The Press.
London, England, 1856-09-27 00:00:00

THE TREATY WITH HONDURAS.

THE copy of a communication from Don Leon Alva-
rado to the Governor of the Republic of Honduras,
advising him of the conclusion of the negotiations
with England and specifying the terms of the treaty,
has appeared this week. The letter is dated "Lega-
tion of Honduras, London, September 15th, 1850."
Although claiming the Bay Islands, Honduras was
willing to leave them free to the enterprise of the
world, on condition that her sovertignty were recog-
nised and the Mosquito territory were returned to
her. The United States accepted these conditions,
and England saw in them a mean.; of getting out of
a disagreeable question. The ambassador then an-
nounces that the treaties are conchided as follows :

1. The restitution of the sovereign rights of Honduras
over the islands of Ruatan, 13onacca, &c., and declaring
them " free territory," governed by its proper municipality.
2. Acknowledges the territorial limits of Honduras
marked in the map by the Hon. G. Squier—say from the
River Warns 6 Segovia to the River Negro.
A tribunal of reference, composed of one citizen of Hon-
duras and one British, and if necessary an impartial third
of any nation, will fix the boundary, indemnify the Dios.
quito Indians for the losses which they suffer, and adjust
all claims whatsoever.

3. Memorandum of the basis of negotiations:—

Senor klinister,—True wisdom teaches that a nation should
march with the circumstances of the day. Honduras enters a
new political life ; her steps should, therefore, be to declare,-
1. That she knows no enemies or parties, and forgives all past
offences.

2. Cultivates friendly relations with all who will accept them.
3. To avoid all compromises, Mfensive or defensive leagues,
so common in America, and so disiuitrous.

4. To form no league, diet, or confederatioh.
5. Invites all her neighbours to regulate territorial limits, and
to examine the claims made by Copan on the part of Florida,
and that in six or eight mouths the titles should be exhibited.
6. Prohibits or abolishes from the public press all politics,
give regulations for education, &c.

In announcing this treaty, Don Leon Alvarado ex-
presses his thanks to Mr. Marcy, to Lord Clarendon,
to Mr. Dallas, to Mr. William Brown, M.P., to Mr.
Squier, &c., for their several shares in effecting this
treaty.

A TREATY OF COMMERCE WItH THE KING OF SIAN
has also been concluded. The treaty was signed at
Bangkok on the 18th of April, 1855, and the ratifica-
tions exchanged on the sth of April last. By this
treaty certain articles in the old treaty of 1826, Nos.
1,2, 3,8, 11, 12, 13, 14, and certain clauses of arti-
cles 6 and 10, relating to the treatment of fraudu-
lent traders on either side, and to the overland trade,
are not abrogated, and other articles and agreements
between the two Governments are set forth at length
and in detail, regulating the power of the consul and
the rights and privileges of British subjects, toge-
ther with the laws and rules by which commerce
shall be carried on between the two nations,
the duties and customs, dm. The regulations are very
minute, and appear to have been carefully drawn up.
The commercial agreement annexed to the old
treaty is abrogated by the new treaty, with the ex-
ception of the undermentioned clauses of Articles 1.
and IV. Of Article 1., the Siamese desire to retain
the following clause
British merchants importing firearms, shot, or gun-
powder, Are prohihited from selling them to any party
but the GAernment ; should the Government not require
such firearms, shot, or gunpowder, the merchants must
re-export the whole of them.
Article IV. stipulates that no charge or duty shall be
levied on boats carrying cargo to British ships at the
bar. The Siamese desire to repeal this clause, and
Mr. Parkes undertakes to submit this point to the
consideration of her Majesty's Minister Plenipoten-
tiary to the Court of Siam.

917

EDUCATIONAL MEETING AT OLDHAM.
Tan Oldham Lyceum was opened on Monday with
great ceremony. Among the guests present were
Lord Stanley, M.P., Sir J. K. Shuttleworth, W.
Brown, Esq., M.P., W. J. Fox, Esq., M.P., &c., and
the authorities and leading inhabitants of the
borough. A procession was formed at the Town-
hall, and, followed by an immense assemblage of
people, proceeded through the streets to the door of
the new building, when Mr. Platt, President of the
Institution, addressed Lord Stanley and the gentle-
men present in a brief speech, explaining the object
of the institution, and entering into the details of its
origin and of the manner in which the work had been
successfully brought to completion. At the close of
Mr. Platt's address the doors of the building were
opened, and the procession passed through and in-
spected the various rooms. The bui.ding, com-
pleted in little more than a year, and situated in Union-
street, is a handsome erection of stone, in the Italian
style, in two storeys, with underground rooms far
schools, and attics for class-rooms, above which is
an observatory commanding an extensive range of
country. The two principal storeys contain an ex-
ceedingly fine news-room and lecture•hall, besides
club, board, and other rooms. The cost of the
building has been upwards of 5,0001.
In the evening a meeting was held, at which Lord
STANLEY, M.P., presided. The noble lord, in taking
the chair, said

I had last year the pleasure to see the first stone laid
of this building, the inauguration of which we celebrate
to-day • it is therefore doubly gratifying to me to witness
the cordialityl with which Oldham has seconded the design
of its founders, and the rare rapidity with which a work
of such magnitude has been completed. We cannot as
yet pretend to estimate the numbers of those who may
hereafter attend your lectures, avail themselves of your
library, or partake of the instruction of your evening
classes. if I am to judge by the accounts which have
reached me to-day, I believe the fact to be that, whereas
in the old building where the institution was accustomed
to meet the number of subscribers was about four hun-
dred, not less than three hundred names have been added
since the occupation of the premises which you have en-
tered to-day. I give you the figures as 1 have heard
them; your experience will test whether they are correct.
But there is one remark which may be made even
without the help of experience—that we greatly underrate
the efficacy, in point of amount, of adult instruction given
in these institutions, if we take merely the number of
those who frequent an atheneum or a mechanics' institu-
tion, and compare it with, or judge it by, the numbers of
those who attend a school. The difference is this—child-
ren go to school because their parents send them, and
many, as we know, with no particular desire to learn ;
youths and men attend places of teaching of their own
free choice, with the determination to profit, as well as
with intellects more ripened and matured. Thus while
in schools you must teach many in order that, compara-
tively speaking, a few may benefit, in an atheneum you
may be sure that none, or next to none, of the teaching
given will be thrown away; that the words of the instruct( r
will rill upon open ears and will be received into willing
minds.

It is common to contend (and the objection weighs with
many who are otherwise our friends) that the mechanic,
the operative, the tradesman, the man immersed in bus.-
ness, has no time to learn anything really, that he
must be a smatterer only, and will merely acquire
a taste which he can never indulge. I want to say
a word on that point, because the objection, if well
founded, would be almost fatal. I believe it is t t
well founded, and I will tell you the reason. It a
true that most, perhaps all of those whom yot r
Lyceum will instruct, are not men of leisure ; but .t
is not true that a large amount of leisure is requisite in
order to obtain a considerable proportion of learning. The
brain, like the body, ca.i only bear a certain amount of
active exertion—nay, of all bodily organs it is the most
delicate, the most easily put out of repair, the most difficult
to set right when once disorganised. Now, it is liable to
suffer in two ways—from too little work in those whose
labour is mechanical only, or who do no work at all ; from
too much work in those whose labour employs chiefly or
exclusively the intellectual faculties. It is idle, therefore,
to suppose that the majority of men, though free from any
pressure of business, though independent of • profession
or trade, can, whatever the amount of their leisure or how.
ever much they may desire it, occupy anything like the
whole or even the greater part of their time in study. If
no external circumstances interpose to limit their exertions,
Nature will and does. The mind only retains its freshness
for a limited time; if that time be exceeded exhaustion
ensues, little is learnt, and the seeds of future mischief are
sown in the constitution. What 1 contend tor, then. s
this—that no man willing to study need despond bee 1•10
he can only command a portion, it may be, of his
while others are masters of the whole day. It is bad ant
metic in such matters to compute that four times as mu, 11
can be learnt in four hours as in one. Just as reasunahl
might one argue that, because one good dinner daily giv. s
health and strength, therefore four such dinners every d: y
would make a man four times as strong and four times •
healthy. Just as reasonably might one affirm, what I
she have looked into the elements of finance know o
be untrue, that if you double the rate of a tax you will
double the amount it produces.
The fact is, nature intends that we should develop all
our faculties, that we should work our whole organisation
iu turn, and not a part of it only. The man who exerts

918

his brain only, and the man who exerts his muscles only,
is equally violating her laws, and those laws are never vio•
lated with impunity. I don't want to overstate my case.
I am not denying that the hours of labour are many, nor
that the cares of life press heavily on the working man who
is also a student ; but 1 affirm that the obstacles which
labour places in the way of intellectual advance, though
real, are less formidable than they look, while by their
nature they save the student from other dangers quite as
real, which beset the man whose time is entirely his own
—the danger, on the one hand, of an idle and relaxed
habit; the danger, on the other, of mental wear and tear,
induced by not knowing when to leave off. Even four
hours in the week, or rather more than two hundred in
tha year, regularly and earnestly devoted to one branch of
thought, will carry an intelligent man very far in any study
whatever.

Speaking in this place, I need hardly notice the old
cavil raised against institutions like these, that their pro-
moters look only to the development of intellect and neg-
lect the moral faculties. No doubt there are instances
where grievous moral imperfections have been shown by
able and cultivated men ; and, on the other hand, we all
know that very ignorant persona may be exemplary in their
conduct, although in cases where remarkable ignorance is
found associated with high morality I think it will usually
be observed that the ignorance has not been voluntary, but
the inevitable result of unfavorable circumstances. But
the general rule I take to be this, that a healthy organisa-
tion, well developed, will gain in every direction
by whatever it gains iu one. In the physical
part of our nature the healthy body and the
healthy brain are more likely at least to go together
than either of them with the reverse. And so it is with
the mind and the moral sense ; when the eyes of the intel-
lect are opened, and imagination is summoned to fulfil her
legitimate function,—when the awful vastness of the
universe appears, and the wonderful mechanism of man is
unveiled, and the not less wonderful system of moral checks
and counterchecks by which the fatric of society is ren-
dered self•sustaining, strikes clear and full upon the view,
the mere fact of familiarity with ideas so high and so wide-
reaching produces a frame of mind incompatible with the •
taking pleasure in those low and sensual and degrading
pursuits which constitute the bulk of immorality as it
exists in England.
111 But there is another point of view in which these institu-
tions may be considered, and one to which I attach great
importance. Recollect what modern society is. Recollect
what modern labour is. We bring together men in masses ;
we employ them in mechanical pursuits. The very perfection
of the work done—the cause of that perfection, division of
labour, carried to the highest point—tends to render
occupation more and more monotonous ; so that the intel-
lect, craving stimulus, asking for variety, is starved. For,
to an active brain, intellectual inaction—the want of sub-
jects for thought—is quite as painful as to the habitually
inert temperament is the unaccustomed toil of thought.
What, then, I ask, becomes of the vast masses of intelli-
gent men and women which we congregate in these towns ?
What are our national amusements? None—or next to
none. Even the simplest of all pleasures, the enjoyment
of natural beauty, is rarely possible. The leisure hours
here fall mostly at night, when out•door pleasures are inap-
propriate, even if the neighbourhood of our towns afforded
more ficilities for such pleasures than they do. We want,
then, besides teaching for those who will be instructed,
rational amusements for those who only desire to be in•
terested. lam not ashamed of putting that prominently
forward as an object which we ought to keep in view.
Health is weakened, disease generated, life shortened, by
the depression of spirits which follows upon an unstimu-
lated existence. Men die for want of cheerfulness, as
plants die for want of light. That is a fact to which you
may get medical testimony in plenty ; and it is to this very
difficulty of finding pleasures—a difficulty arising in part
out of the accidents of our social state, in part out of the
grave, earnest, energetic, reflective, but rather sombre cast
of mind which for many centuries has distinguished the
people of this nation—that I ascribe that habit of exces-
sive social indulgence which is still the principal reproach
upon our national morals and manners. I affirm, then,
that in every point of view intellectual, moral, even sanitary
institutions such as this is intended to be—partly social,
partly literary, useful to the few who study in earnest,
attractive to the many whose chief aim is amusement—
have in both those capacities a real and substantial value.
Your lectures, your reading-rooms, your evening classes,
your lending library—for that essential element of popular
usefulness I hope it is not proposed to omit—will each
draw to you subscribers, each probably subscribers of a
different class. The establishment of an athenaeum, a
lyceum, an institute, call it which you will, in every large
town of England is no longer a mere luxury which may be
enjoyed or dispensed with at pleasure, but has become an
essential and integral part of our social organisation.

I know all that has been and that may be said against
these institutions, and it is possible that their actual results
may disappoint unreasonable expectations on the one
hand as they have dispelled unworthy fears on the other.
But I deny in loto what is sometimes affirmed—that the
experiment of their establishment has been hitherto a
failure. Bear in mind that it is only of late years that the
prejudices once entertained against them have been over-
'come, and that they have ceased to bear a distinctively
party character. Bear in mind that only within the last
few years has there issued from the press that vastness of
cheap and valuable publications which have so much faci-
litated the formation of provincial libraries. Remember
too that while churches, schools, colleges, hospitals are
endowed, institutes have been almost universally left to
live from hand to mouth with little or no capital in reserve,
dependent for their very existence upon every temporary
fluctuation of popularity. Recollect, lastly, that if official
statistics may be trusted (and the private experience of
most of us will, I believe, confirm them), school attendance
in England is only one-half of what it should be in order