The Sun.
London, England, 1864-07-26 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

TIMES.—It is the fashion at the end of every
session for the people to complain that Parliament
has done nothing but vindicate the whimsical
etymology of the old constitutional writers, and has
only "spoken its mind." Yet within a few weeks
after the three taps of the Usher of the Black Rod
have put an end to the deliberations of the Com-
mons there is certain to issue from the Queen's Prin•

tern' publishing office a bulky volume, which every
one is legally supposed to get by heart. When we say
that Parliament has done nothing this session, we
mean that the storms and tempests of Parliamen-
tary debate have passed away without shivering any
of the big trees or bringing down any of the great
edifices. We have not been handed over to the

supremacy of the mob, nor committed bound hand
and foot to the tender mercies of competing or
combining contractors. We have not been forced
headlong into an European war, nor compelled to
ruin ourselves by unnecessarily coming between the
madmen who are tearing each other to pieces on the
other side of the Atlantic. We have not even done

in this one session everything that we might have
wisely done, although we have certainly wisely re•
frained from doing many things that we have been
unwisely urged to do. The fiercest contests have
indeed sometimes produced the least result. But still

,here must ba a residuum even from a burst soap

bubble, and there must be a good deal left to analyse,
examine, and to weigh when this session, which is
now expiring, shall have no other memorial than its
annual statute book. The comfort or discomfort, the
every-day life of the individual atoms, of the body
politic depend perhaps in a much greater degree
upon the little social ordinances which pass almost
unnoticed and undebated, and which are scarcely
known as propositions until they are felt operating
as laws, than they do upon the great contests of
party. It wilt be our duty from time to time to
draw public attention to many of these small
changes which have been wrought out by this Ses-
sion of Parliament, and which must gradually make
their way into our daily habits. It was thought,
and truly thought, so great an achievement of legis-
lation to enable a householder to send an organ-
grinder from his door that both in the Commons and
in the Lords loud cheers, as for some unexpected
victory, welcomed the final stage of Mr. Bass's
Street Music Bill. In no other country in the world,

perhaps, would a nuisance so pitifully vexatious
have required to be abated at such great cost. The
resistance to this measure was the intolerance of hale,
coarse men, of strong sinews, towards the weak,
sensitive persons of over-wrought nerves. It was not
that the strong men were intentionally cruel, but
they did not betieve in a species of suffering they had
never felt. This little bit of grudged legislation which
enables a man to send away from his door a noise
that makes him frantic is to thousands among us
a greater boon than Universal Suffrage, and Vote
by Ballot, and Annual Parliaments, and Wages to
Members of Parliament, all rolled up in one bill
would have been to the three heroic tailors of
Tooley-street. It is almost ludicrous to picture to
ourselves the altered state of mind in which hun-
dreds, and even thousands, of persons in this city
will open their front windows, now that they know
the law has armed them with the power of handing
over to a policeman those terrible tormentors who
made life a burden to them. We hope they will not
be disappointed, for it is just upon the cards that the
police magistrates may even yet make the measure
inoperative; and a much surer plan Would have
been to confiscate the organ, which never belongs
to the " musician," and thus to have made the
muster of the poor stroller the person interested in
making him behave with consideration and civility.
At the sacrifice of half a dozen organs this reform
might have been effected without the aid of im-
prisonment, and without affording to any one the
sentimental regret that—
" The tyrants of this iron time
Have deemed his harmless art a crime."
We, however, accept this new piece of law as we
find it, and only use it as an example of the strong
interest that may hang upon minute acts of legisla-
tion which seam but as the dust and sweepings of
the lawmaker's workshop. If people of sensitive
nerves have reason to bless this Session of 1864, the
people of acute moral sensibilities, who are fortu-
nately a much more numerous class, will also find
something to satisfy them in the forthcoming statute
book. There is no country in tho world in which
there is so much private refinement and so much
public indecency as in England. The reason is that
we scorn to touch immoralities of some descrip-
tions in the only way in which they can be effece
tively dealt with—that is, in a spirit of compromise
with a view to mitigate them by regulation. The
Grand Master of the Templars would touch no
heretic save with his sword, but he could not hack
to pieces every Jew he saw, and we cannot by un-
compromising force bind human passions and crush
human vices., If we will not recognise them, we
cannot regulate them, and we are forced into the
opposite extreme of letting them alone. There
can be no question that the Haymarket and its
neighbourhood are a scandal to any Christian
country. All night there is held there a great
street orgie which is unexampled in the world. It
is true that decent people need not go there, and
it is not like the organ nuisance, which follows the
physfcally sensitive man even into his innermost
sanctum, and there torments him. To be grossly
shocked by it, the morally sensitive man must sit
up all night and go to a distance from his home
especially to undergo the pain of being shocked.
But still it is a scandal ; it is a breach of good
order, it is not creditable to our institutions, and
there is no occasion for such a scene. Sir George
Grey has made a praiseworthy attempt this Session
to mitigate this nightly Haymarket Carnival. A
bill now stands for the Royal assent which provides
that all refreshment rooms shall be closed between
1 o'clock in the morning and 4. As a general pro-
position this seems to us to be very reasonable. Vice
itself ought not to complain of being sent home a+
1 o'clock in the morning, and harmless pleasure
Inver found seeking refreshment in the streets oi
London at a later hour. As a simple police rule we
cannot think that any could be less objection-
able, and, with this in force, it may be doubted
whether any other in addition to it is of much use,
This interval of three hours will certainly starve
out the Haymarket orgie. The difficulty, of course,
is, in a city like this, to make any rule which
shall el 4 off the supplies from debauchery with.