NEWS BY THE MAIL.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 154, 1 December 1874, Page 4

NEWS BY THE MAIL.

(From the Spectator.') Two seats in Parliament have been vacated by death, that for Cambridgeshire through the death of Lord John Manners, brother of the Postmaster-General, and that for Northimpton through the death, after a long illness, of Mr Charles Gilpin. In Cambridgeshire, it is not likely that the Liberals will contest the seat. In Northampton, there will probably be a triangular, or even more complicated contest. Mr Gilpin was a great ■advocate of peace and economy, and a great opponent of capital punishment; indeed, he was of quaker extraction, aud a nephew of the late Mr Joseph Sturge, of Birmingham. I'he Radicals of tbe borough, anxious to jecure as many as possible of Mr Gilpin's supporters for his successor, are getting up, it is said, a requisition to Mr Jacob Bright—tho great partizan of women's sufl'rage—who, though probably of a somewhat different -.ehool of Radicalism, a Radical of a more rationalistic and more social tone of thought than Mr Gilpin, will probably command a ! arge proportion of Mr Gilpin's adherents. \s, however, Mr Bradlaugh is said to be lodged to contest the borough—he polled 1653 otes in the last election—the Conservatives

ill certainly have a chance ; and it is said Mat their candidate of last year, a Mr Mere.ether, will be proposed again. We fear Morthampton is likely to have something of a political Hobson's choice ; —could not the mere reasonable electors persuade Mr W

Fowler, the tbouehtfnl land reformer who represented Cambridge before the last general election, to come forward ? The Oxford Conservatives assembled, and apparently enjoyed themselves, in the Swan Brewery grounds, St Thomas's, the excuse being mutual congratulation on the possession of a Conservative member in Mr Hall. Mr Mowbray, M.P. for the University, congratulated Oxford on the good understanding between Gown and Town which seemed to be established by this return of a Conservative for the borough, toco-operate with the Conservatives for the University. He had little to say, except to compliment MiHall, and to warn Mr Hall's and his own constituents " not to expect too much, even from their own friends." Mr Hall himself had no more to say, except to express, which he is highly competent, to do, a general sense of Conservative jollity and political effervescence at the prospect of being in and stayiu;? in—a very justifiable'state of mine 1 , but a little barren of political interest. In Frome, also, Conservatism has been exalting its horn. The Marquis of Bath and Mr Sclater-Booth both made speeches there, the general drift of which it is almost as easy to imagine as to describe. Of course the Conservatives were told that the Liberal party were quite as tired of Mr Gladstone's Government as the Conservatives themselves ; and (in effect) that Conservatives ought not to look for a fruitful session, but for a barren session, and should be delighted that they had had o e which they certainly had but the most novel remark "of the Marquis of Bath was that Sir William Harcourt is very soon to supplant Mr Gladstone. The Marquis tried to deny that there was any discord of importance in the Cabinet, but he gave a very distinct hint that it is Lord Salisbury, and not Mr Disraeli, in whom he put his faith. Mr Sclater-Booth made a financial speech, in which he stated that the estimates of next year would be be drawn up on strictly Conservative principles, but that it had been impossible to draw them up on those principles in the short time at their disposal during the past session. Does that mean that Mr Ward Hunt is to ask a great sum wherewith to renovate the navy, after all ? It seems hardly likely, after the very severe snubs which he encountered from his own leaders last session.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer is following the lead of his chief in trying to keep the attention of the public fixed on ecclesiastical questions. He took the chair at a meeting held at Exeter in aid of the Church Defence Association, and stated in his opening speech that the time was not come for Churchmen to lay down their arms, go to sleep, and think that because the country has shown itself decidedly hostile to attacks on the Church, they might allow themselves to lapse into perfect security. On the contrary, he held that every effort should be made to meet renewed attacks, but these efforts should not be made in a parly sense, and therefore he regretted that, he, as a member of the Conservative Ministry, should have been asked to take the lead in urging on his audience a state of preparedness to resist the agitation for a dissolution between Church and Stale. He thought that other Churches gained by having a standard Church, responsible to the State, and conscious of its responsibility, with which to compare th.'mselves, and he thought that the Church herself gained by the endeavor to justify the dignity of her position. That i.< all very well, except the notion that the safety of the Church lies in our readiness to throw up our hats for it, and talk down her assailants. A sensitive and self-defen-sive tone is certainly not that which best becomes a Church, and to our minds, the more the Church thinks of her spiritual duties, and the less she thinks of her worldly risks, the safer she will be. The instinct of selfpreservation may be the best safety of a State ; but the instinct of selfforgetful ness is the best safety of a Church. Conservatives are apt to forget the spiritual pa'adox on which rests the true Christian Conservatism—" He that finds his life shall lose it ; he that loses his life for my sake shall find it."

The Univers has been again suppressed, or vat her suspended, for a fortnight ; and on this occasion, even his warmest admirers will have little sympathy with M. Vouillot in his temporary seclusion. The offence is a, scanclctlum magnatnm, gross enough for the readers of " Pere Ducheue," and written with the venomous point and gloating sarcasm which now and then make M. Vouillot resemble Voltaire masquerading as a sacristan. The Univers, which formerly was a Catholic journal, with Legitimist tendencies, might now be more fitly described as a Legitimist journal with Catholic tendencies ; and since the Count de Chambord has made himself the despair of his adherents, nothing has been sacred to this orthodox sapeur. The Due de Broglie has been calumniated with an unsleeping malignity. Marshal MacMahon is now sneered at as the " Bayard {de nos temps modemesy —a sneer which, by the way, strikes the Count de Chambord en ricochet. In his last article, Marshal Serrano was indelicately gibbeted as " M. Alphonse," and Queen Isabella alluded to in terms that not to be applied in an Ultramontane journal to a lady who received so many marks of the Pope's respect and affection. It will probably be the Pope's turn next. M. Veuillot is certainly playing M. Gambetta's game to perfection. His friends ought to advise him to make a spiritual " retreat " under Mgr Dupanloup, specially addressed to the virtues of humility and charity, and perhaps to take a course of very alkaline waters at the same time.

It is well that Parliament is not sitting, for if it were, we should certainly be compelled to witness that always nauseous operation, an honorable member eating his own words, or paying with his person for not so doing. Sir J. D Astley, M.P. for North Lincolnshire, was reported—and as the report has remained uncontradicted, we may assume, correctly—to have said, in speaking of the present Parliament—" There were a lot of Irish chaps in the House who sometimes made him very angry. He thought there were about six'y of those fellows in the House, and about forty of them were the most confounded rascals he ever saw." He, moreover, calls them '• covies," and a second time " rascals," and complains of their " talking about their rotten little Ireland, —whether the whiskey was to be (Scotch or Irish, or the potatoes kidneys or something else." Kir J. D. Astley has no right to call honorable members " chaps," "rascals," "fellows," or even '• covies;" but there is a touch of pathos in I he following sentence, to which those who witnessed some debates of last session will pay the tribute of a yawn, if not a sigh:— '• Such discussions as these were one of the things which drove him clean out of the

House, and tended to make, a man more careless than he should be." The time is not yet come, however, for the fulfilment of Currau's prophecy, which perhaps Sir J. D. Astley had iu his mind, when Ireland was to have her revenge for the Union by sending into Parliament l n o of the greatest rascals to be found on the face of the earth.

The Danish Slesvigers appear to be in a bad way. The bitterest complaints are made of the grievances to which they are subjected by the German Government in Slesvig, by which Danes appear to be ordered into exile without even a pretext assigned or assignable ; and when Denmark complains, she"is calmly told by the semi-official Spener Gazette of Berlin that " the time is passed when small states can pretend to follow an independent policy of their own; Denmark will be obliged to submit herself to the changes which have supervened." A pleasant hearing this for Holland and Belgium, or even for Switzerland! Further they are told that the Treaty of Prague, by which it was agreed that a portion of North Slesvig should be ceded to Denmark, Is .1 dead-letter, and that they have more to gain from the generosity of Germany than from appeal to any treaty on the score of contract. But if they remain silent and do not complain, the Germans point to their silence as a proof that they are satisfied. If thus, either way, they get nothing but cuffs, they may as well have the satisfaction of letting Europe kuow how badly they are treated. Certainly, in the one region where Prussia had a chance of showing the magnanimity of true power, without risk to its solidity, she has seemed to care only to convince the world that her heel is heavy and her temper hard. Sir Charles Dilke. being invited to address the Ancient Order of Foresters, at Hammersmith Town Hall, in a political, but not in a party speech, found no difficulty in discharging his task, by firing volleys into both parties in turns; but as we have elsewhere shown, his attacks on the Tories were chiefly attacks on measures, while his attacks on the Liberals were attacks on men, and somewhat bitter ones. He began by indulging in somewhat vain aspirations that our country could secure as the heads of the great administrative offices any men, though of opposite parties, who are fitted for the posts, remarking on the advantage which Russia gains by being able to entrust the Foreign Secretaryship to so thorough a Conservative as Prince Gortsehakoff, and at the same time, the head of theWarDepartmenttosothorough a Radical as General Milontine. He praised the personnel of the Tory Administration, and sneered at the front Bench of Opposition, but went on immediately to attack keenly the Government Licensing Act of last Session, pointing out that the change from eleven to ten as the closing-hour in places that are not ' populous,' would make it quite natural to talk of striking " Cross," _as country publicans used to talk of striking " Bruce," since the Roman numeral for ten is a Cross. He was very bitter also on the proposed Friendly Societies Bill; declared, very erroneouslv and unfairly, that in rela Hon to the "Public Worship Bill, Mr Gladstone had chalked up "No coercion," and had then run away, and finally ended his rhythmically-balanced thrusts at Liberal and Tory, by suggesting that Mr Disraeli might perhaps find some difficulty in getting rid of Lord Salisbury (wen when he wishes to do so, since Lord Salisbury, and not Mr Disraeli, is held responsible' for the Conservatism of the Government by genuine Conservatives, and might reply, like the negro servant to the Southern gentleman in the Washington hotel, when told that he might retire, " ,Scuse me, sah, but I's 'sponsible for de spoons," The speech, cleverly adapted to make Tory measures look ridiculous, and Liberal statesmen contemptible, was, of course, received with enthusiasm. An elector who is both furnished with solid weapons against his foes, and also helped to look down upon his allies, is naturally in his tjlory—and all the worse for being so. The Comte de Chaudordy, who is the new French Ambassador to the Government of Marshal Serrano, fills a somewhat exceptional position among French statesmen and diplomatists. He is one of the few who feel it consistent with their honour to serve France under all Governments. He was under the Imperialist Prince de la Tour d'Auvergne, before the 4th September, 1870, and yet he served the Government of National Defence at Paris and at Tours. In the Assembly he has always frankly avowed his Conservatism on questions affecting the internal government of France, and opposed M. Thiers' Government on these questions, and yet he had worked most earnestly under Gambetta at Tours, and has steadily shown himself more devoted to France than to any French party. The Government of Marshal MacMahon, in sending him just now to Madrid, hf.s made a good choice. No one can mistake him for a mere nominee of the Ultramontanes, the Right, or even the Septennate.

The Oxford and Cambridge Conjoint Schemes for inspecting the Secondary education of the country—a scheme which is soon, we believe, to be worked in conjunction with a third University, that of Loudon —is now fairly under weigh, and a list has been published of the first certificates awarded to the pupils of various schools under it. It is obvious, however, that the tentative system on which the conjoint scheme has entered, needs one very radical improvement. It is much too expensive for general adoption by small schools, or even individually by poor men's children, and will certainly fail therefore in giving anything like a secure test of the relative merits of schools, or of the relative industry and ability of the pupils taught there, unless the universities can see their way to diminishing very greatly indeed the scale of fees they require for conducting these examinations. The object is by no means to enable schoolmasters to send up their " crack" pupils, but to afford some gauge of the calibre of the teaching itself at average middle-class schools. But this object cannot be attained for small schools at all, so long as every examiner must be paid large fees, we believe something like four guineas a day for every day he is employed, which is what the conjoint scheme at present contemplates. One would think that this system of school inspection is of sufficient public importance to deserve the appropriation of some of the revenues of the universities for the purpose of diminishing the cost of inspection to small schools.

The Working-Men's International Congress is now assembled at Brussels, and Bhows apparently diminished numbers and increased violence of intention and language. If the Times may be trusted, the number of the delegates is small, and they appear to speak for a very indefinite number of constituents. Still, whatever the number of persons who share the views expressed by the Italian,

Spanish, and some of the Swiss delegates, it cannot be doubted that they are dangerous, if only for the extreme passion and blindness of their views. The Italian delegates assert that they must take farewell of the Congress, because the publicity of Congresses is unsuited for their campaign, whicli is to be one of secresy, but is to be prompt and violent. They aim explicitly at " anarchy," and at possessing themselves of the wealth of the country for the collective whole. When, however the other members of the Congress came to discuss what was to succeed the anarchy, there was no agreement. The nearest thing to a practical suggestion was that the population of the earth should become a leviathan co-opera-tive society for producing and distributing all the wealth of the earth, —a suggestion which may at least be called somewhat unmanageable. It is a pity that there is no way of punishing a crowd in its collective capacity short of grape-shot. The crowd at Calais which by its furious yells and hisses taunted M. Duruof into obviously imminent risk of his own life and that of his wife, by ascending in his balloon last week on a night of black storm, ought, if such a law existed, to be pumped upon by all the fire-engines of the town, and might even be slightly scalded all rouud with advantage. The poor aeronaut—though wanting in the moral courage which the occasion demanded from him—certainly did not want the cool nerve and dogged pluck which his art requires. He hugged the clouds until daybreak, and then, far out of sight of land, made a skilful descent on rough water with a strong gale blowing, but within view of several vessels, one of which —a fishing-smack—happily for him, belonged to a gallant mariner of Grimsby, one William Oxley, who at once gave chase to the balloon, and after a race which lasted for more than two hours, overtook it, and rescued Duruof and his almost inanimate wife, " while the balloon rushed off at a mighty speed towards Norway." The history of that chase ought to be placarded pro bono publico on every wall in Calais.