The Express.
London, England, 1867-11-30 00:00:00

THE WEEKLY PRESS.

The Spectator insists that the only real radical
remedy for the disloyalty of Ireland is to identify the
people with the soil. This could be effected by what was
called in Bengal a " permanent settlement"—the tramp-
formation of peasant widers and tenant farmers into
actual owners paying a quit-rent, and liable to eviction
only if they ceased to pay it punctually—and as far as we
know by that alone. Of course no one would propose it
without full compensation to the landlord for the sacrifice
of the estimated future increase in the value of his estate.
The only other efficient and logical policy that the Spec-
tator knows of is to dissolve the union, and give Ireland
back her old, and even more than be old, independence.
No Englishmen in his senses will propose that.
In the opinion of the Saturday Review, the Manchester
election bodes ill both for the government and for the old
liberal party. Although personal and local coadderations
may perhaps have affected the result, the contest lay sub-
stantially between the supporters of Mr. Disraeli end the
adherents of Mr. Gladstone scathe one side, and the fol-
lowers of Mr. Bright on the other. The extreme party
hes obtained a decisive victory is • constituency which
fairly repress& the greet manufacturing towns of the
north.

The Examiner canton& th►t all pacific means of mem-

lug the liberation of the Abyssinian captives have net
been exhausted. This is proved, it 'aye; by dm fact that
at the present time an apiesey is ca its way to King
Theodore from the Viceroy of Egypt; and as this is de-
scribed as a strictly friendly mission, it can require no
support from the presence of our army on the coast. Why
was not this expedient resorted to before, instead of after
a declaration of war? 11-by, again, if a military demon-
stration was thought necessary, was no attention paid to
the sensible proposition of Sir Samuel Baker. to send an
armed embassy of 1,000 men to negotiate for the release of
our countrymen? By all accounts, the King cannot pos-
sibly bring 3,000 men into the field, and of these the
greater number are armed with bows and arrows, and
the picked men with matchlocks only. A small, well-
equipped force, proceeding as an escort to an ambassador,
rather than as an invading army, would have sufficed to
awe, without affronting the King ; but this would not have
been war, and nothing less than war will satisfy the
government.
Endeavouring to deduce the moral of the Fenian execu-
tions, the Chronicle argues that those who allow that bare
justice has not yet been done to a people have no right to
presuppose, if it were done, no satisfactory results would
follow. Our first obligation is to our own consciences.
When we have settled with them, it will be time enough
to calculate the gains of doing our duty, Neither of the
great political parties has yet seriously taken this initial
step in the path of conciliation. What do the land bills
introduced and reintroduced even by conservative govern-
ments mean if not that the relations between landlord and
tenant are still defective? What do all the commonplaces
of successive generations of liberal maims on the enormity
of the Irish! church establiahment mean if not that the
mutual position of catholics and protestants is still in-
capable of being defended, or even excused? It is out of
our own mouths that we are judged and condemned.