The Sun.
London, England, 1864-08-17 00:00:00

SPIRIT OP
,THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

Temns.—Har Britannic Majesty cannot help
having a birthday. We can none of us help it,
though many of us regard the anniversary with
very different feelings from those it suggested
thirty, or forty, or fifty years ago. But every 24th
of May Queen Victoria is inevitably a year older,
upon which occasion guns are fired and there are
ihuminations always very like those of last year.
Fortunately there is a succession of new and de-
lighted spectators, who return home after midnight
to tell their adventures. The State celebration of
the day is not always on the day ; indeed the day
itself seldom fits the public arrangements. But the
anniversary is not a public holyday or festivity.
The mass of the people know nothing about it. The
larger half of London east of St. Paul's need not
know anything about it. The State dues not go to
the expense of a flagstaff, a festoon in calico or in
green leaves, or a sky rocket, or a procession.
There used, indeed, to be a procession of mail
coaches, with the guards in new coats ; there is
now a parade behind the Horse Guards, a flag is
raised on the tower of St. Martin's Church, and,
as we have said, some small noisy ordnance are
carted into St. James's Park, and there discharged
with stunning effect. Such is the birthday of the
most powerful, most secure, and most beloved
Sovereign that ever sat on this throne.
Strange to say, by the side of this cele-
bration runs another, also a royal birth day.
The 4th of June survives in memory and at
Eton. We have heard it observed that the
4th of June always will be the Royal birthday, and
that Queen Victoria's will never be like it. We hope
and trust it never will. This seemingly disloyal
utterance will be understood by those who remember
when every 4th of June the Militia met, fired several
rounds in our market-places, and got gloriously
drunk in the afternoon ; who remember the speeches
of the True Blue Clubs on that day ; who remember
that the excesses of the French Revolutionists and
the ambition of Napoleon were then considered to
justify every social iniquity, every,legal tyranny,
and every official corruption. In fact, the 4th of
June was a political, not a royal anniversary. It
was the commemoration of a King just in that
capacity which time has condemned. But our
neighbours have an Imperial anniversary, and they
celebrate it. They have selected a good day for it.
The 15th of August, besides its other associations in
Roman Catholic countries, is the Fete-day of the
present Emperor and of his uncle. The choice of
the day, therefore, for this purpose amounts to a
compromise or new concordat between the Empire
and the Church. It is a day of peace, and without
the taint of civil feud. Louis Philippe was obliged
to accept the " Three Glorious Days" but allowed
them gradually to lose their attractions. The Em-
peror had his choice ; indeed, he found a new
anniversary in full force—the 24th of February.
He took, however, neither this nor any other that
might have been associated with the foundation of
the Second Empire. He has availed himself of an
assistance which few Frenchmen can venture to
despise, and establish a partnership which the
strongest Legitimist must respect. We, in this
country, have nothing to do but to look on, and we
are always glad to find our neighbours at once
happy, united, and religious. But such is the
Fete of the Empire ; and it is celebrated with so
much splendour and gaiety that, if a Londoner can
afford it, he ought once in his life to take a return
ticket and see Paris in its best attire and on its best
behaviour. The French understand decoration, holi-
day sights and holiday sounds—every man, woman,
and child contributes to the festive whole with a
unanimity we never see here. To be sure, it is the
time when the colleges and gymnasia are breaking
up, when pretty children are going about crowned
with chaplets and bearing prizes, escorted by
happy parents and congratulated by kind com-
rades. Paris itself is laid out and planned for
spectacles. The gay troupes there have only to rush
in from the side scenes, and you have the real opera
before you. Can we stop to criticise what is cer-
tainly so charming, and what our own want may
tempt us to covet ? If we do criticise, it is because
we are not ourselves so carried away by the scene
as to forget some historical incidents and eras of
vicissitudes, and some inevitable processes of the
human mind. We have seen half-a-dozen different
fetes in our time at Paris, all national, but doomed
to a very brief run, and, what is worse, outliving
even their popularity. The anniversary of an Em-
pire must of course be political. It must undergo
a constant comparison with Republican and Royal
anniversaries. It must recall generations and even
centuries from their grave. It must compel a con.
tinual reckoning of gains and losses, promises and
performances, the substitute and the thing laid
aside. In private life we most of us come in time
to dread the anniversary of happy nativities, joyous
weddings, and such white or golden days. There
are families that, confident in their deserts or trust-
ing to their fortune, assemble once a year round the
family tree, and count kith in kin. But year by
year they will care less for the small accessions
which are but buds and germs of something yet to
be, and will feel more and more their substantial
and irreparable losses—the very giants of the grove
fallen for ever. There may be no precise parallel
to this in the annual review and stock-taking of an
Empire, but if an anniversary is to be anything,
and to answer any purpose, it must readily present
to the memory as great a stock of benefits received
or expected as the last or any former anniver-
sary. As soon as the Frenchman begins to feel
himself a worse man for the new regime, or to
fancy that France itself does not come up to the
entire outline or the full brilliancy of any former
epoch in comparison, he will feel his loyalty flag-
ging, and be once more set adrift on that sea of
enterprise ever so dangerous to the Gallic tempera-
ment. In England such a process is impossible,
and out of the order of our very nature; but is far
otherwise across that narrow channel. How stands
the case there? "This is France," says the
French citizen—" the France that we have made,
the empire we have founded, the Emperor we have
elected, and the dynasty in which we still hope
and confide. It is the work of our own hands, and
we are justly proud of it. Has not the Emperor
done this and that, and are there not new fields of
glory open, to which the great Napoleon line will
never be found wanting ' Such is the Empire of
the French, founded but the other day, and cer-
tainly the most successful institution of the age thus
far. Four or five years ago we might have said, as
we read the President's Message, that there was
something in the world more promising than even
the French Empire, We cannot say that now.
The French Empire is almost alone in the earth as
a new institution of the nineteenth century, com-
bining the liberty and vigour of the modern age
with the chivalry and splendour of the ancient.
But whether we wished it or not, this ever-recurring
anniversary compels us to note the progress of this
new and protentious growth of time. What is the
Empire doing for France ? What for Europe ?
What for the World ? To the questions we ask
every Frenchman will ask a thousand others; and
if, on a favourable reply, the Emperor hopes for a
new sanction and new lease of power, he must take
his chance of a reply that may not be so favourable.
POST.—John Bright among the salmon fishers.
The great opponent of game, of its existence and
its protection, the strong-voiced denouncer of plea-
sure in its pursuit, is, as a contemporary announces
who chronicles the movements of sporting men, at
this moment staying at the shooting and fishing
quarters of Mr. Bass, on the Spey, and has suc-
ceeded each day in bringing to the creel at least one
salmon or grilse. We are sincerely glad to hear it.
We congratulate the preservers of rivers, of moors,
and of stubble fields upon their convert, and we
congratulate John Bright upon the fresh means he
has seized of again obtaining the health and vigour
for which he was once so remarkable. Had he long
ago spent upon the banks of the Spey, or on the
moors that look upen it, the hours he wasted in his
anti-game campaign in hot committee-rooms, Mr.
Bright would have been a wiser and a stronger man.
What a singular and extensive change has come
about in the public mind since that day when the
apostles of the utilitarian school preached against
sports and amusements, not because, like the steeple..
hatted soldier pulpit men of the Comwellian age,
they deemed them sinful, but because they regarded
every man who did aught save manipulate cotton as
a mere castaway, and every moment that was not
spent in its manufacture as wasted to the nation.
Then Cobden railed against the grand old oaks of
the nobleman's park as useless, and Bright counted
the grains of wheat in the cropt of a partridge, and
denounced all who promoted their breeding as the
enemies of the human race. It has passed away,
that crusade against what were, or were conceived
to be, the privileges of the territorial class. Bright
catches salmon in an exclusive river, and the
wealthy Quaker of Lancashire, the chiefest among
its great manufacturers, rents moors and rivers in
Scotland, and promotes in Ireland the production
of salmon with the same energy and wise appli-
cation of capital as he has displayed in the manu-
facture of cotton goods in Lancashire. Nor would
any one be less likely than the successful proprietor
of the " several" fisheries in Galway to follow the
example of the peaceful Geddes of the Solway, and
throw open his salmon
crusade isover, pools and streams tocr
crusaders
ac
dr aevrs.
ing public. Thethe
have exchanged their sword and spear for the gun
and the rod, and if they were to blow a trumpet

at ell, it 'would be in the shape of a straight horn
at a cover side as a fox breaks away under the
noso of the quondam anti-sportsman, mounted on
thret-huncired guinea thoroughbred. tis an
excellent thing that it is so, and that peace and
good fellowship have boen established between
country and town, not by the defeat of the at-
tacked, but by the blending of the combatants,
and upon the inexplicable principle which pro-
duces that unaccountable result, a plumpudding,
the creation of a homogeneous whole by the mix-
ing of the most dissimilar ingredients. Public
opinion, the convictions, deep convictions they
sometimes call them, of the public mind. Phrases.
The public never gets beyond having impulses, and
these are as shifting and convertible as the com-
binations in a kaleidoscope. Ten years ago public
opinion was for ploughshares—now, it gives the
highest prize to the gun that can destroy the largest
number of lives in the shortest time—ten years ago
a man with a beard and a turn-down collar would
have been mobbed—ten years ago it was a conviction
of the public mind that England could not exist
without Manchester and America—ten years ago
we should have made a garroter the pet of a fondly
foolish chaplain, instead of flogging him—ten years
ago the whole Liberal press would have howled at
the man who proposed to make salmon property,
and to render his watery habitation an Eden de-
fended by the two-edged sword of the law in the
person of a policeman with his truncheon—and ten
years ago every Jack was to do all work and no
play, however dull a boy it might make him. W°
have changed all that, thank Heaven ! We have
all beards—we have 18 theatres open nightly in,
London—we all fish, shoot, and hunt—moors and
rivers yield a better profit than the best arable land,
and a salmon has less chance of coming unfairly by
his end than a young lady who dismisses a lover
whom she dislikes. England is a paradise now for
horsedealers, gunmakers, roadmakers,
gamekeepers, fishermen, and owners of sporting
lodges. The spirit of our Norman ancestor stalks
abroad, master of the situation, and Saxon John
Bright has become a convert for fear he should be
made captive. Long life to John Bright, and good
luck to his fishing. We hope we shall hear no more
of the fere naturez theory. If a salmon is propert79
surely a pheasant may be brought properly within
the category; if eggs are under the wing of the law,
surely the bird may be that is hatched from them-
Let the partridge and the pheasant be placed upon
an intelligible footing. Let the people be made t°
understand that the possession or pursuit of gam-
is no more a privilege than the possession or ergo?'
ment of any other imaginable property ; that the
spirit of the old game laws no longer pervades our
code, but that, nevertheless, no man has a right to
take partridges or pheasants, or grouse off
another
man's land any more than he has to lift his cattle
or his sheep_ Let the law treat, in short, what,ie
called game at least as well as it does salmon. The
game of the field is quite as much an element in the
food of the people as the fish of the river, as any
one may satisfy himself who will take the trouble
for the next six months of frequenting the market!
of the poor in London and our large towns. And
let the Chancellor of the Exchequer take the first
step towards correcting the mistaken impressions
which exist among the lower classes with regard
to property in game by abolishing the untenable
law which compels a man to buy, at the hands
Government, a license to kill, whether for private
use or for public sale the animals which he has bred
and reared. We can assure him that nothing Ilse
tended so much as this law to create and encourage
in the mind of the lower classes an idea that the
landed proprietor has no rights in regard of his
game, except, perhaps, the refusal to permit the
police to take any notice of poaching.