REASONS IN PARLIAMENT.
IT would be a great advantage if we could find out, distinctly, for practical use, the grand influence which regulates the motives and actions of Members of Parliament as the " representative men " of their country. The House of Commons has been urged into grand actions upon particular occasions by a variety of motives. It is generally understood to be influenced by " reason "; bat whereas we find that Cromwell's bayonets or Lord John Russell's Birming- ham Bull-ring have had the most practical influence upon the House, we observe that the arguments current in the assembly are not of a kind that would be considered applicable elsewhere. The most remarkable thing about some is the fact that they can be ut- tered by sane men for the purpose of controlling sane men. There is nothing more curious as to the exhibition of the present intel- lectual state of this country than some of the " reasons " put for- ward. Take the last debate upon Education. There are three bills before the House of Commons, all proposing a system of free schools for the country; a measure which seve- ral great parties of.the state believe to be essentially necessary for the progressive improvement which the people need and demand. The grand opponent of these measures in the present debate is Mr. Henley; who was doubled on the last occasion by Lord John Manners. Sir John Pakington not proposing a compulsory education, but a• permissive, Mr. Henley attacks the statistic's, by endeavouring to show that under compulsory education in Austria fewer children attend the schools than in England, while there is a larger percent- age of criminals and immorality in that country than in this. Upon the principle of lumping causes together, we might infer from this conclusion, that we should become less criminal and more moral if we adopted the faith and system of Austria and her inferior education. Lord John Manners carries out his right honourable friend with great ability. Sir John Pakington had argued that many children are kept from 'who'd by the poverty of their parents; but, says Lord John, you do not propose to provide those parents with clothing for their children : besides, many children are kept away because their pi- rents are indifferent, because some cannot find the school-pence, and because some children are otherwise occupied in the pursuit of crime. Do not give education to those who will take it, says Lord John, because the wicked classes are already busied in thieving, while their parents are "indifferent "—to what does not now exist for them. Having mentioned that some children are kept away by the want of pence to pay for schooling, Lord John i
mentioned the example of a clergyman in his own neighbourhood who proposed to' substitute a small payment for free admission `in a local school, because it has been found in some places that-pa-' rents will rather send their children to schools where there is a small payment than to a free school. Perhaps ; but the illustra- tion is oddly applied. Besides, says Lord John, "the question that is convulsing England from one end to the other is the aboli- tion of church-rates ' ; and, having made that astounding asser- tion as to the condition of the country, he asks, " is there much difference between an education-rate and a church-rate ? "—Only, he adds, that a church-rate " has the prescription of a thousand years in its favour." However, says Lord John, it is not in sta- tistics that you must seek the test of education, but "in the battle-field, in missionary enterprise, in the long-formed habits and cherished convictions and principles of an industrious and well-ordered people" : and so, do not say that education is better in America, " while slavery exists with all its horrors." These are a few of the reasons which Lord John Manners opposes to, a plan of national education. Lord john forgot the last grand ar- gument : what education is necessary to make the poet who in- dited the immortal verse- " Let laws and learning, arts and commerce, die;
But save, oh save our old nobility !"
Let our next reasons be culled from the last debate on statutes regulating religious worship. Lord Shaftesbury finds more than five millions of people separated from all religions worship; and he proposes free-trade in religions worship, with the two-_ fold object of faoilitating any kind of missionary enterprise and - of relieving the Church of England from a disability that now restrains it in comparison with Dissenters and Nonconformists of every kind, by repealing that act of 1812 which forbids more than twenty strangers to assemble in a private household for purposes of divine worship. The act is not inoperative. It was enforced in 1850 against a labouring man; and it practically restrains the memb:rs of the Established Church from pursuing mission- ary labours in provisional places of worship. A missionary of the Established Church cannot carry the gospel amongst the heathen, because, like an immoveable snail, he cannot travel with the parish-church over him. Like a polypus, he is "plants la"; and if the heathen wants to be converted, he must come to the min- ister-mountain. The Bishops met on Tuesday, and unanimously agreed to oppose the bill to be brought forward on that evening; and in the debate three of them stated reasons against the measure. The Bishop of London anticipates that "any gentleman" who may take offence at the conduct of the clergyman of a parish would be permitted to establish an altar in his own house, and thus withdraw a large portion of the congregation from the parish- chinch. Dr. Bloomfield's reason implies, that " any gentleman" is attractive enough to draw away the congregation of the clergy, unless forbidden by law. The Bishop of Oxford apprehends that if the bill pass there will be nothing to prevent the clergyman of any one parish to be called into the parish of his neighbours and give opposition service, in any hall, barn, or cottage, which may be offered to him for that purpose. Dr. Wilberforce, therefore, imputes to "any clergyman" readiness to set up opposition ser- vices in hall, barn, or cottage; he is only prevented by law. It is no DiSsenter or Latitudinarian who advances this astounding re- presentation as a reason for thinking the bill dangerous. The Bishop of St. Asaph is afraid that under the bill real Dissenters might call themselves members of the Church of England. Of course, therefore, he must regard the present law as operating to shut out Dissenters from the Established Church. He would still inscribe on the ohurch-door, "No unbelievers admitted except on business." We must not, however, forget the most extraordinary reason expounded by Dr. Wilberforce. The bill, he said, professed to affect only the Church of England—Lord Shaftesbury had told him so ; and when this was denied, Dr. Wilberforce repeated that Lord Shaftesbury avowed the bill to be intended "for the Church of England." " Yes," answered Lord Shaftesbury, "I did say so ; but when the right reverend Prelate was walking away, I called him back and said, recollect, it is for Dissenters too." This reply would not have been a reason, unless Dr. Wilberforce had forgot- ten half of it ; and he entered the House expecting that Lord Shaftesbury would assist in forgetting that half. Let us take up a more practical subject—one tangible, definite, and scientific. Let us pick out one of the highest and most cultivated intellects in Parliament—a first-class Oxford man. Mr. Lowe ii the ratiocinator, decimal coinage the subject. Here, how- ever, we must be temperate in selection ; the copiousness and imagination of Mr. Lowe's arguments overflowing all bounds. The first-class Oxford man objects to the pound as a unit, or to the tenths of a pound ; for his only experience of a florin was " that when he ought to have received half-a-crown he has received a florin instead, and when he ought to have paid a florin he had generally paid half-a-crown." Wherever there is a decimal coin- age, says Mr. Lowe, they keep accounts in the largest and the smallest denominations—in dollars and cents, taels and cash, francs and centimes ; thus tending " to put coins into circulation which, are never used in accounts." Observe the extraordinary complication of false statements here. The franc is not the largest coin in France, nor the dollar in America ; while with a coinage not decimal, we have many coins not used in ac- counts—half-crowns and florins among them; which may ac- count for Mr. Lowe's difficulty in managing his own expen- diture of those coins. To justify his argument, we ought to keep account in pounds, half-sovereigns, dollars, half-crowns, florins, shillings, sixpences, fourpenny pieces, threepenny pieces, pence, halfpence, and farthings. We wontleesswhether Mr. Lowe would understand his inn-bill better expressed in those denomina- tions than in a system which takes only the fastigia—pounds, shil- lings, and pence? From a florin, Mr. Lowe says, they would by decimals get to 2d. 2-5ths of a penny ; "but whoever bought any- thing, whoever reckoned or wished to reckon, in such a coin as that ?" Nobody, of course, would ever wish to reckon in a coin that does not exist, according to divisions which are to be extin- guished before it can exist. But the honourable Oxonian does not perceive the absurdity of deprecating a plan for reckoning in future decimals by the fractions of our present complicated sys- tem. Boasting "no profound knowledge of decimal fractions," he apprehends that when the system of coins is changed these fractions will have to be converted, and that before an old apple- woman can tell how to sell her apples, "she will have to reduce every suni into a vulgar fraction of a pound, and then divide by the d.ecimal of a pound." "What would be," he asked, "the present expression for fourpence ? .0166; for threepence? .0125; for a penny ? .004166, and so on ad infini- tum; for a halfpenny ? .002083, ad infinitum. What would be the present expression for a farthing? why, .0010416, ad infinitum. And this was the system which was to cause such a saving in figures, and these were the quantities into which the poor Would have to reduce the current coin of the realm."
And this astounding argument from a man who fairly enough represents at once Kidderminster, English gentlemen, and Oxford University ! Lord John Manners might have found his crowning argument against the utility of education in this discourse u n decimals by a gentleman who thinks that he- should be obligedto call fourpenoe " -0166," and who invariably spends his half-crowns and florins so as to lose sixpence each time by confounding the two coins. Yet Mr. Lowe is one of our cleverest wranglers in Parliament.
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