The Sun.
London, England, 1855-09-13 00:00:00

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.

T 1118 DAY—Morn. 3 min. aft. 3.—Evening 20min. aft. 3
TO-MORROW—Morn. 32 min. aft. 3—Evening 46min. aft. 3

THE WEITHER.—SUN OFFICE, Sept. 13.
THEEMOMETER, IN THE SHADE.

69 -- highest since noon yesterday.
59 —iowost this morning and during the night.
68 —this day. at noon.

BAROMETER, 30.03 falling.
WIND, W.S.W. to W.—Light, with heavy clouds am
sultry weather. Heavy rain in the morning.

, k • .7--
11 , •
qt 4- )

been atif ained, we shall not have much to dread
for the ' future. Famine will make the north side
our ow n, and if due advantage be taken of the
opport unity the whole Russian Army in the
Crinaa a must speedily lay down their arms. But
it is .essential that the occasion be duly improved,
and the victory rapidly followed up. Every ad-
ditio cal blow now aimed at the panic-stricken
enenay will be tenfold more effectual than one
of equal force delivered after a brief delay. The
Allied. Generals will now have to offer the strong-
est proofs of their efficiency ; and it will be for
the English Government, and still more for the
English people, to take care that this time Eng-
land does not forfeit by diplomacy all that she
has acquired by arms, but that full advantage be
taken of the costly, but decisive, triumph achieved
by the Allies. •

The first stage of the protracted investigation
nto the case of Sir JOHN DEAN PAUL and Messrs.

STRAHAN and BATES has been brought to a con-

elusion. After patiently listening to the abundant
evidence, so laboriously hunted up, Mr. JARDINE
has finally committed the prisoners for trial at
the ensuing sessions of the Central Criminal Court,

and they were required to enter into additional
securities to appear at the appointed time before
a jury of their countrymen to answer the serious
charges to be preferred against them.
Notwithstanding the immense body of evidence
brought forward against them, the issue lies in a
very narrow compass. It is one rather of law
than of fact. There can be no doubt that they
appropriated to their own use the securities
lodged with them for safe keeping merely—that
they wilfully and deliberately violated the trust

reposed in their integrity. This is a commercial
crime of the first magnitude. It strikes at the
root of all confidence, and is destructive of that

credit on which the trade and commerce of this
" nation of shopkeepers" is founded. We cannot
conceive an offence of a more serious character.
Even forgery itself scarcely equals in the criminal
scale the outrageous fraud that has been deli-
berately perpetrated.
As to the moral guilt of the defendants there
can be no possible doubt. There may be grada-
tions in their offences. There may have been
the tempter and his victims. One might have
concocted the series of infamous frauds, while the
others only yielded to his vile persuasion. But
that will, in case of legal responsibility, only con-
stitute an element in the apportionment of punish-
ment. It will form no part of the questions to be
submitted to the jury for consideration. Theirs will
be a simple although a tedious duty. The only
issue will be guilty or not guilty ; and there can
be but 'little doubt as to the verdict which men,
faithful to their solemn oaths and the imperative
duty they owe to their country, must necessarily
return. They may regret that persons who occupied
so high a station, who had so long enjoyed all the
luxuries which wealth oould supply, should have
so greatly fallen. But their crime is the more
flagrant on account of these very circumstances,
and from the double-dyed hypocrisy by which,
through an affectation of religion, they were en-
abled the more securely and extensively to carry
out their nefarious schemes. None could
doubt the virtue of such very respectabr*
men, who• were so loud in their reprehension
of the lax morality of " the lower classes,"
so anxious to obtain new restrictions
I to enforce the " bitter " observance of the Sab-
bath, and to prevent any poor man who had
laboured all the week from obtaining a draught
of beer on Sunday, should he 'seek pure air on
the seventh day, and worship his CREATOR in the
contemplation of his works.
1 The question will, however, not be one of fact,
I but of law. It will be for the Court of Appeal

;o decide whether the " candid revelation " of

their guilt, made, not to the Magistrate,
but to the Commissioner in bankruptcy,
shall operate as an act of indemnity, to save
them from the consequences of their serious
offences. A plea of guilty does not in other
cases protect prisoners from punishment,
but the collective wisdom of the nation

has been singularly indulgent to respectable offen-
ders, whose imprisonment is diversified by an
occasional visit to Basinghall-street, and. whose
confessions before a learned commissioner produces
such miraculous and almost magical effects. Un-
fortunately for themselves the elaborate statement
put forward on this privileged occasion has turned
out to be anything but accurate. This will
greatly complicate the question, and possibly
leave them liable for the consequences of
their act. But, notwithstanding the mistake,
it is more than probable that they will escape
from any criminal sentence, and that twelve
months' imprisonment in the Queen's Bench,
under the sanction of the Bankruptcy Court, will
be all they have to fear for their heinous offences
against the commercial code, and for the wide-
spread distress in which they have involved their
too credulous clients.

The British Museum, the Picture Galleries, and I
the Crystal Palace—show long are they to remain,
closed to the public on a Sunday ?
Only until the industrial classes resolutely de-
mand that they shall be open—no longer ! So
strong are the reasons in favour of the change,
i s
and 50 untenable the objections urged against it.
There but little danger of our being mis-
understood.We are not of those, if there be
such, who undervalue the importance of one day's
rest in seven ; on the contrary, we believe that
such cessation from toil is absolutely necessary to
the moral and intellectual well-being of the popu-
lation, as well as to the physical sustentation of
both man and brute, and in this opinion we are
supported by the concurrent testimony of practi)
cal men as well as of men of science. Without
it the overtasked sons of toil would speedily de-
generate in physical constitution and moral and
intellectual status, and far more prematurely than
at present sink into unhonoured. graves. Labour
speaking, have no redemption
ion
would, generally
but in death, for to millions unceasing toil would
be unceasing exposure to au unwholesome atmo-
sphere, unceasing deprivation of the means of in-
struction, of opportunity to attend religious
t
worship, to commune with nature in
h
inspiring presence, and to ponderover
nobling marvels of science and art. It is, in fact,
because of our admiration of the institution that
we make the inquiry.

It is because we would have the Sabbathcons-
secrated to its legitimate functions, and made, as
far as possible, a day of healthful recreation—a
day of rest from physical toil, and of elevating
enjoyment to the moral and intellectual faculties
of the masses—that we ask, How long are the
British Museum, the Picture Galleries, and the
Crystal Palace to remain closed to the public ?
It is the unreasoning Sabbatarian who-would have
the Sabbath desecrated not we. He would
have it signalised by the exchange of an unavoid-
able yoke for one of his choosing, and otherwise
uncalled for ; would have it kept on the narrow-
est interpretation of the spirit of Judaism, though
the condition of the Jews differed widely from
that of our working population,and he himself,
,
$ Liu gel y cough, lieep4 tira Sabbath on i differout .

day from the Jews, and after a fashion of his own
—shrinking from the observance of the more rigid
requirements of the Jewish law, and the applica-
tion of the severer penalties, including death, with
which it was fenced about. To chapel, to hear,
look grave, and. swell the collection, and back
home to cold mutton and drowsy listening to
dronish reading, and he is satisfied ; while failure
in this entitles, in his opinion, the offender to
his denunciatory rebuke. Our notion of Sabbath
observance is of a more enlarged nature than his.
We would have worship not only in church or
chapel, but worship also in the fields, gardens,
lawns, woods, and by the running streams—tem-
ples of Nature, and worship in museums, galleries,
and palaces, temples of Art the homage of
healthy bodies and minds—cheerful hearts and
enlightened understandings fortified at once
against the fanaticism of credulity and unbelief.
The homage arising from an enlarged comprehen-
sion of the goodness and wisdom of the Architect
of the Universe, and a growing appreciation of
the wondrous products of man's intelligence and
skill. And to this end thelopening of the British
Museum—the Picture Galleries and the Crystal
Palace would, if experience is to go for any-
thing, largely contribute. To urge against such
a step the presumption that these places can be
visited during the week, and that the lessons they
are calculated to teach can be learnt then, is worse
than absurd. Thousands of our working popula-
tion, equally entitled with any other class, be it
remembered, to participate in the advantages of
our national institutions, are unable to visit
these places on any other day than Sunday, and
are thus virtually debarred the privilege, and
the result is they feel themselves aggrieved, and
resort to places of more than questionable pro-
priety. Let, however, the opportunity but be
granted to them, and the low taverns and beer-
houses would, to a large extent, be emptied, and
the majority of their habitués would resort to the
above scenes of healthy enjoyment and instruction
—there to be impressed with deeper reverence for
their CREATOR, and respect for themselves, as
beings possessed of faculties worthy of the highest
cultivation. Working men cannot well protest
too loudly, or too resolutely, or too frequently,
against this Sabbatarian atheism, that shuts out
thousands of GOD'S creatures front the contempla-
tion of His works, this anarchical tyranny, that
prevents the cohesion of society by depriving the
most helpless, ignorant, and laborious of our popu-
lation of the opportunity to contemplate the
many trophies of the skill and intelligence of their
countrymen, as well as of their kind, won through-
out the world.