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    .. ~) ? r i.j. A iVY lVrt U ^XjU ttUl HI IJJE ivlTFlW __.

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    npHERE appears to be no loophole by which Lord X Derby can hope to escape from the unpleasant task of bringing forward something in . the shape of a Reform Bill . It is generally believed , in fact , that he has accepted the ugly necessity and set to work to make the best of a bad bargain . One very significant sign of activity we have in the care with which certain important preparations for a hard struggle are being made by the leaders of the Conservative party , as we must , for the present at least ,

    con-Sir John Trelawny , at Tavistock , on Tuesday last , pointed to a fact which is growing up into a dangerous abuse , and this is the warning moral he draws from it : the Lords consider themselves too high and mighty for the consideration of public questions ; and he thinks it will be a question whether three persons shall be allowed . to make . a House of Lord 3 , ' while in the Commons forty persons are required to make a House , " for I don ' t think , " he says , " ought to be allowed to vote . from a

    mere cursory view of the subject , without having mastered the evidence . It is in the power of members who may be absent in different countries to place their proxies in the hands of any given member who happens to have prejudged the question , and for the future the House of Lords must take care that if it runs counter to public questions year after year , dangerous questions may arise , some of which may be considered to be fatal to the British Constitution . "

    Other public events of the week , however , will attract more general attention than those which are merely political . Decidedly the most interesting of these has been the inauguration of the Newton statue at Grantham , on Tuesday , and it will be memorable as much from the circumstances by which it was attended as on its own account . After the lapse of one hundred and thirty-one years , from the time of Newton ' s death , a statue has been erected in the town in which the greatest original thinker which the world has yet seen in science received the

    rudiments of his school education . Upon the uncovering of this memorial , Lord Brougham delivei-ed such an address as perhaps no other man now living could have pronounced . The fame of Newton can neither be augmented nor diminished by anything which anybody could say on an occasion like that of Tuesday ; but there is room to question whether anybody better than Lord Brougham could set forth his greatness and the abundant reasons which England and the whole world have to honour and revere his memory .

    How the great masters of science deserve to be honoured and revered was more generally illustrated by Professor Owen in his inaugural address at the opening of the twenty-eighth session of the British Association at Leeds on Wednesday evening . Most able and impressive was the call which he made for State protection and assistance for the labourers in pure science , and noble was the array of services already rendered by them to the world he set forth in support of their claims . By a far-seeing Minister , ho truly said , " the man of science will

    be regarded with a favourable eye , not less for the unlooked-for streams of wealth that have already llowed , but for those that may in future arise , out of the applications of the abstract truths to the discovery 61 which' lie devotes himself . " Of the future of ono branch of scionco , Professor Owen draws a grand picture , mid every day wo see it growing into the shape he describes . "It is impossible to foresee , " he says , "to whnt extent

    chemistry inny not ultimately , in the production of things needful , supersede the present vital agencies of nature , by laying under contribution tho accumulated Toroos ' 6 f past rifips , " which '" would thus briablb us to obtain in a small manufactory , and iu a few days , effects whioh oan bo realised from tho present natural agencies only when they are exerted upon vast areas of land and through considerable periods of time . " Suoh arc tho aspirations and tho usos of pure science , worthily fostered by the British Association . .

    In nnoi her Held of experimental labour we have had tho Marchioness of Londonderry g iving an acoount of hoi" labours . It is hor Ladyship ' s wont once u year to assemble tho tenants and . workpeople on hor Mali estates ul , a , dimior . ftiul QiitllpflQ . occasions she performs what she takoa to bo hor duty us a landlord—numoly , to road her guests a lecture upon their habits ami conduct during the past year . This year tho lcoturo is n liltlo sharp , for hor Ladyship lias beqn disappointed of certain rosulis for whioh sho looked—sho had instituted prizes fur pardons , and who has boon " obliged to give up tho llowor show ; " hor tenants , sho thinks ,

    tinue to call them for convenience' sake . It is said that the registration courts are being " worked" by thenV with the closest attention to the state of the voting lists , with an eye to the possibility of a general election . Concurrent with the intelligence which reaches us on this subject , we have other intelligence , to the effect that the Liberals are hardly yet sufficiently awake to the importance of this move to make up differences , and systematically to meet it and neutralise its effect by the countermove which is ready to their hands . But whatever the remissness of those to whom the country

    naturally looks as the leaders of the present , as they have been of past , Reform movements , the country , as we have shown in another place , will riot be content to have the question of Reform played fast and loose with by either Liberals or Conservatives , but will demand a measure woi : tl 2 y to represent / the great changes that have taken place in the moral and material condition of the-country since the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832 ^ At present we . have no intimation of the scope of the forthcoming Government measure ; but , as we have said , it must be thoroughly comprehensive and worthy of the conditions under which it has been called for to find acceptance from

    the people . Mr . Newdegate , at Coventry , on Monday , was at considerable pains to assure the licensed victuallers of that ancient city that there were no reasons why Conservatives should not be the representatives of progressive policy . " When others tell you , " he said , " that a Conservative has no right to speak of progress , pay no attention to them . " And he said further , that he desired to sec all classes of the community advance , his sentiments being those which at the prosent moment appear to animate tho breasts of all the foremost men of

    his party . The difficulty which appears to stand in the way of a general acceptance of these new professions of faith on the part of such representative men as Mr . Newdegate is , that they will not admit that they arc making any new profession of faith at all . On tho contrary , they insist that they have always been of the same way of thinking—as beoamc Conservatives—without giving us any explanation as to the contradiction which , to unconservative minds , has appeared between their

    lovo of progress and their practical opposition to it at every step taken during tho quarter of a century since—after they had twice defeated the Reform Bill—that measure was wrested from their strangling clutoh by main force . Tho only limits whioh tho new progressionists , speaking by tho lips of Mr . Nowclegato , put to their aspirations for popular advancement are "tho principles which constitute safety ; " but it is precisely at the definition of that word that Conservatism has stuok , and romainod a

    portiiiaoious obstruction in tho path of " progress " hitherto . If , however , Conservatism oaniiow give a sufficiently liberal meaning to it , tho country will - ~ - « - ~ willin £ l ; yHb 0 ^ and will acoopt a Reform Bill from his chief . But tho fact is , that tho only dangor whioh is ever likely to inonnoo tho constitution is the pesti-; forous opposition of tho Conservatives of tho Upper House to the progross for whioh the oountry , on . various questions , has long ovinood its readiness .

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    might have done more to improve their cottages and might have exhibited more signs of thrift anc frugality . Lady Londonderry , without doubt , h actuated by the very best intentions , but it is noi quite clear that she has the right to be " disappointed" in the short-comings of her cottiers and Labourers—the standard she jud g es them by maj be altogether inapplicable , . under the circumstances of their-condition ; at all events , the sharp lecture on thriftiness and abstemiousness never did and

    never will come well from those who , like her Ladyship , are exalted above the necessity of ever practising those virtues which the poor man is compelled in some way or another to practise every daj of his . In truth , there is nothing for Lady Londonderry to be " disappointed" at in the failure of her little plan of social reform ; much greater schemes of a like kind have failed , and yet—as even her Ladyship admits—the " progress" made within the last few years has been wonderful .

    We have the amplest proof in the statistics of the country , social and commercial . From the disasters of the last and preceding year we are recovering so rapidly , that , from the accumulation of our national stock of capital , we are in some danger of bringing about a reaction by plunging too hastily into business for the purpose of employing our idle money . The Bank of England coffers are overflowing , and it is the same with those of the Bank of France , and the danger is alike in both countries . It is a danger , however , brought about by an excess of that blessing which few will regret to witness—abundance of stored money .

    Among other new schemes which may and tueir way into the money-market , is one of peculiar interest . The Great Eastern Steam Navigation Company are looking about for means of finishing their vessel and getting her to sea , or of getting her off their hands altogether . They propose to form a new company , and to raise sufficient new capital for their purpose under the Limited Liability Act . The original shareholders are to have the first offer of the new shares , and in the event of their declining to take them up , then the shares are to be offered in the London market . With regard to the Atlantic -Telegraph , nothing has been decided upon ,

    and the only progress ihat has been made towards a solution of the . difficulty has been the examination of the cable by Mr . Varley , the electrician to the International Telegraph Company , who has discovered that the present conducting wire is muclx too thin for the work which the cable was designed to accomplish . The flaw , which has led to a partial , if not fatal , stoppage of electrical communication , is , according to his discovery , somewhere between 250 and 300 miles from Valentia . One of the most stirring pieces of the week's news came to the public by the . unusual way of private correspondence in the Times ; it was , that the convicts at Portland , 1500 in number , were within an ace of an oiitbreak , when they had arranged to murder their guards , to burn down their prison buildings , to plunder the villages

    in the neighbourhood , and then to escape as they best might . The authorities , put on their guard by ouo of tho ' convicts ' , -made such arrangements as enablod them to overpower the conspirators at the moment of their rising j but their chance of escape has been a very narrow one . Tho cause of the threatened tmettte was some fancied difference in tho relative punishment of prisoners convicted under different modifications of the law in 1853 and 1857 ; men sentenced between those years to " transportation , " but kept at home under a commuted sentence ; not appearing to enjoy a proportionate remission of their sentence , like other prisoners . The outbreak , however , oannot but bo regarded as casting a doubt on that system whioh Colonel Jebb was lately defending against the competition of a different system under Captain Walter Crofton in Ireland .

    Neither tho Russian Government nor the Qovornmqnt of Sardinia has vouchsafed any direct information on the subject of Villafranoa j but from the Piodmontcso official journal wo gather that Sardinia has gratuitously given to Russia the use of some old buildings formerly use , cl as a conyjjop estal 51 Ts 1 vmcnt ; time 'tlicro is no " contract or Joaso of any kind , and that Russia will have tho uso of those buildings as a coaling station only so long as it shall bo agreeable to Sardinia . We have just roooivod intolflgonce from Paris to thooOoot that similar con ; vonionccs have boon nooordod to Russia at a port in the Gulf of Lepanto by tho Greek Government . Tho plot ; thickens .

    .. ~) ? R I.J. A Ivy Lvrt U ^Xju Ttul Hi Ijje Ivltflw __.

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    Untitled Article

    No . 444 , September 25 , 1858 . ] _ TgE LEABEB , _ 987

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 25, 1858, page 987, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2261/page/3/