The Sun.
London, England, 1863-01-01 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.--There is no abler financier than the
French Chancellor of the Exchequer, and there is
certainly no nation which possesses the power of
logical arrangement and clear exposition in the
same degree as the French. We might reasonably,
therefore, expect that when M. Fould came for-
ward to explain to us the existing position of the
finances of France, we should have arisen from the
Perusal of his statement with a clear and complete
"nception of the subject. This, however, is by no
Means the ease. M. Fould considers the revenue
and expenditure, the probabilities of a balance or a
deficit in the years 1862, 1863, and 1864, but in no
one case does he inform us what is the total amount
of revenue or expenditure. M. Fould deals first
With the Budget of 1862, which on the 6th of last
October he flattered himself would exhibit a balance
between income and expenditure. This will not,
however, be the case. In addition to nearly two
inillions and a half, which was estimated as the ex-
penditure of the year for the Mexican expedition,
the sum of 24,000,000 f., or nearly £1,000,000 ster-
ling, will be required, raising the whole expendi-
ture for the year for this service to 83,000,000 f., or
about three millions and one-third of a million
sterling. This excess, together with the 11,000,000 f.
for the deficit on beetroot sugar, makes up a total
deficit for 1862 of 35,000,000 f. M. Fould argues
with great truth that this money will be just as
easily got by a vote of the Assembly which is
about to meet as if it had been obtained by a credit
Opened under a decree. We next come to the year
1863. For that Budget a surplus was anticipated
of 3,300,000 E ; but M. Fould estimates by reference
to the income of former years a surplus of
110,000,000 E, or nearly four millions and a-half
sterling. M. Fould had reckoned on this surplus
to meet the extraordinary Budget of 1864, but
this is anticipated by the expenses of the Mexican
expedition. He is, therefore, compelled to rely
on a number of miscellaneous items, among which
is the sale of certain Crown property, and
even then the resources thus provided fall
short of the estimate by 17,000,000 f. It should
also be said that these estimates presume a
continuance of peace, except, of course, with
Mexico, and the stability of credit and internal
prosperity. The total of the deficiencies up to the
present time amounts to 848,000,000 f., for the de-
ficiency of 1861, amounting to 158,000.000 f. more,
is balanced by the operation of converting the
Four-and-a-Half per Cents., which cannot, how-
ever, be repeated. It is certainly not satisfactory
to find that, after we have strained our mental
vision so far as to reach the end of 1864, all we
obtain by the process is the sight of a deficit of
17,000,000 E, dependent on the continuance of
Peace and prosperity for not exceeding that con-
siderable sum. M. Fould is a man of figures, and
though he permits himself a little burst of enthu-
siasm as to the expenditure of the 83,000,000 f.
Which goes to the support of those brave men who
et the distance of 2,000 leagues are upholding the
himself,
of France, to figures he mainly confines
'ialeelf. We, however, who are subject to no such
it serve, may be excused for pointing
out how easy
would be for the Emperor of the French, with
the aPPlause of all Europe and the blessings of his
o
o subjects to convert that deficiency into surplus.
The art of finance does not consist in temporary ex-
pcedleats, such as the reduction of the Four per
deefintts- or the sale of Crown property, to meet a
lita,ecurceit.of These are but the manipulations, the
'eger'cle-main of a skilful performer. The real
prosperous finance is something at once
t.hee‘asinsigmleplweroraandemonuoiclim ye
difficult. It lies in
. If tho French Budget
peace IQ formed on a calculation of the continuance of
tinP, why not give peace the best chance of con-
ningin not Onlywarp the instrument, but often tho cause of
Ly
I\TEWS . —Gold-digging is not the only
Pnenome
countrymen nen which draws the attention of our
Lulealir to the Australian colonies, Our
le operatives have now only too much
leisure for r
e 4 ing the newspapers, and a letter

which we published some time since from
an " Overlooker" showed something of the
effect produced on the minds of men
in want by some of the facts of colonial life. Three
thousand bullocks had been boiled down to make
glue, and the poor fellows here who were sickening
and pining over their dole of meal and soup natu-
rally longed to be living where beef was such a
drug that bullocks could be boiled down for glue.
We may remember something of the similar emotion
excited during the distress of 1842, by the frequent
notices in the newspapers of sheep being boiled
down by thousands to make tallow. Legs of
mutton were reserved at first, to be sold for any-
thing they would fetch, but all demand for them
soon ceased, and the legs went into the cauldrons
with the rest. Such incidents naturally set poor
men asking whether there is no way by which the
hungry of the mother country and the food of the
colony can be brought together; and we need not
describe how strong this inquiry has been of late,
nor what efforts have been made to enable some few
of our distressed workpeople to emigrate. There
is, all the while, a way by which hundreds of fami-
lies might, with the utmost certainty, become easy
in circumstances very soon, and before very long
quite rich, if they had the requisite intelligence,
good faith, and self •command, which are the quali-
ties by which men of business of all classes prosper
and become rich. Those most concerned will see at
once that we refer to the proposal of a co-operative
agricultural settlement in Queensland, sent hither
by Mr. Murdoch of that colony, and commented
on by Mr. Holyoake in our columns on the 24th
ult. That twenty families, as Mr. Murdoch says,
or a thousand members, as Mr. Holyoake supposes,
could make it answer to grow cotton and send it to
Lancashire (or, indeed, to grow any crops suitable
to the soil) there can be no doubt, if all the
members were intelligent, industrious, and tho-
roughly public-spirited. The results of well-
managed and well-sustained co-operative associa-
tion are no longer questioned by anybody who
has studied the Roehdale institutions, and some
others elsewhere. The certainty of success in a
country where land—the proper basis of such an
experiment—costs scarcely anything, while the
product of that land is in urgent request, is assured,
if the people on the land are wise and faithful.
There can scarcely be a doubt that means could be
found to carry to Queensland that number of
families which should be considered best for the
experiment; the colony is eager to sell its lands on
the easiest terms to respectable new settlers ; and
we have the express assurance of those who should
know that, for the production of cotton, men of the
stamp of the Lancashire operative, with his intelli-
gence and ambition, are more suitable than the
agricultural labourers, who are still very welcome
in their way. The great question is whether the
risk can be obviated by the terms of the association.
If this can be done, all the rest really seems to be a
thing within the men's own choice.
HERALD.—The conclusion of the country jury
who, on an indictment for assault, found the pri-
soner " guilty," with the appendix " served him
right," is pretty faithfully reproduced in the ver-
dict of the jurors who sat upon the bodies killed by
the explosion of the Edmunil's Main Colliery. They
find that "they are unable to attach blame to any
individual" for " the immediate deaths" of the vic-

tims, and then go on to express " the unanimous
opinion that the cause of the explosion was the in-
cautious and unsafe working of the dipbaard of the
colliery," with the addition that " the mode of blast-
ing with powder was highly injudicious, and ought
not to have been allowed by the under viewer."
They find, in fact, that everything was nearly as bad
as it could be ; that the deaths were made as nearly
as possible inevitable by the character of the man-
agement ; and then, with that courtesy that befits
even so short an official life as that of a juryman,
smoothe down everything with the saving clause,
"of course nobody is to blame for it." It is, how-
ever, a redeeming feature in jury history that
there was found one in the number, a Mr. E. Par-
ker, to protest against so nonsensical an attempt to
reconcile duty to the public with pretty phrases to
everybody ; and no one who has read the evidence
can doubt that the gentleman had excellent grounds
for the independent position he thus assumed.
We hardly know, indeed, in the whole history of
colliery disasters, an instance in which a heavier
culpability lies at the doors either of malingers or
of their workmen. There was a reckless negligence
and foolhardiness displayed by both actually in-
credible did we not know the facility with which
ignorant men gradually learn to reconcile them-
selves after a time to positions of the greatest dan-
ger. Here the mine was well known to be an un-
usually dangerous one, the whole district being
notorious in colliery records for the number and
calamitous character of its explosions. But for
some time past the stimulus of high prices which
has severely tasked the powers of production in
coal-mining generally, has acted here with an
almost exceptional force, and the management, not
content, by the payment of a respectable bonus,
with securing the services of successive gangs of
miners who keep working night and day, increased
the celerity of the excavations by resorting to blast-

ings by gunpowder. In other words, they did their
best to accumulate gas in quantities dispropor-
tioned to their powers of neutralising it, at the
same time that they were busy in applying the
spark which might at any minute explode it.
Everybody knows that the disaster at the Hartley
Colliery was the unpardonable result of trusting to
a massive cast iron beam after it had given unmis-
takeable evidence of unsoundness. At the Ed-
mund's Main Colliery we had an incompetent
undet viewer in charge of between two and three
hundred lives, and sacrificing some sixty of them,
with his own, through a toying with danger as
needless as it was systematic and foolhardy. We
are unable, indeed, to understand how such risks
can be daily incurred, if we accept the hypothesis
that inspectors of mines are charged with duties or
invested with powers. What are they for if they
can interpose no veto on a system of incurring
risks which is only another word for a system of
committing jelo de se They are presumed by
their appointments to be capable of thinking for the
miners—it is surely not over-exacting to ask the
correlative, that they should act for them_ But
another inference that springs out of the needless
and wanton immolations of useful workmen we are

periodically experiencing points to the urgency of
giving every class of miners a better and more
scientific knowledge of the nature and dangers of
their pursuits. We want such an extension in the
number and working of our mining colleges that
we may be able to indoctrinate these men with the
general principles of safe mining, and secure our
having those competent men as viewers and supe-
rintendents through whose ignorance so many of
these accidents are now occurring. It is high
time, indeed, that we should set about saving the
annual thousand of useful men we are now losing
as the result of our indifferent teaching and ineffi-
cient law-making.