EUROPE AND AMERICA.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 2592, 27 April 1869, Page 3

EUROPE AND AMERICA.

(From the Hame News.)

Her Majesty intended, as was semi-officially stated, to open the Reformed Parliament in person, and some preparation was actually made for the pageant. But as the time drew on, the court physicians absolutely forbade the exertion. In the homely words of Mr Gladstone, the Queen had suffered more than usual from severe headaches, and the ceremonial, always fatiguing to her in her younger days, became impossible. But so strong was her Majesty’s wish to establish personal relations with her new Parliament, that arrangements were made for the presentation, at the Palace, of the Addresses in reply to the Speech, and last Monday was appointed for that purpose. It was frustrated, for the young Prince Leopold (born 1853) was attacked by the disease which has on two occasions menaced his life, and which has this time taken the form of extravasation of blood in the knee, so that the Queen was unable to leave Osborne, and the Addresses have been sent in the usual way. It is needless to say that the nation, which had been much gratified at Her Majesty’s desire to meet Parliament, feels the warmest sympathy in her doubled affliction. A lively letter from Dr Russell written from Egypt states that the Prince and Princess of Wales have been moat warmly welcomed by the Viceroy, and it is perhaps as well to forget how differently that personage was received here. The House met, as arranged, on Feb. 16. The Speech from the Throne contained nothing of much interest, except an intimation that the estimates would exhibit a diminished charge upon the country, and a declaration that the ecclesiastical arrangements of Ireland would be brought under the notice of the Legislature at a very early date. Mr Gladstone has fixed Monday next for producing his disendowment scheme. The rest of the speech was made up of the accustomed reference to foreign Powers, a few words on the recent continental topics, an expression of belief that there was a desire to maintain peace, and a promise of some legal and educational reforms. The words in which the New Zealand disasters are referred to will be duly noted in that colony. The debates on the Addresses were of the most amicable kind, the leaders exchanging compliments, and the rank and file having nothing to say that is worth notice. It would seem that the Ministers have resolved to lose no time, for not only is the early date we have mentioned fixed for beginning the great debate of the session, but two very important bills, one on endowed schools, one on rating, have been introduced, a bankruptcy bill is to follow, and that the complaint of the Lords that they have nothing to do may be met, a measure for dealing with criminals, which was to have been brought into the Commons, is, this evening, to be laid before the Upper House. We may also note that disestablishment has practically begun without law, for an Irish living having fallen in, there is to be no appointment of a new clergyman, and a neighbour has been directed to do the duty. We expect outcry about this. The Habeas Corpus in Ireland is no longer to be suspended, and more than half of the Fenian prisoners are to be let out of gaol. Tet, on the opening night, an Irish member grumbled because there was no promise of a new Reform Bill for Ireland. The land question stands over, Mr Gladstone declaring that it is physically impossible to deal with it this session. We shall have much more important Parliamentary record in our next Summary. Law has been dealing sternly with election malpractices. We mentioned that three members had been turned out by the judges. Four more have similarly suffered. Sir A. Guinness is ejected from Dublin, Mr Phipps from Westbury, Mr o‘Beirne from Cashel, and Colonel L. Knox from Sligo. Mr Forster, Vice-President of the Council, had a narrow escape, though no one believed him personally concerned in his agent’s acts. Sir Henry Bulwer and Sir Robert Peel have also been acquitted, as has Mr Smith, the Conservative who headed both the Liberals in Westminster, and turned out Mr Mill. The Conservative, Mr Bell, who came in for the City, under the minority clause, has died, and Baron Rothschild again sits. There are several cases yet to be taken. We announced in our last that the Greek and Turkish question was virtually settled, and have only to add that under the advice of Russia, the Greek Ministry, a very bad one. resigned, and a new one was formed, with M. Za’imes as Premier, whose first business was to accede to the declaration of the Conference. A French diplomatist was sent to Athens with a peremptory intimation that he had to return in a very few days, and bring the assent with him, and he brought it. The Conference formally received this, and dissolved. That cloud is dispelled for the present, but a fresh one will easily collect in the East, though more probably in one of the provinces of Turkey than in Greece. But the Coutinent is by no means serene. We have had to watch a quarrel between France and Belgium. The legislature of the latter country passed, as it had a perfect right to do, a measure prohibiting the sale to foreigners of any railway concession granted to Belgians, and no doubt this was aimed at a particular transaction, though M. Frere Orban, the Belgian minister, denied it. The Eastern Railway Company of France intended to have a certain Belgian line. The French press, under orders, took fire, and stormed at the small nation that had dared to insult France, and it was plainly said that this course was taken at the inspiration of Count von Bismark. For some days the language of the French was so menacing that some believed that the Emperor had at last made up his mind for the quarrel that is expected to bring on the great strife. Pacific lan guage by the Belgian Cabinet has been uttered, and for the moment France appears to be cooling down, but, as we have on former occasions said, when such temper can be exhibited, there is no real security for peace for a month. Frenchmen who write to Englishmen say, frankly, that the Emperor has made fatal mistakes, that one of them resulted in the establishment of the mighty

Pi ussian union, and that this will have to be atoned for by a war. All, therefore, that we can say is that there is no war yet, and while there is peace there ii hope. In Spain the Cortes have had stormy sittings. The division on the choice of a President will shew the relative strength of parties, (he Government candidate, Rivero, having 187 votes to 47 given for the Republican Orense, Marquis of Alvaida. Having this vast strength, Ministers do not use it very gently, but accuse the Republicans of being all communists, and vowed to the destruction of all property rights. This enrages many, who know that the charge is applicable to a portion only of the body of oppositionists, and there are scenes of excitement in the Cortes, “ strangers ” joining in the demonstrations. The verification of the elections is still going on, and, when that is complete, Marshal Serrano is to be entrusted with the formation of a Cabinet which is to succeed the Provisional Government. Prim made an opportunity to declare that none of the exiled house should reign in Spain, It is said, bnt doubted, that Yhe Duo de Montpensier has permission to return to Spain as a private person. It was not unamusing to read that the Republican Marquis above-named made in one of his speeches a lofty reference to England. He deprecated corruption at elections, and said that Spain ought not to imitate the example of England, where elections were made expensive in order to exclude poor men of talent from Parliament. And as he knew that many of his hearers were aware that many poor men of talent sit in the British Parliament he was good enough to explain that this was accounted for by their patrons paying all their costs. He opposed a vote of thanks to the retiring Provisional Government, but it was carried by a great majority. In time, we shall hear something about a King, but the Spaniards do not hurry themselves on that subject, and in so far are wiser than the frogs of fable.

In the royal Speech the Queen was made to say that she hoped a basis bad been laid for the firm friendship which ought always to exist between England and the United States, and Mr Reverdy Johnson, who was present, smiled pleasantly. But if the Convention, arranged by Lord Clarendon and Mr Johnson, had aught to do with the royal hope, it was not well grounded, for in a few hours we had news that the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Senate at Washington had almost unanimously rejected that Convention. We have said all along that the hatred felt by the majority in Congress for Mr Andrew Johnson would most, likely prevent any settlement of the question during his tenure of office, but there ip not, we are content to think, any present reason for believing that its settlement is remote. President Grant will be in his place immediately, and Mr Reverdy Johnson continues to assure us that there is not the least danger of a rupture. By the way, Semmes, of the Alabama, the source of all the mischief, has published a book, boasting his exploits—it is a poor affair, but the most adroit writer could have made little out of the adventures of a pirate who burned a great number of helpless and unarmed vessels, and whose ship was sent to the bottom the very first time she encountered an armed enemy, De Foe, perhaps, might in his perfect unconsciousness of humiliation, have managed it, but De Foe died in 1731, and we have no one like him. There is one incident in bis history in which we could be glad that Semmes had been made to imitate him, but the pillory is gone too. Era touching on minor matters, let us note something which will have interest for those who behold the Southern Cross. In the year 1882 there will be a transit of Venus which will occupy the attention of the philosophical world. We dislike the affectation of taking it for granted that everybody knows why this event is so interesting, while perhaps one person out of a dozen at a dinner table can give a lucid explanation. We do not know, really, how far the sun is from the earth, and if this transit be accurately observed, calculation will tell us exactly how far be is. It must be observed from two places in the world, and one of these must be in the Antarctic region, and the Astronomer Roytl says somewhere between Sabrina Land and Repulse Bay. Already the astronomers and geographers are discussing the subject, partly instigated to haste by the fact that there is another transit in 1874 (which, however, presents no difficulty), and at a meeting of the Geographical Society on Monday, Feb. 21, we had the satisfaction of hearing the hydrographer to the Admiralty intimate that it was perfectly alive to the enormous importance of the subject, and would be ready in due time to do all that could be desired. But he thought that the nation ought also to take up the matter. “ You will send us out,” he said, adding quietly, “ We’ll go.” But it is felt that the expedition must not be only astronomical, and that in fact what Captain Cook did, when sent out to watch the transit of 1769, should be repeated on a great scale, and general investigation be entered upon. There was a large gathering of Arctic and Antarctic explorers, and the feeling was that the men by whom the work in 1882 will be done ought to go through a sort of apprenticeship, in the way of some earlier expeditions, though the veteran Belcher declared, robustly, to the delight of the meeting, that he should be ready to go out, thirteen years hence, and that he should be as fit for work then as ever. But we must not rely upon one brave old man’s pluck, and the influence of the geographers will be brought to bear for the promotion of the preliminary object. The date of this journal is that of the twentieth day on which the Court of Queen’s Bench has been occupied with a case that at first excited the attention of the nation, but has from the monotonous squalor of its details long since ceased to interest anybody but the court, the counsel, the unfortunate jury, and the parties. The trial is called “ Saurin v. Starr.” The case is a Roman Catholic one, and the plaintiff is a nun. The defendant is the mother superior of a convent at Hull. The complaint is that Miss Saurin, having incurred the displeasure of her superior, was subjected to such a fearful and protracted series of petty persecutions, penances, insults, and outrages, that her health was injured, and thst these were part of a conspiracy to drive her from the sacred convent. The answer is that Miss Saurin was a wilful, worldly, “ disedifying,” “imperfect” young person who revolted from the abject submission which she had vowed to practise, and that she exaggerates much that she had undergone but that mnch of it was necessary to tame her proud spirit, and make her truly pious. The details are afflictingly paltry, and whichever way the verdict goes, it is clear that convent life in the present day must be a wretched business, fit only for the smallestminded women. The enormous length of the trial invests it with a factitious importance, and it is really a case that ought to have gone before an inferior tribunal. The House of Commons had a laugh at a small matter on Tuesday. Among the servile imitations of ‘Punch’s’ form and manner, and all else but his art and wit, are a couple of publications which affect a Tory tone, and scoff at the leading Liberals. They are not the most offensive of the pirates, one of which has seized this very week, when the Queen is suffering from personal illness and the dangerous illness of her child, to draw a coarse picture attributing the distress in trade to her absence from public entertainments, and this is only of a piece with other insults which can be safely addressed to an English Sovereign. For some reason the late Government was induced to permit itself to be cajoled into ordering a small supply of these imitation papers to be furnished t» the navy. But the luxury was of brief endurance. The rubbish was ordered on October 15, and stopped a few days after the present Government came into office. “ I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings,” said Mr Childers amid laughter, “ and therefore I won’t say why the papers were stopped.” But in some correspondence, of which Mr Gladstone was cognisant, the words “ vulgarity” and “ scurrility” occur, and were not misplaced. As Mr Dod Johnsonically said for about 37 years, in his “ Parliamentary Companion,” “the turn of mind that dictated spoliation was naturally incapable of impartiality.” Our volunteer force is just now in an uncomfortable attitude as regards the authorities, the military magnates, and the nation. The original enthusiasm in reference to

volunteering has been succeeded by a more practical and valuable state of mind, to which we have no doubt the Household Guard will be indebted for its being placed on a sounder footing. Therefore we own to the reverse of regret at the present tone of feeling, though it is disagreeable to those concerned. Great pains have been taken to prove to the volunteers that they are of no use at all, and that they are quite unfit to defend the country, being without system or commissariat, and not being bandied as soldiers ought to be. Tben officers add to the discomfort by complaining of the heavy expenses cast upon them. Government is asked to take the question in hand, but we are all for economy at present, and thinking of the vast sum which it is said is to be taken off the estimates by Mr Childers. But we cannot allow the noble volunteer force to drop away and shrivel up. Had the effort done nothing more than rouse our young men to a manly exercise, dragging them away from billiard-rooms and theatres, and teaching them the use of their limbs and of their eyes, and once more arming Englishmen with a national weapon, it would be entitled to all our gratitude, and have a claim on Governments. But it has done much more. The volunteers can be made into a standing,(army of the beat kind,but this can be done only on system and by means of an earnest grapple with difficulties. It is to be hoped that the Easter review, which is this year to take place at Dover, and to be supported by part of the fleet, will do something to encourage the volunteers, who are just now saddened, not to say sulky.

We seldom touch matters of mere entertainment here, but an operatic revolution is a topic of society, and may deserve a word. Readers will remember that the old opera house, otim the King’s Theatre, was burned. Another has arisen in its place, but not with brilliant prospects, owing to the peculiarity of the only tenancy that can be accorded. Covent Garden was expected to go on with its old splendour. But managements have coalesced, and the two houses are one concern. This would not matter, but the result has been to force M. Costa, who is the best conductor in the world, to resign his baton at the latter house, because he was not to be allowed control over the arrangements which he was responsible for, and understood better than any one else. Other orchestral veterans also go, and we are told that the performances, in an instrumental point of view, will be much deteriorated. But with Patti, Lucca, Nilsson, and Titiens, the lover of song may manage to console himself, and not one person in fifty, unless told to be displeased, would know whether Costa were leading, or his successor were being led by the band, It has not found its way, we believe, into the papers, but Joachim, the greatest of violinists, has discovered a young English girl, of humble birth, who has acquired such a mastery over the instrument, that if she have genius as well—hitherto her exploits have been confined to music of the lower class—will place her in the foremost rank. His opinion is backed by that of M. Sainton, and it is characteristic of true artists that they are most eager to give the young proficient every chance of developing her resources. Her name, we believe, is Turner, and if their expectations be carried out, it will be known in Australia and everywhere else.

We are without another domestic item of interest, and when this is read, England may be pictured as waiting for the revelation of the largest attempt at innovating legislation which the century has witnessed. All the great measures, hitherto, have been of an emancipating or enfranchising kind; the Test and Corporation Act repeal opened the course to Dissenters, the Catholic Act to members of that faith, the first Reform Act to the lower middle class, the second Reform Act to the artisan. But the measure of which we are expectant, and which Mr Gladstone is to explain on Monday night, is one of destruction, and though a destruction which is demanded by the majority of the nation, there is a certain sensation that a new kind of operation is in hand. Mr Gladstone will probably say, as Vauban, the engineer, said, “ I destroy, but I defend,” and the last ides in his mind is that the disendowment will be an injury to religion. We may be sure that all that fervid eloquence can do will be brought by him to bear upon bis proposals. The event, on the edge of which we close our Summary, assuredly marks an epoch in the History of England.