The Sun.
London, England, 1863-08-06 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

POST.—We have a confident belief that the blus-
ter of the Federal Government will produce a very
salutary effect in Canada. The authorities at
Washington say that the conscription which has
already deluged the streets of New York with blood
is intended not as a means of augmenting the
armies now engaged against the South, but as a
menace to England. The force proposed to be raised
—300,000 men—is to be kept at home merely for
the purposes of drill and general military organisa-
tion. The excuse offered by Mr. Lincoln and his
friends was never suggested until the people of Ne w
York bad forcibly resisted the draft and set at de-
fiance the power of the Federal Government. In-
sult to England has always been a favourite stroke
of policy with American statesmen. It was suc-
cessful at the time of the Oregon and Maine boun-
dary disputes; it was not resented during the Rus-
sian war, when the alleged enlistment of a few
Germans in Pennsylvania induced the Presiaent to
break off diplomatic relations with this country ;
but Mr. Lincoln, if he be wise, will recollect the
Trent affair, and tha prompt and ample retribution,
which Lord Palmerston required and exacted. 1 he
excuse is that England, during the present contest,
has not adhered to that principle of strict neutrality
which her Majesty's proclamation announced;
. init
first,
by permitting Confederate cruisers to be
English ports; and, secondly, by permitting British
subjects to carry on with the enemy of the United
Stares trade in articles contraband of war. The truth
is that the North has no grnund of complaint on
either score. If the decision in the case of the
Alexandra be not good law, the appellate tribunal
will set the matter right; and with regard to con-
traband trade, the American cruisers and courts
have a remedy in their own hands which they cer-
tainly have hitherto applied with considerable
vigour and success. As the British Government
is content to believe that the American
prize courts will administer justice in
accordance with international law, the Fe-
deral authorities are guilty of a piece of
offensive bluster, when, anticipating a further hos-
tile decision in the case of the Alexandra, they say
that they will treat that decision as a casus Belli.
The probability is that Mr. Lincoln would never
have said a word about England if the draft had
not been successfully resisted in New York, and
when that question is settled we may for a time
hear nothing cecially offensive to England. But,
in the meantime, the chronic jealousy and dislike
which the United States have ever displayed
towards this country ought, as we have observed,
to act as a warning to Canada. It so happens that
the people of Canada, blessed with an amount of
liberty and prosperity which seldom falls to the lot
of any community,appear to think that, in the pre-
sence of complications which possibly may never
arise, they are bound to pay no regard to those mea-
sures of self-defence which their exposed and ex-
tended frontier render absolutely necessary. In the
war of 1812 the people of the Province gallantly
and successfully defeated the invading armiesof the
United States, and we believe they would do the
same if war should again unfortunately arise. But
there appears to be a disinclination on their part to
lay out any money to provide in time of peace
those means of security which, in war, constitute
the cheap defence of nations. The Canadians seem
to think that the duty of defending the Province
belongs exclusively to the mother country. They
are quite content to have a large British army sta-
tioned amongst them, because " thereout they derive
no small advantage ;'' but they will incur no ex-
pense in organising the militia or in forming volun-
teer
i
corps. The state of the military defences n
British North America is quite insufficient to meet
any incursion which might be made from the
United States. In consequence of the Trent oat-
rage, which occurred at the end of 1861, a strong
force was despatched to British North America,
and has since remained there. It consists of two
battalions of the Guards, several regiments of the
line, several batteries of artillery, and a detach-
ment of engineers. The active militia force
consists of about five thousand men, and there
are about sixteen thousand enrolled volunteers
in various states of efficiency. The sedentary
militia, about 180,000, exist only on paper. The
available force, therefore, is about 12,080 regulars
and 21,000 militia and volunteers, making a total
of little more than 30,000 men—a force totally in-
adequate to defend the lake frontier of the Upper

Province. In spite of the urgent appeals of the 1
Colonial-office, the Legislature of Canada has re-
fused to place Vie militia of Canada on an efficient
footing, As the Canadians have no sympathy with
the North, the present aspect of affairs on the con-
tinent may induce them to show s; little of the
spirit which animated their fathers in to.? w".r of
1812. Prudence as well as self-interest should .':ad
them to adopt this course. We may add that it is
the bounden duty of the Home Government to look
to the naval defence of the Province. On the inland
seas which stretch from Lake Superior to the St.
Lawrence there is not so much as a gunboat or an
armed steamer, while the Americans profess to have
in their ports a flotilla which at any time would give
them command of the lakes, and render access to
Canada a matter of comparative ease.
HERALD.—TO till the earth is the most ancient
occupation of man, and the inevitable destiny of a
large portion of the human race. Let trade, manu-
factures, and commerce accomplish what they may,
agriculture is ever essential to the sustenance and
comfort of the innumerable families of mankind. The
staff of life is found in the furrows of the field, and
the sharpwitted denizen of the city is dependent
for muscle, bone, and brain upon the patient labour
of the seemingly dull and ignorant peasant. Cities
may rise and flourish, but in the very height of
their glory, as well as in the bud and springtime of
their history, they are dependent cn the culture of
the soil for the stamina and lifeblood of their popu-
lation. The chemist comes to the trader, and the
clerk, the merchant, and the millionaire, and de-
clares that whatever may be the keenness of the
intellect, the polish which civilisation gives to
the manners, or the amount of material wealth
which may be at the disposal of the citizen, the
mortal part of the man is built up of materials " of
the earth earthy," and that, after all, the million
dwellers in the city are but dust. It may
be very bumbling, but it is important that man
should " know himself" in a physical as well as a
moral sense. The most delicate beauty in Mayfair
or Belgravia—so far as her corporeal frame is con-
cerned—is but a cunningly contrived compound,
comprising so many pounds of carbon, so many pails
of water, so much phosphate of lime, and sundry
chemical ingredients, which Faraday may exhibit
in phials and boxes. And all this animal frame is
perishable, perpetually melting or crumbling away,
as surely as so much salt or sand. To keep the
structure in repair food is essential. Man lives on
air as well as bread, and the milliner who shuts up
her work people to sleep or work where the air is
confined and vitiated, as surely starves them as
though she gave them a miserly allowance of food.
But even this air, of which sanitary reformers say
so much, is in many respects an agricultural pro-
duct. The breeze which circulates through the Lon-
don streets was half an hour ago travelling over the
green fields which lie to the windward. The used-
up air of the metropolis goes floating away to lee-
ward, and loses its carbonic acid among the herbs,
and trees, and hedgerows of the country. As an
insular people the English may give all the credit
they can to the sea, but to the smiling country which
surrounds the hives of British industry are we mainly
indebted for the exhaustless supplies of pure, re-
freshing air which keep our crowded cities from
utter stagnation, corruption, and death. But more
directly still are we dependent on the country for
food. Some of us were lately alarmed by being told
that the vegetable mould was becoming exhausted,
and that the earth was about to refuse us her increase.
We are now told, as we have been told before, that
as the town is fed by the country, so is the country

to be fed by the town. A debt has long been accu-
mulating in which the country is the creditor.
Forced loans from Peru are to be tolerated no
longer. Cash payment from home resources is now
insisted upon as the truest economy. The sewage
of towns, rich in the elements of agricultural pro-
duce, is no longer to be thrown away, into the sea
or elsewhere, but to be carefully collected and
duly repaid to the broad acres from which the
towns are fed. This debt, honourably paid, is
to make Englishmen henceforth independent of
foreign supplies. Justus Von Liebig declares that
Great Britain is large enough, if we take arable sur-
face of the land, to produce all the corn and meat
necessary for its inhabitants. Good news this for
John Bull. But, as the shrewd philosopher ob-
serves, " the manufacturers of the dealers in manure
are on a principle inimical to the utilisation of
sewage, and in the battle which is being fought '
they are the inimical army whose forces should be
on no account underrated." Happily, the learned
Liebig has found a sop for these hungry manufac
turers and dealers. It would have been a difficult
thing for Gillott to have proved that the introduc-
tion of steel-pens would be found favourable to the
old goose-quill interest ; but Liebig aucceeds to ad-
miration in showing that the manufacture of arti-
ficial manure will be promoted by the utilisation of
sewage. The baron has hit the blot. He knows
well enough that the sewage is wanted by the
agriculturist, that it is the very pabulnui which our
fields demand. But there is an obstacle:in the way.
That obstacle is not a mere engineering difficulty,
as Mr. Thwaites would suppose, but is simply the
old stumbling-block which for a time has tripped up 1
many a noble enterprise. In short, vested interests
stand in the way; the personal, pecuniary interests
of sundry individuais engaged in the preparation of
certain chemical manures, which only partially
supply the wants of the farmer and the real neces-
sities of the country. The Metropolitan Board of
Works, as the tribunal before whom the question
is now brought, appear to be ear-wigged by the
artificial manuring interest, and the nation is in
danger of being robbed of the enormous value re-
presented by the 266,000,000 tons of metropolitan
sewage annually cast away. This must not be, and
Liebig happily shows that it is not to the interest
of any party that such waste should be perpetuated. ,
The baron's argument is simply this ; that town ;
sewage is rich in ammonia but deficient in phos- 1
phoric acid with less of the ammonia. It is to he
remembered that the phosphoric acid must
be provided, or the fields will not render their
proper return to the tillers of the soil. Potash
and ammonia are both readily obtainable from the
sewage • while the manufacturer cannot readily
command them apart from this source. But the
phosphates, in which the sewage is deficient, can be
easily extracted from bones by the manufacturer,
and we have only to add to the town sewage that
which the manufacturer is able to supply, and we
at once obtain a compound exactly adapted to the
wants of the farmer. The metropolitan sewage
would annually require nearly 1200,000 worth of
superphosphate, by which arrangement the money
value of the sew age to the farmer would exceed a
million of pounds. And it should be observed that
the value of the sewage is in this case determined,
not by any mere theoretical standard, but by a com-
parison with guano, the elements and practical
value of which are alike known. It is not only for
the ratepayers of London, but for the nation at
large to say, whether, under these circumstances,
the sewage of towns shall any longer be suffered to
flow away as a mere nuisance, instead of being
made conducive to the interests of town and coun-
try. It may be hoped that even the " inimical
army" which Liebig• dreads will now be pacified,
and, in view of the £191,628 per annum in the case
of London alone for superphosphate at five guineas
per ton, will lay down its arms, and go on with its
proper work, content to take its rightful share in
promoting and enjoying the general prosperity.
Certainly, in his recent letter, Liebig has shown
his knowledge of the world, as well as his intimate
acquaintance with chemistry and agriculture.
TIMES.—The annual slaughter of excursionists
has now commenced. The season may be considered
to open on the Ist of August, and this year the
public have not had to wait long for the first casu-
alty. Oa Monday evening five persons were killed,
and some five-and-twenty others were more or less
injured, on the Lynn and Hunstanton Railway,
about two miles from the former town. The imme-
diate cause of the accident was an unhappy bullock,
which had strayed on the line. This is the second
accident which has happened from such a cause.
Strangely enough, the danger of cattle straying on
the line had been thought of by one of the opponents
of the railways before these means of communica-
tion were yet in being. George Stephenson was
asked by an adverse committeeman, " Suppose a
cow gets in the way P" " So much the worse for the
cow," he replied. The greatest men are sometimes
wrong, and the obstacle which George Stephen-
son thought would be cut to pieces by a rail-
way train without the passengers perceiving it has
now on two occasions thrown carriages off the rails
and produced fatal accidents. In the present case,
we cannot but thing that there was neglect. With
no wish to raise an outcry against the company or
its servants, we must form this opinion from the
facts reported. In the first place, the animal ought
not to have been on the line at all. It had been
already shown that the bones of cattle are strong
enough to resist even the wheels of a railway train,
and the company was bound, not only out of regard
to its neighbours' property, but the lives of its
passengers, to take care that there were such fences
between the fields and the line as should be effectual
barriers against any intrusion. " It is said," says our
report, " that cattle have been found on the line
more than once before, and that when a party of
officials, brought by a special train from London,
visited the spot at 3 o'clock on Tuesday morning,
they found horses on the line. The fence between
the line and the grazing land at the spot where the
accident happened was not much above a foot high,
and the dykes were quite dry.", Here is quite
enough to convict the company , management of
negligence in attending to the safety of their line.
But if the accounts received are correct there was
an actual warning given of the danger from this
a quarter of an hour after the other. The
very animal. There were two excursion trains, one
starting