NOTES OF THE MONTH.

Globe, Volume V, Issue 549, 22 March 1876, Page 3

NOTES OF THE MONTH.

(Spectator, January 15.)

A little light upon the liquor question. At a meeting of the Church of England Teaiperairce Society, held at Liverpool on January 11th, and addressed by the Archbishop of York, it was mentioned by speaker afler speaker that there was one form of restriction which •the liquor trade would not seriously oppose, and that was the prohibition of new liquor houses in old districts The effect of such prohibition is of course to enrich all holders of existing licenses ; but that is not a moral evil, us the consequence of their wealth is to make ihetu most anxious to keep their houses respectable, lest their licenses should be forfeited. That scheme would not do much to improve the drinking habits of the country, though it would do something, but it would do a great deal towards securing thorough supervision, a police object of great importance. Nobody can keep order in a public-house like its landlord, and the bettor his receipts the more order he will keep. Half the viciousne3s of public-houses arises from a competition for custom.

Meetings against the new slave circular are being held all over the country, but the speakers all make the mistake into which Mr George Dixon has fallen at Birmingham He says the Government, ins'ead of reminding naval officers that her Majesty's ships were not meant for the reception of persons other than their crew- 5 , ought to have told them, " You will bear in mind that it will be your s'uty to receive such fugitive on board your ship, and to give him the protection of the British flag, until he can be lauded in some country or transferred to some ship where his liberty will be recognised and resp 'ctetl " That might be a noble policy to pursue, and one we could heartily approve, but then that is a new policy, not to be settled by an Admiralty Circular, but by Parliament. The point to be decided is whether the Admiralty have transgressed the law, and on that the experts have still to be heard. We suspect they have not, but have given it the interpretation of two possible interpretations which most favours slavery, or rather which produces least inconvenience to officials.

Mr E. Carleton lufncl), inspector of schools, objects altogether to the replacing of the Goliath and Warspito. Ha says ships for training schools are a mistake altogether. They have not room enough, are badly adapted for sanitary purposes, and are likely to take fire. A school on shore, with a model ship of full size in the school yard, is far better, and the boys not only learn all they can learn on board, but display the same readiness to go to sea. The plan has been tried at Mettray, and in the Central London District School at Norwood, and with complete success. Moreover, the boys displayed during a fire the same courage, readiness, and presence of mind. Mr Tufnell is an authority, but is he clear that discipline cm be enforced as strictly on shore as in a ship 1 It is in engraining the boys with the spirit- of discipline, and with the obedience and mutual reliance which it induces, that the training ships succeed, That Billy Bolton, aged thirteen, should order a bargeful of children to '• hold on" to a blazing vessel because more boys might escape i 3 admirable, but that the boys should obey him as the Goliath boys did is the result we want to secure. Billy was brave ; discipline in them beat fright. A correspondent of the Liverpool Bally Post tolls a story of the late Emperor Napoleon which looks true—it is so strangely characteristic of him. It was his chief amusement during his last illness to muse over a collection of the caricatures of himself which had been published during his reign and after his fall. The writer thinks he was so miserable, that he found pleasure only in nursing his sorrow ; but there is another explanation possible. The Emperor, who bad lived much with artiste, knew that caricaturists, if numerous, rarely fail to catch a man's inner weakness, and was studying the collection to discover the quality in himse'.f which he ought, in the interest of his dynasty, to have suppressed. Unfortunately, his first defects were such as no caricaturist catches. Neither Cham nor Tenniel could show that Napoleon disliked mental ability, and enjoyed before all indulgences the meditative inertia which the Arabs call hef. What tact some of these Irishmen have ! Mr Pope Hennessy, the new Governor of Barbadoes, has had, like every other Governor, to receive an address from the Bishop and his clergy. The addies3 was presented, and as it asked protection for 1 he Church, and Mr Hennessy is a decided Roman. Catholic, the situation was a little awkward, but the Governor turned it very neatly. He told the deputation that he had once when in Parliament travelled from the east of Europe night and day to vote against a proposal which attacked the Church of England, Arriving an hour or two before the

division, he made the vote, which would have been 274 to 273, an equal o"> e, and the Speaker, as usual, gave his vote for further consideration. Mi' Hennessey had, in fact, "saved the Church'' for that night, and was told by Mr Disraeli that his vote was a " significant incident in his career." The obvious deduction for the Bishop of B-tr-badoes was that the Governor would protect the Church in the colony, and he made it still more plain by declaring that he regarded the Anglican Church as "a breakwater against the tide of infidelity no;v unhappily rising in Europe," an opinion in which Dr Mitchison no doubt heartily coincided. Whether the Governor's admiration will gain many adherents for the Church in Barbadoes, where most people not churchmen are rather pronounced dissenters, is a different matcer.

One of the many difficulties which will beset any attempt to elect the House of Commons by equal electoral districts is the size of London. There is no principle, except the historic one, on which London can be refused a representation exceeding that of Scotland. She pays far more income tax —nearly one-third, indeed of the whole Income tax of England—and her population is slightly greater. According to the quinquennial report of the Registrar General, it is now 3,489,428, or, if we include the Outer Ring, 4,286,607, the formei number even being greater than that of the nineteen greatest provincial towns, which, though inadequately represented, still return twice as many members as the metropolis. The best proof that London is not fit for her natural place in the empire, is that she endures the preposterous unfairness to which she is subjected in the matter of representation without a murmur.

Mr C. S Read made a speech at Harleston on January 12tb, avowedly in answer to the Spectator's article upon his retirement. He was good-natured enough, though evidently hurt, but as he stated that he had entered the Ministry hoping (o be a good servant of the State and of the tenant farmers, he practically admitted our only serious charge With respect to details, he says he never said a single word in favour of the repeal of the Malt tax, beyond asking the Premier whether lie and his friends might not walk out of the House when Sir Stafford Northcote's proposals came on. He defended Government on the point in his speech to Ihe Chamber of Agriculture, and was hissed for his pains As to the local taxation, he hid thought and said that the concession made by Government was a fair instalment; while on the Agricultural Holdings Bill he had certainly been silent, but that was because he had been ordered to hold his tongue. We are very sorry if we have misdescribed Mr Eead "as a hedgehog instead of a Hodge," as he says, but it. has been from no waut of pains to understand him. We have read every reported speech of his to the farmers since his election, and we think, if he will look back to them, he will see that the spirit manifested iu his request to Mr Disraeli came out outside Parliament more Btrongly than he now remembers. The committee of the Marine Society recently accepted the Admiralty's offer of the Clio, screw corvette, belonging to the Medway steam reserve, as a tempojary substitute for the Warspite, and orders were given for the fitting out of the Olio for that purpose.