The Sun.
London, England, 1855-08-11 00:00:00

2eV
' fr TT rvl
. rar pv,
-
. _ _

;
•
• ,
" • !
n+:

[PRICE 4D. STAMPED SD•

complishnient ; but, as surely'as dawn succeeds to dark-
ness, and day to night, so surely is man entering on a new
era, and rising to a higher civilisation than the world has
yet witnessed. That is not the language of exaggeration
or of enthusiasm—it is the conclusion at which the
profoundest reasoners, the coldest calculators, have long
since arrived. Mark the effect of mechanism in super-
seding brute labour. In industrial matters the leading
feature of the age is the substitution of inanimate for
human labour. That is a change of which we have
hardly seen the beginning, far less the end; and though
its first results may be, and is, to unsettle and to disturb,
and for the moment rather to augment than to lessen hu-
man suffering, yet that first effect can in its nature only be
temporary ;,the ultimate end must be a degree, not only of
comfort, but. of leisure, to the working man, such as our
present social arrangements do not allow, and the want of
which is'the greit bar to diffused intellectual progress.
But 'I
am looking toe far into the future; I return to what
is immediately round us, and I say to you all, as I feel it
myself, that it is your duty and mine, as good citizens, to
omit no act, private or public, that may tend, as assuredly
this will, to cement and consolidate the union of
classes—lt-is--your -duty -and _rninA, as interested in the
future fortunes of this great, empire, to see that- England
shall not lack, by any default of ours, the incalculable
strength that an educated people confers on a state. It is
your duty and mine—as God-fearing men, as lovers of
mankind, as having learnt that lesson of universal brother-
hood which for 1800 years has been recognised on earth as
highest truth —to see that as we ourselves value more than
property, more than influence or power, more than the
opinion of those round us, that intellectual culture and
those great ideas which have formed all our habits, and
moulded our characters to -what they are—so that boot,
almost the greatest which this world can give, and without
which this world were little worth having, shall be spread
abroad as widely, and granted a.; freely, as those other
blessings of air and light which are denied to no living
creature on this globe. (The noble lord resumed his seat
amidst loud and protracted cheering.)
The Hon. and Rev. W. TALBOT, rector of Hatfield,
then proposed a vote of thanks to Lord Stanley for his able
and eloquent discourse.
The motion was put and carried by acclamation.
Lord STANLEY briefly aeknowledged.the compliment.
The meeting then separated.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

( From the Times of this day. )
It would be most' unfair to deny that it is a. great hardship
to the Heine Of Lords, and a damaga to those national inter:
ests over which its influence is pre-eminently conservative,

that it should be called on to discuss the details of an impor-
tant innovation in the last struggling hours of the session.
With whom the fault rests it avails not to say, but if the
House of Lords, with its accumulated store of legal talent,
with ex, ex-ex, and ex-ex-ex Lord Chancellors, perpetual
Chief Justices, and other high legal and mercantile authori-
ties, will not initiate measures of its own, it must be content
with the laconic veto to which its powers threaten to decline.
When Government is unable to force more than, a small frac-
tion of its well-considered and much-wanted bills through
the Commons, it is not the fault of that Government if the
Lords have occasionally little more than to say " Yea," or
" Nay," to a measure. The only equivalent in these cases is
that close attention and that full consideration which every
Peer may give, if he pleases, to the reported debates of the
Commons. Nevertheless, whatever the cause, whatever the
mitigation, the fact is one to be lamented. We would much
rather have seen such men as Lord St. Leonards, Lord Camp-
bell, Lord Redesdale, and Lord Grey bestowing a week on
such a measure as the Limited Liability Bill than compelled
to have out their say in a night; but there appears to be no
help for it, and it is either this or nothing. Our regret is in-
creased by the justice and truth, or rather the foundation in
justice and truth, which we must admit in some of the objec-
tions to the measure and its details. If there were time for
the Lords to take the measure in hand,.te turn it over, to see
it on all sides, possibly their objections would assume a more
practical form, and we might get some good out of them.
As it is, some of their lordships appear to have importuned
for delay—derisively, with insult and menace, not caring to
conceal that, were the bill once in their hands up-stairs, it
would never see the light again ; or, at least, only reappear so
altered that its parents would be unable to recognise it, and so
incapable of doing harm that it would be equally incapable
of doing any good. Such a tone may serve to relieve the
severity of debate, and to soften the rancour of controversy,
but it is not likely to increase the public respect for the
Upper House, nor does it give much encouragement to the
Lower House to send up its bills in better time. Of course
when- this was the temper cf the Opposition, there was no
alternative but to muster the supporters of Government, and
force the bill through the House with the least possible

delay.
But, having admitted that there was a foundation of jus-
tice and truth in the objections urged on Thursdai night, we

must beg to explain that it was so for the best possible reason
—viz., that there was hardly an objection which, did not

equally apply to all forms of conducting mercantile business
whatever. The complaint that wherever partnerships en
command* are allowed—that is, everywhere except in this
country—there is a peculiar code of laws found necessary to
repress the peculiar abuses of the practice, is a -matter of
course ; for there is no form of mercantile enterprise, from
the railway, company itith fts 70D wiles of limo, its thirty
millions of capital, its thirty thousand shareholders, and its
noble chairman, down to the little huckster who opens a
corner shop and sells a " dip" at a time till he gets money
enough to take out a license for the sale of tobacco or beer,
that does not require a whole code to check its inevitable
abuses. There does not not exist any way of conducting
business, either by one or a myriad, towards which, after all,
the creditor has not to use his wits, and not less his moral
instincts. Character is the only sound security, and where
this is wanting, or rather where there is no satisfactory proof
of its existence, every house that you trust with your money,
whether one man, or twenty, or ten thousand, or ah unknown
quantity, is unsafe. It might have been supposed that the
noble lords who talked so sagaciously and so ominously of
the frauds likely to be perpetrated by partnerships with
limited liability, and of the corrective laws that Parliament
would in a year or two be called on to supply, had never
heard of a railway company declaring 5 or 7 per cent.
when it had made no profits at all ;—had never heard
of a solemn, old, pious, and respectable bank failing without
a moment's warning, and disclosing half a century of fraud—
had never heard of the great attorney of the county, with the
estates of ten peers and the savings of 500 small people in his
hands, bursting like a bubble and found as empty of cash—
had never seen a Gazette or a list of insolvent debtors—had
neier had a butler or cook, who lent the savings of his life to
some well-spoken shopkeeper and never saw a sixpence of his
money again—had never heard of a Building Society or a
Benefit Club on self-destructive principles. Of ...course,
_ _

there will be fraud everywhere. Dishonest men, and that still
larger and more dangerous class of weak, indolent, and stupid
men will always, in one form or another, contract obligations
beyond their means, and muddle the accounts they are en-
trusted with. There always will be men of these classes, so
decent, so plausible, and with such au excellent opinion of
themselves, and so well able to impress that opinion upon
others as to inveigle the unwary into unlimited confidence.
With the universality of these evils, showing itself, like at-

mospheric pressure or the morbid tendencies of the human
frame, everywhere, always, and under ail circumstances, there
really was something ludicrous in these venerable noblemen
croaking sinister predictions of failure, abuse, remedial laws,
late repentances, and srious additions to the business of the
courts. Grant everything, what does it all come to ? Just
nothing at all, except a homily on the commercial existence
of evil, which we don't want a resurrection of dowager Chan-
cellors to persuade us of.
These high legal authorities appear to have fallen into the
very groat fallacy, though a natural one in this case, of view-
ing the question from the criminal side. Even that side of
the question, indeed, has its lesson, as we have just drawn
it out,—that, as there always must be abuse of mer-
cantile confidence, the certainty of it is no more
an argument against one form of commercial enterprise
than another. But their lordships appear to have for-
gotten that, if fraud is be counteracted, that is no rea-
son why honesty and industry should not be set free,
and, if simplicity will always be imposed upon, that is no
reason why vigilance should not be left to the use of its own
eyes. We have a right, and we conceive it our duty, to start
from the case of the honest, the sensible, and the industrious,
and to assist them in using their money to the best advan-
tage. We are told, indeed, that they ought to leave their
money in the Savings-banks, or to invest in the Funds, or to
buy Railway Shares ; but, with all due respect for the excel-
lent security offered by the first of these, and the good interest
promised by the last, we still incline to the opinion that a
commercial business, conducted by persons whom we have
reason to trust, is a very legitimate and proper investment
for the savings of little people ; while, on the other hand,
this form of mercantile combination is likely to open trade,
to give fresh opportunities to clever tradesmen and ingenious
mechanics, and to explode adulterations and other fraudulent
manufactures. As to the warning that companies will be
formed for the express purpose of imposing upon us all, of
receiving stolen goods, or of carrying on some disreputable
business under a plausible form, are not these things done
already ? Is not every article of food, or medicine, or manu-
facture, adulterated till it can hardly be got genuine any-
where ? Are there not conspiracies of all kinds against the
health, the property, the morals, and the very lives of the
public ? We are at a loss to see how any trade can be worse
conducted than it is very commonly now. Indeed, their
Lordships, in their eagerness to make out a case against the
bill, fished up objections of the most contrary and self-coun-
teracting tendency. One was, that there was no want of
capital now for any profitable trade or any respectable trades-
man ; another, that the bill would enable the capitalist and
the superior tradesman to crush the smaller ones ; ono ob-
jection was that servants and other people of that class would
be fleeced of their money ; another that they would combine
to get the custom of their masters ; one that private enter-
prise would be certain to prevail ; another that it would be
extinguished. There is some truth in all these objections,
but they may happily be set against one another.
that it is
With regard to the amendments, we must s!lth„uppia.
unfair and unwise to proceed so confidently .
sition that these partnerships will be wising
sr other forms of
other
or to im
pose more checks than are found desirable Is
unnecessary to
enterprise. Of the amendments rejected
speak, so a word or two on those whsttie.hsct
ins. capital without
were adopted. Sup-
posing half a dozen people wish toto b
committing their whole fortuneso
the Sum
be driven to a merely
tbousipess really carried
I 9 Supposing that, owing
on by only one of them, why ar
ostensible scheme of 25 shareholders.
to the beneficial character aenod consequent success of the bill,
°compete largely with the private
numerous as to realise the fears
of partnerships becoim
be
some objectors, an(
dealer, efro,r
form
s it proposed
p r ivate thatenterprise
wr
pthhraiets
eßi?os
aAd
tlol
whose
0.
Trade
shallos t is thea auditys
auditing the accounts of nothing more than a
then is there not to
to be? Why, too, bank, be a public audit of
railway company, every
everw
every J assurance coin-
, other association in
pany, and every the kingdom ? As to
the clause providing for the unlimited liability • of directors in
the case of dishonest dividends, and of
the winding-up of a
partnership in a certain stage of
course it may be admitted that pecuniary exhaustion, of
the direction of a business uns nobody ought to undertake
ss be knows what he is about
and is content to be more
than ordinarily responsible,—
though, no doubt, many win •
,—but as to the particular point
at which a business should
whether it will ever be be wound up, we should doubt
hit under the Operation of this bill,
any more than it is in existing practice. As the measure,
: however, is a first step, and in some degree an experiment,
its particular previsions
do not signify very much ; for in one
respect, doubtless, the fears expressed on Thursday evening
will be amply —P-Y realised, ajicl pot zany :e6eiollEa if ow, will

O.IJI -
" 41F
0,2„. •
,
kl 1111.4
,50".:
•,
Fir
/- . .
„
„, 7 -4,
jtiro >ROIL
in 4::„
237:11 117 --Zol* Crb' ''&
"