ENGLISH EXTRACTS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XXI, Issue 1230, 3 May 1864, Page 3

ENGLISH EXTRACTS.

There is a potency of ignorance about Sir Charles Wood which is sometimes almost admirable. He asked the House of Commons to resolve that Sir John Lawrence though appointed Viceroy, ought not to lose his good service pension of £2000 a year. The request was reasonable, but Sir C. Wood must support it by a precedent, so he said " Lord Hardinge, when he was appointed Governor-General of India, was in a receipt of a pension conferred upon him by the East India Company for his services in the first Sikh war, and a special Act of Parliament was passed, with the unanimous concurrence of the House, enabling Lord Hardinge to receive the full emoluments of Governor-General of India, together with the pension." Nobody expects Sir Charles Wood to know anything about India, but he might have the decency to cram properly. Lord Hardinge began the first Sikh war himself when GovernorGeneral, and prophetic pensions are, we believe, unknown. As a matter of fact, Sir H. Hardinge had, when he landed in India, no Indian pension whatsoever. We presume the truth is that the Act was passed when he was appointed Commander-in-Chief in England, but it is all one to Sir Charles—he will be a peer all the same. The judgment or the rrivy council on tne appeal in the case of Dr. Williams and Mr. Wilson,— essayists and reviewers,—has been given. It was brief, lucid, and in every way admirable, deciding three most important theological points,—that the English Church does not require the clergy to believe in the inspiration of all portions of tne Bible; that she does not require them to believe that Christ's atonement for us operates by the substitution of his sufferings for ours; that she does not require them to construe the " everlasting fire " of the last clause of the Athanasian Creed as necessarily final and hopeless. In the whole of this judgment the Bishop of London—who has throughout the discussions on subscription and on the obligations of the clergy deserved the hearty gratitude of all ecclesiastical Liberals—concurred. The Archbishops of York and Canterbury protested against the doctrine that the English Church does not expect her clergy to believe in the inspirations of all portions of the Bible.

Sir George Grey explained in the House of Commons that the principle of clerical subscription is to be upheld, going out of his way to give it his own personal adhesion. "It would be most injurious to the interests of the Church that subscription should be abolished," said the Home Secretary,—adding by way of inconclusive explanation, " and that clergymen should retain their preferment in the Church while holding doctrines utterly opposed to the teaching of the Church." Sir G. Grey should know that when the Dean of Westminster proposed to abolish subscription, he did so expressly on the ground that the Ordination Service, the law of the Church, and the habitual use of its ritual have far more effect in preventing clergymen from remaining in it without sympathy or faith than the partly nugatory, partly vexatious subscription, which only hampers very scrupulous consciences and stretches lax ones. The Commission just appointed is only to simplify the various subscriptions and render them as little burdensome and unambiguous as possible. It is an unwieldly Commission of twenty-seven members, including the four Archbishops (English and Irish), the Bishop of London, the Bishop of Oxford, the Bishop of Winchester, the Bishop of St. David's, Lord Stanhope, Lord Harrowby, Lord Lyttelton, Lord Cranworth, Lord Ebury, Mr. Bouverie, Dr. Lushington, Mr. Walpole, Mr. Napier, Sir J. T. Coleridge, Sir W. Heathcote, Mr. C. Buxton, Dr. Milman, Dr. Goodwin, Archdeacon Sandford, Professor Jacobson, Professor Jeremie, Kev. H. Venn, Kev. W. G. G. Humphry,—an ecclesiastical happy family not likely to agree very well on any substantial reform. Perhaps, however, they may concur in substituting something more rational for the " unfeigned assent and consent" to all and everything in the Book of Common Prayer.

An unexpected obstacle has arisen to the progress of the Alexandra case. It will be remembered that when the Chief Baron refused to sign the bill of exceptions tendered by the Crown, he suggested that the Attorney-General should move for a new trial; and on its being objected that there would be no appeal from the decision of the Court on motion, inasmuch as this was a Revenue ease, the Court made certain rules under the Queen's Remembrancer's Act purporting to give an appeal in Revenue cases. It seems that this Act expressly gives an appeal in two or three specified cases, and then goes on to say that the Court of Exchequer may make rules of process and practice, and may extend or apply any of the provisions of the Common Law Procedure Acts to Revenue cases. Now, on the Alexandra case coming by way of appeal before the Court of Exchequer Chamber, it is objected that the Legislature had enumerated the cases in which it meant to give an appeal, and that the general clause only applied to proceedings in the Court of Exchequer itself. On the other hand, the Crown replied that the Legislature had merely enumerated such cases as occurred to it, and then given a general power to the Exchequer to give an appeal in any other cases in which there would be an appeal in an ordinary civil cause. Of the seven .Judges who formed the Court, 'the four Judges of the Queen's Bench adopted the former opinion, the three Judges of the Common Pleas the latter. Which is the right opinion depends on the exact meaning of the Queen's Remembrancer's Act, and especially on the signification of the word " practice "—a technical question which it must he left to the House of Lords to finally decide. If the Lords adopt the opinion of the majority of the Court of Exchequer Chamber, the Alexandra caso comes to an untimely end—a result which will, we think, be unjust, and will leave the meaning of the Foreign Enlistment Act undecided. If, however, the Lords adopt the opinion of the minority, the only practical result will be to eliminate the Court of Exchequer Chamber from the proceedings, which will be little loss." The Government has published a mass of correspondence between Earl liussell and Mr. Adams in the matter of the Alabama. The drift of the

whole U it .i iii-i.nl put forward by the United States that (ii'iiii iiiitiiin shall compensate all American owners who rntiy be losers by the Alabama, tlmt vessel being built by British shipwrights, and manned by British sailors, and therefore ft British ship. The absurdity of the demand may be drmonstraled in three lines. The Alabama is either a man-of-war or a pirate. If a man-of-war we have nothing to do with paying the value of her captures, though the South may have; if a pirate, we are no more responsible for her than for any other pirate which may happen to have English sailors on hoard. Let the American Government catch her and hang her crew, as wc shall do if she touches British ships. Earl Russell replies that he can see no prima facie ground even for arbitration, and declines absolutely throughout to acknowledge any responsibility. The tone throughout is moderate except in one despatch of Mr. Seward's, in which he threatens to seize the Alabama in British ports, a despatch which Mr. Adams very wisely did not present. It was probably produced for home consumption only—the kind of " dodge " which Mr. Seward so often mistakes for statesmanship.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in moving for leave to bring in a bill to withdraw in certain cases the collection of the taxes from the Special Parliamentary Commissioners, and put them under the direct control of the Board of Inland Revenue, told a curious story of the way the assessors of the taxes sometime use their power to appoint collectors. It seems that the collectors cannot refuse the office, — the Act giving the assessors absolute power to name the collectors, —and that the assessors not unfrequently appoint very unfit collectors, to whom the salary is of no moment and the responsibility very vexatious and annoying, for spite. Among the persons so named, said Mr. Gladstone," I find a general officer in the army, a retired barrister, merchants absent from home during the entire day, the principals of grammar schools, the captain of a merchant vessel, and lastly, a lady" An assessor is evidently a formidable despot, "If you don't accept me I'll make you collector of taxes in your native town," must be a dreadful menace to hold over a pretty girl- ,

The case of Porter at Flushing has been almost equalled in the Isle of Man. Mr. VV. F. Peacock wandering about the island found confined in a hamlet called Ballakillowey, a lunatic, named Dick Waterson. This man had, eighteen years ago, been frightened out of his senses by another apprentice dressed up as a ghost, and was placed by his relatives in a brick cow-house with a barred aperture. There he has been bricked up alive for eighteen years, lying naked like an animal in his own ordure, without a bed, his food chucked to him through the window. The neighbours have known all this for years, but have not interfered, and the Commissioners in Lunacy are powerless, for the lunacy laws do not extend to the Isle of Man. Now that the case has been exposed, the Lieutenant-Governor will doubtless interfere if he can find some place to put him in, for there is no asylum in the island, nor apparently any one on that side of it with either feeling or education. Are there Manx clergy, and if so, what was the local rector doing for eighteen years?

The need of improving our marriage laws has received another illustration. A Miss Quinton, pupil in a boarding-school at Enniskillen, has £1000, and is a ward in Chancery. An attorney's clerk named Peterson, fell in love either with the lady or her money, and airanged with a priest to marry them. The young lady was baptized and then married by a priest, at whom she was forbidden to look, and then, to make sure of the money, " Peterson's friends saw them safely put to bed." The Master of the Rolls ordered Peterson to be arrested, but the lady refuses to go back to her friends, and there is practically nothing to be done in the matter. The truth is, that where liberty of choice is allowed, boys and girls must be permitted occasionally to make foolish matches. All the fuss made on such occasions may be useful as a deterrent to other couples, but once wedded there is nothing for relatives to do but console themselves with predicting the regular number of misfortunes!

Mr. Home writes to the Times to deny that he ever contracted not to communicate with spirits during his stay in Rome, and gives the words of the undertaking, which was only not to give public seances, and to avoid all conversation on the subject of spiritualism. He did not undertake that the spirits should not make communications or tap the tables, for this they do or not at their own sweet will. He also undertook, it seems, that he had not sold his soul to the Devil in these words:—" I, Daniel Douglas Home, do hereby solemnly declare and Hrro-»T~bU«i J liiive notsold.my soul to the Devil, nor have I on any occasion been cognizant of homing communication with the Evil One." These engagements were taken before the Chief of the Inquisition, who, however, got nervous in spite of them, and sent Mr. Home away from ltome after all. Probably he reasoned that if Mr. Home had sold his soul to the Devil, it would be in the nature of a treat to that gentleman to "avow and declare solemnly " that he had not,—while the Pope's only spiritual remedy would be to promote the completion of the purchase, and prevent its being voided or cancelled by any higher power,—an unseemly office for his Holiness. Besides, what an opportunity might not have been thus afforded to the Devil of at last turning the tables on the Pope ? So Mr. Home had to beat a retreat to Nice.

The Manchester party, who interpret the duty of non-intervention in Europe in the Cobdenian sense of a policy of isolation on all but commercial questions, held a crowded meeting in Manchester, to protest against interference in the Dano-German war. Mr. T. B. Potter made an able speech against granting English aid, in which, however, he confounded together all sorts of interference, from the protection of our own settlers in New Zealand, to the gratuitous attempt to snatch China from the Chinese. Mr. Potter abused the London Treaty of 1852, on the Danish succession, which we do not defend, and apparently inferred that because by that false step Ave injudiciously gave the Danes reason to hope that we would interfere even to compel the submission of their own subjects, therefore we ought now to disappoint their just hope that we would interfere to prevent the violent and unprovoked aggression of foreign powers. We agree with the Manchester meeting that wars to maintain an artificial balance of power are very silly and generally very criminal undertakings. But, let it once be known that England will never interfere to protect the weak State against unjust and unprovoked aggression, however strong the claims that State may have on her, and the commercial prosperity of which the Manchester men think so much will soon leave us in the wake of our political influence.