The Sun.
London, England, 1864-02-15 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 15, 1864.

RAILWAY INTELLIGENCE,

WEST YORKSHIRE.

The report states that the expenditure on capital account
has been £285,096, The net balance of revenue, after pay.
ment of interest on debentures, &c., is £10,422. A dividend
at the rate of £7 per cent. per annum will absorb £7,918,
which, with 4 per cent; upon the asset stock, £532, will
make £8,450, leaving a balance of £1,972, The reserve fund
now amounts to £8,765. The main line and Ossett branch
are reported by the engineer as in satisfactory condition,
and the works on the Batley and Methley branches are ex-
pected to be completed during the summer.

capital account durtng the past half-year amounts to
£995,114, of which £496,011 was expended on the main
lines, £132,732 for additional rolling stock, £25,000 sub-
scribed to the West London Extension, £263,200 to the
North London Extension, £28,787 to the Buxton Extension,
£9,918 to the Disley and Hayfield, £25,000 to the Cocker-
mouth and Penrith, and £2,570 for the improvement of the
permanent way. The revenue account for the half-year
ending 31st December shows that £2,677,408 had been re•
ceived and £1,279,597 expended, including £40,261 parish
rates and taxes, £40,310 passenger duty, £25,000. Parlia-
mentary and legal proceedings, £7,338 depreciation and
insurance of steamboats, and £10(3,667 renewal of road,
leaving a balance cf £1,397,811. To this is added £16,855
from the preceding half-year, £9,106 interest on cash balances
and calls in arrear, £29,763 rents of land and buildings, and
£69,308 estimated dividends from other companies-making
together £1,522,874. From this is deducted £255,088 for
interest on loans and debenture stock, £11,004 for chief
rents and interest on land purchases, £2,000 Preston and li
Wye lease, £24,900 Buckinghamshire lease, £2,750 Cannock
mineral lease, £29,560 North Union dividend and interest,
£87,451 Chester and Holyhead dividend and interest,
£139,681 Lancaster and Carlisle dividend and interest,
£4,473 Kendal and Windermere dividend and interest,
£33,471 Shropshire Union Railway and Canal lease, £512
Buxton and Matlock lease, £l5O West London lease,
£2,729 Leeds and Liverpool and Rochdale Canal lease,
£14,637 Stour Valley lease, £23,590 Birkenhead lease,
£6,000 Warrington and Garston lease, £2,597 Oldham and
Guide-bridge lease, £BOB St. George's Harbour lease,
£11,564 Shrewsbury and Hereford lease, £5,265 Merthyr
and Abergavenny lease, £2,000 Cromford and High Peak
lease, £4,626 Stockport, Disley, and Whaley-bridge agree-
ment, £2,375 Buxton Extension, £31,174 South Stafford-
shire agreement, £5,670 Shrewsbury and Welalapool agree-
ment, £7,138 Bedford and Cambridge agreement, £,OlO
South Leicestershire, £2,661 Central Wales, £2,116 Hayd on-
square depot interest-total, £717,470, leaving a disposable
balance of £305,103, out of which is deducted £784,198 for
the proposed dividend at the rate of 6 per cent, per annum,
leaving a balance of £21,205.

............ ••••1%

GREAT NORTHERN.

The report of the directors of this company states that,
up to the 31st of December, £12,729,323 have been ex-
pended on capital account, and £12,689,416 received, the
expenditure being £39,907 iu excess of the receipts. The
expenditure of capital during the half year was £305,630'
but the balance of the premium realised by the sale of
£115,000 irredeemable preference stock, has with other
small sums been placed to the credit of this account, The
net amount of expenditure is therefore £299,335. The net
increase in the balance, as compared with the same half of
1862, is £6,084. The sum available will yield the follow.
ing dividends :—On the original stock at the rate of £8 lbs.
per cent. per annum ; giving for the half year £1 7s. 6d.
to the original stock, £3 to the B stock, and £5 15s. to the
A stock, leaving:a balance of £213. The dividend for the
year 1863 will therefore be £6 10s. per cent. on the original
stook, £6 per cent. on the B stock, and £7 per cent, on the
A stock.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

LONDON REVIEW.—Lord Russell's Foreignsoffice
" piece" has had a long run ; but there are sym-
toms that the audience is growing tired, and if the
noble lord does not play a little better it runs a risk
of being damned. Disguise the Unpalatable fact as
we may,the English nation has twice within the last
six months had the mortification to see its almost
menacing remonstrances treated with cool con.
tempt. This succession of good things leaves a very
bitter taste in the mouth. Pill over-night in the
Polish affairs is followed by a pill in the Danish
business the next morning ; and all our desire to
believe the treatment scientific does not prevent us
from thinking it unpalatable. As far as Poland was
concerned we are far from condemning the Govern-
ment for either adopting or remaining content with
diplomatic action. The treaty which gave Poland
to Russia, in spirit if not in letter, made the great
Powers of Europe into a kind of silent. Protectorate.
Lord Russell's fault, then, was not in meditating
or in remonstrating, but in giving vent loudly to
protestations that England would never take offence
whatever the language held to her by Russia. One
serious blunder graced the diplomatic negotia-
tion that otherwise would only have been inefficient.
Lord Russell, in a moment of generous improvi-
dence, went down to the country, and on a country
platform declared Russia's title to Poland under
the treaty gone. When you do not mean to bite,
it is a mistake to bark. Bat Lord Russell incau-
tiously went home and penned a despatch to St.
Petersburgh repeating this exasperating assertion.
Oa a semi-official threat of war from Russia—for
it amounts to that—he withdrew it by a hasty tele-
graph. Lord Derby's Shakspearian simile here
becomes not altogether inappropriate. Lord Rus-
sell and the month of March seem always to come
in like lions, and always to go out like lambs.
Having finished with Russia, Lord Russell's
next achievement was his answer to the Em-
peror's proposal for a Congress. It is probable
that the Ministry exercised a wholesome dis-
cretion in declining that barren invitation. But
the Emperor of the French was a courteous and
powerFel ally. All that Lord Russell was called
upon to do was to lay aside the pedant, and to be
for a moment a man of the world. Cold, glittering,
and logical, his despatch in reply to the French
Emperor's suggestion read in the ears of all Europe
as a polemical tractate. This was not the way to
smooth over an obviously awkward duty. In the
House of Peers last week Lord Russell defended
himself characteristically upon this charge. He
extracted two civil expressions from his letter and
gave them, ore rotundo, to his audience as evidence
that he had answered the Emperor like a friend
and not a disputant. A more absolute proof of the
iciness of the epistle could hardly have been dis-
covered. The two chilling and frigid extracts
sounded lake the bare civilities which, in deference
to society, a man pays in a drawing-room to his
deadly foe. They remind us of the metaphor
applied by the great O'Connell to the late Sir Itobt.
Peel's smile. They are for all the world like the
silver plate upon a coffin. On the Danish question,
Lord Russell has not been a happy or successful
correspondent. The estimate put by Germany on
the rigid asperity of his pen, was shown by the
Saxon Minister's passionate reply to one of Lord
Russell's letters. Nor have the Danes, it is said,
more reason to be satisfied than M. von Beust. In
obedience to England's earnest pressure, they have
surrendered their diplomatic position, and as it
seems to very little purpose. Foreign rumour—
looking before and after, and perhaps not altogether
unfamiliar with Sidney Smith's joke about Lord
Russell's readiness to command the Channel fleet,
even attributes to Lord Russell's advice the mili-
tary retreat of General Msza from the Dannewerke.
This ludicrous piece of gossip betrays the amuse-
ment felt by foreigners at the policy of the Eng-
lish Foreign-office. We are really to some extent
thin day the laughing-stock of the capitals of the
Continet. As for the veiled threats addressed
by the noble lord the Secretary for Foreign Affairs
to Germany, we suppose they have come to nothing
—at all events, they have been contemptuously
neglected by Austria and Prussia, not to mention
the smaller States. This time Lord Russell cannot
be accused of perusing the plan he adopted with re-
spect to Russia. The Northern Cabinet was allowed
to understand that we meant no blows, and it pos-
sibly availed itself of the considerate information.
Vienna and Berlin were given no such promise, In
disregarding England's summons to abstain from
hostilities, they quietly took their chance of an Eng-
lish fleet in the Adriatic. This fleet, as they insult-
ingly anticipated, never came. An unfriendly critic
might with some plausibility believe that the Ger-
man Powers had taken stock pretty fairly of the
diplomatic thunder of the Foreign-office. The policy
of much cry and little wool is positively fatal to
peace in the long run. We shall be very much sur-
prised if Lord Russell is as popular in the City as a
Foreign Minister as he used to be as a domestic
politician. All these humiliations added up. The
nation becomes daily more impatient, and at last,
perhaps, surges into war for some worthless cause,
because it is weary of giving advice gratis, Having
steered out of war on great questions that we care
about, at last we shall, out of sheer opiriti be driven
to make war about a bagatelle.
'WEEKLY REGISTER.—In his speech the first night
of the session, Lord Palmerston asked sarcastically,
at least four times, whether his Government had not
a policy—each question following upon some bold
assertion that drew down ministerial cheers, respect-
ing the diplomacy of Downing-street with reference
to the Dane-German quarrel. "We have," he ex-
claimed triumphantly, c. a policy—the policy of
maintaining the peace and the integrity of the
Danish monarchy, and we have to a great extent
succeeded in it." And this was said while the Danes
and the Germans were hotly engaged in mortal com-
bat, and while the kingdom of Denmark was in the
act of dismemberment. The war, which we have all
along anticipated, has broken out, and the Danish
army, seeing no chance of holding their fortified
position against the overwhelming masses of the
enemy, have abandoned the Duchy of Schleswig,
and retreated to the island of Alsen. Had they
done so ten days ago many lives would have
been spared, much irritation would have been
avoided, and the chances of King Christian's re-
taining tFe Duchy of Schleswig would have been
very much better than they are now. We are in a
position to state confidently that when the Austrian
troops were set in motion, there was every wish in
the Government of Vienna to preserve Schleswig,
at least, for the King of Denmark. How far that
wish has been modified or rendered difficult of
accomplishment by the events that have since oc-
curred, is another question, All we can say—and
we say it with confidence—is, that if Denmark
should lose the Duchies, Lords Palmerston and
Russell and their newspapers will have done the
mischief. They stung Germany into fury by their
insolent scolding and menaces, and they encou-
raged the Danes to obstinacy and rashness by their
pompous parade of British sympathy, and their pro-
mises of aid, which was not to come when wanted.
This they did thinking that France would take part
with them in intimidating Germany. But the
German Courts, great and small, knew better, and
Austria and Prussia wore assured their advance to
the Schlei and across it would not cause a French
army to advance to the Rhine. And the same
good authority also made them quite easy with re-
gard to Sweden and Piedmont. This we stated
a fortnight or three weeks ago, and we now repeat
it, in the teeth of assertions of a somewhat
opposite character, that have fallen from the
First Minister and the Secretary for Foreign
Affairs. These ministers denounce Austria and
Prussia for going to war after Denmark had
promised to comply with all their demands, and
after her Majesty's Government undertook to
guarantee the fulfilment of that promise. In
the first place, there was no such promise and no
such undertaking. The King of Denmark pro-
mised to convoke the Rigsdag in six weeks, with a
view to their sanctioning the revocation of the Con-
stitution of last November, which is a very different
thing from promising absolutely to recall the Con-
stitution ; and the British Government promised to
invite the Governments of France, Russia, and
Sweden to join them in a Protocol requiring the
Danish Government to fulfil the promises made to
Germany by the late King of Denmark before the
Treaty of 1852 was perfected, which is a very
different order indeed from that of guaranteeing
the revocation of the new Danish Constitution.
But even if the promise and the guarantee were
what they are erroneously stated to have been, they
came too late. Such as they were, they were not
submitted to the Cabinets of Vienna and Berlin
until the order had been given for the Austrian and
Prussian armies to advance, and all the arrange-
ments for taking forcible possession of Schleswig
were completed. If Lord Russell, instead of " med-
dling and muddling," had gone to work discreetly,
and devoted to statesmanlike diplomacy the time
he wasned in mischievous lecturing and hectoring,
it is not at all improbable that war between Ger-
many and Denmark might have been prevented ;
but he only became discreet and civil when he
found that bullying would not do, and, in the ex.
cited state of German feeling, it might have been
more than the thrones of Austria and Prussia are
worth to have then countermanded the order to
advance.

Sr ECTATOR.—Patriotism and valour, heroism and
self-sacrifice, have all alike failed to stop the bul-
lets, and the military tyrannies of Germany are
masters of the half of Schleswig. General de
Meza, the Jew soldier in chief command of the
Danish army, finding that the Prussians could cross
the Sehlci, that the Dannewerke NS' as thereby
turned, and if he remained his army would be
forced either to accept battle against twofold num-

bers or to capitulate, preferred to withdraw, and,
sharply pursued by the enemy, retreated upon Flens-
burg, whence the major portion of the army crossed
into the district of Schleswig, called from the arm
of the sea which separates it from the mainland the
Island of Aslen. The Danes fought in their retreat
with despairing courage, defending hedge after
hedge. The people of Flensburg defended their
barricades till they had killed a thousand Germans ;
and at Oversee, when utterly outmatched, a Danish
regiment flung itself upon the Austrian batte-
ries, and, though almeet destroyed itself, saved the
remainder of the army. It is all useless, for " the
rain descends alike on the just and on the unjust,"
no moral superiority counterbalances bayonets, and
England does not seem even to feel the grandeur of
the effort the hope of her support has tempted brave
men to make. The Germans, flushed with their
victory, have, to prove their respect for the Treaty
of 1852, already "suspended" the Danish Govern-
ment, and to show their devotionito justice and
nationality have ordered that Danes as well as Ger-
mane shall use the German tongue, The people
north of Flensburg are still ready to die for their
country ; but the people south of that point are
allowed to speak for both, and to proclaim Prince
Frederick as Duke alike of the willing and the un-
willing population. All Danes within reach of the
Hungarians, Croats, Slavons, I talians, and Austrians,
who make up what Vienna calls a German army, are
expelled, Germans who think freedom worth as much
as nationality are compelled to follow them, and
hundreds of quiet families guilty of loyalty to an
English treaty are wandering northwards in this
bitter weather, without home or shelter or goal,
cursing, we fear, the sympathies which induced
them to believe that England, even vo hen not bound
down by a lawyer's contract, could still be relied on
to help freemen against violent wrong. The Danes,
it is believed, will still, with the persistence of their
Scandinavian blood, maintain the contest, harassing
the invaders from Alsen, and by sea, until events
once more turn, but there is no real ground of hope;
forty millions of people in earnest are not to be re-
sisted by less than two, however individually supe-
rior, and the Germans are in earnest. They are en-
joying the threefold luxury of seeing that when
combined for evil they are strong, of hoping that
one day they may be powerful also for good, and of
insulting the power whose political freedom is a
standing reproach to a people who desiring liberty
and unity are still the meek subjects of 30 prince-
lings, and they will quaff the cup to the bottom.
Wny not ? God is far off, and England afraid of
Napoleon, and the world for the moment is theirs to
do what they will—to destroy Denmark if they
like, in order that Prussian recruits may become
veterans, and that Hapsburg may not outstrip
Hohenzollern in the race for the hegemony. What
matters if a treaty is broken when the judges are
afraid to enforce it, that every little nation in Europe
is thrown open defenceless to the assaults of its
neighbours, that a nation is dying as some queenly
woman might die if assailed by wolves, that every
honourable heart in Great Britain is beating slower
for shame at the spectacle of triumphant wrong P
Are not the victors Germans, and are they not the
ruling race of earth, the only one froth which the
world picks kings—competent for anything except
freedom and fidelity ? It is useless, however, with
Tories hungering for a surplus, and Liberals thirst-
ing to show the world that England means
peace even when peace is humiliation, to write
about treaties, and honour, and nationalities, and
" abstract ideas" of that kind. The only argument
which comes home in the present temper of the
aristocratic mind is interest, and we ask them just
to consider for a moment whether apathetic inde-
cision is in this matter their true interest ? Are
they really prepared to allow two great Powers to
tear a province from a little Power because a sec-
tion of the inhabitants of the province speak the
same language as one-half of the two aggressive
populations do ? Because, if they are, we want to
know on what principle they intend to fight for the
Channel Islands, or the Mauritius, or Gibraltar, or
any one of the thirty dependencies of Great Britain
in which English is not universally spoken. That
Germany intends to keep the Duchies is, we hold,
certain, and to keep them upon the ground of
national consanguinity. These Powers have been
driven to the war which qua war they did not de-
sire by the pressure of German feeling, which feel-
ing has been intensified by every military success,
and will most certainly not permit them to sur-
render the long desired prize. The Courts have been
from the first unable to resist the commands of the
excited democracy of Germany, and nothing has
occurred in the war to strengthen their power over
their peoples' passions. If they yield to them they
are safe, and except their own safety what have
they to consult ? There is the Treaty of 1852, but
the Hohenzollerns have just violated a contract of
at least equal validity. M. Bismark writes openly
that a quarrel with Smith dissolves all contracts
with Jones, and the Hapsburgs have broken every
engagement they everi made, unless, indeed,
it bound them to make priests a little
stronger. There is France, but Germany,
united, thinks herself a match for France,
sings in her spasm of energy songs about wringing
" Elsass " from the stranger, and doubtless were
France only as weak as Denmark would try to exe-
cute her threat. There is England, but Germany
g gusto that Earl Russell's
repet;:q with sneering
-;nd ' • that England fights only when
threats are --rilled, and that national dig-
leer interests are hill,- •-12 red an interest. The
nity is not in England confer,
end they will, if
two Powers can break the Treaty,
and w_ith
only it is clear that breaking it will pay;
provinces to acquire, a democracy to conciliate, a
weak foe to outrage, and only England to insult,
who can doubt that the profit is secure ? There will
be, of course, negotiations, for German professors
love to prove rights on paper; there will probably
be half-a-dozen subterfuges, for a plain appeal to
the sabre might bring a flash into England's sleepy
eyes; there will, doubtless, be a popular vote, for,
as Jules Favre said, modern creeds require us to
search the victim's entrails for favourable auguries;
but when all these things are done Denmark will
have lost Schleswig, and a nationality older than
our own will be left without resource save that one
which seems pleasant only to Buddhists, absorption
in something greater than oneself. Is it our interest
to allow this example of successful violence to tempt
France to seize the Rhine, and Russia the frontier
of the Balkan P Resisting either of those two ag-
gressions would cost us rather more than sending a
fleet to Venice and an expedition into Jutland, yet
those are the ultimate dangers which we risk in
order to avoid the possibility of the first of them.
We may avert them, say some Radicals, by steadily
refusing to mingle in any Continental affair, as, in-
deed, it is possible to avoid trouble when the next
house is on fire by calmly going to bed. That is non-
intervention in perfection ; but then there is risk
in that course as well as cowardly neglect of
duty. Fortunately there is not the smallest fear of
Englishmen forgetting that dignity is at least an
element in comfort, or holding that human beings
are to them mere objects of scientific interest, or
consenting to live as members of a family scorned by
all the families with which it must per force asso-
ciate. Short of a policy of selfish isolation, of
watching crime with a sensation of amusement, it is
surely the interest of Great Britain that her friend-
ship should have some value, and her enmity some
importance, that her vote for peace and freedom
should weigh with armed despots, that her "opinion"
should be something more than the shout of an edu-
cated mob. Yet that is the position to which we
are reduced if the governing class insists that we
have done all that friendship can ask for Denmark,
because, forsooth ! we have suggested a conference—
have recommended chloroform in order to make
amputation easy.
SATURDAY REVIEW.—Out of the multitude of
plans for metropolitan railways already deposited,
the materials can be found to piece out almost any
general scheme which could possibly be determined
on, and all that is needed now is to perform the task
of selection on some intelligible and consistent prin-
ciple. To mention only a few of the more conspi-
cuous projects as they appear in the report of the
Board of Trade, we find, first, an entire system
of lines proposed by the Metropolitan Rail-
way Company. The short line from Pad-
dington to Farringdon-street has proved so
successful that it is intended to extend it from both
extremities, to the Minories and the Blackwell Rail-
way on the East, and to Kensington and the Vic-
toria Station on the South and West; and it is also
proposed to make other subordinate lines to improve
the connections with the main trunk railways, be-
sides a branch to introduce into the system St. John's
Wood and the Hampstead Railway. A different
project, having the same object of making the cir-
cuit of London, commences at the Kensington Sta-
tion, pierces through Chelsea and Pimlico to the
Victoria terminus, thence goes direct to Westmin-
ster along the Thames Embankment, and on by
Cannon-street and Tower-hill, where it forms a
junction with the Blackwell arid North London
lines, and throws out one arm to the North as far
as the Metropolitan line, and another across the
river, by the Thames tunnel or otherwise, to bring
the Southern lines into the general circuit. Then
there is yet another company with a group of lines
connecting all the northern and southern railways
on the east side of London, and also putting for-
ward its independent claim for the occupation of the
hitherto useless tunnel. In addition to these inde-
pendent schemes,
connecting system the Blackwell Railway Company
has its own plan for its with the
Great Northern and Midland Railwaythand extend-
ing it to the districts of Tottenham and Edgware.
By a wider circuit the Great Eestern again is to be
united with the suburban railways of the north of
London and with the North-Western and Metropo-
litan systems. The unbuilt Embankment is to be
fought for by various companies who compete for