THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (continued).

Mr Lowe's Budget—The Surplus disappears—Mr. Lowe creates a Surplus and proposes Remissions of Taxes—Cost of the Abyssinian Expedition—Sir Stafford Northcote's Explanation—The Endowed Schools' Bill—Speech of Mr. Forster—The Commissioners—Religious Tests at the Universities—Sir John Coleridge's Bill—Sir Roundell Palmer's Speech—The Bill passes through the Commons—It is rejected by the Lords—The Mayor of Cork—The O'Sullivan Disability Bill—Mr. O'Sullivan resigns—The Bill dropped—Life Peerages—Lord Malmesbury's Speech—Fenianism in Ireland—Deaths of Lord Derby and Lord Gough—European Affairs: the Emperor prophesies Peace—The General Election—The Senatus Consultum—Official Candidates—The Revolution in Spain—Wanted a King—General Grant the President of the United States—The Alabama Convention rejected.

THE new Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Lowe, brought forward his Budget, in a speech of great ability, on the 8th of April, 1869. The state of the revenue, he said, was moderately flourishing, although the receipts for the past financial year had fallen somewhat short (to the extent of about half a million) of Mr. Ward Hunt's estimate. His predecessor had calculated upon a revenue of £73,180,000, but the actual amount received did not quite reach £72,600,000. Passing now to the current year, Mr. Lowe estimated the expenditure at £68,223,000, and the revenue at £72,855,000, which would leave an available surplus of £4,632,000 at the end of the year. Nothing could be more satisfactory than such a prospect. Visions of a lowered income tax, of enlarged grants for special purposes, of general easiness in money matters, must have flitted before the minds of the assembled legislators. But Mr. Lowe had no sooner raised the hopes of his hearers than he dashed them to the ground. The whole of this large surplus, it appeared, except the trifling sum of £32,000, would be required to defray the cost of the Abyssinian expedition. The real cost of that expedition was now for the first time made known. Mr. Disraeli had asked for and obtained a vote of £3,000,000, in November, 1867, and a further sum of £2,000,000 had been voted for the expedition in the early part of the Session of 1868. During 1868 every one supposed that £5,000,000 would cover the cost; but this was found to be by no means the case, and a third vote of £3,600,000 was taken in March, 1869. The total cost, Mr. Lowe feared, would hardly fall short of £9,000,000. Now, of the £8,600,000 that had been voted, ways and means had been found only for £4,000,000, so that £4,600,000 had still to be provided for. This sum would just be covered by the anticipated surplus, leaving a balance of £32,000.

Here an ordinary financier would have stopped, content to have balanced the revenue, and to have defrayed out of current receipts, so as not to add a penny to the National Debt, the heavy and unforeseen charges entailed by the Abyssinian expedition. But Mr. Lowe was not an ordinary financier, and, as a surplus did not exist, he resolved that one should be created. He proceeded to unfold a plan for the more economical collection of the revenue, by concentrating in one payment, to be made in January, the income tax and the assessed taxes, instead of dividing the former into two instalments, payable in April and October. This plan he proposed to bring into operation for the first time in January, 1870; so that (no collection being made in October, 1869) the taxes for three quarters, ending the 31st of March, 1870, should be paid next January, in which month the whole of the income tax and the assessed taxes would have to be paid in future years. That is to say, Mr. Lowe proposed to collect five quarters' taxes within twelve months. The reader will think that it is not difficult to create a surplus in this way. Nevertheless, Mr. Lowe showed that the proposed change in the mode of collecting these taxes was based on common sense and sound economy, and that a sum of £100,000 would be saved merely by having one collection instead of two, and employing the Excise officials instead of amateur collectors. He also discussed the assessed taxes with great force and acuteness, and proposed to convert most of them into licence duties, following the successful precedent of the dog tax, and that they should be payable for the future at the beginning of each year, instead of by two instalments in April and October. Assuming that the House adopted his scheme, Mr. Lowe calculated that before the end of the financial year (March 31st, 1870) there would have been paid into the Exchequer, £600,000 of the Excise licences, £950,000 of the land tax and assessed taxes, and £1,800,000 of the income tax—in all £3,350,000—which, with the £32,000 surplus of revenue over expenditure, would put the Government in possession of a surplus of £3,382,000. How was this surplus (which Mr. Lowe might well describe as a "windfall") to be disposed of? As the chief inconvenience attending the transition from the half-yearly to the annual method of payment would fall on the income tax payers, Mr. Lowe thought that they had the first claim to relief from the surplus; he therefore proposed to take off a penny from the income tax. Next he proposed to abolish the import duty of one shilling on every quarter of corn, left by Sir Robert Peel when he repealed the Corn Laws in 1846. This duty, though it produced £900,000 a year, combined in Mr. Lowe's opinion all the bad qualities which a tax could possibly have, and prevented England from becoming a great entrepÔt of corn. The fire insurance duties were also to be given up, though this reduction would not take effect till after Midsummer. The total remission of taxes thus foreshadowed would amount to £2,940,000, leaving, when deducted from the estimated surplus, a balance of £442,000. Mr. Lowe admitted that his plan was attended by certain drawbacks. Under its operation the Treasury would be in a state of plethora at one part of the year and starved at another; and there might be taxpayers to whom the concentration and unification of the State's demands on their purses might be inconvenient. But he had various expedients to meet the first objection, the chief among which was that during the non-productive months of the year Government should be empowered to borrow at their discretion from the Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt; while with regard to the second objection, the taxpayer, like the eel in the adage, would find the change nothing when he had become used to it. Mr. Lowe's Budget was of course sharply criticised, and the delusive character of a surplus obtained by a financial trick was loudly insisted upon; but the real merits of the scheme, which were obviously great, carried it through.

The statement made by Mr. Lowe, en passant, with regard to the aggregate expenditure on the Abyssinian expedition naturally attracted much attention. The Conservative Government had estimated that the total cost would not exceed £5,000,000; how then, when no unforeseen circumstance had occurred, none but the most shadowy opposition been encountered, and no reinforcements been needed, could the expenses have shot up to the enormous figure of £9,000,000? It appeared that by far the greater portion of the money—more than £7,000,000—had been spent by the Bombay Government. The duty of explanation accordingly fell on Sir Stafford Northcote, Secretary for India in the late Government. Sir Stafford Northcote stated that when the first estimate was framed (that for £3,000,000, laid before the House by Mr. Disraeli, in November, 1867), the expedition had not left India; and that the second estimate (for £2,000,000, additional) was necessarily vague and loose, and exceeded, in fact, the information furnished by the departments. He pointed out, among the reasons for the insufficiency of the estimate, our entire ignorance of the country into which the expedition was despatched, its actual barrenness of supplies, and the necessity of taking precautions against events that never occurred. Much of the excess, he added, had arisen since the period up to which the estimate extended, and in conveying the troops from Abyssinia to India after the expedition was over. These explanations failed to remove the suspicion that there had been culpable laxity on the part of the Bombay Government. The suddenness of the last rise in the estimate was quite mysterious. Mr. Ward Hunt stated, in the discussion that took place in March, 1869, when the supplementary vote of £3,600,000 was demanded, that so recently as the 8th of December, 1868, the Indian Government had telegraphed that they had only spent £5,000,000.

Although the time of Parliament was too much taken up with discussions arising out of the Irish Church Act to allow of any comprehensive educational measure being brought forward in this Session, yet an important Act was passed, by which a machinery fitted to grapple with the long-standing abuses connected with the endowed schools of the country was successfully established. The condition of these schools had lately been inquired into by a Royal Commission, the report of which had been laid before the House. Upon the basis of this report Government were now prepared to legislate, and the duty of preparing a Bill fell into the hands of Mr. W. E. Forster, the Vice-President of the Council. The recommendations of the commissioners had been of a very sweeping character; besides advising that full power of inquiring into the efficiency of every endowed school, and of putting an end to waste and abuse of trust funds, should be taken by Government, they had recommended the formation of a central examining council, and of provincial boards throughout the country under the control of the central authority. But Government did not see their way to the appointment of provincial boards for the present; and the Select Committee to which the Bill was referred, after the second reading, struck out all the clauses that proposed to constitute an examining council. What remained, however, of the Bill was sufficient to make a useful working measure of reform.

In moving the second reading of the Bill, Mr. Forster took occasion to explain in general terms the principal conclusions at which the Commission of Inquiry into Secondary Education, of which he had been himself a member, had arrived. In estimating the provision already existing in the country for the education of the "middle classes," the commissioners found that the schools that came under their observation naturally fell into three groups—denominated by them respectively first grade, second grade and third grade schools, according to the age at which the scholars whom they instructed usually left them. In the first grade schools the average age of leaving was between eighteen and nineteen; in the second grade schools, between sixteen and seventeen; while in those of the third grade, constituting the immense majority in point of numbers, the age of leaving was about fourteen years. As a rule, the parents of boys in the first grade schools were persons of wealth, to whom money was little, if at all, an object in the education of their children The schools themselves were pretty much on a par with the Public Schools, whose condition had been inquired into by a separate commission; and, as in the case of these, a considerable proportion of the scholars left school for the universities. Schools of the second grade were attended chiefly by the sons of professional persons, and of those engaged in commercial pursuits, whose sons were destined to follow similar vocations. In the third grade schools the scholars were found to be for the most part the sons of small farmers, small tradesmen and shop-keepers, and superior artisans. In the schools of all three grades a thorough education was found to be hardly ever imparted, except in Latin and Greek; and efficiency even in these branches was chiefly confined to schools of the first grade. Mr. Forster quoted the evidence of many competent witnesses who had been examined by the commission, to the effect that secondary education in England, considered as a preparation for any of the learned professions or for an industrial career, laboured under grievous deficiencies; yet there was probably no country in Europe in which the bounty of individuals in past ages had provided such liberal endowments for secondary education as was the case in England. Taking these two facts together,—the low standard of actual education and the liberal provision made for it in endowed schools—Mr. Forster drew the obvious conclusion that these schools, under their existing management, failed both to fulfil the intentions of their founders, and to satisfy the needs of society. In support of this conclusion, he adduced some curious evidence from the report of the commission. The head-master of a certain endowed school told an assistant commissioner that "it was not worth his while to push the school, as with the endowment (about £200 a year) and some other small source of income, he had enough to live on comfortably without troubling to do so." In the case of another school, with an endowment of £651 per annum, the master put his nephew and son into the posts of second and third masters. The assistant commissioner "found the discipline most inefficient and the instruction slovenly, unmethodical, and unintelligent; there was no one subject in which the boys seemed to take an interest, or which had been taught with average care or success." At another school, where the endowment was £613 a year, there were thirteen pupils. At another, enjoying an income of £792 from the charity, the head-master taught three boarders and no others and the under master attended when he chose. In a school where the endowment was £300 a year and a house, one boy was found under instruction, while there was a private school with eighty boarders close by. To facts of this kind—lamentable as they were—Mr. Forster did not desire to attach undue weight; he did not conceal from the House that among the endowed schools of every grade many excellent and useful institutions might be found; but he maintained that a case had been made out for interference on the part of the State, in order that where, through negligence or worse, the charitable intentions of a founder were defeated, the endowments might be restored to the beneficial use from which they had been diverted. Since the plan of provincial boards had been given up, the organisation which the Bill proposed to create was exceedingly simple. A small commission, consisting of only three persons, would be appointed; this commission would send round inspectors to inquire into the local circumstances of the endowed institutions, and on receiving their report, would, if change were necessary, draw up schemes for the future government and conduct of the schools. The schemes, when prepared, were to be communicated to the trustees of the different endowments, that they might suggest alterations or modifications; they were then to be submitted to the Education Department, and that department would, after approval, lay them before Parliament. After having lain for a certain time on the table of each House, and not been objected to, a scheme would ipso facto come into operation.

In the course of the fuller explanations which were required of Mr. Forster by various members during the debate, he stated that the Bill dealt with nearly three thousand schools, viz. 782 grammar schools and 2,175 foundations, mostly elementary, with a gross income of £592,000, and a net income for education of £340,000, a sum which, well applied, might effect much; but the money was to a great extent wasted. Requested to name the commissioners to whom he proposed to entrust the preparation of the schemes, Mr. Forster gave the names of Lord Lyttelton, Mr. Arthur Hobhouse, and Canon Robinson. After being passed in the Commons, the Bill was subjected to a searching examination in the House of Lords. Lord Salisbury proposed to exempt from the jurisdiction of the new commissioners all endowed schools founded within the last hundred years, the period named in the Bill being fifty years. But the amendment was lost on a division, and this valuable measure soon afterwards became law.

A Bill for the abolition of religious tests in the universities and colleges of Oxford and Cambridge was brought in in February by the Solicitor-General, Sir John Coleridge. With regard to the universities, the Bill rendered unlawful not only the requirement of any subscription or other test from the candidate for any university degree, but also the exaction of any declaration in the nature of a religious test from any professor, teacher, lecturer, or university officer of any kind, as a condition of his taking or holding office. With regard to the colleges, the Bill only removed all restrictions upon their freedom of action that had been imposed on them from time to time by the authority of Parliament itself. "It leaves the colleges," said the Solicitor-General, "controlled by their statutes; it leaves them controlled by the feelings of their members; it leaves them controlled by all the associations which gather round them, and which are, after all, upon most men's minds as effective as any Parliamentary action can be; and it relieves them only from those restrictions which have been imposed from time to time by Acts of Parliament." He mentioned the case of a Jew who had come out Senior Wrangler at Cambridge that very year, but was deprived by his religion of that natural culmination and reward of great academical distinction which a fellowship usually conferred. Other cases, he added, had come under his knowledge of Oxford men who had renounced fellowships and other offices of emolument sooner than subscribe their belief unreservedly to every part of the Thirty-nine Articles. In cases such as these, should a college desire to open its doors more widely, it would no longer, should his Bill become law, be impeded in doing so by the operation of any law of the land. Its own statutes might still hamper its action in the direction of liberty, but a method of altering these, should the great majority of the governing body desire it, had already been provided by the University Reform Act of 1854. It was true that there were certain colleges the statutes of which could not be altered without the consent of their respective visitors, and that these visitors were sometimes bishops, who were professionally unlikely to be willing to extend the benefit of the foundation to Nonconformists. This defect the present Bill did not deal with, but the Solicitor-General pretty clearly intimated that it would be made the subject of future legislation.

Mr. Mowbray, the Conservative member for the University of Oxford (who had lately been elected to the seat held for many years by Sir William Heathcote), spoke in opposition to the Bill; but the general feeling of the House was strongly in its favour. It even received the powerful support of Sir Roundell Palmer, who announced that, since the question was last discussed in the House, reflection had induced him considerably to modify the point of view from which he had formerly regarded it. He was now opposed to tests, partly because they were ineffective for the purpose intended; partly because, even if effective, they were impolitic. They were ineffective to keep out the unprincipled atheist or sceptic, who was ready to swallow with a philosophic smile the toughest theological formula that might be presented to him. Nor were they of the slightest use in the case of a man who was orthodox at the time of taking the test, but had afterwards become a free-thinker, since neither law nor custom permitted that a man who had once become a member of Convocation should be liable to any further questioning. But even if they were supposed to operate effectually to the exclusion of all but orthodox Churchmen, Sir Roundell Palmer was now disposed to doubt the policy of retaining them. It was vain, he thought, to endeavour to keep the universities up to a level of churchmanship essentially higher than that which prevailed in society at large. In proportion as members of the Nonconformist body forced their way to the front in all departments of political and social life, in that, or nearly in that, proportion it was desirable that they should be found also among the governing and representative men of the universities. If Churchmen had no cause to dread the competition of Nonconformists on the former fields, neither need they dread it on the latter. At the same time, in order to guard the principle of religious education, and give to it more prominent expression in the language of the Bill itself, Sir Roundell Palmer proposed a slight alteration in the preamble, and the introduction of two new clauses. By the first, the established system of religious worship, education, and discipline within the colleges was expressly reserved intact. By the second, it was provided that every professor, tutor, or lecturer in an English university should, after his appointment, and before entering on the duties of his office, make and subscribe a declaration before the Vice-Chancellor, or before the head of his college, that he would "never endeavour, directly or indirectly, to teach or inculcate any opinion, opposed to the divine authority of the Holy Scriptures, or to the doctrine or discipline of the Church of England as by law established." A test similar to this, but omitting of course all reference to the Church of England, was substituted in 1853 in lieu of the old and rigid Calvinistic test for lay professors in the Scottish universities. After an admirable speech from Dr. Lyon Playfair, in support of the Bill, it was considered in committee. Sir Roundell Palmer carried the first of his two clauses without difficulty, but abandoned the second, mainly, it would seem, in consequence of an appeal from Dr. Lyon Playfair, whose long and intimate acquaintance with the Scottish universities enabled him to speak with authority. The corresponding declaration required of lay professors in Scotland was, he admitted, not felt nor objected to, because it was considered to be, on the whole, "innocent and irrelevant;" but it had degenerated into a mere formality, and could not be supposed to exercise the slightest preservative effect on the religious belief of either professors or students. "It is not that test," added the honourable gentleman, "which preserves religion in our Scottish universities, but the inherent truths of religion itself." The Bill then passed through committee, and was read a third time.

When, however, the University Tests Bill reached the Lords, it was treated with little ceremony. It was past the middle of July, and the Peers were still smarting under the sense of the disrespectful treatment which their amendments to the Irish Church Bill had met with in the other House, and indignant at the menacing comments of the press. Farther in the road of Liberalism they were resolved not to be pushed this Session. Lord Carnarvon, when the Bill came on for the second reading, moved the previous question, and, after a short and unimportant debate, his motion was carried on a division by a majority of 91 to 54.

The attention of Parliament was taken up on many nights during this Session by a singular incident, half painful, half ludicrous, which occurred in the sister island. Mr. Daniel O'Sullivan had been elected by the corporation mayor of Cork for the year 1869. Under the Municipal Act for Ireland the Mayor is a justice of peace for the city of Cork during his year of office, and cannot be removed either by the Lord-Lieutenant or by Government. Soon after the beginning of the year Mr. O'Sullivan commenced to sit as a magistrate in the police court of Cork. From almost the first day that he took his seat on the bench down to the beginning of May his conduct was systematically devoted to lowering the administration of the law and bringing it into contempt, and in using insulting and abusive language towards his brother magistrates. But all this was a trifle compared with what followed. On the 27th of April the mayor presided at a banquet given in Cork in honour of two discharged Fenian prisoners, called Colonel Warren and Costello. In proposing the toast of "Our Exiled Countrymen," the mayor said that "he believed a spirit of concession had been aroused on the part of the dominant race. He did not say whether it was owing to Fenianism or to the barrel placed outside the prison at Clerkenwell; but he believed he paid a solemn act of justice to his own countrymen—as solemn an act of justice as if he were a high priest—when he said those noble men, Allen, Barrett, Larkin, and O'Brien, who sacrificed their lives for their country, ought to be remembered and respected as good Catholics and good patriots. There was at this moment in the country a young prince of the Irish nation. When that noble Irishman, O'Farrel, fired at the Prince in Australia, he was imbued with as noble and patriotic feelings as Larkin, Allen, and O'Brien were." (Here the speaker was interrupted by great cheering, and cries of "He was.") This foolish and criminal rant was received with loud demonstrations of applause by Mr. O'Sullivan's audience. Government were soon informed of what had happened, and the conduct of the mayor formed the subject of more than one interpellation in Parliament. The hands of Government were presently strengthened by receiving a memorial addressed to the Irish Executive by more than thirty magistrates of the city of Cork, presided over by the Lord-Lieutenant of the county, Lord Fermoy, in which complaint was made of the seditious language and disorderly behaviour of the mayor, as tending to spread disaffection and throw contempt on the administration of justice. There was not much time to be lost, for the Mayor of Cork is entitled by his office to sit as first commissioner in any commission to be executed within the county of Cork; so that, unless promptly deposed or disenabled, Mr. O'Sullivan would be associated with her Majesty's judges in the Commission of Assize during the ensuing summer. There was no resource but legislation; a general law might be passed, placing the mayors of all Irish corporations under the control of the Crown; or else a short Act, disqualifying Mr. O'Sullivan by name, but affecting the rights of no other person. Government preferred the latter course, and the O'Sullivan Disability Bill was prepared accordingly, and leave to introduce it was moved for by the Irish Attorney-General (Mr. Sullivan) on the 5th of May. A long and animated discussion followed; but in the end leave was given to bring in the Bill, a copy of which, and of the order for the second reading, was ordered to be forthwith served on Mr. O'Sullivan. But on the day appointed for the second reading, when counsel in support of the Bill were about to be heard, and witnesses examined, Mr. Maguire, one of the members for Cork, rose and produced a letter, which he read, from Mr. O'Sullivan, placing his resignation of the mayoralty in the hands of Mr. Maguire and the O'Donoghue. In fairness to the mayor, one or two sentences from this letter ought to be quoted. He declared, in the most solemn and emphatic manner, that the language attributed to him did not in any way express or represent his real meaning; and, further, he solemnly declared that he would himself be the first person to rush to the protection of human life if he knew it to be in danger. "I may also state that I look to the regeneration of my country through constitutional and remedial measures such as that [the Irish Church Act] now passing through the House of Commons, and my belief that the battle of my country is to be fought on the floor of that House." Mr. O'Sullivan must surely have held with the cynic philosopher, that "language was given to man to conceal his thoughts;" for if these were indeed his sentiments, no language could have been devised better calculated to disguise them than that which he used at the Fenian banquet. After hearing the letter, Mr. Gladstone rose and said that, assuming Mr. O'Sullivan's resignation to be, though not technically, yet really and substantially complete, Government would proceed no further with the Disability Bill.

SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE (AFTERWARDS EARL OF IDDESLEIGH).