NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE Belgian business is postponed till the Elections are over. M. de Lavalette and M. Frere-Urban could not agree, the former demanding the completion of the Luxemburg contract with the Eastern of France as a preliminary to any arrangement, and the Belgian Premier was going home without any agreement. This would have alarmed the electors, who, on the whole, desire peace, and the Emperor therefore personally intervened. In a conference with M. Frere-Urban he proposed that the Belgian Government should buy and manage the Great Luxemburg, and that a Commission should then be appointed to settle on what terms the French Company should have running powers. As this proposal surrendered the point at issue, namely, the right of Belgium to pass laws forbidding the sale of Belgian railways, the Premier gladly accepted it, and all once more looks pleasant. It will be observed, however, that if the Commission fails, or is made to fail, to discover an aceeptable arrangement, the entire question can be reopened whenever it is acceptable to Napoleon.
We have commented carefully elsewhere on Mr. Sumner's elaborate speech against the Alabama Convention. Here we need only add that, as far as we understand him, the Convention could only have been satisfactory if we had inserted an admission of our breach of international law and a profound apology in the preamble, and then contracted to submit, not any legal question, but the assessment of the proper amount both of public and private damages to arbitration,—specially providing that we would pay whatever proportion of the whole expense of the war the arbiter might think proper, in consideration of the prolonged contest due to our giving the South a " naval base " in England. Mr. Sumner even mentions, as a possible estimate, that in this way we caused the North perhaps half the expense and duration of the war. If, then, we allow, say, £250,000,000 sterling on that head, and about £20,000,000 sterling for the loss by interrupted commerce, Mr. Sumner would estimate our liability at about £270,000,000,— rather more than a third of our National Debt, at which pretty little sum, coupled with an emphatic apology, Mr. Sumner would apparently let us off with frank condescension. And this speech seems to have expressed the " feeling " of the United States' Senate. What a very romantic taste in political literature that distinguished body must have ! At what sum will Mr. Sumner assess the Emperor of the French ?
The French Chamber has been dissolved, and the Elections have been fixed for the 23rd and 24th May, up to which period the French Government will confine itself to " expeditions into the interior." The Opposition hope to double their majority, but it Is clear that the members think the Government irresistible. They detested the Emperor's proposal to vote £40,000 a year to the survivors of the Grande Armee, but they voted it by a majority of 218 to 6, knowing that any man who refused would cease to be an official candidate, like poor M. Jouvenel. He was a devoted Bonapartist, but he reported against the creation of majorate in favour of General Montauban and other conspicuous soldiers, and was pitilessly sent back into obscurity.
This appears to be indeed a very ' strong ' Government. No Minister will give way on any subject, however trifling. Mr. Layard announced on Tuesday that Mr. Lowe would not give way about the Courts of Justice. It seems to be well understood that he will not give way a jot about the arrangements of the Budget. On Monday, in Committee on the IrisliChurch Bill, Mr. Gladstone wavered for a moment, on receiving an earnest appeal from one of his strongest supporters, the Member for Rochester, Mr. P. Wykeham-Martin, to let the Irish Church keep its glebe houses where there is no building charge, without paying for the sites, which Mr. Gide:tone had certainly intimated his intention to do last session. Mr. Gladstone took time to consult his colleagues, but on Thursday announced that he could not change his resolve as to charging ten years' purchase of the ground-rent of unburdened glebe houses for the site,—the house itself being given in. With regard to the glebe houses burdened with a charge for building, he proposed to charge as a maximum ten years' purchase of the Poor-law valuation of site and building together ; and this he insisted on, in spite of expostulations even from Sir G. Grey and from Mr. G. Moore, Member for Mayo, who ventured intercession as a Catholic, but was immediately repudiated by the other Catholic members,—and Mr. Gladstone carried his point by nearly the least majority hitherto attained—(only 91 !) Great is the power of a working majority of 100. Neither opponents nor tried and trusted supporters find themselves so influential under circumstances of that kind. Still the power of majority may be too relentlessly stretched, and that perhaps is the danger of the present Government.
During the three last evenings in Committee,—namely, yesterday week (Friday), Monday, and Thursday,—the majority on the Irish Church divisions has been seven times tested, and turned out, on an average, as near as can be 100. Its maximum has been 112, and its minimum (against the amendment for putting back the date for the private endowments which the Church is to retain from 1660 to 1560) 86, in a House never larger than 550. The largest House of the week divided on the proposal to give the sites of the glebe houses without charge to the new Church body, when the Government obtained a majority of 91 in a house of 549 (318 against 227). The debates of the week have not been at all remarkable, but one effective maiden speech drew forth a cordial compliment from Mr. Gladstone, though coming from the Conservative benches,—that of Mr. Chaplin, the Member for MidLincolnshire, who made an able historical disquisition on the acquisition of the private endowments by tho Irish Church. It is no discredit to him that he had not mastered his subject quite so• completely as not to expose himself to an elaborate historical refutation by the Prime Minister.
Mr. Bright created a great and a rather uncomfortable sensation in the House last night by making an emphatic statement, during the debate on the state of Ireland, introduced by Mr. Graves, that he bad a scheme for the reform of the land tenure in Ireland which he meant or intended to propound. This curious and irregular independence of his chief on one of the most delicate and difficult questions of the day must, we should fear, lead to misunderstandings, if not disputes in the Government. Mr. Bright always feels too little of the sense of corporate responsibility belonging to his station, and of the loyalty which a colleague owes to a leader.
A perfect epidemic of murder seems breaking out in Ireland. Every mail brings tidings of some assassination, often, no doubt, springing from personal motives, but therefore only the more foreign to the general character of the people. Because Prince Arthur visits Derry, therefore the Protestants must hoot Mr. Gladstone and the Catholics ; and the Catholics retaliating, the row becomes a riot, the police are obliged to fire, three men are shot dead, and several men and women wounded. Mr. Bradshaw, a proprietor, of Tipperary, who never evicted, has
been shot dead, for reasons unknown, —though adultery is hinted at, —and Captain Tarletou, a farmer, near Athlone, for no assignable reason at all. Even the cowardice of these crimes, committed as they are from behind without warning, and upon unarmed men, does not seem to set the people against the murderers, or induce them to bestow on assassins that effective
scorn they so readily extend to informers. If the murderers in either of these cases had been witnesses giving evidence against private stills, they would have been hooted out of the countryside ; but because they are murderers, the police are almost powerless. There are murders enough and to spare in England, but at least the people detest the murderers.
The Lords had another debate over the India Council Bill on Thursday, but it did not come to much. Lord Cairns and Lord Hatherley, and the Duke of Argyll and the Marquis of Salisbury, and Lord Halifax, and all manner of legal and Indian authorities talked at some length ; but the net result was, that the power of the Secretary of State to order expenditure rests upon an extremely doubtful interpretation of a clause about which no two lawyers agree. This should not be. The power of the Minister should be made absolute, as Lord Salisbury proposed, by a declaratory clause. He is responsible to Parliament, which can stop jobbery just as well as the Council can. If the Government is afraid of itself, let it add to the clause an order that whenever two-thirds of the Council protest, the order, unless in the Secret Department, shall not be despatched till it has been three weeks on the table of the House of Commons, with their protest appended. That will be quite sufficient to enable the Secretary to quote the Council in its character of Jerkins, when unbearably bullied by jobbing philanthropists anxious to " develop the resources " at 20 per cent. profit.
The Directors of the Imperial Gas Company have issued a report upon the defalcations of Benjamin Higgs, their clerk on £145 a year, who has robbed their masters of £71,000. His success in his frauds was due, it would seem, to his ability and the Directors meanness and incompetence. He had been seventeen years with them, and was so able that he had obtained the " entire control of the outer office," but they only gave him £3 a week. He induced the collectors to deposit their collections as well as the lists with him, then falsified the lists, stopped part of the moneys, and sent the rest to the bank. No director or auditor appointed by the directors suspected anything, or missed any money, or wondered what had become of some £10,000 a year, or ever heard that the clerk was living at an expense of thousands a year, or, in fact, knew anything that he ought to have known. The directors propose that the loss should be distributed over seven years, and their auditors are " unable to suggest any improvement" in the system of accounts, which is absolutely perfect, and if the collectors only paid the money into the bank, could not break down. We will venture to suggest one. Let them appoint Higgs their auditor, as the only man in the Company with brain enough to know that no system of accounts can " check " the accountants who manage it. That requires a Higgs, a man who will really attend to his business, and obtain" complete control" over the office.
Are Mayors altogether beyond the law or not? If they are not, the Government will show culpable weakness if it does not at once prosecute Mr. O'Sullivan, the Mayor of Cork. That person has been saying of late a great many things most unbecomin g a magistrate, but on Tuesday he outatepped the limits of political discussion altogether, and talked treason and worse. He presided at a dinner given to two released Fenians, and a propos of Prince Arthur's visit to Ireland, took occasion to say that " when that noble Irishman, O'Farrell, fired at the Prince in Australia, he was imbued with as noble and patriotic feelings as Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien were" (the Clerkenwell assassins) ; O'Farrell was as noble as a noble Pole, who fired at the Emperor of Russia because he trampled on the liberties of his country. " O'Farrell would be as highly thought of as any of the men who had sacrificed their lives for Ireland." A clearer invitation to assassinate a perfectly innocent lad because he happens to be the son of the speaker's Sovereign, and the guest of the speaker's countrymen, we never remember to have read, nor one which more richly deserved condign punishment. To leave such a man at the head of a great city is to abnegate the task of governing altogether. Persons of his class should be taught, and taught sternly, that while England is striving to do justice to Ireland, she has lost neither the power nor the will to do justice on Irishmen who make of her repent
aim an apology for new and utterly inexcusable crime. Ia it to prevent the effect of measures which they foresee will tranquillize Ireland, that the Nationalists are thus breaking not only the laws of the land and of their own creed, but those primary rules of hospitality which savages respect.
Lord Derby declared himself on Tuesday night in favour of life peerages,—though not so many as four a year until the number reaches twenty-eight, a proposal the extravagance of which seems to make Lord Derby almost shudder,—on one condition, that the proposed peers should sue in forma pauperis for the honour, as do ministers for their pensions, the patent explicitly reciting that Re Majesty had wished to confer on the person in question the honour of a peerage, but that " Whereas, he, A. B., humbly represented to Her Majesty that the state of his pecuniary affairs did not justify him in entailing on his successors the burden of supporting a peerage, Her Majesty has been graciously pleased to confer on him a peerage limited to his own life." Lord Derby was very great on the constitutional assumption that the House of Lords rests " upon the foundation of property and sure and settled property," though he would not deny there might be integrity and independence, and a grave sense of responsibility without it. That is very candid of Lord Derby. But when he proposes to make a distinguished man ask for a life peerage as a poor man asks for an almshouse, and to limit so very carefully the number of such eminent political paupers, does it never strike him that there is such a thing as a pernicious influence exercised by " property,— sure and settled property,"—on the integrity and independence and sense of responsibility of noble lords? " Does Job serve God for naught?" Are the Peers so hot against the dreaded Irish landtenure reform of the Government and the Irish Church measure, because they are independent ? Perhaps so ;—independent, at least, of their country and countrymen, dependent on their land.
Earl Grey's plan for improving the representation of the Scotch Peerage, by introducing lump-voting, was squelched on Tuesday. The Duke of Buccleugh did not like his patronage interfered with, so moved the appointment of a Select Committee. The Tory Peers backed him, and as the Liberals are nowhere in the House, they carried the amendment by 77 to 33. The Bill is not worth much ; but it was resisted in the interests of the Tory monopoly of seats in the Lords, and its fate suggests that a really great creation of Liberal Peers, say 60, would not be a misfortune either to the House or the country.
On Wednesday, a new market, built by Miss Burdett Contts, to benefit Bethnal Green, and show an example to the Grosvenors, who have forgotten that palaces need the poor, and that the poor need markets, was opened by the Archbishop of Canterbury and an aristocratic company. The market is a grand gift to the people, a building like a great cathedral, covered with marbles, rich with ornaments, costing £200,000, intended for the service of the poor, who, as the donor hopes, will be educated by the building, as well as supplied by its shops. A few more such instances would make us acknowledge, in spite of all we have said elsewhere, that there is "dignity in money ;" but Mies Burdett Coutta's spirit is not that of English, but of old Italian or new American millionaires. Could not Government make her a Life Peer?
The police have been compelled to give up their attacks on the Haymarket nighthouses, the Middlesex magistrates having decided that the assemblage of prostitutes in a drinking-shop is no proof of immoral purpose. They might be wanting refreshment. This decision appears to be in accordance with one delivered by the Queen's Bench, and is probably good law ; and if so, a chum strengthening the hands of the police is to be added to Lord Kimberley's Bill for the better prevention of crime. We confer we do not see what good effect is gained, either for morality or for decency, by driving these women out of doors into the streets, where they are an infinitely greater nuisance to the inhabitants. Shall we never have a Home Secretary with moral courage enough to deal with this question on the principles acknowledged by all sensible moralists, and, as it happens, by the majority of decent men in Great Britain? We cannot put down prostitution, but we can put down street-walking, and ought to do it.
Sir Roundell Palmer, the Solicitor-General (Sir J. D. Coleridge), and Mr. J. Parker Deane have signed an opinion to the effect that no mode exists of trying the Bishop of Natal for any ecclesiastical offence of which he may have been guilty. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council is, they say, only a tribunal of appeal, and unless you can find a primary tribunal before which you can
try such a case, the Judicial Committee is not available. The opinion has puzzled many sound lawyers, who assert that there is always the means of trying, in a common civil court, whether the conditions of a patent have been complied with, and that this has actually been done in various cases, as, for example, a patent granted to the Hudson's Bay Company. It does seem, however, to be possible that when Dr. Colenso was in England, he might have been tried for the book on the Pentateuch published in London, under the Church Discipline Act, as a clerk in holy orders of the Church of England. Still, this applies only to ecclesiastical offences committed within the jurisdiction of an English ecclesiastical court. Dr. Colenso has never shown any want of courage. He has earnestly desired to test the legal limits of freedom in the Church of England, and it is very likely, therefore, that he will, on his next return home, afford the curious in such matters the chance of trying him for heresy.
Mr. Layard pledged himself on Tuesday to propose to the House a plan for the erection of the New Law Courts on the site proposed by Mr. Lowe,—the Howard-Street site. Mr. Street is to accommodate his plans to the site, which comprehends six acres ; and Mr. Layard is to convince the House that the new scheme may be carried out, "including numerous and most convenient approaches," for £1,600,000. Mr. Layard added that Sir Fitzroy Kelly had assured him that all the judges, with one exception, now think that " on every ground, as regards the bench, the bar, the solicitors, the suitors, and the public, the Thames Embankment is to be preferred for the site of the Law Courts." Before Mr. Layard succeeds in " convincing " the House, a good deal of explanation will apparently be necessary. How money is to be saved by procuring a new site, when the old one cannot be disposed of except at a loss generally reckoned at half a million, and when the lower part of the new site must be raised by expensive brick arches to render the ground level, is a great difficulty to most minds. The "numerous and most convenient approaches " are, we suppose, the approaches by the Embankment, and by little streets out of the Strand. We shall be greatly mistaken if there is not a call within a year or two after the building is completed for the "Strand frontage," and large additions to the Law Conde themselves. But be that as it may, why any building, however cheap, is to cost less on land we have to buy, than on land already obtained, and which must be sold again at a loss, is beyond anybody's guessing power. Tardy changes of purpose are generally costly.
Mr. Newdegate on Tuesday showed that he is different from other men. O'Farrell, the man who shot at the Duke of Edinburgh in Sydney, made statements, which included certain libels on the Prince of Wales, but when death was certain retracted them all. Mr. Monsell, in " the course of business," as it were, promised papers containing these statements, but subsequently saw that the circulation of libels on the Prince was not exactly his business, and requested the House to rescind its order. Mr. Newdegate, however, smelt a rat or a priest in the matter, and would have the papers; and after a speech and debate analyzed elsewhere, his friends took a division, which left them in a minority of 15 to 123.
Mr. Denman, on Wednesday, proposed a change in the law of evidence, which amounts to this. Whenever the charge is not one involving directly penal consequences, parties to a suit may be examined. For example, the parties to a suit for breach of promise, or to an application for divorce, may be questioned if they please, or, refusing to be questioned, may leave on the minds of the jury the impression that they were afraid of questioning. Clearly, if the object of a trial is to elicit truth, Mr. Denman is right ; but then, why not question one accused of a crime ? Such questioning would be good for the innocent, and if the guilty suffered, why should he not suffer? The only real objection to the change is the fear that in certain cues the public would rather sympathize with perjury than condemn it, as, for example, in the case of an adulterer. Is he to acknowledge an act which condemns his victim ? Mr. Denman has yielded to this argument, and proposes to exempt the adulterer ; but in so doing he surely gives up the logic of his position, which is that all evidence should be taken quantum valeat. Nobody proposes to compel the adulterer to enter the witness-box.
A Welsh seat has been gained for the Liberals this week by the success, at Brecon, of Lord Hyde (son of the Earl of Clarendon, Who contested South Warwickshire unsuccessfully in December), against Lord Claud John Hamilton (who was defeated at Londonderry in December by Mr. Serjeant Dowse). Brecon returned in December the unseated Conservative Member, Mr. Rowel Gwyn, by a majority of 15 over his antagonist, Mr. Powell Pryce, the whole poll being then 729. This time the number of votes polled was 719, or ten short of the poll in December ; but Lord Hyde beat his Orange opponent by a majority of 63, polling 391 votes to Lord Claud Hamilton's 328. The Liberals polled 34 more votes than they polled in December, and the Conservatives 44 fewer votes, showing a very considerable Liberal gain. At Southampton the election of the Conservative candidates, Mr. Russell Gurney and Mr. Hoare, has been declared valid.
A decision of considerable importance to the Clergy was given in the Queen's Bench on Tuesday, by Mr. Justice Lush, Mr. Justice Mennen, and Mr. Justice Hayes. Mr. Bennett, the Vicar of Frome, who is already involved in proceedings in the Ecclesiastical Court on account of his views on transubstantiation, seems to have published, about ten years ago, a book which the complainant in that case had overlooked. He accordingly applied to the present Bishop of London, in January last, to issue a commission to inquire into the doctrine of the book ; and Bishop Jackson, after considering the book, declined to do so. The complainant, therefore, applied to the Court of Queen's Bench for a mandamus to compel the Bishop to issue the commission. This the judges refused to grant. They held that when the Bishop had deliberately formed his own judgment on the subject, and refused to issue a commission, they were not bound to compel hint to do so against his own judgment,—that a real discretion is left to the Bishop by the Church Discipline Act, which he may exercise if he will. This decision gives the Bishops a very considerable power to protect the clergy against anything like persecution under the Church Discipline Act.
Mr. Justice Mellor seems to have decided on Tuesday a very important point. An action was brought for breach of promise against a youth called Alfred Ruthven, a cook, who had promised to marry Caroline Hale, both the parties being infants. He did not keep the promise, but married somebody else, and pleaded infancy ; against which it was argued that an infant can enter into a valid contract for necessaries. Thereupon Mr. Justice Mellor laid down the important legal doctrine that " a wife is not a necessary for an infant." No doubt,—it would be more plausible to argue that an infant is a necessary for a wife.
The Archdeacon of Winchester is a terrible cynic for an archdeacon. He has been speaking of the improved • health of his Bishop, and tells his clergy and churchwardens,—so the Pall Mall Gazette reports him, at least,—that " his speech, the only infirmity which is not entirely removed, is sufficient for ordinary conversation ;" distinctly contemplating, evidently, an amelioration of his lordship's condition in which this infirmity will be so entirely removed as to render ordinary conversation impossible. This is going a good deal beyond St. James, who spoke indeed of the tongue as "an unruly evil, full of deadly poison," but never threw out, incidentally even, the idea that it is an " infirmity " which we might hope to see entirely removed. What a powerful institution the Church would be without it I The Scotch Members seem unable to agree about the reform of their Game Law. The tenants are determined that the ground game which they feed shall belong to them, and the members, though not pleased, are trying to prepare a Bill which shall satisfy their constituents, yet not extirpate game. Three Bills have been brought in ; but two of them are considered too weak, and one which prohibits all agreements about game between landlord and tenant too strong,—at least for the English side of the Hone°. Lord Elcho, therefore, moved on Tuesday that all three should be referred to a Select Committee, and the House agreed, after a funny debate, in which Mr. Greene asked, in a tone of horror, what men were to do in the winter if there were nothing to kill ; and Mr. Muntz said hares were poisonous things to eat, and condemned in Leviticus ; and Mr. Taylor said landlords had no more right to keep hares than to keep Bengal tigers, against the wishes of the people. One thing was very remarkable, the moderation of county members. They evidently thought it necessary to admit that they did not support " the abuses " of the Game Laws, though they did not define the line between use and abuse. We fancy the compromise,—the air to the landlord, the ground to the tenant,— stands a very good chance, and more particularly if deer are protected like sheep.
