The Express.
London, England, 1861-05-15 00:00:00

11101_WATIZ
_AT WWI TAIDIK

I Dr; es..7.—inerros. an. 29..
Timieasow —llsinlag. 512. &111111111. 6b.

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, MAY 15.

Iv it were not that the interests of trade and
revenue are likely to suffer by a prolongation of
uncertainty regarding financial legislation, we
should not regret the repetition of such discussions
as those which have already occupied eight nights
in the House of Commons, and to which a ninth
is to be devoted on Thursday. Their whole ten-
dency is to consolidate the strength of the Liberal
party, and to rally in support of its most eloquent
Imam a clear and decided force of opinion out of
doors. All the ingenuity of cavil fails to detect
any flaw in the constitutional soundness of the
policy recommended by Mr. GLADSTONE ; and the
factions prophets of ill look day after day and
week after week in vain, for some tidings of mis-
chief or misery in some quarter of the world to
furnish them with a pretext for asking a recon-
sideration of the Minister's calculations. One
practised lawyer after another was put up on
Monday night to argue in favour of the irre-
sponsible power of the House of Lords in matters
of taxation ; but it is difficult to say whether the
special pleadings of Mr. Rorer, or the irrestraineble
irrelevancies of Mr. WHITISIDS, were less to the
purpose of their party. Mr. Cowea as effectually
answered the one as Lord JOHN Ruesr.sc disposed
of the other. The chief reliance of the Opposition
speakers seems to have been placed upon their
hope of being able to confuse men's minds as to
the nature of " a tack " to a bill ; and Mr.
WIJYIIIDS quoted a image from Lord Soma=
against the political character of the great ring-
leader of the bad practice of tacking in his time.
But the instances are nothing to the purpose.
The memorable struggle between the two
Houses depicted by Lord MACAULAY arose out
of an attempt by the Tory opposition of that
day to assume to themselves not only the power
of resuming grants made by the Crown, but
of sitting in summary, absolute, and irrever-
Bible judgment on the Ministers who had sane-
tionod them. They knew that the Upper House
would never pus their usurping measures of
confiscation and penalty unless coerced to do so
by a sense of public danger, and they therefore
" tacked " the penal enactment they had framed
to a Bill of Supply, without which the credit of
the Treasury could not be sustained. A more
monstrous proceeding in every respect the annals
of Parliament do not contain ; yet it is worthy of
note that after a prolonged resistance, the Peers,
though they had manifest right and justice on
their side, were compelled at length to give
way. It is impossible to show a single fea-
ture of resemblance between the case of 1700
and that of 1861. Things wholly discrepant
and dissimilar were in the former tied together,
avowedly for the purpose of bullying the Lords
iato submission. In the present instance two re-
made= of duty are named in a Bill which im-
poses two or three other taxes of minor amount.
But nobody has ventured to argue that any clause
or part of a clause in the measure is not part and
parcel of a Money Bill ; nobody will venture
gravely to assort that from first to last there is a'
single provision which could with any regard to
propriety be incorporated in any other than a•
Money Bill. The great case of " tacking" relied
OD by the orators of the Opposition must therefore
he held to be utterly inapplicable. Not less striking
is the contrast between the venal and virulent
Eirvsor it who led the reactionary party one hun-
dred and sixty years ago, and the upright, puncti-
lious, and we must take leave to say sometimes
I too forbearing leader of the Liberal party iu the
present struggle. A more worthless politician
than "the tacker" portrayed by Sons= can
hardly be conceived, or one who accomplished less
by years of greedy and unscrupulous faction even
for his party. A more stainless public man does
not exist than Mr. Ocaterrows, nor are there many
of the statesmen of our time who have written
their names in a greater number of useful and
popular statutes. If the Cstasicalaoa of the Ex-
cueour.a has a fault, it is the mute disdain with
which he treats scurrility and abuse like that in
which the hope of the House of SALISBUZY
in-
dulged the other night, not for the first time, and
which would have been more befitting the
days of Barwick or Jacs Howe than the
more decent times in which we live. The
House, which last week was surprised
into silent toleration of Lord ROSS= Czen.'s
impertinence and folly, shook its head at Mr.
DisaaeLefl reckless patronage ostentatiously
bestowed on the author of what it was willing to
forget as a thoughtless sally, but what it bad no
mind to forgive if perpetrated again. The out-
break of indignation and disgust with which the
deliberate repetition of the offence was visited on
Monday night must have made the right hon.
Member for Bucks repent the encouragement he
had so heedlessly given. We have heard of the
drummer fearing the lash ; but it is something
new for a tormentor who has given up the busi-
ness to go out of his way to puff and pat on the
back a blundering apprentice in the craft. Mr.
DISEAELI was himself an inquisitor of exquisite
cunning in the art of cruelty, and owed no little of
his first celebrity in debate to his series of
philippics against Sir RosasT Pen.. If
Lord Exeria's nominee for • Stamford had
the wit as he has the will to assail Mr. Cc...ono=
in like fashion, ho would be only too sure of an
attentive and even anxious hearing from an audi-
ence like the present House of Commons. But
devoid of sense as of humour, his efforts at mischief
affront the gravity and offend the taste of the
public ; and were ho not one of the favoured caste
his efforts to revive the ruthless rhodowontade

practised formerly by the late Colonel Stirmo