22 APRIL 1854, Page 13

NOTES AND Q17ERIES.

A CORRESPONDENT of the Times suggests a new force. Deferring to diversity of opinion as to the policy of embodying the Militia and calling labourers from the works of industry, he proposes that "the better sort of convicted men" be enrolle four hundred of them at first, as an " Experimental Brigade." Those who are familiar with the past history of such expedients will not be in- clined to adopt for England this imitation of the Russian plan of recruitment by a conscription of the villeins whom the landlords select for their worthlessness. The Russian plan gives the land- lord power of inflicting on his peasant the punishment of trans- portation: " M." would substitute for transportation Militia service. It would not work. Englishmen will not delegate the defence of their country to the criminals and convicts thereof. Such a force could only be kept in safe order by the most absolute kind of discipline. It would be a species of slave force, more suited to serve the executive of a despotic than a constitutional government; and slave forces have not been happy in their his- tory. A time might come when some English -Pasha would be almost inclined to imitate Mehemet All for the purpose of extin- guishing a Mameluke corps grown arrogant. "M." proposes, that after service at home, men of the Experimental Brigade be sent to the West Indies or Bermuda to relieve the regular Line : West Indians who remember the Maroons would rather request an increase of the Line to keep in check a corps that would soon be running about the less frequented part of the islands and would probably acknowledge no control but that of yellow fever. There may be many kinds of Defence force, but one selected for its criminal qualification is condemned at starting. If we are not to have a general enrolment of the men of England in a Militia, exactly the opposite kind of corps, suggested some years ago by Mr. Frederick Hill, would be the best—a corps of picked house- holders, well disciplined, and paid for the time consumed in drill and active diity.

Who is the friend of the County Courts ? Lord Brougham has been pointed out by a Leading Journal as their "enemy": whence we may understand, at all events, that he is not one of those friends from whom we pray to be saved. For there are different classes of friends; and as Lord Brougham may be considered the parent of the County Courts—as he was the author of the bills in 1830 and 1833 which initiated these courts—he can be only considered unfriendly in the same light that an erring prodigal son proclaims his father to be "no friend" to him when his sub- jection to the Jews is the subject of parental anxieties and remon- strances. Lord Brougham is described as setting up against the County Courts the Superior Courts—the Courts which he did not originate ; and the evidence in proof of this unnatural parentage is, that he objects to the enormous fees in the County Courts,

which are in some instances far greater than the fees in the higher courts. In other words, as the taxes upon law in the County Courts are unduly heavy, and as the excess must restrict their business, Lord Brougham would lighten the burden : and for that endeavour be is denounced as an " enemy "! If the weekly papers were relieved of the stamp-duty, the morning journals re- maining subject to it—if any Member of either House were to point to the impost which would still affect the price of the papers exclusively subject to it—that man would be designated the enemy of the morning papers. In the same manner, Lord Brougham might be called the enemy of Law Reform ; since he is always pointing out defects which obstruct the due working of law, instead of expressing himself absolutely contented with the whole system as it is.

Will Pimlico be pleased to answer a plain question ? There is a great squabble again in St. Paul's, Knightsbridge, between the successor of Mr. W. E. Bennett and the present Churchwarden ; and the question is, what is the question in litigation ? Mr. Churchwarden Westerton prefers against the Honourable and Reverend Mr. Liddell, under whom he sits, a long bill of indict- ment,—chiefly referring to the furniture of the church, the per- sonal demeanour of the clergy, and certain somewhat too systematic arrangements of their marching and gestures and of their use of the furniture. The indictment goes before the Bishop as judge ; and Mr. Liddell explains, that he does not do many of the things asserted in the memorial, that in others he only continues esta- blished customs of the particular church, that in a third class he not only abstains himself but positively restrains others from doing that to which Mr. Churchwarden objects. So that the neat result is a comparatively small difference between the Honourable and Reverend Mr. Liddell and the Churchwarden. The poor Bishop finds little to object to, little also to support. If in the entire field of controversy we expunge from the usages and prac- tices of the Church those things which Westerton condemns, also those things which the clergyman condemns, and finally those things which the Bishop neither condemns nor upholds, we should find the utmost difficulty in knowing what remains, or what speci- fically is the matter in dispute. The most curious part in this puzzle—in this ecclesiastical toy of perpetual motion—is the cir- cumstance that the Bishop has referred the matter to the parish; which has duly pronounced judgment, by telling Mr. Churchwar- den Westerton that he is "to continue." Now we should like the parish to tell us, not only the reasons for its judgment,—which higher judicial authorities have wisely thought it prudent to reserve, —but the parochial conception of the thing under judgment—the "chose in action." Pimlico parish ! we pause for a reply.

Dr. Smith is neither acquitted nor convicted on his trial for the murder of William M,Donald ; but, by the peculiar and judicious right which a Scotch jury retains of pronouncing a charge " not proven," he is sent out of court uneondemned and unabsolved. Will the insurance-office whose policy is supposed to have been the object of the crime—if crime there was—litigate the claim ? It must of course be a very rave .question, whether the doubts cast upon the policy by a criminal trial would warrant directors to cast a doubt upon their own willingness to meet demands upon them, where the irregularity of the instrument has not been proved on the clearest evidence. Every insurance-office will hesitate before it admit almost the possibility of recognizing doubts respecting the character of the holder of a policy, as infecting the policy itself with doubts. But if any such case came before a court of law, a far wider question would lie before judge or jury. Insurance-offices have before now rendered themselves conspicuous by litigating their policies ; and we do not suppose that a repute for that pecu- liar activity tended to the increase of their business. When the case comes before a court of law, however, it may be said that in some respect the character of all insurance-offices will be at stake. We hold that nothing but absolutely proved fraud, or a specific flaw in the document itself, should cast a doubt upon a pohcy of insurance. When once the instrument is executed, the motives of the insurer, the character of the holder, the vehicle by which the policy may return to the office, are questions beyond the pur- view of the parties liable to pay. The amount of insurance ef- fected in this country is enormously below what the public could effect, or what, with regard to its own interests, it ought to effect; and if once it be admitted that extraneous circumstances may in- fluence the validity of a policy, the gravest of all doubts is intro- duced to check the extension of insurance.

Are the English people afraid of cholera ? From many signs of personal fear, last year, as on previous visitations, it might be sup- posed that they are. Yet on this third visitation we are almost as little prepared for it as we were in 1848 or 1831. In 1832, the cholera had an aftermath in which the crop of human beings fell more copiously than in the original mowing under the scathe of pestilence. The interval between the present visitation and the last visit is less than the previous interval. The premonitory symptoms are less distinct ; the consummation of each attack on the whole is more rapid. These are circumstances which contribute to render the official guardians of the public health apprehensive that the aftermath which we may expect in the present summer will be more extensive, more fatal, and more difficult to meet by palliatives at the moment, than on any previous occasion. Well, perhaps, the public may feel fear—that senseless quaking of the flesh which the actual approach of danger inspires ; but are they yet " up " to that kind of intellectual fear which is sufficient to dictate cautionary measures ? Or are we once more to have these

questions answered in the negative, by a mortality which might be prevented but which will not be prevented ?

If we had our scholarly project for testing the qualifications of the civil service by public examination, the paternal government of Cuba far exceeds ours, even with the assistance of the Reverend B. Iowett, by proposing reform of the uncivil service—the press. Nothing can be more naive than the notice issued by the Governor and Captain-General of " the ever faithful island of Cuba." That terse and vigorous document charges the press with inducing youth to leave their studies and constitute themselves scribblers; who " begin with delusive promises," and " finish by fatiguing their readers with wearisome productions." The censors, it is confessed, have made laws and regulations for correction of irre- ligious, immoral, and subversive writings ; but they are provided with no check on the " irruptions of the ignorant" : hence they pro- pose a publics examination to test " a competent literary career," accuracy, and " literary aptitude," before any person be promoted to write in the journals ! What a raid among "gentlemen con- nected with the press"! what a relief to the reader ! Unluckily, however, the practical difficulty occurs in discovering the proper judge of literary aptitude as well as attainments. Is it not likely that the new censorship will perceive literary aptitude only in Ministerial writers ; nothing but folly, irrelevancy, and ineptitude in an Opposition ? Writing sifted through an official sieve, and composed by writers of the regulation cut, is not likely to be less wearisome than the "irruptions of ignorance." Imagine our Rejournals with no "leading articles" but those sanctioned by the verend B. Jowett !