CLIPPINGS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XXX, Issue 2469, 20 November 1868, Page 3

CLIPPINGS.

[l'rom the Spectator.)

The Legislative Council of Jamaica seems liable to attacks of morbid conscientiousness. The negroes send ud so many petitions for the disestablish'ment of the Church, and so much time is lost in reading them, that a tax ou each petition haa been officially proposed as a means of raising revenue and checking a nuisance. The House of Commons adopts a much simpler plan. It never reads the petitions at all, but sends them in bushels to a clerk, but counts the names, and records the prayers, and embalms them all in a " return," which, again, nobodv ever looks at. The Government of India suffers from a grievance of the same kind, petitions arriving in bales upon all manner of subjects and in all kinds of tongues. These are all read, and, we believe, a request was really made by the great Orientalist Dr. Sprenger.who had to read many of them, for increased allowances, on the ground that the multitude of petitions from luuatics took up half his time. Half the mad folk ia India have some grievance, which they think the " Lord Sahib " could remedy if he would. Mr Leone Levi made some remarkable statements to the British Association about the position of the Civil Service. The total number of persons coming under that designation, exclusive of those paid from local funds, and exclusive of the legal departments, is 107,000, receiving an income of £10,800,000 a year. This includes the postmen, but we wish Mr Levi or his reporter had entered a little more into detail, and told us whether he includes any portion of the police or not—the Irish Constabulary, for example. The number, given, if correct, shows clearly that " local self-govern-ment" does not prohibit the creation of 9 very powerful bureaucracy. Mr Levi says there are no less than ninety classes of English clerks with varying salaries, and thinks much of the work could be done by men drawn from a lower class of society, and that competitive examination might be made universal. At present it is applied fitfully to about one third of the appointments in all. Surely a good deal of " doubling-up" is possible iu many departments. Mr Simon, medical officer of the Privy Council, has made a very clever suggestion. Why, he says, should not Jones, poisoned by malfeasance of, say, by the Windermere Water Company, have an action for damages against them, as he would have against the London and Windermere Eailway Company ? Why, for example, should not an inhabitant of Terling, whose wife has been killed by drinking water which ought to have been condemned by an official specially appointed to condemn it, have an action against that official ? or we may add, as a man whose eyes are destroyed by bad gas have an action against his gas company? "The sanitary rights of the public," says Mr Simon, " are very ill protected" Mr Simon will have to be put down. He is always putting revolutionary propositions of a philanthropic kind into practical form, and is we fear, nearly the most dangerous person now in official employ in England. Nobody, it is true, ever acts on his recommendations, but then nobody answers him, and hisideasfilterinto the public mind, Note, that whenever able men want really severe legislation against corporations, they fall back upon the ancient system of fines. Under that word we get nothing but a trumpery imposition, but " damages," which are thinly disguised fines, may may be made very effective. The people of Nova Scotia appear for the present quite in earnest in their dislike of the Confederation. At a large meeting held at Weymouth the speakers talked about annexation to the United States, the Legislature has protested against the Union, and the Convention of members has passed resolutions stating that Nova Scotia will use every means to " extricate " herself from her position. All that looks formidable, but Mr Howe has grown moderate, the well-to-do rather shudder at the notion of annexation, and we think we could produce protests against the Union of Scotland with England quite as strongly worded. The duty of the Colonial Office now is not to yield, but to see that the true grievances of the maritime provinces are at once redressed. They have had hard measure,—the necessity being Imperial,—and should be very tenderly treated. An idea that Napoleon is intriguing at Brussels and the Hague is disturbing the Continental chancelleries. The notion is that he has a secret understanding of Borne kind with the Dutch Court, as Bhown in the readiness of the King to sell Luxemburg,—that Belgium is to be coaxed by great commercial advantages into a commercial union with' France, and that the expected resistance of Prussia will be quoted to Frenchmen as proof positive that Berlin claims to dictate the policy of France on non-German ground. Eeaders of daily papers have noticed a sudden cropping-up of small stories about a " French Zollverein," aud this 'is said to be their interpretation. We do not vouch for a moment for its accuracy, but simply report it as an explanation which men who are not credulous think wcrthy of consideration. The Liberal chiefs should devise some system for restricting the number of Liberal candidates, who are now in many boroughs treading on one another, to the danger ot the party. Some mode of winnowing them is wanted which shall be decently satisfactory, and to which they Bhall submit, under penalty of being " ruled out "of the party. The practice of

applying to well known Liberals for their opinion is not a good one, it is too like nomination; and the" previous ballot" does not work well, the candidates too often finding some reason to evade its decision. If the present system continues, we shall bo driven to adopt the American device of a "caucus," and with it all manner of intrigue fatal to free choice on public grounds. Speeches from Mr Gladstone and Mr Bright exhorting liberals not to vote for any candidate who refused to be bound by the previous vote within the party itself, might have a considerable effect in remedying the existing confusion; but even these would not get rid of the men put up by the opposite side for the express purpose of making divisions, _ Mr Bright has issued his address to his constituents at Birmingham. lb is a short one, Mr Bright justly believing that his opinions are too well known to need long explanation. He wishes for further redistribution in order to secure to the large populations their share of power, and would restore compounding; regards the ballet as of the first importance, as diminishing expense, intimidation, and tumult; affirms that iu disestablishing the Irish Church "we do not touch religion at all," but " deal only with the political institution;" and declares that minority voting was " intended " to deprive the great cities of their proper weight in the constitutional scale. Mr Bright does not say a word upon education, or any one of the many subjects which must hereafter press upon the attention of Parliament, and his whole address has a slight air of content, or it may be of weariness. Nothing rouses him fairly, except the thought that if the Tories of Birmingham number a third of the householders, they may have a third of the representation. •