The Sun.
London, England, 1863-03-26 00:00:00

TIIERMOMETER.

Highest since Noon yesterday
Lowest daring the night
This day at Noon .
Wind—N.-W. ; fresh, with fine weather

Otrltig
ow 4,
Art

LONDON, THURSDAY, MARCH 26, 1863.

The House of Commons yesterday resumed the
debate, which was adjourned on the 4th instant, on
the motion for the committee on the Salmon
Fisheries (Ireland) Bill, to which Lord Fermoy had
on that day made an amendment, to the effect that
the measure should be referred to a select com-
mittee.
Mr. CoNOLLY and Mr. DAWSON now opposed the
bill, which would, they contended, amount to a con-
fiscation of the rights which the lower river pro-
prietors had acquired under the aet of 1842.
COl. WHITE proposed that five representatives
of each of the two contending interests, who were
to be aided by a legal asssessor, should meet and
endeavour to come to soma compromise upon that
subject ; and in order to afford the House an op-
portunity of discussing this suggestion he moved in
conclusion the adjournment of the debate.
A prolonged discussion then followed, which em-
braced every topic involved in the general question,
arid in the course of which several members ex-
pressed their belief that the controversy which had
been raised eould only be terminated by a compro-
mise, and that it was by the Government such a
settlement of the difficulty could be best effected.
The debate was not concluded at a quarter to six
o'clock, and was, therefore, again adjourned.
On the motion of Mr. SCHOLEFIELD, the Partner-
ship Law Amendment Bill was ordered to be re-
ferred to a select committee.
The Inclosure Bill was read a third time and
passed.
The house adjourned shortly before six o'clock.

Earl RUSSELL, it is to be hoped, will see that
an end is at length put to the vagaries of Admiral
WILKes. The doings of that redoubtable sea
captain are in truth no longer to be tolerated.
When we learn now, for example, that it is
positively stated "in the telegrams from New
York that the Peterhoff private merchant steamer
of about 860 tons, from London to the Mexican port
f Matamoras, with British clearance and Mexican
consular manifest, Las been seized by Admiral
-Mises within sight of the harbour of St. Thomas,"
it becomes manifest that there has come at last a
limit to our endurance. The flagrant affair of the
Trent, while it was an outrage that could never be
condoned with any regard to the dignity of the
national character, could at any rate be passed by,
with a sort of scorn, when the Government at
Washington had made, as they did, the most signal
evnende, by delivering up, apologetically, the
Southern Commissioners who had been so disgrace-
fully torn from the deck of a British Mail Steam
Packet, and consequently from under the protection
of the time honoured banner of England. The recent
escapade of Admiral WILKES in British waters off
Bermuda is, in its turn, not forgotten. It was
marked throughout by an insolence of demeanour
that amounted to nothing less than an outrage.
And now comes this rumoured seizure by the
same notorious officer in the Federal Navy,
of tLe private merchant steamer off St.
Thomas's. " The case," it is stated, "is to
be submitted to Earl RUSSELL, and the result
is regarded with great interest by the mercantile
community, since it is said that Admiral WILKES
is thus dealing with all vessels en route to Matamo-
ras." Furthermore, we read, "it is assumed that
the Peterhoff must be ultimately released, but an
adj udication at Rey w
eat occupies about six months,
and there is an appeal to New York or Philadel-
phia." Delays in the settlement
no
llonger,
georil however,
nothing
taht taetr ohto
serious import like this, a
be endured. It signifies little or
e
value involved in the ship and cargo in the present
instance is estimated at £70,000. Whatever it in
volved, a matter of £7O sterling or of £eoo,ooo,
the question under consideration would have
been the same precisely. Lord RUSSELL has—if the
report commented upon be in any way true—but
one course to follow in dealing with it. And that
course he will follow we may rest assured. The
most complete apology and the most ample resti-
tution! An apology and a restitution that ought
to be emphasised by the degradation of the offending
officer.

A lamentable increase of mortality in the metro-
polis is shown upon the examination of the last
returns of the Registrar-General. The mildness of
the seasons we take to be the cause. Of the sea-

-- -_______

sons we say advisedly. For a relaxing autumn and
a humid winter have led the way to a spring of
unusual warmth. Of anything like the old-
fashioned Christmas weather we have not this last
time (1862 and 1863) had even, so to speak, the
merest passing taste. As for frost of any kind—all
the frost we have had has been that symbolized on
our twelfth cakes. Not once this season have we
had the fairy webwork on our bedroom window
panes, prettily called by some poet " frozen
dreams." The skates have only dangled tantaliz-
ingly by the cutlers' door posts. The street urchins
have not once had the luxury of extemporizing a
sly slide upon the pavements parallel with the
gutter, during the temporary abaence of the local
policeman from his beat, and to the endangerment
of the equilibrium of the stout old gentlemen who
go in fear perpetually either of orange peel or of
slides. Christmas in effect upon this last occasion
came upon us almost like an anachronism. And
keeping up the apparent transposition of times
and seasons to the ♦ery last, only a day
or two since we had a March day, here in
London, as like as two peas, or rather
perhaps we ought to say as like as two pea-soup
fogs to a mellow, yellow, pattern London day
literally in the very thick of November.
his because of all this, we doubt not, that the recent
return from the Registrar-General's office show, by
contrast with the average of the last ten years, so
deplorably. The aged and infirm, debilitated
constitutions, delicate children, and confirmed
invalids have succumbed under the influence
of the relaxing heat and moisture. A
shrewd autumn, a bracing winter, a tardy
spring, a spring so tardy that one might
have had a prospect even of winter lingering on
into the lap of May, would infallibly have been
far more salubrious. The transformation of the
seasons has set at defiance all our sanitary precau-
tions. The bills of mortality have numbered up
very heavily in consequence. They still show an
ugly increase upon the wrong side. The second
week of March, for example, was high in its returns.
The third (ending last Saturday) was higher. The
deaths in this last week amoanted upon the whole
to 1624. The average in the corresponding week
during the last decade being, on the contrary, 1,416.
This, remember, even be it said, with all due
allowance made for the increase of the population.
So that no deduction has to be made from the total
already given for last week, viz., 1,624, upon that
score. That same deduction having already been
male quite distinctly. So insalubrious has been
the season, as thus demonstrated by uncompro-
mising statistics, that the deaths are shown with
the clearness of a quotient to have been more
during the last week by 280 than they ought to have
been according to the average rate of mortality.
During the last three weeks the deaths have
been successively 1,370,1,561, and 1,624. Looking
to the average as it ought to have been,
under the head of pulmonary consumption we find
that stated at 315. As it was—we find on the con-
trary 366, or 61 too many. This for last week re-
member. Within the more fatal interval the deaths
by smallpox have been 45—despite the law of corn-
pulsoryvaccination. We find that there have breathed
their last during the week the unusual number of
seven nonagenarians. A mong the deaths of the week
particularized, this week ending on last Saturday,
it will long be remembered that there are especially
notified those of the six women who expired in Icon-
sequence of the night of the 10th, that of the Prince
of WALES'S marriage and the consequent illumi-
nations, "four at Ludgate-hill, and two at the Poul-
try, from suffocation in the crowds from heart disease,
accelerated by the great pressure and excitement on
that occasion." That is the wording of the official
paragraph. A seventh victim (like the rest of
them, a woman) is also reported to have died on the
13th instant from disease of the heart accelerated by
pressure, not on the night of the 10th, but on the
morning of the 7th, the day of the entrance of the
PRINCESS. Altogether, the Health of London, be-
cause of tho ill season, looks but grievously when
examined into. All the more reason, however, for
solicitude and enterprize in regard to the carrying
out of our sanitary improvements, under the guid-
ance and direction of the responsible officers of our
Board of Health. Remembering the growth of
London, the increase of the population, and the
trying changes that have taken place in the most
trying of the four seasons, ie., autumn, winter, and
spring, it is an immense satisfaction to bear in mind
that the main drainage of the metropolis is rapidly
advancing towards completionjuid that the Thames
Embankment has actually been begun, and begun,
too, in earnest.