The Press. — London, England, 1858-09-11 00:00:00

CH orr by the sword. We do not believe that G o es blessing will attend such an attempt, utterly opposed as it is to every Christian principle. The followers of MAHOMET have i n d e ed propagated their creed by the sword, but then this mode of action is in perfect consistency with the doctrines which their Lawgiver laid down and their Koran inculcates. These men act with perfect consistency when they offer to their conquered foes death or the Koran ; but Christians cannot do the like. Supposing that those stipulations should be fulfilled, and the utmost extent of good contemplated should result from them, they would no more palliate or justify the first unjust aggression, than Lord PALMERSTON could justify (as he attempted at the Mansion house) the original hostilities, by appealing to the outrages of the Chinese, which were afterwards done by them in revenge, when exasperated by those hostilities. We confess, however, that we attach but little value to these stipulations. We believe that it will turn out that the Bible will be allowed just as much circulation, and no more, and Chris tianity will receive just as much toleration, and no more, as would have fallen to their lot if the treaty contained no clause of the kind in question. The Chinese authorities, in those spots where they may come into contact with Englishmen, may perhaps conform, when compelled, in parti cular instances, to the words of the treaty ; but how, unless we can undertake to control the police, and the jurisprudence of the vast empire of China, we shall be able to secure, for the Bible or for Christan converts, the stipulated privileges, it will require wiser heads to devise than any that yet are known to grow on British shoulders. And as for regu lating the p o li ce an d jurisprudence of China, though doubtless there exist many presumptuous fools who would undertake the task, yet between the attempt and anything app roachin g to its realization the distance is infinitely great. Those who have studied the official reports on the Bengal police, and have ascertained the actual results of our endeavours .to establish peace and security in that vast province which has so long been under our immediate rule, and within whose limits we have established the seat of our supreme Government—those who know that that police is a source of terror to the peaceful and honest—a source of protection to the thief and to the dacoit—will look down with a smile of pity or contempt on those who entertain the idle idea that we can accomplish in China what we have so utterly failed in accomplishing in Bengal. Let us, then, estimate this much vaunted and bepraised stipulation at its real value. It is just worth nothing at all , ,save as a peg on which Pharisees may descant, and save as dust to blind the eyes of the honest and the good to the real character of the dealings of Great Britain with the people of China , which Sir JOHN BO WRING initiated, and Lord PALMERSTON, for mere party Purposes, recklessly endorsed. OCEAN TELEGRAPII COMMUNICATION. THE partial success which has attended this glorious endeavour to annihilate time and distance in the intercourse of mankind induces us again to bring forward the subject, which seems as yet to be imperfectly comprehended by all but scien tific men. When the great desideratum of ocean tele graphs 11 was first started and the first experiments made, it appeared clear that in the waters and the channels on both sides of Great Britain a firm protection to the precious wire which car ried the electric fluid should be provided ; and, accordingly, the copper wire was inclosed in a gutta-percha case, and that again covered with Spiral cord of iron wire sufficiently stout to bear the rubbing against the bottom of the sea, and to resist ordinary risks of fouling, &c. But when it became necessary to bridge over the deeper waters of the ocean, a question arose whether the Specific gravity of the iron would not sink the cable too fast in paying out, so as to cause severe pressure on the machine and wire, and cause it to snap. Any one who has seen a chain-cable nin out at sea would readily appreciate the danger. And so it happened. The cable from iardinia t o Af r i ca met with numberless mishaps from this cause, and broke continually in paying out from the vesseL THE PRESS, SEPTEMBER 11, 1858. When, therefore, it was proposed to lay ' down a telegraphic wire from England to America, 2,000 miles and more in length, over waters the depth of which we know in some places exceeds two miles, a grave ques tion excited the minds of practical men whether the experience of the iron cable, which was suited to shallow waters, was fitted to bear the strain consequent on paying out to such depths, and in stormy weather; for it is evident to even the most casual observer that 2,500 fathoms of iron rope hanging from the stern of a vessel must exert a most dangerous pressure, not only on the paying-out machinery but on the whole cable so paid out ; and this pressure would be greatly increased by the pitching of the vessel in a heavy sea. Another difficulty in the use of this description of cable was the stowing away of such a cumbrous weight in the hold, and the constant risks of kinking in the coils, and, lastly, the enormous expense, amounting to 1901. a mile, including the waste inseparable from its use. These difficulties were ably pointed out by a pamphlet on submarine telegraphs, by Wm. Row Err, to which we have already called attention in a previous number, and the results of the late experiments seem to have fully justified the apprehensions enter tained.* We will now attempt to explain the probable failure that has occurred, though we have great reason to complain of the disinge nuousness of the Company throughout, in looking rather to the share-market than the public good in this national undertaking, and preserving a mystery throughout all the stages of the proceed ings. the current, they say, is interrupted, the signals being unintelligible. Had they ceased altogether, we could understand that the cable had parted, but signals still passing from end to end, but so weak as not to convey a message, seem to us to disclose such a state of things as the following. The pressure in submerging, of which we spoke above, has forced the iron spiral strand to stretch, and also to elongate and strain the copper wire inclosed in its centre. This wire is composed of small strands, folding over or twisted into a solid rope ; and, though the strain through such a length of cable may and has broken the strands in several places, it has not probably broken them all in one and the same place, so as to disconnect the current alto gether. But still the effect naturally is to weaken the wire so much that it will no longer sufficiently convey the electric fluid to mark the characters on the other end of the cable. We cannot but congratulate ourselves on the caution habitual to the British mind, which saved us the exuberant self-glorification of our warmer trans atlantic and Irish brethren. Be ours rather the task to extract the moral from the late failure, and to learn from it the means of avoiding dis appointment in future. That it is possible to lay down a cable is proved ; that it is necessary to do so is equally clear. It therefore behoves us to select such a cable as will not only obviate the difficulties we have pointed out, but give rea sonable hope of answering the known desiderata. This we have grounds for believing the Directors of the Atlantic Telegraph Company are diligently investigating, though they still make a mystery of their proceedings, which, perhaps, under the circumstances, is hardly wise. In fine, we heartily pray for their success in an enterprize so fraught with untold advantages to the interests of humanity at large, and trust that no shallow prejudices, no petty considera tions, private or personal, will prevent their carrying out their magnificent design on the surest and most enlightened principles. DWELLINGS FOR THE POOR. THE following petition was presented, signed by some of the most respectable of the inhabitants of Kensington, last session, to the House of Lords by Lord Brougham, and to the House of Commons by ➢lr. Slauey That your petitioners learn that a bill is now before your honourable house relating to the afftiirs of the Royal Commission of the Great Exhibition of That your petitioners beg leave, therefore, to state to your honourable house that before the estate at Kensington Gore was purchased by the Commissioners, aided by public money, there existed on that estate a small hamlet, known • it seems to us the cable should never have been carried over the Newfoundland banks, where vessels frequently drift for twenty miles together, and with a north gale would be aura to book the cable. It should bo carried round to the deep water. 867 by the name of Gore-lane, inhabited by *bout sixty poor families, and comprising *population numbering about three hundred souls; t hut they were living in very tolerable respect ability and comfort—earning an honest livelihood—some by washing, others by being employed by those who took in washing—others by carrying on different trades—but all more or less dependent on each other for their subsistence . Many were attached to the spot as their homes where they had been born and had lived all their lives; some were very old, some were weak and ill, some were dying. That in order to carry out the great improvements of the property then contemplated by the Royal Commission, it seemed expedient that this poor hamlet should be de stroyed. This has now been nearly accomplished; but, as no provision was made to secure pruper dwellings for the poor so evicted from their homes, an amount of distress and misery has ensued on the details of which your peti tioners are unwilling to dwell. It is sufficient for them to say that many families had to seek shelter in houses pre viously greatly overcrowded ; so that the misery and mis chief arising from insufficient dwellings for the poor in the parish of Kensington has been greatly aggravated, both to the persons evicted and to those ia whose dwellings they have established themselves. Decency and morality, cleanliness and comfort, have been effectually banished . from them. . . That your petitioners do not desire in any way to con demn the destruction of this hamlet ; they well know that, when great public improvements are to be curried out in a great city, neither the dwellings of the rich nor of the poor ought to be allowed to continue an obstacle; but your petitioners would respectfully point out to your honourable house that, if for the sake of public improvements great distress and misery were brought down upon a large num ber of the poor inhabitants of a district, it is very ques• tionable whether those improvements can be correctly called public improvements. That your petitioners humbly submit to your honourable house that there is great public danger likely eventually to arise from the carrying out of a system which has too long been in operation in this metropolis—viz., that of driving the whole of the poor inliabitante from the localities favoured by the rich to the more distant suburbs, so as materially to increase their daily toil, by increasing the distance to go and to return from the scene of their labours. That your petitioners lament deeply when they see this system carried out by private individuals; bat they submit that it is of most injurious tendency when the example is either followed or set by a powerful and commanding royal corporation. That your petitioners conceive it to be the duty of wealth, but still more of wealth united with official power, to provide residences, eligible both as to come. nience of locality and fitness of building, for those whom wealth and power turn adrift, and whose poverty and weak ness cannot provide them for themselves. That your petitioners therefore humbly pray that, since owing to the destruction of this hamlet a very considerable audition has been made to the value of the property, in the bill now before your honourable house a clause may be introduced, compelling the Royal Commissioners of Itisl to purchase sonic land in the parish of Kensington, and to build thereon as many dwellings for the poor as will provide in comfort and decency for the same number of parish poor as have been evicted from the hamlet of Gore lane. TRADE IN SALT WIfII CHINA. THE Earl of Malmesbury has received a memorial from the salt proprietor of Cheshire and Worcester shire, united under a Chamber of Commerce, for the extension and protection of the salt trade. The memorial says : . Looking to the present state of our relations with Chins, and to the changes which may be expected to result from the negotiations now going on there, your memorialists respectfully urge that an opening for British manufactured salt may be obtained at the various trading ports of that vast empire. Your memorialists cannot adduce any reliable statistics of the actual consumption of salt in China; but assuming the population at three hundred millions, it must range between one and two millions of tons. Your memorialists know that the Chinese sources of supply yield at present no tribute whatever to British commerce, whilst a moat vicious fiscal system, dreaded and detested by the population of China (a system which free admission of British salt would most effectually destroy), compels the use of an impure and deleterious article. Your memorialists impress on your lordship the vast advantage to be derived by British shipping and British commerce from additional bulky articles of export to China. Your memorialists also point to the success which has attended the partial admission of British salt into India, and although restricted to the single port of Calcutta, ICO,OOO tons are now annually imported there, thus furnishing an aggregate of cargoes for 100 ships of 1000 tuns each, with 150,0001. per annum in freight, when previous to the small concession of bonding facility obtained from the East India Company in 184(1, no British salt found its way to India. Your memorialists are convinced that, independent of the great blessing the poorer natives thus derive from the use of pure salt, the beneficial reaction upon the consumers of sugar and other comestibles in Great Britain is considerable, as it affords opportunities to traders and shipowners of bringing these arucles in greater abundance and at a cheaper rate of carriage to England. Your memorialists further obser►e, that as the balance of trade with China is largely against this country, owing to our heavy . , imports from thence of tea and silk, it is highly desirable that our means of paying for such necessaries should be increase , ' by shipments of manufactured articles, so as to lessen the necessity for the large drain of specie hitherto required to carry on our trade with China. On these important grounds your memorialists would, therefore, respectfully entreat that free admission of British salt be made a stipulation in our future dealings with the Chinese authorities.