The Sun.
London, England, 1864-10-31 00:00:00

English wool trade. Business, however, has not materially
decreased ; but a few descriptions, ohieilyskin, have changed
hands somewhat more freely at full quotations. In prices,
compared with last week, no quotable change has taken
place. In colonial wool, by private contract, very little is
doing, yet prices rule stationary. The arrivals of colonial
wool since the close of last sales have amounted to 71,530
bales, consisting of 17,860 bales from New South Wales and
Queensland, 11,860 Victoria, 1,852 Tasmania, 4,984 South
Australia, 198 West Australia, 9,152 New Zealand, and
25,133 bales from the Cape of Good Hope.

Current prices of English wool per lb.
s d
Fleeces —South Down hoggets 1 11
Halt-bred do
Kent fleeces
'south Down ewes and wethers 1 11
Llicestor do,
Sorts—Clothing
Combing . 1 8

s d
2 0
2 2
2 0
2 0
2 2

2

SEEDS.

Very few transactions have taken place in agricultural
seeds. For prices, however, no change of importance has
taken place. Linseed and rapeseed met a slow sale, and the
value of East India has slightly declined. There was an
improved demand for cakes, and the prices of prime qua
ties have advanced 5s per ton.
I' turnip, White,p.bus.2Cs to 22s
Swede —s —s
Mustard, Brown —B •—s
White,
Tares, Spring.... s
New winter, bush 8s gs
Chnary, per quarter —s - s
[-lye grass
Clover, Red Eng., ct. •-s —s
White
Foreign Red —B —s
White —s —s
Trefoil new. —B —s

Carraway 349 353
Coriander ...... ate 258
llerripseed, per qr 563 eos
Linseed,Eng.sowing 643 68s
Crushing
Baltic —s —s

Odessa —B —s
Linseed Cake, p ton —s —s
English .£loos £ll Os

Foreign £9 lOs .£lO 15s
Rape Cakes,p ton.Ct 10s £5 lOs
Rapeseed, new,pr qr ?Os 76s

TALI
The tallow trade is firm to.
ward tendency. The quotati,
40e 6d; town tallow is sellin,
fat, 2s 2d per 81bs.

0 SP.

~day, and prices have an up-
ion for P.Y.C., on the slot, is
ig at 41s 91 net cash ; rough

Mr. Leatham, M.P,. on Female Education.

Oa Thursday night Mr E. A. Leathern, M.P.,
presided at the annual soiree o 1 the Huddersfield
Female Educational Institute, which was held in
the Gymnasium Hall, Huddersfield. There was a
large attendance.
The SECRETARY (Mr David Johnston) read an
extract from the report submitted to the buoiheas
meeting in May last. The number of annual sub-
scribers is 104, who subscribe the sum of £92 16a
There are 78 pupils paying 3d per week, contribut`•
rig £3l is Bd, and 49 pupils paying ld each, con-
tributing £7 14s 11d. The average weekly attend.
once at the classes is 245. The ages of the pupils
are as follow :-51 under 15 years of age, 55 above
15 and under 20 years, and 21 above 20 years.
-amongst the pupils there are eight married women.
Mr. LEATHAM, who was received with loud ap.
plause, said he thought it was pretty generaly
admitted that those who took part in proceedings
of this description, if they happeneal to have any-
thing in their heads of which they wished to make
a present to the public, were perfectly at liberty to
!ook upon these occasions as the most fitting oppor-
tunities for so doing. Indeed, so general had the
practice become that public speakers seemed to vie
with one another in the courage with which they
trespassed upon every conceivable topic which
might happen to be uppermost in their own or in
the public mind, provided only that these topics
had nothing whatever to do with the object of
the meeting. Nor was this curious phenomenon
confined to educational meetings. He had noticed
in the reports of agricultural dinners that instead of
soaring into high flights of eloquence in praise of
the glories of fat stock end on the best manure for
turnips, the speakers launched away into criticisms
upon the foreign policy of the country, into tirades
against the Yankees; and now and then they had
denunciations of some unfortunate clergyman who
happened to have formed the opinion that a tippet
had become an article of clerical attire, or some pre-
late al ho had quarrelled with Moses and could not
be induced to believe in Noah's ark. (Laughter and
applause.) Precisely in the same way the celebra-
tions of the votaries of social science appeared to be
made the occasion for transferring to the public the
annual sweepings of noble brains. Indeed, Sterne
never uttered a greater truth than when he said that
when a man had one resolved upon a subject, then
for a text, Mesopotamia, Cappadocia, Asia, Pontes,
Phrygia, or Pamphylia, was as good a text as any
in the Bible. (Laughter and applause.) He was
afraid he should be considered as a rash invader if
he attempted to keep pretty close to the question
and to say a few words apropos of the occasion.
This much he would say, that if they would kindly
look over the offence this time, he would promise in
future to be as illogical, as discursive, and as irre-
levant as the most fastidious person now present
could desire. (Laughter.) If they would permit him,
then, he would make a few observations with refe-
rence to female education. And in the first place
he thought it was a matter of great congratulation
that they possessed in Huddersfield a recognised
and successful female Mechanics' Institute. (Ap-
plause.) He was quite sure that the establishment
and successful working of such an institute must
tread with very considerable emphasis upon the corns
of prejudice. There were some people whose moral
and intellectual feet were so tender that they
screamed out if anybody came within a yard of them
with these institutes. There must have been a whole
chorus of screamers when that institute was set up
not that the screamers were not very sensible people
but then they were told that if the very sensible pee.
plc of another day had had their own way, we should
still have been champing acorns, and, doubtless
when our forefathers renounced their time-honoured
acorn diet, and turned out of their ancestral huts in
favour of the pigs, the very sensible people of that
time regarded that gigantic innovation with very
grave disapproval. Now, what was it that the very
sensible people of Huddersfield had to say against
this institute and in favour of female ignorance ?
[hey said that such an institute was oat of place;
that it was an anomaly and an impertinence; that
the young people who attended ft had much bet-
ter atay away ; that they were much better with-
out the instruction they got there; that it
only turned their heads; that it only in-
capacitated them for their work ; and that it only took
away their attention from those domestic affairs on which
they ought to be engaged. That was a very old argument ;
it was as old as the hills. It was as old, at all events, as
Sidney Smith, who had this very neat way of putting it—
not by any means that he was expressing his own opinion
—that if a woman were once permitted to taste of the
fruits of the tree of knowledge, the rest of the family would
soon be anxious to be fed with the same ethereal and
unsatisfactory diet. That was the assertion with modi-
fications, that had been applied to the education of almost
every class of women in the country, and the consequence
had been that there had arisen a great controversy on
female education, and that as it was the nature of ex-
tremes to breed extremes, a set of philosophers had cropped
up to maintain that boys and girls ought to be educated
precisely alike, After expressing his entire dissent from
this doctrine, Mr Leatham combated the statement made
by many objectors that the possession of a good education
would induce the females of the lower ranks to assume airs
unsuited to their rank in life. He contended that when
the system of female education had become general among
the operative classes no young woman would take airs to
herself because she could read a paragraph fluently in the
newspaper, or do accounts, or write a neat hand, any more
than she would take ails to herself now because, like a
royal prince, she had all her fingers on one hand, or that
Providence had been pleased to grant her a nice, comely,
cheerful, healthy countenance. (Applause) Another absurd
oljection was, that a well informed woman made a bad wife
to a working man and a bad mother to his children; that
the time of such persons would ba taken up by pursuits
which are foreign to domestic matters ; that they would
neglect John's potatoes for a poem, and John's babies
for a romance. Who ever heard of a woman neglecting
her own child for a romance ? and what romanee was ever
written which, in her opinion, would compare with the
poetry which sparkles in the eyes of her own little boy ?
The opponents to female education seemed altogether to
forget the share which the wife had in making the man.
(Hear, hear) Ht aid not hesitate to Bay, although it might
be derogatory to hie own sex, that nine out of every ten
men who married poung were very much what their wives
had made thorn. (Hear, hear, and applause.) The influence
which a woman, patient, orderly, virtuous, religious, and
intelligent might have over her husband for good was in-
calculable. (Hear, hear.) Some men were made of hard,
unyielding, unpromsing materials ; but a good woman
would go chipping away like a patient sculptor ; it
might take years and years, it might take half a lifetime,
but in the end she would work the ludo block into shape,
and there was many a noble and manly fellow now living
who could tell that but for woman'and God's blessing upon
her work there would not have been much manliness or
nobility left in him. (Applause.) He had said nothing o
the influence of the mother upon the future of her off-
spring, because no one would deny that their earliest im-
pressions were those that were the most durable, and it was
to the mother that they must mainly look for this. He
maintained that it was a high and noble calling that of the
working-women of England. (Applause.) They had en-
trusted to them much of the happiness of the present
generation of working men, They would mould much of
the character of the next, and upon the character of the
working population the character of the whole nation must
more and more depend ; the part which the people would
take and the place which the country would fill in history.
This was a consideration which had been too much lost
sight of in the past. It had been assumed that the happi-
ness and prosperity of the nation was vested in the hands
of a few, but all experience from day to day was teaching
that it was not in the Court or in the palaces of the great,
but in the cottage, that we must seek for the birthright of
prosperity. Beneath those lowly rafters lies the cradle of
dominion, and from that humble threshold pruoeLds the
majesty of States. (Cheers.) If there was a particle of
truth in this doctrine, they should recognise at once the
necessity of those efforts and the importance of these
institutions. (Applause.) There never was an epoch
when these considerations wore forced upon them with
greater power. This was no jog-trot age, when the river
of history rolled smoothly on—it was broken at every
turn into a thousand cataracts; they lived amidst people
of gigantic passions and in the presence of stupendous
events. Hitherto our path amongst nations had been one
of prosperity and security; but standing as we did in the
midst of so many and so great catastrophes, whore was the
man Ns ho would have the courage to say that it might not
become overcast, perplexed, and strewn with peril ? But
whatever might be the future which awaited;t.his country,
they, at all events, may take courage, certain that their
efforts, under the blessing of Providence, must conduce to
the welfare of their fellow• countrymen ; that they would
assuage the calamities of war itself, and would crown with
a still brighter lusture the victories of peace. (Cheers.)
A vote of thanks to Mr Leatham for presiding terminated
the proceedings,

FATAL RAILWAY ACCIDENT.—On Saturday,
about 5 p.m, the train from Dublin to Galway ran off the
line near Ballinasloe, when a carriage was overturned and
two men were killed—Mr Glenville, a builder, and T.
Henry, a a servant of the company.