The Sun.
London, England, 1864-03-28 00:00:00

supporte:rs of the Ministers are alienated from
them long ago to a lamentable extent. One
after anot her the principal members of the Cabinet

have falls ,n into disfavour. Several of the ministers
not actually having seats in the Cabinets are among
the most unpopular men in the House of Com.

mons, among the most unpopular men there even
to the House itself. In this respect, in-
deed, we should be disposal to imagine that

Mr. ROBERT LOWE might claim precedence, among
all competitors for the distinction, as the most un-
popular. He can never make a single move in his
own particular department without exciting the ani-
mosity not only of a crowd of individual members
sitting upon both sides of the House of Commons, but
it might be said with no one particle of exaggeration
while saying it, without woundirg the amour
propre and arousing the keen and excited anta-
gonism of large and influential classes of his
fellow countrymen. The Home Secretary has
long been noticeable both within and with-
out the walls of Parliament for his perverse
pertinacity in the way of blundering.
seems to be nearly incapable of acting as an Ad-
ministrator without evidencing while so doing
some flagrant error of judgment. The First Lord
of the Admiralty, it may be said, never was
popular—from the first moment of the
existence of the Administration. The Indian
Secretary has been running counter within the same
interval of nearly five years continuance to the
opinions of almost all those whose views
upon matters affecting our Indian Empire
is of the smallest value whatever. And,
as a matter of course, he has by so
doing, been running as directly contrary all the while
to public opinion as well. The Foreign Secretary—
well, we all know what his popularity has come to
be ! As a Reformer he has thrown up his earth
altogether. He has acknowledged the game to have
been played out. He has taken as his device that
lotos eaters' maxim of Rest and be Thankful. As
a diplomatist he is an object of indifference and yet
vexation abroad, of disquiet and profound dis-
appointment at home. With regard to the
greatest rhetorician of his age—reference being
13era made, it is almost unnecessary to say, to the
right hon. gentleman the Chancellor of the Exche-
chequer—his consummate abilities as a debater, hie
in many respects unrivalled powers as a master of
oratory have stood him in such good stead as an
orator, as a debater, that there is hardly a man
in the House who can, in rising to address Mr.
Speaker—at once, upon the instant, by the very
sound, as it were, of his once persuasive voice—
excite upon all sides so many or such
bitter antagonisms. The great popular Prime
Minister even, Lord PALMERSTON himself, has con-
trived at length to become so compromised
by one or another of his colleagues that
never perhaps in the whole of his career
has he been known to speak so indifferently, in
plain words, to cut so exceedingly sorry a figure as
upon the very last occasion of any import-
ance of his opening his lips in the
House of Commons before the adjournment
of the House over this Easter recess, when the Pre-
mier, acting upon the impulse of such a very ex-
travagance of magnanimity ,etood forth Quixotically
in defence of the intimate friend and associate
of the adviser and instigator of the intending
assassin GALLENGA. Such, in brief, is the situa-
tion of some among the chiefs of the Ministry now
awaiting the announcement cf its future for good
or evil, almost immediately, we may rest assured,
after the renewal of the sittings of the Legislature
at the close of these Easter holidays.

Another melancholy case has been added to the
long list of deaths from cold and privation during
the present season. That list is already too long for
our wealth, for our humanity, for our elaborate poor
law system; and feelings of shame, regret, and in-
dignation have been excited in the public mind by
their painful disclosures. Official neglect, under-
paid labour, and similar causes have been the real
murderers, and each tragedy in turn, whether of
the poor widow who could not work fast enough to
gain a living out of her miserable earnings, or of
the unhappy creature who was found a few days
ago dying of typhus on a door step, with the story
as yet undisproved on his lips, that he slept at a
workhouse the night before, and consequently had
been sent out into the streets to shift for himself.

The case which has taken place within the last
week has, however, some peculiarly distressing
features, showing that inhumanity is not confined to
union officers, and revealing a degree of quiet and
apparently undeserved suffering that is most painful
to hear. It seems that JOHN MYERS, a dock
labourer, 42 years of age, and of very sober habits,
was found dead on the floor of his room, on Mon-
day morning last, his death, according to the ver-
dict of the jury, being caused by inflammation of the
lungs, accelerated by exposure, want of clothing and
necessaries. Such a case is unhappily not so un-
common as it ought to be, but the most shocking
past of the case remains to be told. The poor man
had, it seems, been unable to work for the last five
months, whether from illness or from not getting
employment is not stated. Fer four of those
months the rent of his room was in arrears. The
landlord, judging him unable to pay the sum due,
was resolved to turn him out, but MYERS, it seems,
would not go. Ho probably did not know where
to go to, and shared the horror of "the house" so
common among the poor. Determined, however, to
get rid of so profitless a tenant the landlord, whose
name was ROBY —it deserves honourable mention

for his original and humane idea—Estructed a man
to take the window out and the door off its hinges.
This was done,..it must be remembered, in the cold
weather some three or four weeks ago, and the
severe snow storm which followed must have
been hailed by Mr. ROBY as a potent auxiliary,
on the principle that the Russian commander-in-
chief styled January and February his best gene-
rals. However, the plan, although ingenious,
failed. The poor sinking and exhausted creature
still clung to his old habitation till one night-his
groans attracted the attention of his fellow lodgers
below. A man and his wife who occupied the
room underneath went up, although, as the man
quaintly said in evidence, " they did not know
him." Certainly it was no time to stand upon the
ceremonies of introduction. MYERS was lying on
a small piece of flock on the floor, with a sheet
for his only covering. A table and a broken
chair were the only articles of furniture in the
room, from which the shivering occupant had tried
ineffe-tually to keep out the bitter winds by fas-
tening up two little pieces of calico to the empty
window frame. He had not had any food, he
said, since the previous Friday, and it was then
Sunday afternoon. The other lodger, with the
liberality so common among the poor, offered the
sufferer some food, which he could not take, and
some tea, and in answer to his pitiful complaint of
c; It's very cold here with the window out," he
brought him a coat to throw over him. MY ERs
asked the woman to go for a parish order, but as it
was Sunday she could not gat it. Elrly the next
morning, as we have seen, ho was found lying dead
on his floor, soon to be exchanged for a resting
place which no one need begrudge him. There are
several questions suzgested by this melancho:y nar-
rative which are not very easily auswered. In the
firs:. place, will!, is there butt a ;horror of the Work-