The Sun.
London, England, 1855-08-24 00:00:00

coin out of their pockets—of old women, guiltless
of half their years, serving to make the foi tune
of knaves warm by pretending to have nursed all
honest man—of woolly horses appropriately found
in the Rocky Mountains, and of Tom THUMBS hi:l-
ouden tly foisted on the credulity of Courts, to
kiss the lips of our maidens, and, in effect, dive
with gusto into the pockets of their friends. If
so, the feeling did him credit in so far as his
censure was discriminate ; but when the next tale
of American smartness reaches him, let him re-
member what has been practised, and is still being
so, at home.

patronage, secretaries, nor members of Parliament
of any colour will be able to mystify them, that
the great majority of 16,000 Government appoint-
ments now given in defiance of all law and prin-
ciple, as means of local bribery and corruption,
ire available for the improvement of the educa-
tional institutions of the country, and for the
promotion of industrial science and practical skill
of the country. Well might Archdeacon WlGlum
rejoice as a minister at the prospect of the social
improvement of his flock by the withdrawal of
such powerful motives to local party divisions and
bitterness of feeling. A new and great force, an
organised corps d' armee, is brought in aid of
Administrative Reform.

Vulgar, impudent, and audacious as such frauds
are they only go to pick pockets, lower morals,
and perpetuate knaves and fools. They don't sap
the citadel of men's lives—they don't lay the seeds
of incurable disease—they don't weigh down the
blossom of childhood to the grave—they don't
sallow the manly cheek and bring the crimson
dawn of death to tincture the cheek of beauty—
they don't call for incessant drastication or per-
petual drenching. A man may outlive a thousand
cheatings; he can only be once killed with poison.
A wooden nutmeg may try a lady's temper, but
grated wood in her possets is not so bad as alum,
copperas, pearlash, and ammonia in her bread.
A clock at double price, and with no qualities out
of a hundred vaunted of it but one—that of telling
the time in its own way—may be worthy of an
unsaintly ejaculation, and provocative of no
prayers but prayers for patience ; but jars of
pickles verdant with verdigris, a cruet-stand a
very laboratory of poisons and nastiness, such as
horse-juice and tannin, red lead and vitriol, ar-
menian bole, ochre, and copper, are enough to
make the stoutest start. The mermaid was
an impudent draught on. American credulity, but
not quite so bad as that which offers
you as a wholesome beverage an infusion of malt
strengthened with sugar, bittered with quassia
instead of hops, and doctored with grains of para-
dise, sulphate of 'lion, cocculus indicus, lime, &c.
Tho woolly horse was an audacious myth, but
those who believed it had not to swallow chicory,
and chicory adulterated with articles the bare
mention of which is enough to make you sick ;
nor had they, as its victims, to drink tea prepared
from Bohea, a fifth time infused, redried, and
curled together, or otherwise mixed with wil-
low, sloe, and other leaves, coloured and polished
with black lead, Prussian blue, and chromate of
lead ; nor were they called on to mince at cakes
made of potato flour instead of arrow root, and
sweetened with coppery preserves ; nor at jellies
guiltless of isinglass, and trembling on feet of
gelatine. The old nurse of WASHINGTON was
a Methuselative imposture, but the decrepit old
dame didn't ask you to swallow along with her
port and sherry, hot with spirit and cayenne,
and bodied with catechu, Dino, and logwo.)d, nor
spirit etherealised with nitric acid, and made
ardent as the peppers of the Tropics. Nor were I

you required to take her with a pinch of ochre,
glass, sand, saltpetre, ammonia, and fermented
and dried tobacco refuse sold under the misnomer
of snuff; nor, if disposed to smoke her, to do so
with earth, sugar, oil, sand, treacle, ochre, salt-

petre, and hemp-dust. Tom THUMB was a
mighty humbug, though but an impudent little
dog in other respects ; but his osculations, how-
ever much they might disgust the fastidious of the
other sex, were not so bad as the poisoned kisses
sold at every confectioner's shop. Whatever they
were they brought to no fair lips, young or old, the
verdigris, the Prussian blue, the lead, the arsenic,
the mercury (vermillion), the smalts, the chrome
yellow, the warehouse scrapings that daily
find their way to them in the shape of
sweetmeats through the ignorant kindness of
parents and relations, nor, we must add,
hard as all these things were to swallow,
were they so bad as to have palmed on you
damaged or poisoned drugs for genuine, to rely
on opium, aloes, rhubarb, and scammony in your
hour of need, and discover by the effects or no
effects, that " they are all something else." In
conclusion, while pointing out the turpitude of
these adulterations, and administering a correc-
tive to national vanity, we are far from express-
ing an opinion that American morality is superior
to our own. What we have aimed at has been

to indicate that a system deserving the'most in-
tense moral reprobation is in vogue among the

tradesmen in this country, that (until the
Lancet pointed it out) the eyes of the public have

been blind to the evil, though they could see a
vicious system across the Atlantic, and that its

destruction is imperatively called for by every
consideration of morality and expediency.

We would call particular attention to the Report
we have received of the proceedings of the Con-
ference, held at Southampton, of delegates and
members of Mechanics' and Literary Institutions
of the Hants and Wilts Educational Society in
union with the Society of Arts in London. We
there see the chief local leader of the Anti-Corn-
Law League, together with one of the most influ-
ential members of the Tory party at Southampton,
—Mr. STEBBING—the Archdeacon WIGRAM, and
the Hon. Mr. BEST—in unanimous response and
agreement in opinion as to the necessity of the
abolition of local political patronage, and the con-
version of party appointments into prize scholar-
ships, to be given upon competitive examinations
to the mos, meritorious candidates, for the en-
couragement of the local and general edncational
institutions for the lower as well as the middle
classes of the community. A leading inhabitant
promises, on behalf of Southampton, that it shall
be got to set an example to other boroughs of a
self-denying ordinance, and the renunciation of
political patronage, in favour of impartial and
competent awards for merit. This movement
will, of course, be slighted and treated as Utopian
by those who are unaware of the feelings created
by recent events in the minds of all classes. The
example of the competition for the Indian writer-
ships has made an immediate and profound im-
pression on all persons connected with the educa-
tional institutions. They have been brought, by
other evidence, to see the practicability of the
extension of the same principle to appointments
for merit available as prize scholarships for scholars
of the middle classes, and even for merit amongst
the children of artisans. Every zealous schoolmaster
will soon perceive that every appointment as a
piece of party or borough patronage, or political
jobbing by the Borough Member, is a prize scholar-
ship stolen from one of his best scholars, and an
act of injustice to his own labours. Every middle
class kind of a family will be brought to see that
every such outrage is in derogation of the securi-
ties for the education of his children. The appeal
of the Rev. Mr. BOOTH, the Chairman of the
Council of the Society of Arts, for exertions to
secure the stimulus of examinations and prize
scholarships in behalf of the middle classes,
must meet with a deep if not loud re-
sponse. The interests of the educational
associations in Hants and Wilts are essentially the
same as those of the other affiliated institutions
throughout the country. Now, those institutions
at present number 400, and comprehend upwards
of 70,000 of the best-instructed and most intelli-
gent of the community. They have now their
attention directed to the fact, in which neither

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