The Sun.
London, England, 1864-02-01 00:00:00

to

•-7/ a 74.1

~izn.

LONDON, MONDAY, FEB. 1, 1864.

The English Parliament has scarcely once, within
the experience of this present generation, met under
circumstances more imminently momentous than
those now ushering in the session which is about to
commence on Thursday afternoon. What, in point
of fact, are those circumstances ? They are momen-
tous to the very last degree, both internally and
externally—both in regard to the manner in which
they affect our foreign relations and in respect to
the way in which they must inevitably affect the
policy of our home Government. The Parliament
itself is five years old, and therefore, as parliaments
have gone since the inauguration of the septennial
system, it may be regarded as already liable,
at any sudden turn of the wheel in counting
out the lists upon a partydivision, it may be regarded
as already liable at such a moment as that, at such
a political casualty, to prove to be what is called in
House of Commons' slang, at such times, Moribund
—in other words just nezt to death's door. Besides
a
this, with—again, we say, as (nominally) septennial
Parliaments have gone upon the average within the
national recollection—with a Parliament of full age,
ve have what is naturally by no means a numeri-
cally strong Government, conspicuously weakened
during the last yelr or two of its :existence I Me
have an Opposition stronger both in point of num-
bers and in point of discipline, than any Opposition,
-Whim or Tory, has been for a very considerable in-
terval ! An Opposition that has earned an immunity
from the customary charge directed against Opp°.
gone of being systematically or even momentarily
firctious ! While such is the rulative• position in
which,the Government end the Opposition stand

in regard to each other, the leader of the former—
the Prime Minister of England—is a man who is
all but an octogenarian. The most popular states-
man in England, this aged party-leader still ie,
as he has been, in point of fact, for several years
past. But—there cannot be one instant's doubt
about it, that, by the actual doings of his Govern-
ment, whether at home in the matter of Reform,
or abroad in the matter of Diplomacy, he has done
just next to nothing, or rather it should ever be
said he has done just worse than nothing by way
of justifying his great popularity. In addition to
which facts as we have just mentioned them
as being—there is a good deal of significance, we
take it, in that old Greek incident about the
Athenian mob getting sick to death at last of per-
petually hearing ARISTIDES called" The Just." At
such a juncture as this, with the Huse of Commons
five years old, and a Premier just upon eighty, and
a weakened Government, and a strengthened Opposi-
tion—the Parliament of England is about to meet for
the Session of 1864 ou Thursday next, the 4th of
February, with a Grand Party Struggle for Place and
Power distinctly upon the cards, and with a great
European War actually already commenced. Never
has a Cabinet laid itself more glaringly open to
attack than Lord PALMERSTObI'S Government has
done during the last few months; and this not less by
its sins of commission than by its long since noto-
rious sins of omission-. The motto inscribed upon
the banners of the Opposition, we may premise,
those who run almost may read very readily—it be-
ing virtually no other than "Miching Malecho ; or,
It Means Mischief !" A struggle for Power between
the two great rival parties being imminent thus at
home, down in that immemorial arena for
the great political gladiators, the palace of
the Imperial Legislature at Westminster—what
we have before us upon the European Continent
the telegrams are now telling us from
hour to hour as by so many lightning
flashes. War—not the mere threatenings of—
but war, actual war, even now begun. A war to
the passionate participation in which we have
already been committed. It is, in fact, to the first
fierce winding of the war trumpet upon the frontiers
of Schleswig, it is to the sound of the German and
the Danish drums beating the pas de charge that
the curtain is now preparing to rise upon the
great annual Parliamentary Spectacle down at
Westminster.

The events of late years have turned the atten-
tion of this country repeatedly towards China, and
have rendered that singular and exclusive nation
an object of interest. There are many qualities
possessed by the Chinese which are remarkable in
a nation which has had little or no intercourse with
the Western World; their civilisation had two cen-
turies ago reached a height which astonished a tra-
veller from Europe, while the ingenuity and patience
of the people enables them to excel in many works
of skill, Their system of Government, although
peculiar in some ways, has nevertheless many ex-
cellencies, and the great body of the people are, on
the whole, contented with their laws and their in-
stitutions. Their reluctance to admit foreigners
arises rather from their self-satisfaction and unwil-
lingness to change the old methods, which have
hitherto sufficed to maintain them, than from the
fear and dislike with which the Japanese regard
any Western faces. Some very interesting parti-
culars of the trade and commerce of China are given
in an article in the current number of the Quarterly,
chiefly with regard to that central portion of the
Empire with which our commercial relations are
principally concerned. The principal productions of
China are tea, cotton, rice, and silk, the western pro-
vinces being also rich in minerals. Coal is obtained,
but not in any large quantities, seeing that little
demand is made for it. It has been estimated that
the consumption does not exceed the annual amount
of 900,000 tons, including what is used in factories
and distilleries. Great Britain, with less than one-
twelfth of the population of China, consumes coal
in the proportion of 75 to 1, and this is not owing to
difference of climate, since the Chinese are subject
to violent changes of temperature, and build without
chimneys or fireplaces alike in north and south.
They rarely use fire, save for cooking purposes, and
generally burn charcoal,contenting themselves with
wearing. thick clothes in winter, and trying to keep
out the fresh air. This want of invention is some-
what surprising in so ingenious a people, and the
natural result is that their coal mines have not
been very extensively worked, although a great
increase in the demand may be expected from the
traffic of foreign steam vessels upon their great
rivers. The silk trade is an important part of
Chinese commerce, owing to the abundance of
the native production, although its quality is
greatly inferior to French and Italian silk,
and consequently is not likely, at all events under
native management, to compete dangerously with
its European rivals. Still the quantities produced
at a rapid rate give China a prominent position in
respect to the silk trade, and it is satisfactory to
find that by far the greater portion of the export
to Europe passes into English hands, lo be, in most
instances, re-exported to the continent. The cotton
trade has proved less satisfactory to our merchants
and manufacturers. Cotton is grown in all the
central province 3, more especially in Che-Kiang
and Kiang-su. It is of two kinds—the white and
the yellow—the latter being well-known to English
housewives as an extremely strong and tough
material under the name of Nankin. This, dyed
blue, is the ordinary dress of the Chinese working
classes. :Each farmer grows his own cotton, which
is gathered in by his family and household, carded,
spun, and wove in his own homestead, and made
into garments so strong, cheap, and durable, as to
disincline the natives for the purchase of foreign
cloth. The Chinese are a cotton consuming people,
the majority of them being exclusively clothed with
that material, and the cotton cloth expended
in making this clothing is estimated at no less a
value than £175,000,000 per annum. It is not sur-
prising that our merchants, knowing the demand
for cotton, should have looked forward to finding
in the newly-opened ports a profitable market, and
should immediately on the conclusion of the treaty
have despatched ample cargoes to China. But
although for a year or two curiosity encouraged
the purchase of the strange commodities, the de-
mand soon fell off, and in 1852, when commerce
was everywhere in a flourishing condition, our ex-
ports to China were only valued at £1,918,244,
while those to India amounted to nearly £8,000,000 !
The explanation to this contrast is found in the
fact that the Chinese are a laborious and self-reliant
people, entirely different from the indolent and
thriftless Hindoos, and bad besides been in the
habit for many centuries of depending on their own
manufactures for their national clothing, which
they have succeeded in rendering suitable to their
wants and wishes. Consequently our exporters
were competing with a nation of cotton growers,
who from the cheapness of labour and the domestic
system of manufacture were able to rival the foreign
wares in the cheapness and durability of their goods. ,
It is therefore suggested that our manufacturers must
offer to the Chinese a cloth as durable as their own,
at a lower rate, if they hope for a profitable sale.
Cotton was not cultivated in China until the 13th
century, but tea, a more important feature in their
trade, was known about the fourth and introduced

into general use about the ninth, and from that
time it has been the universal beverage, so that a
Chinaman of tolerable position shrinks from un-
mixed water with horror. Tea is cultivated more
or less throughout China Proper, but its chief
districts are in the maritime provinces and on the
western hills. The most necessary qualifications
for its culture are good drainage, moderate moisture,
and rich sandy earth, with fair proportion of
vegetable mould. These requisites are best obtained
on the slopes of hills—a statement which makes us
more readily appreciate the advantages offered by
our Himalaya elopes for this cultivation. The tea
plants produce leaves when two or three years old,
and last with care some 10 or 15 years. No less
than four crops can be obtained from them. Tne
first and best is in April when the leaves are
young; the second, and most plentiful, in May;
the third, a smaller crop, is picked in July ; and the
fourth, whose larger and coarser leaves are destined
to supply the wants of the poor, is gathered in
August. The native prices are somewhat tantalising
to English purchasers. Thanks to the charges be-
fore it reaches the vessel, the freight charge to Eng-
land, the wharfage expenses, the duty, and the profit
of the dealers, the English village grocer supplies
his customers with a fair congou tea for three shil-
lings, which the Chinese dealer under similar cir-
cumstances is selling for three pence ! The export
of tea from China to Great Britain is, as might be
expected, very large. During the year 1862 it was
108,523,0001b5., 81,000,0001b5. of which were re-
tained for home use, and the rest re-exported to
the Continent, to which the direct supply is very
small, not exceeding £1,000,000 annually. Yet this
large export is reckoned as but a fractional part of
the Chinese consumption. It is drunk at all meals
and in all places, by every rank and class, and to
ensure freshness and quality is taken in small
quantities, very weak, and without milk or sugar.
This description does not seem very attractive to an
English tea drinker; but tastes may differ in dif-
ferent quarters of the globe. It would certainly
appear so, since the stalks and refuse are com-
pounded into small square cakes and despatched
into Mongolia for the benefit of the wandering
Tartars. It is conjectured that the amount of tea
consumed in the Chinese Empire is somewhere about
1,000,000,0001b5. It holds in fact a position in
China corresponding to that of rice, though the
latter is the more vitally important, since the very
existence of the population depends in a great mea-
sure upon it. The chief rice producing districts lie
in the south eastern provinces, where it is not un-
usual for the fields adjacent to the rivers to yield
five crops in two years—two good crops a year
being the regular supply. To the north of the
Yang-tse-kiang only one crop is obtainable, and in
the mountainous countries, where the inhabitants
depend on the import of rice from the south, great
privations are common. It is therefore a matter of
vast importance that the supply of rice should be
good, liberal, and all details connected with it re-
ceive the most careful attention from the Govern-
ment. The rice harvest is, it has been said, the most
momentous question with which the Emperor and
his advisers have to deal. The writer of the able
article we have referred to remarks that it is a great
mistake to look upon China only as a country that
exports tea and imports opium. Such exports and
imports are comparatively unimportant. The greater
part of the cultivated land is employed in the pro-
duction of the food necessary to supply the wants of
an excessive population. Such considerations may
suggest hints of profitable and useful trade to our
Indian merchants, who, could they turn the vast
resources of India to full account, might supply the
wants of China. In examining the laws relating
to the possession of the land in China it
is impossible to avoid reflecting how much
our Indian Empire would have gained by
some such la xs—how greatly Chinese industry
would have been impeded had " waste lands" spread
their desolate extent over fair and fertile hillside
and plain. The Chinese people are unanimously
represented by those who know them best as cheer-
ful, thrifty, and ingenious, but selfish and material-
istic to a degree. They are jealous of foreigners,
though kind and hospitable, and deceitful in common
with all other Eastern nations. They are prudent and
quick-sighted as to their own interests, and shrink
from a military life as unprofitable. If we can suc-
ceed in proving to them that it will be to their
advantage to trade with us, if we can manage to
supply them with the right goods at a sufficiently
low price, they will no doubt be excellent customers,
and in their commercial instincts we shall find the
best security against outbreak or disaster. lire
must, however, proceed cautiously, first studying
our way, and trying to ascertain something of the
character and requirements of the people with
whom we have to deal, for want of that knowledge
has too often made us miss the right road, and has
produced much bloodshed, misery, and expenditure,
that might by the exercise of a little caution Lave
been entirely avoided.

Last week the adjourned inquest upon the body
of MARY CAVE, aged 62 years, held at White-
chapel, before Mr, WALTREW, was concluded.
The unfortunate woman some three weeks ago
was proceeding along Gun-street, Whiteehapel,
when she slipped upon a slide which some boys
had made in the road, and fell heavily to the
ground, receiving severe injuries, from the effects
of which she expired shortly afterwards. The
jury returned a verdict that the deceased died
from a fall, but how the said fall was caused
there was not evidence to show. This may be
legally a correct verdict, and in conformity with
the evidence adduced before them, but no reason-
able doubt seems to exist of the cause of the acci-
dent. The police have power to prevent persons
from making slides in the streets, and from other-
wise obstructing and endangering the safety of the
public. They are particularly active in the case of
hawkers and eostermongers, but in frosty weather
they have no authority over a slide; once made,
they cannot compel it to " move on," like an
orange woman, nor can they take it into custody
for its obduracy, and they are not provided with
the necessary implements to destroy it. That
office should devolve upon the pariah authorities,
who, at but a trifling expense, might render much
public service by employing workmen to do so.
Yet while we complain of the inconvenience and
danger occasioned by slides, the season is short, and,
as Christmas comes but once a year, it soon passes
away, and so do its accompanying dangers. But
we have an enemy as terrible ever with us, which
we suppose from habit we seem to have become
reconciled to. If an accurate list of the casualties
occasioned by the reckless destribution of orange
peel over the metropolitan pavements could be ob-
tamed, the public would be astonished at their
number and severity. Many still entertain a lively
recollection of the unpleasant sensation caused by
an involuntary contact with the ice a few weeks
ago, but then the danger was courted, as it were,
and the result not to be wondered at; but a man
does not calculate while walking along one of our
public thoroughfares to be precipitated either into
the kennel or a neighbouring shop window, from
having trod upon a piece of orange peel thrown
down by some indifferent apprentice or shopman,
taking a slight lunch while on an errand-.
Many Sensible individuals take pains to

remove these miniature torpedoes from the
footway, but the multitude at large pass them heed-
lessly by, as in general do the official guardians of
our safety. Many petty annoyances are to be met
with in every street in London, to wit, small
urchins, hoops, which have an ungovernable pro-
pensity to run between the legs of passers by, and
children's peramubulators. Although these occa-
sion a certain amount of inconvenience, but little
danger results from them. In the case of orange
peel, or slides, however, it is too often very diffe-
rent. It is difficult, we admit, to determine the
proper remedy for this grievance; yet something,
surely, ought to be done. The arm of the law is
all-powerful in some respects, but it does not
seem able to grapple with orange peel distributors.
A constable has the power to arrest any person or
persons letting off fireworks in the streets ; people
are not permitted to place obstructions or offen-
sive substances in the thoroughfares, beggars
are liable to imprisonment, and a constable
has authority to convey a horse to that
lucus a non lucendi, the greenyard, if it be left un-
attended in a crowded street. It was only the other
day that a young man was fined by a police magis-
trate for discharging a catapult, or popgun, in the
the neighbourhood of Kensington. Now, when so
much care is taken to avert these dangers or,
more properly, nuisances, surely something might
be done to mitigate, if it be impossible to remove
altogether, the danger of coming to the ground at
any moment by not perceiving the trap before your
feet. It would no doubt be going too far to autho-
rise the police to apprehend anyone dropping a
piece of peel on the pavement ; and as we do not
live under the rule of the celebrated HAROUN-AL-
RASCHID, Englishmen might very possibly object
to obey an order to eat the offending pigment as
being unconstitutional. But there could be no
harm done if Sir RICHARD MAYNE were to issue
an order to his myrmidons to remove any pieces
they might happen to meet with on their respective
beats, and likewise to caution any persons they
might detect in the thoughtless practice of dropping
the peel of their oranges at their feet rather than
throwing it into the roadway. If this or some
similar remedy were adopted, we have little doubt
that many serious accidents would be prevented.