NOTES OF THE MONTH.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 211, 11 February 1875, Page 4

NOTES OF THE MONTH.

{From the Spectator.)

The French Assembly commenced its session on November 30th, but the President’s Message was not read till December 3rd, The Marshal tells the Deputies that no Foreign Power doubts his sincere desire to remain on friendly terms with all the Cabinets, that the harvest has been the largest yet known, that the Government bas specially endeavoured to make the taxes yield all they can, and that fiscal laws intended to prevent frauds will be submitted to the Assembly, While travelling through some Departments of France, he had noticed “ the desire that an organisation admitted by the Assembly to be indispensable should give to the Power created by the law of November 20th the strength which it requires,” and he trusts that the Deputies will come to an agreement upon it; but if they do not, the Marshal is “ only a means of social defence and national recovery.” He is “ not there to serve the aspirations of any party,” but “ will not desert the post in which the Assembly has placed him," but “ occupy it until the last day with immutable firmness and scrupulous •i Respect for law.” It is believed that the was originally much more peremptory, and that at present the Govern,mcnt do not hope for a majority on the Con- ; stitutional Laws. The Comte de Chambord has desired his friends not to vote for anything that may impede a Restoration, and it is understood that the Right, with part of the Right Centre, will tin refore oppose the organisa tion of the Septennate. This renders tin passing of any Constitutional Laws impossible, and ought to compel Marshal AtaoMahos and hie Government to lean upon

the Left Centre and Left; but they prefer, it is believed, to remain as they are, and go on administering affairs without a steady majority in the Legislature. They conceive that no party is strong enough to carry its own programme, or force a dissolution, or depose the Maisbal, and that they consequently have only to wait on. This view is probably sound, but the policy founded on it leaves France without a Gove nment, and exposed to all the risks which would attend the death or even the illness of an officer no longer young. France might be thrown into anarchy because a stout elderly man had an apoplectic stroke. That situation cannot be regarded as a triumph of political skill, but it appears to be unavoidable. Slavery, as a legal institution to be enforced by Courts or police, has been abolished on the Gold Coast. On 3rd November Governor Strahan called the native Chiefs of the Protectorate together, and after recapitulating the recent exertions and expenditure of the Queen in their behalf, told them that in return she and her people expected that slavery should cease. “ The Queen does not desire to take any of your people from you; those of them who like to work for and with and to assist you can remain with you. If they are happy, and continue to live with you on the same terms as now, no change will be forced upon you; but any person who does not desire to live with you on those terms can leave, and will not be compelled by any Court, British or native, to return to you.” The Governor added, that although when the Queen had spoken, their business was to obey, he would listen to any representations. The Chiefs, who had previously been consulted, yielded, but asked for a continuance of a right to keep the slaves who were not maltreated, and to pawn slaves. Both requests were, in substance, refused, though explanations were given which the bulletin writer has misunderstood. It is evidently, as we have, shown elsewhere, the Indian anti-slavery scheme which has been adopted, and under that ■icherne no slave ow er need enfranchise hi* slaves, but if I hey disobey or depart, no official will restore them. Slavery, even of the voluntary kind, will probably disappear in a short time, as a si >,ve who cannot be struck, or starved, or sold, or pawned, is a slave who has only to sit still to make himself a burdensome nuisance to his owner.

By a circular read in the Roman Catholic churches on Sunday, November 29th, Archbishop Manning explained to the faithful of his Churcn that as both the Immaculate Conception and the infallibility of the Pope had been defined by infallible authority, and the definitions properly published, all “ who openly refuse to believe the said doctrines.” yet “ persist, nevertheless, in nailing themj -Ives Catholics,” and “ give out that they go to confession and go to communion in the Catholic Church,” are deceiving the clergy by such practices.” and “that in every such •orifession and communion they commit a '‘acrilege, to their own greater condemnation,” That is, we suppose, a mild way of drawing the attention cf the priests to the fact that the anti-Infallibilists are out of communion with the Church, and cannot be absolved without retracting their disbelief ■md confessing their sin in persisting in such disbelief. Rome could hardly have done less in such a juncture. And the little that is done has a curious air of anxiety and hesitation about it.

Bishop Clifford (of Clifton) also issued a pastoral on Nov. 29th which seems intended to find voice for those Loyal Roman Catholics who are opposed to the reigning school of the Vatican. He begins by observing on the number of Roman Catholics who have served the state loyally since Emancipation, and who have practically proved that to 'heir ears civil allegiance represents a sacred duty. He then goes on to remark that a l l human actions are moral actions, but it by no means follows from that that they belong to the sphere of spiritual power. It is moral to pay taxes, but the Pope has no more power to assess taxes than he has to sit and deliver judgment in the Court of Queen’s Bench. The relations between the temporal and the spiritual power arc already fixed by him, and he has no more power to unfix them than to make right wrong or wrong right. He is infallible in defining doctrines of faith or morals, but for that very reason he cun no more contradict himself than Euclid in his second book can prove the falsehood of a proposition in the first. That is an intelligible view enough—if only the Popes had always held it. But what is to be said to definitions such as that cited by a writer in the new Macmillan from the Bull Unam Sanctaml Has not the Pope there defined expressly as a doctrine that he, as Pope, has absolute power over all civil rulers?—and if so. how can any Pope have denied that he had that power, except by a collision of in fallibilities, which, as Euclid says, is absurd? Nevertheless, while the Roman Catholic Church continues, Bishop Clifford’s sc.V'ol in it is. no doubt, the school which will lead to the least trouble with modern States;

The Benchers of Gray’s Inn have disbarred Dr Kenealy for publishing in a journal, which he is advertised on the face of the journal to edit, libellous statements about the Queen’s Judges, There can be no doubt that the insults poured upon some of the Judges in the Englishman have been outrageous, or that the Benchers have acted according to their rules in disbarring Dr Kenealy, who has, as it were, tempted his fate, but we cannot help wishing that each inn would transfer this power to a sworn sub-committee possessing more of a judicial and less of an accidental character. We can imagine cases in which a barrister might be deprived of his living, because his enemies outnumbered his friends, and the right of petitioning the Judges is in this case—a very unusual one, no doubt—the right of petitioning the colleagues of the men alleged, and truly alleged, to have been insulted. Suppose anybody else had published the same insults, he could only have been tried. It is said the Benchers act like officers on a court-martial, but a court-marlial is a sworn court, governed by most landing traditions, bound to act on evidence, and in most instances hearing that evidence in public.

It is stated that Marshal Serrano intends himself to take the command against the Harlists, and that 20,000 men of the Reserves have been forwarded to the North. As Marshal Serrano is by no means the ablest of Spanish Generals, this would mean that he was unwilling to trust a large army to a competent subordinate, lest, when once victorious, the General should make a jh'Onunciamento on his own account, but we greatly question its accuracy. Most of these reports are put forward to amuse the public, which accuses the Government of wilfully protracting the war, whereas it is only delaying, in the hope of winning

through a “ transaction,” instead of risking a battie which might involve the fate of all Spain. If the latest story is true, however, (his policy cannot be continued long. The Treasury is in such a state, it is said, that (lie pay of the Civil Service has stopped entirely, and as the interest on the debt is suspended and the clerical budget never paid, the entire resources of the State are devoted to the Array, which is too much occupied in the ,Nonh to maintain order elsewhere. Even Spain cannot bear such a situation many months. The elections for the Municipality of Paris have ended in a triumph for the Radicals, Out of the eighty wards into which Paris is divided, sixty-six at least have returned Radicals, sixty-three of the candidates <>n M. Gambetta's list in the Itcj)7ibli(pie Francaise having been successful, while three not on his list are known to be of very extreme opinions. There are only twelve Conservatives in all, and yet the vote was a heavy one. The Councillors, however, though Radical, cannot fairly be described as Red, and they will, it is expected, be moderate in action, as the Government, with the strong garrison at its back and the state of siege still existing, would not hesitate to supersede the elected body by a Municipal Commission The late Council contained a majority of Republicans, but they did nothing violent, and established, at a heavy cost no doubt, an equilibrium in the budget of the city. Paris is now as heavily weighted in proportion as Great Britain—that is, it owes nearly ten years of its revenue—and taxation on its present lines can scarcely be pushed further. Mr W. Rathbone has published a plan of local government which would he thinks, remedy many evils and attract to it many superior men. He would divide the counties into convenient districts, and in each district he would have a Council, to be elected, onefifth by the magistrates, two-fifths by the ratepayers who elect guardians, and twofifths by the householders at large. To this Council he would entrust all powers now exercised by any local Board, including the control of education, and he contends that it would make an excellent municipality for all but the laigest towns. We fear that unless the district is conterminous with the Parliamentary division of a county, it would never be sufficiently watched, and would require some strong check on its expenditure and taxation. We should prefer making the Magistrates a second Court, with power of veto whenever a measure had not been carried by a two-thirds majority. Even then it would be necessary to restrict the power of getting into debt, which is going to be the temptation of our municipalities. They can “ place” their bonds too easily. Vice-Admiral the Honourable Joseph Denman, who died on November 26th, was one of a family who have served England well in many different relations, and though he had for several years before his death been incapacitated by illness of a type like that which closed the life of his father—the Chief Justice of England—formerly he had honorably distinguished himself by very gallant efforts to put down that horrible traffic to the extinction of which his father’s best legislative and legal efforts had been directed —the Slave Trade. When a young man of about thirty years of age, being the senior naval officer on the West Coast of Africa, he took upon himself the responsibility of entering into a treaty with the native chiefs by virtue of which the whole of the slave fac tories were destroyed, the white offenders expelled, and the slaves, 900 in number, recovered, taken to Sierra Leone, and emancipated. In short, the late Admiral Denman was at once one of those gallant sailors whose spirit has made the British Navy great, and one of those Liberal philanthropists whose noble exertions have made England just.

We are sorry to hear that the Bishop of Oxford (Dr Mackarness) inhibited Bishop Colenso from preaching in the City Church of Oxford on Sunday, Nov. 2"th, so that the sermon he would have preached was read for him by the Hector, and a very excellent s rmon it appears to have been. The clergyman who seems to have procured this inhibition ca'led Dr Colenso a “deposed bishop and an excommunicated heretic,” bnt he did so in defiance of all law, for the ecclesiastical trial by which Dr Colenso was said to be deposed had no validity, and was, moreover, so unjudicial, that Bishop Thirlwall went out of his way in one of his charges to condemn the proceeding. Bishop Mackarness has been always understood to be a moderate man, and he should reflect that *he State Church can scarcely last, if its Bishops throw stigmas in this reckless way on other Bishops whom the Church has sent out, and who have never been found guilty of any heresy or other offence, except by a Court which had no jurisdiction, and by virtue of a judgment passed upon principles which would equally condemn a large number of the best clergymen of our Church. The Dean of Westminster, with his usual gallantry, selected the Sunday on which this stigma had been cast on Dr Colenso to pass upon him a ver> warm eulogium, in the pulpit of Westminster Abbey, After a hearty panegyric on two great Missionaries, Bishop Patteson and Dr Livingstone, the Dean went on:—“ Such an one (if I may for a moment speak of one who in this respect stands in the foremost rank of living missionaries; is the South African Bishop, who, of all who have gone to that distant land, has given to it the fullest and largest share of his laborious life; who was among the first of the colonial Bishops to translate the Holy Scriptures into the native language of those whom he was sent out to instruct; who, by dealing with his simple converts not as inferiors, but as companions and fellow-Christiane, had the grace to learn from them with a new force some old truths, which, though sometimes pushed to excess, have since been, in principle, almost accepted at home, who stands conspicuous among the missionaries of our time for (he noble self-forgetfulness with which he has sacrificed his dearest prospects, and severed valuable friendships cemented by the most trying circumstances, in order to vindicate the rights of a barbarian tribe, which (whether with or without ground. I do not say), he believed to been un justly treated through the misapprehension or misjudgment of his fellow-colonists.” With such praise uttered in Westminster Abbey—with his sermon read in the City Church of Oxford—and occupying as he did, by the permission of the Master of Balliol, the pulpit of that college (where Dr Mackarness has no jurisdiction) on the afternoon of the same Sunday, Dr Colenso will hardly remember that he was inhibited from preaching by the narrowness of the Bishop, whose virtual excommunication will now be seen to be as ineffectual as it was unworthy.