The Sun.
London, England, 1855-11-06 00:00:00

tr ONDO Ns TUESDAY XvENINert___NOVEmBER a, togs,

THE COMING MEMBER FOR SOUTH-
WALL

(Pon?, tire Civil Service Gazette. )
In this shifting, changing, ever-varaing world, where so
many things are doubtful, so many difficult to be averred,
one thing at least is certain ; and it is this, that the famous
interrogatory which every day appears iu the advertising
columns of the Times, " Do you double up your perambu-
lators ?" most be answered with an indignant negative if
addressed to Sir Charles Napier. So far is he from
doubling up his perambulators, f hat he is flinging them out
with a freedom, a force, and an energy not to be surpassed
by any gentleman of his weight and yeas within the
four seas of England. Wlicther he is getting himself
in training to-enter the lists with that amiable and ac-
complished lady in America, who has wagered to roll
a wheelbarrow a hundred miles in as many hours is
more than we can undertake to say, but should he feel in-
clined to engage in the ennobling strife we, after what we
have this week seen of his pedestrian achievements in the
bailliWiek ofsSouthwark should be disposed to back the
gallant admiral at any reasona'rle odds. He has been per-
forming miracles of locomotion such as might provoke the
011 vy of that athletic pedestrian so famed in the literature of
the nursery, who took seven leagues in a single step, and
cleared a mail-coach and four horses at a bound. If Sir
Charles did not capture Sweahorg he has done the next
best thing ; he has bombarded Southwark, and that, too,
with a vigour and velocity which have exceeded the ex-
pectaiots of his friends and carried dismay into the
camp of the enemy. " Panting time speeds after him in
vain." Now at Rotherhithe, now at Bermondsey, pre-
sently at Blackfriars, then at St. Saviour's, anon at St.
George the Martyr's; he has been flying about like bottled
nle in all directions, and the difficulty would be to say
where he Las not been. He has sallied forth on a now
crusade, and if his performances are not precisely those of
the knights and minstrels of the middle ages, they are
assuredly somewhat analagous, and he has shown that
he is animated with a kindred inspiration. If he
has not gone about like them cleaving giants, behead-
ing serpents, slaying dragons, routing armies, shat-
tering fleets, and dissolving enchantments, he has under-
taken tasks scarcely less chivalrous and not a
whit less hazardous. He has been bearding power in
its high places, running a tilt against official routine, try-
ing a fall with the dark demons of misrule, flinging his
glove in the teeth of traitors, and breaking a lance with
the windmills of the Admiralty; and in all these enter-
prises ho has displayed an amount of juvenile energy
which, if he were a soldier instead of a sailor, would have
ruined him at the Horse Guards, and destroyed his pro-
spects of a field-marshal's baton. Now this all comes of
having a grievance. " What is a gentleman without his
recreations?" was a favourite sentiment of George IV.
Might we not rather ask, " What is a gentleman without
Lis grievances ?" Heavens ! what a _cue to passion is a
grievance ! what a soul of action it infuses into a man
what young blood it sheds into his veins ! what fire it
gives to Ills eye, what wings to his feet, what fervour
to his tongue ! Sir Charles Naples is that king
amongst his fellows —an ill - used man who has
sworn that there shall be no peace in the land till
his wrongs are acknowledged and his injuries redressed.
If not the hero of a hundred fights, he is at least the hero
of a hundred grievances, and he will have satisfaction fur
them all, or, as his arch-enemy would say, "Know the
reason why." His years are three score and ten, but what
of that? Inspirited and invigorated by the sense of in-
jury, he feels them no more than if each year were a
thistledown. He has renewed his youth like the eagle,
and on thee, thou recreant Knight of Netherby, his
dazzling eye is fixed. The storm without is but the faint
external image of the commotion which swells in the breast
of the man whom in an evil hour thou didst injure. But
the day of retribution is at hand.
During the greater portion of this week the weather in
London was trrific. There was a paroxysm of tempest
—the wind wailed and howled through the deserted
streets, and the rain came down in floods which threat-
ened to wash out the policemen. But high above the
storm, in the dead waste and middle of the night, rose the
wild accents of Sir Charles Napier, like those of an aveng-
ing angel. Sometimes they were heard to proceed from
the back parlour of the "George," sometimes from the
front balcony of the "Pig and Whistle," occasionally from
Mr. Walker's corrugated iron manufactory in Grange-road,
but, come from what quarter they might, they were always
and everywhere the words of the avenger—accusing de-
nouncing, rebuking. There he stood, the sad genius of the
raging storm—wet, but witty; cold, but unconquerable.
What cared ho for loose slates, flying chimney-pots, or
shivering constables? Nut a potato. He is the Lear of
politics—
" Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks ! rage ! blow !
You cataracts, and liunicanes, spout

Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks ! "
A man with a grievance can look and laugh at all that.
But what means this tumult inn seaman's veins ? Nicking
Malicho ; it meaneth mischief. It means—and see to it,
ye base transpontiue burgesses, doomed to vegetate in
rank luxuriance on the wrong side of the river I—no sleep
for Southwark till Sir Charles and Sir James have had it
out on the floor of the House of Commons ! Listening
senates must arbitrate between them. Sir Charles is now
the right man in the wrong place. Send him to Parliament,
where alone he can effectively vindicate his fair fame, and
then we shall have the right man in the right place, ac-
cording to the requirements of that everlasting apothegm
which threatens to become almost as great a nuisance as
the " Popping Weasel" and the " Ratcateher's Daughter."
Seriously, we wis I success to Sir Charles Napier, and
should be glad to see him returned. In the first place, the
fend between him and Sir James is not a mere personal
quarrel. It is a question of some national interest, and
sooner or later it will have to be decided on its merits. It
is fit that it should be calmly and carefully investigated by
Parliament in the presence of both parties, and that the
public, to use a vulgar but expressive phrase, should
" know the rights of it." There is a prevalent opinion
that Sir Charles experienced unjust treatment from the
Admiralty, and that for this Sir James Graham is largely
responsible. Let this opinion be refuted or established as
the fact may justify, for, as a third knight, a certain
Sir Isaac Newton was wont to observe, " the whole
world must bow before a fact." In the second phce,
putting the quarrel • altogether out of- the ques-
tion, we believe that it would conduce to the in-
terests of the country that such a man as Sir Chas. Napier
should have a seat in the house. He is not a revolutionist
—sailors seldom are —but he is liberal and progressive.
He is eccentric and impulsive, but fearless and single-
hearted, and if it be true, as he avers, that in the Admi-
ralty, which is a most important department of the State,
the public money is squandered and patient merit de-
pressed, it is right that there should be in Parliament at
least one man unfettered by office to expose and denounce
such abuses. At one of his midnight meetings this week,
while the wind was blowing and the rain falling around
him, he assured his hearers that the Admiralty depart-
ment was even now full of abuses, and that they wanted
a man in the House of Commons to expose them. If
they did not return such men these things would go on
till there came a great crash, and then people would say,
"Who would have thought it ?" It will be pleasant to
ste the Admiral slouching up the house once more with
his battered old white hat and his short trousers, and
gripping the floor with his toes as if he were walking with-
out shoos and trying to keep his footing on a wet forecastle
in a high gale. Moreover, the set-to between him and Sir
James Graham will be worth all the money—the contrast
between the two men, both in mind and body, is so dra-
matically striking—the one round fat, and sailor-like ;
other high, haughty,
the other tall, stately, and patrician; the one frank, bluff,
hear ty, and out-spoken; the
reserved,
and polished ; yet, withal, exceedingly courteous, his
courtesy, however, enveloping the deadly snake of a most
envenomed irony, like the warm blanket wrapped round a
cobra capella.

THE LATE FATAL ACCIDENT ON THE
WEST CROYDON AND MITCBASI RAIL-
WAY.

SPECIAL VERDICT.
Yesterday Mr. W. Carter, the coroner for East Surrey,
resumed, at the Plough, Beddington, the adjourned in-
quest on the body of John Bingham, the unfortunate
engine-driver who lost his life at the accident which oc-
curred on the 24th of last month, on the newly-formed
%Vest Croydon and Mitcham Railway. The inquest was
adjourned from the 26th ult., to allow time for the reco-
very of the other parties, who were also seriously in-
jured.
Ueut.-Col. Yolland, the Government Inspector of
railways, was present at the request of the coroner, as
were also Mr. Sleight, the secretary, and Mr. Faithful,
the solicitor of the company, and several other railway
officials.
George Weller, a fireman, said—On Wednesday, the
24th of October, I was employed as stoker to the de-
ceased, on the Croydon and Wimbledon line, which had
opened three days. The train consisted of an engine and
four carriages. About a quarter of a mile from the
junction the engine ran off the line at a time when we were
going 20 or 26 miles an hour. I heard Mr. J. Craven,
the superintendent over the locomotive department, tell
the deceased that he was not to look at the time-table,
but to run cautiously and steady. He told him that on
Monday morning. The engine ran off about thirty yards
from the metals before it turned over. It fell to the
right. One carriage, a third-class one, was next to
the engine, which was also thrown over across the rails,
the coupling-chi ins giving way. I did not notice
whether the other carriages were separated. They were
all off the line, but not overturned. The moment the
train went off, deceased said, " She is off the road." I
fell with the engine, and Mr. Whitley fell on me, between
the fire-box and the tank. I saw the deceased between
the handrail and the engine. Ho appeared killed. I
made no attempt to ascertain how the engine and train
got off the line. No obstruction bad been noticed by any
of us on the lino. I did not notice any one near at the
time. Nothing arose to lead me to think the train would
go off, as there had been no particular oscillation noticed.
There had been seven trips performed that day by the
same driver. There was a slight curve at that part of
the line. I noticed one of the rails bent up and turned
over the front of the driving-wheel in the foim' of a
circle, on the right side. It was fixed, but I did not notice
in what part. The rail was not broken, only bent. I
think the jerking of the train had forced out the wooden
key between the chair and the end of the rail. I think
that as we were passing over the end of the metal the
fly-wheel caught the end of the rail and twisted it up.
Nothing else was found to account for the engine going
off.
By the Coroner—l know of nothing else to show the
cause of the occurrence.
John Little, a guard in the employ of the Brighton
and South Coast Railway; Mr. Donald Fraser, inspec-
tor of the P division of police ; and Cuthbert 0 liver,
time keeper aed foreman over the plate-layers on the
London, Brighton, and South Coast line, having been
examined,
Colonel Yolland, one of the Government inspectors of
railways, said—ln consequence of notice having been
served on the Boerd of Trade for opening the line, I made
au appointment to inspect it on the 11th of last Sept.
I went at the appointed time to the Wimbledon station,
but not finding the officials present I walked some dis-
tance down the line to lookinto its state. Finding that
the signals were not erected I was going to return to
London, when an engine from Croydon came down, and
I proceeded from Wimbledon to Croydon, and then to
Lon h n I made my report the same day, and the
Board of Trade made an order for the postponement of
the opening of the line for a month in consequence of
the incompleteness of the signals at the Wimbledon and
Croydon junction?. The rails were laid down like most
others in the kingdom. 0n the 28th September I again
surveyed the line, proceeding from Croydon to Wine-