The Sun.
London, England, 1852-10-08 00:00:00

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LONDON, FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1852.

It was recognised by many intelligent observers,
long before the discoveey of gold in that quarter of
the globe, that a necessity was every day becoming
more and more apparent that we should no longer
ship our convicts to the shores of Australia. Since
the enormous increase of emigration to that colony,
consequent upon the anxiety to reach the diggings
before the supply of the precious metal should give
tokens of exhaustion, the fact of that necessity has
become still more generally appreciated. Even the
most obdurate sticklers for the old system have come
at last to acknowledge that it were little short of
madness to dream of continuing to treat those pos-
sessions of ours in the southern hemisphere as the
moral sink of England, or, in other words, as a
penal settlement. A change has now become impe-
rative. The Government of Great Britain must forth-
with adopt measures for the more judicious treatment
of such criminals as may in future incur the ven-
geance of the violated laws of the United Kingdom. To
act otherwise than in accordance with this rational and
benevolent prompting to innovation would be absurd
and cruel, if only upon the plea of inconsistency. It
were preposterous to talk of allowing the colonists in
Australia the privilege of arranging the machinery of
their own government, and at the same time to per-
sist in transmitting to their coasts periodically ship-
loads of the dregs of our own populaticr. Some-
thing, it is evident, therefore, is absolutely required
in the way of improvement in this direction. Some
new arrangement is demanded by circumstances from
the Imperial Legislature, with a view to relieve one of
our chief dependencies from the curse of remaining
a penal settlement. Everybody gifted with two grains
of common sense must perceive at a glance that this
new arrangement must have reference to the organi-
zation of a different system of punishment than the
one hitherto enforced in the way of systematic trans-
portation.
Several years have now elapsed since we first called
the attention of the public to an enterprise, by the
developement of which we felt satiified, on mature
reflection, that incalculable adv inters would accrue
to the Anglo-Saxon race in both hemiephores. No
other journalist in this country had, at that time,
ventured to assert the merits of the proposed scheme,
or even to allude, in the most cursory manner, to the
mere circumstance of its proposition. It is so far
satisfactory to us to bear in recollection the fact that
The Sun was the first organ of
popular opinion to
direct the notice of the community to the plan of a
grand trunk railway across the North American con-
tinent—a railway connecting the Pacific with the At.
lantic, and effecting this, moreover, by traversing our
own fruitful but neglected territories. Already
there bad been submitted to the consideration
of the people of the United States the out-
line of a similar undertaking, as suggested to
his fellow- citizens by the ingenious Mr. ASA WHIT.
rim But the proposition which secured to itself our
peculiar sympathies emanated in the first instance
from an intelligent officer in the British army, in the
course of a somewhat remarkable communication ad-
dressed to the celebrated wit, Judge limeinuieroet. It
was the pamphlet written by Major ROBERT CAR.
MICHAEL SMITH, in whic
was rapidly sketched an
h
undertaking so vast an i symmetrical, that ALEXANDER
might have entertained the idea of carrying it out,
and NAPOLEON might have conducted it to its actual
realization, with PALLADIO as the architect of the
line, and ARCHIMEDES as the principal engineer.
Gigantic as the enterprise unquestionably was on the
first showing, it was no less obviously at a glance in
every way practicable, its benefits being within the
attainment of the popular energies, supposing those
energies were only in the first inetance directed
by the vigour and sagacity of the Imperl it Govern-
ment. Attracted to the
by the very grandeur of the
consideration of the subject
proposition, we
found
on its more detailed and deliberate
investigation hat
the scheme was very far indeed from being in any re-
spect extravagant. It area from arriving at this eon
ion in the serene impartiality of a
Perfectly un-

THE

biassed judgment that we resolved to direct the at-
tention of the British public to the proposal, and
after remaining for some time altogether alone in the
advocacy of the undertaking, we were gratified at
last to observe the spread of similar opinions among
some of our more observant contemporaries, and ulti-
mately even into the highest councils of the Ad-
ministration. The projector of the United States
line of railway between the two oceans—rendering
the central portion of North America the
channel of intercommunication between the Euro-
pean and Asiatic continents—arrived in this
country somewhere about the period of the Great In-
dustrial Exhibition. Proposals for carrying forward
the rival scheme were addressed to her MAJESTY'S
Government meanwhile by the local administrators
in our North American possessions. Earl GREY
even had the good sense to accord to these proposals a
favourable hearing—insomuch that everything looked
propitious upon the advocates of the intended enter-
prise—when, as ill luck would have it, precisely at
the juncture when the delegates sent to the mother
country upon the subject of Nova Scotia and New
Brunswick arrived in London—the RUSSELL Cabinet
had been abruptly induced to resign, and Sir JOHN
PAKINGTOR had been formally installed in power in
the position of Colonial Secretary. Between the
cup and the lip the old slip came, as
usual. Mr. CHANDLER and his companion were
compelled by untoward circumstances to return
homewards with the chagrin of having encountered a
very annoying, and doubly so because wholly unex-
pected, disappointment. So ended the negotiations
between Great Britain and her North American Co-
lonies, upon the subject of the great trunk railway
proposed to be constructed across those invaluable,
but hitherto almost entirely neglected possessions.
Untoward as these events have proved—we cannot
induce ourselves to believe, even now, that the mis-
take that has been undoubtedly committed in the
matter by the existing Cabinet is altogether irrepar-
able. The DERBY Ministry have resolved to open up to
British enterprise the abundant produce of the South
American Continent. We must still hope, therefore, that
upon more deliberate reflection they will resolve to
accord similar advantages to the commerce of the
United Kingdom by unlocking the equally abundant
stores of the North American Continent—stores
doubly valuable because our own, and because by
thus going in quest of them we should become in the
end carriers of the merchandise flowing to and fro
between Asia and Europe, between Canton and Lon-
don, between England and Hindostan.
Allusion has here been made to the apparently
abandoned project of the British North-American
Railway, because we regard that project as again
forcibly thrust upon the national attention by the
exigency, already referred to, as more than
ever visible in the increased emigration to
the gold districts of Australia. Abundant
convict labour might at once be found in
the carrying out of the before-mentioned enterprise
—and one of our most interesting and valuable colo-
nial possessions would be at once relieved from the
curse of remaining a penal settlement, while in the
very act cf removing that curse another of our colo

nial possessions, scarcely less interesting and scarcely
less valuable, would be afforded the blessing of a
grand and systematic development. In the course of
an ingenious work showing the analogies subsisting
between Art and Faith, and the Harmony connecting
Science with Scripture,* Mr. GEORGE TROUP, the
author, refers to the very scheme here particularized
as one calculated in an eminent degree to prove
fraught with a very peculiar beneficence. " This
proposal," he avers almost with the solemnity
of prophecy, "will be accomplished," (ch. iv.,
p. 76). He proceeds—" The Halifax and Quebec line,
600 miles long, will be its first great stage ; the se-
cond will extend to Montreal; the third will reach to
Kingston ; the fourth will bring the traveller 'near
the copper regions of Lake Superior ; and then through
a country, reputed to be of easy access, although now
almost nameless, the course of the line will be directed

towards the Pacific coast, at a point opposite to Van-
couver's Island, the great coal depot of the west."
Further on he remarks—" This railway will form the
north-western passage, which we have paid dearly in
men and money to seek in a quarter where, if found,
it would be useless. Objections are taken to the out-
lay of money requisite for its completion. It would
not be more than the past expenditure on the efforts
to crush ships through ice by a route which no mer-

chant could ever use for transmitting goods."
Mr. Tuour considers the enterprise es certain

:0 prove in the end profitable in a twofold

capacity—extending the knowledge of Christianity
while diffusing the products of Civilization. For a

multiplicity of reasons, therefore, we are still san

guine that the British North American Railway may
be ultimately sanctioned and fostered by the DEBBY
Government. It should be remembered by that Go-
vernment that aided by this enterprise we might se-
cure an adequate field for convict labour, we might
relieve Australia from remaining a penal settlement,
we might connect together by indissoluble bonds of

union the at present scattered fabric of the British

empire, we might develope the uncultured fruitfu'

ness of vast tracks of country like the Hudson's Bay
territories, we might render those territories the scene

of the perpetual interchange of the commodities of
Europe and Asia, blending together the now separate

commerce of the Pacific and Atlantic—and while se

curing these and a multiplicity of other and scarcely
. . . .

less important advantages, we might in the most effec-
tual manner be aiding the development of civilization

and the propagation of the divine truths of Chris

isnity.

* A volume, almost in thoso very words, so entitled,
and recently published by James Blackwood, of Pater-
noster•row, pp. 408. London, 1852.

"It is important for the cause of good govern-
ment, and for the future welfare of England,
that there should be a People's party in Eng-
land."—So writes JOSEPH HUME, the veteran
Reformer and economist, in a letter to Mr. Cox,

LINE, editor of the Hull Advertiser, which has just
beet published. He adds, what we believe, " I have
been long anxious to see that party formed, and I
have, at the commencement of two new Parliaments,
attempted to form one; but you may as soon make a
rope out of the sand of the sea shore. There is no
common principle of adhesion among those who have
hitherto been denominated Liberals to join in the
efforts which I have made to form a phalanx that
would, early and late, and on all fit occasions, take
the popular course, and support measures having the
public welfare in view, and tending to increase the
power of the people in the House of Commons."
This, we fear, is only too true. There is a want of
union among the Liberals. There are materials for a
strong Liberal psrzy, bat there are no means of bind-
ino them together in anything like unity of action.
The Liberals, like the bundle of sticks in the old fable,
would be enormously strong, if they had this union•
Without it they are reeds. There are divisions and
subdivisions, jealousies, and ambitions, and so
their strength is gone, because their force
is scattered. There are the true, honest
Liberals, headed by Mr. How. There are the
" Manchester men," led by COBDEN and BRIGHT.
There are the Metropolitan Economists, headed
by DIJNCOMBE and WILLIAMS. There are the
c:rareh Reformers, with Sir BENJAMIN HALL at
their head. There are the Law Reformers without
any particular leader. There are the office•hunting
Liberals, of whom Lord Jour/ is the commander.
There are the Irish ultra-Liberals against all things
in general, and the Church and the landlords in par-
ticular. United, all these would make a strong party
—obrokendur, up
tihn,netosections, they can do next to nothing.
that a veteran Reformer, such as
jN
OSEPII Huatis, should bitterly complain, after his
forty years' trial, " You may as soon make a rope
out of the sand of the sea shore es bind ell these par-
ties into one." No common principle of union can
connect them—no one leader can command them.
They profess to have a common purpose, but
they certainly do tot combine to obtain it. Not
yet, even if they did unite, could they gain a ma-
jority in the House of Commons; but, such a party,
if compact, could control any Government, and pre-
vs•nt bad, if unable to carry good, measures. Wby,
then, do they not unite ?

Mr. Hums, who certainly ought to bs authority
upon every tunic minuted with the Liberal cause,
with which his whole Parliamentary life is identified,
does not hesitate to give his opinion very boldly and
openly. He says, "After repeated trials and after