The Express.
London, England, 1859-03-01 00:00:00

LONDON, TUESDAY; MARCH 1.

We are at length in possession of the Ministerial
project of Parliamentary Reform. While yet in
ignorance of its principles and details we asked for it a
full and candid hearing. Now that it has appeared
we are compelled to remark that no worse could be
wished for it by the bitterest enemy of its authors.
The country has for months waited patiently for the
development of a Tory scheme of electoral change.
Large and liberal promises were held out vaguely
of conoeseious to popular worth and loyalty. Whig
biddinge were oharacterimed u niggardly and narrow,
and even Radical proposals were stigmatised as want-
ing in comprehensiveness. Conservative progress
was the something better that should eclipse them
all. Ample time was given for its elaboration, and
no precipitancy was suffered to mar its dee deve-
lopment. And now that it is at length before us, we
look at it and into it with feelings of surprise amount-
ing almost to incredulity. How any set of men
standing in the position of responsible Ministers of
the Crown should have been ab:e to persuade ose
another that such a Bill as that expounded by Mr.
DISRAELI last night could or would be accepted by
the nation, surpasses, we must own, our oompro-
hension.

Three things were fairly asked and fully expected
of Ministers :-1. That the laborious industry as
well u the cultivated intelligence of the community
should be endued with the rights of eitimmehip.
2. That sham representation by means of rotten
boroughs should cease and determine, while populous
and wealthy towns should be enfranchised in lieu
thereof. 3. That the right of voting should be
secured against unjust and oppressive influence.
Now have these demands been met P Against the
unenfranchised millions who live by their labour the
gates of privilege are to be barred anew, more
defiantly than ever. Through the postern door
of a Saving, Bank franchise a handful may
be admitted by stealth as it were, and
such as happen to be able to pay for
permission to last within the precincts of
privilege, " as lodgers paying Si. • week" (201. a
year), are to be graciously permitted in &tare to
vote at elections. But of the mass of rate-paying
householders whose rent Is under 101. a year no
notice whatever is taken in the Government mea-
-1 sure; and, were it to pass into a law, they would
find themselves ea completely as ever without the
pale of the constitution.
Nov is this all. The manifest operation of the
various clauses by which the more highly educated
classes are more fully and completely enfranchised,
unbalanced as they are by any provisions for extend-
ing the suffrage in an opposite direction, must and
will be taken as strengthening the means of defence
on the part of the present monopolists of poli-
tical power. The sentinels are to be doubled
on the ramparts of resistance. The scandalous de-
crepitude into which many existing boroughs h►ve
politically fallen has been the theme of ridicule, re-
preach, and remonstrance year after year. The only
doubt amongst the people was how far it might be
possible in one legislative day to lop off all the
decayed and withered branches. Some were for
attempting the complete performance of the task by
• vigorous effort, while others would have proceeded
more cautiously, and been content with getting rid
of the most offensively corrupt and lifeless boughs.
But Lord DEBBY and his colleagues will not suffer
one of them to be cut off. Not a single borough is
to be disfranchised. Caine and Eye, Midhurst and

Rips, and all the rest of the manufactories of mock
members, are to remain, while numerous large towns
that have grown up sine 1832, or have outgrown
the =emu of representation then accorded to them,
are to remain as they now are, destitute of political
weight or influence in the councils of the empire.
From fifteen places that now return two members
each, one is taken I and with the pettifogging stock-
ig-trade thus obtained, the splendid donation is made
of one member each to seven secondary towns, while
the West Riding is to have four additional
members, and Middlesex and South Lancashire
are each to hate two. Such is the make-
believe map of redistribution. Finally, as re-
gards the exercise of the franchise, the
electors of cities and boroughs are left as they now
are, devoid of all defence against intimidation, and all
redrew when subjected thereto. In counties the sys-
tem of voting papers is to be introduced: an elector
is to send his vote by post, his signature being
attested by two witnesses. Is one of these to be
that of the bailiff to the estate? We are not en-
lightened upon this point, but we note the charm-
teristie provision in the Bill, that no exception is to
be taken to the validity of the written vote. If
forgery and fraud have not carte blanche iu this way
we know not how they could obtain ir.
Whatever may be the fate of this extraordinary
project of law, it is satisfactory to find the propriety
of lowering the county franchise to 101. unreservedly
recognised even by men so imperrious to the atmo•
spheric influence of the time as Lord Daxey and his
eelleagus. In a certain sense it may indeed be said
to be the Bill of Mr. I.ocee KING et praterea
Aeotber satisfactory indication is a clause by which
the odious and demoralising unction given last
maim to the payment of travelling expenses is
repudiated and proposed to be repealed. In lieu
thereof a provision is inserted which declares that us
future any such payment should be illegal. We
row know the reason why Messrs. Wstrote and
HENLEY' have resigned. It was by their folly and
obstinacy that this abominable legalisation of a
corrupt practice was carried last year, in defiance of
public opinion ; and now at the eleventh hour
their colleagues find themselves compelled to
pass what amounts to a deliberate vote of

am for thus having led
th7rmar.sstegy., We need only express our regret
that Lord HalDvitols, who alone was found to
defend the Act of last session, has not shown himself
equally sensitive, and been equally ready to depart.
As for the main provisions of the Government Anti-
Reform Bill,. there is certainly nothing in them
which could by possibility provoke any politician,
however timidly Conservative, to withdraw his
darkness from the councils of the Crown. We cannot
be surprised at the unmeasured tones in which the
more earnest Liberals in the House expressed them-
selves with regard to its purpose and tendency.
The leader of the late Administration, and his ex-

elusive colleagues, require time to make up their
minds about the matter. Lord JOHN RUSSELL, Mr.
ROEBUCK, and Mr. Baton; need no leisure to cal-
culate whether it would be wrong not to do what is
right, or right to do what is wrong. It is plain
that we are on the eve of a great and exciting
struggle. "The word has gone forth, the declare,-
" tion is planted ; great men may apostatise, but the
" muse of truth will live."

WHEN M. DE MONTALEMBERT was about to com-
pose his memorable Apology for England end ,
English Institutions in the spirit of the Roman
historian writing on the manners of the Germans, he
made a pilgrimage to the House of Commons, on the
night of a great national debate. It is easy to con-
ceive the bitterness of enthusiasm with which the
I silenced orator and the homeless statesman would
contemplate the almost immemorial, and unwsniog
grandeur of the freest and proudest representative
Assembly in the world. He would mark, with a
pang of admiration and regret, the plain and prac-
tical reality, the solid and substantial simplicity, the
visible and felt but unobtrusive power impressed
upon all the proceedings of those picked lawmakers
of a serious, self-respecting people. The Palace of
Westminster, compared with the Palais Bour-
bon ; the British Parliament, with a liveried Senate
and a menial Legislative Corps, might well awake
in the breast of a patriotic French gentleman a sense
of humiliaion and a mingled emotion of envy and
sympathy, such as we, to whom these scenes are part
and parcel of our every day existence, can hardly
imagine. From the sight of Englishmen, at home the
" mist of familiarity" obscures the dignity and the
nobleness of freedom in its daily working dress.
We perceive only Sir C. BARRY'S expensive Gothic
vagaries combining darkness and inconvenience,
and a number of common-place, ungainly,
or frivolous men, talking parochial English
painfully. One mast be absent from the old
country a year or two, or stay ten days in Paris,
to see our Parliament as others see it. Then, again,
the mania of smart provincial correspondents for
"showing bp" the House in graphic sketches, and
treating our Parliamentary celebrities as a valet
treats a hero, is notealealated to suggest to the popu-
lar mind any very exalted image of the national
Senate. Nevertheless, there are few more satiafito-
tory spectacles to a serious observer In what Mr.
DISRAELI would call a " wise and understanding"
age, than the English House of Commons on the
occasion of a great debate or, domestic policy. We
ray emphatically on domestic policy, because it is
then that the House is really itself, and therefore seen
to the best advantage. There is all the difference
in the world between a home eight and a foreign,
night in the House. The French Chamber of
' Deputies and the National Assemblies were never so
brilliant as when the resurrection of POLAND or the
Rights of Man were the order of the day. In the
' House of Commune, who cares for the Danubian
Principalities, or even for the Italian Ties-
. tion, except so far as pesos or war may be
concerned in its arrangement P On Friday last,
for instance, there was an immense excitement
about Lord PALMERSTON'S questions and Mr.
• Omer .l's answers; the House wee full of strange
feces, and the very air in the lobbies was feverish
and fuming with anxiety. Bat the House itself,
though curious and unquiet, wee rather bored and
pozzled than interested, and had lost for the moment
its habitual air of business-like simplicity and
sobriety; it looked more like a Corpe Ltgislatif
• waiting for a decree, a Bourse paralysed by a para.
graph in the Moniteur, than the High Court of
Parliament. The atmosphere was un-English, and
so was the tone of the speakers—timid, artificial,
reticent, insincere.
Last night the House was itself again ; not like
the Great Briton abroad, half-shy, half-defiant, and
wholly ridiculous, but like a Great Briton on his own
premises, cheerful, outspoken, thorough, and natural,
A Reform Bill is just each a piece de resistance as an
English legislature likee, not one of your foreign
' diplomatic kickshaws—only fit for the cypher of
' chanceries and the small talk of salons. It does not
come on the table every year, but it is "cut and come
" again," and will bear a good deal of bold and
awkward carving.
' A Reform Bill introduced by a Tory Ministry
in spite of themselves, with a wincing party
at their back., and with an early disciple of Josten
Hume as their organ, in the face of the Lord
Jowl of 1831 sitting below the gangway, in
front of JOHN BRIGHT, Member fir Birmingham,
and of the Lord PALMERSTON of any time and any
administration these fifty years sitting on the front
Opposition bench—surely this was a pungent com-
bination of men and circumstances. Mr. DISRAELI

was in very happy case, and ho hes seldom, if ever,
spoken more effectively. It has often been re-
marked that he does not shine in the purely
official capacity ; and when he is charged
with some tremendous Government secret he
is apt to " mouth," like Humid defying Laertes.
There is a streak of wilful and mocking genius
in his organism which betrays itself through
all the forced severity. But in bringing for-
ward the Reform Bill, he charmed the majority
be could not convince by what Mr. BRIGUT called
the " interesting audacity" of his manner and matter,
and by the dear, sonorous music of the periods in
which he rung out a chime of "fancy franchises."
Every now and then there was a glimpse of the
ideal, and a gleam of romance, as in his con-
ception of the borough of Arundel as the great
representative constituency of the nine hundred
thousand Roman Catholics in England, which exer-
cised an irresistible fascination on the House,
and sounded like a page of Coningsby or
• revelation of Alsoy. As a work of art, as au effort
of oratory, Mr. DISRAELI'S speech was a splendid
feat, and it deserved the sustained attention, the ar.
1 pinusive laughter, end the impartial admiration it
; received. As a ministerial triumph it was, we fest,
destined to be brief and bright. The Scotch mem-
bers had note word to say for it, since it had said
not a word for them. lip they rose in weird succes-
sion—dreadful Caledonian shapes in menacing array
—to ask why Scotland and Ireland (in the silence of
Irish members) were left ont ; and the polite excuses
of the LORD ADVOC tTE came too ItiLIP to moderate
, the rancour of their tongues. But the knell of the
Bill and of the Ministry was sounded by Lord
JOHN RUSSELL, who was not only more than usually
broad and clear in the substance of his word', but sin-
gularly genial and hearty in tone. His allusion to
the "finality" from which he had "departed"
was as playful as a boj'a recollection of an early

flogging ; and when he declared that there were
hundreds of thousands of the working-classes who
deserved the franchise, and whom Mr. Distant
had altogetker forgotten in his Bill, he proved
that his youthful sympathies had not shrunk with
the lengthening shadows of his liberal years.
But Lord JOHN RUSSELL spoke from below the
gangway. Above the gangway was the leader of
the Opposition; and what had he to say against this
great Bill of exclusions, this scheme of disfranchise-
mints, this bundle of spurious Tory shams ? Lord
PALMERSTON rose, amidst breathless silence, to guard
himself against disowning the details of the Bill,
which was not yet in possession of the Hones,
and to ask the Right Hon. gentleman for what day
the second reading would be fixed. Not by the po-
litic clemency of PALMERSTON, however, by the
dolorous but subdued howl of NEwDEOATE, or the
sorry jocularity of Polonius was the discomfiture of
this unlucky Bill accomplished or delayed. Mr.
ROEBUCK and Mr. CROSSLEY denounced its insolent
shortcomings, and Mr. BRIGHT sounded the tocsin.of
an agitation which a Tory Reform Bill was wanted
to justify.

Tux admissions elicited by the Earl of CLAREN-
DON from the Earl of MALIIESBERY last night have
already blown to the winds the pretended " expla-
" nations" of the state of Foreign Affairs offered by
the Government with considerable solemnity on
Friday. It now tarns out that the only foundation
for the assertion that Austria and France were about
to leave the Papal States was that our Government
knew that the Pore wanted to get rid of both, that
Austria had said in a general way that
if the Holy Father wished it she would
go, and that France had casually said the
same thing. There had been no common con-
sultation, no compact, nothing like a diplomatic
transaction or event to justify the announcement
which last Friday evoked the cheers of the House.
The Government had put this and that together, aid
the impending evacuation of the Roman States no en
inference, and nothing more. Now that he is qua-
Honed on the subject, Lord MALYEADDRY admits that
before such a withdrawal can take place many arrange-
menu must be made, but what those arrangements
may be he cannot say. He adds, with ineffable
naivete, " My knowledge is confined to the fact that the
" Porfi has uked for the evacuation of his territories;
" and I see no reason why those powers should
" remain." We now see why last week's Ministerial
explanations were received with incredibility in
France. Thus collapses another diplomatic bubble.

LATEST INTELLIGENCE.

AUSTRIAN ITALY.

TURIN, F. 28.
Advice. have been received from Milan to the
27th inst.

In consequence of the popular demonstrations at
the funeral of Signor Dandolo, numerous arrests and
domiciliary visits have taken place ; but several
parsons whom it was intended to arrest, succeeded
In escaping. The prisoners were conducted to this
Castle and delivered over to a military commission.

The followiog are extracts from a private letter
received at Mr. Rtuter's office:

MILAN, FIB. 24.

" Last evening a disturbance among the lower
duels broke out before the doors of the Alla
Scala' theatre. The mob endeavoured to prevent
the entrance of the mules into the theatre, about
eleven o'clock, by hissing, whistling, and throwing
stones, but order was quickly restored.
" A second duel has been recently fought here.
The combatants were an Austrian officer and an
engineer from Crema.
" Among the persons who have lately emigrated
to Piedmont are included the son of the Podesta of
our town, two functiooariee (attaches of the Arch-
duke Governor), several empoy#: in the financial
department, and even an officer of police.
"It is expected that the Archduke will return to
this town in the ours* of a few day&
" Very many persons here are of opinion that the
line of policy adopted by the government of Eng.
land tends to neutrality : they think at all events
that England desires peace ; and with this object In,
view she may persuade Austria to go great lengths
in yielding to the pressure from without."