The Express.
London, England, 1868-08-19 00:00:00

LORD ELCHO.

TII E oracle has spoken at last, and Haddington-
shire has heard from her "promising young man."
This was Lord ELMO'S character upon his enter-
ing Parliamentary life twenty-seven years ago,
and it describes him accurately now. Gifted with a
good-humoured self-complacency which never fails,
and a belief in his own infallibility which has never
wavered, Lord Ewe) has been proclaiming him-
self the man born to set the world right through-
out an entire generation. His lordship's mode of
dealing with public questions is two-fold. He
either states hackneyed truisms as it they were re-
velations personally vouchsafed to him, and by
him to a benighted world ; or he puts forward
flimsy paradoxes and calls calmly upon the nation
to accept them on the 'pee dirit of their gaily auda-
cious oracle. The address he has just issued to the
electors of Haddingtonshire begins according to the
first of these methods. Either the newspapers do
not reach the northern country, or Lord Euno is
doubtful as to the reading powers of his oonstitu-
ents, for he begins with this remarkable piece of
information :—" The last Parliament elected under
" the Reform Act of 1832 is about to expire."
After this it would be superfluous to express sur-
prise at supererogatory statements, or to challenge
arguments which are obviously based on the
assumption that those to whom they are addressed
are ignorant of facts patent to all the world
beside. What Lord ELCIIO said and did and
thought at various times and on various subjects
occupies a largo portion of his address; we prefer
to turn to his profession of political faith, and to
learn whether his lordship sails avowedly under
the colours he has joined. On this head his
utterances are, to do him justice, plain and clear.
Lord ELcuo is "not prepared to sever all connexion
" between the Irish Church and the Constitution
as now established in Church and State. I wish
" the principle of a Protestant Church Establish-
" went to be retained in Ireland, for while advo-
" eating and upholding the principles of civil and
" religious liberty, as established by the Bill
"of Rights and Act of Settlement, I
" cannot, under our existing Protestant Con-
" stitution, admit the principle of religious
" equality, 88 between Protestants and Roman
" Catholics. I cannot admit it because in 1688
" civil and religious liberty were founded on the
" principle of religious inequality ; that is, on the
" close connexion and alliance of the Crown and
" State with the Protestant and not with the
" Romish faith, and nothing short of the severing
" of this connexion and alliance can establish
" religious equality between Protestants and
" Roman Catholics, either in Ireland or in the
" United Kingdom. I repudiate, then, this new
" doctrine of religious equality. I adhere to the
" principles of the Revolution, and I am much
" inclined to think that those who speak of °stab-
" fishing religious equality in Ireland, by the dis-
" establishment of the Irish Church, either do not
" mean what they say, or else mean a great deal
" more than they do say. Think well of this."
The "think well of this" is charming in ite unoon-
scions conceit. Lord ELMO seeks the suffrages of
the Haddingtonshire electors as a supporter of Mr.
DISRAELI, against Lord WI Ax HAY, a sound
Liberal and a faithful follower of Mr. Orawno:Te.
His lordship, in one of his characters as the friend
of humanity, is fond of arbitrating between capital
and labour, preventing strikes, and generally
making the world better. But all this bonhomie
is of the " high falutin' " order, which people
somehow associate with Lord ELCIIO. A horse
that is " all action and no go " is in the long run
discarded for an animal less showy but more
useful; and we trust the time has come when the
common sense of Haddingtonshire will refuse to
return a high political stepper whose indepen-
dence is all on one side.

THE PRUSSIAN BULLET-PUMP.-BALL

PRACTICE.

Malta is something grimly amusing in the fact
that at the very time when a diplomatic conference
is called to discuss the Russian proposition for the
disuse of explosive engines of destruction in war,
authorities of the great military states of Europe
are expending time and money in the invention
and perfection of machinery for the wholesale
slaughter of mankind. Here, for instance, is what
they have been doing in the royal city of Konigs-
berg on Monday, according to the You Gazette :
The officers and sub-officers of the 43rd Prussian regiment
were practising on last Monday with the new infantry gun—.
called the ball-pump. This gun, which is a breech-loader,
rests on a support. In the trial of last Monday a table
bound by an iron hoop was used. The rebound is ins*.
nificant, for it is deadened by a spiral spring. The gun is
composed of 37 barrels enclosed in a common cylinder.
Thus it has 12 barrels more than the revolver can-
non of France, and it discharges from 222 to
333 shots in a minute. It was tried on Monday last at
distances of from 300 to 800 paces. Paper targets placed
before baskets of brushwood were the object fired at. At
300 paces the conical bullet, an inch and a half long,
paired through the brushwood, and at 800 panes it passed
deeply into it.

fjo-me time ago we reported from the French
journals that in the ball practice at Vincennes
some 30 or 40 bullets penetrated each of the painted
men who formed the target for the sharpshooters,
and at the present moment further perfection is
being attained in the Camp at Chalons.
The Russian journals boast of the perfection of
their military arms.

The Austrian military authorities are not die-
' posed to remain in the background. The General
Correspondence of Vienna has the following:
In consequence of the change of military tactics intro-
duced by the new fire-arms, greater care is to be bestowed
upon the formation of a corps of sharpshooters. For this
purpose there has been established at the Camp of Bruck,
on the Leitha, a practising school under the direction of
General Count Auersperg. The Emperor has ordered that
the best shots shall receive special distinctions, as in other
gamin. Those of the first-class in the line regiments will
receive red ribbons, and in the Chaim" green, which
they will wear on the breast in the same way a the de-
corations of the captain of the gun in the artillery.

We (Herald) are glad to learn that the alarming
reports published by some of our contemporaries as to the
health of the First Lord of the Admiralty are without
foundation. A very few dap' residence on the Continent
has sufficed to remove all traces of his late attack, although
his medical advisers recommend a somewhat longer sojourn
abroad.