The Sun.
London, England, 1852-01-01 00:00:00

THURSDAY

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

FROM THE MOB BING PAPERS OF THIS DAT.

TlMES.—There is a rule of life so directly the
ordinance of nature that all authorities are unanimouq
in its favour. Muralists and economists, philosophers
and merchants alike insist on the duty of reviewing
the natural periods of time, and settling the balance of
losses and gains. As we are placed here to advance
and improve, unless we keep a log of our voyage, and
take stock of our goods, we lose at least one important;
security and stimulus. An annual budget is expected
from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and her Ma-
jesty cannot open Parliament or prorogue it without
a short businesslike review of the recess or the session.

Following these precedents, therefore, we will pro-
ceed to sum up the losses and gains of the year 1851,
which has just quietly expired. It has given us one
vast and immeasurable gain in the Great Exhibition.
All the nations of the civilized world, not to say more,
have been represented—some very largely, arid all
very efficiently—in one fair teeeple of industry and
peace. All have become wiser and better known ; all
have cast into one great treasury, and been blessed
from its stores; and on the minds of many
nations and many millions has been left one
soothing and instructive—one glorious and indelible
impression. On all sides the seeds of knowledge
and enterprise, cast on the waters of that peaceful
confluence, are beginning to bear fruit in new dis-
coveries and undertakings. A vision of universal
peace has been seen by the wo 71d, and, if its realiza-
tion is still remote, its influence is not the less salutary
and energetic. We are not among those who expect
that the triumphs of peace are likely in our time to
extinguish the passions of peoples and the ambition of
adventurers ; but we nevertheless think we may dwell
with satisfaction and hope on the memory of an event
the direct and natural tendency of which is pacific
and profitable. The more of such occasions the bet-
ter. They are the basis of institutions, and the means
of an intercourse, which cannot but endure, and
which must in time tell on the fortunes of hu-
manity. England has had her full share in the
glories of this world-wide competition. She has
effaced the national stigma of inhospitality. She has
shown a largeness of conception, a practical talent, a
rapidity of performance, a power of organization, a
fertility of resources, and even a taste, for which
foreigners had hardly given her credit. More con-
spicuous than all have been her fairness and gene-
rosity. All this is gain. The victory has been as
cheap as it has been bloodless. The whole cost of
the Exhibition to the thousands of exhibitors, and
millions of visitors, has not equalled that
of one battle. Among other results there
has been an interchange between this and
the neighbouring metropolis, singularly be-
fitting the year that has seen the two
cities linked by instantaneous communication, and
most happy at a crisis when events are occurring of a
nature to revive the slumbering recollections of a
miserable war. Few who keep house will forget
in the more prominent glories of this year that it has
emancipated from a barbarous tax the light and air
of heaven ; nor will dwellers in this city forget that
it sealed the fate of Smithfield. There are other
honourable and even grateful associations that will be
ever connected with this memorable year. As if to
show that the monster attraction in Hyde-park could
neither divert the national mind from objects of para-
mount value, nor supesede other species of advance-
ment, there have been some grave proceedings of a
religious or political aspect. The nation has made a
solemn protest against Papal aggressions, and if the
enactment in which it was expressed was not strik-
ingly bold or immediately effective, it is the nature
of constitmtienal protests to be rather for future inter-
pretation than present effect. Again, at the very com-
mencement of the Exhibition, and with an inexhaustible
fund of popularity accruing thence to the advisers of
the Crown, they were signally beaten more than once.
They had to resign on a question of Parliamentary
reform, and returned to office on a promise to bring
forward a comprehensive measure next session. The
year 1851 has thus bequeathed a great work to the
year 1852, and the Ministerial crisis which has
brought it about must be set down to the credit of the
former year. St. Alban's, also, may claim some share
in the honour of hastening the second Reform Bill.
Reform has this year made its way into the Court of
Chancery, and a long-desired change has been in-
troduced into the law of evidence. For the rest, we
believe we may say with literal truth that the year
1851 has been unexampled for material prosperity,
for the amount of imports and exports, for the quan-
tity of both British and foreign shipping in our ports,
for the amount of labour employed, whether skilled or
unskilled, whether in the mill, the workshop, the mine,
the shipyard, or the field; for the decrease of pau-
perism, and for the enjoyment and cheerfulness of
the people at large, a very large proportion of
whom have bad their share, as delighted and de-
serving spectators in the Great Exhibition.
The losses of the year, though eclipsed in its I
splendour, have not been inconsiderable. We
have seen a British colony in South Africa assuming
a portentous resemblance to the French colony in the
north; a settlement of herdsmen and traders lapsing
into a chain of military posts, held with vast blood•
shed and cost against implacable savages. The census
of this year, while it adds fresh proofs to the growing
prosperity of Great Britain, especially in its manu-
facturing districts, discloses the serious fact that fa-
mine, fever, and emigration have taken away not less
than 2,000,000 of our Irish fellow-subjects. Happily,
seven-eighths of the loss are attributable to the last
and least unhappy of these causes, but the actual es-
trangement of so large a British mass, not only from
these isles, but for the most part from the British
Crown, is a fact the gravity of which we may some
day have cause to appreciate. As for our relations
with foreign Powers, we have long ceased to indulge
in any warm international attachments, or to expect
them in return, so there is not any positive
loss to be noted under this bead. Our relations
with Italy are not improved by the sympathies
freely expressed in this country for the politico-re-
ligious enthsiasts who are preaching a crusade against
every throne in that peninsula. Our relations with
France are not improved by our stubborn preference
of constitutional government, even in the form of a
republic, over military despotism. Our relations with
the United States are threatened at this moment by
a disagreeable and unaccountable incident, of which
it is premature to speak till something is known about
it. Oa the whole, however, it can hardly be said
that we stand quite as well with the rest of the world
as we did a twelvemonth since, though there was not
much to boast of even then. Perhaps England has
no right to expect a very general amount of
sympathy. Insulated in position, with a mixed
political constitution, the asylum for refugees from
stream,
all nations, showing her flag on every sea, and
thrusting her manufacture into every market, unable
to sympathise entirely with either monarchs against
peoples or peoples against monarchs, she commands
the respect, the fear, and even the admiration of man-
kind, but not their love or their free co-operation.
Just now, however, another change is passing over
this department of our public affairs. The advent of
a new Foreign Secretary offers some hope that we
shall preserve our boasted neutrality without either
compromisethbt
eacesnt
dG to
)
f orpetulance; without offering the right
rampant despotism, and the left to democra-
tic conspirators. The new Minister starts with the
omens in his favour. In the mimic world of
r
eat Exhibition, with its territories, its sectional
Governments, its fierce competition, and its common
appeal, Lord Granville has performed the functions of
KilTeilolus with most creditable success.
HERALD.—Hours, days, weeks, and months are
the most punctilious of servants. Again have they
performed their offices with their accustomed exacti-
tude,
of anxiety and afflic-
tion may appear longer in their transit than the same
and thus filled up the measure of another year.
The revolutions of time are irresistible and certain,
although its issues are doubtful anpderepveetruavlarmyointigo.n—lat
ishe
mighty
agl lr aannd
obstruction. continual
representative
Seasons
of
whose rapid course de-
rides
periods spent in the perfect vigour of health, or amid
the enchantments of happiness and content ; yet this
protraction is but a mental delusion.
The measured
footsteps of old Father Time admit of no irregularity
of action. The echo of the tread of the retiring mo-
ment has not altogether ceased its vibrations ere we
distinguish the advancing step of its successor.
The progression is maintained with arithmetical
precision, whether the span of the hour's duration
be seemingly contracted by the thoughtless gaiety of
youth, or apparently tediously lengthened by the
spirit-corroding cares of manhood. Though time
never actually halts in its march, yet,
at this period,
the majority of our fellow-countrymen note more
carefully its advances. Man is prone to pause, as it
were, between the new year and the old, and while
he reviews the past one, he endeavours to penetrate
the promises of good or ill shut up in the shrine of the
future. And a suitable season is it for contemplation,
nor will the wise man fail to seize upon the opportu-
nity it affords to sit down with his conscience and
look over his annual account. Such an inspection
of our past conduct is the consummation of wisdom.
We ought never to forget that—
"lie husbands life who looks not to its length,
But use; and uses it to glorify
The Giver !"
Vain to us the flight of time unless we detect the
moral it inculcates as it pursues its swift career. We
feel it, therefore, incumbent upon us to moralise a
little with the rest. We are the faithful chroniclers
of every phase of human existence from the cradle to
the tomb. We are daily setting forth, as in a
mirror, the grandest lessons afforded to humanity;
and is it not proper that we survey that which we have
achieved, and ponder over the labours we are about to
undertake? The past year has added no treasures to :t1 e
stores of our political economy. It
may bo justly
termed the year of unbounded promise, and most
ignominious performance. Ushered in with the
loudest acclamations, at its very threshold stood
failure and disgrace. A Cabinet
,ezioting by suffer-

1 8

ante, in futile endeavours to please every party suc-
ceeded most effectually in disgusting all. With no
settled principles to give direction to its counsels, it
clung to each empty bubble of opinion that promised
a momentary popularity, and then betrayed the cause
it feigned to r,drocate, till at length the disunion
among its members, which from the hour of its for-
mation has scarcely ever ceased to threaten its exist-
ence, suddenly rereals itself, and thus terminates its
last chance for a much longer duration. Imbecility
of purpose, incapacity for government, and a de-
grading humiliation to political agitators, have formed
the chief characteristics of the men composing the
Ministry. They have introduced no measures of
public utility, and tlae sole great (9) act of the session
is found to be an unseemly abortion, and is thrust
upon the shelf like other kindred specimens, carefully
preserved to prove how imperfectly the ungainly
exaggerations of. distortion imitate the symmetry of
a well-metured and carefully- constructed production.
To so low an ebb have our present diminutive
legislators of the Cabinet now fallen, that they are re-
duced to the wretched expedient of ushering in the
new year with the worn-out rallying cry of " Re-
form," in the hope of deluding the people, and thus
prolonging their sway. The advent of 1852 inspires
113. We hail it as a deliverer. Indications are not
wanting to assure us, that during its course the
government of our country will be snatched from the
hands of the incapable. If we direct our attention
to other nations, we cannot exult over much real ad-
vancement. There has been plenty of destruction of
the good and the had together, but little just rejection
of the evil, and judicious preservation of what is per-
manent and great in the constitution of states. Yet
we believe that better things are in store. We trust
that where the iron fetters of despotism press rudely
on the lovely proportions of freedom, the severity of
their grasp may be gradually and surely relaxed, and
wholesome liberty established. Let us look forward
with confidence to the actual progression of
humanity ; not the spurious counterfeit, which
rejoices in revolution, but that advancement
which is the fruition of careful statesman-
ship, and the accumulation of experience and
calm consideration. Amid the vicissitudes of domes-
tic life we trust that numbers may be found who
have gone through the year with minds unruffled by
those storms which destroy social peace, and desolate
the family hearth. These will be enabled to cast a
retrospective glance on pleasant scenes and unclouded
moments, the remembrance of which may impart a
livelier pulsation to the frame, or lend its hallowing
sweetness to mitigate the anguish of future sorrow.
Others, the children of a more active perseverance
and enthusiasm, may delight to reflect upon the diffi-
culties they have surmounted, the conflicts they have
sustained, the perils they have escaped, as the
mariner tells of the tempest and the shoal; the
soldier, of the battle and the scar ; or the tra-
veller, of the wonders he met with, or the per-
plexities that beset his path. These are glorious
harvests garnered up in the storehouse of me-
mory, to which the stricken spirit may at times
resort, and from which it may derive consolation in
seasons of prevailing gloom. Happy, thrice happy,
he who, to the best of his ability, has during the past
year fulfilled all the duties of his station. If rich, he
can think upon many a wounded bosom he has healed,
many a necessity he has relieved, and on many a
darkened hour which he has illumined by the cheer-
fulness of his presence or the liberal diffusion of his
bounty. It is no ignoble action to restore the
household gods of a family to some hearth from
which calamity has banished them. If poor, he
will remember duties zealously performed, temp-
tations to covetousness and envy at the prosperity
of others manfully overcome, and quiet and holy
resignation to the apparent inequalities of the lot
assigned to him in this world by his and its Creator.
May time be the gentle handmaid of good to us
all ! May our hearts be weeded of evil, and made
beautiful by the sweet-smelling flowers of for-
bearance, charity, benevolence, and all Christian
virtues! The improvement of individuals will achieve

the regeneration.of the world at large, and by each of
ua striving to become better, we shall hasten the ad-
vent of a brighter and holier era. Let all begin the
year with high resolves. There is One who is able
and willing to sanctify these resolves, and wbo can
cause them to bring forth a hundredfold if His di-
. .

rection be sought with meekness and with faith. To
all that do this, the new year will prove a happy one ;
and how severe soever the trials it may bring, they
will gladly own their purifying influences, and from
their beneficial results he compelled to confess that
they were " blessings in disguise." Farewell to the
old year, and welcome to the new; in the words of
our Poet Laureate we say—
" Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true."

DAILY NEWS.—Today we enter upon a new
year, which—judging by the present aspect of the
political horizon—promises to be as fruitful' in in-

ceresting events as any one that has of late gone be-
fore it. "No one," says Charles Lamb, " ever re-
garded the First of January with indifference. It is
that from which all date their time, and count upon
what is left. It 'is the nativity of our common
Adam.' I never hear the peal which rings out the
old year without a gathering up of my mind to a
concentration of all the images that have been dif-
fused over the last twelvemonth ; all I have done or
suffered, performed or neglected, in that regretted
time. I begin to know its worth as when a person
dies." Every one must acknowledge the profound
truth and beauty of these words. For the
journalist, however—who, in addition to the con-

sciousness derived from his distinctive personality,
is the depositary and exponent of the corporate con-
sciousness of large masses—they have an extended
meaning. We who have felt vividly the pulsations
of the heart of great movements—and have worked
with various degrees of ability and success to carry
out their objects—look back upon the register of the
public doings of the past year with something of a
personal interest in the retrospect. 'We feel a kind
of responsibility as to this corporate consciousness, and
are depressed or elated just as the successive images
in the phantasmagoria of last year's events are sub-
jects of sorrow or of joy, We are anxious to strike a
favourable balance of those transactions of the year in
which we have sympathised or participated—Just as
the merchant is when he posts his ledger to ascertain
his losses and his gains. Seen in this light, the events
of 1851, although not sufficiently satisfactory to
warrant indulgence in extravagant anticipations of a
millennium, are still of a kind that enables us to
entertain hopes that the cause of progress will not
only maintain its ground, but make advances in the
new year on which we this day enter. Although it
was not very pleasant at the commencement of the
year 1851 to learn that no party wouhi take the
trouble of governing us,—and that from sheer
inability to find any one else who would under-
take the task, we were obliged to place the power
thus left, in the hands of those who had thrown
it up,—still there is great consolation in the fact that
the functions of the body politic went on as well
without a government as with it. This recolleoticn

is abundantly refreshing at a time when a change of
Ministry in any other country in Europe is either
produced by, or productive of; a coup d' itat, which
paralyses all the national movements, puts the towns in
a state of siege, and converts peaceable citizens into
targets for the musketry of a brutal soldiery. Very
consolatory also is this fact, as showingthat the oscilla-
tions of the political pendulum between Whig and
Tory are so small, that the public begin to pay compa-
ratively little attention to them, and are expecting, and
will find, deliverance from some other quarter. Again,
although the proceedings of the Pope, in anathematis-
ing education in Ireland, in sowing he seeds of reli-
gious discord in England, in turning his back against
liberal principles all over Europe, and in patronising
the butchery in the streets of Paris, are melancholy
matters enough—there is comfort in the thought
that the very extravagance of this conduct is serving
to convince even Catholics of the fact—which Pro-_

testants felt sure of long ago—that the pretensions of
the Papacy are utterly incompatible with the preser-
vation of free government. So also, although we
might regret that the universal public do not declare
its
present the toleration of the episcopal hierarchy in
present anomalous state is a sin—we have reason, on
the other band, to thank our stars that the Bishops,
by the evidence forced from them about the condition
of their revenues, and the unblushing impudence of
their defence, have done much more towards enabling
us to reform the abuses theAstand by, than could have
been accomplished by any other than themselves. It
is very sad without doubt to reflect that the Bishop of
Exeter tried to get a number of his clergy together to
break the peace—but it is consoling to know that the
knowledge of what the synod did is lodged exclusively
in the brains of certain high church old ladies, who
prattle about it in a manner similar to that in which
their prototype indulged when speaking of King
Charles's visit to Tillietudlem. If the Protectionists
wail almost as loudly as ever, it is delightful to
reflect that the only annoyance they occasion is
their noise since every sensible man has
quitted their ranks. If the education 'question
is not settled for the whole kingdom—still
Manchester is on the
point of settling it for herself.
Abd-el-Bader is still in prison, in spite of Lord Lon-
donderry's epistolato,.ry and Lord Maidstone's poetical
talent ;—but then Kossuth is free, and is kindling
fire which despotism. will find it a hard matter to ex-
tingui,h. King Bomba's proclamations are vile
enough in all conscience—but then are they not so
much waste paper weighed against Mr. Gladstone's
pamphlets ? In this way we might go through the
events of the whole year just gone from us, finding
compensation—and something more—for all the evil
that we should have to lament, and then—leaving this
evil out of the question—put down as clear gain a
list of important items that would include, increase of
the revenue, diminished taxation, the Great Exhibi-

JANU A Rrur