The Express.
London, England, 1868-05-04 00:00:00

78 PU3LI81187)

EVERY EVENING.

LONDON, MONDAY, MAY 4.

THE BUSINESS OF THE SESSION.

Tat old question of the Duke of Wamatiorox,
How is the K Ino's Government to be carried on ?
presents itself now in a narrower and more special
shape. Men are everywhere asking, How is the
necessary business of the Session to be got through?
The poet's lament, "so little done, so much remains
" to do," applies to the condition of legislation
in the House of Commons. For this state of things
a variety of causes may be pleaded. The first is
Lord DBILDIrs illness. For that the Tories are not
responsible. Hereditary gout is an incident
of an hereditary aristocracy. It is ono of
those heirlooms of great families which are
often as embarrassing as mortgages and set-
tlements. The democratic tendency of the
age, and the greater cheapness of French
wines, may possibly extend gout even more
widely than Tory-Radicalism has extended the
suffrage. It may be a sign of Mr. GLADSTONE'S
hostility to the institutions of the country, and of
his desire to convert aristocratic privileges into
popular rights, that he should have made claret at
10s. a dozen a possible beverage in England.
But without entering into these remote ape-
culations, it is certain that the de'ay of
nearly a fortnight which Lord DERBY'S retirement
and Mr. DIBILARLI.B accesaion to the Premiership early
in the yearbronght about, has involved a serious loss
of the time at the disposal of Parliament for the
transaction of public business. The same may be
said of the unnecessarily protracted debates on the
Irish Church question. The discussion and division
before Easter were practically decisive of the
discussion and division last week ; and the Govern-
--laent fostered the tendency to talk with the
blear view of making action impossible. Of
course the introduction of this question
broke in upon the Ministerial programme, It

disturbed the arrangements

made for their own convenience•
tion of Ireland made inatant actii

and the avowal of a Ministerial policy
principles distasteful to the country,
moisMissimssity for t►e ennui:libber' by the Liberal
party of a counter policy, and for the introduc-
tion of measures framed to give such

effect to it as the • eireams tames of the
existing Parliament allowed. If Mr. DISRAELI
had temporarily acquiesced in the vote before
Easter, as in the vote taken last Friday morning,
his journey to Osborne might have been spared.
The second and third of Mr. OLteseorts's
resolutions might before this have received
the assent of Parliament ; and instead of a Minis-
terial statement, and the renewal of the committee
on the Irish Church—a bill based on the resolutions
might even now be awaiting its first, perhaps
its second reading. It is vain to say that Mr.
Graneroma's course has delayed the necessary
business of tho session. In the opinion of a vast
majority in Parliament and, we believe, also in the
country, action upon the subject of the Irish Church
formed a part of the necessary business of the ses-
sion. At any rate a Government which trifled with
National Education, in as paltry a measure as ever
was propounded by an incompetent Minister, which
coquetted with the Bankruptcy Laws, and toyed
with the Electric Telegraph Companies, has no
right to insist on a narrow or technical interpreta-
tion of the term " necessary business."
There can be little doubt that most, if not all,
of the measures which we have just enumerated,
and some others of the same class, will have to be
abandoned to a more convenient season. The neces-
sary business of the session so far as the Covermnent
is concerned— is simply to pass those measures which
are the needful preliminaries of a dissolution. The
voting of the supplies has to be completed. Mr.
.WARD HUNT'S unambitious Budget has to be
passed. The English Boundary Bill must become
law ; so also must the Scotch and Irish Reform
Bills, and the Boundary Bills, which are relative
to them. These measures must receive the Royal
assent this year ; but it does not follow that they
are to do so without full discussion, and
if needful, large amendments. The source whence
the additional members promised to Scotland are
to be obtained opens a very large and grave
question of policy and expediency. The Liberal
majority in Parliament will not abdicate its
right to come to a satisfactory settlement upon
this point at the bidding of the minority in
office. While not losing time, and in order
not to lose time, they must avoid that raw haste
which is half-sister to delay. To do this year what
will need to be undone neat is a very short-sighted
policy. Besides the adjustment of this critical
problem, there are the important ques-
tions of the redistribution of seats in
Ireland and Scotland. The proposals of
the Government on these matters are open to great
objection. The same may be said with still
greater force of some of the suggestions of
the Boundary Commissioners which have been
transformed from recommendations in a
report into clauses in a bill. To adopt
them en massc would be not so much, perhaps, to_
take a leap in the dark, as to jump with open
eyes into a quick-set hedge, or down a pre-
cipice. The arrangements which it is pro-
posed in some cases to perpetuate, and in others
to introduce for the first time, are of the most ques-
tionable character. They may require instant rtxti-
fication. So again, if retrenchment should prove
desirable or practicable in the estimates, no one
can suppose that a mistaken delicacy for Mr. WARD
Hearr's feelings, or a preference for the s.rearns
of grouse and the whirr of partridges over
the voices of debating K P.'s, and for
Scotch moors and English preserves over
the streets of Westminster, will be suffered to
impose on the tax-payer burdens not necessary to
the efficiency of the public service. Mr. Duntam's
Government must put itself in harmony
with the temper and make itself truly
the executive of the will of the House of Commons,
or transfer itself from the right to the left hand
of the SPEAKER. The present Ministers are not
essential to the conduct of public affairs. The
necessary work of the session can be brought to a
close by Mr. GLADSTONE as well and promptly as
by Mr. DISRAELI. We trust that the duty of
effecting a change in the Government will
not be forced on the House of Commons.
There would, we believe, be serious incon-
venience in the formation of a Liberal Ministry
out of the materials presented by the present
Parliament, and with reference to the feeling
which characterises it. The new House of Com-
mons may be animated by a very different spirit.
The selection of men which would be suitable
and inevitable now might not in some in-
stances be desirable or possible then. It
is on various grounds to be desired
that a Grammes Ministry and a Reformed Par-
liament should have their birth together, in order
that they may be suited to each other. The illicit
advantages which are to be derived from the
possession of office during a general election are,
we believe, vastly overrated. On the whole,
therefore, we trust that Mr. Disaazu will not make
office impossible to himself, nor force the Liberal
party to expel him before the close of the session.
If the thing has to be done it will be done ; but if
it can be avoided it ought to be avoided.

descendant of the kiss first imprinted on the fo.t
of the Emperor 'CALIGULA. The fans which go
behind him are the punkahs of the Ess'era Em-
perors, borrowed from the Court of Persis. The
" Pontifex Maximus," from whom the n ame by
which the highest ecclesiastical character of the
Pars is indicated, was not the Jewish High
Priest, but the Pagan dignitary whose duty it was
to conduct all public sacrifices, preside at the
assemblies and games, and scourge to death any
one who insulted the Vestal Virgins. The word
" bishop," episcopus, was taken, not from any usage
of the temple or of the synagogue, but from
the officers created in the different subject-towns of
Athens, borrowed from the Grecians. The word
ordo (our holy " orders "), was the name of the
municipal senate of the empire. The word and
idea of a " diocese " was taken from the existing
divisions of the empire. The POPE'S Temporal
" power " is in no way the result of the connection
of Church and State, but belongs to that feudal
and princely character which was shared
by so many great prelates of the middle
ages. When the POPE is seen surrounded by his
Swiss guards, or defended by his Chassepot rifles,
we must regard him as " the last of the brotherhood
" of the fighting, turbulent, courtly prelates of the
" Rhine, of the Prince Bishop of Durham, or the
" ducal Bishop of Osnaburgh." Whether Dean
STANLEY is right or not in his belief that lessons
of charity and wisdom are taught by considerations
of this kind, it is certain that they possess strong
historic and antiquarian interest.

THE progress of Chambers of Agriculture has
an intimate bearing upon the politics of the
time. So long as the farmers, who constitute
the mass of the members, limited themselves
to questions like the malt tax, education,
and turnpike trusts, all went smoothly ;
but modern farmers are practical men, and
their reverence for the territorial aristocracy
seems to be modified by a sense of what
is due to themselves. A proposal to
substitute county financial boards for the time-
honoured system under which landowners spend
the money of rate-payers for county purposes
without allowing them any voice is now being
hotly discussed. This scheme is unpalatable to
a large portion of *the magistracy, whose
snug coteries in connexion with the manage-
ment of gaols and lunatic asylums are thus
threatened with invasion. At the last meeting of
the Central Chamber of Agriculture, held in the
metropolis, the landlord interest was feebly reprc-
sented by Lord Baawarts, and hesitatingly seconded
by Sir Geoana JRNISINSON, but their amendment
on the occasion was all but unanimously
rejected. The question was debated last
Friday in the Essex Chamber, where
Mr. P. 0. PAPILLON, late M.P. for Colches-
ter, unsuccessfully led the opposition,
and at the same time warned his farming
friends against indulging in " political agitation."
It is manifest that tenant-farmers generally are
determined that their own case shall form no ex-
ception to the principle that representation should
be co-extensive with taxation. The main argument
relied upon by the opposing magistracy, both in the
chambers and in the House of Commons, where
Mr. Wimp's bill for carrying out the object has
been referred to a select committee, is
singularly infelicitous and untenable. It is
that, whereas landowners have a ' per-
manent interest in the well-being of their
respective counties, farmers have only a temporary
one, seeing that as a rule a notice to quit may at
any time sever the connexion ; in other words,
that, like TENNYSON'S brook, the owners of the
soil alone " flow on for ever." Would not this ob-
jection be equally valid against ratepayers in
boroughs having any control over borough expen-
diture

SHIELW.

vas published con-
amine° es the " Gils.
oloded the minutes of

composed of Sir J. 0. D.
Hay, Major•Genenl Sir ;An W. Gorden, CoLnel Adye,
R. h., Lieoteicant.Colonal B. W. Ward, ILL, Mr. W.
Faiehairu, Mr. W. Pole, and Mr, John Peru.
The instruction given to the sononittee were to inquire
low fu the trials that have been made wire imfavourable
to the shields, and what welt the causes which have led to
any failure ; and the committee were further instructed
to consider whet changes they could resommend in the
construction of these shields.

With mopest to the first question, the com-
mittee find, after a amend consideration of the general
remits of these trisla, that they were unfavourable to the
shield, and that it is not strong enough to resist the direct
attack of powerful ordnance at a distance of 400
yards. It is not sufficiently massive, nor dots it
appear to the committee to be of the most
favourable construction. Various witnesses have
testified to the weakness of the girder, to the insufficient
thickness of the front plate, to the danger to the gun
detachment from the multiplicity of bolts, nuts, and rivets,
in a structure wholly of iron, to the weakness of each side
of the embrasure, to theinaufficiency of the skin as a sup-
port, and to other detente. It was, however, stated by
other witnesses that the oonstnurtion adopted has the ad-
vantage of being easily strengthened to any required degree
by super-imposing additional armour plates, or by substi-
tuting thicker ones. Many diffs not methods of strength-
ening the shields were suggested to the committee, but
they do not consider that the question of their improve-
ment can be satisfactorily dealt with until after
further experiment ; and benoe they recommend that two
of them should be returned to this country and expert-
usented on, with the view of ascertaining how far the
remainder are capable of improvement at a reasonable
cost, and to gain experience for the future.

It followr, thereto'', as a matter of course, that the I
committee were not prepared without further experiment
to submit any recommendations with regard to the con-
struction of other shields ; or the principles on which they
should be built. The committee, however, arrived at the
general conclusion that shields for important positions on
land defences should afford greater protection than the one
now reported on. The cost to this country of strcnger shields
would be small in comparison with the oatisy necessary
for their reconstruction.

Coincidently with the publication of this blue-book a
parliamentary paper has been issued containing the obser-
vations of Col. Jervoise, C. 8., of the Works Depar: mess
of the War-office, on the report of the special committee.
The object of the paper is to vindicate the Works Depart-
ment in this matter. Colonel Jervoise says that, looking
to the poesibillty of oomplications arising from the Minato
between Austria and Prussia, in 1866, special attention
wea turned to the defences of Malta and Gibraltar;
and it was then proposed to protect by iron shield, a few
of the most powerful guns at each place. A sum of
30,0001. wax appropriated for this purpose, and the problem
for the Works Department to solve was the application of
this sum so as to provide as many shields as possible
capable of fulfilling the conditions imposed. With regard to
the result, Colonel Jervoise contends that when a com mitts.
specially appointed to consider the question, with ample
time, with additional evidence, and with the results of
further experiment before them, fail to see their way as
regards the construction of shields, the Works Department
may fairly claim every consideration in any discumaion as
to the mode in which they dealt with the subject in 1866.
He moreover contends that the experiments themselves
put the shield to a test and strain altogether in excess of
what it should bear to enable it to fulfil the conditions

for which it was designed ; and he expresses a belief that
had the inquiry been conducted on a broader
basis, and bad more consideration been given to all the
contingent circumstances which affect the case, the com-
mittee would have come to a different conclusion.

.. . • -Ji
lATO ' iiiXPRPS% ' MONDAY .-: :. , .1 s. MAY ~.i
;
--,,
whink tlisiPry had is the onoienOlodenquin of the • nobl !nil the eve at battle , , .Idiers/woold fear . re ' ' • , "0 • . AR"
Bathe gPhi - and of opera the ItoOlon Petelite.'• The mil/lit/it the instil si peasants, and, Xis • - 1 ~..
action expealent ; IdiPPen whisk he we are the ' rt....0"N 'tried bodyguard oft,ooo, melt away. `4-"' - i - ' boa a
sae report at air special eon
policy, based upon mapogines, of the Roman Eatrzaos.. grzio kiss
iditure'shislds, towhist: are spy
)Iliatin created a whiskthe..l_ll2lglPar_il.t_ !RI •_a_.... __ .t.till a.- . THI mnaress of Chambers of Aerieultnre has I .4618.8* Th• alluditill was son