The Sun.
London, England, 1864-05-16 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON,
ItctuNDAY EVENING, MAY 16, 1864

Naval and Military Intelligence,

The Albert Memorial.

The *orb in connection with this national me-
morial were last week commenced by Mr. Kelk, to
whom the execution of the entire contract has been
intrusted. The site chosen for it is in Hyde Posif,
almost facing the entrance to the Horticultural
Gardens, and on this spot the excavations for the
foundation are being made. Fram the great height

(160 feet) and the immense solidity and massive-
ness of the memorial, the foundations have to be
taken unusually deep, considering the excellent
nature of the soil, which is all gravel. Under the
centre part they are to be formed of 16 feet of con-,
crete, and nowhere are they to be less than 10 feet.
The base of the memorial is to consist of broad and
lofty flights of steps that gave access to the work
on four sides, and the work itself is to be no less
than 130 feet square. The steps of grey granite
are to be laid in a double flight, with a broad
landing between the upper and lower tier. From
this upper landing the memorial proper will rise,
the basement being formed of a noble frieze in
marble, the figures on which will be in high relief
and of life size. The columns which support the
spire-like superstructure of the memorial are to con-
sist of groups of four red granite pillars, each 21t in
diameter. Their capitals are exceedingly rich, and
will be surmounted with statues of heroic size.
The spire, if we may BO call it, which closes in the
arch, is one of the richest and most elaborate of all
Mr. Scott's designs. It will be built of red and
grey granite, and the rich white stone known as
Darley Dale. The termical and surmounting cross
will copper gilt, and this portion
of the
be of wroughtheworkisto
beexeeuted by the Skidmore
Art Company, whose rood screen in the transept
of the last Exhibition excited such admiration
for its exquisite finish. Beneath the groined
arch will be placed the statue of the late Prince
Consort. His Royal Highness is represented in
robes of State, seated on a chair of state. The
proportions of the figure are on a scale which,
if the statute was repreaentel standing would
give it a height of 30ft. The details of this figure
and the other groups of statuary which will sur-
round the memorial are, however, still undecided,
The whole work is expected to take four years in
completion, and by the terms of his contract Mr
Kelk has bound himself to complete it for the sum
in hand—Xl2o,ooo. The laying of the foundation
stone will be marked by a public ceremonial, at
which the members of the Royal family will be pre-
sent. No date is fixed for this event, which, in-
deed, is not likely to take place till late in autumn.

reduction to recommend. The army, he says, costs
greatly too much, and there are 600,000 men on
foot, but France has and will have 100,000 men
abroad, including Algeria-. 250,000 men are required
for garrison duty, and she has therefore only 250,000
men available for foreign service. 'With that force,
in his judgment, "she is, perhaps, the only Power
in Europe en a peace footing." The inner network
Of railways will add a million to the burden of the
State, but they haVe been commenced, and Must be
finished. The civil expenditure has been enormously
raised. but " intelligent officials must be placed on
a level with the classes limuns whom they live."
The marine requires reduction, but the mark,: are
abroad, and reduction is impossible until they are
at home again. And so it goes on, subject by sub-
ject, till the orator acknowledges that the Empire
has increased the annual expenses by thirty-two
millions sterling a year, and bursts into a perora-
tion which will be accepted throughout
France as a justification of the outlay. "I
may be to!d that this general increase of 500 or
600 minim's causes alarm, but that all may be
explained by a closer scrutiny. Yes, all may be
explained if every three or four years a great war
is undertaken without giving the country time to
breathe. Such a war as the Crimean, undertaken
for a defiaite object, or a war for an idea, such as a
Polish war might have been, and the Italian war
certainly vas; and then, in the interval, little petty
wars, petty in their objects, great in their cost.
Yes, in that way all is explained; for we have a
deficit every year, and thus we have arrived at an
increase of 300 millions in the public debt ; all is
made clear if it is wished at one and the same
moment to add prestige to the Government, to
augment salaries, to demolish and reconstruct cities,
to organise the army in the most costly manner, to
add to the obligatory expense of transforming our
marine that of distant expeditions to found em-
pires, to confer now and then a crown, in that way,
I repeat, all is explained." What Frenchman alive,
knowing that he is at med to fight for an idea, that
the official world he hopes to enter is powerful and
well paid, that the Government is reconstructing
cities, founding empires, transforming armaments,
giving away crowns, will not accept that position
as compensation for high taxes and higher rents?
We believe, as a matter of fact, that the indirect
teaching of the speech is more, correct than its pro-
fessed object, that France has earned its penny-
worth for its penny, that as far as material civilisa-
tion and external power are concerned the Empire
has given full value for all it has exacted. Napoleon
has broken up the old coalition of Europe, has raised
France again to her natural position as leader of the
Continent, has so increased the facilities of commu-
nication, the inducements to trade, the habit of
speculation, and the actual produce of the country
—for example, the vineyards and the mines—that
France pays 80 millions a year more easily than
she paid fifty. But then what kind of statesman-
ship is it which detesting the regime for other
reasons attacks it on its strongest side ? The
Liberals of France deplore the awful " corvee of
blood," the 100,000 youths exacted year by year,
and M. Thiers says Fiance is the only Power which
has no need to disarm they rage at the power of
sending untried men to Cayenne, and he talks of
the cost of the police; they mourn the decay of
intellectual vigour, and he hesitates about railways
which are equalising advantages throughout the
country ; they lament the surrender of education to
priests, and he objects to a rise of schoolmasters'
salaries; they sigh ror freedom to guide and regue
late all this fierce activity, and he questions whether
activity be of itself a good. His speech is answered
as it is spoken ; for he enumerates the purchasers,
and forgets all of the price not expressed in money.
It is as if an invalid officer should say, " I spent a
thousand pounds in buying this pension for life, and
the cost was great," forgetting that helms also spent
a lifetime and a leg. Once, and once' only, did M.
Thiers rise to the level of his position. He wanted
to say that the cure for expenditure was Parliamen-
tary control, a dangerous topic for any other man
in France. M. Thiers, however, though Bona.
partist by instinct, was trained in a school other
than that of the Empire, and has the tact of speech
which is not given to men who are never contra-
dicted. M. Fould, he says, advised the relinquish.
meet of the right to order supplementary credits;
and the prerogative was resigned. " Had I been
then in his Majesty's councils, I should have said,
with the prpfound respect due to his august per-
son and high dignity, Sire, do not renounce the
right of decreeing supplementary credits; it is
impossible to foresee that they may not be re-
quired in the course of the year ; and then it would
be necessary to violate the law, an net always
to be deplored. I should have added—' instead of
depriving us of this valuable faculty, allow me
to venture a criticism on your policy, and to this
end restore the relations bat ween myself and my
colleagues, and then between them and the Cham-
bers: " That introduction of a demand for the
responsibility of Ministers into the Corps Legislatif
without reproof from Imperialiits is admirably done,
but even in this M. Thiers di 4plays his secret in-
stincts, He does nut ask th tt the greatest right
of despotism, that of spending national money with-
out the natioa's coeeent, should he abolished or re-
strainee. He would retain it in full, bat make the
power beneficial and transfer it to himself. If
these are the criticisms to which the Empire is to
be .s-abaitted in the annual &bite it will add to its
many victories one in the tribune. The Empire
has crushed out freedom and impaired intellectual
vigour, placed the thinkers under the heel of the
peasants, and statesmee beneath the soldiery,
stopped the progress of population and destroyed
the security of social intercourse, turned all French
men into gsnehlers and destroyed all belief in politi-
cal morality, made of every savan a courtier and
rendered every politician liable to Cayenne, and
then M.Thiers declares that its vice is as expendi-
ture which, as every Frenchman sees, has some-
thing like a fivefold return. Napoleon gives France
a stone for bread, and the great Orleanist only
grumbles that the stone was paid for.
THE " LONDON REVIEW" ON THE ROYAL PRE-
ROGATIVE.—These high authorities (the writer has
been quoting from the "Lord's Journals and from
Hallam's " Constitutional History") establish
that, while foreign treaties and wars are by theory
subject to the Sovereign's despotic will, they are
matters for which Ministers can be cellacto account
and punished by the severest penalties, under the
principle that it is only by them that the
Sovereign acts. And this being the undoubted
law, there must follow the rule, as clearly in foreign
as in home affairs, that the Sovereign is not justified
by the Constitution in acting against the advice of
' Ministers, who must thus bear the responsibility;
and that Parliament is entitled to act by Previous
discussion as amply as by subsequent inspeacht2eht•
Nor has this implied rule been departed from since.
the date of the remonstrance which established it.
If, on any occasion, treaties have been concluded, or
wars declared, for which the previous sanction of
Parliament, expressed in unmistakeable votes, has
not been given, it has been because Parliament has.
virtually committed to the Government for the time
the power of negotiation. No instance in modern
history can be quoted where it has for a moment
passed by the Ministry either to confer on the Sove-
reign alone such powers, or to acquiesce in his
exercise of such powers in contravention of Minis-
terial advice. Blest as this nation has been for a
quarter of a century with a Sovereign whose exem-
plary private life has been equalled by her strict
adherence to constitutional principles in home poli-
cies, it has bad no inclination to inquire critically
into her relations with her responsible Ministers, or
to suspect that in this age there could be danger of
an extension of the Royal prerogative. Yet it may
perhaps seem, to the calm observer of human
nature, scarcely possible that in a female reign some
such questions should not arise. Those peculiari-
ties of disposition and temperament which make a
woman most loveable and most sacred, are precisely
those which tend to urge her, in such a position, to
the exercise of forbidden powers. It would be
almost unnatural it such an one should not be moved
by family feeling and by tender memories, should
not struggle tosupport her wishes by her authority,
and should het able to weigh against these motives
the policy of States and the unwritten restraints
of the Constitution. But unhappily that which
tends to the overstepping of the constitution makes
the transgression doubly dangerous. Personal go-
vernment, in the hands of a men so wary, so expe-
rienced, so impassive, as the Emperor of the French,
may, during one generation, be successful ; but
personal government, virtual or avowed, exercised
by a woman's intellect, deprived of the masculine
support on which for 20 years it avowedly leant,
guided by a woman's knowledge, and inspired lithe
woman's feelings, can neither represent the interests;
of the nation, nor ec,pl with the astuteness of foreign
diplomacy. Fer these reasons, we have thought it
rig'et to recall to attention that in foreign policy,
as well an in domestic rule, the constitution subjects
the sovereign, nominally supreme, to the same re-
straints. It removes the responsibility from her to
he Ministers, by assigning to them, not to her, the
right to ant, And if they lightly reckon such re-
speneibilit we dare not. For we, too, every one
of me ere responsible to God for our share in the
nation's deeds. We can, if we will, do what is
right; we can, if we choose, take arms againstf op-
pression, and beat bavk in time tile advahne
is 1713 o
vio-
lence and anarchy in Europe. And
tir
its per
--
power, our duty goes with it. If weiCaitl
on_r chil-
formance the penalty vita lie en us and
dren ; for the constitution tolls ue that thF
.I.ltieen
can do no wrong, and reason tell us as Rtamly that
whatever wrong is done by this nation is not done
by its head but by its members.
THE to EXAMINER " ON PARLIAMENTARY LYNCH
LAW.—There are things which get such. a twist of
error at first that they never can be got straight and

case of Mr Lowe, the victim of Parliamentary Lynch
law. A resolution of the House was levelled at

him, which applied to him was wholly false. It
servco, however, to drive him from office, and
now stands on the records of the house to be fitted
to the case of some other, any other, officer of the
Council-office. This Lord R. Cecil distinctly states.

It is the old story of the wolf and the lamb, little as

Mr. Lowe!resembles the helpless animal, "If it was
not you, it was one of your family." The mutila-
tion of reports is charged in the resolution, and
triumphantly, says Lord Robert Cecil, a line in the
report.
of a Mr. Morell has been suppressed! The
rnroves the summer. It was said the
to stand upon. It is false
single swallow.
resolution had not a leg ,
answers Lord Robert, here is its leg, the words,
" considering how recently the present teachers
have been in charge," struck out of Mr. I'j-crania
report. There is the one leg, and such a leg !
line was not struck out by Mr. Lowe, but by Mr.
Lingen. But what of that ? There is a consistency
in the point. Mr Lowe was convicted first and tried
afterwards. The resolution aimed at him as passed
was entirely groundless, but after it was put on the
journals of the honourable house a ground has been
discovered for it—a very small ground certainly,
and perhaps rotten, but such as it is an afterthought
and if Mr. Lingen should finally be acquitted, like
Mr. Lowe, the resolution will nevertheless stand
good to have a shot at some one else in the Council-
office. And all this comes of Education, the most
fruitful source of strife of our contentious times. The
truth is clear enough that the resolution ought to
'have been rescinded. It was founded on mistaken
evidence, and passed, as Mr. Osborne says, when the
Homeric rage of hunger was superadded to the pas-
sion of party. Oue thing is but too certain, that
Mr. Lowe has been treated with great injustice,
and an injus;ice which cannot be repaired. As re-
gards him, what can a committee of inquiry ascer-
tain that has' not already been confessed, that he is
blameless ? The only question is whether he was run
down by his enemies 'or abandoned by his friends ;
perhaps a delectable mixture of both. The puzzle
to the public is something like the dilemma in
which the old schoolmen put the character of
Lucretia. Si casta quare trucidata ? si non pare,
laudata ? if blameless, why is Mr. Lowe out of
office ; if not blameless, why universally acquitted ?
Has he, indeed, like Lucretia, to whom he bears so
many points of resemblance, been more tenacious of
Gme than of reality ? Be that as it may, it is
something for him to have to boast, as he may
safely do, that he is the worst used man of his day.
But his time will come, for talents such' as his, once
known and appreciated, proved and approved,
cannot be lost to the public service ; and there is
that in him which will never let it be forgotten
that he is not where he ought to he and has a right
to be, by title of intellectual merit.
THE " JOHN BULL" ON THE ETHICS OF Go-
VERNMENT.—In the ancient monarchies end repub-
lics it was deemed the highest function ecd most
important duty of Government to make men vir-
tuous. The greatest statesman was he who could
by positive enactments do most to accomplish this
end, and the best-ordered commonwealth was that
which most readily accepted such laws and most
strenuously enforced them
Si quserit Pater Urbium
luscribi statuis, indoinitara audeat
Rentesenare licentiam.
Bat the lawgiver of old had to supply his citizens
with a religion as well as law in the modern sense
of the word—he had to train their spiritual life as
well as their social life. We, living under the
Gospel; have gradually learned that Christianity is
a better agent for making men virtuous than muni-
cipal law can be. The State is acquiring the
habit of leaving such matters to the Church, and
the Church, though she has still at times a han-
kering after the help of the civil sword to enforce
her sanctions, finds that on the whole she is more
patent without such auxiliaries. Nevertheless there
is still in Parliament a great deal of legislation
which is proposed or accomplished with the view,
generally a very honest and sincere one, of "making
men virtuous by statute." And the same principle
constantly crops out in the incidental discussions
which arise in Parliament on points of govern-
ment or legislation. Thus on Thursday night last,
when Sir Edward Daring suggested to the autho-
rities of the Woods and Forests that it would be
a reasonable and cheap kindness to put up two
or three sheds in the vicinity of Rotten-row so as
to furnish the fair equestrisus of that spot with a
place of refuge when a sudden shower of rain
might come on, Mr. Scully was amusingly sarcastic
at the notion of Parliament spending any time or
money for the comfort of Anonynta and her tribe
of " pretty horsebreakers." Sir Edward Dering,
with the legitietate indignation of a father of a
family and a county member, protested against the
assumption teat he had referred to " that class of
ladies." But seriously we do not see, when a little
matter of public convenience of this sort is in ques-
tion, that our legislators have any right to speculate
as to the class of ladies that will :.veil themselves
of it. Rein fads on the evil and the geod, and
vietue looks to higher rewards than an umbrella at
the public cost. Some years ago there was a cry
to remove the colonnade in the Quadrant, on the
ground that when the weather was bad people took
refuge there who had much better have been at one
of the "midnight meetings." So whenever an
arcade is prcjected protests are immediately entered
against the plan on the like ground. We think
this sort of thing carries State supervision a little
too far. It' the thing is needed for general conve-
nience the Legislature has no right to be curious
as to the undeserving people who may partake
in the benefits of it, or even abuse them. On
this ground (though we certainly do not subscribe to
Mr. Roeback's angry and uncharitable denuncia-
tions on the subject) we were glad that the House
of Commons rejected Mr. Somes's Bill on Friday
week. We fully grant that Sunday observance
constitutes (at first sight at least) an exception to
the principle for which we have been contending,
that the State has no right to control us in matters
of morality unless these matters can be shown to
have a direct connection! with our social duties.
Legislation on the subject of Sunday is necessary to
guard the interests of those who would unduly
suffer by observing the day, if others were left at
liberty to desecrate it. In all such cases no
doubt a strong claim ought to be made out by
those who feel themselves aggrieved. We cannot
think that any argument of this kind could have
been urged in behalf of Mr. Somes's measure.
People must eat and drink on Sundays as well as
on week-days, and other people must perforce work
in the culinary duties required for the purpose.
This sort of work will probably on the whole be
considerably increased by lightening the weekly
'hours cf Maritornes and other functionaries
whom Mr. Somes may profess to consider his clients.
To the 6ahneral public it is a great accomoda.
Lion to be able o obtain reasonable refreshment at
these places on santdays ; and if some people abuse
theaccommodation 13),- eating or drinking too much,
or by making an unseemic noise over their viands
and liquors, that is no reason e7h9
the
part of the community should be mulctedwell-disposed of their
freedom in the matter. We will say the same of
what we may call Sir George Greyte Corfew Bill.
He proposes that the State shall do its best to curb
the licence of those who propose to themselves not
to "go home till morning" by providing that nd
one shall keep a house of entertainment open be-
tween the hours of 1 and 4 a.m. Now it may be
very proper that we should all be in bed by one
o'clock. But we do not like that the State should
see us to bed and take away our candle—more
especially when it is done for our own good ; and
this, we presume, is the motive of Sir George Grey's
action in the matter. No doubt there are houses
of this kind where disreputable and lawless
people congregate, turning night into day, and
making a very ill-spent day of it. But, on the other
bend, there are a great many of us who, though
spending the night in a manner comparatively re-
spectable, have still a fancy for "hearing the chimes
at midnight" and something more. Are these
people—perhaps very exceptional in their dissipa-
tioe—to be cut short in their nocturnal festivi-
ties ? Is Malvolio to put on a policeman's
garb and to come upon us with the Queen's
authority ? Because Sir George Grey is virtuous
—the quotation is something musty. All such
nights are not necessarily demoralising. Has Sir
George Grey never looked in at the festive halls of
Mr Patrick Green in Covent garden, and ob-
served what that worthy entertainer has done to
provide a pleasant and respectable gathering for the
young lawyers, medical students, and other care-
less spirits who are looking about for amusement
after the theatres? Yet Mr. Green's house will,
we suppose, be closed under Sir George Grey's
legislation when the clock strikes one, and his audi-
ence dispersed to roam the streets. These are the
classes which are out for pleasure ; the bill perhaps
will fall still more hardly on carters who come to
Covent-garden market at three o'clock in the morn•
ing and find the houses close,' where they met to
seek their early refreshment. We do not suppose
that the Home Secretary's Bill will pass, but the
failure of such schemes has frequently a bad effect
in itself..

TIIE THREE HEROIC BROTHERS, THE NAPIERS,
AT THE BATTLE OF BUSACO.—Charles Napier,
"advancing on the 4th of March, 1811, met a litter, of
branches borne by soldiers, and covered with a blanket.
' What wounded officer is that?' ' Captain Napier
(George), of the 52d—a broken limb.' Another litter fol-
lowed. Who is that ?' ' Captain Napier (William), of
the 43d, mortally wounded.' Charles Napier looked at
them, and passed on to the fight in front,"