The Sun.
London, England, 1864-02-22 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

SATURDAY REVIEW.—It must be an immense
honour to represent Brighton in Parliament. Judg-
ing from what men are willing to go through for the
chance of attaining that position, we should say that
it must be one of the very proudest distinctions that
ever fired a generous ambition. After reading the
account of the proceedings at last Saturday's
nomination—not to speak of the little affairs of
Monday and Tuesday, which have more than sus-
tained the reputation of the borough—one is lost in
admiring astonishment at the heroic endurance of
which English gentlemen are sometimes capab.e
when the prize of martyrdom is a seat in the House
of Commons. Not one of the five patriots who on
that occasion faced the fierce democracy of Brighton
in the fiercest mood can have been ignorant of what
was in store for him. It was perfectly well known
beforehand that there was going to be an awful
shindy, for elaborate precautions had been taken to
minimize the risk to life and limb which was more
or less incurred by all persons concerned. The
hustings were carefully fortified in the best way
that circumstances permitted. The structure was
strongly boarded round on all sides but one; a roof
of stout planking was put overhead; and the re-
porters were considerably secured in a box of extra
depth, where they could neither see nor be seen
unless they were imprudent enough to expose them-
selves voluntarily to the fire of the enemy. The
result entirely confirmed the wisdom of the judicious
arrangements. From beginning to end of the day's
proceedings there rained on the chief performers a
regular hurricane of missiles of all descriptions
—stones, dirt, gravel, oranges, battered hats,
boiled and unboiled potatoes—with the pleas-
ing accompaisiment of deafening yells frome five
thousand throats. We have no complete return
of casualties ; but the unfortunate Mayor is re-
corded to have got a black eye (not the least
wound he has received from the enlightened elec-
tors), and the strength of the works which pro-
tected the reporters was tested by "a large boulder
stone" which "came with startling force" against
the boarding in their front. Conservative and Libe-
ral speakers alike were impartially pelted, and more
than one of the candidates must have eaten (without
a metaphor) an amazing quantity of dirt. Yet we
hear 01 no flinching in any quarter, unless we are
to make an exception of one gentleman who resorted
to the somewhat undignified expedient—which
must have sadly interfered with the impressiveness
of his oratory—of " continually bobbing about and
shielding his face with his hat." Candidates, movers,
and seconders all stood manfully up to their work,
as if they lrather liked it than otherwise ; and all,
with a magnanimity which does credit to human
nature, professed unbounded zeal for the elevation
and glorification of the working class of which their
hearers were politely assumed to be-a fair average
sample. In a moral point of view, likewise, the day's
proceedings included much which nothing but the
very strongest sense of a duty to be performed, or
of an honour to be won, could have rendered tole-
rable to a gentlemen. The speakers, no less than
the auditors, indulged in a liberal exchange of those
little amenities which are only endurable in the
pursuit of a cherished object of ambition. Even the
refined and cultivated Mr. Fawcett—who, by the
lvay, seems throughout to have enjoyed the rather
questionable distinction of being the popular fa-
vourite—roundly charged his opponents with cor-
ruption and intimidation; and he was given to
understand in his turn that he dealt in " calumnies,"
that he pursued an " ignoble course," and that he
would retire from the contest with "a stigma upon
his character." It is a fine thing for the country
that men of intellect and social standing are ready
to go through this sort of thing with no earthly ob-
ject in view but the public good. It speaks
volumes for the disinterested patriotism of Eng-
lish gentlemen that no fewer than five aspirants
can be found in a single borough, who, for
the chance of performing gratis a most laborious
service to their fellow citizens, will subject them-
selves for hours together to insult and outrage not
unattended by-personal danger. Even under defeat,
they sustain the same indomitable spirit which had
carried them bravely through the conflict. At the
declaration of the poll on Tuesday, Mr. Goldsmid
pledged himself to his auditors, in the fee of a
shower of missiles, to come forward again on the
first opportunity; and we have little doubt that his
disabled end absent rival, Mr. llarnas—who had
unfortunately fallen among the Philistines the night
before and been very scurvily used—would be quite
ready to give a similar undertaking. It is to be
regretted that, as there was but a single vacant
seat to dispose of, the martyrdom of four out of the
five candidates necessarily wont unrewarded. One
and all, to the " Protestant champion" downwards,
they claim our respectful admiration.
EXAMINER.—A money crisis exists in India lead-
ing to difficulties in trade and finance. This has
been ascribed to all manner of causes but the right
one. It has been ascribed to the hoarding of silver by
the natives—to India's being now, as at all times, a
sink of the precious metals—to the incapacity of
the mints to coin fast enough—and to the inability
of the banks to issue a sufficiency of paper money.
We believe the true cause to be over-trading, or spe-
culation beyond means, a mistake which India has
made before, but probably never on so great a scale
ac on the present occasion. The unnatural demand
of Europe for cotton, caused by the American civil
war, is the main cause of the over-trading. Before
the cessation of the American supply, the cost of the
Indian supply at the old normal prices was estimated
at no more than £9,000,000. Very nearly the same
quantity in 1863, and of somewhat worse quality,
is estimated to cost £43,000,000, a difference
which amounts to the frightful sum of
£3l,ooo,ooo—one sufficient to disarrange the
commerce of any country. It has to be made
good by imported bullion and merchandise, which
have at the same time to pay for the usual supply
of other Indian staples, such as sugar, rum, indigo,
raw silk, jute, oil seeds, and rice, hides, horns, &e.
No wonder, then, that such a state of things should
bring on a commercial crisis. As to the theory of
India being a sink of the precious metals, we can
only say that it produces neither gold nor silver, and
if it is to have them, it must have them from foreign
nations. It is no more a sink of gold and silver than
it is of copper, tin, and zinc, all of which it is a
large consumer, without producing a pound's weight
of any one of them. It is, in fact, no more a sink of
gold and silver than is England of sugar, wine,
cotton, silk, and hemp. As to the boarding of the
precious metals by the Indians, we have not the
least doubt but that it has been monstrously exag-
gerated. The buying of treasure in the East is sel-
dom or never practised, except in civil war and fo-
reign invasions. The only way in which silver is
withdrawn from circulation in India is by its con-
version to trinkets for the wives and children of the
peasants. Now the amount so disposed of cannot
possibly be large, for the upper and micEle classes
are too intelligent to indulge in tricketry, and the
number of the peasantry who can do so must be
small, the majority living from hand to mouth,
deeply indebted to the money-lenders. The people
of India, it should not be forgotten, are not in
money matters a prodigal and thriftless race, but,
far beyond their state of civilisation, economical,
and generally evenp penurious. That India is not at
present labouring under any peculiar scarcity of the
precious metals is, we think, to be inferred from the
fact that Europe is at present sending to it hardly
one-half of the bullion it supplied before the cods-
.mencement of the cotton famine. Previous supplies
had, in fact, gone a good way towards saturating
it. But the monetary difficulty of India is accom-
panied by a financial state, not, indeed, formidable,
but disappointing, for it threatens to reduce the
yearly £3,000,000 of surplus which have accrued
since the suppression of the rebellion to no surplus
at all, or, may-be, to a deficit.
SPECTATOR.—Mr. Gladstone's sermon at Haw ar-
den on the value of thrift was not composed, as the
sermons he is said to be always writing usually are
merely for his own edification, or that of a provin-
cial audience. It was the expression of a convic-
tion deeply rooted in his mind, and which even then
him towards a measure which, if the
was impelling
people accept it heartily, may make thrift of the
most provident and farsighted kind a constituent of
the national character, All through the recess little
hints have appeared in the semi-official journals of
some great measure with which Mr. Gladstone in-
tended to continue the war against pauperism
which he declared when he instituted the State
Banks for the poor, and social reformers half ex-
pected that it would be ushered in by one of those
wonderful efforts which, besides making Mr. Glad-
stone a Minister, prove that rich eloquence and
exact statistics may proceed at the same time from
the same mouth; that Adam Smith might have been
an orator, or Cicero a currency doctor, and yet not
have been an intellectual lusus naturce. The effort,
however, has been postponed, and the most decisive
blow whida since the new Poor-law has been levelled
by a British Government at English misery has
been delivered in the form of a short, simple, and
almost technical bill, introduced without explana-
tion " by Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer and
Mr. Peel." In the Act which created the Post-office
Savings: Banks there was, as we pointed out some
weeks since, a clause enabling any person to pur-
-1 chase a small deferred annuity. That clause was,
however, inoperative, and, indeed, so far forgotten
that postmasters in country districts declared they
knew nothing about it, and refused without special
instructions to earry out its previsions. It required
the poor man afraid of the workhouse for his old
age to buy the annuity by a single payment, and
as he had not the money, and would not part with
it if he had, and seldom heard of the Act, and could
not understand its provisions when he did hear, he
never attempted to benefit by the new principle
introduced. In three years there was scarcely a

single application, not one serious one, indeed, ex-
cept from a liberal master or two anxious to provide
for an old dependent, and the poor went on sub-
scribing to societies which every eduested man who
read their rules knew must fail just when life-long
payments had made their promises beneficial,
Mr. Gladstone resolved on extending his scheme,
and the present bill gives the Treasury power to
accept payment for such annuities in instalments,
to be regulated as to amount and intervals entirely
by the officials. That is all contained in the im
poriant clause, and that is enough in Mr. Gladstone's
hands to reform the habits of English lower-class
life, and, if only the masses can be induced to accept
the enormous privilege conceded, to revolutionise
the operation of the Poor Laws. For it enables the
Chancellor by simple executive order to create a
Benevolent Society, covering the entire kingdom
with its offices, open to subscriptions like the
societies which already cover the tend, but unlike
them beyond risk of fraud, or injustice, or bank-
ruptcy, or the temptation of exhausting trust funds
in unlimited beer for the throats of thirsty trustees.
He can, and we believe will, arrange that payments
in pennies shall be received weekly at all post-
office savings banks, which payments shall secure to
the payer an annuity at sixty of not less than ten
shillings a week. John Smith, engineer journey-
man, may, in fact, by sacrificing—on a rough cal-
culation—about seVenpence a week of his wages,
guarantee himself against poverty when he can
work no longer, or if he has a little extra nerve in
parting with wages, may buy for himself an old
age of hearty, well-fed comfort. The servant wi;o
now, after a life of well-fed ease, passed in houses
where she is as far as physical comfort is concerned
herself one of the rich, looks forward to the work-
house as her only home in old age, may, by merely
paying away her " veils," secure herself an inde-
pendence which will make her a welcome guest
with all the relatives who now plead that, kindly
as they are inclined, they can but just feed them-
selves. This payment, moreover, is made for an
absolute certainty. No blunder of calculation, or
fraud by secretaries, or claim from a pot-house
landlord, or vote by half-drunk men, received as
" liberal" by the society and as insane by Mr. Tidd
Pratt, can impair the State guarantee, or leave the
nation without means to allow the annunity earned
by such ceaseless thrift. The element of risk, the
doubt as to future solvency which destroys the in-
stinctive thrift of the poor, is removed, and every
penny the labourer can lay by is assured beyond all
chances, save those which would destroy the value
of Consols, to his old age. It is not too much to say
that if the scheme is accepted by Parliament and
the people, the worst misery of poverty, the vague
dread of the future which deepens and intensifies
itself with every advance of education, the anxiety
which is the harass of the middle-class, and is be-
coming the torture of the poor, will be abolished.
The first clause of the little bill on a half-sheet of
paper is the deadlient blow ever levelled by an Eng-
lish Cabinet at the sum of human misery, the
strongest check officials have ever been enabled to
place on recklessness and prodigality. The suc-
cess of the measure depends upon the people, and
their co-operation has still to be secured. The bill
will need exposition, and exposition in a very po-
pular form; but the penny press and the clergy can
manege that between them. The postmasters will
do nothing, will, indeed, resist as much as they dare,
those functionaries hating trouble to an extent
which afflicts them with chronic incivility. Even
a relieving officer is scarcely such a brute to the
poor as the average country postmaster, a cause
which impedes the success of the postoffice banks
almost as much as the postmistress's habit of chat.
ter. The poor object to be cursed, except in the
way of business, and object still more to hear their
savings discussed in the village taproom where,
though the landlord is " safe," and the villagers
trusted, the master's bailiff is neither, and the poor
man's relatives are greedy for little loans. Still, if
the proposal is attractive the people will hear of it
and understand it in the end ; but will it be attrac-
tive ? In the towns we think it will, and among
better-class servants ; but throughout the people it
will be regarded as having one serious drawback
What is to be done about sickness ? Old age is far
to the young, but sickness is always near, " con
finements" are pretty nearly inevitable, and the
society which offers allowances for illness as well es
old age may have the preferencce over the Govern-
ment, which provides for old age alone. If the idea
becomes general that the society is more beneficial,
Mr. Gladstone's bill like every other advance in
civilisation, benefit the mechanics but just miss the
noun try labourer. He may see means for meeting
this objection, and we shall wait with some anxiety
for his exposition, but for ourselves we are clear
that to succeed the State must go one step further,
and guarantee through the Union medical machi-
nery annuities payable in sickness. Without that
advance the benefit may be but partial, with it
Mr. Gladstone will have extinguished among the
honest and industrious the horrible dread of old age.

LONDON REVIEW.—The flagrant abuses of Pri-
vate Bill Legislation have at last compelled tee
Government to deal with the question. Foremost
among the evils of Parliamentary Committees are
their incredible waste and costliness. The London
and North Western Railway has spent from first to
last a million sterling in the committee-rooms of
St. Stephen's! The Great Western has expended
£BOO,OOO in Parliamentary contexts. The Great
Northern was mulcted in £420,000 before a sod was
turned. The Parliamentary costs per mile of the Groat
Eastern are set down at £9OO. Some shorter lines
have been plundered in a still more shameless man-
ner. The Hereford Railway expended a quarter of
a million in obtaining/he sanction of a line 25 miles
in length—say £lO,OOO per mile. Fifteen and even
20 per cent. on the capital of a company are not
unfrequently wasted in Parliamentary litigation.
Sir M. Peto, indeed, relates one case in which the
entire subscribed capital of a company (X 82,000)
wasswallowed up in passing the ordeal of the ,tand-
ing orders! It is conjectured, with some show of
probability, that of the £400,000,000 expended on
the railways of the United Kingdom about a tenth
has been swallowed up in Parliamentary contests
and committee-rooms. It may be thought that the
great cases of wasteful litigation belong to the years
of railway mania-1845, 1846, and 1847. But this
notion is dissipated by a return of the Parliamen-
tary outlay of the great lines between 1855 and
1861. The London and North Western spent
£150,009 ; the Lancashire and Yorkshire, £90,000
(£40,000 in 1861) ; the Great Western, £86,000
(X 40,000 in 1861); the Caledonian, £80,000; the
North British, £60,000; the Great Eastern, £48,000
(£28,000 in 1861). Mr. Whalley, M.P., charges
Parliament with having caused an expenditure of a
million and a half on less than 300 miles of railway
in Wales. The sum spent by railway companies by
no means represents the entire cost of Parliamentary
litigation. Small landowners, and those who have
inconsiderable interests to protect, are compelled to
pay feesentirely disproportioned to the value of their
interests. Col. Wilson Patten, who, as chairman of
the Committee of Selection, may be said to be
the manager of the private business of the house,
states that a gentleman of Gloucestershire or
Wiltshire who had to defend his garden against a
railway could not get into the committee-room
without incurring an outlay of £35. His garden
was worth £B5; his bill for Parliamentary expenses
ultimately amounted to more than £3OO. A Par-
liamentary agent told a Committee that in no case
would he advise an owner to appear in Parliament
against a railway company. This is a denial of
justice to the owners of small properties. In one
case a gentleman was put to an expense of £3OO or
£4OO in preparing his case. Hie counsel were in-
structed, and his witnesses were in E, tt 6:clan ce,_when
the railway company, at the last moment, :old him
they did not want his land. This was a case in
which an owner has no redress, and yet Parliament
has refused to relieve such persons from payment of
fees. Why is there such an outcry, not to say panic,
in regard to the metropolitan railway invasion but
that small landowners and occupiers know they are
at the mercy of railway companies, and are debarred
by the ruinous expense from appealling to a Par-
liamentary Committee for protection ? Add to the
millions spent by railway companies the hundreds
of thousands levied upon owners of property,
tenants, and others who have had rights to defend,
and what a monstrous and sinful aggregate of waste
has been sanctioned and enjoined by Parliament !
LAW TIMES.—The " Palace of Justice " is to be
again brought before the House of Commons.
Notice has been given that a bill to authorise its
erection near Lincoln's-inn-fields will be introduced
during the present session, and we trust it will find
a happier fate than its predecessor. Since the re-
jection of the former bill by the measuring cast
majority of one, the evidence in its favour has mul-
tiplied ; the complaints by the public and the Pro-
fession of the insufficiency of the existing law courts
have grown louder and louder, and out of doors no
economist could be found so rigid as to refuse assent
to the assertion that in no part of Europe is justice
so meanly lodged as in wealthy England. At length
then there is a fair prospect that this long required
improvement will be accomplished, and we may hope
to see in a few years a concentration of all the law
courts on a noble site, in the heart of London, con-
structed with all the accommodations for the public,
fcr the suitors, and for the Profession, which the
union of experience and science can devise.
RAILWAY NEWS.—It may be matter of interest
at the present time, when the subject of circular
railways for London is under the consideration of
Parliament. to hear what has been the result of the
Chemin de Fer de Ceinture de Paris, which encircles
Paris, north of the Seine, as Mr. Fowler's proposed
Outer Circle Railw•iy would, if constructed, encircle
London north of the Thames. The Paris line ex-
tends from Auteil, just outside the fortifications, by
Patsy, Les Batignolles, Montmartre, La Chapelle,

Belleville, St, Mande (outside the Place du Vont
clog
round to the stations of the Orleans Railway,
to the Jardin des Plantes. The line also coullect,
the various railways across which it
enabling merchandise to be readily carried bY,.lar•
means from one metropolitan station to an
18x2,
This railway was opened on the 14th of July' re
and the results of tie enterprise since that date the
now before us, as reporteJ by the companY to.
_t.
shareholders in Paris on the 14t,b. of IgB3
It will be suffi,:ient if we state the traffic of
thtg
The total number of passengers convey (311%f,. an
passes, tbil.;
line during the entire year was 205,607, The
average of 589 per day, or 32 per train. The ' ,oth
was worked between five stations until the rhL
of November, when two other stations were oPestir,‘
one of which Belau., is " en correspontiance'
the Vincennes Railway. Ttie results, as resPe'-
money, were by no means satisfactory. Ttle fir
ceipts were found to have amounted to 1,093,311
and the expenses to 1 293,772 f., showing a I°ssie
197,460 f. on the working. Although a consideo;' 0
increase is expected in the traffic on the cornPlet',o°,
of the line round the south of Paris (which, bt)til
ever, will involve the. construction of two c°s'l,s
bridges over the Seine) we believe the propriel°o
of the Chemin de Fer de Ceinture de Paristr
discovered that the traffic of a great city is" " -„t° -
one suburb of it to another : and the disco
the
bably, may not be without its interest to the P
jectors of the proposed similar circular railvcld
round London.

Murder of a Wife at Hirwain, Glamorgaw
shire, and Suicide of the Murderer.

The village of Hirwain, Glamorganshire,
Saturday thrown into a state of the greatest e$ be.
ment and consternation, in consequence of
its gD
coming known that an engineer, named r'y ,r
Williams, had murdered his wife by strangling b'
whilst asleep, and had afterwards put a
his own existence by hanging himself from an ir°
crook in the ceiling of the kitchen of his dwellin,gl
house, The first alarm was given by a little l;
of
daughter of the deceased couple, who ran out 0'
the house screaming and in evident terror, and wf,bd°
on being interrogated said that her father fl-d
mother were both dead. The neiglaltours atfirst bePheut
that she was suffering from some childish feer,A7,nz
on entering the house they were horrfied at flnut.ed--
the man hanging by the neck, as already descriv,;
period
from the ceiling of his kitchen. They cut d°".3
the body as speedily as possible and found it Still
warm, but the vital spark had fled. They tn,
went upstairs, where the wife was found in L:el3s
and apparently asleep. There were no indie3tino
of any struggle having taken place, but the
woman was quite dead, and on her body beied,
examined it was found that she had been straeg .ch
apparently in her sleep, by means of a cravat, Wbi to
was found drawn so tightly round her throat fis
se
be to an extent embedded in the flesh. In her es;,,
also the body was not quite cold. It has bee
certained that the murderer and his victimre-r,it a
to bed as usual on the Friday night, and there va
be no doubt that he got up at an early henr':er
having first despatched his wife in the we-riltof
indicated, went into the garden, cut down a Rkbat
a clothes line, and hanged himself with it. criU►e
motive led to the perpetration of the doub;e
d that
hri not been ascertained, but it is sal
Williams, who was not forty years old, had boolot
bad health, and had suffered is his spirits s that
that lunacy may probably have led to the feoce
tragedy. Information of the sad event wasst "oe
sent to the coroner with a view to an inquest°ll
bodies.

363" I
olert
0 "