The Sun.
London, England, 1864-04-15 00:00:00

opinion of a larger section of the people in the event
of any complication requiring an interference in
foreign affairs, and the necessity for a heavier im-
position of taxes. This was a good answer to those
who had advised him to wait for a more convenient
season before he attempted the introduction of his
measure. There would be less reason to fear the
irritation or of the community if the people
generally thought that they were more fully repro•
sented, and the classes that came in more immediate
contact with their wishes, their claims, tied their
necessities were in a position to represent their
views, set forward their ideas, and geve a voice to
the expression of their feelings. Lord PALMER-
STON'S conduct on this occasion was most peculiar,
It seemed as if he was determined to act a pare•
doxical part. The noble lord had, however, better
take care, for he cannot always play into the hands
of both parties at once; and really it is not qdite
the thing for the Prime Minister, the leader of the
House and the ruler of the policy of his party, to
declare that he will vote for a measure, but that he
does not agree with it. This seems too much a
system of Parliamentary juggling, and a sort of
political pasquinade which is neither safe nor suit-
able. Here we have the noble lord distinctly stat-
ing that if the measure of his hon. friend goes into
committee, he cannot agree to the particular fran-
chise that he seeks to introduce, but yet he votes for
its introduction for fear people should think
he does not wish any change made in the
county franchise. Was ever anything more ridi-
culous than such a way of proceeding ? No
wonder the House received the communication
with laughter, that it would be time enough in
committee " to consider what the franchise should
be." This is playing at legislation, and trifling
with the concerns of the country. It was a clever
move, doubtless, but it is not a creditable one. The
noble lord wishes not to compromise himself in case
Reform takes him by surprise one day or other, and
yet he wants to look well to the country and have
his name among the list of the reforming and go-
ahead parties. Many who see his name there will
think they have gained a mighty champion, and that
the prospect of affairs are promising. It will occdr to
many on perusing this extraordinary statement from
the Treasury benches that these unequal contests
and unworthy subterfuges might have been decided
had the question of Reform been settled as it might
gave been during the DERBY administration. The
conduct of Earl RUSSELL on that occasion was dis-
graceful; in fact, it was a home policy worthy of the
foreign statesmanship that now tarnishes the glory
of England, and makes us a by word and reproach
before the honest men of all lands. Rather than let
others have the glory of introducing Reform he
preferred to cut short its existence altogether, and
he did that in a very underhand and unfair style.
It may be long now before such a chance again
occurs, and the odium of the failure must also be
shared by those who assisted the noble lord to carry
his unfair, unwise, and inconsiderate proposal. The
Conservative party have prospered since their exit
from office, but the cause to which the noble lord
professed so devoted a zeal has suffered irrepa-
rable damage, and the country that he appealed
to has been grossly deceived by the false hopes
and expectations raised. We should be in
a very different position •as regards our repre-
sentative system now if the meddle and mud-
dle party had not interfered to lay their interdict
upon the measure before the House ; and though the
chief actor in the scene has changed his tactics, it
will not be found that he has risen to conquer, and
the peerage and the foreign office have shed no new
lustre on the name of RUSSELL to compensate for
the death-b!ow he dealt to Reform.

The recent experimental trials at Shoeburyness
have brought the relative merits of Sir W. ARM-
STRONG'S and Mr. WHITWORTH'S twelve pounders
into fair competition. As the trial is not yet con
eluded, and the official data as yet withhold, we
cannot of course:pronounce a decided opinion upon
their relative merits, but as far as the contest has
yet gone the contending parties seem to be pretty
much on a par, for while Mr. WHITWORTH's gun
carries its shot with the greatest accuracy, the de-
structive powers of Sir W. ARMSTRONG'S segmental
shell are more effective. The result of these elabo
rate trials will prove to the British public, and to
foreign Powers, that we possess two very excellent
models for light or field artillery, while " Big Will"
looming in the background, reminds our neigh-
bours that, in case of a misunderstanding, we shall
be able to give unwelcome visitors a warm recep-
tion, The experiments at Shoeburyness have been
carried on with great activity for a considerable
time, and we may add, too, at considerable ex-
pense, but many important results have been
obtained. It is curious to observe that the old
smoo h sixty-eight pounder has in many respects
held its own, and, at close quarters, is after all, as
formidable a piece as any of its compeers. It is
of course admitted, even by its greatest advocates,
that the Armstrong and Whitworth guns have a
longer range and a greater accuracy, yet, with the
three hundred and six hundred pounder Armstrong
guns, the velocity is greater, and the impact is
unquestionably greater. The damage effected upon
the earthworks practiced upon by the twelve-
pounders at a range of nine hundred yards was
immaterial, showing that it is useless to trust to
light artillery against entrenchments; but it is
not likely that the game will ever be left long in
the hands of the artillery, when our soldiers are
within hail of the enemy. It can never be neces-
sary
for our field artillery to operate upon in-
trenched works. Now that the long range and
accuracy of both the rifle and cannon are so much
improved, the necessity of rapidity and promptness
in evolutions, and in attack or retreat, must mate-
rially change the tactics of generals in the field.
The Prussians have proved that light rifle artillery
can by its accuracy and length of range silence
far heavier batteries of the Danes, which are con-
structed upon the old-fashioned principle of the
last century. For field artillery for foreign service
the Armstrong batteries even in their present state
are equal to any emergency; what defects exist in
their mechanical arrangements can no doubt be
remedied hereafter. But with the navy the ques-
tion is more complicated and difficult. A ship is
required according to the present regulations of the
service to carry not only the heaviest armament,
but also to be protected with impenetrable
plates. Mechanical science has overcome the dill
culty of forgiog heavy masses of iron, as was demon-
strated in the rolling of the fifteen inch beams
which are to form the face of the battery being
constructed for the Russian Government, now in
course of procedure at the Millwall Ironworks.. It
is absolutely impossible for a ship to carry plates
even of six-inch thickness, which by the by are
no protection against three-hundred pounders,
without being of such a gigantic size as to be use-
less anywhere except in the open sea, and even
then her construction must be such that her rate of
speed must be inferior to that; of any ordinary
merchant steamer. Mr. REED has endeavoured to
meet the difficulty, and in his recent vessels has
combined a small tonnage with heavy plating, but
in order to accomplish this desideratum he has
reduced the guns from tens to un ts, and given
his ships a rate of speed which wi i render them

perfectly useless to protect our commerce fron the
attacks of foreign navies. All that such ships can
be fit for is to bombard an enemy's harbour, for a
weaker enemy would not of course wait for the
approach of so formidable an adversary ; end, on
the other hand, a ship of superior power would be
able to capture her at leisure. In fact, a ship
that cannot run after a flying enemy, or away from
a pursuer, can be of no service to a nation whose
merchandise is the greatest in the world. It is the
fast ships of an enemy which would damage this
country by seizing our merchant ships, and check.
ing our commerce far more seriously than by burn.
ing our four ptiucipal dockyarc:s. Now the only
way to afford the necessary protection must be in
giving our men of war the greatest possible speed.
Our ships have stood fire at close quarters before
now, and although riddled by shot have yet con-
trived to keep afloat and capture the enemy, whether
on land or water. The spirit and daring of our
sailors are not less now than of yore, and despite
iron plates, and copulas, or turrets, we opine that
our boarders will in the future as in the past settle
naval questions with the cutlass and boarding pike,
as our soldiers can so well do with the bayonet.
Let, then, the Americans and the Russians erect the
strongest forts, and cast the heaviest guns, bat only
give " Jack" the means to overhaul his enemy, and
he will soon give a satisfactory account of him.

Few things are more difficult to deal with than
venerable prejudices, more especially if those pre,.
judices have anything of a religious character.
There is usually some feeling that deserves a degree
of respect belonging to them, and whether or no
such is the case, the holders of those prejudices are
not to be convinced by argument, shamed by ridi-
cule, or shaken by abuse. Their objections are
more a matter of feeling than of reason, and as such
obstinate to contend against. We all know how
the advance of enlightenment and spread of educa-
tion has not, even now, availed to uproot entirely
from among the masses the old superstitions re-
specting witchcraft and fortune-telling. Cases are
constantly coming before our police courts, reveal-
ing most extraordinary accounts of audacious im-
posture on the one hand and weak-minded credulity
on the other in respect to the fascinating pretence
of reading the future, while the unfortunate case at
Sible Hedingham, which some time ago brought
that part of the country into discreditable promi-
nence, is sufficient to prove that the belief in the
malpractices of the black art leads sometimes to
actively mischievous results even in our own ra-
tional England. When such is the case, then, among
a highly civilised people like ourselves, what must
be the power and influence of prejudice among a
people on whom the beneficent and tolerant tenets
of Christianity have no power, and any attempt to
confute them is received as an attack upon the old
traditional creed. Yet, however wise and kindly
may be the tolerance which enlightened nations
now usually show to those still walking in the
darkness, there are cases in which religious preju-
dice or tradition may lead to such evil results that
it is incumbent on those who have any influence or

power to exert themselves towards their surt,pres-
sion, even at the risk of exciting irritated
feeling and provoking angry opposition.
In such a position are countrymen in
Calcutta now placed ioy the Hindoo method
of disposing of tieeir dead. It is well known
that a strong fe,eling exists in most parts of India,
especially ',..nroughout Bengal, against the European
castor of interment, For some reason or another
F:Jod mother Earth is regarded by them as the moat
I unfitting keeper of those who sprung from dust.
The other elements of fire and water are the only
ones that they will tolerate as the recipients of the
departed, but although the funeral pyre is, as we all
know, the recognised custom of the Hindoo, and is
universally adopted by the wealthier class, it is
necessary, according to their tradition, that ashes
should be sprinkled with some drops of the sacred
stream. This idea helps the humbler Hindoo out
of a serious difficulty, since poverty in Bengal, as
too often elsewhere, makes itself felt even in the
sorrow for the dead. The poorer class, then, avail
themselves of this notion to throw the bodies into
the stream itself, where they float up and down
with results, is a hot climate like India, that Eng-
lish readers could scarcely bear to hear of. Yet the
English residents in Calcutta have been forced to
endure these horrible and revolting spectacles at the
cost, too, of even more than the consequent outrage
on every feeling of decency and refinement. The
public health of the European part of the City of
Palaces is notoriously unhealthy, that of the natives
is many degrees worse. What with low marshy
ground, bad drainage, bad water, the habits of the
natives, and this fearful custom of poisoning the
waters of the Hooghly, there is little wonder that
pestilence should walk in darkness, and sickness
slay in the noonday. Yet with the criminal neglect
of every sanitary measure that has hitherto dis-
graced our Indian administration, with the reckless
indifference which left men to die in close barracks
because a dead wall shut out the healthful sea breezes,
this custom, so repulsive to every feeling of a civi-
lised community, so shocking to human nature, and
so fatally injurious to public health, has been con-
tinued up to the present time. In justice we must
admit that very possibly the fear of creating any
religious excitement among the Hindoos has, since
the mutiny of 1857, helped to restrain interference.
It is not surprising, however, that measures should
at last have been taken to arrest such a practice,
especially since, in consequence of an epidemic,
the river has been filled with corpses floating
with the tide among the ships or lodging against
the banks. At the same time an edict has been
issued for the closing of "all burning grounds
within the town," in order to stop the scarcely
less revolting and injurious consequences of the
burning of the dead in the vicinity of Calcutta.
Such measures will indeed be substantial bless-
ings to the whole community, native as well as
European, if properly carried into effect, but it
is unfortunate that legislative interference after
being so long delayed, has been somewhat harsh
and abrupt. The consequence is that the Hindoos
of Bengal are in a ferment, and a bitter feeling
of antagonism to the Government has been ex-
cited, which it will be. difficult to allay. The
latent suspicion of the Hindoos has been aroused,
and the violent fanaticism of their religion en-
listed against us by an arbitrary decree, which
might have been framed so as to avoid provoking
such strenuous opposition. A little tact and mode-
ration, a greater degree of caution and conciliation
towards native prejudice, and immemorial tradition
would have saved the European authorities from
a painful dilemma. As it is, we recommend the
tolerance of such a pernicious custom, but must
look to the firmness, good sense, and long Indian
experience of the new Governor-General to recon2
cite the intense indignation of the Hindoos with the
requirements of public wealth and common pro-
priety.

DIE PROPOSED STATUE TO THE LATE RIGHT
HON. JAMES WILSON.—The committee have re-
ceived intimation of " the great interest taken by Lord
Palmerston in the proposal to erect a statue to the memory
of the above gentleman at Hawick, and his desire to sub-
scribe towards the necessary fund as a mark of his esteem
and admiration for that distinguished man, and his appre-
ciation of the great services rendered by Mr, Wils?n to the
country as a member of the Government,",