The Express.
London, England, 1866-01-08 00:00:00

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RAYILULIZT.

THIS EVENF.sO. BROTHER BAIL Mesas. Bothers, Back-
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ORPHEUS IN THE HAYMARKET. Messrs Farms & D. Fisher .
Misses Keeley, Howard & Wright. —MY HUSBAND'S GHOST.

pßuicurs.

THIS BVMMIO, QUM- LODGINGS.—After which IT IS
DIV= 100 LATI TO MIND. Yews. Vining, 13.
T. Wed, D. Mturray, b. Callum. R. Villiers. J. O. Shore, G. Mur-
ray, end Z. Cetheirr ; Wises L. Moore and L Dodgem

LYcrum.

THIS IVINING, THR iiiusiiirous STRANGER. Mr. H.
Wldittcomb.—THE MASTER OP RAV/LNSWOOD. Mews.
Pechter. Jordat, Venn. Emery. Widdiccanb. ettspstrieJc, Evans
Ifealtunes Ternan.ltiawarthy, Lana; C. leaclercg.

BRITAlfifIl.

Ten Myrna*, OLD DADDiiiiiielloi AND SIR REGENT
CIRCUS; OR, THE RACK ROE THE GOLDEN APPLES.—
and Mdme. Stertzenbaelt. DevanL—Ohner.--Bhower
of Golden Raln.—And JUBA THE MORMON'S DAUGHTER.

ffiGH FAT= AT LONDON-pRIDGI.

1 DATZliOifinTa eh. Wei::: ifiria;cra, 57g•
T04101140W Ilanalag, Th. 41a

LONDON. MONDAY. JANUARY 8.

A Court of Inquiry, assembled at the instance of
the Board of Trade, delivered its decision on Satur-
day last, on the collision between the Dover mail
packet Samphire and the American barque Fanny
Buck. This court, consisting of the Mayor of
Dover and a brother magistrate and two nautical
assessors, was engaged for eleven mortal drys in
receiving and recording a heap of incoherent, con-
tradictory, and irresponsible statement, from ever
so many interested, aggrieved, alarmed, and gar-
rulous witnesses, with whom it would be mere
wade of time and space on our part to occupy
the attention of our readers. Out of this
idle gossip of people who were all anxious to
appear wonderfully courageous and self-possessed
after the event, two or three facts are abundantly
clear ; and we need not wait for the official re-
port of the Board of Trade to bring them to the
test of common sense. It is evident that, with a
few exceptions, the passengers behaved as badly as
possible ; and the crew of the steamer, also with
exceptions, behaved even worse than the majority
of the passengers. It would be absurd, perhaps,
to look among the ship's company of a Dover and
Calais mailbost for the virtues of British seamen,
and still more absurd to seek for examples of
heroism and self-devotion among a motleycrowd of
tourists and bagmen crossing the Channel in a
tidal steamer as they might cross London in an
omnibus or a Hansom cab. It was an ignoble
scene of selfish terror on the part of passengers
and crew alike, and it can hardly be supposed that
if all who tried to save themselves had perished
England or any other country would have
felt the loss. As to the steamer, her
captain seems to have behaved singularly
well after the mischief was done, but nothing is
more positive, amidst the bard assertions (it was
not swearing) on both sides, than the total want
of preparation in the vessel for any sea risk, the
reckless cowardice and bewildered incompetence of
the long-shore lubbers who composed her crew.
The judgment, or whatever it may be called, of
'the Court of Inquiry leaves us nothing to alter or
retract in the opinion we Yentured to express
at first on the causes of the collision between
the Samphire and the Fanny Buck. According to
the recollections of the two or three passengers
who were not quite imbecile with alarm, it would
appear that the night of the collision was not,
as was pretended, hazy, but simply very dark.
At any rate, the Dover lights were visible enough
twenty minutes after the Samphire had left the
Admiralty pier. The captain of the steamer gave
his usual orders for a good look oat fore and aft,
and stationed himself on the bridge with his
night-glass in his hands. The barque Fanny Buck
was not, it seems, running down Channel, but on
a wind, by which we suppose is meant, not close-
hauled, but a point or so free. On the
faith of this evidence, then, we have only to
insist still more decidedly on the conclusion which
we did not hesitate to express on the first inquiry
into the circumstances of the collision. Of course
the barque was in the wrong if she was not
showing her regulation lights, or her lights
were not properly trimmed. American ves-
sels have a reputation for neglect of these
precautions. But, as we said before we now
say again, without compromise or abatement :
whether the barque Fanny Buck's lights were or
were not properly trimmed, or whether she showed
lights at all or not, the whole blame of the col-
lision rests with the steamer. Without fear of
contradiction—we don't say from any seaman, but
from any man of common sense—we affirm that a
steamer is bound, under all possible circumstances
or conditions of wind, weather, tide, or course, to
make way for a sailing vessel. To speak as landsmen,
we may ask whether a Pickford's van in a narrow
street is expected to get out of the way of •
Hansom or the Hansom out of the way of the
van ? The veriest cockney can answer such
a question. We don't care how much or how little
the barque was in the wrong ; no sailor a trifle
worthier of the name than the vagabonds who
jumped into the boats of the Samphire and made
off before the women could be got on deck would
pretend that a vessel under canvas only s expected
to change her course to get out of the way of a
steamer. The truth is these passenger boats
across the Straits have little or nothing
seamanlike about them, as this accident
has shown. They are driven at a great
speed in almost all weathers and at all hours
of day or night, as express trains are driven, by
men who never allow themselves to imagine that
the road is not clear, and whose business it is to
do a certain distance in a certain time. The system
answers well enough nine times out of ten, but on the
tenth day or night comes a smash, which inquiry
shows to have been equally preventible and
inevitable. A pointaman was sleepy, a goods train
was too slow in shunting, a signal was not seen or
net attended to. Lord ALFRED Pscrr, who has a
right to be heard on the subject of collisions, having
had a yacht sunk under him in the Straitaof Dover,

I puts the common sense of the matter in a very
few words. A steamer rushing on a dark night
lacross a narrow channel crowded with ships or boats
I at the rate of twelve knots an hour endangers all
she meets and all she carries. It results from
this Board of Trade inquiry that two hours and five
minutes is the time allowed by the Post-office for
the outgoing mails, from the arrival of the train
at the Admiralty Pier to placing the gang-board
on shore at Calais. Whenever a train is run
under the contract time a premium is given to the
Company ; whenever it is exceeded, a fine is ex-
acted. No allowance is made for dark or foggy
nights. It is on these terms that the public who
go down to the pier in trains are " forwarded "
across the Channel, and if the service were less
expeditious, or there were a premium on caution
instead of on speed, the same public, who make the
passage ninety-nine times out of every hundred
in safety, would be as reedy to denounce the
Company and the captain of the steamer for
missing the train at Calais as they are when a
collision happens to denounce anybody or any-
thing but themselves and their own ignorant
recklessness and impatience.

OUR CONTEMPORARIES.
(THIS DAY.)

--*--
TH2 NILITARY RIVOLT IN SPA M.

Suspending for a few days an opinion as to the
real significance of the military revolt reported from Spain,
the Tunes observes that agitations throughout the Penin-
sula. for • generation past have taken the form of military
insurrection. For the tart six months Spain, which we had
been led to believe was advancing in power and resources,
has been in such a state that it oompele us to believe a
political revolution or almost anything possible. The
country has been a prey to suspicion, disaffection, and fear,
and this without any visible cause which had not been equally
patent for the last ten year; for it is not to be supposed
that the government is obnoxious to the people on the
ground of the arbitrary character of its recent foreign policy,
The revolt, at all events, is deeply to be deplored. Many
things could be discussed in Spain which demanded reform,
but none which, after so much patient endurance, need
have provoked revolution. Small civil wars, barrack tree.
sone, and military executions are things fitter for Maximo
than for Spain. There was a time when such scenes were
familiar enough, but those days must not be recalled if
Spain is to improve or preserve her present position among
European states.
The Herald has been looking for a revolution in Spain
for some months, the O'Donnell regime of sham liberalism
having disgusted the people, but confesses entire ignorance
of the particular object of the movement which has taken
place. All we know, or, more correctly, all we are told
about it, is that it was organised by the Progreesistas, that
the insurgent troops shouted " Viva &porter° " and "Viva
Prins," and that Prim himself is at the head. This latter
part of the story is likely enough to be true.
Prim is • man who, with qualities which endear
him to the soldiery and which make him an ex-
cellent representative of Spanish character in its
more romantic and brilliant aspect, is filled with an
immense idea of his own merits, and angry at the sub-
ordinate part in which he considers himself placed. But
what his object, beyond the overthrow of his enemies and
the acquisition of the chief power for himself, may be, we
do not pretend to know. It is, however, extremely im-
probable that the movement, if he is its author, is directed
against the throne. Its programme is more likely to be the
liberation of the Queen from what may be called her
present thraldom.
The Telegraph remarks that few things are more strik.
lag than the mantinem of eminent civilians or of general
actors in the political emtutes of this agitated land. When
the " cataclysm" arrives the man in whose name the inevi.
table pronundantiento is issued, is always found to be •
soldier. The bustling, angry crowds of the great city
show when the time for doughty deeds is come, a
supineneu and an indifference which to an English.
man are amazing. They bear to the revolutionary
actors no larger a proportion than Falstaff's
bread bore to his sack. In the " Progrendsta" party of
Spain, all hope of complete rehabilitation for that rich and
favoured country seems to the Telegraph virtually to reside.
The policy of the Progreasistas has long been that of inac-
tivity, and, at the recent election; they abstained, for the
most part, from the polls. It would seem they think the
hour for shaking off inactivity has arrived. We shall
await with impatience the announcement how far, and with
what cod in view, Espartero has taken part in the new
movement. It may be but the shifting of a ministry, but
on the other hand it may inaugurate the advent of great
organic changed.
Spain's one great want being • sovereign, the Star does not
see how an insurrection under General Prim could supply
that deficiency. Any movement of the kind, therefore,
could have even for Spain itself little more than a personal
importance. Materially and morally Spain is in most ways
looking up. She wants more than anything else just now
to be able to lift her rulers to her own leveL A military
riaiog which gave Queen Isabella cue daring soldier for chief
counsellor thaiead of another, could hardly accomplish
much to satisfy the healthy aspirations of the Spanish
people.
In the opinion of the Advertiser, the exertions of all
sound democrats in Spain ought to be directed towards
setting aside the effete dynastic rule and bringing about the
triumph of popular sovereignty. A national assembly
convoked on such a basis might then occupy itself with all
those political and social problems which in Spain, as in
many other continental countries that are convulsed by
frequent sudden changes, await their solution.