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    structions , and we need only thank him for reprinting in a-bold and legible type a memorandum of the great facts in the Ministerial history of the Last few months . What then do we find ? " We find that the Ministry was formed for the purpose of retrieving the discredit into which Mr . Disraeli and Lord Derby were said to have brought the Executive of this country by tampering with its accountability

    to Parliament ; for the purpose of maintaining unimpaired the commercial policy of Sir Uobert Peel ; and also for the purpose of introducing a variety of measures of improvement upon which all parties , even the moderate Conservatives , were agreed . The measures were Parliamentary Reform , Purgation of Corrupt Constituencies , Education for Scotland and England , Poor-law Reform , University Beform , Law Reform , Reform of c the Parliamentary Oath so as to admit Jews , and several other cognate measures of

    a minor order . But what are the practical results ? Many of these reforms , such as the sanitary , still renaain in the shape of good intentions . Some , like the University Reform , attempted in a fragmentary shape , applicable to Oxford alone , doubly or triply imperfect in their very nature , are slowly passing through committee ; in . which stage Ministers surrender detail after detail , permitting the Opposition or the cross-benches to supersede the leaders of the Legislature , and to share the direction of affairs . A more

    numerous series , like the bill for emancipating the Jews , the several bills for purging the eoirupt boroughs , the bills for conferring education on England and Scotland , and that for reconstructing the Parliamentary representation of the country , are thrown overboard . Ministers had a home policv of a

    moderate but a popular kind , embracing many objects dear to the wishes of the great majority of the English people ; and that policy entrusted to their care they have disposed of in the easiest and simplest manner m which a Ministry can dispose of its liabilities—they have thrown it over * .

    They have abandoned their domestic policy , and we are in sadness compelled to ask whether they are preparing also to abandon their English policy on the Continent ? We lay , indeed , little stress on the rumour that I ? rance has offered to take some thousand of the political prisoners in Rome , and to transport them to Cayenne ; for if that act were as true as some others not less nefarious which belong to the past , we still say that a course so foolish and suicidal in its wanton

    wickedness is incredible . But we hare- another more distressing fact in our mind , when we observo that Naples , the traitor Government , the tool and dependent of Austria , has been permitted quietly to slip into the neutrality alliance ; when we remember the too great probability that Naples -will claim the guarantees and immunities secured hy Austria through an alliance with the anti-llussian Governments ; and when we remember that

    Poerio still liea in prison , the victim , with hundreds or thousands of others ' , to studiously cruel confinement . We remember , too , the eloquent appeal nm < le by Mr . Gladstone to Lord Aberdeen and the British public on his behalf , when the writer was out of office , and had not Lord Aberdeen for his Premier . Already , therefore , some of our statesmen have abandoned their championship of popular

    interests on the Continent . Well , individual Ministers must sacrifice their own enterprise to tho collective counsel of a Cabinet ; but here again , on the English ground , wo find the entire * Ministry accused by tho Opposition , leader of having abandoned an entire policy at homo , and they are unable to givo a roply , either in excuse for tho past , or in re-aasuranco for the future !

    HOW TO BEGEST A MARRIAGE REFORM MOVEMENT . A coe . ee spoin"dent puts some questions which , are too important to be passed over in silence : — " It is not in the nature of things possible that so clear and forcible a statement of the duties of the ' aggrieved' under existing laws , as is contained in your article on the ' Wrongs of Women / should remain ^ without practical results .

    " May I , with a view to -these , and in the hope of eliciting something that will be generally useful , be permitted to ask one or two questions ? " First . In what degree can we be said to have the choice of submitting to ox resisting an injustice that affects not ourselves alone , but others , if we have any faith in national existence , and are conscious of duties towards posterity no less binding than those we o ~ we our contemporaries ?

    " Second . Why should not the believers in the necessity for Marriage-lav reform strengthen each other ' s hands by sympathy and co-operation ? Why should they not prepare for action -when the right time comes by establishing at once a thorough understanding among one another ? " Third . What are the means best calculated to bring about this good understanding ? How far is organisation desirable , and by what means attainable ? Earnestly hoping for a practical and explicit reply , " I am , Sir , yours , &c . " May 24 , IS 54 . "

    We answer our correspondent ' s questions seriatim , beginning -with that in the prefatory part of the letter . " We believe that however " clear and forcible' * our statement may have appeared to our correspondent , it -will not appear so to many , because a great number of persons do not understand the subject at all ; they have not been compelled by their own experience or incited by their own intellectual activity to inquire into it , and have

    taken up their opinions second hand . Threefourths of men active in society do so , and however they may reserve a few particular subjects for independent judgment , it seldom happens that that minority hit upon the same questions to be independent about . The consequence is , that all special questions command the attention , of very few people indeed

    —a fact which must materially influence the progress of any opinion upon such subjects , and ought to be kept in view to guide any agitation upon special questions . Of the three subsequent questions , the first would be answered , in each case , by discovering the proportion which the interest of posterity has in any course of our own . There is no doubt that our actions are the

    germ of the actions of posterity—that the mass of opinion and conduct of the present day is the source of opinion , and even of institutions , at a future day . But it is a class of subjects on which the idea 3 are necessarily so vague , so diversified , and so conflicting , that effectively very little force can be gained upon our present course of conduct by looking to the rights of posterity . Even in so simple and material a question as that of finance , the interest of posterity has a very inadequate influence ; but in the class of questions under consideration , where men cannot

    determine what their own convictions and interests are , it is scarcely possible that they can agree what will be the interests and convictions of posterity . There ia another ground , however , on which we must to somo extent abstain from meddling with the responsibilities and liabilities of posterity . It ia , that ii

    thero bo anything progressive in education and opinion , posterity will bo much better able to judge of ita own institutions than wo can for it . "We are daily contending with laws made by our ancestors in days before printing and mail-coaches , to say nothing of gas , railways , and electric telegraphs . Some , even of the absurdities of tho Marriage-law , may bo traced to the apparent necessities of

    society under institutions and national creeds , bearing little resemblance with our own at the present day . There is , however , one duty towards posterity , as simple as it is great , —constantly violated yet easy to be understood ; and if those who are conscientious would seize firm , hold of this one principle , they wouldwe

    , believe , do a greater service to mankind and to the future than by any specific laws . Ifc is , not to presume the convictions of posterity , and simply to abstain from making any laws , intended to be irrevocable ^ for the observance of generations beyond tKosecwhicb we can see rising up within our own / Hfetime . r

    Here , indeed , we touch upon the greatest evil of the , present day—the making of too much law , especially of prospective law . Lefc us remember , that every additional enactment devised by man , say , for some enabling purpose , is tolerably sure to carry with it many disenabling collateral effects , which are

    not foreseen . In the natural organism there is no portion of the frame that does not carry with itself the vital power of accommodation to the circumstances essentially natural to our being ; whereas , every article of clothing that we put on , made b y art , wears out * ' shrinks , stretches , tears , is outgrowth fcna entails some infliction or some deterioration

    of the natural power . Yet in . our servile submission tb conventional dictates ) we not only take pride in the costume with wl&cfa we burden ourselves , "but positively we undertake to make slop clothing for po ' sterity-The difficulty in a practical reply to the third question would be ^ the "thorough understanding . " Men desire to strengthen their own hands by the co-operation of others , but they have no corresponding wish tb

    strengthen other men ' s hands for the enforcement of other men ' s views . Everjr man is Ms own pope , and it is particularly bo On moral questions . We have practical instances before us , more or less known to the public The reason is , that most moral questions are in themselves intricate , and are rendered more so , in the firsfc place , by the circtimstance that they take their rise in physical questions , which are very little understood ,

    on account of the infancy of any really comprehensive physiology ; and , in the second place , beca / use they are complicated with" < a number of conventional arrangements , the sudden or sweeping interruption of which would be personally inconvenient , and is , in , contemplation , personally alarming . But in any complicated question , handled by any judgment which is otherwise than very cool and very patient , there is a disposition summarily to supply the place of clear perception and well-established conviction by provisional

    presumptions ; and a very large proportion of the moral convictions of society at the present time are made up in part , no doubt , of genuine , well-considered opinion , but for the rest , of presumption . Now , deference for existing usage , and for the opinion of otliers , is laudable for its motive and practical influence , and ought to be encouraged . Bufc presumption , when it is made to pass for conviction , becomes absolutely worthless and actively mischievous . If any man could but survey tho general schedule of his own knowlodge , of his experiences , and so-called convictions , strike out from them everything which is no better than presumption , and place all such supposititious convictions in a separate schedule , which might bo called " provisional rules for conduct in default of conviction , " ho would emancipate his mind from the grossest slavery which hinders the present freedom and the progress of mankind . Presumptions—things which we supposo to exist when their existence ia not known tc us—necessities which we take on trust oi

    Untitled Article

    w June 3 , 1864 . ] THE LEADER . 6 lf .

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), June 3, 1854, page 517, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2041/page/13/