ENGLISH AND FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE.

Taranaki Herald, Volume XV, Issue 759, 16 February 1867, Page 4

ENGLISH AND FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE.

(From the Spectator, Deo. 1.)

There was a Conservative demonstration in Essex on the 27th ult., the annual dinner of the Maiden Conservative Club furnishing the occasion. One or two of the speeches were remarkable, Mr. Ducanc's because, speaking of the party, he said " there was life in the old dog yet," which, as all dogs must die, and old dogs soon, was not a sanguine remark. Mr. Sandford intimated that a Conservative Government was a compensation for & bad harvest, not because Mr. Disraeli is good to eat, but because he may repeal the malt tax. He wanted a Reform Bill with varied suffrages, and would increase nasty little boroughs like Maldon by including them in a country district. He threatened Lord Derby with opposition if he gave way to America too much, and spoke all through like a Tory by no means-satisfied that he had the government he wanted. Mr. Earle, on the other hand, made a very able speech, saying that constitutional governments had stability, but democratic governments had energy ; and he thought that some of the schemes of Reform " would add to tho total sum of political power in the country," would " give us a stronger instrument " — a remarkable utterance, considering that the speaker is by party a Tory. He' and Mr. Sandford exactly illustrate the distance between Mr. Disraeli and Lord Cranborue, on whom Mr. Sandford, by the way, openly pinned his faith. Is the House of Cecil to enter the Tory Cave of Adullam ?

Dr. Pusey has written another letter to the Timea, stating his opinion of absolution. He believes that Christ, conferring upon the Apostles the nower to remit sins, intended to confer it also upon their " successors." He therefore holds that every successor has the power to 'remit the sins of penitent persons as fully as Christ himself could have done, and so he affirms, on the authority of the Ordination Service, the Church of England also holds. In other words, Christ intended to leave the salvation of souls dependent on the will of such human beings as can be proved to have been ordained by the ordained up through the ages to Plimself. One single imordained Bishop, say in the middle ages or the third century, would spoil the whole arrangement. Why does not Dr. Pusey claim the power of working miracles given to the Apostles at the same time-? The invisibility of the power is no greater obstacle in the one case than the other. If the sick did not get visibly better for the priest's touch, neither do the bad get visibly better for his absolution. After all, does the human race advance ? A Roman gentleman would have smiled at a superstition so gross as that which Dr. Pusey dignifies with the name of Christianity.

The EcQu-omisl of Satnrday last contained a remarkable account of the causes which have brought the great house of Overenil, and Gurney to the ground. It appears from an affidavit by Mr. J. B>Guruey himself, that the firm was previous to 1860^ netting a profit of about .£190,000 a year, but in 1861 Mr. Gurnoy found the London partners embarked in business so dangerous that he" stopped all dividends. Nevertheless, in 1866 they had advanced £'3,500,065 to twelve companies and their own railways, and had granted exceptional loans to the total amount of ..£4,199,000, out of which Mr. Gurney believed i' 3,117,000 was totally lost. No fortune could stand such a shock, and Mr. Gurney and his partners therefore sold the ! business, and pledged their whole property, estimated at .£3,805,060, as security for the loss. Nearly a million of this " property " J consisted of undivided profits in the bank, j profits which were, in fact, mere matters of account ; but the new directors revealed nothing of any part of the transaction, but told the new shareholders that they had bought Overend and Gurney's business for ,£500,000. Yet none of them will be | punished, and the whole weight of the dis- ! aster falls on the new shareholders, who were totally innocent, and on Mr. Gurney, who was innocent of everything except neglect of Ins own business. Had he, when he first j saw things going wrong, assumed the die- j tatorship of his own bank, the great firm might have been saved, and hundreds and ; hundreds of poor families would have escaped ruin. When the crash came he did eivery- | thing he could, descended at once from his j immense position to utter poverty ; but he \ could have prevented the crash. '

The debenture-holders of the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway held a meeting on Monday to consider the proposal of the shareholders. They rejected it by acclamation, and forced Lord Harris, the chairman, to put a resolution authorizing a committee of bondholders to investigate the accounts of the Company anew. This was carried, but the Company has not given up its plan, and the bondholders will probably be compelled, after all their losses, to sustain a Parliamentary battle. Lord Redesdale, however, has written to the Times condemning the scheme, and suggesting that the Company should be allowed to raise enough money at par to pay tho debentures off, paying any interest needful. If in five years the Company were unable to pay tills interest, the line, cleared of all liabilities, should become the property of the stockholders. Thy scheme has only one defect — that it gives the shareb-jUlers another chance to which they have no right w hatever. Why not change the debentures into stock, and hand over the railway at once? Lord Eedesdalo suggests, as an alternative, that Goveidment should pay off the debentureholders, charging tlie railway 5 per cent., — a scheme which we have commented on elsewhere. It will not paaF, being" a direct temptation tn the public to lend money to insolvent railways.

Archbishop Manning seems to believe in newspapers almost as suuch as Dr. dimming who quotes letters from " special corespon' dents" to prove that the Millennium is at band. Lord Clarendon recenily called on the Pope, and, according to Roman gossip, said, on quitting the presence, " That is, indeed, a Sovereign," meaning that the old man has the personal dignity and bearing which is supposed to distinguish raonarchs, and in which they are, as a rule, so deficient. This remark, which may or taay not be apo-

crycal, is -quoted hy Pr. Manning in an address delivered on Tuesday to a Catholic charitable society, us if the cool, sceptical diplomatist had said, admitting the lVpe"s priority among Princes. " This is, indeed, the Sovereign of Sovereigns." What Lord Clarendon, in all probability, said was, " Gentlemanly old man ; acts king well." Hampstead Heath, it appeal's, is threatened with destruction. Sir Thomas Maryon Wilson, its owner, has, it appears, the right to grant leases for twenty-one years, has commenced a house by the flagstaff, the best prospect in Hampstead, and means to cover the Heath with a sort of Agar Town, to the utter ruin of Hampstead as a place of residence. The Mctiopolitau Board have been asked to buy his rights, hut decline, and the parish alone cannot afford the money. Sir Thomas's defeuce for his conduct in thus destroying one of the lungs of London, — the best site in it for a People's Park, — is, that he had tfeen shabbily treated by London, which lias resisted his application to Parliament for leave to build on the Finchley Road Estate. This is true, and we never could quite understand why Hampstead did not accept the compromise offered, and allow Sir Thomas to build where he liked, provided the property in the Heath was_\ested in the parish. Another judgeship has fallen to Lord Derby, Vice-Chancellor Kindersley having resigned. His seat has been filled up by Mr. Malms, a good lawyer and sturdy politician, but without much special reputation in debate. Tho Tories have now a grand opportunity for bringing forward new men ; but they have not, we fear, been lucky in their first choice. Sir John Rolt, the new Attorney-General, made a -very poor speech indeed to his Gloucestershire constituents, and when called on to compliment the retiring Chief Justice Erie he had next to nothing to say. Sir Roundell Palmer and Mr. Coleridge will make mincemeat of him in the House, and there is no Sir Hugh Cairns to extend his triple shield of eloquence, courtesy, and brains. The Continental papers are full of a report that the Empress Eugenic is about to make a pilgrimage to Rome, the object of which is variously represented. Her Majesty is either going to induce the Pope to summon Italian troops, or to persuade him not to fly, or to deter the Romans from attacking His Holiness lest the French should return, or to secure some other end unknown. The Empress, it is added, has not yet obtained permission for her jourcey.

The innate savagery of the British character has broken out thi^week at New Brighton, on the Mersey A vessel, the Elizabeth Buckham, laden with rum, was recently wrecked there, aud the barrels floated ashore. The bystanders broached them and drank the raw spirit till they dropped, one young man dying on the spot, and a hundred others being seriously injured. A number of servant-girls and other women who hurried down to " see the fun " were tempted to taste, and were all, girls and wives alike, violated on the beach, one who resisted strenuously being nearly murdered by three ruffians. The same scene, under the same temptations, would, we may fairly assume, have happened anywhere else on the coast, and we have, therefore, as civilized men, an obvious right to kill negroes and New Zealanders as savages.

Will nobody ever do anything for London streets ? For the last four days"*" they have been almost impassable, being covered with slimy, glutinous mud, on which horses slip about like children or girls on ice. We saw on Thursday a little scene in the Strand whicb would have done the heart of a horsedealer good — an omnibus, a carriage, and two cabs literally unable to move. One of the horses in the omnibus was down, the near horse in the carriage — one of the hundred-guinea sort — was vainly endeavouring to keep its feet, one cab-horse had just slid on to its side, and the other was trying hard to prevent his head going through the back panel of the carriage. The mud left in our streets by the vestries must cost the horsey interest many thousands a year, and might all be i emoved by an expenditure on a water supply. In Turkey the vestrymen would be set to clean the streets under the whip, and it is greatly to be regretted that the cabmen, omnibus-drivers, and coachmen, and the upper ten thousand who pay for expensive horseflesh do not lynch a- vestryman or two. We suppose it' is hopeless io remonstrate about paving, hut three weekc ago Regent Street was being paved by hundred-guinea horses, the poor brutes walking on angular bits of granite as if they were red-hot.

The Dean of Carlisle is about to commerice a good work. He has recently buried a sou', and had & tombstone prepared, headedf %as usual, " Sacred to the memovy." The Burial Board, however, being at once Calvinistic and ignorant of philology, objected to the word "sacred" as " unmeaning and superfluous," and requested its erasure. They gave way after some correspondeuce, but the Dean intends to try whether they have any business to interfere. We sincerely hope he will persevere, and that a judgment will be passed which will bring all these boards to their senses. They have, we believe, almost everywhere passed votes declaring that anything " eccentric," that is original, in epitaphs shall be prohibited, thus actually killing an entire branch of literature. We heard one of them objecting to a text from Ecclesiasticus as " giving countenance to the 'pocryfar," and they would probably reject the epitaph on Purcell as " vanity." Their business is to extort all they can out of grief, like other undertakers, and they should be compelled to confine themselves to that congenial task. — Spectator, November 24. Dr. Tyndall has written by far the ablest defence of Mr. Eyre's policy in Jamacia hitherto printed, and as even he breaks down hopelessly, we conclude there is nothing more to be said. His line of argument is to point to the terrible incidents of the Hayti rising in 1793, to identify' the premonitory symptoms in Jamaica with the premonitory symptoms in Hayti, to recall that a former rebellion in Jamaica which everybody supposed suppressed in May burst out with double fury in Jauuary 5 and to infer from

these indications that Mr. Eyre was quite right to prolong military terror for a considerable length oi time, in order to prevent a second outbreak. Dr. Tyndall only forgets that Sir. Eyre himself was satisfied of the effectual suppression of the riot or insurrection, or whatever it really was, within five days of the outbreak— so satisfied that he declined military aid from a neighbouring power ; and that his military force was swelled from Barbadoes long before the end of the reign of military terror. Does Dr. Tyndall really think it morally right in any Governor to refuse military aid as unnecessary when the only alternative is to terrify by hanging und whipping, without the pretence of either justice or mercy, for weeks beyond what would otherwise be needful ? Granting Dr. TyndalPs own estimate of the probabilities, which is however not the estimate of the Commissioners, who displayed quite sufficient bias to Mr. Eyre's side, what misconduct could be greater than to dispense with aid which would have rendered a reign of terror needless, in order tv have a justfication for indiscriminate flogging and hanging ? Is indiscriminate cruelty on a large scale, administered by such men as Captain Hole, and Lieutenant Brand, aud Provost-Marshal Ramsay, either quite the noblest way or quite the most prudent way to prevent fresh outrage ? Dr. Tyndall has peculiar views of justice and prudence if he thinks so, a.'sd as to Mr. Gordon, he appears to ignore the fact that the Commissioners themselves had no doubt of his innocence, and that no evidence has ever been produced against- him that would have got him even commtited for trial in England. — Ibid, November 10. A suggestion has been offered this week for the enlistment of Sikhs, who could be obtained in any numbers, who are excellent soldiers, and who are willing to volunteer for European service. There are two formidable objections to that scheme. One is that we cannot stretch the Mutiny Act over India, and cannot dispense with it in the case of troops employed in the United Kingdom; and the other is that the practice would introduce the frightful element of race hatred into every quarrel. Imagine the eifect of a charge on a London or Dublin mob by a copper- coloured regiment ! We would not trust even the Guards not to sympathise with their countrymen ; and besides a Sikh regiment, good as it is for fighting, would if once let loose in a European district, leave traces behind it which would make their further employment quite impossible. The Sikhs entertain quite Biblical ideas about old men aud young maidens being given as spoil to the victors. — Ibid, Nov. 10.