The Sun.
London, England, 1864-01-13 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—Some years ago the elder members of one
of our Universities were accustomed to spend much
sympathy and some coin upon a celebrated Jehu
who had been deposed and ruined by the then re-
cent railway. His calling was gone, and he was in
miserable plight. Suddenly, however, his penury
seemed to cease, and, although many believed that
he had lost his wits. all agreed that he must have
found a fortune. Our friend might every day be
seen upon a branch turnpike road in the neigh-
bourhood of Camford, driving sometimes a gig and
sometimes a cart up and down from 500 yards on
one side of the turnpike gate to 500 yards on the
other side, but always keeping himself to this short
bit of road, and always as he went through the gate
paying the toll and taking a ticket. Old Splinter-
bar was very close upon the object of his drives
and payments at that time, and perhaps it was lucky
for him Dr. Forbes Winslow did not happen to
pass that way, but somehow it was that there was
method and profit also in his apparent madness.
Months later he did not mind showing his friends
how he was engaged all that time in " making
traffic for the new branch line." There was a traffic
taker inside the tollhouse who marked him down
every time he passed, and the traffic•taker proved
his figures, the toll-collector proved his receipts,
and the ticket vouchers proved the tickets, and all
went before the House of Commons' Committee;
and by this simple means one of the most solitary
cross-roads in those parts became statistically one
of the most frequented communications in the
kingdom. Recalling to mind these and many other
stories of the same kind, we are not disposed to put
implicit faith in the estimates recently put forth by
the promoters of the new metropolitan schemes as
to the numbers of men who daily come in by rail
and omnibus from the environs of London to keep
business hours in the metropolis. The suggestion
made is that 700,000 persons come into London
every morning and go out of London every night.
This may be, and probably is, a great exaggera-
tion ; but there can be no doubt that the real
figures, if they could be obtained, must also be very
large and far beyond the control of any such agency
as that of our friend in the gig. Perhaps weshould
not be far beyond the mark in estimating that half
a million of persons engaged in business transac-
tions in London during the day sleep out of town
in habitations within a radius of five-and-twenty
miles. This is a fact which deserves much more
careful attention than it has hitherto obtained. It
marks an epoch in the habits of our people, it die•
covers a new want scarcely known to the last gene-
ration, and it indicates a mine of wealth as yet very
imperfectly worked by the railway companies. It
is under every discouragement that all this vast
population migrates morning and evening. These
people do not appear in the metropolitan Census,
they form no portion of the estimated three millions
of the metropolis, and no doubt their number would
be doubled if the facilities of transport were what
they ought to be. If we look beyond the smoke,
we may see that the railway traffic-master can dis.
tribute them as a magician can conjure his spirits.
Where there are trains every quarter of an hour,
villages of villas and little towns of cottages lightly
cover the landscape. The Crystal Palace, despite
its clayey soil, will soon be in the very midst of
suburban London. Again, where the trains are
numerous in the morning, with a late train at night
for the playgoers, and the London diners-out, and
the late workers, the larger houses rise and the
railway residential revenue increases. The South-
Eastern bids very fairly for a large traffic) of this
kind, and is getting it—the landowners. down the
line and the public sharing the gain with the Com-
pany. The South-Western is rather niggard of
conveniences, and with, perhaps, the finest oppor-
tunities of converting some 40 miles of valueless
line into a highly paying district, stops short in
its resident accommodation at Weybridge. The
Great Western is far too proud, though by no means
too prosperous,to attend to such small matters, With
the best line and perhaps the most unskilful staff
in England, it utterly neglects the mine of revenue
which lies in the beautiful country about Marlow,
and, indeed, all down to Pangbourne. The lines of
the Great Northern and of the Great Eastern are
not laid in pleasant places, and there is something
about the traditions of the latter line which does
not invite the confidence necessary to habitual
travel, The change of name and even the estab-
lishment of several Accidental Death Insurance
Companies have not yet succeeded in rendering the
Eastern Counties popular as a place for cockney
ruralising. The North Western, with many disad-
vantages of soil and climate, and a distant London
station, have by liberality in trains and residents'
tickets begirt Harrow with first-class houses, and
gathered a population on their line. But none of
these traffiesmasters have studied the habits of the
fish it is their business to catch. Any traffic-master
who considered the matter for a moment must know
that the great London deliveries of suburban resi-
dents ought to be at 8 45, 9 45, and 10 45. The
junior clerk, the junior partner in the retail busi-
nese, and all the active, youthful, and subordinate
little wheels of London commerce begin to revolve
exactly at nine,—not a moment later, for punctu-
ality is the soul of business. The junior pertners,
,managing clerks, and people of second-rate autho-
rity, arrive with equal exactitude at ten. The
magnates, when the letters are opened and docketed,
the orders registered, the Stock Exchange open,
and the world well aired, come in, to the moment,
at eleven. All the world of London knows this,
and every one acts upon it except the traffic-mas-
ters. In stupid indifference to the wants of their
customers and the pockets of their shareholders,
they not only make their lines inconvenient for re-
sidential purposes, but they circumscribe the area
available for habitations and make the available
places crowded and uncomfortable. Any of our
readers who will glance at the " Map of Metropo-
litan Railways and Miscellaneous Improvements
deposited at the Private Bill-office,"just published,
will readily discern the state of things which has
suggested the observations we are making. Before
the Metropolitan Railways are intrusted with new
powers they ought to show that they are making
the best use they can of the facilities they now have,
All these new London projects can be for no other
purpose than to catch the morning and evening re-
sidential traffic. The occasional traveller, encum-
bered by his luggage, must take his cab to his rest-
ing place at all events. It is the habitual, unladen,
daily customer who wants to be set down within
five or ten minutes of his shop, or his counting
house, or his office. It is for this custom the fight
listo he made. But the fight should be made not
only in the London streets, but in the country. The
customers will grow up upon the lines that have the
most frequent trains ,?,hel the most liberal system of
yearly tickets. There can be no doubt that the most
paying thing at this moment .W-Puld be a series of
short residential lines, restricted to ree::lential traffic,
going 25 miles into the country round Lca7doh, but
converging into two or three lines near London, and
with trains every quarter of an hour. Far be
from us to propose anything of the sort in the pre-
sent state of affairs, but the object should be to get
as near to this as we can with the least possible in-
terference with present arrangements, and, above
all, without unnecessarily disturbing the streets of
London. If the shareholders of the present lines
would spur their directors, and the directors would

take the traffic masters rather energetically by the
collar and shake them into a consciousness of the
present state of the wants of the metropolis, a great
deal might be done without costly Parliamentary
contests or pulling down London.

TELEGRAPII.--Mercy weeps, and Justice herself
takes part with her dismayed sister in protesting
against the deed which was done yesterday at Horse-
monger-lane Gaol. Its most awful characteristic is
that it stands irrevocable; for the appeal of pity
made by the people on behalf of Samuel Wright
has been carried ere now by his own sad spirit to a
tribunal beyond the purview of earthly rulers.
Adjudged upon compassionately there—as we may
think it will be—the ruling of that sublime and
faultless Court of Error cannot set right again the
wrong done here. It remains an injustice irrever-
sible, an eternally petrified mistake, a piece of cold
officialism and Ministerial stiff-neckedness stereo-
typed for bad, and all by the gallows. The man
whose life might yesterday have been saved by one
stroke of the Secretary's pen—by one generous and
observant impulse rising above the dead level of
routine—lies now in a felon's grave, with a prison
passage for his cemetery and a shroud of quicklime
for his funeral cerements. No ghost evoked with in-
genious optical methods, or imagined by a diseased
brain, could possess the power and the horror of that
corpse. From the grave it accuses its executioners of
an unmerited death, which the crowd—hardly re-
strained at the scaffold by respect for law—hooted
" as a murder." From the grave it raises that most
perilous and catching cry of " one law for the rich
and another for the poor," which can hardly be con-
tradicted while Victor Townley lives and Samuel
Wright moulders. From the grave, too, it reminds,
and will long remind the country, of that strange
and distressing scene enacted yesterday, when the
homicide on the scaffold bowed with his darkened
face to the people crying " Shame !" on his han-
man. When and while the choked lungs fluttered,
and the heart's throb
dulled to all paused, and the poor brain
things in this life except to that one
terrible and slow agony tediously fading off from
nerve and organ, Wright must still have heard his
countrymen crying against the infliction of that
supreme penalty. What did it mean, this sympathy
for the man ? Was he not a murderer? Had he
not slain. with his own hand the woman who was
his companion ? By his own immediate and
jlwretched co
infe:eion, he had done so; and the Erg.is pope irkve no maudlin pity for the shedder of
blood. Cut the feeling grows etronger Every day

amongst a large section of the community that blood
cannot be washed away by blood, and on the red
list of " murders" this did not stand in the worst
class. It was an act of vice and of passion, but don®
without premeditation, and upon starting up from
sleep ; it was swiftly made known, readily acknc's'
'edged, briefly tried, and hurriedly adjudged. IC°ll
could not sell a house or buy a bit of garden-ground
so quickly as Samuel Wright was arrested,
arraigned, and cast for death ; and while the pro'
secuting counsel himself therefore pressed for delay'
to produce palliating circumstances, the people had
just witnessed a most doubtful act of clemency, Oa
demanded, with a wise and humane logic, that the
department which had seen insanity in jealous lose
should not see wilful murder in the frenzy of a hasty
quarrel, completed and repented of within the siztl
seconds. They demanded it, as all know too well?
in vain, and now the dangerous experience
has passed upon the public of an executiol
hooted by its spectators. If anything
woo
lend gravity to such an event, it
be the self-restraint shown by the indignant crowd'
Five hundred policemen and a few barriers of elm
timber could not yesterday have kept the thousand°
who shouted " Shame!" from tearing Wright WI
the gallows, if their sympathy for him had not be
its basis in love of law and justice. This becorne°l
then, no common incident—no mock-heroic of go'
annals—no Jack Sheppard or rollicking Mache,a,,„
kissing hands to the mob, and cheered out of
in return, as a bold, light-hearted rogue. An ;
leaving the crowd out of the question as the lec?ci
important portion of the tragedy, those who woo
have gone, but who stayed away in order to hale
no hand or part in the business, must be roger
bered. For every hundred spectators at the hang:
ing there would have been thousands, but that tilos;
who usually bear to look on such things ha_
sternly denied themselves the spectacle, rathe,
than seem to warrant a judicial murder. lish°;
again, behind all these absentees, we think et
thousands who actively protested, by argument ith
meeting and petition against the execution—;
eluding men of mark and character, and alute7
all the London press with its million readers
i
the terrible thought is more and more impress!
upon us that at Horsemonger-lane gaol the
try was on this occasion one way and the Goverore
ment another, as to whether the life should
strangled out of the poor bricklayer. The Gever„s
meet, however, is a shadowy term,, and we 113",$
bring closer home the responsibility of the glia.°„t
blood. Solemnly feeling, then, how grave a t°l,';
we say, and how good a gift it is that a Milo",
should have the courage to disregard clamour 10
follow law, we cannot avoid the duty of layingt of
misery and mistake of this deed upon the bead
Sir George Grey. We would do the Home Seerl
tary justice—and we are sure we do him no nil
than justice in believing that he would have Saved
Wright if, in his own official opinion, "he COti s
have saved him." It would be absurd to believe
fit
Minister obstinately bent upon exacting the 1,50.4
penalty from such a criminal, and Sir George Pei
neither the character nor the bearing of a ertisO
man. His error was not of the heart so much
of the Lead, and has been bred of that cold flue
dull official blood which routine and foolscap eogeof
der. He would have drawn the blunted swer",,s,
Mercy from its sheath, instead of the pointed roe
pon of Justice, but that his own fingers had tied of
blade to the seaboard with Gordian taPgl_issors
mt. tape. Had he been less ministerial and ''..fat
of a Minister he would have perceived that here "16
precisely a case where the instincts of the Pe ?Ste
were a great deal more weighty than such con
rations as that there had been a reprieve beler"oi.
that there mustn't be too many—that populaffito
nion was encroaching upon the sacred carpet re
eat,
Home-office—that Government was liovernhistbe
and must be maintained. These, we say, °asap
kind of thoughts which haunted Sir George
and which—proving him far more foolish and a" je
monplace than cruel or haughty—sustained lift al
the usfortunate business to its bloody end. „sibi'
then that horror comes in, and that the resPa-idete
lity which we lay upon the Minister's 5h°13,40
stains our hands with crimson and soils his (not
dress with the same colour. The obstinacy that 014
ministerial in the office was homicidal in the
bleak air of the winter morning, when Wrigui":o-
- to die for having committed manslauChr-soe'
judiciously close after a murder elsewhere. 11 e; oft
not take the weight of "the bricklayer's" deawa the
the head that nodded assent so easily when:, 03i,
gentleman" was pronounced mad. And wh`lsiet
nisterial responsibility is a reality and not a s"..itt•
it is not only just that we should refer that, 're
ters to the right man, but he himself must be of
pared to accept the reference. It is a great
00
even a sublime authority to stand before theP,e,'stt
the official " master of life," the incarnate ,`","tea
of Final Appeal
for that cffice be too cold or too eae;the
brained, we must say so, for life and death and
iye
; atd if heart or head seLeaais.
public weal are i On Sir Geetb.,
Grey lies the load
-h question.
we think it was; with him remains all
credit of his firmness, if Wright's act was a niceie
der, and Victor Townley's was not. He, and he
_tci
is the adviser of the Crown in these matters; her
of this event, if shameful,;
those who placed a petition on this subject int •
Majesty's hands asked of her tender heart an Inelio
ference which her wise and experienced Iniad,_°,eo'
to have refused to her strong inclinations. Tn,s„r
ple's instinct, striking the balance of justi._evtbe
fairly in these perplexed cases, has fixed avitl.lestro
same acumen on him who is to blame in the eel
and now but one hope is left,
business. It is the Home Secretary, and 0 lest
chance of mercy—with the dreadful scaffold Aide
lately enacted when Alice Holt died, and trio 10
inconsistence of logic Middles hich Par:Letlient
Derbyshire to hang in x-1118Y `-`etas/.
work upon public opinion so as speedily th r.ottoli
the power of life and death out of the Des'
erring hands of parliamentary officials.
namely, that the