The Sun.
London, England, 1855-11-26 00:00:00

Spirit of the Public Journals•

( From the Times of this day.)
Of all classes of the community our manufac-
turing population ought to be most anxious to
patch up a peace. On the contrary, every day
brings fresh evidence that they, of all others, are
most anxious to prosecute the war with vigour.
On Saturday we gave a report of an enthusiastic
demonstration. at Glasgow in honour of past vic-
tories and in favour of more determined hostilities,
d to-day we publish another such report from
Oldham. The meeting at Glasgow was a soiree
intended to supplement the banquet of six weeks
ago. The banquet was for the wealthy and the
noble—the merchant princes and the Scottish
chiefs ; a Scotch duke was in the chair, and the
speeches were delivered by men of old historic
name and of public standing. The soiree was for
the middle and lower classes—for the bailie of the
Saltmarket and the deacon of the weaverg for

Pat-o'the-Mill and Harry Burn-the-Wind. A
Professor of Astronomy took the chair and turned
his telescope over Europe ; while the speakers
generally seem to have been men of humble life
and local reputation. We are not going to criticise
the speeches, or we might urge objections to some of
the views put forward. But there can be no mis-
take as to the feelings manifested by both of these
assemblies, and the satisfaction which that feeling
gives to every patriot heart throughout the country.
The peasant is as bold as the peer, the clan as de-
termined as the chief; the master is not more

ready for sacrifices than the journeyman ; the
wholesale merchant is not more enthusiastic than

the snuffy little dealer in the back street
who retails everything imaginable, from tea to
coffee, and from broadcloth to brass nails.
It will be observed, also, that another meeting
is to be held in Glasgow, as in other cities
throughout the country, on Thursday next, the
object of which is to incite the Ministry to resusci-
tate Poland, and so to inflict the deadliest blow on
the Muscovite power, and establish the surest bar-
rier against her domination for the future. We
need not at present stay to inquire whether this
policy be good or bad ; it is at least attended with
far more difficulties than have ever, probably, en-
tered into the calculations of its advocates. But,
whatever difference of opinion may exist as to the
scheme, there can be none as to the main object of
these meetings, which exhibit the unflinching de-
termination of our people to carry on the war, and
bear all its expenses, all its sorrows, until its ob-
ject be effectually attained. All are true sons of
the fatherland, and in the genuine mother tongue
swear themselves foes to Russia.
We should think that even in the few individuals
throughout the country who aro calling out for
" peace at any price," the spectacle thus presented
by the nation, and especially by the manufacturing
classes, must excite a sentiment of admiration. He
is certainly not to be envied who can look on the
privations to which the working classes cheerfully
submit for the sake of a war undertaken in the first
instance in behalf of a distant State and a despised
people, and now carried on for no material gain to
ourselves, without feeling proud of his country.
We have all a share of this burden to bear, most of
us have had our hearts wrung with sorrow ; but
on the manufacturing classes the war presses with
peculiar weight. In some respects it is a positive
advantage to the agriculturist, who finds a market
so much better for his produce that he may be re-
garded as almost interested in prolonging the
war. The trader, too, may gain more than he
loses. If the war shuts up one sea, it opens
another ; if one species of goods lies dead, another
is in demand ; new firms, new businesses spring
up ; trade is as brisk as ever, and fortunes are
made in a voyage. But the manufacturing classes,
and especially those of England, are peculiarly
liable to be affected by the continuance of war. A
shoemaker in this country is a shoemaker all his
life ; lie has purchased his right to work at this
trade by a certain number of years' apprenticeship.
When the market is overstocked with shoes, and
ho is thrown out of work, he cannot turn to tailor-
ine., or carpentery, or clockmaking. he has all his
life been standing on one leg, plying one wheel,
wielding one arm—he can do but one thing. There
he is at this moment, with hundreds of others, out
of work. Wages are reduced, bread is dear, sugar
has risen, tea has risen, tallow has risen, taxes are
increased. He is sadly pinched, and yet he never
flinches, but gives his vote right willingly for the
war. We have before now spoken of the bread
riots throughout the country, and expressed regret
that our operatives should resort to such measures
—measures which only increase the misery which
they attempt to alleviate. But there is one interest-
ing feature of all those "strikes," all thoso riotous
meetings, that they very unmistakably evince the
hearty feeling with which the manufacturing classes,
amid all their privations, regard the war. We are
not aware of a single voice raised among them in
opposition to the war. There is a noble feeling
abroad, which, before the struggle broke out, very
many had despaired of ever witnessing in a
country" where Manchester politics were begin-
ning to exercise too powerful an influence, and
nothinc, was cared for unless it was wrapt up
in cotton. " The age of chivalry is gone, said
Burke, when he spoke of the enormities of the
first French Revolution and the indignities
suffered by the Queen—a saying refuted in the
wars which followed. The cry has been echoed in
our own times by men who looked too much to the
surface—who saw the financier raised into the First
Minister of State, and finance regarded as the sum
total of statesmanship, who saw men rising to power
who regarded cheapness as a cardinal virtue, could
dine off a statistical table, and treated every pos-
sible question as a question of accouuts—whos aw
the police reports filled with cases of cowardly as-
sault and swindling—who heard of solemn old
firms insolvent for years—who read of forged bills
accepted by persons knowing them to be forged—
and who had tasted the`adulterations of food which
the dealers had practised. Underneath all the true
spirit lay dormant, as fire in flint, and the iron of
war has struck the spark. Poetry is not gone, and
chivalry is not dead, so long as for Honour and
Justice—names which at one time were almost too
romantic to be mentioned among us—our produc-
tive classes can, amid ell their privations, still so
unreservedly raise their voices for war. Ve have
heroes in the Crimea, but we have heroes also at
home. The former aro mentioned in despatches,
win promotion, have
their pay increased ; all the
poets are singing of them,
the newspapers
The latter chronicle their exploits. seek no glory
ern dirty,ed
and win no renown ; their wages
their children ask for more bread theyare lsese a
and anything but C 0 decorated ;" Le poets do not
sing of them, and people generally do not recognise
the heroism of their endurance. Let us at least
attest the constancy with which they have sup-
ported the war, and record our admiration of the
calm confidence and generous self-denial with which
they await the result.
It is almost too mach to hope that .this noble
conduct will have weight with a certain class of
our statesmen. Seldom has there been seen a
greater anomaly—the
people unanimous, entha.
eiastic, determined on one fine of policy, their
once trusted leaders opposed to that policy, and
leagued against the Minister who, almost single-
handed, has ventured to adopt it. However much
we may admire their powers, and especially their
power of speaking, they are still but men, and as
from being the supporters of the war they have set
themselves against it from motives which every
sane man in the country considers utterly insuffi-
cient and unworthy, perhaps the bearing of our
people, who have almost invariably been right in
their foreign instincts, and who have an immediate
interest in putting a stop to further hostilities, may
lead them to re-examine the question, and to ask
-nether a policy for which such sacrifices are cheer-
lulls made may net, after all, be
and, at all events, may not be worthy of less su-
percilious treatment
than they give to it. We
may be quite wrong ; it may be the merest fanati-
cism to fight for an idea ; it may be very absurd to
provide against ee
a,
future contingency ; but the
people of England, if
they are absurd, are absurdly
practical. Depend upon it they are thoroughly in
earnest ; and when they have been thoroughly in
earnest they have generally been in the right:
(Front the Times of tltia d )
et have
Lord The lesser arrangements of the Cab
been definitely announced.
st are
an,l
Two additionsve now
made to this body in the persons
of Lo
Mr.
of A. ley, who retains his present past as Prosy
dent a the Board of Trade, and or Baines,
who is to be Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancas-
ter. It has for some time seen known that the
Duke of Argyll is to fill the office of Postmaster_
General. The Privy Seal, which has been placed
Once more at the disposal of the Premier by the
Duke's translation to St. Martin's-le-Grand,
has been given to Lord Harrowby, who vacates
the Chancellorship of the Duchy of Lan-
caster to make room for Mr. Baines. None of
these •
gentle-
man4pointraents, except that of the last name(!, lfr.
call for any serious remark. •
Baines is ese
classes, and a representative of the middle
evidence of thee disposition
may be accepted as
ositioti of the Minister to im-
port that element
into the
Ca-
binet. Hitherto, constitution of his whatever duties Mr. Baines has
oeen intrusted with he nas discharged to the satis-
fac!ion of the public. As chief officer under the
Poor Law he had a most troublesome and ariioeust
chit); to perform—one which served rather to t
his capacity for administration than his fitness for i
the higher vocation of statesman and orator. He