The Express.
London, England, 1868-03-24 00:00:00

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LONDON, TUESDAY, MARCH 24.

A WORD TO THE CONSTITUENCIES.

Ores of the most uncomfortable animals in this
nether world is a man suddenly brought face to face
with the logical consequence of the opinions he has
always professed to hold and the principles he has
always pretended to maintain, and compelled,
by the force of circumstances, to act upon them
as if he had not been a solemn quack or a hollow
canter all his life long. To be called upon at a
moment's notice to be honest, sincere, truthful,
loyal, and in earnest, is a melancholy trial
for a man who feels that he never had a serious
conviction, or consulted any interest but his own,
all these years, when he went about confessing his
party faith and protesting his personal fidelity. There
is reason to fear that some members of the
Liberal party in the present House of Com-
mons are at present in this distressing predicament.
They positively hate being forced out of that
indolent hypocrisy which has become a second
nature. To gird up their loins and put on the
armour of faith, to fight for some cause in
open parliament which they have cherished
as an empty " cry " for the hustings, is an into-
lerable necessity to some good easy men who
have long reached the dressing-gown and slippery
stage of public life, and who resent a call to action
as an injury and an affront. It would be an error to
suppose that Mr. GLA DPITOrt EN appeal to a concerted
onward movement on the Irish church question
had conciliated all the sympathies of the PAtvrß-
Arosr.►re majority, and rallied all the restless or
the hesitating spirits of the party. To intriguers
who have tasted the delight of desertion and the
rapturous vanity of betrayal, there is something
of the grindstone in Mr. Otarwrose's appeal.
They don't want great questions to be agitated on
the eve of a general election. They don't want to
disturb a Government from which they can get
more perhaps for their services in opposition than
they could by restoring their proper chiefs to
power.

There was once a political faction in France who
were called Les Imporitrett. The successors of that
vain sect are sitting now on more than one bench
to the left of the SPEAREI:•B chair. They are so
troubled with a sense of their own importance, and
so well pleased with its recognition by the Minister
to whom they owe no allegiance, that they cannot
bear to be reduced again to the rank of faithful
followers, or, still worse, of "independent" sup-
porters. As independent seceders from their
own party, they can almost flatter them-
selves that they have souls above Shibboleths,
and political consciences above the customary
temptations of adherents ; that an irritable self-
love is a single-minded zeal for the public
good, and that a resentful jealousy is self-abne-
gation. Add to these heroic schemers
the few who perhaps honestly conceive
that they are finishing the liberal education of the
Conservative party, and of their own leader as
well as of the leader of the Government, and
some who with better reason are afraid of
restoring the old Whig, " families " to Down-
ing-street, for another long lease of ineffi-
ciency and inaction, and it becomes intelligible
bow the party who sit behind Mr. Gt.aosvons
require a little stimulating pressure from their con-
stituents at this conjuncture. Between this
and Monday next there will be ample time
for trimmers to invent all sorts of pretexts
for evasion. It remains for the electors of the old
and the new constituencies to remind " mori-
" bund" members of the future state of electoral
rewards and punishments into which they are
about to enter, and for which they seem to
think neither a lively faith nor good
works to be the most fitting preparation.
Without naming names, which would be super-
fluous, for it is the obscure and not the illustrious
that need to be reminded of their honour and
their duty in these cases—we leave to the care of
their constituents representatives who pretend
to deprecate a debate and division on the Irish
Church, on the singular ground that dying men
should not presume to make a will. We trust the
Liberal electors will remind these modest and pious
politicians that it is precisely to enable them to
make their will that these Resolutions are
proposed, and that political intestacy is political
suicide. It would argue a very crab-like progress
of the Party it a motion which would have been
one of the stock pieces of the session thirty
years ago should be regarded as preci-
pitate or excessive by the last Liberal majority
of theten-pounder Parliament in 1868. Nor can the
too virtuous Liberal pretend that by voting as one
man for Mr. GLADB7ONe9 resolution the Opposi-
tion will be throwing public business into con.

IRE
fusion and interrupting the progress of beieScifOr
legislative measures. The PAW= has oat
ground from under their feet by his eandistatate-
meat last evening. He does not threaten a
dissolution this year. Nothing so
pall have been accounted possible, except by maa
to whom the next dissolution means a bourne
from which there can be no return. What-
ever may be the fate et the Resolutions next
week the present Parliament will be al-
lowed to die a natural, or, at any rate, not a
violent death. There will be six months at least
for meditation and repentance for Conservatives
and Liberals alike. But six months will certainly not
suffice for the rehabilitation of .a
Liberal member

whose name was not found in the division liaton this
great occasion. Unless he can justify it by irresistible
motives of expediency he will be invited to carry
his disinterestedness into the retirement which
so very nice and scrupulous a patriotism deserves.