The Sun.
London, England, 1864-03-28 00:00:00

Commence at 7.

•
ROYAL
STRAND THEATRE.
Manager, Mr. W. H. Swanborough.
THIS EVENING, a new Comedietta, A HUNT FOR A
HUSBAND.
After which, the Grand Christmas Burlesque, ORPFIEUS
AND EURY DICE : Messrs. Honey, Wood, James Fenton,
Mesdames Swanborough, Marie Wilton, Hughes, &o.
Concluding with MARGATE SANDS.
Commence at 7.

;yIEiE THEEtD EDITION OF " THE SUN,"
JL Containing the Latest SPORTING INTELLIGENCE,
psn be had Every Evening of
G. EL GIANIE. NEWS AGENT,
No. 4. Connaught-terrace, Hyde-park.

COALS.—The LILLESHAL 1., COMPANY'S
COALS.
Direct from their own Collieries.
Marquis'. --Ms. per ton. I Double.. 21s. per ton.
'Pop 25s „ Nut 5........ l9s. „
Deep ....225. „
Well screened and delivered within five miles of their De-
pots,vggne:otbotqe Park-road, W., and 17, South Wharf,
a
Best Core
Terms cash.
JOHN SCOTT, Sole Agent.

The Weather—Sun Office, March 28, 1864,

THERMOMETER.

This day at Two o'clock .. 48

Barometer-29.62.

Wind—South-West ; moderate breeze, and hazy.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
THIS DAY.—Morning, 4h. 59,n.—Afternoon, sh. 16m.
ro-moßitow.-Morning, sh. 86m.—Afternoon, sh. 54 n.

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tiFe „otiaLs-
4jt -,144tc1ui).-.44,,
1,

LONDON, MONDAY, MARCH 28, 1861.

The Easter Vacation comes this season very
much like the lull before the outbreak of a storm.
It is already recognised as such upon both sides of
the Channel. A cursory glance through the organs
of public opinion bath in London and at Paris re-
veals even to a far less eagerly observant watcher
of events than your professional poitician the
prevalence just now of the impression that
a party contest of the severest kind may be looked
far, almost immediately the House of Commons
shall have settled down again to serious business
upon the re-assembling of the Legislature. It is
not simply that the two great opposing Parties,
the Inns and the Oats, the Government and the
Opposition, the Liberals, so called, and the Cone
servatives, are so very nicely balanced that the result
of any great division upon a question vitally affecting
the existence of the Cabinet, is left in the smallest
degree doubtful. It is that the balance, clearly, noto-
riously, undeniably, lies on the wrong side,
On the side, that is, opposed to the existing
Administration. Discover any distinct question
involving as its issue a vote of confidence or
of no confidence in the present Cabinet, and
the result is already patent by anticipation to
everyone's apprehension. The difficulty before the
Opposition has been hitherto the discovery of any
such question presenting to them any such golden
opportunity. To manufacture an opportunity
of this kind would inevitably lay them open
(their leaders have evidently felt this all
along) to the charge of having degenerated into
that favourite theme for Ministerial obloquy or
Factious Opposition. Whenever either a
Ministry or a Parliament has reached that
period when it comes naturally to be called
in House of Commons slang moribund—then you
may be quite certain upon one point, that whatever
adverse move is initiated, so to speak, by the Oppoe
bitioa, not by the regular course of events but by
the opposition, will at once be regarded from
the 3linisterial side of the House as the
signal for raising a furious outcry, repeated and re-
peated usque ad nauseam of—" Factions Opposi-
tion," As it happens—the word moribund is P•
this moment clearly applicable at one
and
same time to the Ministry a re
au to the Parlthe
ia-
ment. To both of them together ! The
Cabinet has as viainiy as pessible just nearly
"ttcht'a- the very end of its tether. The
Pdlliatneat, as Parliaments have gone since the date
of the Reforla sill, has arrived at a tolerably ad,
vanced period of
existence. In the natural course of
things it may look, after no very extended interval,
t(;) the striking of the hour of its dissolution. The

supporters of the Ministers are alienated from
them long ago to a lamentable extent. One
after another the principal members of the Cabinet
have fallen into disfavour. Several of the ministers
not actually having seats in the Cabinets are among
the most unpopular men in the House of Com-
mons, among the most unpopular men there even
to the House itself. In this re3pect, in-
deed, we should be disposed to imagine that
Mr. ROBERT LowE might claim precedence, among
all competitors for the distinction, as the most nn•
popular. He can never make a single move in his
own particular department without exciting the ani-
mosity not only of a crowd of individual members
sitting upon both sides of the House of Commons, but
it might be said with no one particle of exaggeration
while saying it, without wounding the amour
propre and arousing the keen and excited anta-
gonism of large and influential classes of his
fallow countrymen. The Home Secretary has
long been noticeable both within and with-
out the walls of Parliament for his perverse
pertinacity in the way of blunderin g. He
seems to be nearly incapable of acting as an Ad-
ministrator without evidencing while so doing
some flagrant error of judgment. The First Lord
of the Admiralty, it may be said, never was
popular—from the first moment of the
existence of the Administration. The Indian
Secretary has been running counter within the same
interval of nearly five years continuance to the
opinions of almost all those whose views
upon matters affecting our Indian Empire
is of the smallest value whatever. And,
as a matter of course, he has by so
doing, been running as directly contrary all the while
to public opinion as well. The Foreign Secretary—
well, we all know what his popularity has come to
be! As a Reformer he has thrown up his cards
altogether. He has acknowledged the game to have
been played out. He has taken as his device that
lotos eaters' maxim of Rest and be Thankful. As
a diplomatist he is an object of indifference and yet
vexation abroad, of disquiet and profound dis-
appointment at home. With regard to the
greatest rhetorician of his age—reference being
h?re made, it is almost unnecessary to say, to the
right hon. gentleman the Chancellor of the Exche.
chequer—his consummate abilities as a debater, his
in many respects unrivalled powers as a master of
oratory have stooa him in such good stead as an
orator, as a debater, that there is hardly a man
in the House who can, in rising to address Mr.
Speaker—at °ace, upon the instant, by the very
sound, as it were, of his once persuasive voice—
excite upon all sides so many or such
bitter antagonisms. The great popular Prime
Minister even, Lord PALMERSTON himself, has con-
trived at length to become so compromised
by one or another of his colleagues that
never perhaps in the whole of his career
has he been known to speak so indifferently, in
plain words, to cut so exceedingly sorry a figure as
upon the very last occasion of any import-
ance of his opening his lips in the
House of Commons before the adjournment
of the House over this Easter recess, when the Pre-
mier, acting upon the impulse of such a very ex-
travagance of magnanimity, stood forth Quixotically
in defence of the intimate friend and associate
of the adviser and instigator of the intending
assassin GALLENGA. Such, in brief, is the situa-
tion of some among the chiefs of the Ministry now
awaiting the announcement of its future for good
or evil, almost immediately, we may rest assured,
after the renewal of the sittings of the Legislature
at the close of these Easter holidays.

Another melancholy case has been added to the
losg list of deaths from cold and privation during
the present season. That list is already too long for
our wealth, for our humanity, for our elaborate poor
law system; and feelings of shame, regret, and in-
dignation have been excited in tho public mind by
their painful disclosures. Official neglect, under-
paid labour, and similar causes have been the real
murderers, and each tragedy in turn, whether of
the poor widow who could not work fast enough to
gain a living out of her miserable earnings, or of
the unhappy creature who was found a few days
ago dying of typhus on a door step, with the story
as yet undisproved on his lips, that he slept at a
workhouse the night before, and consequently had
been sent out into the streets to shift for himself.
The case which has taken place within the last
week has, however, some peculiarly distressing
features, showing that inhumanity is not confined to
union officers, and revealing a degree of quiet and
apparently undeserved suffering that is most painfnl
to hear. It seems that JOHN MYERS, a dock
labourer, 42 years of age, and of very sober habits,
was found dead on the floor of his room, on Mon-
day morning last, his death, according to the ver-
dict of the jury, being caused by inflammation of the
lungs, accelerated by exposure, want of clothing and
necessaries. Such a case is unhappily not so un-
common as it ought to be, but the most shocking
part of the case remains to be told. The poor man.
had, it seems, been unable to work for the last five
months, whether from illness or from not getting
employment is not stated. For four of these
I months the rent of his room was in arrears. The
landlord, judging him unable to pay the sum due,
was resolved to turn him out, but Mver.s, it seems,
would not go. He probably did not know where
to go to, and shared the horror of "the house" so
common among the poor. Determined, however, to
get rid of so profitless a tenant the landlord, whose
name was ROBY —it deserves honourable mention
for his original and humane idea—instructed a man
to take the window out and the door off its hinges.
This was done,lit must be remembered, in the cold
weather some three or four weeks ago, and the
severe snow storm which followed must have
been hailed by Mr. ROBY es a potent auxiliary,
on the principle that the Russian commander-in-
chief styled January and February his best genes
rale. However, the plan, although ingenious,
failed. The poor sinking and exhausted creature
still clung to his old habitation till one night his
groans attracted the attention of his fellow lodgers
below. A man and his wife who occupied the
room underneath went up, although, as the man
quaintly said in evidence, " they did not know
him." Certainly it was no time to stand upon the
ceremonies of introduction. A
IYEscs was lying on
a small piece of flock on the, floor,
with a sheet
for his only covering. A table and a broken
chair were the only articles of furniture in the
room, from which the shivering occupant had tried
ineffectually to keep nut the bitter winds by fas-
tening up two little pieces of calico to the empty
window frame. Ho had not had any food, he
said, since the previous Fridey, and it was then
Sunday afternoon,
4.•
liberality so s e one other lodger, with the
suffer,—
-omen among the poor, offered the
some food, which he could not take, and
some tea, and in answer to his pitiful complaint of
"It's very cold here with the window out," he
brought him a coat to throw over him. MYERS
asked the woman to go for a parish order, but as it
was Sunday she could not get it. Early the next
morning, as we have seen, he was found lying dead
on his floor, soon to be exchanged for a resting
place which no one need begrudge him. There are
I several questions suggested by this melancholy nar-
rative which are not very easily answered. In the
first place, why is there such a horror of the Work-

house among the decent poor, that rather than
enter its doors they will undergo such cruel priva-
tions. The harsh repulse, the poor food, the strict
regulations do not deter the vagrant or worthless
paupers who want a place of shelter for the
winter; but when the industrious sober man,
from some of those calamities from which
neither king nor beggar are exempt, is unable to
procure food, medicine, or shelter, why is it that,
with all our cumbrous and costly appliances, he
dies for want of them. How is it, coming to a
minor point of detail, that parish medical orders are
not obtainable on Sunday. Most assuredly death
and disease are not obedient to the rules of the
guardians, neither will they wait the
convenience of relieving officer or parish
apothecary. This inquiry is more easily answered
than the broad general question, and we may
therefore hope for some solution of it. But the
parish authorities are not the parties to blame in
this case. The fault lay with the poor man him-
self, with his neighbours who never took the
trouble to inquire into the matter, and, above all,
with the landlord. For twelve months MYERS had
occupied his room, for eight of those months he had
paid his rental of ls. 3d. a week. Since the most
casual inspection might have satisfied him that the
arrears were the result of poverty, and not of dis-
honesty, why did not the landlord apply to the
parish authorities, and have the case properly
attended to. No doubt the poor man told his
own story of illness and incapacity for work ; the
very workman who was sent to remove the door
and window could have testified to the truth of it.
But whether one man more or leas died, what did
it matter ? His pound of rent was a much more
serious thing, and accordingly it was his intention,
if the window and door did not do their work, to
have the flooring taken up. It would surely have
been more rational and more economical to have
applied to the police magistrate, or the relieving
officer, than to the carpenter. A woman, it seems,
managed the letting of the rooms, but she said it
was by Mr. ROBY'S orders that the door was
taken down. How far she is responsible for the
cruelty and the neglect of the proceedings we
cannot say. We can only regret that the jury
did not express the indignation which they felt
in their verdict. Bat Mr. RoBY is probably well
satisfied. He has won the day, he has carried the
siege—the besieged party being literally " starved
out." Truly things have come to a' pretty pass
in this our Christian England, and yet we may
thank our Night Refuges and Asylums that such
cases are not multiplied by hundreds. In spite
of commercial prosperity and increasing wealth,
in spite of the well-fed convict and pampered
felon, the honest poor may still too often exclaim,
in the words of HOOD'S pathetic apostrophe—.

"Oh GOD 1 that bread shluld be £0 dear,
And flesh and blood so cheap I"

The King of Prussia's reply to the Conservative
address is a very characteristic one; and as one
peruses it the mind recalls the unhappy conten-
tions and endless strifes which distracted the in-
ternal condition of Prussia during the past year.
King WILLIAIf still attempts to play the martyr,
and with well-feigned virtuous indignation he de-
claims against those who occasion the disaffec-
tion that disturbs him. Thus we read that " In-
dustrious efforts have been made to confuse the
people." Can anything be more absurd than this.
It is true that efforts have been made, but by
the Ministers of the Crown under the sanc-
tion and with the universally acknowledged ap-
proval of the King. It cannot be said that the
people were confused exactly by their doings, but
they were grieved and disappointed in the extreme
at the sudden lots of confidence which they felt in
their rulers. King WILLIAM is aware of the fine
he will have to pay for his dearly cherished
scheme of absolutism, for he describes in this dis-
course the withdrawal of his people's love and con-
fidence as the "heaviest sacrifice that can be laid
upon a Sovereign." It is all very well to carry
out the purport of the paragraph to go on to declare
that ho is always endeavouring to establish and
secure that welfare. The expression of such senti-
ments sounds well in an address or a reply, but
we who can see behind the Booties, and behold
things from afar with their bold, outlines dis-
played, not troubling oursell;es about the minor
adjuncts, are pretty `':ell satisfied that when
Monarchs seek to extend their power beyond the
verge of cone: -itutional limits, and Ministers in the
Plenittla:e of their zeal seek at all hazards to carry
out she royal desires, the welfare of the people is
put quite on one side. It may be taken as an un-
erring test that when rulers and authorities speak
overmuch concerning the intensity of their nolici-
tude for the well-being of their subjects, micehief
is brewing somewhere. Profession and prac-
tice are very different things, and a melan-
choly illustration is now being exemplified in
Prussia. The King next goes on to announce
his satisfrction at the " joyful revulsion" that has
taken place. It is to be questioned if this delight
may not be very questionable in the long run ; but,
at 411 events, now it is a certified thing, an acknow-
ledged fact, and King WILLIAM makes the most of
it. The army comes in for its share of compliments,
and this praise is accorded with a. willing hand,
and, doubtless, the appreciation of its merits springs
quite es much from the opportune assistance it has
rendered in dispersing the enemies at home as in
gaining triumphs abroad. The sense of injustice,
the hatred of oppression, and the determination to
vindicate their rights which so distinguished the
Prussians last year, and which called forth the
admiration and attracted the sympathy of Europe,
is now lost sight of, when the victims are to be
others and not themselves. This is not as it should
be, and goes far to neutralise all the good feelings
and kind interest that were being expressed in this
country. The strange fact is, however, that the
KING does not want to make out that all is pro-
misiag. He passes over this present period, and
takes a perspective glance at the time when war
must merge in peace. Of this era he does not seem
sanguine, nor can he refrain from giving utterance
to his gloomy prognostications. 'f When this is
past, it is not impossible that we shall encounter
times such as we have known for two years." This
is encouraging, certainly; the most vehement
opponent of the BISMARK faction, the most bitter
satirist of the policy that reigns supreme in the
Berlin Cabinet, could hardly have uttered a more
startling warning, or indulged in a more sinister
propheoy. It is most probably a very sapient re-
mark, but it is not a statement which bears out its
own professions, in so far as regards the tone and
temper of the Loyal Address. A King who has the
interest of his people at heart now enjoys the
esteem which he deserves, and meets the respect
he merits, because the people are dazzled
and delighted with the successes of their armies in
prosecuting an urgent war with cruel, arduous, and
misguided zeal. When, however, this season is past,
all that can be looked for is a recurrence to the tur-
moils that disgraced the public condition and dis-
tracted the private existence of the kingdom. If
this is to be all that can result from so much time,
trouble, and expense, King WILLIAM may well ex-
claim, in the words of a wiser king than any that
'ever sat on a Prussian throne, "All is vanity and
vexation of spirit." The concluding paragraph in