The Express.
London, England, 1868-06-25 00:00:00

TIIE EXPRESS, THURSDAY EVENING, JUNE 25, lB6B.

the purely intellectual gifts of the rival leaders are
in strongly marked contrast. The scrupulous
hesitation with which Mr. OLanfrromt approaches
any difficult question, and the nicely-balanced con-
siderations by which he judges it, seem to
have little in common with the passionate
fervour and strenuous conviction of his
later attitude. The hair-splitting dialectician
and the subtle casuist is scarcely to be
recognised in the eager political dogmatist and
impetuous Parliamentary orator. But these
two sides of Mr. GLADSTONE'S character have
the same root, lying deep in conscience. Careful
and even sceptical inquiry is the basis of genuine
conviction. Hence Mr. GLADSTONE, in the begin-
nings of great controversy seems often a doubtful
friend ; towards the close he is for colder tem-
peraments a too daring ally. Mr. Datum
has neither the strength nor the weakness of this
type of character. Unburthtmed with deep con-
victions of any kind, be moves lightly and grace-
fully. Ile never hesitates, and ho is never ob-
stinate. He sticks at nothing, and he adheres to
nothing a moment longer than the convenience of
his party requires. Equally gifted in point of
intellect, or approaching near enough to equality to
make the contest a fair one, the issues of victory
lie between Mr. GLAneroree's strength and Mr.
DisitAELes suppleness and agility. The training
of the two men has contirnied the natural bent of
their characters. Destined to political life while
yet a lad in the playing fields of Eton, and a de-
bater in the Oxford Union, Mr. GLADSTONE was
a member of Parliament almost as soon
as he came of age, and in office before
he was five-and-twenty. While he was
doing the work of a legislator and admi-
nistrator, in office or in opposition, as the
member either of a triumphant majority, or of a
compact and united minority, Mr. DISRAELI was
working his way in a very different sphere.
Mr. GLAnerosz was laying the foundations
of scholarly acquirements among the towers
and glades of Eton when Mr. DISRAELI was
serving an apprenticeship to life in the
office of a city attorney. The leader of
the Opposition was a sixth form boy,
when the PRI3IE MINISTER was writing " Vivian
" Grey," persuading MURRAY the publisher into
unfortunate newspaper speculation, composing a
radical satire on English institutions in " Captain
" Popanilla," and airing his familiarity with the
great world in the " Young Duke." In short,
Mr. DISRAELI was studying and turning to account
the weaknesses of society, while Mr. Geinsrose
was engaged in scholarly labours, and in
the business of administration. The one has
become a scholar and a man of business ; the
other a man of the world and of society ; the one
has learned to administer affairs ; the other how
to manage men. The one has become a consum-
mate statesman ; the other a masterly tactician.
The division of parties, the temper of the House of
Commons, the gravity of the occasion, will deter-
mine the ascendancy of Mr. GLAnsTora or Mr.
DISRAELI; and their relative position has varied
according as there was real work to be done
or the prejudices of persons and of cliques to be
humoured and played with. Between these two
men the people will have to choose at the general
election. The arts which amuse the House of
Commons will not be a very powerful recommend-
ation to the million who have not the entrege of
that place of entertainment; nor are they
likely to be vexed at the earnestness, and made
uneasy by the tacit reproaches which Mr.
GLADSTONE'S strong conviction administers to
poco-turantciam. The two statesmen will be
judged by their past. Mr. GLADSTOIo•E, educated
in all the prejudices of Toryism, has renounced the
service of an oligarchic class for the service
of the people. Mr. DISRAELI, abandoning the
liberal professions of his early youth, has put on
the livery of an order which distrusts him, but
cannot do without him, and which he sways
only as the roguish slave or valet of TERMTE or
MommeE sways the testy but dull master, whom
he at once humours and laughs at. Mr. GLAD-
STONE was one of the instruments of removing
the tax which starved the people, for the
sake of swelling the, landlords' rents. Mr.
DISRAELI did his best to maintain it. Mr.
GLADSTONE has lightened the burthens,
and stimulated the industry, and afforded
safe vehicles for the savings, and brought
knowledge to the doors of the humblest classes.
Mr. DISRAELI has hindered most and helped
none of these changes. Mr. GLADSTONE
now appeals to the nation to pacify Ire-
land by justice ; Mr. DISRAELI asks them to
maintain the vicious ascendancy of class and creed
to which all her sufferings, and many of our
troubles are due. Shall the work of material,
moral, and intellectual progress go on ? Or shall
it be interrupted and thrown back ? If public
life is a comedy, Mr. DISRAELI has unquestionably
a claim to play the principal part in it. If it is a
serious business requiring high capacity, large
knowledge, and conscientious purpose, Mr. GLAD-
STONE is the man for whom the hour calls.

asserted during the last nineteen yean, all
tending to the enforcement of this view.
Where gardens abut on to the Heath a nominal
fee has been exacted for propping their hedge
from the Heath side; laundresses have been called
upon to pay a few pence for sticking their drying
poles into the soil ; donkey owners and showmen
have been mulct of nominal sums. These things
have been enforced gradually, and have been too
petty in their character for a fight; but the fatal
bricks and mortar are only another develop-
ment of the principle that has been laid down.
Sir Thrones WILSON says the Heath is his, and, so
far as we understand the matter, his opponents
dispute his right in foto, and are averse to pur-
chasing, as the Board of Works talked of doing,
rights which they maintain to be imaginary. Tho
metropolis has a deep interest in the dispute, for
to be deprived of Hampstead-heath as a breathing
ground would be little short of a public calamity.

THE METROPOLITAN FOREIGN CATTLE

MARKET BILL.

THE Metropolitan Foreign Cattle Market Bill,
which is to come on for discussion to-morrow, will
be opposed on the ground that it would practically
exclude foreign meat from the home markets, and
make animal food an unattainable luxury to the
very poor. The plea that its provisions are wan-
sary to prevent the recurrence of rinderpest is de-
clared to be unsound. Professor SPOONER, of the
Veterinary College, M. BOSLEY, the veterinary
adviser of the French Government, and Mr.
PEMMICAN, the official cattle inspector of tho
largest metropolitan district, have pronounced
against them. All foreign countries aro to
be tabooed, while Spain, Portugal, France, Olden-
burg, Schleswig-Holstein, Denmark, and Sweden
have never had rinderpeat at all ; and Holland,
Belgium, Prussia, and Austria are not only free
from it now, but have adopted the most stringent
measures against the admission of infected animals
into their several domains. At present, the homo
and foreign meat sold at the Islington Cattle
Market brings together 5,000 retail butchers
to compete for it. But if, an will undoubtedly be
the case if the bill under discussion becomes law,
foreign animals aro excluded from the central
market, and slaughtered and disposed of at a
special market near their landing place at Barking
Creek, only the large carcase butchers
would find it worth while to traverse
the ten miles between it and Islington, and the
competition would be thus reduced from 5,000
bidders to 100. The loss of time, the cartage of
dead meat, and the depreciation of offal,
would amount to from 30s. to 40s. per
beast, causing, in fact, a prohibitory duty of
from 10 to 12 per cent. ; as is the case at Liver-
pool, where the experiment of a separate market
for foreign cattle has been tried. This is the more
serious if it be remembered that half the meat of
London is at first supplied by the foreign cattle
trade, and that the poor of the east of London
would be in practice deprived of the offal which is
now one of their staple articles of cheap animal
food. Lord ROBERT MONTAGU, who will advo-
cate the bill to-morrow, is rather ingeniously
quoted against himself by its opponents. When
speaking of the Contagious Diseases (Animals)
Bill, in 1807, his lordship said :—" The honourable
" member for the Tower Hamlets wished to have
" a separate market in London for foreign cattle,
" but that would be a most expensive measure,
" as it would be necessary to purchase land, and
" to erect buildings for the accommodation of not
" less than 5,000 cattle a week, as well
"as slaughter-houses for all these beasts.
" Besides, if they were to have two mar-
" kets, one for English and the other for
" foreign cattle, they would divide the buyers and
" destroy competition. The proposal is therefore
" a gigantic system of protection lt is

" not upon joints, but offal, that the poorest feed,
" and offal will never be brought to London if the
" animals are killed at the place of landing."
Lord ROBERT MONTAGU seems to have summed
up very neatly the arguments against the measure
he is now expected to advocate.

the order for emocution to the Kura. General
RENARD insists that if the man is not guillotined
all discipline in the army will be destroyed. M.
BABA dote not think the argument of the general
satisfactory. But whilst the doctors differ Fr ZRON
keeps his head. _._____

'his debate which begins this evening in the
Houma Lords on the Established Church (Ireland)
Bill, is not expected to last more than two sittings,
though there is, of course, some uncertainty on this
head. The Bishop of OXFORD, we believe, will
move the adjournment of the debate to-night.
The majority is variously estimated st from 50 to
70. There can be no doubt that the rejection of
the measure by their lordships will greatly stimu-
late the efforts of the Liberals.

THE Registration Bill was settled yesterday, in
Conunittao. Wo understand that the recommen-
dations to be returned to the House will admit of
the elections taking place early enough to allow
of the meeting of Parliament at the beginning of
Deeember.

FOREIGN NEWS.

(THIS DAY.)

THE PAPAL ALLOCUTION.

The Hiirk of to-day, remarking on the Papal
denunciation of the recent confessional laws passed
in Austria, says :
Here is pious and catholic Austria, the ancient rampart
of the faith, exposed to the ban of the catholic world by
Pins IX. The laws voted by the Austrian parliament are
characterised as " reprehensible," " abominable" as
" contrary to the rights of the church and its doc-
trines," /cc. The laws thus spoken of are
laws which established the freedom of the pram, liberty
of conscience, civil marriages, and the withdrawal of
schools from the predominant control of the clergy. Once
more "the infallible oracle "—to use the expression of M.
Veuillot—has anathematised those princinles which aro
the banes of those modern communities which desire to
live and to progress in liberty. In what miserable
equivocations will those members of the French clergy
who pretend to he at once submissive children of the
church and citizens attached to civil freedom, new take
refuge Y What wretched casuistry will they invoke? By
what new outrage on common sense will they maintain
that a man can be at the same time a faithful believer,
condemning, with Pius IX., liberty of the press, liberty of
conscience, and liberty of education, and a political citizen
demanding in the name of justice those same liberties?
All distinctions in this case are but the subtleties of
sophists driven to the wall. One must choose. One mud
he either catholic and absolutist, or rationalist and liberal.
! There is no medium. The Popo has taken it upon him-
self to point to the faithful that this is the case. We know
nothing so sad as the contradictions and capitulations of
conscience to which the impossible task of reconciling the
doctrines of the church with the principles of a free and
democratic people condemn those who persist in making
the attempt.

A FRENCH BISHOP'S IDEA OF RELIGIOUS

EDUCATION.

The prefect of the Dordogne, desirous of estab-
lishing a society for the extension of primary edu-
cation in his department, inserted the names of the
Bishop of Perigueux and some of the leading eccle-
siastics of the diocese as members. The bishop at
once wrote to the prefect, requesting to have his
name removed, on the ground that he
could not " countenance a society founded on
conditions which are incompatible with the
inalienable rights of the church :"

Whatever, says the bishop, may he the claims
and endeavours of which we are the saddened spectators
in these days, let us remain firmly attached to the idea of
the church on the subject of the education of the rising
generation. Jesus Christ is the master of truth. Ile
recognised the temporal power—he paid homage to
it—but to the church and the church only,
he gave the right and imposed the duty of
teaching mankind. It is not that the laity are
prohibited from receiving education, especially when
science and literature are its object. We put forth no
such claim. The church accepts, encourages, and blesses
devotion of every kind; but that which is true, and what
we must loudly proclaim, is that every person engaged in
teaching ix bound in conscience to amept the superinten-
dence and control of the church. This right of the church
is imperative.