The Express. — 1868-03-24 (London, England)

PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING.  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 Commons 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 intolerable 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 PAtvrßArosr.►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" supporters. As independent seceders from their own party, they can almost flatter themselves that they have souls above Shibboleths, and political consciences above the customary temptations of adherents ; that an irritable selflove is a single-minded zeal for the public good, and that a resentful jealousy is self-abnegation. 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 Downing-street, for another long lease of inefficiency and inaction, and it becomes intelligible bow the party who sit behind Mr. Gt.aosvons require a little stimulating pressure from their constituents 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 superfluous, 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 precipitate 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 Opposition 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 eandistatatemeat 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. Whatever may be the fate et the Resolutions next week the present Parliament will be allowed 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.