The Sun.
London, England, 1864-04-22 00:00:00

Mr. GLADSTONE'S explanation of yesterday.

The upshot being, nevertheless, that GARIBALDI
is to-day, all of a sudden (and as it certainly
appears to us, rather unceremoniously) hurried out
of England—because, it seems in the exceedingly
affectionate solicitude of one of our Cabinet
Ministers for General GARIBALDI'S health, that
he, GARIBALDI, had better change all his plans,
break through the whole of his arrange-
ments, promises, DO matter what, and go
away ! GARIBALDI himself all the time not only
protesting that (everything considered, or, in other
words, barring his foot) he feels uncommonly well
—but, in every line of his bronzed and handsome
face, looking the vary picture of health ! His
sense of his own capability for going through any
amount of fatigue that appeared to be before him, is
corroborated, for that matter, by the able Italian bur-
geon personally in attendance upon him, namely,
Dr. :13AsiLE, whose brief but emphatic letter
(to that effect) we published in The Sun
several days ago. All this time —side by
side with this Hurrying Away of GARIBALDI
—what is occurring here, in the midst of us,
in our metropolis ? 'What is occurring we mean
in the matter of the Dano - German Confe-
rence ? Why—to say the least of it, by a very
strange coincidence—there are all this little
petty hitches and delays in regard to the prelimi-
nary getting together of the Conference ! The in•
augurative sitting of the plenipotentiaries, some-
how or another, has to be postponed and postponed !
Of course purely by a coincidence—the negotiators
from the various Governments, can't, for some
reason, fairly settle down to the business before
them. Perhaps—we just throw out the hint,
as a little shadowy shred of a hope for us
yet to cling to, in the matter of this Con-
ference—perhaps, just birely as a possibility,
the Conference may Now at length contrive to
begin its labours—by the time, that is to say, that
our authorities have come to know for certain that
GARIBALDI has taken his departure from England
en route for Caprera, on board the Duke of SUTHER-
LAND'S yacht. Who knows ? At any rate let us
hope so. And afterwards let us hope, too, that
something may eventually come from it—that is,
from the Conference itself ?

In the meantime, we presume we may—if only i❑
the exercise of our common sense—entertain oar own
opinion in regard to the health of GARIBALDI.
Yet, really and quite frankly, be it said at once
by us—alto in the exercise of our common sense—
that while Ministers of the Crown are doing
what they are doing, and not a doubt
about it—(for the facto come to be proved
afterwards very awkwardly, come even to
be acknowledged by themselves as facts)—
while, we say, Ministers of the Crown are doing
what, one after another, they are doing, we
don't set such very high value upon their explana-
tions afterwards ! If the truth must be spoken
in the matter at all—well, There it is! Frankly,
and quite distinctly we acknowledge it : the ex-
planations recently given in regard to their—shall
we say ? extra•official— doings, the explanations
recently given to the House of Commons,
in one case, by Mr. STAN SFELD, and now, in regard
to a totally different matter, by Mr. GLADSTONE,
have for us the very smallest interest, value, or
importance. There has, in each instance, been, first
of all, so much of the mppressio veri in the manner of
these two Ministers of the Crown, the little one and
the big one, the ex-Junior Lord of the Admiralty
and the Right Hon. the Chancellor of the Exche-
quer—there has been on their part so much of
studied reticence, that it has been in no way pos-
sible for us to respect very much, or to tot any
very particular value upon their subsequent
explanations. We listen to what it is they have to
say as English gentlemen—and one of them at any
rate as an eminent British statesman. And—listen.
ing to them as such—we believe of course
that we are listening to the manly truth
throughout. But—for the life of us—we can't get
over the glaring, staring, undeniable facts of the

case in either instance. We can't for one instant
lose a recollection of the proved and acknowledged
" doings," of :the ,two Ministers. There, for

example, on ono hand we know for an absolute
certainty that only the othEr day Mr.
STANSFELD, though a "Minister of the Crown," as
he coxcombingly called himself, though a junior

Lord of the Admiralty, and as such a mem-
ber of Lord PA LM ERSTON'S Administration,

not only continued individually to cherish his inti-

mate personal. friendship with M. MAzzINI, but

also continued (until ho was found out to be doing
so, and was thereupon shamed into discontinuing it)
that, he continued to render his (the Minister'b) pri-

vats residence the channel and receptacle for the

Secret Correspondence of that notorious Arch-Con-

spirator. Again, we know also for an absolute

certainty that, within a very few boars from the
present time, another and a far more impor-

taut member of the Governme has, on
the plea of GARIBALDI'S health, been personally in-
strumental in hurrying him, GAlti.ktra, out of
England—and this Tory oddly (purel:, of oouroe, by

a coincidence) when this Dano-German Conference
is trying to begin its sittings here in London!
And, beyond that, we know also that Mr. GLAD-
STONE ha's strangely gone t,ut of his way to do all
this—very oddly (but here again, of course, purely
as a coincidence) just after Lord CLARENDON'S
return to London from his conciliatory mission to
the French Government.

By the mail from Bombay we learn with regret
that the fears which were previously entertained
by the experienced residents have been too surely
fulfilled, and that a disastrous outbreak of cholera
is ravaging the provinces of Central and Western
India. It will be remembered that considerable
uneasiness has been fele i❑ India on the score of the
public health for come time past, and the last mail
brought us intelligence of the commotion excited in
Bengal by the steps which the .provincial Govern-
ment had thought it necessary to take in order to
put a stop to the pernicious and dangerous custom
of throwing dead bodies into the Ganges. Accord.
ing to the Bombay Gazette there was only too much
reason for apprehension on the subject, seeing that
the terrible epidemic which, tradition tells us, had
its origin in the dirt and unhealthiness of native
towns, has already broken out with great virulence
in the Southern and Western portions of the em-
pire. Bombay itself is, as yet, comparatively free
from the disease, but in Surat, Guzerat, Berar, and
Kandeish the list of victims is alarmingly extensive.
It is said that the deaths number some hundreds per
day in these parts, and even allowing for the exag*
geration of alarm and anxiety, there is reason to
fear that the visitation is severe and widespread.
The natives are, of course, the first and most nume-
rous of the victims. Their habits, tbeir ignorance,
the disposal of their dead, all tend to propagate
the disease when orce established, as well as to
render them especially liable to its influence. A
good many Europeans, however, are said to have
also succumbed to the unseen enemy, and principally
those employed on the railway works. Such a
calamity, although always deplorable, is particularly
to be lamented just now, when industry and enter-
prise were beginning to develop° themselves in
India, and so many sources of benefit to the country
and profit to individuals seemed to be opening oat
to the adventurous. It is to be feared that this
appearance of a be more invincible than the tribes
of the hills, more deadly and more dangerous than
the mutineer, will damp, in some measure, the ener-
gies of Anglo-Indians, and deter many from casting
in their fortunes with a land subject to such blight-
ing influences. It remains to be considered, too,
how far we are justified in exposing men to the
dangers of such a latitudie and several points lay
open to grave reflection. In the first place, we shall
do well to consider how far the veil is remediable,
and how it is inevitable, and before setting down
the climate or soil of India as hopelessly unhealthy
we shall do well to ask ourselves what result the
same conditions of life would produce in our own
temperate zone. A rigid system of sewage and
drainage, a constant endeavour to diffuse physio-
logical knowledge among the people and to pro-
mote the use of baths and wash-houses, to encou-
rage ventilation and cleanliness in social habits, has
not prevented fever and cholera from decimatiug
the population of some of our lanes and rookeries.
We have found by an experience so common that
its teaching his passed into a truism, that wher-
ever large numbers of persons are packed together
without a close and careful observance of the three
grand requisites for health in cities—cleanliness,
drainage, and ventilation—sickness and death will
be of constant and familiar occurrence. The sound
sense of Lord PALMERSTON'S practical advice to the
Scottish citizens on the occasion of their proposed
Fast Day on account of a prevailing epidemic, was
universally recognised, and the inconsistency of
public humiliation for a calamity which was in-
duced by public neglect, without any corresponding
steps being taken to mitigate the evil, was admitted
on all hands. But if the laws of health are inexor-
able in their nature in a climate and among a peo-
ple like our own, what must they be under a sun
like that of India ? Yet a limited supply of bad
water, a totally inefficient attempt at drainage, lied
accumulating heaps of decaying matter are pressed
into the service of King Cholera, as if he needed
any such help. The climate may be trying to the
European constitutiou, but what would our Regis•
trar-General's returns be like if heaps of refuse were
suffered to accumulate at our doors under a July
sun, if our sewage system were a thing unknown,
if dead bodies floated up and down the Thames, if
we could only obtain a smell quantity of very in-
different enter, and a mass of people lived hard by
with the evil habits of the Hindoos, and the smell
of burning bones continually poisoned the air and
sickened us with the thought that human remains
were being thus consumed ? If we picture to our-
selves the probable condition of things after a few
weeks of such a state of things carried on in the
temperature of last July, we shall have less to say
about the dangers of the Euglish climate. We
must, too, as regards the Angle-Indian population,
add to these dangers the obstinate attempt to fol-
low the English style of living, the strong food and
drink, the exercise at all hours, and many
other habits harmless or even beneficial
at home, but dangerous, because unsuitable,
in our Eastern Empire. The mortality among our
soldiers has been so excessive as to attract official
attention, and the result is that barracks will,
henceforth, be built in dry and airy spots instead
of in low, marshy, and unhealthy neighbourhoods.
We have all heard the story of the barracks
where pestilence raged until the high blank wall
whim shut oat the sea breezes was pulled down ;
but doubtless there is many a similar case in
which men's lives have bee-i sacrificed in
India to official ignorance or indifference. But
the time has gone by for the supine influence of
red-tapeism to reign paramount, and the condition
of the public health in India is a matter too
vitally important to this country to be neglected
in any way. Prompt and unprejudiced attention
should at once be given to the matter. It is, of
course, extremely difficult to interfere with the
habits of the natives, but a few plain sanitary
laws might, we should imagine, be enforced with-
out troublesome consequences if causes for irrita-
tion were carefully avoided. Secondly, no effort
or expense should be spared in removing public
establishments to well drained and airy localities.
It is nothing less than wholesale murder to con-
demn men to pass their days in close barracks, built
on low swampy ground. A good and plentiful
supply of water is another necessary of health, but
how can we hope for that with Sir CHARLES WOOD
at the India Office? The newly appointed sanitary

officials will surely make it one of their duties to
provide for the removal of all refuse and decaying

matter, since its presence in the vicinity of human

laabitaticn3 is a pat3ut agent of malarie. Many
minor points, such as preventing Anglo-Indians
from working in the wrong hours of the day, avoid-
ing unwholesome diet and dirty habits, &c., must

be mainly carried out by the people themselves, but
were such regulations, large and small, fully and

'airly observed, we should have leas of filo fatal and

widespread influence of the cholera. But unfor-
tunately India has to contend not only against

obstinate ignorance there, bat against wilful pre.'

judice in England, and it will, we fear, be long
before we see any of these reforms put into practice.
It is rumoured that our present enlightened Secre-
tary of State has distinctly refused to listen to any
proposal for removing the seat of Government from
Calcutta to a healthier spot, although the City of
Palaces has already cost us many valuable lives.
"We must hope that the report may be inaccurate,
but it comes from Bombay in sufficiently clear and
positive terms. We shall probably learn, with very
little delay, the true sate of the case, when so un-
warrantable a refusal have been actually given.
The public voice will unhesitatingly demand its
immediate and unconditional revocation.

Sonnet a Shakspere,

APRIL 23, 1864.

Le monde etait plonge dans un epais sommeil,
Et tout &ait encor chaos dans cet empire,
Des celestes lambris lorsque to vins, Shakspere,
De la nature entiere operer le reveil,

Et sur l'hurnanite briller nouveau soleil I
L'univers aux dour sons des accords de to lyre
Se sentit tressaillir, et dans un beau desire
Salua d'un hourra ton astre sano pareil I

Trois cents ans en passant sur ton jour de naissance,
Ont cimente ta gloire et ta preeminence,
Ta renommee immense a triomphe da temps ;

Et dans oe jour ce n'est pas la seule Angleterra
Qui vient le 0616lorer ton grand anniversaire,.
Mali; cent peuples divers qui t'offrent leur encens.
LE CHEVALIER DE CHATELAIX.

Departure of General Garibaldi,

THIS DAY.;

To-day General Garibaldi took his departure from the
metropolis en route to his island home, Caprera.
At an early hour several of the intimate friends of the
General called upon him at Prince's-gate to take leave, and
shortly after 1:t the General left the residence of Mr, Seely,
accompanied by that gentleman and the Earl of Shaftes-
bury, and proceeded to Stafird House, where he arrived at
half-past twelve.

It had been expected that the General's departure from
London would have taken place at a much earlier hour, and
therefore when Mr. Seely's carriage drove up to the resi-
dence of the] Duke of Sutherland, there were not more
than a dozen of persons present. The General, to all
appearance, seemed in exuberant health, and acknowledged
the greeting of the few parsons who crowded round the
carriage with his accustomed heartiness.

Later in the afternoon the General quitted the metro,.
polis on a visit, we believe, to Colonel Peard (Garibaldi's
Englishman), at his residence, Penquite, in Cornwall.
On Monday General Garibaldi leaves Plymouth on
board the Duke of Sutherland's yacht, the Ondine, for
Caprera,