NEWS BY THE MAIL.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 118, 16 October 1874, Page 4

NEWS BY THE MAIL.

[From the Spectator, August Ist.] Rumours are circulating everywhere of a coming intervention in Spain. They are not yet distinct, but they are evidently based upon some fact which, to judge from the telegrams flying over Europe, would appear to be this Prince Bismarck has decided to oppose the Carlists. as likely, should they win, to aid the Ultramontanes ; has found in the execution of Captain Schmidt a popular reason for interference, and has asked all the leading Courts to assent to bis design. How far he intends to go is not apparent, but he has ordered a squadron to visit the north coast of Spain, and stop the arrival of arms ; has demanded and obtained from France greater vigilance on her frontier—where, however, there will be no anxious vigilance till the Legitimist Prefects are removed—and has proposed to recognise the existing Government in Spain. It will be necessary to do much more than this before the Carlists are puc down, and doing it is exceedingly difficult, owing to the Spanish dislike of foreign interference ; but it will not suit German statesmen, when once in movement, to be baffled iu front of Europe. Accordingly, we expect much stronger action, and do not, for reasons stated elsewhere, feel certain that the British Government may not take sides in the matter in the name of civilisation. Mean while, the Spanish Government has as yet published no hint of its intentions, bevond a statement that it has remonstrated with the Government of France, and will, if disregarded, seek new and more faithful alliances. The facts are yet uncertain, but that the Spanish war is becoming a danger to European peace is, we conceive, beyond a doubt.

The French Assembly has decided, by a majority of forty-two, that it would not dissolve. The term of the prorogation is not yet fixed, but it is believed that the Assembly will resume its sittings on the 28th of November, will endeavor to pass constitutional laws, will fail, and will dissolve. It is stated that the Legitimists intend to use their last chance with vigor, but nobody believes they can act until they have overcome the resolution of their King not to part with his white flag—and their efforts are sure to break upon this rock. For the present, therefore, France is placed under the personal government of Marshal MacMahon, who pledges himself to put down all pretenders, the Republic included, and to wait quietly until the Chamber reassembles, when he professes to hope the deputies will be more united in temper. If so. the union will be due to the bath of electoral opinion which the deputies are about to take, but it is more probable that in December the discord will be greater than ever. Three months is, however, a very long time in France.

Mr Disraeli announced that Parliament might hope to adjourn on the Brh August. Her Majesty’s Government had resolved to give up the Land Bills, the Judicature Bills, and in fact all Bills of the least use, except the Public Worship Regulation Bill, which, in theory at least, is still a private measure. As to the Endowed Schools Bill, the Premier believed the House to be under an entire misconception as to the character of the Bill, but he admitted that he could not, after hours of attention, pretend to understand it himself. He attributed this obscurity to the'draughtsmen employed by the House, and their new method of drawing amending Acts, and he therefore proposed, as the House had sanctioned the appointment of a new Commission, to postpone the clauses still in dispute until the coming session. The House took this explanation, and especially the promise with which it concluded, as an excellent joke, which was, perhaps, the best method of treating a statement in which words were so obviously used only to conceal thought. If they were sincere, they would amount just to this—that the Premier had staked his Administration on a Bill, the object and effects of which he knew all the time that he did not comprehend. He not only leaped in the dark, but did not know why he leaped.

After Mr Disraeli had made this curious retreat from an untenable position, Mr Gladstone rose and remarked how unfortunate it was that Mr Disraeli had not discovered the unintelligible character of the Bill before the Opposition were charged with obstructiveness for steadily resisting its progress. He pointed out that after removing the old Commissioners expressly because they could not be expected to carry out a new religious policy, Mr Disraeli had now determined to abandon the new religious policy itself, and the war declared by Lord Sandon against “ political Nonconformists ” was to be heard no more of. The Commissioners were to submit to the sacrificial knife, as an atonement and reconciliation to Tory prejudices, and there the matter was to stop. Their policy was to be carried out by others, who “ with faint hopes and weakened powers, were to prosecute the duties imposed on them by the country.” Mr Childers also made some very pungent criticisms in another vein. He remarked that six measures had been enumerated in the Queen’s speech as constituting the legis-. lative work of the session, of which one (the Masters and Servants’ Act Amendment Bill) had never been introduced, aud four and a half had been withdrawn. Of the promises given, the only fraction fulfilled was the trivial Intoxicating Liquors Bill, as it ultimately pas-i d the House. The two Judicature Bills (for Ireland and Scotland), the Land Titles measure, the Friendly Societies Bill, were all gone. Lord Sandon s Bill was not promised iu the Royal speech, and yet had been brought in, but how its chief principle had disappeared, and the official legislation of the year had resulted “ iu half an hour more every day for drinking in London, and the dismissal of three officers who were appointed by the late Government, and the appointment of three other officers by the present Government.” Such was Mr Childer’s summary. Indeed, the Government may have a very effective cry when they next go to the country—“ More drink and less school,” or “ Protection for ignorant children, wasteful charities, and thirsty souls.”

The names of the new Charity Commissioners were mentioned, when it became obvious that Mr Disraeli had wisely insisted on having as little change as might be in the temper of the commission. The new charitj commissioner, i.e. the one who fids up the vacant place in the old charity commission (as distinguished from the Endowed Schools Commission), is to be Mr Longly, at present chief inspector of the Local Government Eoajd in the Metropolitan district, The two

endowment commissioners are to be Canon Robinson—one of. the present Endowed Schools Commission—and Lord Clinton, who was for some time in the House of Commons ns Mr Trefusis, where, says “ Dod,” he was counted “a Liberal-Conservative,” and “ favorable to progressive improvement.” (By the way, what is ?mprngressiv« improvement. we wonder?) Lord Clinton was made Under Secretary of State for India by Lord Derby’s Government in 18(17, anil seems to in; reyarded asasens ble and quiet friend of gradual reform. Mr Disraeli is trying to retrieve as far as he can the gross blunder of Lord Sandon’s Bill. He explained, by the way, on the same evening in the House, that the Bill was not drafted by Lord Sandon at all, but by the Cabinet, and that Lord Sandon was only asked to move it, ,l in pursuance of the desire he (Mr Disraeli) had always felt to give the rising generation of statesmen every opportunity of bringing themselves before the country,”—a desire not in this case so fortunate for Lord Sandon as it might have been. But surely there was another reason ? Has Mr Disraeli forgotten that, according to his own statement, after devoting many “ anxious and perplexed hours to the attempt to understand parts of this Bill,” he failed? And of course, what he could not understand, he could not explain to the House of Commons. Lord Sandon understood it, and explained it only too well, thereby enabling the country to understand Lord Sandon,

The committee on the Public Worship Regulation Bill resulted in giving an appeal to the Archbishop when, and only when, the Bishop exercises his discretion to stop litigation, in negativing Mr Cowper Temple's proposal that, a meeting should be called to inform the Bishop of the feeling of the parish as to any customary or startling breach of the rubric ; in negativing also the exemption of college and endowed school chapels, and the chapels of the Inns of Court, from the provisions of the Bill; and finally, in rejecting the proposal to make Bishops and Archbishops liable to the provisions of the Bill. This last exemption was carried avowedly because the members who proposed to subject the Bishops to the provisions of the Bill were chiefly persons opposed to the Bill as a whole, and their motive, therefore, was presumed to be sinister. The Bishops themselves need not obey the law they are to impose on others. The strike of the agricultural labourers may be considered over. The farmers of Cambridgeshire and Suffolk have held out vith the obstinacy characteristic of their class, and the Union funds are so near exhaustion, that their committees have signified that the allowance hitherto paid to all men locked out or on strike must cease. They can only offer the men the means of emigration. We doubt their ability to help the men much, but of course the general result of the failure will be an immense stimulus to emigration, the men refusing to live in a country where the first civil right, that of combination, can be refused by employers who gain their own strength from the strictness of their Trade Union. It is evident from the course of the struggle that too many men have been engaged in agriculture; that the farmer, once put on his mettle, can do with half his usual supply; and that the remainder must either go, or submit to live on 2s a day. The strike has, on the whole, done good. It has raised the average wages 2s a week, has broken the farmers of their notion that they have any right over their men except contract, and has cured the laborers of the belief that their own degraded position is like hail or drought or anything else unpleasant,—part of the natural order of things. The Irish Members have quite rightly entered a very strong protest against including Acts which are grave constitutional anomalies—like the Irish Coercion Acts, —in the Omnibus class of Bills called the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill. No practice can be more objectionable; and the Irish Members have so far succeeded, that they have wrung Lorn Mr Disraeli the concession of only continuing those Coercion Acts till December 31st, 1875, instead of till August, 1876. The concession is inadequate, but is a moral victory for the Irish Members. Mr Disraeli expressed his desire, after a warm discussion, that the members of the House might be able to part “iu tolerable good humour with one another ;” but certainly he himself seemed desirous to promote a parting of an opposite kind, for on Mr Forster’s asking once more for the names of the new Endowed Schools’ Commissioners, Mr Disraeli replied that this was now the third time the question had been asked, after the Government had already expressed its desire to give the House the information at the earliest practicable moment, and that such reiteration was not in conformity with the precedents of the House, and hardly “with the courtesies of life.” That must have been pure suappishness, for, as Mr Forster very naturally replied, nothing is morefcousouant to usage than to press repeatedly for the names of persons appointed to offices of high trust, before the measure uuder which they are appointed leaves the House of Commons. In fact, the whole character of a measure often depends on the persons who are to carry it into execution, and the House would frequently be quite justified in rejecting a measure to be carried out by one set of persons, though they might have accepted it without a division if other names been substituted. We suppose Mr Disraeli had been thwarted by his own Cabinet, and was in the mental condition of the unlucky gamester mentioned by Tom Moore, who, on coming out of a gambling-room after large losses, kicked downstairs some unfortunate person who was tying his shoe on the stairs, with the remark, ‘ Damn you, you’re always tying your shoe !’ However, with the Prime Minister’s temper at such a superheated point, it is hardly reasonable to hope for a very cordial parting. Mr Cross has kept one of the Tory promises. He moved resolutions providing that whenever a private Bill contained powers of eviction, extending to more than fifteen houses occupied by laborers, the promoters must insert clauses binding them to procure accommodation for those evicted, an I to give two months’ notice of eviction, which notice must be certified by a Justice of the Peace. The first provision is, of course, in itself impracticable, not to say absurd, as the railways can no more find lodgings for everybody than they can find work, but it will compel the companies to give tenants decent compensation for dispossession ; while the second is a real gain to the poor, who are often hurried out of their lodgings without time to move their furniture or find a ucw residence for themselves. The resolutions were accepted by the House without discussion, and have therefore become part of the standing orders.

Lord George Hamilton moved the second reading of the India Councils Bill in a speech for which he was sptcially compli mented by Mr Disraeli, but which contains, as reported, only two new facts. Lord Salis bury did not say he intended to spend forty millions more on irrigation works, but only fourteen, the mistake having been a blunder of the reporters, who ought to have been corrected before. Nor does Lord Northbrook now oppose the Bill. On the contrary, he is indifferent to it, believing that a proviso under which the Indian Cabinet may be again red cod to five, takes away its most mischievous effect. These statements took the pith out of Mr Fawcett’s speech, which had been baaed on the two assumptions now officially disclaimed, and reduced it to the argument that a Financier was wanted to save, and not an Engineer to spend. Mr Smollett made a clever, but rough speech, in the ‘‘ old Civilian ” sense, condemning “ the plague of legislation,” demanding economy, and decrying public works, Mr Grant Duff said the Viceroy had asked his friends not to vote against the Bill. Sir G. Balfour made the new point that the direct control of public works by the Head of the State was an evil, as it concealed the failure of the department ; and the remaining speakers indulged in covert hits at the “ Indian Brunei,” Sir R. Strachcy, who, of course, is to be the Engineer Member of Council. No one, that we can see, disposed of the single and final argument for the Bill, the necessity that the head of the great spending—and wasting—department should have a seat in the Indian Cabinet. We might as well keep the War Minister out.

The select committee of the House of Commons appointed to inquire into the principles and practice regulating the purchase and sale of materials and goods in the public departments has made its report, the pith of which is that the system introduced by Mr Childers at the Admiralty should be extended to the other Ministries. When Mr Childers took office as First Lord in 1869, he found that each of the six principal permanent officers of the Admiralty bought and sold the stores of his own department, subject to no sufficient financial control. The main securities taken for the due performance of the contracts were “ intricate and complicated penalties and elaborate and antiquated forms of security. Mr Childers changed all that, with the one idea governing his policy—that the commercial business of the Admiralty should be managed on the same principles that regulate all other commercial business in this very commercial country. The First •Secretary was charged with extra-financial responsibility, and a Superintendent of Contracts was appointed to advise him on all questions of sale and purchase. The committee report that the new arrangements have proved a complete success, and recommend their extension to the other departments, especially the army, Mr A. M. Sullivan exposes in a long letter to the Times the fact on which we have so often dwelt, that the Irish Judicial Bench is absurdly overmanned. The work in Ireland as compared with the work in England is nearly as 3to 12. while the Judges areas 12 to 18, the object being to buy up the Irish Bar, which till very lately was supposed to lead the Irish people. So eagerly was this object pursued, that it is said to this day there is in Ireland one salaried office to every three members of the bar, Mr Sullivan, however, not content with this exposure, adds that the Judges are enormously overpaid. In England a first-class barrister loses by taking a Judgeship, in Ireland he almost always doubles his income. That may be true, and still the Judge may not be overpaid. In Ireland, of all places, it is needful that he should associate only with the best in the land, and should be absolutely released from pecuniary temptation. It is hard enough to make law respected there at all, and Judges chosen by a sort of Dutch auction would not increase the respect. The best thing that could happen to Ireland would be to put the Irish Judges on the English rota, and make them interchange circuits. Judge Keogh could do no harm in Cornwall, and Baron Bramwell would do infinite good in Galway.