The Sun.
London, England, 1867-12-07 00:00:00

13PIRIT -OP THE PVIIL 10 JOURNALS.

It Was latelyistatehy tr. dathdriie r4ify. pkit abort
thousand liienkorialuqe yearly receive 4 214 Xfot:ie'
Office in rear to Sentences of capita punishment and
enal servilude. This fact, which, if alleged en less con-'
'elusive authpritkAhe Times might have hesitated to
throws a flood of light on the uncertain operation of
ourcnmina I.W. 'Though it may hive been a cogent
to Mr". 'Newdegate's Motion for a half-yearly pub-
lication of all these memorials with the correspondence
tipen them, it constitutes a very strong presumption
against the present latitude of the Home Secretary's quasi-
aPpellate juiisiliction. It is hardly too much to ray that
every single memorial of this nature represents a sen-
sible deduction from the deterrent effects of punishment.
It is possible that periodical returns from the Home Office
of the sentences actually commuted would contribute to
check indiscriminate commutation. We greatly doubt,
however, whether it would be practicable or desirable to
assign the reasons which influenced the Minister in each
instance, so as to give the House of Commons the means
of reviewing them. There is something to be said for
a regular Court of Criminal Appeal, and something, too,
for an indefinite responsibility such as is now vested
in the Home Secretary, but there is nothing to be said
for transferring that responsibility to the Legislature.
On the other hand, the Legislature is bound to watch
every department of Government, and there is no depart-
ment which more urgently requires its supervision than
criminal procedure. For example, the want of any
approach to uniformity in sentences must tend, like
the hope of remission from the Home Secretary, to defeat
the objects of a penal code. It is not uncommon for two
men to be condemned on the same circuit for crimes pre-
cisely similar, the one to a few months' imprisonment,
the other to several years' penal servitude. One judge
or chairman of quarter sessions visits first offences with
great severity to deter the prisoner from repeating them ;
another treats first offences lightly, but invariably inflicts
penal servitude on a second conviction for any felony.
The want of unity in our police system and prison
management greatly aggravates the effect of the want of
uniformity in sentences. If a man is convicted one year
in one county, and another year in another, it is by no
means certain that his former convictions will be brought
up against him, and hardened offenders seldom out of
gaol are sometimes admonished from the Bench against
the danger of entering upon a career of crime. In
short; our criminal law, however far from scientific per-
fection, needs reform less than its administrative ma-
chinery, and the subject discussed on Tuesday is but a
part of a larger question which cannot be postponed much
longer.

The Daily News looks upon M. Rouher's speech in the
'French Chambers as the death-blow to the Conference.
He has also, it adds, torn up and scattered to the winds
the last shreds of the alliance between France and Italy.
[His admirable eloquence will be cordially appreciated at
Berlin. We should not be surprised to hear that Count
Bismarck had sent him congratulations through the
*xussian Minister in Paris. On the other hand, we are
not quite sure that the Emperor Napoleon, comparing the
eloquence of M. Rouher with the more modest and hesi-
tating utterances of M. de Moustier, may not doubt whether
the department of Foreign Affairs, involving so many
delicate considerations and susceptibilities, is most fitly
represented in the tribune by a rhetorician or by a respon-
sible Minister, though the rhetorician is vociferously
acclaimed and the Minister is listened to in silence. We
trust the Italians will have the good sense to feel neither
discouragement nor indignation at M. Rouher's oratorical
efforts. Indeed, their shrewd political instinct will be
sadly at fault if they do not in their hearts thank him.
There is nothing, after all, in his most emphatic statements
which can prevent time and chance being her best allies.
Patience will work greater wonders than the Chassepot.
The Standard writes a chaffing leader at the expense of
Lord Russell and Mr. Layard, on the question of King
Theodore's long unanswered letter. Neither the peer nor
the commoner took any trouble about it. The whole
treatment of this most expensive document, indeed, is but
another and a most egregious specimen of "meddle and
muddle." It was tossed about from department to depart-
ment in what we suppose is the usual light and airy
manner of conducting the public business. It was docketed
and minuted by a great many persons, and then pitched
into a corner and forgotten. From Mr. Hammond it
seems to have been thrown to Mr. Layard, and from Mr.
Layard to Lord Russell. Then, somebody having dis-
covered that it was properly in the Indian Department
(the credit of this brilliant achievement seems to be claimed
lj Mr. Layard himself), it came somehow into the hands
of Mr. Kaye, who probably duly had the honour to receive
the document, and there it remained. For nearly three
years it lay about in Mr. Kaye's desk—tha t enterprising
%fficial having, as it is gravely pleaded, no pigeon-holes.
Probably all this time the letter bad been a standing joke
in the department. Abyssinia was a long way off, and
Theodore, if he was believed in at all, was perhaps invested

with that comic character with attaches to the ordinary
Ethiopian melodist. The wonder is that the letter should
have survived at all the extraordinary treatment to which
it was subjected—that out of the pigeon-holes it should rise
up at last to confute Mr. Layard's most positive assertions
and to bear evidence against Lord Russell.
The Saturday Review, in dealing with the President's
Message, warns us that under present circumstances such

a document affords no indication of the policy which is to

be adopted by the United States. As to the idea of an
.impeachment, it would be useless if it were not preceded
by an act for suspending the President from office during
the trial. Unless two-thirds of both Houses are ready to
vote for such an innovation, the veto of the President will
be fatal to the measure. And unless the impeachment
is rapidly proceeded with it must be inoperative, for the

President's term of office expires in twelve months from
this time. The demeanour of the different parties in
Congress will be watched with more anxious curiosity.
In a few days it will be seen whether the Republican

majority has learned any practical lesson from the recent
election& It is well known that the leaders of the ex-

treme party are determined to persevere in the violent
course which has within a few years almost destroyed
their great majority ; but the bulk of their followers may
perhaps prefer to swim With the stream, although it is
now flowing in a reverse directiori. A very small seces-
sion would restore to the President the control over
legislation which was habitually exercised by his pre-
decessors ; and a patient and adroit statesman in his
place would cheerfully await the self-inflicted defeat of
his enemies. Mr. Johnson, however, is one of the least
judicious of politicians, and his patience will pro-
bably be soon exposed to a severe trial ; for it ap
pears that the Judiciary Committee will report in favour
of impeachment, and that the Republican leaders will
attempt the prosecution, If the President can keep
his temper he has little to fear from the imprudent
,hostility of Congress, for it is doubtful whether
'the House of Representatives will vote the impeach-
ment, and nothing can be easier than to protract
the proceedings until his term of office is completed.
'The charges against Mr. Johnson are either frivolous or
insincere. If he has deserved impeachment, his guilty
acts are not those which have brought him into collision
with Congress. At the beginning of his Presidential term
he perhaps usurped the prerogative of deciding the condi-
tions on which the conquered States should be readmitted
to the Union. It might possibly be the duty of the Presi-
dent to declare that the termination of the war involved
the restoration of all constitutional rights ; but, in re-
quiring the States of the Confederacy to abolish slavery,
Mr. Johnson assumed powers above the law and the Con-
stitution. In his defence it may be fairly urged that Mr.
Lincoln was prepared to adopt a precisely similar policy,
with the full assent of the people and of Congress itself ;
and notwithstanding his alleged encroachments, Mr.
Johnson retained his popularity until the Republicans dis-
covered that he was recurring to his former Democratic
associations. If the Judiciary Committee has succeeded
in discovering administrative irregularities, or even acts of
'corruption, it will still be unwise to prosecute a great dig-
nitary for vulgar malversation which he might have perpe-
trated with absolute impunity but for the political animo-
sities which he has provoked. The proper security against
Presidential corruption would be the election of gentlemen
and men of honour to the highest post in the Republic. It
is extravagantly unjust to reproach a President, elected
because he had been a working tailor, with a deficiency of
the artificial refinement and delicacy which are cultivated
under other circumstances and conditions.

The " rarliamentary Collapse " is the heading of
an article in the ,'''pectator, which deals with the
autumn session and it; results. Our abla contem-
porary did not anticipate. very much from it, but
eel
did expect that Par:lament would ha-e expressed
Av'tii force and elearnes3 the expectations of the county
with respect to the measures which the Government should
introduce in February-. But the spirit of both Houses
has been more than passive ; it has shown positive help-
lessness. Ireland, India, Italy, alike have been passed
over. But worst of all has been the demeanour of the
Lords and the indifference of the Commons on the subject
of Education. It is well known that the Ministry are to
introduce a bill on this subject, and now, if ever, was the
time to modify its provisions. Mr. Disraeli had already
'intimated, and the Duke of Marlborough, in his poverty-
stricken speech of Monday, again stated, that the present
intention of the Government does not go beyond a cautious
extension of the present denominational system—in other
words, has nothing large about-it, and will do no good in
those poor, ignorant, and populous districts where educa-
tion is most needed, because there is no one to set it on
foot. We are greatly 332i/taken if the national opinion has
not far outstripped the thin and meagre designs of
Government.
_con IygrY 04. yff) }Anil 44 confessions of

tcinTioisioit to a large and Zaiiiieheisive educational
policy. The voluntitry 'Sect has given up its wretched
crotchet in deferenae to the clear expression of the nation's
will, and Radicals and Conservatives have alike expressed
their anxiety to see that kind of intelligence developed in
the working classes of this country which has been seen
to give such extraordinary elasticity to the power of the
United States and Prussia in the moment of trial. Yet
in the face of all this the Duke of Marlborough almost
limits his concessions to the magnificent suggestion that
the Government may probably be induced to help schools
without insisting on certificated schoolmasters, and the
House of Lords drops the subject, while the House of
Commons never takes it up ! The debate of Monday in
the House of Lords is the greatest proof of the inability of
the Peers to enter heartily into the political anxieties of
the country and lead its counsels which we have yet seen.
Grant that Lord Russell's motion may have looked like a
party bid ; still, it should have been vigorously used with
any needful disclaimer of party purpose, to prompt and
spur a reluctant Government out of its stupid lethargy. A
hearty stimulus applied to its zeal now, before the detail of
its plan ,Id been settled, would have been worth many times
the value of any criticism applied in February or March. Yet
Parliament is now adjourned to the middle of February
without a hint from either House of Parliament that the
nation will not be satisfied with the contemptible modicum
of concession announced by the feeblest Minister in the
Cabinet on the greatest English question of the day. The
Duke of Marlborough said l e was quite incompetent to
cope with so great a question as the appointment of a
Minister of Education, and we agree with him, and argue
lc fortiori that he is still more utterly incompetent to cope
with the far greater question of what such a nister
ought to do. No " certificated schoolmaster" could have
been found to make a much narrower, more piggish,
imbecile speech on this great matter than the noble duke,
If the duke had himself been trained in that period wheit
children are said to have owed their education wholly to
Sunday schools, he could not have excelled the feeblen'ss
of his Monday's deliverance. And the House of Lords
allowed that and Lord Russell's vague speech to ge
forth to the country as all that they cared to say in view
of the proposed Tory policy on educational reform! On
every subject, then, on which an early and emphatic
expression of the nation's wish might have been expected
to influence the coming session, and not only the coming
session but the ripening of national thought, this autumn
sitting of Parliament has been a complete failure. It has
been indifferent, lifeless, apathetic—in a word, prococurante.
It would seem that the Commons, in view of their doom,
are too selfish to think of anything but their " notice to
quit," and that the Lords, being hopeless of directing the
mind of the nation, are almost magnetised into imbecility.
No more pallid, faded ghost of what a Parliament should
be ever met at a crisis thick with the most weighty living
interests than the one which has just adjourned. It is
the only prognostic we have seen at all confirmatory of
Mr. Carlyle's dismal forebodings of a period'when vivid
. political life shall cease, and " gibbering phantoms" shall
idly chatter where statesmen once held the reins. It may
be, we trust it is, a false prognostic. But no one can say
that the autumn session has not been a miserable display
of languor and apathy, where we expected energy and
life.

The appointment of Dr. Selwyn to the bishopric of
Lichfield gives the John Bull unmitigated satisfaction. It
points out that to this day the statute-book is encumbered
with restrictions on the exerciseof Ministerial functions in
England by Scotch and colonial clergy, and not only have
no colonial bishops ever been translated to English sees,
but their employment as suffragans, or quasi-suffragans,
has always been eyed with disfavour by politicians
and by a large section of Churchmen. The transla-
tion of Bishop Selwyn will be a heavy blow and
discouragement to these proclivities. From another
point of view, it may also be regarded with satis-
faction. The weakening of the Catholic idea
of the Church of England by the distinction made
between that part which is established at home, and th,
non-established dioceses in onr colonies, to the prejudice
of the latter, is not the only danger. The unhappy
schism in the province of South Africa has led to a ten-
dency, in the minds of many Churchmen, to regard the
colonial dioceses, not as identical in character, and essen
tially united, with the dioceses in the home provinces,
but as something higher—branches of an independent
State-free Church, linked to the Church of England not
much more, if at all, than is the Episcopal Church in
the United States. Naturally, this view has found
most favour in the North American Provinces ; least
favour in Australia, mainly peopled as she is by
emigrants, whose only idea of the Church is that in
which they were brought up at home. Between these
extremes haye always stood the bishops and people
of New Zealand. They, like the Australians, are for the
most part emigrants ; but they are also almost all, in the
popular sense of the words, High Churchmen; and while
they probably share to some extent the feelings of their
Australian neighbours, in opposition to the separatist
tendencies of Mr. Cardwell's recent bill, their objec-
tions will be based on very different grounds from those
put forward by the Metropolitan at Sydney, or by the
Bishop of Melbourne. Happy is it, therefore, for our
Church, that, in the new Bishop of Lichfield we have a
colonist of all others the most capable to promote a satis-
factory settlement of the Colonial Church difficulty. The
value of Bishop Selwyn's counsel in Parliament on all
questions affecting New Zealand policy cannot be over-
rated, as well as on Colonial Church policy generally. Nor
can we doubt that his work in the Black Country will II
as successful as it has been in the Pacific.