The Press. — 1858-10-30 (London, England)

JOHN RUSSELL.,:, at Ardwick, reported in the daily papers of last Monday. His Lordship spoke sensibly on the subject of ragged-schools, the value of which is, we believe, being more fully recognized every day. With ragged-schools, reformatories, and a penal reformatory, which we believe it is contemplated to establish at Parkhurst, our machinery ought to be nearly complete. On one point to which his Lordship made allusion we believe he was misinformed. The paper-bag manufacture is prosecuted, we believe, in London schools as well as country ones. It certainly is so in one, namely, Mr. DRIVER'S, in Belvidere-crescent.  From Weedon to Woolwich is a step that our facetious friends who form the Commission of Inquiry into the Army Clothing System have probably taken with pleasure. It enlarges the sphere of their operation, supplies them with more vaned materials to whet their wit upon, and enables them to court popular applause from a more conspicuous platform. It is, no doubt, in spite of Mr. SELFE S protestations, a highly delightful thing to be a Commissioner for the first time. To crack one's little jokes about routine and red tape with a certainty that they will not be lost, to extend one's mimic shield over oppressed virtue, and couch one's bristling bulrush against titled corruption, is a delicious, though apparently a somewhat intoxicating pleasure. Mr. SELFE and his colleagues have got a certain plain duty before them, but for the life of them they can't stick to it. First the Militia must come under their patronage, and a fine opportunity of tickling the British citizen in his most sensitive part must not be thrown away. The Militia receive the cast-off clothes of the Line ! Horrible ! say the Commissioners. They would have us to know, forsooth, that the  Militia are highly respectable. The Militia represent a great and important class. And more of the same twaddle. Now, no one conversant with the columns of THE PRESS can doubt our sympathy with the Militia, whose steady champion we have been for the last three years. But we really think the War-office, however fast bound in tapen fetter is competent to settle this question. And as no complaints have been heard from the Militia themselves, we think SELFE and Co. might just as well have kept its remarks to itself. The same holds good of Mr. TURNER'S pompous offer of protection to gentlemen who complained of their salaries— " I will make the King do you grace : I will leer upon him as he comes by." And we only hope Messrs. GRANT and MORRIS may find they fare better than Justice Shallow did. The Clothing Colonel, of course, formed a subject for satire that these eminent wits could not be expected to leave untouched. And possibly if they had succeeded in making a single good joke among them during the whole time they have been sitting we might have pardoned the irrelevancy of it. But they have not. They wish to prove themselves jaunty men of wit and nature and position alike point to a very different estimate of themselves. and their duties. ‘. This merriment of parsons," said old JOHNSON, "Is mighty offensive." Would he had been a listener in the IVeedon and 'Woolwich Committee rooms ! pleasure, when  The late foul attempt at assassination in the North of Ireland is a matter of more serious import than may at first sight appear. The murder of a gentleman in cold blood before the eyes of his wife and daughter is so horrible in itself, that our readers may, perhaps, he at a loss to understand our meaning. Unhappily it is too easily. explained. We have reason for believing that the reappearance of a crime, for some years hoped to be extinct, may but too probably be only the beginning of a series. We are assured on most reliable evidence that the revival of the secret societies under the management of the mined upon by the rulers of the Romish Church, and in the West is already in course of organization. The priests having found out that the defiant and disloyal tone adopted in Cardinal Wismot's progress is a complete failure, have resolved upon active measures. Anything is better Priests is already deterthan contempt. If au omission to drink the Queen's health provokes