The Express.
London, England, 1857-07-11 00:00:00

GALWAY.

The Galway Town committee resesetubled at the UMW
hour dill Mollllog, and the evidence in support of the alle-
gation of bribery on the part of Mr. O'Fisherty the sitting
naenrer's &genie, was reautued.

All the committees rose early this afternoon.

UNTRIED PETITIONS.

Select committees severally to try the petitions complain.
in of undue eloctione and returns for the Berwick-open.
Tweed town, the Leitrim county, Dover borough, Finsbury
borough, and Drogheda borough, will be chosen by the Oa
neral Committee of Election' on Monday, the 27th, at one
o'clock in the afternoon, in No. 14 Cutaouttee•ruem of the
House of Common.

The committees to try the petitions from the Borough, of
Portsmouth, Caudle', Beverley, Sligo, the City of Dublin, and
Lisburn, will be chosen on Tooeday, the 28th.

LARGE BOROUGHS AND THEIR
MEMBERS.

(From the now number of the Edinburgh Review)

While the same classes, and nearly. the same
families as formerly, continue to furnish the ministries who
rule ue, and while the counties and the email boroughs
return, to • great extent the same sort of members, and often
the very same individuate, es of yore—the claw of men
chosen by the large town cocurtituenews, and eepecially by the
new conatituencree, ore altogether and increasingly dis-
similar. Thew are either men who have wade themselves
known in public life—and known for the most put
as holden of extreme opinions—or men of local influence
and reputation. Where they do not owe their seats to
dienoceatk favour, as noted radicals, they owe them to
the respect and esteem they enjoy among their fellow-
Imenemen. There can be few stronger or better
frendid titles to a twat in parliament than this.
NM who have won the trust and admiration of
there among whom they hare lived, who know them well
and have watched them long, will often make excellent
members of proliament, 'sagacious judged of public questions,
sad vigilant guardians of the public purse. It ie well that
the House of Commune should consist, in • fair proportion,
of such men. But there me certain onuaterbalancing amid-
deratione which should not be overlooked. The marked and
increasing diepoeitiou of large boroughs to elect local men
and mere town celebrities tends towards consequences not
fully foreseen nor altogether beneficial. In the ant place,
the most really able and intelligent residents are usually busy
men—merchants, manufacture, or others—who cannot
leave their vocations; and the choice is thus frequently
driven, by a process of exhaustion, upon men whose local
eminence is doe solely to their wealth, their benevolence, or
the respectability of their private character. It would be in-
decorous and invidious to specify instances, but recent etc,
I lions abound in such. And the class of member. usually
sent up by the Ingest borough constituencies in the king-
dem has lung eupplied a subject for disparaging comment to
the satagonista of reform, and has undeniably been a source of
disappointment to its f, linde.
la the second place men who have achieved eminence
among their fellow-townsmen, and won their respect by cha-
racter and conduct, will necessarily, in the majority donee,
be men peat middle life. As senator, whore function is
namely to watch over popular rights, to check wasteful or
corrupt expenditure, to counsel, and, if need be, to control
the rulers of the nation, such men may be fully competent,
and pehaps even invaluable. But the attributes and require-
ments of an English parliament take • 'rider range. From
Its members are chosen the confidential advisers of the sore-
reign, the responaible ministers of the day, the men to whom
are entrusted the actual reins of power, and on whom
devolves the daily task-work of administration. These
ministers have not merely to contrive wise measures, and to
defend them skilfully in debate, but to transact barmy
with foreign Make to conduct complicated affairs at home,
to encounter and to solve many laborious and difficult
problems of legislation and finance—in a word, not only to
understand vaguely the science of politic, but to administer
it practically with sagacity and diligence. The HOUIO
of Commons, It is true, is not the executive, but it far-
niehes the chief portion of the members of that executive.
Now, to become a competent and efficient minister in a
country and a constitution such as ours, demands not only
good capacities, but good opportunities—the devotion of the
whole man-the advantages of long and early training. It
ia rare indeed that a representative who his spent the best
years of bin life in alien callings, however honourable and ser-
viceable those callings may have been, can enter the cabinet's
a minister adequate to the various and onerous requirementa of
his office; and it is too late for him to commeneean apprentice-
ship in subordinate positloll3. Neither the faculty of debate nor
that of admiuistntion, are easily acquired late in life. Few
ever distinguish themselves, either in parliament or in office,
who do not begin their political career while yet young and
flexible—ready for toil and drudgery, and net too old to learn
a new profeemon. The clam of members, therefore which it
is the natural tendency and the increasing habit of large
popular conetituenries to choose, is not such as can furnish
moisten for the service of the country and the crown ; and
the more then constituencies are midtiplied the more will
the House of Commons be impoverished for official and
ministerial pwposee,—the more restricted will be the body
from whom, practically, we can chooseour rulers. As a
rule, large boroughs will not elect young men or unknown
men ; es a role, too, only men who enter parliament while
young will become, can be induced to become, or are fitted to
become, ministers;—it follows, therefore, inevirably, that, if
the prevalent democratic notion of a Belton Bill were
stri y carried out by the disfranchisement of small boroughs
and the transfer of their members to the moat populous
towns, the effect would be to confine ua, in our chance of
three alternatives. Either we must take them from
rgel to
House of Peers,—and already there is an increasing
tendency towards this born of the dilemma,—or we must
look to those ancient and wealthy county families who, by
connexion, by territorial influence, ly ancestral custom (aa it
wen), can return their younger members for county consti-
tuencies •—or we must follow the example of other natione,
and so fir alter our constitution sto snake ministers out of
statesmen by education and prefeeeion,—but statesmen whose
adneetiaa has been conducted, not in the Noun of Commons,
bat In the offices of establiehed and experienced politicians.
To state the matter broadly, our leaden and rulers would be
'Rhea' aristocrats or bureaucrats.

THE PRINCE OF WALES AT WATERLOO.—Hie
Royal Highness the Prince of Wales whited the Field cl
Waterloo on the Bth inst., proceeding thither in a prints
cl" from Brussels. Afterwards he drove to the time's-
endatfeStation of the Great Luxembourg Railway, a distance
of five miles, sad proceeded by that line to Namur, where
he arrived at half-pest 3 o'clock. His Royal Highness slept
at Namur, and the next day continued Ids journey towards
Germany. The sew route by the Great Luxembourg hoe
adopted by his Royal Highness offers great attraction, to the
tourist proceeding to the Rhine and Germany, whether as
regards the beauty of the scenery throughout from Br usela
the regularity of the service of the railway, built by English
capital and worked under English management, or the
directness of the wine.

TESTIMONIAL ;77 E PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED
STATES TO AN ENGLISH CATTAIN.—LITERPOOL, FRIDAY.
—A letter was received to-dsy by the owner of the Ann Pit.
cairn, Captain Sharp (Mr. A. Henderson), from the General
Registry of Seamen in London, requesting information as to
the whereabouts of that vessel, so the President of the United
States disbud to present its captain (Shan)) with a chrono-
meter and • gold chain, for bermes render.") in taking off the
mew (tithe American ship Cathedral in February last. Ths
lollowieg Is Captain Sharp's report of the occurrence. "We
hod 16 storms off Cape Horn. An American ship, the
C of 2,000 tons, foundered close to us, February MI
of Cape Horn. We saved 34 of crew, 27 of which we landed
Vaipandso. The captain, doctor, stewardess, and sit hands
Inuit down with the ship."