The Express.
London, England, 1868-04-01 00:00:00

00WrAINING

The Latest Foreign Telegrams ; the Latest City
Railway, Mining, and other Shares ; Sporting
and General Intelligence,

IS PUBLISHED
EVERY EVENING.

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 1

MR. _HARDY AND MR. BRIGHT IN
DEBATE.

ALTHOUGH the speech with which the HOME
SECRETARY resumed the Irish Church debate last
evening, in the presence of the Prince of \Yates
and a host of civil and religious dignitaries from
the sister isle, was in effect, as Mr. BRIGHT
described it, " an answer " to that of the Foacius
MINISTER, it was emphatically, as Mr. BRIGHT
also characterised it, " a good speech." We
should be sorry to be considered capable of doing
justice to the oratory of Liberal members only.
In commending when one can the eloquence of
adversaries, there is a much livelier satisfaction
than in extolling friends. Criticism becomes easier
when it has proved its impartiality and is forcible
in proportion as its fairness is beyond dispute.
Mr. HARDY'S speech was "good" in many ways. It
was vigorous, direct, explicit, and sincere. It was
manly and robust in tone, courageous in spirit,
frank and fearless in expression. Mr. HARDY is
at present one of the ablest and most effective party
speakers in the House. Endowed by nature
with a resonant voice of a somewhat high register,
but never shrill or thin, a voice at once
mellow and vibrating, with a copious yet
not redundant vocabulary, and with a comba-
tive rather than an aggressive temperament, with
pleasant open looks, and a cheery impulsive
manner, eminently respectable and 'tardily conven-
tional, Mr. HARDY brings with him to public life a
large share of those physical and moral qualities
for which the men of his county are often famous ;
he brings the energetic temper and training
of the North, and to all these natural and
native advantages he unites the sober and
safe refinements of the best education this
country can afford, the moral training of a
public school, and the more or less religious and
intellectual culture of Oxford University. He is
one of those country gentlemen of a latter day
whose fathers were the founders of estates, and
there is probably something of the charm of a
novel sentiment in his warm attachment to the
superstitions of the country party. If we sub-
stitute Lancashire for Yorkshire we find more re-
semblance than difference between the earlyhistory
of Mr. HARDY and Mr. GLADSTONE, as there is
always more resemblance than difference be-
tween the characteristics of a Yorkshireman and a
man of Lancashire. The divergence and dispro-
portion between the two statesmen are neither in
the accidents of birth and blood, nor in family
rank and station, nor in the course of education.
The one is not more patrician, nor more delicately
nurtured and cultivated than the ..they. But
the intellect of the one is of a very different order
and range from that of the other. Mr. GLAD-
/TONE'S mind is to the mind of Mr. HARDY almost
as music to written poetry ; it begins where the
other ends. Mr. HARDY'S political ideas at this
moment are at the point which the mind of Mr.
Guam:one touched and traversed some thirty
years ago. But Mr. GLADSTONE'S ideas have been
In progress ever since ; and Mr. HARDY has sue-
ceeded—we were almost saying by slaw of Nature—
to Mr. Otateiroivz as the chosen representative of
the University of Oxford, that is, of the inert
forage of that University. No two minds can be
more dissimilar, though both are, in some
sort, similarly equipped. The one is
powerful and comprehensive, yet subtle and
ardent in its search after the just and the true ;
the other is genially stedfest to commonplace,
radiant in all the respectabilities, fluent to a fault
in demonstrating with all the fire of a dis-
coverer that two end two make four, in the
heavens above and the earth beneath.

W. HAZDY'S speech on Lord Srsratis

l'HtE E.

Amendment was a model of its
Whether it was a model which the Prima,
would recommend to his colleagues is a question
which we will not presume to decide. If we
could descend from so high an argument to look
upon this debate as a mere party fight we might
be tempted to compare hie putting up
Mr! VAIIDY to answer Lord Srairzsv to the con-
duct of a General who, after concerting
with the chief of his staff an elaborately cautious
sad skilful strategical movement to turn his
enemy's flank, should allow the most headstrong
and uninstructed of his divisional commanders to
turn a feint into a charge and a reconnaissance into
a forlorn hope. Mr. HARDY resembles some
famous English soldiers in his sublime indifference
to the whole art of war. To " blaze away"
and make a soldier's battle of it is his
conception of a parliamentary campaign. This is
all very well with a British army in the field, but
with a parliamentary party demoralised and heart-
sick, in the face of an opposition united for the
first time under an advancing banner, and demand-
ing only a fair field and no quarter, the sound of
the gallant HARDY'S voice cheering on the Orange
Brigade and the old Tory infantry to the rescue
of Protestant ascendancy, may well cause some
shadows of dismay to flit across the inscrutable
features of the wariest Chief. It is not easy to
imagine anything more distasteful to Mr.
Duman' than the sustained emotion with which
Mr. HARDY is wont to vindicate the integrity of
his faith. A truly liberal Tory Ministry must be a
moat delicate monster to manage at the beat of times,
with its " forward voice" and its " backward voice,"
and especially when it is the backward, not the for-
ward, voice that raises the loudest echoing cheers
on the Ministerial benches. The PREMIER, unlike
the jester in the Tempest, may well breathe into the
ear of his FOP.EICIN SECRETARY the wish that there
were at least two others on the isle "brained like
" us." All the distance between Oxford and
South Lancashire separates the politics of the
HOER SECRETARY and Mr. GLADSTONE. Mr.
HARDY, who, with all his heartiness of nature, has
learnt a little sharp practice in the course of his
ministerial experience, read last evening an ex-
tract from a private letter addressed by
Mr. GLADSTONE to a member of the Uni-
versity during the last electoral contest, in which
he spoke of the Irish Church as a " remote "
question. This was in 1865, and in 1868 the
Irish Church is the question of the day. Mr.
HARDY saw a chance at hand to deliver what he
evidently believed to be a most destructive
blow at Mr. Grantrrozz's political conscience.
Yet what does it amount to ? It amounts to this :
that Mr. GLADSTONE was neither a Prophet nor a
Providence id,1865; that he could neither calculate
nor control the force of circumstances and events.
Great principles are projectiles of which neither
the initial velocity, nor the trajectory, nor the im-
pact are so calculable as the experiments of Shoe-
buryness. Against the private letter of 1865 Mr.
Gz.uerroNE might cite his repeated refusals, during
thirty years of public life, to commit himself to
the maintenance of the Irish Church Establishment.
But what is all this idle wordy recrimination
worth beyond the walls of the House of Conunons?
What do the people of the three kingdoms care
about what Mr. GLADSTONE wrote to a pri-
vate friend three, or thirty years ago
What does Mr. Gr. arorrouz say, what is ho prepared
to do, here and now—that is the only question
worth a moment's notice. No doubt the
true statesman looks before and after. But what
sort of statesman can we call the man who should
refuse in 1868 to deal with a question of immi-
nent concern to the common peace and welfare,
because in a letter to a private friend three
years before he had considered it "remote I"
These empty taunts are available enough for in-
stalitaneous effect in what is called a " slashing
" party speech in the House ;" but they sink, like
stones into the sea, into public contempt when a
whole nation is calling for justice.
The HOME SECRETARY, religiously shutting his
eyes to history and to facts, regards the tempo-
ralities of the Established Church in Ireland as in-
vested with a more than mortal sacredness—as holy
ground. Yet without losing his breath in his
solemn appeal to heavenly sanctions and attributes,
he rouses the apprehensions of every secular land-
owner in the United Kingdom by insisting that
the • Irish Church is before and above all a layman's
question—a question of the rights of property.
This engaging fallacy is familiar to all students of
the political literature of the Court of
Rome. The defenders of the Temporal Power,
from the POPE downwarbs, confuse the temporal
and the spiritual interests so inextricably that a
question of so much territory and revenue be-
comes exalted to a question of the Kingdom of
Heaven. Mr. HARDY, however, treats the Irish
Church as M. TETHER treats the temporal power
of the POPE, as above all a great political in-
terest, and he is very properly rewarded
with the acclamations of the champions of Pro-
testant sacendency. For the rest, he deserves all
the honour that is due to the abandonment of all
caution, or reticence, or reserve. He is prepared to
act upon the recommendations of the Royal Corn-
' mission in amending the internal economy of the
Irish Church Establishment. Against disestablish-
ment and diaendowment he seta his face like a
flint. If Lord STANLEY'S Amendment is carried,
he will oppose the Resolutions, and he would
rather have met them by a direct negative.
If the Resolutions are carried, and the new
Parliament shall decide to act upon them, he will
not sacrifice his convictions as a Minister of the
Crown : if he ever sacrifices them to the peace of
Ireland he will release himself from the responsi-
bilities of office, and renounce at once his opinions
and his place to preserve his honour and fulfil his
duty as an independent member. Meanwhile,
happen what may, the present Government will
neither dissolve nor resign, but, with true Christian
humility, will continue to offer the other cheek to
the smiter.

Passing over the intermediate events of last
evening with a word of compliment to the singu-
larly promising maiden oratory of Captain Warm,
and the diverting performance of the Irish
ATTORNRY-GENZRAL, we need only say of Mr.
BRIGHT'S great speech that it was in his
very best manner, in that later manner
which makes its difficult to recall the
popular tribune and the formidable agitator
of a former yet not a distant time. Evidently for
the member for Birmingham, the storm and
stress period of his political life is over-
past. He has emerged into a sunnier and
serener air of confidence and conciliation.
In all his present utterances there is not a
note of bitterness or defiance, of anger or reproach,
but instead of the vehemence and indignation
of other days, there is the calmness of cons ions
strength, the subduing sense of victories achieved,
and all the clemency of the conqueror. His reflec-
tions and his counsels last evening were those of a
large and foreseeing statesmanship, without a shade
of partisanship or personality. His observations on
the peculiarly anti-national ultramontane spirit
which the denial of religious equality to the
1 Catholic priesthood and population ham engendered

IAY

iu Ireland
tention.
of the
Lows
already
debate is not likely to lariguish for lack of , fuel
to-morrow. But we believe it will be found that
Mr. BRIGHT has left to the coming
.epeekere only
the opportunity of making a personal display of
epigrams and sallies of wit for the intellectual re-
creation of the salons and the dinner tables of the
West.

A STRANGE STORY.

A waraza in the current number of the Atlantic
Monthly professes to give the " true history of the
Earl of CARDIGAN'S duel with Captain Haavav
Trcirarr and its sequel." The latter is sufficiently
curious, and narrates with great particularity
the result! of personal intimacy and observation,
the life of Captain and Mrs. Tockarr after
the famous state trial, and the acquittal of the
EARL. They were a strange couple. The
Carrara, old enough to be " twice the father of
"his beautiful wife," "tall as a grenadier, and with a
" moustache white and fierce as that of one of
"NAPOLEON'S Old Guard ;" the lady ever, until his
death, "dressed in solemnest black, her face
" entirely hidden by a veil of the closest and
" thickest texture." After a course of specu-
lative enterprise in newspapers, the husband died
deeply in debt, his last words being a touch-
ing, though, according to the Atlantic
writer, a rather theatrical confession of faith :—" I
" never doubted you, Mattoanrr ; I honoured myself
" in the love and faith 1 gave you always." Within
a week of this his widow laid aside her mourning
garments for ever, and, driven by necessity, went
upon the stage. " Her Napoleonic energy " asto-
nished her husband's friends. Besieged by credi-
tors, and refused an engagement at theatres, she
said calmly, "If managers will not engage me, I
" will turn manager and engage others." We
" who knew her in the days of the old CAP-
" Tam knew none so reticent or shy as she ;
"none about whom was so closely wrapped the
" mantle of retiring, modest womanhood ; none so
" timid of herself, so weak or dependent." But
the dainty lady "who had sent two gentlemen of
" England to crack away at each other with pistols,
" and had brought one of them to the bar of the
" House of Lords to be tried for his noble life,"
had been a strolling player in her youth, and had
picked up odd shillings in barns. In September,
1855, she opened a theatre in Baltimore,
and the history of her management is
simply "one of disaster and fraud." The
anecdotes told show her to have combined the attri-
butes Of JEREMY DIDDLER, BAMPFYLDE MOORE
CAREW, and BECKY SHARPE. The cajolery
and wiles of this extraordinary woman '
read
like an extract from " Wilson's Wonder-
" ful Characters." She lied and defrauded
with matchless impudence, and "her shrewd wit,
" dazzling shoulders, and youthful beauty (1)" are
" described as charming like a devil' more
" than fourteen years after the great scandal
" which first gave her notoriety. Sho became
" essentially a bad woman. Good wives made
" ugly speeches about her ; people grew shy of her
"theatre," and though "the fond old Carrara
" had helped her sail along clear waters for a while,
" when he was gone she drifted away into the dark

" seas because she loved them best." MAaosairr
TocxErr then sank into low depths of want and
sorrow. The days of lovers, friends, and luxuries
were over, and in a noisome room of a
filthy tenement in a poor street she lived by
her skill or inspiration as a spiritual medium.
Bat the end was not yet. Years later she
took " a long flight with her friend to the surlier-
" owl regions of Colorado," where she died ; her
biographer asking, "Was MARQARET TUCK Err
" guilty out there in India? Were Mrs. RAWDON
" CRAWLEY and Lord STPYNE guilty 7" and
adding, with sweeping though tardy charity, " as
" he gave to BECKY, let us give to MARUARET, the
"benefit of the doubt."

little parish church of Wymering. Here the Vicar
has it all his own way, the objectors having with-
drawn and set up a tabernacle of their
own. Mr. MACKOROCRIB'S display, we are
informed, is tame when compared with the
adjuncts of the Rev. Guinea Nueza's service,
with its processions, banners, processional crosses,
and incense bearers ; its priest with the berretta,
and cope, and chasuble ; and its handsome reredos
and altar, decorated with choice flowers and
brazen cross, and lit up with the blaze of five
dozen tapers. In addition to the early " low " and
noonday " high " celebrations, Mr. Rooms has
notified his intention to provide for the expected
crowd of worshippers by erecting an " altar" in the
rectory grounds; and, to heighten the novelty,
volunteers who are choristers are urged to take
their surplices as well u their uniforms with them !

ORE of the weekly religious papers has recently
been adorning its pages with portraits of " clistin-
" guiahed Christians," such as the Archbishop of
CANTIIIBUR; the Duke of kanvi.z, and the Rev.
Mr. SPUBOZON. Among the portraits promised is
that of the SULTAN. Our contemporary's Chris-
tianity evidently takes a wide range.

Tin Brussels Indipendenee of yesterday says :
" We have been called on by M. Loris Gains,
" civil engineer, and requested to publish the fol-
" lowing note : ' The report put in circulation that
" ' M. DOIILTON bad left Belgium is entirely un-
" ' founded. M. DoiThroi, after having informed
" ' the magistrate that he was at his disposal, pre.
" ' seated himself yesterday in his chamber, and
" ' after having given an explanation on the
" ' matter which has created so much noise, was
" ' left in entire liberty.' "

NESS, WEDNESDAY
. 7
t uf f APRIL 1,
ii
I \
d appear to us to deserve particular at- Will he • • ;' • paraphernalia of
1. As Mr. Roaarcat is in poeseseion let lights,' ''. together wite:llo
s House for Thursday evening, and Mr. further; attraction el /" Sarum use."
‘Nriat
and Mr. Biases. Ono= have tears who 'admire , achievements
`>
competed for the .Brraisms's eye, She Alban's will be enehalited by the ceremonial at the d