The Sun.
London, England, 1863-09-11 00:00:00

sto_N. LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 11, 1863.

ables, books, Yankee notions. The voice was not sufficient
to solicit custom; the basket was thrust in your ribs for
your patronage. The hawkers of New York papers bawled
the titles of their ware in our ears till midnight. Presently
came the turn for the Philadelphia, then for the Baltimore
early press. The evening trash was followed by the morn-
ing rubbish, with first, second, and third editions, and the
" sensation" headings dinned at full length into
our ears.
Anon there was the sharp twanging voice of the Yankee
guard squllling for tickets. He came past like a turnkey
making the round of his gaol birds. He dug his sharp-
nailed thumb between the shoulders and chest of the unlucky
sleepers. He spoke to us, handled us as no London police-
man would deal with a thief. Eight or ten times at least in
the night was that odious call for tickets ren3wed. The ne-
ces,ities of the service may, for aught 1 know, render the
nuisance unavoidable; but nothing will convince me that
the surly official dog does not take a wanton pleasut e in ag-
gravating the hardness of his functions ; that he does not
wish to impress you with the fact that all men are equal
before him, and that till he sees your ticket ho has a right
to look upon you as a swindler, and has the right to treat
you as such both before and after seeing the ticket.
Mauled, pounded, and with all my poor blood boiling
with the sense of long-endured indignities, I at last reached
Washington, where, as a matter of course, I had to go
through the ordeal of porters, carmen, and hackney coach-
men, and to bear the vacant, insolent stare of the office-
keeper, and the laziness and untidiness of the waiters at the
hotel. I have since been moving about, without ceasing,
by day no less than by night, by steamboats no less than on
railways. I found nowhere a change for the better. Every-
where the same crowds and mobs, the same filth, the same
utter disregard for other people's comfort, the same reek-
less irresponsible extortion, the same cool quiet insolence,
the same want of all order, punctuality, civility. I spoke to
well. to .do Americans, who agreed with me that travelling
in their country exposes them to all the harsh unmannerly
treatment I complained of, who confirmed my opinion that
matters on that score have become infinitely worse than
they used to be in my old experience of Yankeeland a quar-
ter of a century since, when they were in all conscience
already as bad as they ought to be. My friends shrug their
shoulders, and think the evil admits of no cure. Secession
you may have in America, and martial law, and the sus-
pension of the habeas corpus; but democracy must needs
hold its tyrannical sway on the high road ; and a division
of railway carriages into classes, a separation of first and
of
ao f t than second cabin passengers in steamboats, are no more to be
pri-
vilege jaw s thought
nn th
independent
.
vilege every man has of turning the carpet even of a lady,. s
drawing-room into a pig-sty. How should, then, a poor
wight travel in this country P The answer of my estimable
er eniciotviz ael n, of
or the
the na"btoylitionid of fi the
friends is simply "don't," and they illustrate precept by
practice by limiting their excursions in the States to jour-
neys of dire necessity, and hastening to Europe whenever
they can afford leisure and money for genial locomotion.
Travelling in America is like politics—a dirty work, from
which clean-minded men shrink, leaving it to those who
have no better way to get on in the world, and who know
how to turn it to the best account.

r leave much mark in the great national account.
chat account goes on with the steadiness and uni-
formity of mechanism, and happy it is for us that
its purport is prosperity. On :Another point, too,
connected with this subject the same conditions of
the question may he remarked. It has been asserted
that among the middle class of the population, or at
any rate among a particular section of that class,
marriages have become of late less frequent than
they were and than they ought to be. But this de-
cline, if it has anywhere occurred, is lost in the
gross totals of the reckoning. -Whatever may be
clone by war or famine, we may be pretty certain
that a mere predilection for bachelorship has never
yet affected the marriage rate struck by the Regis-
trar-General. We sincerely trust it never may
do so, for the symptom would be a bad one for the
country, but at present the whole assertion must
remai❑ without proof. We cannot test it. We can
only say that if it is founded on fact the result
is inappreciable in the statistics of the population,
and that it requires causes far more powerful than
social selfishness to influence the marriage rate of a
great nation.

DAILY NEWU.—The establishment of People's
Parks in our large manufacturing and commercial
towns is a felicity quite peculiar to our own day, a
striotly modern fact, and it is at the same time one
of the most gratifying signs of our social and poli-
tical progress as a nation. Until quit() a recent
period, excepting in the single instance of the Me-
tropolis, Parks belonged only to the privileged
classes, being wholly identified with the royal or
noble owners for whose use and pleasure they were
in the main sacredly reserved. Close to many of
the large towns were magnificent parks and plea-
sure grounds, within whose dividing pale, from
year's end to year's end, only a single household or
a select circle ever entered, while the pent-up dwel-
lers in those towns had no means whatever of open-
air recreation except at too great a distance for any
but vagabonds habitually to enjoy. The rapid de-
velopment of our manufacturing, mining, and com-
mercial industry has no doubt tended, as Lord Rus-
sell points out, to increase these evils. The rapid
multiplication of mills and workshops will soon,
even in the most rural districts, absorb the village
green, turn the way-side stream into inky slush,
and cover the adjacent fields with a mass of densely-
populated, squalid tenements. In a few years al-
most the only available recreation for a working
man in such a district after his day's toil is a pipe
on the door-step, a wrangle with his wife, or a pot
with his companions at the beershop at the corner.
But this serious incidental evil of our prosperous
industry is being rapidly corrected. In our day the
vanished village green is restored on a scale answer-
ing to the enlarged requirements of a manufacturing
town over those of a country town or a rural ham-
let, Within the last few years many of our large
towns, such as Salford and Halifax, have been sup-
plied with magnificent People's Parks, and the
boon has in most cases been the result of local muni-
ficence, the parks having been given in whole or
part by merchants and manufacturers. Those whose
capital has most largely profited by the modern
concentration of labour have thus been amongst the
first to recognise the claims of the industrial classes,
by making permanent provision on a general scale
for their comfort and recreations and enjoyment.
Through the munificence of Sir D. Baxter, Dundee
is now added to the number of towns thus favoured.
The beautiful park which this public-spirited mer-
chant has presented to his fellow-townsmen was
opened on Tuesday,Lord Russell gracing the occasion
with his presence, and appropriately summing up the
feeling which such an act naturally inspires :
"Happy is he who can give to those ' in populous
city pent' a rest from exhausting toil amid scenes
which invigorate the body, and turn the mind to
the contemplation of the wonderful works of God."
he political allusions of Lord Russell's address, if
deficient in the charm of novelty, were nevertheless
peculiarly fitted to such an occasion. We have no
doubt heard before of the noble lord's share in the
repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts, as well as
in the great Municipal and Parliamentary Reform.
But for this very reason, because a reference to
these measures is so familiar and commonplace, we
are too much disposed to overlook the great social
and political revolution they represent, and while
enjoying the beneficent results of this revolution it
is well that we should be reminded now and then
of the struggles through which it was achieved,
and learn to connect our superior advantages with
.their true cause. There is a far closer connec-
tion between the Parliamentary Reform of thirty
years Isince and the People's Parks of to-day than
careless observers might be disposed perhaps to
imagine. It was substantially the battle of popular
rights and political justice against the combined
forces of class, privilege, and accumulated wrongs ;
andits success gained for the people the position
out of which People's Parks, popular education, and
numberless other schemes of industrial elevation and
social reform arose. That great instalment ©f public
justice, with the measures in favour of political and
religious liberty it produced, did much to remove
the bitter alienation that had grown up between
the governing classes and the people, established
an understanding between them, and lain for the
first time a solid basis of future action for the com-
mon good. It is enough to glance at the history of
this country during the years which preceded the
passing of the Reform Bill to be convinced of this.
We can hardly now even conceive of the terribie
social and political condition of England during the
fifteen years that intervened between the peace and
the era of successful reform. The Government of
the day was not only destitute of popular sympathy
and support, but waged an active and determined
warfare against the people. It was the era of the
Hampden Clubs, the march of the Blanketeers. the
so-called Derby insurrection, and the political trials
for alleged blasphemy and sedition. At the ti▪
me
when Lord Russell first entered public life the govern-
ment of the day demanded and obtained from a
subservient Parliament a suspension of the Habeas
Corpus Act, on the plea that the existence of clubs
and societies in favour of Parliamentary Reform
was a public danger, demanding this extreme mea-
sure, Then, as now, Lord Russell was the cham-
pion of public justice and popular rights, agai▪
nst
the encroachment of arbitrary power and the selfish
violence of a privileged class. One of his first
speeches, it will be remembered, was against this
unconstitutional measure, and referring to the
much more serious dangers of the country when the
Act was passed, he said, "We talk much—l think
a great deal too much—of the wisdom of our .
an-
cestors. I wish we would imitate the courage of
our ancestors. They were not ready to lay down
their liberties at the foot of the Crown upon every
e
vain or imaginary alarm." In the speechsame
earnestly warned the House against losing the re-
spect of the people by refusing to listen
to their
grievances. " Let not the Reformers say—When
we ask for redress you refuse all innovation ; when
the Crown asks for protection you sanction a new
code. For us you are not willing to go an inch--

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

among its
T
lins.—Marriage is an important as well as a
dete-
rioration, holy thing. Nothing can be sounder than the doc •
trine that a nation is in a bad way when the mar-
riagesfact is proof • either of public distress or social dete-
population decline in number. The
Still, there must be fluctuations in such
statistics, but it is very desirable that their real
meaning should not be mistaken. Just now, the
returns on this head are rather remarkable, but we
doubt whether we have been correctly apprehended.
It is beyond question that the marriages in the
whole kingdom were below the average for the whole
year 1861—the
last annual reckoning published by
the Registrar-General. It is also certain that the
o Famine in the matter has not
decline was distinctly marked in the manufacturing
districts, but we are by no means sure that the in-
fluence of the Cotton been materially overrated. When we read in the
report that. in a certain q
as compared with those of
quarter of the year 1861 the
marriages in Manchester,
a similar period in the year preceding, declined from
1,285 to 1,150; in Ashton, from 342 to 271 ; in
Blackburn, from
412 to 288; in Preston, from 355
to 254 ; and in Stockport, from 332 to 218, it is
impossible to deny that the incipient paralysis of
the cotton industry might really have been then
affecting the returns of the year. Yet this influence
could riot have been so powerful as was supposed.
The Quarter which we have quoted was the fourth
Quarter, and,
indeed we could hardly have looked
for much effect of the blockade before that time.
But the report shows that the whole year was more
or less unfavourable to marriages,,
and especially
the first quarter of it, when the cotton supply had
experienced no interruption, and the Civil War in
America had not broken out. In point of fact, it
was the weather which at this period was the ob-
structive agent. Most readers will retain a lively
recollection of the Christmas of 1860, its intense
frosts and its snow. The extreme severity of the
season and the dearness of provisions rendered the
period " eminently unpropitious," anti contributed
much to that decline which is visible upon the whole
year. The second and third quarters, again, succes-
sively failed to bring the marriage rate up to the
average, but still the prospective cotton famine could
in fault, for the same phe-
nomenon been
wbeaesnoebsspe
ervciaaybllle in the majority af the great
divisions of the kingdom. It is evident, in short,
upon an attentive inspection of these statistics, that
the decline in the number of marriages which distin-
guishes the year 1861 was due to the operation of
general and ordinary causes rather than to the in-
fluence of any one extraordinary agency. We can
also go one step further. We can show that this
decline, such as it then was, exhibited no alarming
or uncommon proportions. Nobody examining the
tables of these statistics for the last 20 years would
be induced by the figures for 1831 to suspect that
any unprecedented misfortune had befallen the
country in that year. There is a very distinct fall-
marriages, no doubt, since the total
dropped from 170,156 to 163,706 for all
Wales together, whereas, according
andshould have risen a little as the popu-
ingoif
numbers i nd
rtohpeP
to England
rule, t b
e I,
lation increased. But such fluctuations are not
unusual. Ten years ago, for instance,—that is to
say,in B5B the figure
say, in the year 1853,—the marriages, though
among. a smaller population, amounted to 164,520,
being actually in excess of the returns for 1861.
in 1855—they
t h atis t
Again,o
dropped from 159,027, the number for 1857, to
Bhaudt
ftawlioenyetaorslsl2a:ll3.
156,070. The years 1840 and 1842 also fell off
from the returns of their predecessors, though not
materially ; but in 1847 the marriages, which had
been upwards of 145,000 in 1846, declined at a
sweet, to 135,845. There is nothing, therefore, in
the figures now before us to create any astonish-
ment. No doubt, 1861 wad rather a bad year for
marriages, but the falling off in the numbers was
not so large as we have seen on former occasions,
and it was not due in any great degree to the Cot-
ton Famine. But the last quarterly return of the
Registrar-General, just issued, announces an unex-
pected revival. The reader is probably aware that
in these Reports the marriage retut n is always three
months in arrear of the others, so that, whereas we
get the births and deaths up to June 30, we get the
marriages only up to March 31. Yet in that quar-
ter—the first of the current year---they were de-
cidedly increasing in some of the chief districts
affseted by the Cotton Famine. In Manchester the
figures rose from 951 in 1861, and 830 in 1862, to
1,006 last spring. In Chortton, also, there was a
considerable increase, and in Salford too. In other
districts the tide was still setting the other way, and
possibly, as the Registrar-General observes, there
have been movements of population affecting these
results. Nevertheless, in spite of the destruction of
our greatest industry and the impoverishment of
our richest communities, the national marriage
rate for the first quarter of the present year is re-
ported above the average. So broad, in fact, is the
area of these surveys, and so numerous are the ele-
ments at work upon the results, that we may per-
haps find lighter traces of the Cotton Famine than
we expect even in the complete reports of 1862 and
1863. The cotton districts, after all, are but a trac-
tion of England, and if any causes should combine
to stimulate trade and encourage industry in other
great centres of population as they seem to have
done in the metropolis, the decline to be anticipated
in the marriages of Lancashire may be compensated
by increase elsewhere. 'We have already learnt that
cotton is not such a King as was supposed, and that
the destinies of England are not under his rule.
The cotton trade has been struck out from the in-
dustries of the country for a whole year with less
effect upon the business of the nation than anybody
could have imagined. Some analogous result we
may possibly discover in the Registrar-General's
future returns. We see, in fact, in the tables now
before us that the progress of the nation is but im-
perceptibly affected by any of the vicissitudes which
are successively chronicled. The great body moves
cADVERTISE,
on like one of those migratory glaciers described liver, and stomach.]—Claonts, in mption
every
ag-
by geologists, with a slow but irresistible course, gravated and acceleratedemel byi complaints,
, all nervous, bilious
drugsofstage, are only
every
grinding out for itself an onward passage through perfectly curable by Du Barry'shealth restoring description, but
every obstacle in its way. The Registrar-General Arabica Food, as proved by thousands of
eae Revalenta
tells us that we may take the last quarter of a cen- been considered hopeless. We quote a few.— csursewNe. hic6h, had
tury, and consider that the growth of our population Miss Lange, 18 years of age, cured after the medical men had
throughout the whole period proceeded as uninter- abandoned all hopes of her recovery from the last stage of
ruptedly and as uniformly as the growth of a Pulmonary consumption, with fearful cough, expectoration,
"Each quinquennial period added exhaustion, spitting of blood, perspirations, hollow cheeks,
gigantic pine.
a million or a little more to the account. In 1836-40 emaciated
healthy,
a skeleton. Sine is now, thank God, a perfectly
the population was rising through its sixteenth Police y, to
ro
eomNillog,46oe2a7hoy g311r11,—..
eLslfet Commissaire de
million; in 1841-45 through its seventeenth; in Surrey, of thirty years' diseased.l.N lungs, spittintfobf l'lood' • leYVer
1846-50 through its eighteenth; in 1851-55 through derangement, and partial deafness.—Cure, No. 4;421 ~
Miss
1i
itflnineteenth ; and ih 180-00 through its twentieth Elizabeth Jacobs, of extreme nervousness, indigesti
..illion." In the middle of 1861 our numbers are gatherings, low spirits, and nervous fancies.—Cure' /(s;
-.-- have been 20,119,496 for England and 64,816. Ihe Rev. games 'l'. Campbell, Fakenharn, Norfolk,
computed 1,. .._ • -!-- cnite of Was mutinies, f
„, of indigestion and torpidity of the liver, which had resisted
Wales only, and this la a,all medical treatment. In tins, lib, 2s 9d; 21b. 45 6d
,sib,
commercial panics, deficient harvests, and 'nommen, 1 .„1,,";" nu); 225; 211 b, 40s. Barry du Barry and Co., No. 77,
seasons. Calamities which startle us at the moment, Regent-street, London ; also Fortnum and Mason; and an
and which may produce deep local distress? fail to Mars and chemists in every town of the Malted Kingdom.

for Miniater;lyOug;a-Mile. When we ask for our
rights, you ought not to touch the little finger of
the Constitution—but when those in authority de•
mind more power, you plunge your knife into its
heart." When Lord Russell used this bold and
patriotic language, all the world of fashion, in-
fluence, and power were against him, but he steadily
fought the battle of popular rights, giving the best
years of his life to the snuggle, and eventually he
triumphed. And amidst such welcome and striking
illustrations of the beneficent effects of the victory,
a reference to the cause is not only pardonable, but
in a high degree encouraging and instructive.

Another political murder has just been committed
at Warsaw on a man named Richter, the head of the pass-
port-office, who had recently been engaged in organizing a
now police. He was stabbed to the heart in the street close
to his own door.

SHOCKING GIIN ACCIDENT AT WARRINGTON.—
Au accident, attended with fatal consequences, oc-
curred on Monday. Two young men, named Peter Ken-
wright and Wm. Durkin, went to the house of John Mee,
in Ilaydock-street, and borrowed a gun. Mee was not at
home, but his wife, on being asked by Kenwright if the
gun was loaded, said she did not know. The young men
then went together to the shop of Thomas Lowe, butcher,
Winwick-street. Kenwright went into Lowe's house for
the purpose of procuring a powder flask and shot bag, leav-
ing Durkin. who held the gun, at the shop door. Durkin
stood with the gun resting on his foot, but, by some means,
ho let it fall, and, the hammer coming in contact with the
ground, an explosion was the result. The greater part of
the contents were lodged in the head of a boy of Lowe's,
four years of age, who was playing about in the shop.
The boy was killed instantly. Durkin, in a state of great
alarm, went to the police and gave himself into custody.
The chief constable, however, finding there was no blame
attached to him, did not detain him.