The Sun.
London, England, 1864-04-07 00:00:00

Perhaps the noble lord thinks he will gain some-
thing, or lose much in driving things to extremi-
ties—perhaps he knows that before the particulars
are duly ascertained or fully circulated it may not
be as an official character that he listens to the
animadversions that their perusal may call forth.
Whatever may be the real reason or the secret
motive that has actuated the noble lord in his con-
sent to the proposition, it is to be considered as a
matter of satisfaction that we are to have the cor-
respondence of the affair put before us. There is
not much use in verbal declarations of any sort or
in mere assertions of the most positive nature.
Proofs are always required. before conviction is
formed, and this is why at all times during this
session there has been such a marked reticence
displayed whenever hon. members have asked for
any detailed information, or demanded any returns
of correspondence, &c. It is very satisfactory that
the affairs of the country should be conducted in
this manner, because the danger is that after a
stormy session and a series of bickerings and con-
tentions, intermingled with personal attacks and
awkward affairs, all will go on as before, except
that Ministers may become more reckless if pos-
sible, and still less inclined to conform to the re-
quirements which the feeling and opinion of the
public expect from them. Great credit is dna to
those who, like Lord CLANRICARDE, come forward
and zealously advocate the cause of the oppressed,
and set forth the true reasons for such and such a
state of things. After the garbled statements, and
very one-sided accounts that we meet with in high
places, it is doubly necessary that private members
of both Houses of the Legislature should assume a
prominent position, and take upon themselves the
thankless task of opposing, single-handed, the col-
lective force of Ministerial phalanxes, and the
mighty array of those who always swear by the
Government, right or wrong. It is really difficult
to form a correct estimate of what might have been
attempted by Ministers in their infatuated par•
tiality for the Federals, if Parliament had not hap..
pened to meet when it did. As the surface of
events becomes more complicated, and the political
horizon becomes more and more threatening, we are
led to appreciate to a fuller extent, and to acknow-
ledge with a more iearty recognition, the benefits
and blessings of a representative form of Govern-
ment. Foreign States may be at the present
moment better regulated, and more efficiently re-
presented than we are ; but it is a matter of chance,
and if the people do not approve or ratify this or
that decree it will, nevertheless, be carried out all
the same, It is otherwise with us, however, and
whenever the overtaxed patience cf the public gives
way, and the much abused latitude always accorded
to the Cabinet is exhausted, the day of reckoning
will amply atone for all previous lathes and former
shortcomings. The spirit of a free people cannot
always be kept under, and the rights of the nation
to have its feelings and opinions represented in an
adequate form before the world must one day be
vindicated in spite of all the efforts of time-serving
and place-loving statesmen.

'The social statistics of a busy thriving community

like our own afford a good deal of interesting
matter for consideration. The returns of births,
deaths, and marriages, the respective numbers of
the followers of different religions, the test of pope•
lar education afforded by the marriage-register, and
the actual strength of the population, are all paints
of great importance which exercise a powerful in-
fluence on tne fortunes and prospects of our time.
The curious have, however, pushed their inquiries
still further, and have procured a careful and toler-
ably correct analysis of the occupations of the
peop e. This i 3 by no means a prefitless study,
an the information which it gives us is very inte-
resting. Tne task of arrangement and subdivision
is by no means an easy one, and gives rise to some
singular classifications—her Gracious MAJESTY
and CALCRAFT, the hangman, being enrolled in the
same division—the professional class ! It is true
that the QUEEN is ranked, as in duty bound, first

in the first department, that of the Governmental
class, and that the solitary representative of what
is styled " the ancient office of executioner" closes

the last of the three subdivisions of the professional
class. Economising Radicals will see with alarm
the advance of the Governmental body from
66,724 in 1851 to 87,350 in 1861 ; but
half the increase is due to the additional
numbers of those very useful and hardly-worked
officials, the police and the Post-office employes.
The military profession also shows a considerable
addition in the ten years, no less than from 85,818
to 131,944. This is a remarkable increase, consider.
ing that Volunteers ate not reckoned, since their
military business is subordinate to their other em-
ployments. The learned and artLtio professions
furnish some curious details. Their numbers have
risen more than fifty thousand in the decade; mem-
bers of the clerical profession of all denominations
having increased, as have also physicians, while
surgeons and apothecaries have decreased, let us
hope, to the diminution of drugs and blisters; bar-
risters have added nearly three hundred to their
forces, while, happily for the world, attorneys have
remained stationary. The schoolmaster is certainly
abroad and preternaturally active, for sixteen
thousand teachers are added to the list. Of the
110,364 instructors now ranked under that head no
less than 24,770 are governesses, a forcible reminder
that it is high time that female industry found
other channels. We are not surprised to find fresh
recruits in the ranks of the votaries of music. The
old absurdity of the English not being a musical
people is now pretty well exploded, and year by
year the divine art affords employment to more and'
more. Signs of the times are also to be found in the
rising numbers of the civil engineers,while the sudden
mania for photography has increased the numbers
of its followers from 45 to 2,534. Members of the
literary profession are reckoned at 3,580, but this is

by no means the limit of the bookmakers, since
members of any other profession may write books—
legal, medical, theological, &c. At the close of this
professional class are found some very odd cotfreres,
conjurors, ballad singers, and pugilists—though,
considering the pugnacious tendencies so frequently
displayed in public by disputants of various degrees,
it is somewhat surprising to find only 18 pugilists.
By far the largest class is that headed domestics,
whose numbers include women not engaged in busi-
ness, children, innkeepers, and those engaged in
providing board and lodging, besides the very large
item of domestic service. Nearly a million female
domestic servants were reckoned in England
and Wales at the last census, a num-
ber whose amount is positively startling,
showing more plainly than any words could
do the value and importance of an efficient training
being provided for so large a class, and the vast
amount of moral responsibility resting with the
heads of households. It is a sign of growing pros.
perity that 400,000 more servants should be enu-
merated in '6l than in '5l, but such signs are not
always infallible, since they sometimes tell as much
of love of luxury or display as of actual increase of
wealth. It is difficult altogether to account for the
great decrease perceptible in the agricultural class.
It is possibly partly duo to a diffirent method of
calculation, possibly to the custom of reckoning all
the grown-up members of a farmer's family as as-
sistants. It is possible that the increasing energies