The Sun.
London, England, 1864-01-13 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

TIMES.—Some years ago the elder members of one
of our Universities were accuetotned to spend much
sympathy and some coin upon a celebrated Jehu
who had been deposed and ruined by the then re-
cent railway. His calling was gone, and he was in
miserable plight. Suddenly, however, his penury
seemed to cease, and, although many believed that
he had lost his wits, all agreed that he must have
found a fortune. Our friend might every day be
seen upon a branch turnpike road in the neigh-
bourhood of Camford, driving sometimes a gig and
sometimes a cart up and down from 500 yards on
one side of the turnpike gate to 500 yards on the
other side, but always keeping himself to this short
bit of road, and always as he went through the gate
paying the toll and taking a ticket. Old Splinter-
bar was very close upon the object of his drives
and payments at that time, and perhaps it was lucky
for him Dr. Forbes Winslow did not happen to
pass that way, but somehow it wan that there was
method and profit also in his apparent madness.
Months later he did not mind showing his friends
how he was engaged all that time in " making
traffic for the new branch line." There was a traffic
taker inside the tollhouse who marked him down
every time he passed, and the traffic-taker proved
his figures, the toll-collector proved his receipts,
and the ticket vouchers proved the tickets, and all
went before the House of Commons' Committee ;
and by this simple means one of the most solitary
cross-roads in those parts became statistically one
of the most frequented communications in the
kingdom. Recalling to mind these and many other
stories of the same kind, we are not die posed to put
implicit faith in the estimates recently put .farth by
the promoters of the new metropolitan schemes 18
to the numbers of men who daily come in by rail
and omnibus from the environs of London to keep
business hours in the metropolis. The suggestion
made is that 700,000 persons come into London
every morning and go out of London every night.
'This may be, and probably is, a great exaggera-
tion ; but there can be no doubt that the real
figures, if they could be obtained, must also be very
large and far beyond the control of any such agency
as that of our friend in the gig. Perhaps weshould
not be far beyond the mark in estimating that half
a million of persons engaged in business transac-
tions in London during the day sleep out of town
in habitations within a radius of five-and-twenty
miles. This is a fact which deserves much more
careful attention than it has hitherto obtained. It
marks an epoch in the habits of our people, it dis-
covers a new want scarcely known to the last gene-
ration, and it indicates a mine of wealth as yet very
imperfectly worked by the railway companies. It
is under every discouragement that all this vast
population migrates morning and evening. These
people do not appear in the metropolitan Census,
they form no portion of the estimated three millions
of the metropolis, and no doubt their number would
be doubled if the facilities of transport were what
they ought to be. If we look beyond the smoke,
we may see that the railway traffic-master can dis.
tribute them as a magician can conjure his spirits.
Where there are trains every quarter of an hour,
villages of villas and little towns of cottages lightly
cover the landscape. The Crystal Palace, despite
its clayey soil, will soon be in the very midst of
suburban London. Again, where the treins are
numerous in the morning, with a late train at night
for the playgoers, and the London diners-out, and
the late workers, the larger houses rise and the
railway residential revenue increases. The South-
Eastern bids very fairly for a large traffic of this
kind, and is getting it—the landowner: down the
line and the public sharing the gain with the Com-
pany. The South-Western is rather niggard of
conveniences, and with, perhaps, the finest oppor-
tunities ,of converting some 40 miles of valueless
line into a highly paying district, stops short in
its resident accommodation at Weybridge. The
Great Western is far too proud, though by no means
too prosperous,to attend to such small matters, With
the best line and perhaps the most unskilful staff
in England, it utterly neglects the mine of revenue
which lies in the beautiful country about Marlow,
and, indeed, all down to Pangbourne. The lines of
the Great Northern and of the Great Eastern are
not laid in pleasant places, and there is something
about the traditions of the latter line which does
not invite the confidence necessary to habitual
travel, The change of name and even the estab-
lishment of several Accidental Death Insurance
Companies have not yet succeeded in rendering the
Eastern Counties popular as a place for cockney
ruralising. The North Western, with many disad-
vantages of soil and climate, and a distant London
station, have by liberality in trains and residents'
tickets begirt Harrow with first-class houses, and
gathered a population on their line. But none of
these traffic-masters have studied the habits of the
fish it is their business to catch, Any traffic-master
who considered the matter for a moment must know
that the great London deliveries of suburban resi-
tents ought to be at 8 45, 9 45, and 10 45. The
junior clerk, the junior partner in the retail busi-
ness, and all the active, youthful, and subordinate
little wheels of London commerce begin to revolve
exactly at nine,—not a moment later, for punctu-
ality is the soul of business. The junior partners,
managing clerks, and people of second-rate autho-
rity, arrive with equal exactitude at ten. The
magnates, when the letters are opened and docketed,
the orders registered, the Stock Exchange open,
and the world well aired, come in, to the moment,
at eleven. All the world of London knows this,
and every one acts upon it except the traffic-mas-
ters. In stupid iudiff,3rence to the wants of their
customers and the pockets of their shareholders,
they not only make their lines inconvenient for re-
sidential purposes, but they circumscribe the area
available for habitations and make the available
places crowded and uncomfortable. Any of our
readers who will glance at the " Map of Metropo-
litan Railways and Miscellaneons Improvements
deposited at the Private Bill-office,"juet published,
will readily discern the state of things which has
suggested the observations we are making. Before
the Metropolitan Railways are intrusted with new
powers they ought to show that they are making
the best use they can of the facilities they now have,
All these new London projects can be for no other
purpose than to catch the morning and evening re-
sidential traffic. The occasional traveller, encum-
bered by his luggage, must take his cab to his rest-
ing place at all events. It is the habitual, unladen,
daily customer who wants to be set down within
fare or ten minutes of his shop, or his counting
house, or his office. It is for this custom the fight
is to be made. But the fight should be made not
only in the London streets, but in the country. The
customers will grow up upon the lines that have the
most frequent trains and the most liberal system of
yearly tickets. There can be no doubt that the most
paying thing at this moment would be a series of
short residential lines, restricted to residential traffic,
going 25 miles into the country round London, but
converging into two or three lines near London, and
with trains every quarter of an hour. Far be it
from us to propose anything of the sort in the pre-
sent atate of affairs, but the object should be to get
as near to this as we can with the least possible in-
terference with present arrangements, and, above
all, without unnecessarily disturbing the streets of
London. If the shareholders of the present lines
would spur their directors, and the directors would
take the traffic masters rather energetically by the
collar and shake them into a consciousness of the
present state of the wants of the metropolis, a great
deal might be done without costly Parliamentary
contests or pulling down London.
TELEGRAPEL—Mercy weeps, and Justice herself
takes with her dismayed sister in protesting
against
the if..ed which was done yesterday at Horse-
. Its most awful characteristic is
monger-lane sac;:
that it stands irrevoC able; for the appeal of pity
...‘,
made by the people on ehalf of Samuel Wright
e
has been carried ere now by ~` is own sadoipirit to a
tribunal beyond the purview e-s.f earthly rulers.
Adjudged upon compassionately there
e—as we may
think it will be—the ruling of that su..."ale and
faultless Court of Error cannot set right age, n the
wrong done here. It remains an injustice irrev,:r-
sible, an eternally petrified mistake, apiece of cold
officialism and Ministerial stiff-neckedness' stereo-
typed for bad, and all by the gallows. The man
whose life might yesterday have been saved by one
se
ry
aohf
tt h e S ec
impulser e t arriye
i' pen—by
ns
gabove theon e generousd e e
d level a nedf
routine—lies now in a felon's grave, with a prison
ecerne
meeiteert. No ghostysandashr evoudekd ofequiclim
for his passage
f for
h
funerali s
ewithquicklime
e
y
in-
genious optical methods, or imagined by a diseased
brain, could possess the power and the hoeror of that
corpse. From the grave it accuses its executioners of
an unmerited death, which the crowd—hardly re-
strained at the scaffold by respect f orlaw—hooted
" as a murder." From the grave • t raises that most
perilous and catching cry of "
one
law for the rich
and another for the poor," which
can hardly be con-
tradicted while Victor Townley lives and Samuel
Wright moulders. From the
grave, too, it reminds,
and will long remind the country,of that strange
and distressing scene enacted
yesterday, when the
homicide on the scaffold bowed with his darkened
face to the people cryince " Shame !" on his hang-
man. Waen and while the choked lungs fluttered,
and the heart's throb a
dulled to all things in pused, and the poor brain
this life except to that one
terrible and slow
agony tediously fading off from
nerve and organ, Wright must still
b
countrymen crying
acyainstthav e heard his
einfliction of that
supreme penalty. Whatn did
it mean, this sympathy
for the man ? Was he not a murderer? Had he
not slain with his own Band the woman who was
his companion ?
• By his own immediate and
wretched confee,sion, he had done
so; and the Erg-
1M people have
no
blood. But rho maudlinfeeling
pity for the shedder of
o Aui, grows stronger every day

biOOU
amongst a, large section of the community that a
cannot be washed away by blood, and on the red
list of. " murders" this did not stand in the el%
class. It was an act of vice and of passion, but de;
without premeditation, and upon starting up fre..,„
sleep; it was swiftly made known, readily acknrt,
ledged, briefly tried, and hurriedly adjudged. You
could not sell a house or buy a bit of garden-gren
so quietly as Samuel Wright was arrests!
arraigned, and cast for death ; and while thede'
secuting counsel iiimself therefore pressed for !"?'
~
to produce palliating circumstances the people and
just witnessed a most doubtful act of e, emend' the
demanded, with a wise and humane logic, that.te ae
department which had seen insanity in in,. lcous._asti
should not see wilful murder in the frenzy ce a nuts
quarrel, completed and repented of within the siv''elf,
seconds. They demanded it, nee
in vain, and now the dangerous expert ti,,
has passed upon the public of an executila
as all know too ,
hooted by its spectator& If anything cea,id
lend gravity to such an event, it we'd,
be the self-restraint shown by the indignant crl„
Five hundred policemen and a few barriers of e;
timber could not yesterday have kept the thousli%
who shouted " Shame!" from tearing Wright ire a
the gallows, if their sympathy for him had not bess
its basis in love of law and justice. This becole 01
then, no common incident—no mock-heroic of po
annals—no Jack Sheppard or rollicking Mse„he,ele,
kissing hands to the mob, and cheered out of 11
in return, as a bold, light-hearted rogue• not
leaving the crowd out of the question as the laid
important portion of the tragedy, those who
lice
have gone, but who stayed away in order to heir
no hand or part in the business, must be reale,
bored. For every hundred spectators at the lia%„
ing there would have been thousands, but that toed
who usually bear to look on such things tile
ste,...nly denied themselves the spectacle Latoo,
than ges,:.7l to warrant a judicial murder. spectacle,
vv;tbe.
again, behint; all these absentees, we think oi
sod
thousands who ae:ively protested, by argument 10.
meeting and petitioe:
against the execution...4l
eluding men of mark a. 7
d character, and ant,,,
all the London press with .its million readele;oetl
the terrible thought is more aCd more iniP7ooo'
upon us that at Horsemonger-lane
gaol the
try was on this occasion one way and. the Glelero.
id be
meat another, as to whether the life sh,eacerie
strangled out of the poor bricklayer. The Lie tatel
meet, however, is a shadowy term, and we oil
bring closer home the responsibility of the
blood. Solemnly feeling, then, how grave a, two'
we say, and how good a gift it is that a IVilel
should have the courage to disregard clamour the
follow law, we cannot avoid the duty of laYiegd of
misery and mistake of this deed upon the hegaccar
Sir George Grey. We would do the Home
tart' justice—and we are sure we do him n° pod
than justice in believing that he would have %gel
"Wright if, in his own official opinion, '` he, to
have saved him." It would be absurd to belle 101
Minister obstinately bent upon exacting the bee
penalty from such a criminal, and Sir Georg creel
neither the character nor the bearing of a„11 0
man. His error was not of the heart so raid afld
of the head, and has been bred of that ce'L'aeo'
dull official blood which routine and foolscaP eerci of
der. He would have drawn the blunted offifer
Mercy from its sheath, instead of the poioteu, d the
e
pan of Justice, but that his own fingers hod tletho
blade to the scabbard with Gordian taq;ory
red tape. Had he been less ministerial and -0,100
of a Minister he would have perceived that tiered
precisely a case where the instincts of the Piele'
were a great deal more weighty than such coo re,
rations as that there had been a reprieve 13,efecepl'
that there mustn't be too many—that poputobi
Dion was encroaching upon the sacred caePetp,"
Home-office—that Government was Lieverayo
Clio
and must be maintained. These, we say, abteP
kind of thoughts which haunted Sir Georg ea 0111'
and which—proving him far more foolish ae,„fiai,e,,
monplace than cruel or haughty—sustained 'lt V
the unfortunate business to its bloody cod•noibi:
then that horror comes in, and that the resP7,OOP
lity which we lay upon the Minister's shen'teciP,
stains our hands with crimson and soils ,
dress with the same colour. The obstinacy the eel"
ministerial in the office was homicidal le, thmioselle
bleak air of the winter morning, when Wr4l,-t-oe
forth to die for having committed manslaugi,-001e;
judiciously close after a murder elsewhere. ;ate e,.'„
not take the weight of " the bricklayer's" 'Tie- tP:
the head that nodded assent so easily Wheh-ile
gentleman" was pronounced mad. And n-obsw,'
nisterial responsibility is a reality and uol' tea
it is not only just that we should refer the-be pre;
ters to the right man, but ho himself must pit Or,
pared to accept the reference. It is a krleeeti
even a sublime authority to stand before the
the official "master of life," the incarnate I",
of Final Appeal ; and if heart or head oet
latt\u
for that office be too cold or too Olt"
brained, we must say so, for life and death °note
public weal are in
Grey lies the load of this event, if shot:leo ,10
we think it Wan; with him remains flail oat'
question. On Sir Ise
credit of his firmness, if Wright's act waed oelpi
der, and Victor Townley's was matters; 0 hot
is the adviser of the Crown in these
those who placed a petition on this Object tk
, 00
Majesty'al hands asked of her tender hear..- d ooe
ference which her wise and experienced mit,lphope_ie,
to have refused to her strong inclination& tie
not. He, an
pie's instinct, striking the balance of b
svlt 00
fairly in these perplexed cases, has fixeL. jos ,
same acumen on him who is to blame in the Po, Ile;
business. It is the Home Secretary, agd.°,/iii 1°!,0
and now but one hope is left, namely, 016' 60.'1
chance of mercy—with the dreadful scaffo'be
lately enacted when Alice Holt died, andrtdoeshir
Derbyshire to hang
inconsistence of logic or law which P - gel).
to
work upon public opinion so as speedily
the power of life and death out of the licw
erring hands of parliamentary officials.
in Middlesex—mil to of