The Sun.
London, England, 1852-10-19 00:00:00

Vairitirta

LONDON, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 19, 1852.

Philosophers, who, of all people in the wide world,
are most enamoured of the mysterious—whatever they
themselves may say to the contrary—can now happily
look forward with some degree of confidence to the
delight of a grand Japanese Revelation. Eleusia was
nothing to it. The most inexorably enforced taboo
ever indulged in by the elders among the savages of
the AlarcilesaF, never tended so remarkably to pique
the curiosity
of the more inquisitive. Here is a coun-
try of extraordinary dimensions, which has been, in a
political sense, so to speak, hermetically sealed from
the rest of the nations of the earth during no less pro-
tracted an interval of time than the last two centuries!
It is at length about to be forced into some communi-
cation with the external multitude—thanks to the
generous cnterprize of the United States' Govern-
ment. For it must be observed that the expedition
which has been so long talked of, as about to proceed
to Japan from the ports of the American Republic,
has been only for a while delayed, not altogether
abandoned. The interruption is simply attributable
to that unlucky squabble about the British Fisheries,
which appears to be undergoing the process of an
amicable settlement, owing to the better judgment of
Mr. WEBSTER and the energetic resolution of Lord
IVIALME3BURr. Almost immediately may be antici-
pated, therefore, the intelligence that the vessels en-
gaged in the undertaking already specified have set
out for their vary singular place of destination.
It is impossible not to await with peculiar eager-
ness the result of this novel and humane enterprise.
For ourselves, we look forward to that result with
Some such interest as we might suppose would be
'wakened among the generality were a balloon to
soar off to one of the planets under the direction of
some experienced aeronaut. Not can the comparison
be regarded as in any way so very extravagant,
seeing that Japan is to the rest of the world almost
as untrodden a region as the surface of the moon or of
Jupiter. Seriously speaking, we may assert that we
know rather more about the inhabitants of the
Flying Island than about the hitherto almost in-
scrutable and nearly fabulous Japanese. GOLOWNIN'
it is true, has given us an account
of the latter, but
an account by no means so categorical
or explicit as
that furnished in reference to the former by LEMUEL
GULLIVER. The wonder is how this ignorance could
have so long
survived the application of the steam-
engine to the purposes of navigation. Travellers
have penetrated in all directions, it would seem
this solitary exception. China has been 'with
traversed
from end to end by the Jesuit missionaries. BASIL
HALL has told us all we want to know about Lon
Choo. HERmANN. MELVILLE has described the
manners and customs in vogue among the
naked exquisites of .I.Tukuhiva. FRANCIS HEAD has
taken us, as it were on the crupper, in a gallop across
the Pampas. JAMES LOSS has conducted us (shiver-
ng) down to the antarctic shores of Victoria land.
WILLIAM PENNY has induced U 3 to accompany him
(with our teeth chattering) to that remote arctic
strait which lies to the nor'-west of the Queen's
Channel. We have ransacked the exhumed ruins of
Nineveh with AUSTIN LAYARD. We have even
reached with BAYARD TAYLOR the golden gravel
strewing the paths of El Dorado. A learned gentle-
man named SQUEERS—who, by the way, ought to
bring an action 054iust blr. D.Raios, for casting

odium upon his patronymic—has given us the topo-
graphy of those forest-cities of the West which were

flourishing in marble magnificence long before the
first mason had carved a stone for the vaunted halls
the Alontezamss. Another gentleman, not less
learned, named SLEE MAN, has described with
astonishing minnuteness, the architectural monu-
ments of Hindostan. We are familiar with the

lilliputian republic of Marino. We are inti-
mately acquainted with the miniature oligarchy
of Montenegro. Nay—it was only the other day
that a young lieutenant of the Royal Navy of Old
England, putting spurs to his horse, clambered up the
acclivities of the Libanus, and ventured to domesti-
cate himself among the dreaded chiefs of the Ansayrii.
The Right Hon. BENJAMIN DISRAELI had proceeded
there already in romance : but the Hon. FREDERICK
WALPOLE went there in reality—and by this time,
under thanks to the indefatigable press of Mr.
BENTLEY, we have been enabled in that, as in so
many other quarters before then, to fathom secrets
which had hitherto seemed to be altogether unfathom-
ible. Everywhere, indeed, about the surface of the
globe, have we been conducted by that Great Power
which Sir BIJLWER LYTTON has so grandly idealized
13 the Genius of the Lamp—everywhere (because
Central Africa, according to our notion, must be
entirely excluded from the category, seeing that, on
the principle of the " sour grapes," we don't want to
go there any longer)—everywhere, we repeat, have
we been ushered in the north, in the south, in the
east, and in the west—everywhere but within the
ocean-frontiers of Japan ! And Japan, let it be
remembered, is no little obscure corner of the globe,
to be overlooked by reason of its insignificance.
Japan is a group of four large and flourishing islands
—Jezo, Niphon, Sikok, and Kiu-Siu—commanding
attention, if only for the extent and grandeur of its
marvellously fruitful territories. It comprises no
less than five imperial cities—Jedo, Sakai, lleaco,

Okosaka, and Nangasaki. It contains a population
variously estimated at from 15,000,000 to actually
50,000,000, the general and most rational impression
upon the subject, being that its inhabitants number
as many as those of the French Republic, the fore-
most among the races of the European Continent.

Added to all which, it has be®n declared, upon autho•

rity, that the capital of the Japanese is more populous
than our own monster metropolis—GoLoWNlN actu-

ally talking of 8,000,000 as the reputed number of
the citizens of Nangasaki! It is to this wonderful

empire that the civilized races of the world are at
length about to be formally introduced by means
of the gallant undertaking adventured upon by the
democratic statesmen of Washington. Cannon balls,
it is true, may probably be the sugar-plums of com-
pliment thrown to the Japanese by the "great guns"
of the United States ; for, when we speak of being
introduced to the mysteries of Japan, it must be un-
derstood that Artillery is to be the Master of the
Ceremonies !
Whatever particulars have hitherto been collected to-
gether in reference to the sources of Japan, or in regard
to the customs of the Japanese, have only been calcu-
lated to whet the popular appetite for the marvel-

lous, and to enhance the public eagerness for
some more searching and more widely extended
investigation. It matters little, perhaps, to the
merchant whether the people in those quar-

tars robe themselves at a funeral in white
by way of mourning ; whether the advance of preg-
nancy among their women is marked by the wearing
of a red crape scarf ; or whether they distinguish their
more honoured guests by the presentation of a plate
of snakes delicately stewed and adroitly seasoned.
Such eccentricities are recorded of them, no doubt,
but that matters little to the princes of trade either at
New York or at Manchester. Possibly, moreover, it
may be considered as a circumstance of moment only
in the more recondite contemplations of Mr. WAKLEY
in his capacity as the Coroner for Middlesex, that the
young gentlemen of Japan are in the habit of reliev-
ing themselves of the tedium of existence through the
fashionable suicide effected by dexterously ripping
open the abdomen. Why the young ladies of the
same country should presume for a moment that they
enhance their beauty by blackening their teeth, or
extracting their eyebrows, may seem a question of
trivial import to those not wholly infatuated by the
virtues of Mr. ROWLA.ND'S renowned Odonto, or of
his dainty Kalydor, or, still more, of what Lord
BYRoN has celebrated as his " incomparable oil Ma-
cassar." But surely it must be admitted that while
the verification of such rumours may be gra-
tifying to comparatively small sections of the
civilised community, a multiplicity of other state-
ments of more moment in reference to Japan and the
Japanese, demand the more careful and sedulous at-
tention of every active and enterprizing population.
For a thousand reasons, therefore, we await with the
most fervent solicitude, the completion of the interest-
ing project upon which the Ministry at Washington
has determined to adventure. As the expiation of
many flagrant acts of inhumanity, we look forward to
the desired vengeance with emotions of very peculiar
satisfaction. We rejoice at the expedition, in fine,
for, inasmuch as it will tend to bring 30,000,000 or
40,000,000 more of GOD'S creatures into communica-
tion with the rest of their fellow-men—breaking
asunder that monstrous and unnatural system which
has for two centuries insulated Japan from the bulk
of the great family of mankind, shutting them out,
generation after generation, from the chance of parti-
cipating in the marvels achieved by Science, in the
skill acquired in Art, in the comforts secured by In-
dustry, and denying to them at once, and by the most
effectual means, the blessings of Christianity and the
advantages of Civiliz stion.

Two eminently practical persons have just favoured
those of our middle classes, who purpose to improve
their condition by emigration, and those who would
rise in life in this country, with some excellent advice.
Mrs. Cmsnored at one of her " group meetings"
of clerks and governesses, reported in the Sun
of Saturday, and Mr. PETO; incidently and by
example, in his speech at the meeting of the
Builders' Benevolent Institution, which appeared in
our paper of Friday. Mr. PETO has been one of the
most successful men In his line in the kingdom ; but
he has deserved his success. It has been achieved in
the right way. No employer of labour has done
more for the comfort and instruction of his labourers
than Mr. PETO ; and no man has enjoyed more their
good will and respect. 'We have frequently heard of
his arrangements for their convenience, and the
Bishop of NORWICH bore public testimony to his ad-
mirable plans for their religious instruction, only
wishing that he could claim so excellent a master as
a Churchman. His benevolent contributions and sub-
scriptions are seen in almost every list ; while by far
the handsomest chapel in London, belonging to his
denomination, is that (nor is it the only one) which
he himself erected in Bloomsbury. To him, too,
in no unimportant sense, we owe the Great Exhi-
bition of 1851, for all was at a stand-still
for want of means, till he headed the guaran-
tee fund with 50,0001. ; an act not the less
generous and noble because the money itself was
never wanted. It cannot be wondered at that be has
been decidedly the most popular candidate in two
elections at Norwich, in two of the railways connected
with which city he had been so largely engaged.
Well, Mr. PETo tells all our young men whom it may
concern, and all their parents who wish to put their
sons in the way of making a fortune, that he attri-
buted all his prosperity to beginning at the begin-
ning. "He attributed all his success in life to an
early course of training in the workshop, where he
became acquainted with those :details which never
failed to enable men to carry out great works?'
Mr. PETO'S has not, therefore, been a royal road to
wealth, nor is such a road open to more than a very
few. Most of the men whom people are apt to call
"lucky" are rather men who knew what work was,
and who, like Mr. PETo, have had the judgment,
foresight, and decision to make use of advantageous
openings. We spoke of his example, and we advert-
ed not only to the general example we have just
mentioned, but to a special incident connected with
the meeting. Our Saturday's paper records also
the QUEEN'S visit to the Tubular Bridge, erected
over the Menai Straits by Mr. ROBERT STEPHENsoN,
on the same day as the meeting was held ; and it ap-
pears that Mr. PETO, chairman of the Chester and
Holyhead Railway Company, had received a special
ummons from her MAJESTY, through the LORD
CHAMBERLAIN, to attend her on that occasion. Mr.
PETO had made, however, a prior engagement to

preside at the meeting of the Builders' Benevolent
Society ; and as it was, of course, too lat.:: to alter the
day of the meeting, he, " though he could assure them
he was by no means disloyal, felt it to be his duty to
return a respectful message, stating that he had
made a previous promise to this institution, which it
was impossible for him to pass." WELLINGTON or
NELSON would have made the same reply; and it is
impossible not to perceive that Mr. PETO owes his
present position, in no small degree, to that habit of
abiding by his duty, which he exemplified on this
occasion. We are confident her MAJESTY felt grati-
fied at finding that she had a subject capable of acting
thus.

The speech of our admirable female lecturer, Mrs.
CHISHOLM, ought to be read by the class to whom it
is addressed throughout the kingdom ; it will, indeed,
do none of us any harm, but the thousands of unhappy
persons who as clerks and governesses are respectably
starving to death, or pining in back sitting rooms,
should study every line of it. Mrs. CHISHOLM tho-
roughly knows all phases of society—the bush,the sheep-
run, the Australian town, the suburban farm, on one
side of the globe ; and the accomplished unmarried
earre•nothing families of girls, the slim, well-dressed,
numberless lads wanting situations, or but just able to
make ends meet in them, of old England. Yes, she
knows them all quite well—and she tells the young
ladies here, " if now you can only wash up the things of
the house, and toss your own beds, and be your own
laundresses, and make the puddings and pies, why,
you may go (with some friend, of course), and you
may be an independent lady." Mrs. CiiisnoLm is
plainly of opinion, though as a lady she does not say
that in plain English, that such young ladies may
very quickly become mistresses in Australia ; and she
is herself evidently one who would prefer doing the
work of her own house, to being a domestic Protestant
nun, under the sovereign control of some superior
in purse, with that charming charge, a little large
family—a charge too troublesome for the said supe-
rior. How true also is Mrs. Cnisnoem's picture of
the sufferings of our clerks :—" I have been horri-
fied," she says, " at seeing men coming to speak to
me on the subject of emigration, whom, from their
appearance, I took to be sixty years of age, but when
I inquired, I found the same not more than forty-five
or forty-six. It was not illness, but care and anxiety
that gave them this premature old age. It is this daily
anxiety that destroys many more than the work
they have to do. In this country, pride, or the keeping
up appearances, as it is called, has been more destruc-
tive, has done much more harm, and caused more do-
mestic misery, than ever the cholera did when it was
among us. (" Hear, hear.") But there is no neces-
sity for this in the colony. There you can do many
things which you would not wish to do here." As
with the ladies, however, so with the gentlemen.
They must be willing to work; that is, not merely
to fill up time with something, but to work as shep-
herds, or anything else. They are to lock up their
broadcloth and Wellingtons as soon as they take ship
—no man can work in these things—and with the
workman's short jacket they will feel able to set about
sem; Nog, and inclined to do it too. If they cannot
at first do as much as a practised shepherd, they will
by degrees be able ; and when a man and his wife can
earn 401. a year, and everything found them, any in-
dustrious person can earn enough for himself from
the very first. Children, Mrs. Cnisuoem describes as
an actual fortune ! Hear it, poor clerk, not knowing
what to do to keep a wife and half-a-dozen little ones
in health, food, and clothing, in some narrow, un-
wholesome, back street—hear what these costly cares
may be worth—worth pecuniarily to you :—" In the
colony a child of nine years of age Can earn its bread.
Children are a help to their parents; they are
no burden or expense in the colony. I de-
clare I would rather go to the colony with
twelve children, than with 12001. in my pocket."
The one indispensable condition of success, however,
is work. Fathers and mothers, lads and lasses, must
all start for work' ; for work and independence, how-
ever !—not for ill-rewarded anxious clean-fingered
toil, with the continual fear of the Union House be-
fore their eyes. We thought, while glancing over
Mrs. Cnisnoesa's speech, pencil in hand, and marking
many more passages than those we have quoted, bow
our friend CARLYLE would enjoy it. Such a chapter
on work !—on doing—not on palavering as scribbling,
but downright doing. " Yes, yes," we thought we
heard him hastily exclaim, " Yes Mrs. Ceirsimeet,
that is the sort of men you must make them into.
Men ,fit to dig and to delve GOD'S good earth; no
longer your counting-house flunkeys, your mousta-
chorised dandy-coated sixpenny-chop diners, tripping
to and fro on their thin-soled Wellington's,—but
working men—in working fustia., and working hob-
nailed shoes ; with appetites that would make them
look rather cross at sight of only said sixpenny chop.
_Yes, they will then achieve something better than
copying long rows of figures, or folios of manuscript,
to hip weak tea, and breathe foul air at night. Yes,
Mar'm, get them to work and you will have translated
them from purgatory to paradise ; and they will bless
you in all their generations for teaching them that to
use their GoD-given muscles, was the way to become
men—real men—men in both body and soul."
At a former meeting Mrs. CHISHOLM gave some im-
portant advice as to the necessity of emigrant ships
being always provided with a separate compartment
for the provisions taken on the voyage by the passen-
gers ; one key of such apartment to be in the hands of
a person chosen by the passengers, another in the
keeping of a ship's officer. Mr. LINDSAY, the great
ship-master, who was present, highly approved of
Mr. C.'s suggestion, declared his intention to
adopt it, and recommended decidedly iron ships as
the best and safest. Mr. Be LOWE, M.P. for Kidder-
minster, who has lived in Australia, followed, strongly
recommending the colony, not as a gold country
merely, but for agricultural purposes. He called at-
tention to one point which Sir JOHN PAKINGTON
ought not to overlook for an hour. It is notorious
that the great stream of agricultural emigration is to
the United States ; probably many of our readers
may not be aware that we actually, so far as in us
lies, binder the settling of Australia by charging
1/. per acre for land, while the Americans charge
but a dollar ! Not only do we persist in saddling our
colonists with the scum of our prisons, at a great
additional cost to ourselves; and not only is the
voyage unavoidably more expensive to the emigrant,
but to convicts and distance, we must add the objec-
tion of selling our waste land to our own people, at
four or five times the price at which foreigners will
sell them the same commodity. Turn which way we
will, every colony, great or small, proclaims the need
of a comprehensive, generous, and vigorous mind at
the head of our Colonial Department. As we re-
marked on Saturday, India, the Cape of Good Hope,
Canada, Australia, and minor colonies too, now need
a first-rate man—a man able to bind them by other
ties to the British Crown than those of continual in-
terference and thwarting in local matters.

It was remarked by one of the most philosophic
minds that ever applied itself to the consideration of
questions of public polity, that " the chief danger to
the Church was from the Church itself." Without
waiting to apply this to the injury done to the Church
by the Oxford party, or by that " Right Reverend
Father in GOD, lIENaY, Lord Bishop of EXETER," or
by pluralists, like MOORE and PRETTYMAN, We shall
now point to an evil of considerable magnitude—
namely, the avowed and open (and we might add
shameless) traffic in Church preferment. Every day
supplies us with materials for regret and remark on
this point, but we shall confine ourselves to the traffic
which appears advertised on one day.

A recent number of a morning contemporary con-
tains four advertisements, one following the other, in
which the practice is distinctly shown. The first an-
nounces, very briefly and significantly, that " Five
thousand pounds will be given for an advowson, o f
adequate value, in a desirable county. A good resi-
dence, offices, &c., and very early legal possession, rare
essential. A large population objected to." This is rather
plain and undisguised. Of course, the advertiser is a
clergyman, who, at his ordination, made a solemn d e-
claration that he believed he was called by the lie
SFLMT to become a Minister of the Gospel ! He iII:US
the command of 5 ,0001 , and wants to invest it more
advantageously than in the Three per Cents. Be
seeks a Church living " of adequate value," and it
must be " in a desirable county" (suited, no doubt, for
hunting,urther thetaoti must
ng, fishing,be
and pleasant society).
F
" a good residence, ofs( Les,
&c."—by which is probably meant a fine range of
shoaling,