The Sun.
London, England, 1863-12-01 00:00:00

tension)—West Yorkshire— Worcester, Leominster, and
Bromyard—Weston Super Mare, Axbridge, Cheddar, and
Wells—West Super Junction, Waterford and Wexford,
Wilts and Gloster, West Riding and Grimsby, Wellington
and Drayton, West Norfolk Junction, Watford and Edge-
ware Junction, West Shropshire Mineral (new lines), ditto,
alterations, Wallingford and Watlington, Woodgreen and
Enfield, Wrexham, Mold, and Connah's Quay—Waltham-
stow, Clapham, and City—Weald of Kent, Wolverhampton
and Bridgemark, Wimbledon and Brixton, West Drayton,
Staines and Woking—Whitland, Tenby, and Milford Haven
—Wensum Valley—the total number of projects being 300.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TlMES.—There has been no delay in appointing
a successor to the great office which the certain re-
signation and only too probable death of Lord Elgin
have rendered vacant. It was considered desire-
able that the new Governor-General should depart
for the sphere of his duties by the mail which
leaves this country on the 10th of this month. The
list of persons qualified by rank and talents to hold
an office which requires the greatest ability and de-
votion to the public service, but which the prescrip-
tion of the last thirty years seemed to have de-
cided must be held by a Peer, was soon run
through. Some were disqualified by age—a melan-
choly experience having recently made it only
too plain that those who go to discharge the tre-
mendous duties and responsibilities of this anxious
and laborious office, if they commence their expe-
rience of India after the meridian of life,rgo only to
seek an honourable but certain grave. Others,
possessed of rank, wealth, and high connexion—of
everything that gives a charm and attraction to life,
were unwilling to run the risk of what has come to
be regarded as a dangerous service; while others
found in the political prospects which were open to
them a counter attraction too powerful to be re-
sisted. It has been happily determined, then, to
break through the charmed circle which has so long
restricted the office of Governor-General to the
Peerage, and to send out to the empire which
was formed by the exertions of Robert Clive
and Warren Hastings not only a commoner, but
a commoner wholly unconnected with any family
of the English aristocracy. The person, how-
ever, on whom the choice of the Govern-
ment has rested is a man stamped by the hand of
nature with the truest impress of nobility, and
though not born, to inherit aristocratic titles is pe-
culiarly calculated to create them. Every one will
recognise from this description that the new Go-
vernor-General of India is Sir John Lawrence.

If past services can be admitted as giving a title to
positions of honour and command, as well as proving
the fitness of him who has rendered them, no living
man has a claim to be intrusted with the govern-
ment of India at all comparable to the claims of our
new Viceroy. He has saved the empire which he
is destined to administer. Placed in a newly con-
quered and turbulent province, which nothing but
his genius and firmness could have reduced in eo
short a period to anything like order, cut off from
the slightest possibility of assistance from any
quarter, intrusted with the lives of the whole Euro-
pean population of the Punjab, with nothing but a
small military force and his own undaunted courage
to rely on, the mutiny of 1857 found Sir John Law-
rence in a position in which it would have been
thought a great triumph to preserve the interests
more immediately committed to him from destruc-
tion. That, however, was not the view which Sir
John Lawrence took of his duty. Many felt then,
and all see now, that upon the success of the siege
of Delhi depended the existence of our power in
India. If we had not taken Delhi, we should have
lost the country ; though it is certainly possible that,
by enormous efforts and sacrifices, we might have
succeeded in reconquering it. The siege of Delhi
owed its success to Sir John Lawrence. Without his
energetic remonstrances, it would have been aban-
doned; without his foresight, fertility of resource,
and unflinching resolution, the siege of Delhi would
have failed. Out of his own slender resources, in the
midst of a population only watching for the least
symptom of weakness to rise in insurrection, Sir
John Lawrence contrived to organise the means of
transport for stores, artillery;and munitions of every
kind, and, above all, those reinforcements under
Nicholson, without which success could never have
been achieved. At the same time he suppressed
with a strong hand the mutiny of his own native
troops, and held his province without any of those
disastrous reverses which befel us in so many other
parts of our empire. But it is not only on the
ground of past services that the elevation of Sir John
Lawrence to the office of Governor-General is to be
justified, but on the powers for command and orga-
nisation which those services have drawn forth and
made manifest. No man has more power over native
races, no man possesses more the faculty of giving
them as much of European civilisation as they are
capable of receiving. The collection of revenue
and the administration of justice in the Punjaub
under Sir John Lawrence have become the model
for all the non-regulation provinces. The procedure
in civil causes, mainly, we believe, the invention
of Sir John Lawrence himself, was the precursor
of that code of procedure which has worked so
happy a revolution among the dilatory Courts of
India. From among the men trained by Sir John
Lawrence have been found those best fitted for
high and difficult trusts, and the maxims of his
policy have become a sort of tradition among many
who never knew their author. He has the credit
of possessing, if not a profound knowledge of
finance, a peculiarly clear and quick insight into its
difficulties. If we add to all this a character of the
most perfect simplicity, truth, and conscientious-
ness, we have given the portrait of a man whose
appointment to exercise sway over the destinies of
a hundred and fifty millions of the human race is
amply, and more than amply, justified. There
have been periods in the history of India when a
man such as Sir John Lawrence would have
been the very ideal of a Viceroy, bringing order
out of chaos, tempering justice with mercy, and
overwhelming by the force of his character
those who might not be prepared to yield to
the wisdom of his counsels. At present India
demands rather the development of her internal
resources, the adaptation of European ideas to
her government, her agriculture, her commerce,
and all the arts of life; the diffusion of an
education calculated to raise the 'people from their
degraded state, the improvement of means of trans-
port, and the care of the health of the soldier. We
believe that in these and similar matters Sir John
Lawrence, with the versatility of true genius, will
be found as much at home as ,he has been in the
arts necessary to reclaim a barbarous people and to
crush a cruel and treacherous enemy. Indeed,
when we compare the qualifications which he is
known to possess with those which have been
proved to belong to the best of •his predecessors
when they entered on the administration of Govern-
ment, we can scarcely admit the possibility that he
may be found less adapted for a period of peace and
commercial development than he has undoubtedly
shown himself for a period of war, of treachery, and
of danger. We have only one further remark to
make. Sir John Lawrence is well known to be a
man of strong religious feeling, and is generally
supposed to advocate more active measures for the
propagation of Christianity in India than the gene-
ral opinion of those to whom her government is in-
trusted would be inclined to recommend. We do

not doubt that in this, as in so many other cases,
that practical good sense which has never deserted
him will not fail to attend him, and that neither
the stability of our empire nor the cause of civili-
zation and enlightenment will suffer by too ardent
a wish to anticipate a change which can only be
the result of temper, patience, and long-suffering.
HERALD. —Onr readers are doubtless familiar
with the anecdote of the housemaid who protested
that there was no dust or dirt in her jurisdiction,
"It was the nasty sun." A similar philosophy seems
to prevail with the parochial authorities of Bethnal-
green. There is no special dirt or disease in their
immaculate parish, so they tell us—the only actual
nuisances are Dr. Moore and the coroner. True to
this conviction, the rulers of the parish are doing
their best to suppress both the one and the other,
and the energies of the vestry and the board of guar-
dians are directed to the snuffing out of Dr. Moore
and the shutting up of the coroner's court. In the
midst of the parochial turmoil thus excited, we
hear the stately tones of the Home Office, inquiring
what is the meaning of this uproar, and directing
the attention of the local authorities to certahinto legal
y
considerations. Perhaps it is not too much
much
that no parish in the kingdom commands
sthe
metro-
of public attention at the present time
and the reeking
politan parish of Bethnal-peen. The li
in upon the domain of beactledomr,e
placed in full
dens of that hatless region ght is let
view of the public eye.
But v
distinctness, and
fact accumulates with startling
ino
e
the very Government is dat the horrid
spectacles, theaalthough fact upon
parish authorities have the hardi-
hood to reproach, not
themselves, but those func•
tionaries who yet remain faithful to their trust, and
who bravely let in the light upon this
Bu t for scene of filth,
a
fever, and desolation. medical officer who
had spirit enough to risk the loss of place and fa-
coroner' who was willing
your, but for a to brave
all the petty annoyances of a parish officially hostile
to his functions, and but for the ready interposition
of the public press, all the horrors of Bethnal-green
might have existed unknown to the community at
large, and unaffected by the force of public opinion.
The sun shines upon the fever nest, and its hideous
uncleanness appals the heart cf society, however
indifferent the constituted authorities may continue
to be. It takes a good deal to convince some people,
and it evidently takes very much to make the
parochial magnates of Bethnal-green practically
coneciolle of tb,.! aboraination4 by vhich they are