The Express.
London, England, 1868-06-05 00:00:00

IS PUBLISHED

EVERY EVENING.

LONDON, FRIDAY, JUNE 5.

PARLIAMENTARY EPISODES.

E business of the House of Commons seems to
be resolving itself into a game of cross questions
and crooked answers. The House, although in a
dying state, is scarcely old enough to have fallen
into a second childhood ; yet what other interpre-
tation can he placed upon the petulant
puerilities with which members equally
obscure and violent, who would never be seen or
heard under ordinary circumstances, are permitted
toiwaste the last hours of a condemned Assembly ?
What sense of dignity, what self respect can tole-
rate an impertinence so grotesque as the notice
of a question to be solemnly addressed by
an " independent" member im the back Tory
benches to the member for Athlone, as to whether
or not that spirited gentleman professes himself
a supporter of the leader of the Opposition and
has "acted as such ?” The member for Athlone
has no reason to thank his rivals on the oppo-
site side of the House for dragging him back
into parliamentary and public notoriety after the
recent crowning effort of his brief and brilliant
career, of which it may be said by his constituents
that nothing became him like the leaving it.
The episodical encounter, however, with which
the serious proceedings of last evenin; bei,an
was one of more than a merely personal or pass.
ing interest and importance, as the &operate jocu-
larity of the First Minister to m clearly tomtit ed.
Whether Mr. Distuam felt particularly grateful
to the member for Devizes for his excessive zeal in
clearing the character of the Government from a
charge inconveniently precise, since it was founded
on the text of positive official declarations from
ministerial lips, it is no concern of us to conjecture.
Seldom have the PREMIER'S unsurpassable gifts
of countename and tongue been more severely
tested. We beg pardon for the comparison, but
the right hon. gentleman's mode of answering Sir
THOMAS 8A711,80X reminds us irresistibly of one

of those clever "contortionists," as they are called
in the language of th 3 boards, whose faces are
like masks and whom) bodies have become, by
much practice, independent of bones. Nor is the
PREMIER alone in his glory. He has educated his
colleagues so well that it may be said of them all
that they
Out en se faire en front qui no rougit jamas.
Let the calm reader who is not the dupe of these
tricks of face aad voice, be the judge between this
no-Popery Government and a Protestant country.
Mr. GLADSTONE, in reply to an East Worcestershire
elector, who had asked him, ow the eve of the recent
contest in that county, whether it was true that the
present Government had proposed to endow the
Roman Church in Ireland, or to charter a Roman
Catholic University, paying its expenses out of the
taxes of the country, wrote to say that the Govern-
ment had proposed to equalise the status of all com-
munions in Ireland by a " concurrent" or general en-
dowment of all, and to establish a Roman Catholic
University of which certain professorial chairs
and scholarships should be endowed out of the na-
tional funds. In support of this allegation Mr. GLA D-
STOWE quoted the e xpresa word s of the CIiiEF SECRE-
TARY to the LORD-LIEUTENANT, who, in his official
statement of Irish policy had recommended that the
ecclesiastical arrangements of Ireland should be
readjusted on the principle of levelling up and
creating, and not of depressing and destroying.
The same principle of creation, as opposed to con-
fiscation, had been distinctly affirmed by
Mr. DISRAELI last summer. in the spring of
1867 Lord DERBY had caused a letter to be
written expressing his regret that the liegium
Donum could not be increased in the' estimates
of " this year." Now, how do the Pitzmize and
the CNIZI, SIIICRZTAILY for IRELAND meet these
explicit, these textual proofs ? Mr. DIS-
RAELI declines to be responsible for
the letter of his former Chief, under
whom he was serving when that letter was signed
by Lord DERBY ; he explains away Lord MAYO'S
vague and elastic phrases about establishing
religious equality in Ireland by creating and level-
ling up and not by confiscation, as meaning nothing
more than the raising of the status of the Roman
Catholic clergy by allowing them to serve as gaol
chaplains. Lord Mayo, who is certainly a most
promising specimen of his preceptor's educational
prowess, goer farther, and insists that all the Irish
policy of the present Government, so far as eccle-
siastical arrangements were concerned, was
simply based on the principle of the grant to
Maynooth. As to the Catholic University, the
most he had ever contemplated was the grant of
" a few hundreds a year for the remuneration of
" the few professors who would be necessary."

- -
The common sense and good faith of the public at
large will pronounce upon these ministerial apolo-
gies. The Government is going to the country on
a No-Popery cry, having tried and failed to conci-
liate the Irish Roman Catholics and Presbyterians
by a new sort of ecclesiastical financing, by pro-
missory endowment notes and University accom-
modation bills, drawn by the FIRST Lono of the
TREASURY and backed by the Cirr er SECRETARY to
the LORD-LIEUTENANT. No doubt it is not very easy
for honest men to detect and expose this eeclesias-
tical " kite flying." There may be no distinct and
definite engagement on record to endow the Roman
Catholic Church or a Roman Catholic University.
Neither the time, nor the mode, nor the sum was
settled. Tho negotiation had not proceeded so
far when it was "blown upon," and repudiated.
But who, out of the present administration, can
pretend for a moment to doubt that the aim and
object of all these ambiguous phrases of Mr. Dia-
RAELI and Lord MAYO was to create an impression
in the proper quarters of their desire and inten-
tion to place the Catholics and Protestants on a
footing of equality, not indeed as " stipendiaries
"of the State," creditors of a Budget of
public worship (for that was formally denied),
but as churches equally recognized by the
State, and endowed out of the common national
fund. The project has failed, and the Govern-
ment will mount the hustings to the cry of
"No Popery ;" while, as Mr. GLAD-TONE
most seasonably informed the House last
night, the official journal of the Court
of Rome is regretting that Mr. DIIRAELI.B
enlightened, moderate, and cautious policy, has
been thwarted by the rude interference of Mr.
GLADSTONE and the Liberal party.