The Express.
London, England, 1868-06-20 00:00:00

ME WEEKLY PRESS.

The Saturday Review says that Mr. Disraeli's
speech at the Merchant Taylors' banquet, although very
well suited to the occasion, was a very poor and clipped
affair as compared with his great outburst of solf-praise
and audacity at Edinburgh. His spirit has been tamed,
and ho is obliged to be more guarded and homely.
There was nothing on Wednesday night comparable to that
astounding flight of fancy in which he assured his Scotch
hearers that, little as they might suspect it, almost every great
measure passed in the last quarter of a century was due to
Lord John Manners. There were no revelations like that
in which he described how he had been educating his
party, and how very hard work it had been. There were
one or two moments when he tried it on rather sharply
with his City friends. If any man in England can be
trusted to know how great is the nonsense of seeing a spe-
cial dispensation of Providence in the fact that the new
constituencies arc, as their first duty, to decide on the
existence of the Irish church, Mr. Disraeli is the man.
Conservatives after dinner may be, but Mr. Disraeli is
certainly not, capable of believing that, whereas the
question of the Irish church must have been brought
before • reformed parliament in a very short
time, Providence has specially arranged that it should
come on this year, but that if it had not come on for a
year or two, Providence would have had nothing to do
with it. But at a public dinner no ono is critical, and
most of those who listened probably believed that Mr.
Disraeli knows, in a really remarkable degree, what Provi-
dence is about, and that it is somewhat due to him that
trade, which has been stagnant ever since he came into
office, is not even much worse than it is.

With respect to the Irish Reform Bill, the SalUrday
Benno mays that, in point of fact, it is not a reform
bill at all, but virtually contains only one clause by which
the hard and fast line at which the Irish borough franchise
now stands is reduced to a lower figure.
When the Spectator remembers that it was Mr.
Disraeli who raid of Sir A. Alison that he had written
eight volumes to prove that " Providence was on the side
of the Tories," our oontemporary understands what Mr.
Disraeli's recognition of the " hand of Providence "
in this " awful dispensation" for trying the merits
of a tory Reform Act really means. At the
Merchant Tayloni dinner he was evidently addressing
not his philosophical admirers, but the party which he
finds it so hard to educate. For these ho feels that the
cry of "Disraeli" alone is no longer sufficient,—so ho
raises instead that of " Disraeli and Providence," a com-
bination of watchwords which he feels very justly that it
needs a truly "awful dispensation" to render conceivable.
To the Spectator it seems, in no superficial sense. a really
awful dispensation that a man who so sincerely believes,
and shows that he believes, the assertion he put into the
mouth of one of his characters that " men are governed
by words," not by convictions, not by faiths, should be
fora time the ruling spirit of the English parliament and
people. Our contemporary does not doubt that Mr.
Disraeli is the agent in a much more awful dispensation
than he himself has any idea of--a dispensation intended
to bring home to us the frivolous character of an age
in which real admiration and tangible power are accorded,
by virtue simply of his excelling us at oar own miserable
weapons, to "him they call Dizzy." Mr. Disraeli's speech
on Wednaiday is, to men of the smallest reality of cha-
racter, one of the grossest satires upon the age. There is
scarcely a outmost in which the speaker's real contempt
for the audience he was addressing, and greater contempt
for the greater audience whom he hoped to reach through
them, is not, with almost perfect inaotoeiwace, betrayed.
What Mr. Disraeli means by talking about an "impend-
ing dispensation of Providence " the Bramiser does not
ask, because it is useless to ask questions that c►nnot be
answered. Our contemporary once heard a desperate
young advocate in an assize court, whose cause required
that he should denounce the captain of a ship for having
been the cause of its wreck, cap the climax of his denun-
ciation by the epithet, " thisnaufragioussooundrel." "That
was a powerful speech you made," said a friend as the
orator left the court : " but what did you mean by nau-
fragious "I don't exactly know," was the reply ;
" but I thought the sound of it would tell." And so the
fancy paamage about Pruviclonoe seems to have told at
Merchant Taylors' Hall. Only the Examiner would
like greatly to know, what does it mean ? Tko City
friends of the Premier marshalled a great array of retro-
grade rank and dulness to listen to the manifesto of their
official chief, and had the mane been changed, it is not
clear that any greater representation of the conspicuous
qualities of conservatism could have reasonably been
counted on.

Yesterday morning a large gathering of
clery and laity, including many permitsl friends of
the-Rev. Dr. John Ailey, Vicar of Leeds, attended
divine service at the church of St. Mary-le-Bow, Cheap-
Ade, to witness the confirmation of the election by the
Dean and Chapter of Hereford of the rev. gentleman to
the bishopric of Hereford, rendered vacant by the death
of the Bight Rev. Dr. Renn Dickson Hampden.
fuzzes or Cotom GILPIN, M.P.—We regret
to learn that Colonel Gilpin, whose presence both as a
member of parliament and a local magistrate, is much
mimed, iss4 confined to his house at Hockliffe Grange.
He bad within the past week considerably recovered, and
it was hoped he would have been out again in a few days,
but on Monday last a fresh attack of gout destroyed that
for the present. gallant colonel was horn in
M.—Rorke Indepardiwt.
INFIRMARY FOIL EPILEPSY AHD PARALYSIS.-
A morning amateur concert was 'yen oney at the
Hanover-square Rooms to a ct oors-
pony in aul of the funds of this useful charity. The
buildings have been enlarged sad repaired, in order to re-
ceive a larger number of in-doorand out-mts, who come
from all parts of town and country. Great good is being
done for the sick poor aMicted with epilepsy and para-
lysis, who are generally shut out from other institution.
on account of such mysterious and cruel maladies. There
are over 100,000 living sufferers.
CHAPEL ROYAL, SAVOY.—The evening preachers
are as follows:—June 21, Roy. J. Grover, head master of
the Coventry Grammar School; June 28, Rev. li
Jones, rector of St. Luke's, Westminster; July 6, Iteva..r7.
A. Abbot, head master of the City of Loudon School;
July 12, Rev. Stopford Brooke, teplain in ordinary to
her Itajost ; July 19 Rev. ff. I. Mld, head master of the
Worcester echo&