The Sun.
London, England, 1864-11-16 00:00:00

rim SUN, LONDON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, NOVEMBER 16, Mt'

dend, &c., as may be agreed upon. To authorise
the alteration, amendment, and extension of agree-
ments with the Wenlock and Much Wenlock and
Severn Junction Railway companies. To empower
the Great Western Company to concur with the
London and North-Western Railway Company in
the purchase of the Shrewsbury and Welshpool
Railway, and to become joint owners thereof. To
authorize a lease or transfer of the Bridport, the
Great Western and Brentford, and the Wycombe
to the Great Western Company. To enable the
latter company to run over with their own engines
and carriages, officers, and servants, on all or some
parts of the Metropolitan Riilways on such terms as
may be agreed upon between the companies, and
to authorise the company to raise additional capital
for the 'general purposes of the undertaking.

GREAT WESTERN AND YALE OF NEATH.
After several interviews between the directors of
the two companies it appea►s that a preliminary ar-
rangement for amalgamation was arrived at on Fri.
day for the Great Western to pay 51 per cent. on the
ordinary capital of the Vale of Neath Company, and
that the latter will also participate in the prcfits over
and above the payment of that dividend. The
freighters on the Vale of Neath and the commercial
public of the district are rather opposed to the amal-
gamation, but as it is understood that Mr Williams
will continue to be the general manager not onl; of
the Vale of Neath proper, but of the whole Great
Western route from Swansea to Birkenhead, it is
believed that the freighters will be satisfied, that
the traffic will be conducted as heretofore, and
that the facilities at present afforded will not in any
way be interfered with.

yet knew the commercial value of the sewage. lie
believed that the ratepayers of the metropolis would
not derive any benefit from the selected scheme for
very many years, if they ever did.
Mr. SAVAGE seconded the amendment.

Mr. TITE, M.P., thought there had been sufficient
delay on the part of the board. They had been
blamed by a committee of the House of Commons
for inaction, and now it seemed as if they were to
be blamed for setting to work in earnest. It was
clear that the sands could be turned into fertile soil
by the application of sewage. It was said that there
were other schemes to be considered. So much the
better. They would all be considered by the Par•
liamentary committees, and no doubt the best
would be selected. He should vote for the recep•
tion and adoption of the report.
Mr. LEGG briefly spoke in favour of the amend•
ment.

Mr. NEWTON, at some length, supported the
original motion, and closely criticised the schemes
which had been laid before the board. He thought
that the board had full information before upon
which they could act with safety.
Mr, SAUNDERS said that it was premature on the
part of the board to select any particular scheme.
If the recommendation of the committee was
adopted, the board would become a sponsor to the
scheme of Messrs Hope and Napier. He should op-
pose the original motion and support the amend-
ment.

Mr CARPMAEL said that he was of the same
opinion as he held in 1862, which was that the
scheme selected by the committee was the most fea.
Bible. Mr Ellis had not submitted any engineering
plan with his scheme.
Several other members took part in the discussion,
but the main arguments on both sides had been pre-
viOusly dealt with.
Ultimately tho amendment of Mr Collinson was
negatived..
Another nmendment was movel by Mr IL L
Taylor, to the effect that it was not desirable to
lease the sewage for so long a period as 50 years.
This amendment was seconded, and having been
put, was negatived.

Mr LEGG moved another amendment to the effect
that furthar tenders should be advertised for.

This amendment was also seconded, and when
put from the chair, negatived.
The original motion was then put and carried by
a majority of 26 to 9.
The board adjourned at five o'clock.

The report of the Main Drainage Committee of
the Metropolitan Board of Works on the applica-
tion of sewage at Rugby, Croydon, Carlisle, and
Edinburgh, has just been published. The committee
consider the evidence they have collected will prove
of assistance in arriving at a sound conclusion in
reference to the sewage of London. At Croydon
they saw that the operation was successful, though
on a limited scale, and were informed the results
were remunerative. At Carlisle, where the pro-
cess was only employed to prevent decomposition
of the sewage, they learned some curious state-
ments of its collateral advantages. At Edinburgh
they witnessed the beneficial result of many
years' experience of the profitable application
of sewage to sea sand, " Your committee," says
the report, " were not able to ascertain during their
visit to these several places, the chemical composi-
tion of the sewage of any of them, or the precise
quantity of sewage applied annually, or during a
given time ; still less did trustworthy experiments
appear to have been made as to the quantity which
could most advantageously be employed. The same
uncertainty prevailed as to the amount of grass cut,
or hay made, or cattle fed upon either the sewaged
land or that adjoining, obviously a most necessary
element of comparison. They have, consequently,
given in each case a statement of money payments,
very satisfactory es far as they go, but by no means
sufficiently accurate fur scientific purposes, money
valee depending on many other considerations
besides power of production, such as nearness to
markets, proportion of supply of a given quality
of land to demand, fitness or unfitness for the
particular purpose by reason of comparative
levels, and so forth, Some uncertainty appears
to prevail as to the kind of grass best adapted to
sewaged land, or whether any other crop may be
groan upon it with profit. Your committee would
of course except from this statement the fifteen acres
of land which have been the subject of the experi-
mtnls of the Royal Commission at Rugby; there
every one of thee.; particulars has been most care-
fully recorded by .kill<d observers, and many of
them have been already published by the commis-
sion in their second report."

tion and less regular spoliation he must recover by
entering into the traffic of the war, and by acquiring
such an interest as to have his share in its spoils,
its contracts, its speculations, its offices. The foreign
trade of the States, and even their coasting trade,
which they have laboured to keep wholly to them-
selves, have now passed almost entirely to the flag
of the foreigner, and even the immense duties now
extorted under the war tariff are unable to keep out
foreign manufactures, so great is the disturbance of
industry and trade. Hence, while other industries
decay and other openings are closed, war and politics
become all in all, and me❑ must be soldiers and
politicians or nothing. But all cannot be on the
winning side, so all cannot prosper ; and in every
city in the North there is now a conflict raging
between parties that can only exist, as they count-
existence, by the downfall of the other. The contest
is everywhere the same, and in the fierce struggle
between the Republicans and the Democrats we see
only another form of the very same quarrel that
has divided the North from the South. They who
are for local institutions, local self-government, and
the quieter and humbler blessings to be attained by
treading very close in the steps of our forefathers
are generally ranged on the so-called Democratic
side, and d 3 not disguise their sympathy with the
South. They who feed their fancy with the splendid
vision of a mighty federation, and who accordingly
wage war egainst every obstacle to this glorious
consummation, are generally on the Republican
side, and look to Mr Lincoln as their man. Already
even in these four short years, under the rude hand
of war, they have seen the finer strokes and purer
hues of their vision give way to a coarser touch and
more gaudy colours. Self-government, personal
freedom, mutual love and respect, and all that we
suppose in our pictures of national liberty have
been daubed over to make a rough ground for the
vulgar pageant of a vast military despotism. Every
scholar has wondered at the fatal rapidity with
which the Roman Republic ripened, or rotted,
into an empire, But that is, in sober fact, the
process we now see across the Atlantic. But
who shall hold the rod of empire, and who shall
feel its weight P No wonder men fight as they
do when such is the stake, and when the ques-
tion is not only the man or the city, but the style
and tone of the coming dominion. Who can doubt
that these are the questions at issue when we see
every consideration making way to the man or the
faction ? An immense army is to be hurled against
impregnable works, a large and costly armament
is to win or sink before a port defended with con-
summate skill, a General is to force a valley, to do
some prodigy hundreds of miles from his supports
—in fact, to gamble with twenty thousand lives, in
order to furnish a topic for a platform speech and a
heading for a friendly newspaper. A war almost
unparalleled is waged, not for the steady purpose
of final success, but for the quicker triumph of a
political sensation. Such is the way in which fac-
tions and chiefs fight, not for freedom or any really
public purpose, but for power; and power it is that
these men fight for.

POST.—With whatever justice blame may be
attributed to England for occasioning the large
majority of quarrels which so frequently arise be..
twecn the colonists and the natives of those coun-
tries in which they take up their abode, a similar
explanation can certainly not be given of the dis-
turbances which have so often, daring the past few
years, affected our relations with the Japanese.
Whether it be true or not that we are arbitrary,
selfish, and overbeariag 'in our etttitude towards
those semi-civilised, if not barbarous, rases with
which the commercial enterprise of our merchants,
and the adventurous spirit of a rising generation,
destitute of employment at home, brings us in cone
tact, it cannot fairly be said that those stern mea-
sures which we have found it necessary more than
once to employ to secure protection for our trade
with Japan have been dictated ottserw'se than by
the necessity of preserving rights which we enjoy,
as well by virtue of the law of nations as of
formal conventions. Dismissing from considera-
tion the particular causes of the differences which
have arisen between us and the Japanese, the cira
cumstance that we have received not only the
countenance but the active support of the other
Powers maintaining relations with Japan it itself
proves that the cause of quarrel has been common
to all. Nor, indeed, is it pretended, either by the
central Government at Jeddo, or by those
independent princes who, by their own acts of ag-
gression, provoked those hostilities which have led
to their unconditional submission, that the English
have made themselves specially obnoxious. When
Mr. Richardson was murdered on the high road by
the retainers of the Prince of Satsuma there is no
reason to doubt that, had the unfortunate gentle-
man been French, or Dutch, or American, instead
of English, he would have equally shared the same
fate. He was a foreigner, and that was a crime
which, in the eyes of a Japanese noble, well merited
death. Iu those acts of aggression which led to the
recent operations of the alllied fleets of England,
France, and Holland in the Straits of Simonosaki,
the Japanese evinced the most perfect impartiality
in the outrages committed on the ships of foreign
nations. The Prince of Nagato, who is what in past
times would have been called the feudal lord of the
territory commanding the straits and of the town of
Simonosaki, made a point of firing upon every ship
which attempted to pass through the straits. A
similar lesson to that which a year since ;we found
it necessary to teach the Prince of Satsuma, we, in
concert with our allies, have now given to his
brother Daimio ; and, in the one case as in the
other, the results have been all that could be de-
sired. The Prince of Nagato has surrendered at
discretion, and a convention has been agreed upon
which, if observed, will ensure henceforth the
free navigation of the straits, and which,
if violated, will simply lead to a repetition
of the punishment which has just been inflicted.
Although no justification can be offered for the cone
duct of those Daimios who have sought to discourage
the maintenance of commercial relations between
Japan and the rest of the world, the motives which
actuate them are easily explained. To us it may
seem preposterous that a nation should assume the
right of isolating itself from all others ; and admit-
ting the legal right to exist, the policy of ku ch a
course would naturally strike us as suicidal.
But that different ideas should operate on
the Japanese mind cannot surprise any who
are acquainted with the history of their coun-
try. At the time when Ignatius Loyola was
engaged in founding the Order of Jesus, the
Portuguese effected, without any opposition, a
settlement in Japan, and the first missiocaries who
taught Christianity to the Japanese were the imme-
diate disciples of the ci,devara page of Ferdinand
V. Their labours were not uusuccessful, but that
meddlesomeness in politics which has procured
their exclusion even from Roman Catholic States
led to the persecution of their converts, and to the
extinction in Japan of the creed which they had
sought to establish. Before the middle of the 17th
century the Portuguese had been expelled from
Japan, and warned by the calamities which had
supervened on the admission of foreigners, the Jae
panese resolved that they would thenceforth close
their ports to all the world. For more than two
centuries was this policy pursued, and it has not
been until within the last ten years that the Japes
nese Government have consented to establish a
trade with other countries. But owing to the pecu-
liar nature of the Government in Japan, and more
especially to the extravagant powers exercised by
an aristocratic body only nominally amenable to the
jurisdiction of the supreme Executive in the State,
the treaties concluded with foreign Powers not only
did not command the approval of all, but provoked
the opposition of some who possessed the means as
well as the desire of giving practical effect to the
antipathy they entertained towards foreigners.
Clinging to the traditions handed down to them
for nearly three centuries, the Princes of Satsuma
and of Nangato, and many others of their class, de-
termined to employ that power which, in defiance
of the Tycoon, they knew they could exercise with
impunity, to prevent the establishment of that in-
tercourse with the external world which they be.
lieved to be fraught with danger to their country.
Hence arose those circumstances which occasioned
the burning of Kagosima, and the capture of the
town of Simonosaki and the forts commanding the
straits of the same name. The central Government
was too weak to impose submission to its decrees
upon a discontented section of its subjects, and
those foreign Powers which were interested in the
observance of the treaties which were violated were
obliged to take upon themselves the task of
enforcing the authority of the Tycoon. With
Japan, considered in its entiri ty as a State, we
have been always at peace, and those hostilities
which have now terminated so successfully have
been in every respect anomalous. Elsewhere than
in Japan a similar state of circumstances could not
have arisen, because nowhere else is a conflict of
authority to be found so serious as that which has
arisen in consequence of the rival pretensions of the
Daimios and Tycoon. Regarded from that point of
view indicated by association with organised Go-
vernments, the Princes of Satsuma and Nagato would
simply be considered es rebels, for whose acts the
Government of their State would he held responsible.
It would, however, have been as unjust to make the
Japanese Government responsible for the outrage
committed by the Prince of Nagato in firing upon
ships navigating the Straits of Simonsaki as it would
be to claim reparation from the Government of the
United States for an insult to our flag offered by a
Confederate cruiser, because by a diplomatic fiction
the authority of tbo Northern President is still re-
cognised through what once constituted the Ameri-
can Uuion. We have been obliged to take the law
into our own hands, because those who ought
to enforce it were too weak to do so. The Daimios
may still affect to despise the Government to which