The House, it is evident, has no taste
for this political teratology, and prefers a
healthier and more profitable course of study.
The very clearness and compactness of Mr. DIS-
RAELI'S present statement suffices to condemn the
looseness and the vagueness of his previous
harangue. For when at nine o'clock last evening,
after a debate of four hours and a half, the Re-
solutions were " withdrawn " till Thursday, the
House found itself precisely where it was on Mon-
day, February 11, so far as legislative action upon
the Resolutions, or any satisfactory explanation of
them, was concerned. The project of a Reform
Bill with which Mr. DISRAELI has now favoured
the House might just as well have anticipated
as followed the Resolutions, and might much
better have replaced them. They are now, as we
understand, relegated to the limbo described by
DANTE, where the spirits dwell of those who were
neither good nor bad, or rather, perhaps, to that
intermediate region in which the ancieela thought
the shades of the self-murdered wait until the
rites of sepulture have been fulfilled. The Resolu-
tions are, in effect, no longer before the Have; the
debate upon them was not even formally adjourned.
It was understood that the subject-ma.ter of them
should be reconsidered on Thursday next, but on
that day it is open to Government either to repro-
duce them in their present shape or remodelled
and recast, stripped of all that is superfluous or
objectionable, and thus reduced from incoherence
to idiocy, or to get rid of them altogether, and in
their stead lay the promised Bill on the table and
invite the House to read it a first time on Monday
next. After yesterday's experience of the temper
and disposition of one side of the House
it would be an impertinence, and probably an
injustice, to suppose that the Ministry will hesitate
to renounce the pomp and vanity of Resolutions,
and proceed without further delay to the serious
business of legislation. It would be uncha-
ritable to suppose that the Government,
after soliciting the co-operation of rivals and
adversaries and the forbearance of supporters, and
ascertaining the formidable concurrence of chiefs
and leaders of debate so incapable of fore-
gone conclusions or party combinations as Mr.
Lowe and Mr. BRIGHT against the method of pro-
cedure by Resolutions, can incline to persevere in
tactics which look more like a feint for drawing
their forces off the field than the first movement
in advance of a campaign. Who could have
imagined a year ago that Mr. lowa would be
complaining of the Conservative tactics as in-
jurious to the constitution, or Mr. Balmer charg-
ing a Conservative Government with "Ameri-
" canising " our institutions I Mr. GLADSTONE
challenges the Home SECRETARY to cite a parlia-
mentary precedent for the Ministerial procedure.
Mr. DISRAELI, if we may judge from his at-
tenuated and distressed reply to all these powerful
objectors, is prepared to expiate by • final
example of humility and abnegation all the sins and
all the triumphs of Sir ROBERT PEEL's supplanter
and successor. In the lives of the Saints it is not
the voluntary dedication of a whole life to poverty
and squalor that claims a martyr's crown, but
the penitential austerity of men of the world,
who under the show of luxury have worn the hair
shirt and bled from secret wounds in the service of
their faith. Without pretending to divine what
may have passed at the meeting of the Tory party
in the afternoon, it is enough to read the draft of
the Resolutions and the scheme of the Bill which
is to follow them, to feel great compassion for
their responsible interpreter. Common hums-
pity relents towards a Minister who is obliged
to give his name and his strength to
a compromise between bigotry and necessity
which his superior intelligence disdains, and to
artifices which have not even the recommendation

of expediency, or the advantage of satisfying a
momentary purpose. The iteHobitions and Abe
Bill which is to come are too evidently-9W offspring
of convenience and compulsion, the 'weakly pro-
geny of an unloving union. Mr. DISEAELI'S
franchises have that look of unnatural pensiveness
and prudence which is apt to dignify a premature
decrepitude. There is little vigour, little confi-
derce, little heart in them. The corrective lateral
extension is out of all proportion to the vertical
extension of the suffrage, the subsidiary franchises
overlap each other, admit more butlers and
I footmen, and (as Mr. BRIGHT suaested) by
virtue of the new direct dog tax, probably " rat-
" catchers," than of intelligent and independent
workmen who have families to maintain and
educate before they can become fmalholders or
savings-bank depositors, or payers of income-tax.
The borough and county rating franchises fall
f. ir short of those which Mr. GLansTONE
proposed as a " moderate" measure last year. In
brief, the Bill looks like one dictated by distrust
:old fear, and drafted by expediency and neces-
sity. Nevertheless there are good points in the
plan of redistribution, and in the purposed
dealing with corruption, which suffice, we think,
to dispose the Liberal party to accept it for what
it is worth, and by good treatment to snake it
unrecognizable even by its parents. We believe
there is a spirit of toleration, of indulgence, of
pity and goodwill, in the Liberal party—a
spirit encouraged by returning concord, and
fortified by an abounding faith in the
future, which is resolved to exhaust the
devices of conciliation, and to save Ministers if
it civil, in spite of their party and themselves.
Perhaps the great danger of the situation is one
which Mr. LOWE diseenut as clearly and de-
nounces as strongly as Mr. BRIGHT. it is the
danger of the great bulk of the Liberal party
being reduced by indifference, or by insincerity, or
by fear, to conspire with the great bulk ofethe Tory
party in passing a Bill which, so far from settling
the question, as Mr. BRIGHT so earnestly im-
plores, " for the rest of their parliamentary
" lives," will only be the beginning of a more
destructive agitation than that at which Mr.
Lows, in his memorable speech of last evening,
and in the very act of accomplishing a signal
political evolution at which all his Liberal
friends will rejoice, could not abstain from throw-
ing a passing jest, though ho treated it in effect
as serious enough to bring back deserters to the
camp.

OUR CONTEMPORARIES.
(THIS DAY.)

TILE GOVERNMENT REFORM PROPOSALS.

Thu nines pronounces against Mr. Disraeli's
speech, his procedure, and his scheme. The proposi-
tions fall short of the necessity of the occasion. The
estimates of the numbers to be enfranchised by the
•lucationid and other correlative franchises iire mere ex.
aggenited guesses, and the reduction of the occupying
qualification in boroughs will bring in, Mr. Gladstone de-
clared, not more than 100,000 voters of the working classes,
instead of the 200,000 proposed to be admitted by last year's
bill. Stripped of the addition of the fancy frauichises—which
are only the fringes, and the comparatively unimportant
fringes, of the real measure—Mr. Disraeli's scheme is but
a timid and halting repetition of the bill of the Russell
Ministry, based, like it, on no principle save that of ap-
peasing clamour with the dole of a mouthful, and having
no promise—we do not say of finality—but of fizity of
settlement. The scheme of redistribution is of the same
temporary character, and is tainted with the graver error
that it would, if adopted, add to the difficulty of a future
settlement. Were the scheme embodied in a bill it could
not be passed, and it would be impossible for the Ministry
to retain office after it was rejected. Unless the House of
Commons insist upon impressing its will on the Ministry,
and the Ministry, modified or unmodified, be sincerely
willing, as Mr. Disraeli declared yesterday fortnight, to
adopt its counsels, further useful action is impossible. The
session will be lost ; we must all regret it, but it is in-
evitable ; and it is more true wisdom to recognise what is
inevitable than to persevere in a line of conduct which
must be delusive.

The Daily News cannot see why Mr. Disraeli's speech
was not delivered a fortnight ago. The government pro-
cedure found no defender, even among the supporters of
the ministry, who listened in sullen and assenting silence
to the arguments and sarcasm of the opponents. Possibly
the resolutions, which are virtually withdrawn, have ►een
forced upon his keener sense by • more powerful influence
and • feebler capacity. On Thursday next he will
most likely give notice of his intention to bring in
• bill. The scheme has one merit, that it admits
of a great deal of improvement. A reduction of the
borough franchise to a 6/. rating would not afford •
resting place for a single session, and though nothing can
be said in principle against the fancy franchises, they all,
with the exception of the educational one, admit of easy
abuse. Mr. Disraeli proposes to extend the franchise
in the boroughs vertically to 130,000 persons, and laterally
to 82,000 pumas. This proportion would soon, we
imagine, be altered. Faggot votes might bring up the
82,000 voten to twice or thrice that number and
so swamp the honest and genuinely qualified part
of the constituencies by con apt elements. A lower
oocupation franchise, • 61. rental, or a 4/. rating,
would probably include most of those working men who
have a real savings bank or funded property qualification.
A lodger franchise on equivalent terms would embrace the
rest. The four new franchises are adopted, it is to be
feared, rather for the purpose of exclusion than of in-
elusion. The selection of •M. rating qualification for
the counties is inoonsiatent and capricious as well as
illiberal. The process of disfranchisement end of enfran_
chisement of boroughs might have been carried further.
But within the limits which be has allowed himself, and
the materials they placed at his disposal, the redistribu-
tion of seats does not seem to be injudicious or unfair.
The project as a whole is not hopelessly or irremediably
bad ; and. though liberals cannot accept it as it LS it may
be passed if the conservatives will accept it as it ought to
be and must be.

The scheme, the Pose says, offers much lees than that of
last year, and it is a question whether, upon that ground
alone, the opposition will not think itself justified in op.
posing its adoption. At any rate it is probable that, if it
should even get into committee, an amendment would
be proposed to the borough franchise clause, carrying it
down to 111. rating ; but there are so many and such grave
dangers surrounding it, that it seems at present to be
very problematical whether it will live so far, or indeed, if
the resolutions are insisted upon, whether it will ever be
formally introduced at all.

The Herald applauds the government's proposal in all
its details. The opposition expressed towards it was a
foregone conclusion with the men by whom those opinions
were delivered, and the hcstility manifested was not pro-
fessedly directed so much to the plan itself as to the pro-
cedure of the government. Mr. Bright and Mr. Lowe fur
exactly opposite reasons are doing their best to defeat a
measure which, whilst extending the suffrage and re-
cogniaing the claims of the working classes to • larger
■hare of power, yet maintains the just rights of property
and intelligence. It will not be the least merit of the
government measure in the eyes of many that this chief
opponent of all reform and the arch demagogue have com-
bined to oppose it.
The SModord says it is no secret that the measure
sketched in Mr. Disraeli's speech of last night is not that
which ministers originally intended to introduce. The
original plan, which the Standard would greatly have pre-
(erred, consisted of household suffrage, coupled with a
frank and direct provision for plurality, or rather duality
of voting ; household suffrage, compensated by the per-
mission given to the payers of direct taxes to enjoy •
second vote in right of that second qualification. This
permanent settlement ban been rendered impossible by the
opposition of the liberals. The Standard then proceeds
to urge that the resolutions might as well have been
abandoned by Mr. Di/twill last night. The matter is not
worth a party fight, and the government might gracefully
yield to the desire of the house.
In the opinion of the Telegraph, if it is waste of time to
discuss the mystic resolutions, it will be a still pester

wade of we fis; debate abe the offigringat a perplexed
and vacillating cabinet ; i bill tinkered end patched to
satisfy • jarCin which this nation no soafidence, aid
yakich ne4tVered any eeetikleuee tithe Nudes.
The Star presumes the liberals will co" fit-day to •
determination to stop the ridiculous farce de resolutions,
which is not • thing even to be laughed at ; but • still
stronger resolve must be arrived at before the question
can be settled ; for a people crying out for enfranchise-
ment will *ever be satisfied by infinitesimal and vexatious
changes which, to use Mr. Bright's apt citation, "touch
the lira but leave the palate dry." The silence of the
conservatives last night sufficiently indicated the unani-
mous disapproval of the government procedure, and the
speeches and exclamations of liberals attested the futility
of the government 'lmmure. It only remains for the
country to ratify a condemnation thus doubly justified by
two grounds of opposition, either of which would suffice
for the expulsion of ministers from the semblance of
power.

THE ELIPLOTHEICT OF VOLUNTEERS IN CTV/L DIEFURBANCES.

Joining the discussion which took place in the House of
Lords last night, the Times contends that the volunteers
were not intended for the suppression of civil disturbance,
and are not qualified for such service. To call out the
regular soldiery is always a matter of considerable delicacy
and of some risk ; but it is no disparagement to the volun-
teers to say that they are destitute of many of the advan-
tages which recommend soldiers on such emergencies.
Soldiers are part of a machine, and are never suspected
of partiality. Volunteers, on the other hand, would
he regarded as deliberate agents, and their employment
of their military advantages would excite a personal
animosity. Nor should it be forgotten that, as Lord
Russell remarked, being a local force, they would be liable
tobe actuated by local or party feelings. In a word, their
employment fur such purposes would expose them to great
animosity. A similar reason would make the service un-
popular among the volunteers themselves. It should be
distinctly laid down that in civil disturbances volunteers
have nothing to do with either their organisation or with
their arms. They are private citizens, and no more ; and
if they are sworn in as special constables, they must act
in exactly the same way as other special constables. The
question is one of sentiment, not of law, and the Times
trusts, therefore, the government will pay their chief
attention, not to the legal aspect of the question, but to
its general and common-sense bearings. If these be kept
in view, there can be no doubt how it ought to be
settled.