15 OCTOBER 1864, Page 1

NEWS OF THE WEEK.

THE Lancashire people are squeezing speeches out of Mr. Glad- stone like sugar out of cane. He has spoken this week at Bol- ton on the utility of people's parks and the expensiveness of too much smoke, and at Liverpool on colonial and foreign policy and British finance. The speeches are all of them rather too . full of honeyed words, flatteries of England, American in all but their sound, and vague assurances of a good time supposed to be coming. The most important of them was the one at Liverpool, where Mr. Gladstone affirmed that England had foresworn all lust of terri- torial aggrandizement (the age of conquests is past, said Napoleon, as he gulped down Savoy), and will only retain her colonies on condition that they perform their duties as freemen. In other words, Mr. Gladstone wishes the Empire neither to advance nor recede in territory, but devote itself to the " administration of the constitution " and the improvement of the condition of the people. In foreign politics England, being an Wand, is to wait for that influence sure to attend the opinion of an " impartial" power. There seems to have been for once in his life a confusion between two ideas in Mr. Gladstone's mind,—the respect which a judge obtains from his impartiality, and the power he wields because behind him stands an irresistible executive. The " impar- tiality" of a bystander does not greatly influence a street fight.

Mr. Gladstone, in his speech at Bolton on the opening of Farn- worth Park, the present of Mr. Barnes to the town, remarked on the extraordinary change which a few generations had made in the love of man for Nature. The Greeks, he said, however much of beauty they might have discerned in Nature, certainly had no sort of sympathy with the delight in detached individual objects,—a tree, or a stream, or a hill,—which is so often part of the common life of the poorest Englishman. Indeed even a century or less ago " communion with Nature " would have sounded an unnatural phrase of gross affectation, while Wordsworth, who was the poetic high priest of Nature, entirely disbelieved in the capacity of people in general to enter into that communion, and wrote sonnets against their invasion of the Cumberland lakes. Now, said Mr. Glad- stone, it is a sensible part of the life of the working-classes. It is certainly true and very curious that Nature, which up to Words- worth's time was more or less an external world, has for the last half-century been amalgamating itself as it were with the mind of man, and penetrating in some sense inside his character, widening and perhaps also rendering more vague and misty, and endowing as it were with a sort of soft dim beauty, the range of his feelings. The pagan world worshipped the powers of Nature,—we are in danger of worshipping its symbols.

After the ceremonial at Farnworth Mx. Gladstone attended a banquet, and after the banquet made a furious onslaught on a nuisance which he seems to regard with personal dislike, viz., smoke. He called it the " great smoke question," declared th it it was comparatively useless to open parks for the people while this " wanton discharge of smoke into the pure atmosphere of he wen " was allowed to continue. His belief was that the suppression of smoke was a very important matter, that it would "be a saving of several millions a year to the population of the metropolis alone, ' that Lord Palmerston had tried to secure it by an Act which was " one of his most useful efforts," and that he hoped his audience would " operate upon the Legislature " to secure yet more stringent enactments. Obviously Mr. Gladstone does not intend to maintain the btissez-faire theory of legislation. We dare say, the quadrennial painting of London being taken into the account, he is right iu his estimate of loss ; but he should have given some hint of the way he hoped to secure his end. Are we to have a system of smoke drainage ?

In his financial speech at Liverpool on Thursday Mr. Gladstone reprimanded justly though gently the wild and visionary schemes of the Financial Reform Association, which is so enamoured of direct taxation as to wish to dispense- entirely with every other source of revenue. Perhaps he- admitted too much when he agreed that, even theoretically, direct. taxation is the sounder system ;—no doubt it is the most econo- mical of money, but whether it is so economical of comfort as one. which enables the poor to adjust at pleasure the amount of their own taxation according to their earnings and their wants, by tax- ing consumption only, is a very questionable matter indeed.

The news from America to the 1st October left the Federal General Sheridan at Harrisonburg at the extreme southern point of the Shenandoah Valley, successful in having driven General Early quite out of the valley after his two defeats, but not yet quite prepared to follow him to Charlottesville on the road to Lynchburg, where the Confederates appear to have made a stand, and to have been reinforced, probably from Richmond. The news from the James River was of more moment. General Grant bad made a considerable advance both north and south of the James River. On the 20th September General Ord's corps advanced from General Butler's lines at City Point, crossed the James on a pontoon bridge to the north side, and advanced and carried the entrenchments below Chapin's Farm on the Osborne road, capturing fifteen guns and 200 or SJO prisoners. At the- same time General Birney advanced from Deep Bottom (also on the north side), and carried the Newmarket road. This advance was probably partly for the sake of diversion, though an advantage- in itself, for on the 30th General Warren advanced on the left from the Weldon line and carried the enemy's works, and General Meade advanced and carried the works at Poplar Grove,. on the Lynchburg line of railway, leaving, if he retains his posi- tion, only the Danville line open. The ease with which these operations seem to have been performed rather countenance the many rumours that General Lee is in great want of men, and having had already to detach troops to Lynchburg to resist General Sheridan, is contemplating some considerable contraction of his lines round Richmond. The Confederates have made an irruption into Missouri and gained some successes there, and Con- federate General Forrest and his cavalry are said to be breaking up the railway between Chattanooga and Nashville, and so dis- • turbing Sherman's communications.

All the political rumours are favourable to Mr. Lincoln's elec..- tion, and he himself is complying with the Baltimore Conven- tion's request to provide himself with a homogeneous Cabinet. The- Postmaeter-General, Mr. Montgomery Blair, whom the Republi- cans believed to be a leas strenuous anti-slavery man than the President, has resigned, but is canvassing vehemently for Mr._ Lincoln, as is Mr. Chase, the late Financial Secretary, in Ohio. The Republican leaders have at least laid aside all personal feelings in. the struggle, and unless some great military disaster intervenes. their success seems tolerably certain.

The Archbishop of Canterbury delivered his charge on occasion of his primary visitation of his diocese on Tuesday. He referred of coarse, like all the other Bishops, to the controversy concerning the inspiratioa of Scripture, and took up that kind of via medics which is so popular among Englishmen, both because it looks tno lerate and is in reality less tenable than any other conceivable theory. Verbal inspiration he gave up; he thought the writers chose their own words, but "all we ought to maintain was the absolut ant uaiversal authority of every portion of Scripture as written under the divine inspiration, which guarded the writer from error—the exact words in some cases being dictated as in the words of the Dec tlogue." This is a theory which combines every conceiv- able difficulty,—denying undeniable inconsistencies of date and cir- cumstance such as no harmonist ...11118 ever overcome between the Gospel of St. John and the Synoptics, and also inconsistencies of sentiment with God's own teaching, such as Deborah, for instance,' indulged in when she vindictively commended the treachery of Jael and some of the Psalmists when they cursed the daughters of Babylon, without -securing the neatness and convenience of the verbal theory of inspiration. The Archbishop cares apparently little for the main point that men should accept God's revelation in their hearis,—in comparison with the pertinacious ecclesiastical resolve that they shall defer outwardly to what they inwardly pare away, smother under forced explanations, cavil at, become sceptical over, but never really accept.

At the Church Congress at Bristol the Rev. Mr. Lyne, better known as " Brother Ignatius," created a great sensation on Wednes- day by appearing in his Benedictine garb, popularly described as an Inverness cape much too large for him, with sleeves and a hood. His head was tonsured. The clergymen present behaved like an infuriated body of John Bulls on the occasion, instead of treating the eccentricity of the costume with the mild amusement which would have been the most effective discouragement. The Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, however, at length procured him a hearing, and Mr. Lyne spoke with ability and real earnestness on the necessity of dealing more effectively with the gigantic pauper- ism of our large cities, and the complete inefficiency of the parish system, without " collegiate " institutions of unmarried clergymen banded together in aid of it, to invade this pauperism with any effect. The Earl of Harrowby succeeded the speaker, and while doing justice to his earnestness, gratified the eagerness of the meeting for some public reproof to the monastic offender by con- demning the obnoxious habit and the shaven crown. The clergy, who evidently felt that if Brother Ignatius' uncomfortable dress failed to bring upon him also moral discomforts, a great scandal would have been suffered in the Church, were appeased by the Earl's mild expression of displeasure, and subsided into clerical ,calm.

All the insurance offices interested in the houses injured by the Erith explosion have announced that they do not intend to pay for any of the damage done. That is, we presume, they do not con- sider that damage from gunpowder in a state of ignition is damage from fire. If a bit of lighted charcoal burns down a house they will pay, if a saltpetre warehouse catches fire they will compen- sate the owners, but if the two combustibles happen to be together they hold themselves exempt from liability. We trust when the " moral claims " of the insurance offices next come up for discussion Mr. Gladstone will not forget the treatment of the poor people of Erith.

The Bishop of Salisbury in his recent charge not only laments that excommunications for immorality and Church discipline in general are obsolete, and looks forward to their revival, but desires the coming of the time when it may be possible so to use Church courts and Church laws that "persons convicted of notorious sin may be put to open penance and punished in this world, that their souls may be saved in the day of the Lord." And he speaks of this as an appointment of " our Lord's." Where ? Did our Lord impose an " open penance " on James and John for their ambition, or for their persecuting spirit towards the people of Samaria, or on Peter for his denial, or on any of them for their cowardly flight ? He probably knew the Pharisaism of his time too deeply to doubt that " open penance " would mean secret sacer- dotal pride and sin, and especially enjoined, according to the Gospels we have read,—perhaps the right reverend prelate knows better—that all the spiritual duties of the soul, the prayer and the fasting, should be performed in secret, and not at any priest's com- mand.

The Bishop of Salisbury also speaks of the value of " re- treats" for clergymen anxious to meditate upon the condition of their souls apart from the influences of the world. He suggests that the easiest and least objectionable way to secure them would be to obtain the loan of parsonages, and secure tem- porarily the aid of men well skilled in the treatment of souls. Ought not bishops' palaces to be just such retreats, and bishops to be just such skilled physicians? Suppose his Lordship of Salisbury tries the experiment first, and then, if it succeeds, induces the arch- deacons to follow ?

The strike of the colliers in Staffordshire appears to threaten serious consequences, the men 119 they get soured with the contest overstepping the legal line. Three outrages having been committed by them on men guilty only of working for lower wages ; it has been necessary to keep a body of Lancers in readiness against an outbreak, and a body of 8,000 workmen who marched into Bilston to hold a meeting were followed by 150 armed policemen. The men appear resolved not to yield, and are even said to have passed resolutions forbidding their delegates to hold any further confer- ence with the masters having a view to submission. The masters seem at least equally determined, and the affects of the strike are being severely felt among the smaller shopkeepers of Birmingham. The struggle is of course quite hopeless, but it is not to the credit of either side that they cannot agree sufficiently to establish a Committee of Reference.

The Pope has, it is said, hit on a new idea. His Holiness thinks there is a course between raising a new army and coming face to face with the people of Rome. What if he revives one of the military monastic orders, say the Order of St. John ? The Catholic fanatics of Europe subjected to the double discipline of the monastery and the barrack, excited at once by the passion for asceticism and a desire for a crusade, might form formidable soldiers, while a religious order would link itself easily in with the Roman system. Monsignor de Merode might even be Grand Master. The notion is subtle,-but His Holiness forgets one fact. The old Knights of St. John had enemies to fight, the new soldiers will find out in a week that they are merely policemen. The " soldier - monk" is rather a grand figure, the tonsured Dogberry rather a grotesque one. Besides, there are more fanaticisms than one, and the Reds are even in that respect more than a match for the Blacks.

There is much reason to hope that the New Zealand war is approaching an end. On the 5th and 6th of August a meeting took place between the Governor of New Zealand, Sir George Grey, and the natives of Tauranga, at which the latter submitted unconditionally to the Queen's authority, and placed their lands at the Governor's dispo3al. They have been permitted to return to their lands after the confiscation of a very small portion. Of course this does not ensure the submission of the Waikatos or of the Taranaki Maories, but, of the former, few have been lately in the field ; and the latter, though the onl y really treacherous and malicious Maories—much the worst of all the tribes—are not formidable as a power unless assisted by stronger and more courageous allies.

Sir Henry de Hoghten, Bart., has done a very foolish thing—we suppose with a humane end. He has concocted an address from the people of England to the people of America urging the latter to make peace,—and has obtained, he says, 300,000 signatures to it in three weeks. It is very probable that if he had proposed an address to the people of America requesting them to extinguish slavery at any cost he would have got the same people in general to sign it, and without any consciousness of inconsistency. These foolish addresses from masses of persons who have never thought practically about the matter in hand at all, and aim vaguely at peace without considering the obstructions, like a man who aims at a robber through an opaque door, never hit any mark, and never ought to do. They are impertineucies born of the meddling tendencies of a fussy morality. The address is to be presented to Governor Seymour of New York, the great Copperhead, and may perhaps serve to revive in his mind the pangs of defeat.

The position in Italy is curious. Mazzini is outrunning the party of action, who for the most part are wisely and nobly sacri- ficing their individual jealousies to the good of the country and the French Convention, and running into the arms of the narrow Piedmontese party, who are clinging to Turin with all their might. Mazzini (if the published letter is genuine) denounces the Con- vention as treachery and imbecility,—treachery in giving up Rome, —imbecility in buying at a great price from France what Italy might extort by force of arms. The Piedmontese feeling is re- presented by a very clever letter of the Marquis Ricci's, who speaks of the removal to Florence as the change from Sparta to Athens, and predicts a softening of the national nerve under the sunny in- fluences of Tuscany. Moreover, the Marquis in fact betrays his own disbelief in the unity of the nation by stating that Piedmont can never be otherwise than discontented under the change, and will have to be cut off finally like Savoy. It is clear, however, that only the extreme Mazzinians and the narrowest Piedmontese will act together in repudiating the Convention.

The harbour of Mobile is a greater loss to the Confederates than was imagined. We hear on good authority that five blockade- runners crept out from Mobile for every one from Wilmington.

Another Governor of Madras has, it is said, risked a recall from home. Sir W. Denison, according to a telegram received this week, has refused to carry out Sir Charles Wood's final orders on 'amalgamation, alleging that they are contrary to the " Royal -wishes " and the Parliamentary guarantee to Indian officers. If 'the statement is true—and the Madras papers would not have in- vented that odd remark about the Royal wishes—Sir Charles Wood .has no option except to recall the Governor. Whatever the diffi- culty in defining the rights of the local and the supreme authority, one principle must be steadily kept in mind. An order once sent from England must be obeyed. If it is not, the tendency to indi- viduality which characterizes all Indian officials will very soon throw the Empire into anarchy. The excessive irritation which Sir Charles contrives to produce in every class with which he -comes in contact is, however, noteworthy. The colonel who is always creating a mutiny is not a good officer, even if he always quells it.

The daily letters from Copenhagen are getting worse and worse. We thought the scribe who painted so lovingly the yellow 4‘ uniform" of the running footmen, had reached the uttermost depth, but the Standard laughs at our poverty of imagination. That paper, the favourite journal of the Tories, printed on Friday in its leading type a letter from its special correspondent contain- ing the following story :—" If report speaks truly his Imperial Highness the Cesarewitch is perfectly bewitched by the charming Princess Dagraar. . . . One expression of his Imperial Highness is so pretty that it may not be improper I should mention it. It may have been . . . when looking out on the diamond-studded heavens of a northern night, that the tall, fine-looking Grand Duke fixed his large eyes on the still more expressive ones of his beautiful betrothed,

Dagmar,' he said, ' those are not eyes you have, indeed, they are not eyes !" Not eyes ?' said the lively Princess, with a look which went to his heart, ' what are they if not eyes ?' By Heaven !' said the love-sick Imperial Prince, ' they are stars. Nothing above is more bright or beautiful!" And then we abuse New York for tolerating the Herald!

Lord Dufferin, it is said, is to succeed Lord Wodehonse as Under Secretary for India,—a good selection. Lord Dufferin be- sides being a good yachtsman, an observant traveller, and a Peer who can write masculine English, really knows what a Mussulman is like when excited. As Commissioner in Syria he was singularly successful, and five years of the India House may qualify him for the Viceroyalty, which on the last vacancy rather went a begging.

The Marquis Pepoli, who arranged the Convention with the Emperor, and who married a Bonaparte, has made a speech to the citizens of Milan. He denied emphatically the rumour that the evacuation of Rome had been purchased by territorial cessions, declaring that every Italian " would be ready to sacrifice life and property rather than suffer such a new disgrace." The Turinese in their momentary soreness are inclined to believe that part of Piedmont proper is to be sacrificed, and chatter superstitiously about an " eagle " which recently alighted in Turin and remained two days, a sure sign, say the people, that the French are coming. Had they not better kill all their bees, which are everywhere, and which, and not the eagles, are the badge of the House of Bonaparte ?

The French papers announce the death of Jasmin, the barber- poet of Languedoc. He wrote in the patois of his province, and his songs are almost as popular among his countrymen as those of Burns in Scotland. The only remarkable fact of his history is, that after being caressed and feted in Paris, dining with Louis Philippe, and receiving a gold medal from the Academy, he returned to his native town, Agen, and went resolutely on with his business, put his decorations on the counter, and called one of his collections of poems " Curl Papers." He is said to have been a vain man, but the sort of vanity which dictated such a course is of rather more value than many virtues.

The manufacture of charges of indecent assault seems to be becoming a mania. No less than three have been detected this week. In one, a girl of fifteen charged a surgeon with rape, and it was proved beyond question that he was not in the house all day, and that the girl had declared herself able " to make any married woman jealous." In another, three children swore to a charge of exposure on the part of a respectable tradesman, and the magistrate, after a patient inquiry, dismissed him ".without a stain upon his character." In the third, a boy of ten years old was charged with an assault upon a child of four, and the usual offer made to compromise, which was refused, and the magistrate declared the charge " morally impossible." The only remedy seems to be the one judges are applying--:.making extortion the heaviest of all offences except murder.

The distress in the cotton districts seems to be on the increase again. The number of persons relieved in the first week of October is greater than that of the same week in September by 4,960, while the number of hands out of work has increased from 102,000 to 135,000. The number of persons now in receipt of relief is believed to be 114,000, and although the Relief Committee still has a balance of 214,0001. it is expected that further applications must be made to the public. The Public Works Act is in full operation, but the local authorities are in places slow to avail themselves of its pro- visions.

Austria either wishes for peace or for the reputation of pacific in- tentions. The Government has put forth an order reducing her army to a peace footing even in Venetia, where it is asserted that General Benedek's force will be reduced by no less than 15,000 men. The belief that Prussia would be prepared to assist her against Italy has been rather shaken by the appointment to the French Embassy in Berlin of M. Benedetti, the most Italian in policy of all the French diplomatists, and who is said to be a very welcome selection to the Court of Prussia. An appointment disagreeable to the Prussian Government would scarcely have been made so imme- diately before the Prussian Prime Minister's visit to the Emperor of the French.

The Atlantic and Great Western Railway Company have issued further mortgage bonds for 4,000,000 of dollars to complete the Ohio division of the line. The bonds are issued at 66, and carry interest at the rate of 6 per atilt. on par value, or Clf on the rate of issue. They are secured by a mortgage on all the property of every kind belonging to the Ohio division of the railway, and the interest is payable in London at the fixed rate of 4s. to the dollar. The directors calculate the surplus of their receipts, after paying interest and working expenses, &c., at 2,107,148 dollars, all of which is applicable to meet the loss caused by the rise in exchange.

The Directors of the Estates Bank have found it necessary to augment their capital, in order to carry on successfully a steadily increasing business, and have decided on a third issue of 10,000 shares, which will be offered at 10s. per share premium. This esiablishment undertakes the operations of a Land and Building Society, and transacts the business of a Land Mortgage Bank. Since its formation, at the commencement of the present year, it has ad- vanced nearly 40,0001. on mortgage.

On Saturday last Consols for money left off at 871 88, and 881 1 for account. Yesterday the closing prices were, fortmoney, 881 1, for account, 88/ 1. The stock of bullion in the Bask of England is 13,006,293/.

Yesterday and on Friday week the leading Foreign Securities left off at the following quotations :

Greek Do. Coupons .. Friday, Oct. 7.

28 91

Friday, Oct. 14.

991 Mexican 27

261 Spanish Passive •• 801

3(1 Do. Certificates .. 191

••

131 Turkish 6 per Cents., 1858.. 89

1889.. 701

491 „ 401

••■•

491

The following table shows the closing prices of the leading British Railways yesterday and on Friday week :-

Friday, Oct. 7. Friday, Oct. U.

Caledonian .. .. .. 1221 .. 128f Great Eastern .. 441 48f Great Northern .. .. 128 1281 Great Western.. .. ..

691

711 Lancashire and Yorkshire .. .. 1131 • . 113f Loudon and Brighton .. .. 1021 1431 London and North-Western .. 110e 112 Loudon and South-Western 96 ' 951 London, Chatham, and Dover

.. • s 4 ••

89 Midland .. .. .. ... 1291 .. 1301 North-Eastern, Berwiok ..,

.. .. resi ..

Rif Do. York .. •. .• ... 051 95

West Midland, Oxford .. .. 0., .a 461