NOTES OF THE MONTH.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 271, 24 April 1875, Page 3

NOTES OF THE MONTH.

(From the Sjjectatnr.) Mr Lowe has replied in the Times to an attack of Lord Russell’s on “the bandits” of the Cave of Adullura. Mr Lowe points out that he took the same line on the proposal to reduce the franchise in the debate of 1860, before Lord Palmerston’s death, when m Government measure was before the House, and when there was consequently no question of loyalty or disloyalty; that so far from gaining by his resistance to reform, he fully expected 10 exclude himself personally from office in Liberal Governments by his policy; that he nevertheless declined Lord Derby’s advances to him from the Conservative side; and that he “certainly had not the least right to expect the kind and generous treatment he received from Mr Gladstone on the formation of the late Ministry.” He reproves Lord Russell for not taking the beam out of his own eye, instead of devoting himself to the examination of the mote in Mr Lowe’s; in other words, for not explaining his own abrupt disloyalty to the Government of Lord Aberdeen during the Crimean war, and his subsequent retirement —not “in the following year,” by the way, as Mr Lowe says, but in the same year—after his blunders at Vienna, from the Cabinet of Lord Palmerston. That is all very well, though it would have been even better omitted, but why does Mr Lowe speak of the last event as due to “ the very serious imputations” on Lord John’s conduct? That is a phrase which sounds more like imputations of corruption than imputations of weakness and vacillation. But we never heard that any one charged Lord John’s Austrianising conduct at Vienna with any worse characteristics than complete want of clearness, firmness and diplomatic courage. The German Landsturm Bill is cot yet law, but it has passed the second reading, and is supported by all the Union Liberals. The Military party appear to have carried all their propositions, and to have placed the whole nation at the disposal of the Emperor. All men between twenty and fortytwo may be called out, should an enemy invade or threaten to invade the country, and may be drafted into the Land wehr, which, it must be remembered, is intended as a reserve for general service. This last provision disposes of the difficulty about officers, as the Landwehr is sufficiently officered, and can of course absorb as many men as it may lose. All the able-bodied men in Germany, in fact, may be used as soldiers, and the Government has old needle guns on hand sufficient for them all. Of course no Government would disorganise society completely by calling out its whole population, but the law will enable Germany to face two powers at once. Moreover, the Emperor is empowered to call out the Landsturm of any particular district by itself, so that in the event of sedition, say in Posen or Silesia, all the able-bodied men could at once be placed under military law in its most stringent form. It is difficult to imagine how any nation can bear such a strain, but the law has been voted by the entire Liberal party. It was opposed only by the Catholics. Mr Forster made an important speech on the commercial relations of Canada with the United States, at the annual soiree of the Bradford Chamber of Commerce. He began by recommending the people of Bradford to exhibit at the Philadelphia Exhibition of next year, even though they should think, with him, that of commercial exhibitions, as a general rule, there have been enough and to spare. Still the Americans _ were good customers, and very hospitable as friends; and besides this, their inventions were very numerous and clever, and an agreement between the United States and Great Britain on the Patent Laws was very desirable. Moreover the Americans are still hazy on the subject of free trade,. and nothing would be more likely to clear up their haziness than for them to see our goods and the prices at which we can afford to sell them, especially as Philadelphia is the centre of the Protectionist interest. Mr Forster also observed that the reciprocity treaty between Canada and the United States was not likely to pass, the Senate of the United States having apparently reported against it. He did not think Canada would suffer much by the loss. The high duties on Canadian produce injured the people of the United States much more than the people of Canada, whose fish and timber the United States could not do without; and he thought the high duties would tend much more to free trade than reciprocity treaties. He did not think that England ought to assent in any case to a differential duty imposed bv Canada in favour of the United States and unfavourable to England, nor did he believe that any person of influence in Canada entertained any dream of so unfair a proceeding. On the whole, he thought the United States would learn most by being left to suffer from protection, but Canada must assuredly always treat the mother country at least as fairly as she treats her great neighbour. Mr Forster added a few words on Mr Gladstone’s retirement, which were wisely reticent, though they were earnest. “It was only those who had been brought into close personal contact with .him who knew the high personal example he had set of absolute sincerity—the absolute want of selfishness and of self-seeking in the manner in which he had conducted political business—what an example of self-sacrifice, purity, and disinterestedness he had set politicians throughout the country, and to what extent he had raised the tone of political life.” That was a just tribute; none the less so that Mr Gladstone seems to have aided a new joy to political vituperation, as well as this new earnestness to political duty. There are even those who describe his resignation as at once a necessity and a caprice, a duty and a sin—who are furious with any one who thinks he could have led with success, and more furious with any one who thinks his resignation justifiable. It is the natural effect of a great character to intensify both the sympathies and antipathies of political life. The Prussian Lantag, which has just met, is told that it is to consider a measure for giring Roman Catholic congregations complete authority to deal with the property of the Church. “It is very urgent,” says the Address from the Throne, “that Catholic congregationa should be enabled to look after the administration of Church property, and entrust the same to persons elected by themselves. A Bill en this head will reach you as soon as possible.” That will test fairly the disposition of the laity. If they obtain real power and use it in the Roman Catholic sense, they will defeat the Falck laws yel. If they secretly favour the Falck laws, this measure will be a new blow at the power of the priests,—as, no doubt, it is intended to be,

Is the Government literally going to do nothing ? Everybody expected a local Government measure, but it appears, from a speech of Mr Clare Rean to his constituents, delivered at Harleston on Wednesday evening, that Government do'-s not intend to touch the question this session. His words were “He had read in the paper that Mr Cecil Raikcs, in a speech to his constituents at Chester, had said they were going to have a great reform of local taxation next session. That was the first whisper he had heard about it, and had it been contemplated, he almost fancied that they would have known something about it at the Local Government Board. He could only say that beyond the consolidation of the Sanitary Acts and the amendments of the Adulteration Act, and one or two smaller measures, he did not think their department—the Local Government Board—would have “ a very conspicuous part to play in the Parliament.” We gather from the same speech that there is to be a Tenure Bill, and suspect, but only suspec*, for this is not in Mr Read's department, that the great difficulty of that Bill has been got over by a compromise. There is to be one year’s notice to quit instead of Mr Disraeli’s two years, but the landlords surrender the right to contract themselves out of the Bill. There is also to be compensation for unexhausted improvements. Archbishop Tait has made a speech at Faversham, in which, taking advantage of the presence of Nonconformists at the reopening of the newly decorated church where he had just been preaching, he insisted earnestly on the value of the principle of comprehension, and the impossibility that if private thought is to be exercised at all, everybody can possibly come at the present time to the same view of theological truth. This is a view which the Roman Catholics think almost childish, and perfectly inconsistent with the central idea of Revelation. A writer, for instance, in Catholic Opinion of this week, pointing some rather lively satire against ourselves for the remark that Protestants believe the Providence of God to have been steadily guiding men to see the falsehood of the Church’s claim to Infallibility. How, say the Catholics, can God be supposed to reveal that of which He takes pains afterwards to show us that there is no clear, authoritative, intellectual interpretation ? The answer seems to us very simple, namely, that what was revealed was primarily something spiritual—a divine character and purpose—and only secondarily, as the result of the reflection of the human intellect upon it, a set of dogmatic truths. Where is the paradox in saying, with Archbishop Tait, that the spiritual character revealed is permanent and identical, while the intellectual inferences of men from it are always likely to vary, though, of course, as in relation to any other objective fact, they must eventually tend to converge on a single and consistent explanation, as the faculties employed in drawing these inferences become more universally educated 7 The Roman Catholic idea seems to be that the dogmatic truth is the central matter, and the spiritual influence its consequence. Dr Tait and all true Protestants put it the other way—that revelation appears primarily to the spirit and conscience, only secondarily to the systematic understanding. The Trades Union Congress have shown moderation and sagacity in more than one direction; Mr Cremer brought in it a fierce charge against some members of the Congress that they had “ sold themselves” to the enemies of labour in relation to the appointment of the Royal Commission for examining into the Law of Conspiracy and the Law of Master and Servant. The colleagues of Mr Cremer demanded a private investigation of his charge, and when it appeared that he had no evidence at all to bring, the Congress expelled him. Nothing can be wiser than this firm resistance to the spirit of vague and frantic suspicion. That spirit has always, both in the French Revolution and in other revolutionary eras, been the bane of true liberty. Men who can freely invent imaginary “ traitors to liberty” are usually men who do not know what liberty means, —how much moderation, and self-control, and equity of judgment it really implies.