NEWS BY THE MAIL.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 156, 3 December 1874, Page 4

NEWS BY THE MAIL.

[From the Spectator. | The chronic hostility between the negroes and the whites in the Southern States has broken out somewhat fiercely this week in Louisiana, in spite of a temperate speech by Mr Jefferson Davis, delivered recently at Memphis, with the object of denouncing the massacre of negroes at Trenton and reconciling the races. However, at New Orleans it was not exactly race hostility, but rather hostility to the very bad government representing, or affecting to represent, tne negro race, which brought the two parties to blows. Governor Kellogg—the Governor supported by the President, though he seems to have owed his election to a fraud, and to have used his power chiefly with the view of preventing it from coming to its natural constitutional close —had been seizing the arras of the citizens, in order to secure himself from resistance, when a deputation of the whites waited upon him to request his abdication. Of course he declined to receive the deputation, and a struggle ensued, in which the party of the Governor was worsted, although he was vigorously supported by the police, under General Longstreet, The city fell into the bands of the White or Conservative party, who agreed, however, on the formal demand of the Federal Government, to restore the original state of things within five days, on receiving a promise of amnesty from the Federal Government. If General Grant is wise, he will not restore Governor Kellogg without conditions, and such conditions as will enable the Federal Government to undo the mischief which Governor Kellogg has done, and before long to dispense with that mischievous Governor himself, The White party must not be allowed to rebel, but their real grievances must not be ignored. The Maine-et-Loire election resulted in a great success for the French Republicans, though the result is not quite final. Three candidates —a Republican, M, Maille, a Septennalist, M. Bruas, and an Imperialist, M. Berger—went to the poll, and came out in the order in which we have named them, with the following votes : M. Maille, 45,287 ; M. Bruas, 26,075 ; M. Berger, 25,420. M. Maille not having an absolute majority of,the vote given, there must, in conformity with the stupid condition of the French electoral law, be a second ballot, when any majority will seat the candidate. M. Berger has already retired, and the friends of the Government profess to hope that the Imperialists will give their help to M. Bruas, but it is exceedingly improbable that enough of them will do so to endanger seriously the Republican victory. In any case, it is clear that the department is strongly Republican, in spite of the convenient assumption of the sub-editor of the Culvers that all who did not vote (about 52,000 out of 150,000) were Legitimists, in-

stead of, as is most likely, in the main Tndifferentists. In 1871 the Legitimists carried everything before them, but then nobody dreamt that the Assembly was to do anything but make peace ; and for the purpose of making peace Legitimists were not a bad choice. The only ominous feature of (he election is that the Republican majority seems to have come almost wholly from the towns, while the Imperialists and Septennalists were rural voters. That wide divergence between the town and country view is one of the chief evidences of a condition of unstable equilibrium. The French Government has never strained its authority more flagrantly than in the warning it gave the DchaU for saying that “ whoever is not for the Republic is for the Empire. The policy inaugurated on the 24th May has had for sole result to produce alarm in the country.” If it be bringing the Government into contempt and endangering order to write this, the Government must be'already on the very borderline between indifference and contempt, and “ Order” must be a mere happy accident of the moment. A nervous person is sometimes heard to say, “ You might knock me down with a feather." But when a Government is so nervous that it ostentatiously says the seme, there is some danger of the feather being produced—and even of its proving adequate for the trivial operation indicated. The correspondent of the Fall Mall at Santander insists that the German gunboats deliberately provoked the firing of the Carlists at Guetaria, by sailing far closer to the shore than any of the other members of the squadron, quite needlessly close with the German flag ostentatiously flying ; and also that they returned the harmless fire of a few rifles with fifteen ponderous shells of tremendously destructive power, in the hope of causing a more lasting quarrel. He also asserts that, immediately after this affair, the German gunboats approached the Carlist outposts at Lequeitio, where Don Carlos then was, within 500* yards, hoping to provoke another attack, for which the Spaniards were too prudent. Again, it is noteworthy that the very Spanish paper which certainly proved "itself Serrano’s organ in the recent attack on General Zabala, is advocating a foreign intervention on the Republican side as the only proper set-off against the aid which Prance surreptitiously gives to the Carlists. Again, the Berlin correspondent of the Tablet— an Ultramontane, and therefore not a very impartial authority—reasserts most explicitly what he has asserted before, that in the German military and naval departments “ all is prepared for intervention ; troops are in readiness to march, and transports prepared for their embarkation, and to sail at an hour’s notice.” The notion of Germany spending her strength on an invasion of Spain still seems to us as inconceivable as it did last week, but little as we believe these anticipations, we are bound to record the signs which disagree Us well as those which agree with our own expectations. That any party in Spain, except the Carlists, should desire, or pretend to desire, a foreign intervention, is the strangest symptom of all.

M. Guizot is dead. He expired at his country residence, Val Richer, at the age of eighty-six. His father was one of the victims of the French Revolution who perished in 1794, when Guizot was already a child of seven. He himself studied at Genova, and imbibed there, perhaps, some of that precision and rigorousness natural to the Oalvinistic Protestantism of the place, which always adhered to him. He became chief of the doctrinaire party in 1816, published “ The History of Civilisation ” in France between 1829 und 1832, and was made Louis Phillipe’s Minister of the Interior in 1830, and thence led the “juste milieu” party. From that time he was constantly in one office or another, till the fall of the Orleans regime in 1848. He was earnest, didactic, arid severe, without having the instinct of a high morale, and his administration was, in many respects, characteristically un-French; he was a precisianist orator, and a purist intriguant. But he 'was a thoroughly intelIfctual man, with a mind far more powerful than his social tact or his impulse—a form of politician to which France has been little accustomed. Indeed, he was not the minister so much as the tutor of France. If, indeed, Sir William Harcourt is speedily to “ supplant” Mr Gladstone in the lead of the Liberal party, as the Marquis of Bath assures us, he must be prompt in ridding himself of a somewhat loose and arrogant habit of mind in dealing with subjects of complexity. He has often displayed this in the House, but seldom more curiously than ho displayed it in arguing a case before the Railway Commissioners this day week on behalf of the Highland Railway Company. The Postmaster-General a.-ked the Commissioners to compel that Company to afford, as required by the Act of Parliament, “reasonable facilities” for carrying the letter-bags, which, —no doubt because they thought the payment insufficient —they had taken out of the proper train to weigh, subsequently dispatching the train without them, as time was up. Sir W. Harcourt contended that this was a case in which the Commissioners had no jurisdiction, on the ground that all questions of compensation were, under the Act, to be referred to arbitration, and that the delay was virtually a question of compensation. The AttorneyGeneral opposed this view, pointing out that it was not on the point of compensation, but on the point whether or not the company had afforded the State “ reasonable facilities” for carrying the mails, that the dispute arose ; and the Commissioners held with him, peremptorily overruling Sir W. Harcourt’s point as to jurisdiction, and orderingthc case to go on on its merits. But here Sir W. Harcourt had to ask for an adjournment, confessing that he was so much taken by surprise by the ruling of the Court that ho was not ready to proceed. In other words, he was so absurdly over-confident in his own very loose construction of an Act of Parliamedt, that he was not ready to defend the fortress when the outworks were taken. Loose impressions about his case, and immense confidence in holding them, hardly constitute the requisite qualities of a leader who is just about to “ supplant” Mr Gladstone.

Dr Pusey is plaintive about the Public Worship Regulations Act. His letter, addressed to the Associates of the Catholic Union, and published in the Times, is very melancholy in tone, though he is thankful, as a good man should be, that the Bill is no worse. Ho even congratulates himself on the fact that the function of the Bishops will bo to stop litigation—except, of course, when they let it go on—but Dr Pusey seems to have less fear of the “ indiscreet Bisnop ” than Mr Gladstone. Yet, on the whole, Dr Pusey is mournful. He fears very justly that the Act will encourage captious people

to vent their own bad tempers, “ as a matter of conscience,” in ecclesiastical complaints. He fears it will lead both to attacks and to the vindictive retaliation of attacks, and he ends by insisting on the necessity of cultivating humility and love. Not even the severest Protestant can doubt but that Dr Pusey is genuinely a very pious man. His advice to the Catholic Onion is truly Christian. We only hope the Catholic Union may take it, which we doubt; and that, if it does, Protestant Unions may imitate the Catholic Union, which we doubt quite as much. A controversy has been raging for a fortnight about the schools examination of the Conjoint University Board, in which there has been a good deal of sedulous ignoring of the true point. The Conjoint Board offer either —(1), to inspect the general work of schools, their teaching and training, and to report upon it—by far the most important offer they make, but also unfortunately at present the most costly one; or (2), to examine the highest division of a school, and report on the general work of that division—the offer second in importance, and second, too, in cost; or (3), to examine and report on the standard reached in any one subject or subjects of instruction ; or (4), to give “leaving”certificates to boys of eighteen, a good deal of choice being given as to the subjects to be prescribed, and a fee of £2 for each candidate charged for the examination. Dr Farrar, the headmaster of Marlborough School, writes to Monday’s Times as if these proposals were very dangerous to the individual genius of the schools, and would hand them over “ bound hand and foot to the Universities.” Now, such a remark certainly cannot apply to any one of the three first, and by far the most important proposals of the Conjoint Board—for each of these implies that the teaching is to be absolutely at the discretion of the authorities of the school, while an external inspection, professedly intended to be in sympathy with the methods adopted, is offered, on the very simple principle that a prudent man should let some one else audit his accounts. If preparation for the “ leaving examination” tends to cram, and to disarrangement of the school methods, let head masters use their influence against any preparation for it while the boys remain at school ; but we very much doubt whether it will have this tendency, so liberal is the choice of subjects offered by the Conjoint Board.

To us it seems that the one fatal defect of the new scheme is the costliness of the first three examinations, which will be most needed by the schools by which they are least attainable, schools, namely, whose reputation is small as yet, though it deserves to be large. Schools like Marlborough, Cheltenham, and so forth, do not stand much in need of University gauging or criticism ; yet they can easily pay for it, and will probably not choose to sacrifice the public fame it might gain for them. But the smaller grammar schools and better private schools will not be able to pay examiners at the rate demanded by the Universities, and so they will lose relatively by the costly proposal, instead of gaining by it. To those who have shall be given, and from those who have not shall be taken away even that which they have. A correspondent argues, in another column, that the only fairness would be to offer gratuitous school inspection, paid for out of the surplus revenues of the Universities. We doubt whether it would do to make it quite gratuitous. But assuredly it should be made so cheap as to be easily attainable by all respectable schools, unless the arbitrary preferences are to be not only sustained, but even aggravated. M. Bazaine has not improved his position by his appeal to the editor of the Nero York Herald. The Atlantic has been somewhere described as a vast Lethe, for those who cross it, as regards the people whom they meet on the other side ; but American opinion has not as yet much influence in rehabilitating those who conceive themselves wronged by European tribunals; and the New York Herald itself is hardly regarded as a true conduit to the highest and most equitable region of American opinion. Russian opinion is indeed that of which M. Bazaine himself, apparently, most values the testimony. He says—“ Its appreciation, of which lam very sensible, has often brought me precious consolation.” One act of justice, at least, must, he says, be rendered to M. Bazaine. “It is that I have imitated the conduct of the Emperor ; that I have never accused any one, or sought to cast responsibility on others.” In the very next paragraph he says—“ MacMahon was as unfortunate at Sedan as I at Metz, as Trochu and Ducrot at Paris, as Bourbaki and Clinchant in the East. He forgot all that when he became President of the Republic;” and the whole letter is full of similar insults or inuendoes. The Due d’Aumale is naturally assailed with a peculiar bitterness, to which he may be more or less reconciled when he reads the glowing eulogy passed on Marshal Leboeuf. The letter is utterly without historical value, except as an exhibition of a very coarse and vulgar character,

Mr Newdegate actually made a speech at Knowle, in Warwickshire, without once mentioning the Jesuits or Rome, although he was on a subject which must to his imagination have suggested these spectres so powerfully as Agriculture. Now Agriculture suggests seed, and seed suggests the enemy who sows tares with the wheat, so that Mr Newdegate’s mind must surely have been running most powerfully on the Jesuits all the time he spoke ; but still, by a strong constraint upon himself, he said nothing about them—and this, too, in spite of Lord Ripon’s conversion, which it must have sadly pained Mr Newdegate to hear his colleague, Mr Bromley Davenport, mention in this light vein :—“ He did not care whether Lord Ripou was a Protestant or a Roman Catholic. He had always considered him a moderate man as a Protestant, and had no doubt that he would turn out a very moderate Roman Catholic.” Mr Newdegate nevertheless, refrained his soul and kept it low, and kept silence even from good words. Can he be doing penance for any moral shortcoming 7 Penance seems too Romanising a process for Mr Newdegate, but anyway even he now is very difficult to understand. And till now, he has been almost the only simple phenonemon of our complicated life,