The Press. — London, England, 1858-08-28 00:00:00

THE PRESS, AUGUST 28, 1858. nothing but Parliamentary interference can check the ardour of British enterprize ; and unless some wholesome restraint be applied, we may be sure that great national loss will be the result. Com panies will start into existence, claiming Acts of Parliament, and various kinds of concessions which cannot with even-handed justice be refused, until a complication of Acts and concessions have been granted most destructive to the general interests of the public. And if such restraint is not early applied, we may expect even worse difficulties than those under which we are now suffering under our railway mismanagement. In railways, however, there is always something to show for the investment ; but in the Ocean Telegraph adventure an entire line, which will cost an enormous sum, may, for want of proper management, be irrecoverably lost, not only to the adventurers, but such loss is absolutely of great public importance. And that the national wealth may be preserved, legislation at the outset, before complications and precedents arise, is imperatively called for—legislation that will take a prospective view of which is now morally certain in some shape or other to take place. Telegraph lines will intersect, cross, and recross every ocean. Therefore now is the time to lay down broad and leading principles under which the general interest shall be protected and to which all matters relating to any individual line shall be subject. It is now clear to every intelligent mind that if a general comprehensive Act of Parliament had been formed, with prospective reference to railways, immediately on their first development between Liverpool and Manchester, when it was obviously only a question of time as to when the country would be covered with one web of railways, the vast incomprehensible complication of railway Acts of Parliament, which have since essentially forced themselves upon the Legislature, would, in a great measure, have been unnecessary. Whilst the promotion of railway accommodation would have been encouraged, the interests of adventurers would have been fairly protected by the general Act, the security of which would have saved the country from the several railway panics through which it had to pass ; thousands of families would have been saved the poverty and misery to which they were irrecoverably driven. With such dire results from the neglect of timely legislation before us we last week suggested a plan by which the enterprize of the people in any ocean telegraph adventure would be promoted, and the aggregate result made profitable to every interest concerned, whether individual or national. SAVAGE LANDOIt AND SAVAGE SLANDER. THE case of " Yescombe against Landor " is one of those literary scandals which occcur from time to time, and which serve to moderate the exagge rated value occasionally given to learning and talent. The injury inflicted by a libeller is gene rally in proportion to the vigour with which he uses his pen as a stiletto ; and the poisoned verse of Mr. SAVAGE LANDOR was calculated to do hideous damage to its victim. Mr. PHINN, the counsel for the defendant, alluded in extenuation to the circumstance that Mr. LANDOR was a writer of the old school, and that he was a con temporary of Bvnos and MOORS, both of whom dealt habitually in personality. What a back handed blow was thus dealt at the personal cha racters of these distinguished poets, when it was insinuated that the odious and disgusting verses of Mr. LANDon belonged to the satirical school of Moola: and BYRON ! Yet, unfortunately, there was some truth in the remarks of Mr. Prnxs, and there can be no doubt but that your high flying " Liberal man of letters" always claims such a degree of licence in commenting on social incidents as is never permitted in the more sober and well-bred school of Conservatism. WALCOT ( Peter Pindar) was a most "savage" and malignant libeller of GEORGE 111. ; the Rolliad (edited by Dr. FRENCH LAWRENCE) went to extreme lengths in attacking private frailties ; and when the Anti- Jacobin wits attempted retaliation, Mr. PITT interfered, and refused to sanction the poignant personality of CANNING and GIFFORD. For a long time the Liberal press actually throve on 819 invective and abuse, and the terrorism by which the public mind was lashed into a frenzy at the time of the Reform Bill is now matter of national history. Between political lampoons and private libels there is, however, an immense difference. A lampooner in public affairs may be coarse and malignant, but political passion, the excitement of party contests, and the exasperation of long continued strife, will in some cases palliate, though not justify, an excess in vituperation. The brutal attacks of Mr. SAVAGE LANDOR were entirely of another character. They were cruel and cowardly; they assailed a woman with all the morbid energy of an imagination revelling on the eructating imagery which a diseased brain might delight in ; and the circumstance that the writer hoped to escape by the anonymous shield, and by the fact of his advanced age, added to the disgrace of their composition. It is just twenty years since Mr. LANDOR published in the columns of the Examiner a poem on some of the recollections of his life. The scene was also laid in Bath, and the subject arose from the casual meeting with a lady to whom he had fruitlessly paid his addresses some forty years before. He painted the youthful charms of the lady of his early love, and he contrasted the present and past : She shines in coronetted pannel, With husband mummified in flannel, Amongst the harridans and hacks That spread their tanneries at Almack's. That is precisely the same style of "liberal" composition as was unfolded in the Yescombe case. When will the Whig aristocracy and the gentlemen of the "Liberal " connecticn cease to patronize the writers who deal in Landorian licence? Yet what an amount of well-acted in dignation is professed by " Liberals" at the ex cesses of Dean Swill-r, and at the personality of the John Bull in the days of THEODORE HOOK ! It has been said that " libelling is one of the main resources of the Liberals," and without going so far as to echo that assertion, there can be no doubt that Junius, Cirummu., the writers of the Rolliud, Byliox, MooRE, and many other " Liberal" names, are deeply tarnished with the cruelty of their personal satires. The age of duelling is gone, and a new standard has come in by which compositions should be tried, but in any case vilifying a woman and agonizing her feelings could never be tolerated. Unqualified disgust is the only feeling that can rise on the perusal of Mr. LANDOR'S verses, and it is a pain ful spectacle to see a man thus sully his name at the threshold of the grave. this gentleman, we understand, ranks among the electricians rather than the engineers. His cable, es pro posed to the Great George-street Institution, ce rtainly has the merit of reducing the specific g ravity, compared with the Atlantic cable ; but the mode of accomplishing it appears to us objec tionable. This cable, we understand, is composed of a large iron wire in the centre, which is to perform the double duty , fir s t of bearin g all the tension necessary for submerging the cable, and then to act as the electric conductor. This large iron wire is to be covered with gutta percha of considerable thickness, that it may be perfixtly insulated. No one can deny that the arrangement is simple. But we fear there are several fatal ob jections to such a cable : first, the iron wire must be large to secure the amount of electric power which is practically found in the use of a very small copper wire ; the quantity of gutta percha required to insulate such wire would be so great as to increase the expense seriously ; and a thick, stiff iron wire would be difficult to keep in its place in the gutta percha when coiling it away, and still more so when running out from the ship under a tension of from five to ten hun dred weight. But a gutta percha cable, with a heavy iron centre coiled away upon itself, we fear, would stick together and press the lower tiers of the coil into strange shapes, especially in high temperature, which, in summer or passing through tropical climates, could not be avoided. To protect the gutta percha, therefore, there must be a covering of some fibrous material which would not only make the cable already very costly still more so, but also too bulky and cumbrous for any description of ship to carry. Another important difficulty lies in the necessary tension for submerging the cable being applied to the very wire on which the entire success of the enterprize depends, and in lengths which count by hundreds, if not thousands of miles, it would be unreasonable to expect perfection in the wire ; hence the necessity for it to be submerged under a small degree of tension. In other words, we think the electric wire should be separate and independent of the means employed to carry it to its resting-place. A cable made on Mr. ALLEN'S plan could not possess the flexibility that a seaman would require for coiling it away into proper compass, or for its safe running out during dark and tempestuous nights. Its cost is a secondary consideration, if it could only be shown to be the best. Mr. ALLEN'S contrivance deserves the merit of being ingenious, and, as we before said, is a step in the right direction, by reducing the specific gravity. Hut, though we are willing to admit his great abilities as an electrician, he has not hit upon the provision for some nautical circumstances that may arise in submerging an electric cable in ex treme deep water and over long distances. We are bound to form our judgment by what is placed before us and before the world, regard less of every individual interest; and, after de liberately examining the semi-floating cable pro posed by Mr. WILLIAM Rowlirr, preserved as w•e find it would be, according to the remarkable tests to which it has been subjected and which w e have taken pains to examine, we should be doing violence to our convictions if we did not say it deserves the especial attention of those who may have the direction of ocean telegraphy, which is now elevated to the highest national importance. The unanswered, and we think unanswerable, pamphlet he has published on the subject will best explain the nature of his plan. But, whilst we must defer comment on it in detail, we may say that he appears to us to master every con ceivable difficulty, and renders the question simple as well as easy of accomplishment, at small comparative cost. If better and more con sistent means should be devised, from whatever quarter such improvement iray come we shall hail it s a d vent w i th sincere approval ; but in the absence of such, we are bound to direct attention to what we firmly believe will meet the present necessities of the public. There are, however, other important considera tions in this question besides the selection of the most efficient an d econom i ca l ca bl e. N ow t h at it is proved, beyond all cavil, that neither the deep water nor the extreme distance the electric current has to pass beneath it impede its shock, wires have only now to be laid across any and everY ocean, as they doubtless will be, for TIIE LUNACY QUESTION. THERE is something so horrible and dreadful in the notion of a sane human being actually being shut up in a lunatic asylum, that it is no wonder, when there seems good ground to fear that such events do take place, that an alarm should be created, and that the most stringent measures should be called for to prevent the recurrence, or continuance of similar cruelties. It is well that thus it should be, and we are glad, therefore, to see that the public mind is aroused to the necessity of a more vigilant inspection being established over private asylums. The cases of alleged lunacy which have re cently appeared in the newspapers, coupled with certain admissions from the Commissioners of Lunacy, which prima facie, until explained, appear to imply considerable dereliction of duty on their part, evidently call for some change in the existing system ; but at the same time great care should be taken not to rush into an opposite extreme, which may be productive of great public mischief. The difficulty of placing restraint upon persons who are really insane is, we believe, at present greater than it ought to be, and in confirmation of this opinion we appeal to the constant reports contained in the newspapers of deeds of horror which are perpetrated by madmen who have been left in possession of their liberty, and the number less suicides which the coroners inquests return as done by persons who are insane. These events prove, at any rate, that if some persons who ought to be free are confined, yet that I I I 41