25 OCTOBER 1873, Page 3

Mr. M"Cullagh Torrens has invented a new form of address

to constituents,--a kind of royal message. Finsbury, he says, is too populous to address personally, so he sends Finsbury a message on polities, very carefully polished, and reminding one in style of a cross between Napoleon HI.% manifestoes and Mr. Disraeli's speeches,—between the style of the interpreter of his age and of •the critic of it. "Fear of taxation is an exotic on our soil, like the dread of the evil eye." Again :—" To talk of either [town or country householder] as unfit to have a vote because he lives beyond the range of gaslight, is to jest without wit or to frown without reason. The logic of assimilation is irresistible, and it will not be resisted." That same irresistible logic is likely, we fear, to assimilate Mr. M'Cullagh Torrens, in spite of his ambitious message, to the secret foes of the Government, and to get him treated accordingly. It is worthy of note that he justifies in grandiosely vague language his opposition to one of the schemes of the Endowed Schools' Commission,—that for the reconstruction of Dulwich College,—on grounds shown by the secretary of the Commission, Mr. Roby, in a letter to Wednesday's Times, to be entirely imaginary. The interpreter of his age (to Finsbury) should not despise facts.