The Sun.
London, England, 1852-10-12 00:00:00

RAILWAY INTELLIGENCE.

SEVERN VALLEY.—A deputation from the direc-
tors, consisting of Mr. J. Thorpe and Mr. W. Reed,
attended public meetings during the last week at the
various towns in the districts of the proposed line.
The meetings were numerously and influentially at-
tended, and resolutions were passed to the effect that
the construction of the Severn Valley Railway would
be a great public convenience, and afford increased
facilities for the development of the agricultural,
manufacturing, mineral, and other resources of the
districts, and pledging the meetings to cordially sup-
port the undertaking. The line as proposed termi-
nates at Coalbrookdale ; hut, from the opinions ex-
pressed at the meeting in favour of continuing it to
Shrewsbury, it is expected the company will decide
on going there.
SOUTH WALES.—Yesterday the 30 miles of addi-
tional railway from Swansea to Carmarthen were
opened for public traffic. It will be remembered that
a formal opening of this portion of the line took place
more than three weeks ago, but, in consequence of
certain requirements of the Government Railway In-
spector being unfulfilled, the opening for traffia was
deferred. The inspector has given his sanction to
the use of the line for public traffic. Five trains run
daily to and fro on the extended line, and a person
may now breakfast in London at 9 A.M., end dine in
Carmarthen at half-past four. The new stations are
Loughor, Llanelly, Pembrey, Ferryside, and Car-
marthen.
FORTH AND CLYDE JUNCTlON.—Preliminary
measures are now being taken to promote a Bill in
the ensuing session of Parliament for the construction
of the above line. On a former occasion a Bill was
promoted with a view to obtain the sanction of Par-
liament for the construction of the line at a cost of
400,0001., but now it is proposed to construct it for
about one-third of that amount. It is stated that a

most responsible contractor is ready to undertake
the work and complete it for something less than
140,000/., a❑d to take in part payment above 40,0001.
of that sum in shares in the u❑dertaking.
RAILWAY EXCURSIONS TO IRELAND.—It is stated

that upwards of 250,000 persons have visited Ireland
during the last year through the cheap excursions by
railway.

ULSTER.—This compiny's extension line is to
proceed via Glasslough, Monaghan, Clones, and
Belturbet, to Cavan and Mullingar, at a cost of
350,000/.

POLICE INTELLIGENCE,
SOUTHWARK.

CAM AT RAILWAY STATIONS.—Mr. A'BECKETT
on Friday gave his judgment in a case of great im-
portance to all the railway companies within the me-
tropolitan police district, as well as to the public
using the various stations.
On Tuesday lc st a cabman was summoned .by Mr.
Welsh, a barrister, for refusing to carry him as a fare
from the cab stand or rank inside the Brighton
Railway terminue, London-bridge, when Mr. Lewis
attended for the defendant, but mostly to argue the
question on behalf of the railway company. He
contended that the defendant did not become amen-
able to the Act of Parliament, inasmuch as the rail-
way station was not a public place, and therefore,
defendant could not be liable to punishment for re-
fusing to take a fare when plying for hire. After
some considerable discussion, at the request of Mr.
Lewis, the Magistrate suspended his judgment until
yesterday, when the court was crowded by railway
officials and cab owners, who were anxious to ascer-
tain the decision on this very important case, espe-
cially as it is final, and cannot be taken to a higher
court.

Mr. Lewis and all the parties being in attendance.
His Wousaur proceeded to deliver his judgment as
follows :—This is a summons against the defendant,
as the driver of a hackney carriage within the metro-
politan police district, for refusing to go with the
complainant who was desirous of hiring the said car-
riage for the legal and proper fare. It bas been
argued on the defendant's behalf—first, that a cab
within a railway terminus is not a',hackney caeriage
within the meaning of the Act ; secondly, that the de-
fendant was not plying for hire ; and lastly, that the
rail way terminus is not a place contemplated by the
Act of Parliament. The first point may be briefly
disposed of by reference to the Act of the 6th and
7th Victoria, cap 86, the second section of which de-
fines a railway carriage to be " every carriage except
a stage carriage which shall stand on hire or ply fur pas-
sengers for hire, at any place within the limits of the city
of Lond on and the liberties thereof, and the metropolitan
police district." That is a much clearer definition than
that given by the Ist and 2d William IV., c. 22, the
fourth section of which limits the definition to a car-
riage with two or more wheels standing or plying
for hire in any public street or road, and any
place, whereas, from the more recent Ace, the
words "any public street or road" are omitted. The
second point raised on behalf of the defendant is that
he was not plying for hire. Now, the words of the
Act Ist and 2d William IV., c. 22, and sec. 35, have
stated clearly " that every hackney carriage which
shall be found standing in any street or place, and
having therein any of the numbered plates required
by this Act to be fixed in the hackney carriages,
shall, unless actually hired, be deemed to be plying
for hire, and the onus of proving the previous hiring
is thrown on the party complained against. The
second point being thus disposed of, 1 come to the
last, upon which most stress has been laid,—namely,
that a railway terminus is not a place within the
meaning of the statute. Now this argument is
clearly untenable, even if a railway terminus were
not a public place of resort, and, in my opinion, to be
within the Act ; but there is no doubt that the ter-
minus, though the property of the railway company,
is a place of public resort, and a place which, by Act
of Parliament, the public have a right of resorting
to. An opposite view of the case would be most in-
convenient to the railway company themselves, as
well as the public, for many offences committed at a
terminus were punishable by being committed at a
place of public resort. If a cabman could not belpunished
for refusing to taking a fare at a terminus, neither
could he be punished for abusive language, extortion,
or other misconduct at a railway station. The rail-
way officials have no right to assume an authority
over hackney carriages, or to lay down regulations
inconsistent with the law, and those drivers who act
under this improperly assumed authority must take
the consequences of the illegality of their actions.
There has been put into my hands by the solicitor of
the defendant a printed copy of rules and regula-
tions for the government of owners and drivers of
cabs standing for hire at the station of the London,
Brighton, and South Coast Railway. These regu-
lations confirm what I have said as to the illegal as-
sumption of authority by the railway companies over
hackney carriages. Among other things I find that
the public are expected to pay certain rates fur lug-
gage in addition to the ordinary fares ; and the public
are told that otherwise the charge is discretionary
with the cab-driver. Now, this is an error of which
the public mind cannot be too speedily disabused, as
the cab•drivers can make no charge at all ; and the
only discretion they have iu the matter ie that they
may refuse to overload their cabs with an un-
reasonable amount of luggage. They are bound to
carry any reasonable amount without any charge,
and it is time that the railway companies should
understand that they are not authorised in fixing
cab-fares, and that they ere very improperly mis-
leading the public by issuing such regulations as
those just placed before me. This is not a new case,
and the complainant in the present instance has been
the complainant on previous occasions, when, some-
times on account of a promise that the illegal re-
striction on the public convenience should be abolished
much forbearance has been shown, and a small or no-
mind penalty inflicted, As these as been much ob-

stinacy in continually violating the law, and as the
parties doing so have been acting under the sanction,
or rather under the coercion of the 'railway com-
panies, it is necessary that the law should be fully
carried out, and I shall therefore inflict on the defen-
dant in this case the full penalty of 405., with the
costs of the summons.

SIR CULLING EARDLEY AND MR.

LUCAS, M.P.
In the Tablet of Saturday there was a curious
correspondence between Sir Culling Eardley, Bart.,
and the Hon. Proprietor of that journal. As Sir
Culling's letter is short and Mr. Lucas's plaguy long,
we submit the first for publication, and about an equal
quantity of the second :

" Geneva, Oct. 1, 1852.
" Sir,—l observe in the Tablet, the Tuam Herald, and
other Irish newspapers, that a movement has been began
by Irish Roman Catholics, with the proposed object of
attaining religious equality.' In one of those papers
(the Tablet) I see it is argued that the first step to-
wards attaining the blessing of secure homes and safe
altars, must be the destruction of everything in the
shape of privilege, precedence, monopoly, or unfair ad-
vantage on the part of the Established Church.

"Li that movement your name is prominent.
" I need not suggest to you that for public men to
command respect they must act upon a principle. To
profess to desire religious freedom in Ireland, and not to
the best of their ability to promote it elsewhere, would
be to be politically unprincipled.
"It is not my purpose to express any opinion about
your Irish movement, but I take the liberty of address-
ing you on the following subject.
" You are, no doubt, aware of the imprisonment of
Sig. and Signora Madiai in Tuscany for religious calms.
They are condemned severally to threo years and a half
and four years-and-a-half confinement with bard labour,
for:having read the Scriptures, and worshipped God out
of the Church of Rome ; and for having induced or as-
sisted others to do the same.

" Upon such cruelty it is superfluous to comment.
The public prosecutor distinctly stated at the trial that
there was no political accusation whatever. The prose-
cution was avowedly for religion, the religion of the
Established Church of Tuscany; and the puuishment is
the grossest conceivable invasio❑ of the most rudicaen-
tary principles of religious liberty.
" A deputation from various countries—the United
Kingdom, France, Holland, Switzerland, and Germany
—is about to wait upon the Grand Duke of Tuscany, in
order to solicit, in the name of religions freedom, the
liberation of the Medial. I expect to meet these gen-
tlemen at Marseilles, and I take the liberty of asking
whether I may inform them that they have your per-
mission to state at Florence that you, whose name and
position are well known there, regard, with indignation,
the incarceration of the Medial, in the supposed interests
of your faith, and that you wish success to the object of
the deputation.
" I reserve to myself the right of making a public use
of the correspondence as soon as it is completed; end I
nquest that it may not be considered as completed until
I have bad time to acknowledge the honour of your reply.
" The gentleman who will wait upon you with this
letter will arrange with you for the reply to meet me at
Marseilles. " I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
" C. E. EAZDLEY•

" Frederick Lucas, Esq., M.P."
The substance of the reply of Mr. Lucas is, that he
will not comply with the suggestion of his corre-
spondent. Why and wherefore you may discover from
the closing part of his elaborate epistle, i. e.:—
" If I were a member of a constitutional state, like
Belgium or like England, on whichever side the majority
happened to be, I would advocate the strictest impar-
tiali'y and /quality of treatment for all. If I were an
absolute monarch under the like circumstances I would
practise the same rigid impartiality. But if I were an
inhabitant of a country like Ireland—governed, nomi-
nally by a representative government, in which the vast
majority of the people profess one religion—in which a
miserable minority, besides robbing the majority of
their estates, have robbed them also of the religious en-
dowments accumulated by the piety of their ancestors
fur centuries before—by the aid of those endowments
uphold themselves in a position of social and legal supe-
riority over the mass of the people—use these endow-
ments as an instrument of insult and a means and a mo-
tive for every kind of misgovernment, and the mainte-
nance of every species of abuse—in such a case, I care
not whether I belonged to the majority or the minority,
to the class of the oppressed or the class of the op-
pressors, to the Catholic or the Protestant—in any event
I should be earnest, with my whole soul, for cutting
out of the flesh of the state so foul a gangrene, and
establishing perfect religious equality among the people.
" This is the opinion I entertained before I became a
Catholic and ever since I came to the age of reason. I
uphold it now on the same principle on which I adopted
it then, but with a fuller knowledge, a deeper conviction,
a profounder hatred of the wrong, and a more resolute
determination to abate the nuisance. Show me a case
in which a Protestant majority is so treated by a usurp-
ing, plundering, and oppressive Catholic minority, and I
will be as forward in expressing my indignation at the
conduct of the Catholic oppressors, and my sympathy
with the Protestant oppressed.
" But when you dare to suggest to me a similarity be-
tween Tuscany and Ireland—between the Madiais and
the Catholics of this land—between your souping, swind-
ling, mammon-proselytism, the whole practical aim of
which is directed to root out the Christian faith, and to
plant infidelity in its stead—to disturb, destroy, disor-
ganise, break, and tear asunder an ancient and virtuous
society, by foreign influence and foreign gold; to make
men devils, or anything, if it were possible, that is worse,
rather than allow them to save their souls in the pure
way in which their fathers worshipped God; when you
dare to suggest to me a parallel between resistance to
the first beginnings of such revolutionary innovations,
and of such hostile invasions from without, and the
efforts of the Tory bigots here, to maintain their plunder
and their ferocious gripe upon the throats of a famished
people, I turn from the suggestion with a contemptwhich, assuredly, there as nothing, either in your letter
or in anything I know of your career, to modify or
diminish.
" I am, Sir Culling, your obedient servant,
"Tablet Office, Saturday, Oct. 9." "F. LUCAS.

(From the Times.)
The advocates of " religious equality," in the Irish
and epecial sense of the phrase, have encountered an
awkward opponent on the very threshold of the commit-
tee-room. The other day, as cur readers are not likely
to forget, these conscientious and simple-minded men,
being devout upholders of a creed which confines salva-
tion exclusively to itself, and justifies the extirpation of
religious differences by fetters and fagots,_ recorded a
series of extraordinary resolutions, to the effect that spi-
ritual freedom was the genuine birthright of all people;
that the:several denominations of Christians possessed
respectivelyttheir own proper claims to consideration, and
that " the first step towards securing the blessing of se-
cure homes and safe altars must be the destruction of
everything in the shape of privilege, precedence, mono-
poly, or unfair advantage on the part of the
Established Church." This notification met the eye
of Sir Culling Eacclley, and acted on the free-
souled baronet as a proclamation by Lord ifardinge
for disbanding the entire army might be expected
to act on Mr. Bright. For years had Sir Culling
been lebourieg in the work of religious equality and
evangelical freedom all over the world, and for years
had he and his coadjutors regarded the Romish esta-
blishment as the incarnate terror of poor God-fearing
souls. But here were not only Papists, but Irish Pa-
pists ;
" archbishops" and " bishops" assembling together to
put on record doctrines of religious liberty which might
pass good muster at a convention of the Protestant Al-
liance. Into what emotions Sir Culling was thrown on
the spot must be left to imagination to conceive. Per-
haps he did as Colonel Sibthorp was represented by a
facetious contemporsry to have done in the lobby of the
House of Commons when the Crystal Palace was fi-
nally condemned ; but, at any rate, he then and there
applied the discovery to prompt
.and practical use. A
poor man and woman in Tuscany of the name of Madiai
have been just sentenced to four years' confinement
with hard labour for having read the Scriptures and
worshipped God out of the Church of Rome. There
was no suspicion, charge, or implication of moral
or political criminality attaching to the case. The
public prosecutor frankly declared at the trial that
there was no such accusation whatever, and that
the prosecution was wholly and avowedly for
the religion of the established Church of Tuscany. Sir
Calling, in concert with many other benevolent persons
of this and other countries, was then compassing the res-
cue of these unhappy prisoners, and in furtherance of
this charitable object a deputation was proceeding to
solicit their pardon from the Tuscan Court. Now, if
the Irish confederates, being of this veryTusean
and known indeed throughout Europe as out-Romanieleg
the Romans themselves in all the genuine characteristics
of Popery, would but concur in suggestively recommend-
ing to their brethren at Florenoe some of those maxims
which they were proclaiming so clamorously at home,
what a catch it would be for the deputation! So thought
Sir Culling, and he addressed himself incontinently to
Mr. Frederick Lucas, an active promoter of the " equa-
lity movement," and a public expositor of the cause.
Referring to the declaration of the confederates touching
" secure homes," " safe altars," and the method of " at-
taining such blessings" by the destruction of ecclesiasti-
cal monopolies, Sir Culling ventured to introduce the
question of the Madiais. Nothing certainly could have
more forcibly illustrated the principles on which
Mr. :Lucas and his colleagues were now taking
their stand. The ease seemed made for the very pur-
pose. How terribly an " established church" might
interfere with " secure homes and safe altars" was
shown to some effect in a sentence of four years' impri-
sonment:for reading the Bible without that church's
permission, and spiritual "
privilege, precedence, mono-
poly, and advantage" were most assuredly exemplified
to the life in decrees which visited the very smallest
dissent with the penalties of a common felon. So, after
quoting the resolutions of the " equality" committee,
and alluding to tho purposes of the deputation then on
its road, Sir Culling " took the liberty of asking" Mr.
Lucas whether be, " whose name and position were well
known at Florence," would permit the deputation to
state that ho " regarded the incarceration of the
Madiais" with the " indignation" professed and recorded
against all " privilege, monopoly, or advantage of an
established church," and whether; he would contribute
his public " wishes" to tho " success" of the mission?
Welt spol.en, Sir Culling ! You have not always car-
ried English opinions with you, but you have got them
now. lend what did Mr. Lucas city? Why, he first tuck
Sir Culling roundly to task for presuming to expect an
enswer to so impertinent an application, and he then, with
truly Irish consistency, wrote an answer filling three
whole columns of a newspaper. As far as this repri-
mand condescends to reasons, it proceeds on the differ-

once detected by Mr. Lucas between two cases so stye
rently similar. True, the Popish religion is established
in Tuscany and the Protestant in Ireland; but Protest-
antism in Tuscany is " a crinse.in the sight of God, and
an injury to society," whereas Popery in Ireland (as
we must infer by antithesis) is a real and genuine
blessing to the State. The Tuscan Government, again,
is " Catholic," and the country is " exclusively Catho-
hc," and, therefore, in repressing dissent, its rulers may'
use any means they think expedient. But tho established
Government of Ireland and the Established Church of
Ireland are both as truly Protestant as the Tuscan esta-
blishments are Popish, and why may they not act ac-
cordingly? If precedence, monopoly, and privilege are as
dotestsble as Mr. Lucas thinks them they can certainly be
none the better for being absolute, or, if this is held to be
the case, we have only to make the Government of Ire-
land still more Protestant than it is, and lock up Mr.
Lucas and Dr. for four years, instead of merely
not allowing; them to steal other men's goods at their dis-
cretion. We have only to terminate all toleration, and
then we shall no longer bo chargeable with intolerance.
To give a Dissenting community free scope and license
for all its tenets and ceremonies, and to interdict it solely
from outraging the laws of the State and appropriating
the property of its neighbours, is persecution; to seize
and imprison every Dissenter, and to stifle the very
faintest utterance of dissent, is no persecution at all, but
a rightful exercise of power, in which just so much
rigour should be infused as is necessary for effect. Now,
don't say so, Mr. Lucas! Don't preach such doctrines.
They are dangerous at the present moment, we can es-
sure you. If Papists ought to have everything they
want or nothing at all, the former will not be the
alternative preferred by the British nation. Of
course, Popery with ISIr. Lucas is all that is
precious, and Protestantism all that is vile. Of
course, Protestant Church Missions are a scheme of or-
ganized evil—" a souping, swindling, mammon prose-
lytism, the whole aim of which is directed to root out
. .

the Christian faith and plant infidelity in its stead; to
disturb, destroy, disorganise, break and tear asunder au
ancient and virtuous society " (is this Ireland?) " by
foreign influences and foreign gold, to make men devils,
or anything, if possible, that were worse;" while the
way of Dr. M'Hale and his fellow priests is the " pure
way "of righteousness, and so forth. In short, Popery
is truth and Protestantism heresy; truth ought to be,
promoted and heresy rooted out, and therefore Popish
establishments may impriscu Protestants, but Protestant
establishments ought to admit Papists to "equality.'
This is the practical view of the new committee. Sir
Culling Eardley. meantime, has certainly got an answer,
and a pretty stiff one too, but the members of the de-
putation are called impertinent for asking anything, and
tools for expecting it, and the Baronet himself is dis•
missed " with a contempt which there is nothing in his
letter or his life to modify or diminish." " Equality"
for ever!

LYMA
statement
.t of Lond
1852, to t

RKETS.

of the quantities of
lon from the ports in
the 9th Oct., 1t352,

. ,z
, a s
ti. 711
C. A

I g
4 1 1;4