The Sun.
London, England, 1863-12-01 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TlMES.—There has been no delay in appointing
a successor to the great office which the certain re-
signation and only too probable death of Lord Elgin
have rendered vacant. It was considered desire-
able that the new Governor-General should depart
for the sphere of his duties by the mail which
leaves this country on the 10th of this month. The
list of persons qualified by rank and talents to hold
an office which requires the greatest ability and de-
votion to the public service, but which the prescrip-
tion of the last thirty years seemed to have de-
cided must be held by a Peer, was soon run
through. Some were disqualified by age—a melan-
choly experience having recently made it only
too plain that those who go to discharge the tre-
mendous duties and responsibilities of this anxious
and laborious office, if they commence their expe-
rience of India after the meridian of life,'go only to
seek an honourable but certain grave. Others,
possessed of rank, wealth, and high connexion—of
everything that gives a charm and attraction to life,
were unwilling to run the risk of what has come to
be regarded as a dangerous service; while others
found in the political prospects which were open to
them a counter attraction too powerfal to be re-
sisted. It has been happily determined, then, to
break through the charmed circle which has so long
restricted the office of Governor-General to the
Peerage, and to send out to the empire which
was formed by the exertions of Robert Clive
and Warren Hastings not only a commoner, but
a commoner wholly unconnected with any family
of the English aristocracy. The person, how-
ever, on whom the choice of the Govern-
' ment has rested is a man stamped by the hand of
nature with the truest impress of nobility, and
though not born, to inherit aristocratic titles is
pe-
culiarly calculated to create them. Every one will
recognise from this description that the new Go-
vernor-General of India is Sir John Lawrence,
If past services can be admitted as giving a title to
positions of honour and command, as well as proving
the fitness of him who has rendered them, no living
man has a claim to be intrusted with the govern-
ment of India at all comparable to the claims of our
new Viceroy. He has saved the empire which he
is destined to administer. Placed in a newly con-
quered and turbulent province, which nothing but
his genius and firmness could have reduced in to
short a period to anything like order, cut off fi ona
the slightest possibility of assistance from any
quarter, intrusted with the lives of the whole Euro-
pean population of the Punjab, with nothing but a
small military force and his own undaunted courage
to rely on, the mutiny of 1857 found Sir John Law-
rence in a position in which it would have been
thought a great triumph to preserve the interests
more immediately committed to him from destruc-
tion. That, however, was not the view which Sir
John Lawrence took of his duty. Many felt then,
and all see now, that upon the success of the siege
of Delhi depended the existence of our power in
India. If we nad not taken Delhi, we should have
lost the country ; though it is certainly possible that,
by enormous efforts and sacrifices, we might have
succeeded in reconquering it. The siege of Delhi
owed he success to Sir John Lawrence. Without his
energetic remonstrances, it would have been aban-
doned ; without his foresight, fertility of resource,
and unflinching resolution, the siege of Delhi would
have failed. Out of his own slender resources, in the
midst of a population only watching for the least
symptom of weakness to rise in insurrection, Sir
John Lawrence contrived to organise the means of
transport for stores, artillery,'and munitions of every
kind, and, above all, those reinforcements under
Nicholson, without which success could never have
been achieved. At the same time he suppressed
with a strong hand the mutiny of his own native
troops, and held his province without any of those
disastrous reverses which befel us in so many other
parts of our empire. But it is not only on the
ground of past services that the elevation of Sir John
Lawrence to the office of Governor-General is to be

justified, but on the powers for command and orga-
nisation which those services have drawn forth and
made manifest. No man has more power over native
races, no man possesses more the faculty of giving
them as much of European civilisation as they are
capable of receiving. The collection of revenue
and the administration of justice in the Punjaub
under Sir John Lawrence have become the model
for all the non-regulation provinces. The procedure
in civil causes, mainly, we believe, the invention
of Sir John Lawrence himself; was the precursor
of that code of procedure which has worked so
happy a revolution among the dilatory Courts of
India. From among the men trained by Sir John
Lawrence have been found those best fitted for
high and difficult trusts, and the maxims of his
policy have become a sort of tradition among many
who never knew their author. He has the credit
of possessing, if not a profound knowledge of
finance, a peculiarly clear and quick insight into its
difficulties. If we add to all this a character of the
most perfect simplicity, truth, and conscientious-
ness, we have given the portrait of a man whose
appointment to exercise sway over the destinies of
a hundred and fifty millions of the human race is
amply, and more than amply, justified. There
have been periods in the history of India when a
man such as Sir John Lawrence would have
been the very ideal of a Viceroy, bringing order
out of chaos, tempering justice with mercy, and
overwhelming by the force of his character
those who might not be prepared to yield to
the wisdom of his counsels. At present India
demands rather the development of her internal
resources, the adaptation of European ideas to
her government, her agriculture, her commerce,
and all the arts of life; the diffusion of an
education calculated to raise the; people from their
degraded state, the improve ment of means of trans-
port, and the care of the health of the soldier. We
believe that in these and simile.r matters Sir John
Lawrence, with the versatility of true genius, will
be found as much at home as he has been in the
arts necessary to reclaim a barbarous people and to
crush a cruel and treacherous enemy. Indeed,
when we compare the qualifications which he is
known to possess with those which have been
proved to belong to the best of his. predecessors
when they entered on the administration of Govern-
ment, we can scarcely admit the possibility that he
may be found less adapted for a period of peace and
commercial development than he has undoubtedly
shown himself for a period of war, of treachery, and
of danger. We have only one further remark to
make. Sir John Lawrence is well known to be a
rtian of strong religious feeling, and is generally-
supposed to advocate more active measures for the
propagation of Christianity in India than the gene-
ral opinion of those to whom her government is in-
trusted would be inclined to recommend. We do
not doubt that in this, as in so many other cases,
that practical good sense which has never deserted
him will not fail to attend him, and that neither
the stability of our empire nor the cause of civili-
zation and enlightenment will suffer by too ardent
a wish to anticipate a change which can only be
the result of temper, patience, and long-suffering.
HERALD. —Oar readers are doubtless familiar
with the anecdote of the housemaid who protested
that there was no dust Or dirt in her jurisdiction,
"It was the nasty sun." A ceinilar philosophy seems
' t," prevail with the parochial authorities of Bethnal-
greetz. There is no special dirt or disease in their
immacutlete parish, so they tell us--the only actual
nuisances as-e Dr. Moore and the coroner. True to
this conviction, the rulers of the parisi2 are doing
their best to suppress both the one and tLe other,
and the energies of the'
vestry and the board of ozuft,rr-e
dians are directed to the t:nuffing
and the shutting up of the c..`roner's court. Ind w
out of Dr. Moe
the
midst of the parochial turmohl thuso
cee, excited,
hear the stately tones of the Homoffi
what is the meaning of this uproar,
ertain legal
the attention of the local authorities to
t-na.h. to say
considerations. Perhaps it is not too ril
050
ouch
and directing
that no parish in the kingdom commandse
The light is let
of public attention at the present time
politan parish of Bethrial-gredentn.
and the reeking
in upon the domain of beadleno
ar,e
placed in full
dens of that hatless region as the metzP-
although fact upon
view of the public eye. 13
t startling distinctness, and
fact accumulates with
is moved at the horrid
epectacles, the par
the very Government
ish
authorities have the hardi-
hoodnot them selves, but those fungi•
remain faithful to their trust, and
twho bravely let in the light upon this scene of filth,
ionar to reproach,
wh o et
fever, and desolation. But for a medical officer who
bad spirit enough to risk the loss of place and fa-
vour, but for a coroner who was willing to brave
all the petty annoyances of a parish officially hostile
to his functions, and but for the ready interposition
of the public press, all the horrors of Bethnel-green
might have existed unknown to the community at
• large, and unaffected by the face of public opinion.
• The sun shines upon the fever nest, and its hideous
uncleanness appals the heart cf society, however
indifferent the constituted authorities may continue
to be. It takes a good deal to convince some people,
sod it evidently takes very much to make the
parochial magnates of Bethnal-green practically
• conscious of the abominations by which they are

•
surrounded. They can discern much to objec‘
to in Dr. Moore or Mr. Coroner HumphreY,
but they can see nothing particularly
obp
noxious in Holly bush-gardens or other chr;sen
locatitieg, where it is next to impossible for a chit'
to live. There is war in Bethnal-green, and there is
death. The authorities are not disposed to attack
the fever, but they are determined to attack the
doctor. Time and energy required for the saving
of precious lives are devoted to the raking up of
accusations against the officer of health who has
dared to expose the prevalent sanitary evils of the
parish. In the meantime death is doing its
terrible work. The King of Terrors is not to be
beaten back by angry resolutions and captioue
charges. The
ness, and the arrow which flieth by day, are de.'
stroying the young child and the suckling. It lei
not too much to say that public feeling is outrage?
Pestilence which walketh in dark-
by the every-day history of Bethnal-green. l;
parochial squabble may be very amusing Wider
certain circumstances, but not in the midst
.9.
a graveyard, where little coffins are being eontio
nually dropped into the ground, and where motner
are weeping over poisoned babes poisoned by
official contumacy. If the vestry and the gnat..
_
diana of Bethnal-green are so infatuated as
think that the community at large is looking 111)°'
their parish with the same eyes as themselves ail
are greatly mistaken. The public are not to b..
gulled into the idea that all this uproar is oe.es
sioned simply by a fussy, impetuous, intriga'l3.,g
medical officer or popularity -hunting cororie;
Society at large knows. better than this. t'jt
facts do not rest upon the sole testimony ef
Moore. The senior surgeon of the Great Norther,
Hospital, being summoned as a witness into can:
deposes to the sanitary history of one particule'
family in Hollybush-gardens. Out of six children
in this family, all originally healthy, four ere.o
attacked with scarlatina, two die and two rope!
in
a very precarious state. The two that died di;
not succumb to the fever, but " died during °lp
ordinary. stage of convalescence." The little strefig`e
which the fever left them, and which would he
borne them up into health again under ordinarily
favourable circumstances, was insufficient to eaeb.,'
them to contend with a malaria so intense that
we are told—the adult population were therek's
robbed of sleep during the night, and could i°,enter their backyards without being made 01°,1
rho witness to whom we have just alluded state,
in his evidence that (in reference to Hollybil,o
gardens) "the soil in all directions seemed satarato.f
by the exudations of the cesspools, " and the sl)
simply stank." This gentleman (Mr. John 01,0
further stated that " children attacked by zyo3°`o
diseases springing from such a source would heyto
hardly a chance of struggling against their de°
e,
in an atmosphere so foul." As remedial n' be
sures be recommended that the privies should d
trapped, an abundant water supply introduce
drainage lhid down, and the very ground the
deodorised. Finally, Mr. Gay advised that
gt",
convalescent children should be removed, hst,
otherwise their death was inevitable." Do
they
parochial authorities believe all this ? Or do We'd
think that they are mere fictions of some 01°0.
imagination ? Holly bush-gardens have been e°oo
plained of in Dr. Moore's official report ttnie
guardians a month ago, and " he believed the' „t,
had made a similar report some months back!' -v "a 0
they, ". he was not aware that any steps had be",,,
taken in consequence." So far as professional eat,
deuce goes, Dr. Samuel Pearce also pronotis,c"o
Hollybush-gardens " decidedly noxious to heal the
The jury decided in this particular case, that t:f•
poor little victim of five years old died from the 01"-e,
tal. effects. of the impure atmosphere which trgi
vailed in the locality, and they further decie`,"o.
.that. "great blame is due to the parochial aelcid
rities, inasmuch as they ought to have reMeut.„-0
such a state of things long ago." In additl'io
to this, the jury condemned the property '0
question. as unfit for the abode of he °lO
beings, and declared—" That the inhabits p 8
ought to quit until the said Hollyhush-gar2ebl,
be . deodorised and rendered fit for human "anct,
ration." The verdict- is very special and very distl,lo,
I. .f after this and all preceding admonitions, the au
rams of Bethnal-green are still determined to B:4"be
by their nuisances, some vigorous measures nerheif
enforced to bring these brazen boobies tO
senses. Fever is not a thing to be slighted, Part,i-of
larly in a large and crowded city. The disease "Iti
spread, and Heaven knows how far it may ge: he
a lecture given by Dr. Moore on Friday nigh"•oo
made it sufficiently clear for popular apprebelied
that scarlet fever naturally and inevitably reee,ati.
from a certain gas which abounds in cesspool
via. "But the disease so generated was contago°o
Its virulence was indicated by the instance in
he noticed a child playing over a sewer grating, $O.
in four hours that child was dead. As for the Cato
tagious character of the disease, he had brought b°
the infection to his own family. Disease of thisl/nf
ture is not to be trifled with, and the authoritieS
a single parish most not be allowed either to slaeg,,,
ter the poor by official neglect in their own jer:O"..
diction, or to let loose upon the metropolis sacks
fections disease which may ultimately introu;re
suffering and death where the originating cauelfeo.
not permitted to exist. Bethnal-green if; al °toe
der against every metropolitan parish cleave.-
dirtier,
itself—and we hope it is not possible to find