The Sun.
London, England, 1864-08-11 00:00:00

work, and sho expected him back every hour. I asked her
if I got work in Reading if she would come and live with
me, and I said I would try to support her and the children.
She said she would not, for she would not be under obliga-
tion to anyone. On one of the occasions when I saw her
she talked of selling the things she bad with her, and going
back to Tunbridge to see if her husband was there.
The Coroner—Did she state what her object or motive
was in coming to Reading ?

Witness—She stated that they were come to Reading to
live. That her husband was an upholsterer by trade, and
that he had sent goods or luggage, above 20 cwt., by rail-
way, and she and the four children were to follow it, as she
believed, to have a home there.

The Coroner—ln her conversation with you did she
speak in a way that led you to suppose sho was in a despond-
ing state ?

Witness—She appeared to mo to be low spirited on ac-
count of her husband's absence and drinking as she sup-
posed. She was under the impression that ho had gone
back to Tunbridge.

The Coroner said that was all the evidence he was pre-
pared to lay before the jury at that time, but, as it was de-
sirable to find the husband, an adjournment must take place.
In the meantime, Inspector Peck would communicate with
the police at Tunbridge-wells, and probably some informa-
tion would be obtained respecting him, and also other evi-
dence which might enable them to arrive at a verdict.

The inquest was then adjourned until next week,

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

TIMES.—The absorbing affairs of Europe, the
embarrassments of the present, and the uncertain-
ties of the future have left us but little time of late
to consider events that are passing in other quarters
of the world. The civil war in America is now,
however, no longer the topic of absorbing interest
that it was before the war in Denmark. The Polish
insurrection has been finally trampled out, yet little
is said and less thought about the wrongs of a coun-
try which a few months ago almost monopolised the
sympathies of Europe. Under these circumstances
we need no apology to our readers for recalling their
attention to the local affairs of a dependency of the
British Crown which as yet at any rate is enjoying
the blessings of profound and uninterrupted peace.
The time is rapidly approaching when the comple.
tion of the public buildings erected at Ottawa for
the reception of the Governor-General and the two
Houses of the Canadian Parliament will permit the
session to be opened in that remote locality. The
place was, as our readers will remember, fixed upon
by an award made in the name of the Queen for the
site of the future capital. Many were the murmur-
ings, bitter was the discontent with which this de-
cision was received. Quebec, Toronto, and Montreal
each had their advocates and supporters, Toronto
might plead that she was the capital of the wealthier
the more fertile, and more progressive part of the
colony; Montreal that she was situated on the con-
fluence of two mighty rivers, accessible to steam
navigation, and on the boundaries of the Upper and
Lower Provinces ; Quebec could boast of her anti-
quity, of the unrivalled beauties of her picturesque
and commanding situation, of her historical renown,
and her long possessio❑ of the rank of capital. It
was not likely that persons actuated by these vio-
lent local jealousies should readily acquiesce in any
decision, but there was a large portion of the Cana-
dian public who, without any decided sympathy for
the three competitors for the rank of capital, were
nevertheless as much displeased at the selection of
Ottawa as those whose patriotism was more local or
municipal. They objected to a transfer of the
Canadian Parliament from civilised and thickly
peopled districts, from places busy with the hum of
commerce and presenting the attractions of settled
and civilised society, to a small town, placed, indeed,
in the neighbourhood of resounding waterfalls and
splendid woods, but recently founded, inhabited by
a rude and turbulent population, and remote from
the habitation of almost every member of the Legis-
lature which it was to receive. Placed high up on
a river the navigation of which is impeded by rapids,
and the mighty tributaries of which have not even
yet been all named and explored—with nothing be-
yond it, with no commerce but the lumber trade, and
few inhabitants besides those whom that rude and
primitive labour supports, there was at Ottawa
something wild and repulsive which those authori-
ties who merely contented themselves with unroll.
in the map and fixing upon the most central
position they could find between East and West
could scarcely conceive. Probably, also, there was
another feeling, lees openly avowed, and perhaps
less coneciously entertained, which made the
selection of Ottawa unpopular. There was a
time when Canada thought seriously of annexa-
tion to the United Snatee, when, fretting over
imaginary grievances, she believed she would find
a remedy for them all in the bosom of the great
Republic. But long before the breaking out of the
present civil war this feeling had cooled, if it had
not entirely passed away. The United States and
their institutions had lost their charms in the
sight of a Canadian placed en the spot, and there.
fore not to be deluded by these sounding phrases
which so long had passed current among English
Radicals. There was no wish to copy the American
plan of selecting the capital of a State the most
insignificant and out of the way town that could
be found, provided its situation was only central.
They saw in the selection of Ottawa for the capital
of Canada a servile imitation of the strange policy
which forbids Baltimore to be the capital of
Maryland, Philadelphia of Pennsylvania, New
York of New York, Cincinnati el Ohio, Chicago
of Illinois, or St. Louis of Missouri. They thought,
not unreasonably, that the presence of good so-
ciety, the sessions of Courts of Justice, the assem-
bling of a military force,--that wealth, commerce,
and industry, with all their adjuncts, were more
fitting accompaniments to a Legislative capital
than logs, rapids, and Red Indians. This was, we
believe, the almost unanimous feeling of Canada;
yet, to the honour of Canada be it spoken, this
unanimous feeling did not prevail. The word of
the Colony had been given, and that word, though,
it must be confessed, not without many demurs and
much repining, has hitherto been honourably ob-
served. Notwithstanding the embarrassment of the
Colonial finances, money has been found for the
erection of suitable buildings for the Legislature,
though others existed elsewhere, and the time is
rapidly approaching when the Canadian Parliament
will take possession of its new residence. A diffi-
culty has, however, been started, which, so far as
we know, nobody had mentioned during the long
and acrimonious controversy to which the decision
of the Queen gave rise. It is asserted with con-
siderable snow of reason that the true basis of ope-
rations for the defence of Canada in case of invasion
from the United States must necessarily be the sea.
The frontier of the colony is long and low, running
in the Lower Province from north to south, and in
the Upper Province from east to west, along the
shore of the St. Lawrence and the great Lakes. It
is said, then, that it would be impossible to defend
the Upper Province, a long and narrow strip of
land, against the invasion of armies so numerous
as those which the American Government could

bring against it, now that the Northern States
have become a great military Power. As we
recede from the shores of the St. Lawrence there
is little to tempt an invading or to shelter
and support a retreating army. From this
point of view all those parts of Canada
which a British man-of-war cannot protect are
virtually at the mercy of the United States.
Among these must be reckoned the city of Ottawa,
which though situated on a mighty river is in•
accessible from the sea to ships of any burden on
account of the rapids which obstruct the naviga-
tion. It is therefore argued that to place the Par-
liament at Ottawa would be to place the Governor
and the Legislature absolutely at the mercy of the
Americans, and it is earnestly pressed upon us that,
at any rate till the present danger is over, we should
retain the Legislature at Quebec. There is bat
one objection to this argument—that it proves too
much. If no place is fit for the capital of Canada
which is not accessible at all times to an English
man-of-war, we fear that Canada must go without
a Legislative capital altogether. Certainly, Quebec
is no such capital, for its port is closed by the ice
every year from the end of November to the end
of April; and the same consideration, of course,
applies with still greater force to the towns of
Montreal and Toronto, which lie higher up the
stream of the St. Lawrence. We have never ap.
proved the policy of forcing a capital into existence
in defiance of man and of nature, and even though
this argument against Ottawa be not Conclusive, it
may be allowed some weight in support of a view
against which, as it seems to us, there is really so
little to be said. At the same time, we hardly see
how in the present state of affairs the English
Government can very well take the initiative in
inviting the colony to break that promise to which
they have hitherto insisted on holding it so fast.
PosT.—Macaulay's New Zealander is quite as
likely to find himself occupied, when the time for
the fulfilment of the prophecy arrives, with an his.
torical inquiry at some university at the Antipodes
into the number of Lord Palmerstons who governed
England during the nineteenth century, as to be en-
gaged in sketching ecclesiastical ruins from the
broken arches of the Thames. He will perhaps be
in much the same doubt as to the plurality of Lord
Palmerston that we are in as to the plural existence
of many a mythical hero the diversity of whose
deeds we cannot attribute to any one man. The
_ W Zealander will probably record that he finds
this Lord Palmerston in office during the first de-
cads of the century, that he finds him Prime
Minister also in the seventh; he finds him a young
man in 1804, he finds him still a younger Yuan in
1864; be finds him a friend of Fox and Pitt; ho
finds him again the energetic chief of a Cabinet
cultiiioing men of the generation of Argyll, and DJ