The Express.
London, England, 1850-02-28 00:00:00

TILE EXPRESS, THURSDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 28, 1850.

escand read* would not bo opposed, and the debate an
it would be taken oa ping iato committee.
TM debate wee then najournoll.
COPTHOLD ENFRANCHIBEMINT.
Is answer to Mr. AGLIONIT
Sir 0. (IRBY said that the bill for the abolition of harlots
31ki1!?..D PIIPIna• it*l. M Ise introduc4,l4 Lk. other
-came of Pansameat. He did not know it had sot
Ocia iaMestistichut he would Inquire.
„ COUNTY BATES.
0a the Both,* Mr. Hwy, the tallow* retort was
ordered : *tun of the valise of all extra persilal property
which oithethas been at is liable to be emaessedlo the county
rate, under this act 8 and 9 Vie , e. 111, as fixed either by a
county rate made ander the said mat, or by the property tax.
The house wijostraed at a quarter peat four.

PARLIAMENTARY BUSINESS FOR THIS
EVENING.

HOUSE OF LORDS.
ORDERS OF THE DAY.
81301 ID READINO.—Party Processions (Inland) Bill.
REPORT OP AXINDEINTII—RECIegiEItieII CollllEitkioE
Bill.

NOTICES OF MOTION.

---
Tan CAPII MIID,POST PHILIP —Lord MONTBAGLE, to
present • potitiAt from the Cape of Good Hope on the
adniiesion of convicts; and •lw • petition from Port Philip,
Australia, on the franchise.

ghe eimrefso.

effectual way, and that was, to rally at f
once the whole of the rate-paying classes
round the eaves of peaceful regress, and while in-
vesting them with the legal power, charging them
with the lei* responsibility, of defending all that has
been already gained. We now repeat that counsel,
and we do so deliberately. No qualmish maples shall
restrain oar utterance of the disagreeable but there-
fore the more urgent truth—that the cause of indus-
trial freedom and social peace is in danger. A
sliding scale of corn duties, or a prohibition of horned
cattle, we may never see again proposed in parliament,
but something meant to be as good for the tax-eaters,
and consequently as bad fee the tax-payers of the
kingdom we shall undoubtedly see proposed and
urged open the legislature by the re-united strength
of the heeded and colonial oligarchy. After what we
have seen within the last few days, it were sheer hy-
pocrisy to affect incredulity as to their numerical
force or unscrupulous daring.
There is bat one way of bridling the rage and cu-
pidity of the few, and that is, by appealing
promptly and plainly to the endangered many. Free
trade and few taxes are questions for the people at
large, or they are nothing. If the people don't ap-
preciate the value of them, they are practically value-
less. If a larger share of the comforts and necessaries
of life be not worth fighting for, we do not know
what is ; and if financial and fiscal reform be not cal-
culated to insure these blessings to the overwhelming
mass of the industrious community, its doctrines
are but economic riddles not worth the trouble
of finding out,—philosophical conundrums not worth
tre pains of solving. But if the undeniable fact be,
that the people thoroughly understand their deep and
lasting interest in the matter, and would, if they
were allowed an opportunity for the full and free
expression of their opinion, pronounce such a verdict
as would a the the great social controversy for ever,
—then in justice to thorn no further delay should be
suffered to take place in appealing to the judgment of
an Enfranchised People.
The mass of the rate-paying population of the
United Kingdom, as things now stand, are unjustly
and unwisely denied the suffrage. Yet these are
they whose interests are peculiarly at stake in all
that points to progress or menaces reaction. What
infatuat-on then withholds men who ancerely wish
to see the policy of gradual and peaceable progress
rendered irreversible,—what timidity or apathy
causes them to hesitate in taking forthwith a step
which they must feel to be ere long inevitable,
but which, if unhappily 'delayed much further,
will be forced npoo them by the passionate reproaches
of an impatient and exasperated nation ? Da the
wait for Loch a call ? Do conservative liberals think
it wise or politic to teach the bulk of the community
that there is nothing they may not extort by agita-
tion, and nothing that they may hope to get without
it? This is practically the question which will to
decided by the division on Mr. liesues motion.
Fins phrases and conventional distinctions
about terms will not be heeded now. All
we have, and all we want to win for I
the physical and moral amelioration of the com-
munity is in jeopardy. "The Philistines be upon
thee, SAMSON !" Will green withes from fastidious
gardens, however cunningly intertwined and twisted,
suffice to hold down the awakened giant?
The cuckoo cry for a dissolution is among the false
notes raised by the Disraelitish party. Not a bad
dodge for them, if they could only bamboozle the
world i :to believing it. They would appeal to the
people. So would we ; only let the appeal be an-
swered legally and constitutionally by the rate-paying
people, and not by the sham electoral bellies to which
the constituency of the realm has to so great an ex-
tent been reduced. Will they dare to take that issue ?
They know well they dare not. The very shadow of
electoral reform startles them. In the House of Com-
mons on last Monday night they fell into convulsions
at being asked to go into committee on a bill—
not to extend the Irish franchise beyond that
which wis intended by the Reform Bill, but
confessedly to restore the constituencies of that down-
trodden ciuntry to something like an equality with
the other portions of the empire. They grew per-
fectly delirious, talked in an incoherent manner, and
manifested all the ague of persons labouring under
the influence of insanity produced by anxiety or
alarm. Well may they fear. Their last hold on
Ireland is so attenuated that they shriek from
havirg it even looked into closely or ex-
amined. To defend it is impossible ; to sub-
sti-ute for it anything efficient or Imitable
would, so far as that portion of the realm is
concerned, be their qe-ctus. Hence their iitieble
exhibition of weakness and frenzy. Were we mall-
ciolie, we would anticipate its repetition. Nothing can
be more instructive than the self-immolation of fiction.
But we arc much mistaken if the old hands o' the
party have not already taken measures to pre-
vent the recurrence of such indecent exposures.
Instead of being hailed as a deliverer the
next morning, Mr. DISRAELI was given to
understand by more than ono weighty person-
age' it is said, " that this sort of thing must
never happen again." Old nobles and rich monopo-
lists don't m'nd being well abused, and clearly con-
vict, d of political delinquency; they have always
been used to it, and think it rather a tribute to their
poeitiou than otherwise. But there is one thing which
utterly destroys their digestion. They cannot bear
to be laughed at. Anything else they can endure ;
but when they find themselves unexpectedly placed
in an absurd and ludicrous position, they get red in
the fice, and thick in the speech; giddiness seizes
their eves; they become altogether helpless ; and are
in that condition capable of being unresistingly
dragged backwards and forwards by any wicked
wight whom they may have formerly stung by their'
jockey scorn.
If, however, such a paroxysm is produced by so
very moderate an instalment of justice to Ireland as
Sir W. Someavitee's bill, what may we not expect
when the full payment of the electoral debt
due to the united realm shall be proposed ?
And how hollow must the pretended desire
of toryiem be for a real appeal to the people? Aud
if so, why should any sound or honest friend of popu-
lar right and social safety halt between two opinions
any for ger ? Eighty-four members of the House of
Commons voted for the same motion made by Mr.
Hum e in 18-19; we have surely a right to count upon
a great accession of support for it in 1850.

NEVER was a request so cryingly supported by cir-
cumstances, or so temperately and conclusively put
forward by its mover, as %Ir. Fox's proposal on
Tuesday night. The field of education in this
country has been completely abandoned to great
political interests, or to the z•ml of religious associa-
tions. Education in the higher classes is the mono-
poly of a caste. Beneath this, it it for the most pert
a mere subservient to the inculcation of religious
tenet& The State, as soon as it came to meddle
with education, saw noshing better to do than
not only to sanction this, but to extend and promote
it. Inreead of bringing in any new priniple, creating
w facilities and incentives to education, the State
has merely sapersedel, and thus chiller], the efforts of
religious societies to extend and perfect their ei veral
educational establishments. Ono hundred thousand
a year has been distributed, the rca'er part
to aid the wealthier dame and the church
in bu'lding school-house which the church
and the wealthier classes were very well
able to do of themselves ; this very church and upper
classes now turning round upon government, and re-
turning, not gratitude, but bitter reproaches for the
boon. . . .

'There is a certain pint, however, at which even
reli.,ious zeal, though aided by government pay, stops
short: and there remains beyond a large proportion
of the population, not t 3 be reached by any effort of
either voluntary or state cducatit n, or by a combination
of both. It is to attain this neglected, and, in
educational provision, this proscribed portion of the
community that Mr. Fox brings in bill.
Mr. Fox comes but as a gleaner. Ile puts no
impediment in the way of the church reaping .11 the
hams!, that its s ckle can compasq. l le would not
prevent any Denomination front cutting and plucking
its proportion of the ern). All he asks is to be
allowed to gather std to germ r what is left. If there
be a district or a knot of remote poor, not in the vicinity
or in reach of the charity of either wt althy landlord or
capitalist, he requests that the property of the county
be made liable to afford means of it s'ruction to the
benighted and neglected of the population.
What more fair, what more imperative, what more
charitable ! No statesman could gainsay it, and we
congratulate Lord JottN Itt'sso 1.1, upon having had
the courage to receive with courtesy and favour the
that introduction of Mr. Fua'a proposal. The diffi-

collies, however, do but :there commence ; for it is
precisely for these waifs of society for whose instrue-
tion and improvement Mr. Fox would provide—.
it is to obtain possession of these, that the
church militant is at present most eager.
Not content with full educational power in the
very school-houses which the State has erected,
awhich it insists in vesting exclusively in the pre-
lates, the Natienal Society claims an educational mo-
nopoly over the young inmates of the poor.houee and
of the prison, and over the training schools that are
to provide teachers for this and for every clue.
" The education of pauper children," writes the
Secretary of the National Society, " was entrusted to
this society by the crown ' • and the National Society,
as the organ of the church, has still higher rights and
graver responsibilities in that character."
The church, therefore, claims as its own the two
extremes of English society. It gives no degree or
advantage in its lordly universities to students of any
other creed. And it will allow no education of the
destitute young, save what it directs and monopolise'.
Whenever, in fact, there are fends provided for educe-
tioo, the church insists on acting schoolmaster, be
it in the village school-house or the college hall.
When Mr. Fox, therefore, proposes to raise
money for educating the destitute, he may
be sure that the church will not hear of
it. He may talk as he will of the virtues and
necessities of secular education. Secular educa-
tion means an education that the clergy do not
direct; and they will in consequence none of it.
We, therefore, have no hopes of Mr. Fox carry-
ing his point. Ile will state his case indeed so ab.y
and so eloquently, that ministers cannot but com-
pliment him. But ea his oppoi.ents would
much rather see Englishmen uneducated, and
living like swine, than have them educated by
other tnen they, even though it were by state pre-
ceptors, strongly and necessarily bound to the inte-
rests of religion, we again repeat we despair of his
success.

Government, we fear, committed a fatal error when
it took the great religious associations as the basis of
its educational scheme. It sought to make use of
them, to lean upoa them an crutches, till the
educational department of the government grew
erong. Hut the crutches have got a will
and an interest of their own, and refuse to prop up
or to bear that feeble and premature invalid,
the Committee of Education. The National Society, re-
presenting the church, claims no less than to act itself
the executive and admiuis:rative department of edu-
cation. It claims its right from the Crown, from the
church, nay perhaps from the Apostles; and it treats
parliament as the mere national puree-bearer, bound
to furnish its wants and haw submissively to its
decrees.

If government resists these pretensions, it evidently
loses the support of the religious bodies on which it
bailed. All the schoolhouses and the teachers, and
the thousands of pounds it has sunk in fith,
become useless, and the annual grant will, in fact,
have been tnrown away. li', on the other hand, go-
vernment succumb, all the poorer class, that which
cannot pay for its education, will be reduced to a
kird of Egyptian bondage, and consigned to
ignorance, b..causii the church will have the exclu-
sive right to teach, without having the funds or the
means to do so, whilst parliament will have voted
the funds and the means without the power of apply-
ing them.
We cannot but think, therefore, that Mr. Fox's
bill is a proposal to erect a superstructure upon an
edifice so mis-shapen, so ill-built and In tottering,
that it would be money and masonry
thrown away to set about completing it. mne
educational foundations that we have laid are rani, y,
and in fact incapable of supporting even the present
ricketty edifice above them, much less a comprehensive
and worthy structure.
Mr. Fox is n 3 doubt guided by prudential reasons.
He limits his proposal to what he is likely to carry.
And we hope he may carry it, in order that when the
pri sent education system by means of religious so-
cieties falls to the ground, which it is already doing
by the lukewarmness and schisms of these societies,
there at least may be left something else standing ti
which educ don and its prospects may cling.

THE financial business of the session begins on
Monday next. On that day government is to pro-
ceed with the navy estimates. On the Monday fol-
lowing the first votes on the army estimates are to be
taken ; and on the 15th of March the CHANCELLOR of
the EXCHEQUER, if sufficiently recovered, is to make
his annual financial statement.

We are thus particular in directing attention to
the opening of the financial camplign in order that
constituencies may be warned to keep a sharp look
out on their representatives, and even administer a
gentle hint to such as are not already at their posts
that they are expected to be in attendance when it
begins. The struggle for retrenchment will commence
with the introduction of the first estimates. Mr.
CuttDEN has already put the following notice of mo-
, tion on the order book :

On going into committee of supply, to move, that the net
expenditure of the government for the year 1535 (Parlia-
mentary Paper, N. MO, 1847 ), amounted to 44,422,0001 •
• hat the net expenditure for the year ended she sth day of
January 15.50 (Parliamentary Paper, No. 1,15%01, amounted
t 3 50,553,000 ; the increase of uowards of 6,000,0001. having
been caussel principally by successive augmentations of our
warlike establishments, and outlays for defensive arma-
ments. That no foreign danger, or necessary cost of the
civil government, or indispensable disbursements fcr the
services in our dependencies abroad, warrant the continu-
ance of this increase of expenditure. That the taxes re.
quired to .neet the present expenditure impede the opera-
tions of agriculture and manufactures, and diminish the
funds for the employment of labour in nil branches of pro-
ductive industry, thereby tending to produce pauperism and
crime, and adding to the local and general burdens of the
peep.e. That, to diminish these evil., it is expedient that
this house take steps to reduce the annual expenditure, with
ell practicable speed, to an amount not exceeding the sum
latch, within the last fifteen years, hu been proved to be
sufficient for the mainte:tance of the security, honour, and
dignity of the nation.

The Army, Ordnance, and Navy Estimates, for
1850 51 have been published. The following tabular
statement, compiled from them will show what instal-
ment of reduction in the six millions of excessive ex-
penditure ministers intend to offer the country :

1350.1. 1649:30.
Army 011,0111,397 06,142411
Omance 2.431,417 2,632,601
N.tvy
I'OISt-0111CC l'Aciets 764238 748,298

Z1:,,067,473 515,756,336
15,067.4:3

Proposed &ware ie 1130-1

0720,063

Seven hundred thousand pounds out of six mil-
lions ! One and one-sixth per cent. ! The debtor
who would venture to propose such a compromise to
his creditors would require a tolerable stock of modest
assurance.

LOUIS BLANC.

FRANCE.
PRIS, 5.1
M. Carlier's agents again attemp edEDMPRDAY to M 0 r.
stir np dia.
turbance in Paris by provoking the democrats.
The
provocation is admitted in the following communi-
cated notes of the government.
"This morning the chaplets which bed been deposited st
the foot of the Column of July, on the Pare de Is &rine,
had disappeared ; they Were taken away during the night
without any order. The Prefect of Police, when ial6rmed-
the fact, immediately gave directions that they should bof
e
replaced, and a Commissary of P dice, in his inaignia
office, presided over the operation. An inquiry is 'Art,/ to
eseertain the author of this unjustifiable act, and ecrue jus. ties will be exercised on him."
o A peace officer, during last night, removed the chaplet,
which had been deposited nn the 24th February roiled the
Column of July. The Pr-feet of Police, after demanding in-
structions from the Minister of the Intrrinr,immediatsly
missed this agent, who al far forgot his duty and wad eon.
tra to his instructicns. The chahits
the day by the cue of the authorities. aces replaced during
This incident was touched upon in the Assembly,
when M. Salved put his questions relative to the
conduct of the prefect of the Loir-et-Cher,
_in pro_
venting political writings from being hawked about,
and bills posted up, as is permitted by the electeral
law when a general election takes place. M. Saint
argued that, if full liberty were not allowed at all
elections, universal suffrage would be but an empty
aame, whil-t the Minister of the Interior maintained
that the prefect acted Ferree, ly in accordance with a
decision of the Court of Cessation, and in pureinente
of orders received from the government Af cr a
rather confused discas,ion, in the course of wh!c!,
Cremieux proposed an ordee of the motive, blaming
the conduct of the prefect, the Assembly adapted the
order of the day by 411 votes to 203.
To-day in the Legislative Assembly, M. CaeEimir
Perrier rose to move the bill on the Greek loan. He
said that the situation in which Greece now f,end
itself had imposed on the committee of which 1 e vps
the reporter a most painful du'y. The rpicAlon of
finance involved, and was dominated by, one of
policy, which presented itself as one difficult to
avoid and delicate to treat. When the world was
moved by the unforeseen threats made agaMst a
young nationality so lately inaugurated amidst the
applause of Christiani y, when France on a n.cent
occasion had ehown its sympathy for sufferings
which were borne with that dignity which was the
best weapon of the weak, the committee had thought it
necessary and possible to csneiliate the exi;:encies of
national feeling with that res-rve %Lich important
interests required. That reserve was an imperi .us
duty in the present instance, and nothing ce,uld be
more proper to mark that tendency than thst adjourn-
ment of anything like debate or negotiarie n resat ve
to the service or interests of the loan, tad the future
regulation of financial regulations wCh Greece.
M. Mauguin agreed with the sentiue n's issuir;
from M. C. Perrier. However, he wou'd s'y tat the
hostility that England had always evinced to-seeds
Greece, its persistence, in spite of the di,e)r tent.
of France and Russia, were too seriou, faces to
allow of his nut insist:ng. Tnis per-i-earce
on the part of England caused Burped e, hecauee it
was a power which proceeded to ac•ioa after eery
mature deliberation. It was therefore impos, co:
to seek for the cause of this conduct. He wou:1 oat
. .