The Sun.
London, England, 1863-07-07 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, TUEsDAY EVENING, J ULY 7, 1863

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—Many have been the Chinese debates in
he British Parliament, and many more may we fore-

see in the years that are to come, each resembling
that which has gone before it in the scope of its
arguments. "Justice," " humanity," economy," one
party will exclaim, as they urge a rigid abstinence
from all political intermeddling ; " necessity," the

other will answer, as they proceed to show that with

out arms in our hands and the will to use them we

can neither trade, nor travel, nor even live within

the borders of the Chinese Empire. When the evil
time shall pass away none can dare to predict, but
at present it seems as if weakness and anarchy and
the call for European interference were not likely

soon to cease out of the land. The hour of doom-

has sounded for the old fabric of Chinese govern-
ment and society. The cloud which in the early
days of this generation began to form has become
blacker, until now it covers with a thick darkness
that ancient civilization. Weaknessbegets violence,

violence promotes the enmity of foreigners, whose
chastisements in turn tend to raise up rebels and

Pretenders against the humiliated Government.
The blows struck by England twenty years ago, by
breaking the spell of Imperial invincibility, had not
a little to do with the rise of the Taepings, who since

1850 have been constantly busy at their work of de-
struction in the empire. The natural insolence and
cruelty of the Chinese nature, increased by civil
wars, has broken out again and again within the last
few years, leading to fresh hostilities with the
Christian nations, and further weakening the influ-
ence of a Government already beset by gigantic rebel-
lion. While thus the Chinese political system seems
approaching its end, the European element is
plainly acquiring increased importance. Things
have gone so far that the House of Commons is now
appealed to, and asked to discountenance the for-
mation of permanent military bodies for service
within the Empire. At Shanghai a force is en-
rolled for the defence of the place and the surround-

ing districts; and Captain Sherard Osborn will soon
be in Chinese waters ready to carry on active hos-
tilities against the rebels, and support the authority
of Prince Kung throughout such parts of his Re-
gency as a British seaman can reach. It is this
swerving from the paths of peaceful commerce that
Lord Naas last night desired to condemn. With
great elaboration he laboured to show that it was
neither our duty nor our policy to interfere in be-
half of the regular Government. To the usual
arguments in favour of neutrality Lord Naas added
others less commonplace, though hardly more con-
vincing. A man of peace will treat the question as
one which general and abstract principles are
sufficient to decide. Like Mr. Cobden, he will con-
tent himself with saying that the Chinese have
governed themselves for several thousand years,
and need no interference from us now. He will
consider that whether there be peace or war w ithin
their borders we have nothing to do with the mat-

ter, our business being confined to buying tea and
silk from whomsoever will bring it down to us,
whether he be Imperialist or Taeping. We may
regret war and destruction, as we regret the flood,
the drought, or the blight, but we should no
more think of increasing our commerce by the in-
vasion of a neighbour's soil to compel political
tranquillity than to enforce the sunshine or
, is not content
the rain. Lord Naas, however

with this course of argument. He suggests
that the rebellion is not an abnormal phase of
Chinese history. Resistance to misused authority
has always been a doctrine of the philosophical
Whigs of that empire. The right of rebellion had
always been recognised by the great Chinese writers,
and the people had been consistent in reducing the
doctrine to practice. Years had often passed in
such rebellions, and the country after their success-
ful close recovered and went on as prosperously as
ever, Why, then, may not the Taepings be now
working out a great and salutary change in Chinese
politics ? There are the usual elements. One or
more Pretenders, a long and bloodthirsty warfare
of many years, desolating whole regions, and bring-
ing what in other countries would be thought
irremediable evils on the Empire; a weak Govern-
ment, unable to rescue some of its largest cities
from the grasp of its enemies; these are what have
been found in China for ages pas', and they
are now seen once more. True, the Taepings
are unable to overthrow the Government they have
risen against. They are strong enough to overrun
and to hold permanently certain regions, but they
are not strong enough to change the dynasty. Yet,
if we do not misapprehend Lord Naas 's argument,
their rebellion is nothing so extraordinary in the
annals of China as to call for any action on our part.
Whether the Government was victorious or van-
quished, or whether, as is more likely, the rebellion
smouldered on for years, it would be merely a
healthy and natural process that was going on,
and we should impede recovery by attempting
to stop the progress of an inevitable malady. Our
own opinion is that these arguments, whether
philosophical, or economical, or political, in favour
of doing nothing and of seeing a vast wealth-pro-
ducing region; ruined by marauding savages, are
founded in error. As to Captain Sherard Osborn
and his companions, we are not under the neces-
sity of defending them, It has always been held
that foreigners may enter the service of a legitimate
Government, and, leaving aside the question whether
periodical Chinese revolutions are necessary, there
is no service more praiseworthy than that of pro-
tecting the most flourishing cities of Eastern Asia
and the banks of the greatest rivers from the attacks
of insurgent armies which destroy wherever they
come. The British Government, however, is quite
independent of these officers, and not responsible for
their acts, although it has authorised them to enter
the service of a friendly State. All that this country
is doing is to carry out honourably and cordially
the principles on which the last reconciliation with
China was effected. We have been placed by the
Chinese Government—thanks to the courage of our
soldiers and sailors—in the same position that Russia
so long occupied alone. We have a Minister at
Pekin, we have the opportunity of representing our
views and wishes, and it is stated that the Chinese
ruler is ready to attend to our advice. It may be that
it is impossible to prevent the decay of Chinese
society, but it is possible and for the benefit of both
native and European that peace and order should
prevail, and that the industry of the people should
resume its wonted course. The Government of
Pekin asks our assistance in effecting this; and
those who know the country think that much may
be done by the support of a Power like England,
and the use of a small naval force. Considering the
magnitude of the British interests involved, it is
impossible, as it seems to us, for the Government
to hesitate. Unbounded resources, untold wealth,
exist in a region traversed by bands of robbers,
to whom the brigands of Naples are saintly and
gentle. To those regions we are freely admitted
by treaty, and only the state of the country pre-
vents our reaping the full advantages of former
exertions. We are now called upon to guide the
destinies of that mighty population, and in con-
junction with other European nations to take care
that the collapse of its ancient systems may do as
little harm as possible to theta and to us.
POST.—Upon Monday next, it will be seen by our
Parliamentary report, the House of Commons will
in all probability resume the debate upon Mr. Roe-
buck's motion for the recognition of the Southern
States. We cannot help thinking that whenever that
debate is resumed, there is a point connected with it
which must receive a more solemn and seri-
ous attention than has been yet devoted
to it. Proceedings have taken place in the
course of that debate which challenge a
decision on the question whether the House of
Commons can permit any of its members to profess
to be the bearers of communications from a foreign
Sovereign to Parliament in opposition to the Minis-
ters of the Queen. In opening the motion Mr. Roe-
buck took upon himself to say that he was autho-
rised by the Emperor to make certain statements to
the House of Commons. In the best days of the
House of Commons the uttering such words would
have been instantly followed by a motion to take
them down. The statements of which Mr. Roebuck
thus professed himself the bearer related to matters
which were the subject of State communication be-
tween the French Emperor and the Queen. Nay,
more, they involved a complaint of the manner in
which the Queen had treated the diplomatic commu-
nications of the French Sovereign. Mr. Roebuck
had the presumption to say that he had been desired
by the French Emperor to make a complaint in his
name to the House of Commons of the conduct of
the Foreign-office, and also to tell the Home of Com-
mons the Emperor's sentiments upon the question
which had been the subject of official correspondence
with the Government of the Queen.
organ of the French Government has formally dis-
avowed the part which Mr. Roebuck in his mar-
vellous The official
statement attributed to the Emperors f
thetn
French. So far as his Majesty is
explanation is very simple and complete.
inter-
concerne
Two
members of the British Parliament sought an.g_ifi_
view with him, which the Moniteur rather
wi
can tly observes he had no reason to refuse. another
another
he would so easily be induced to grant themview the
the Moniteur does not say. In that
which
ether
were
Emperor freely expressed his opinions.,

already well known to Europe, upon a subject of inte-
rest both to England and toFrance. Upon this simple
incident is based the statement made by Mr. Roe-

buck, a statement in which the Emperor saw with
amazement himself represented as having sent a
message to the British House of Commons, and as
having selected Mr. John Arthur Roebuck to be the
hearer. We did not need the announcement iu the
illoniteur to comprehend the exact truth. Before
that announcement appeared mestpersonsv%r ho knew
anything of the character of the French Emperor
and of Mr. Roebuck had made up their minds that
the statement of the latter originated in that morbid
vanity which is of all human passions the most likely
to give rise to grotesque delusions. Some words
of good-natured complaisance were sufficient to
make the person to whom they were ad-
dressed imagine himself an accredited agent of
an Emperor ; and the same vanity which sug-
gested the delusion of necessity prompted the an-
nouncement to the astonished House of Commons.
Another member has however rushed into print to
claim his share in the Imerial confidence, and his

participation in the mission from Napoleon III. to
the British House of Commons, and Mr. Roebuck
and Mr. William Shaw Lindsay are the illustrious
Ambassadors through whom, if we are to believe
themselves, the Emperor of the French conveys his
wishes and sentiments to that assembly. This is
something more than silly impertinence. It is a
grave offence against the constitution and the
law, It is a violation of the first duty which sub-
jects owe to their Sovereign, and Englishmen to
their country. Great lawyers have held that any
public communication, on matters of State, between
a British subject and a foreign Sovereign is a
high misdemeanour. But unquestionably it is so
for any British subject to thwart and oppose by
such communication the councils of his Queen.
Unquestionably it is so to bring to the people of
this country a message from a foreign Sovereign in
opposition to the policy of the Queen. The Queen
is the only representative of the nation to foreign
States. With the Queen alone rests the right of
holding intercourse, in the name of the nation, with
the authorities of those States. The right of send-
ing and receiving ambassadors is one of the highest
prerogatives of the Crown. That prerogative is
infringed when any one of the Queen's subjects
presumes to make himself the medium of communi-
cation on matters of State policy between a foreign
Sovereign and any portion of the people of this
realm. The House of Commons must judge what is
due to their own dignity and to their respect for the
constitution and the prerogative of the Queen. If
they think fit to permit Mr. Roebuck and Mr.
Lindsay to play out on the boards of St. Stephen's
the little farce of " The Twin Envoys; or, The Im-
perial Ambassadors," the best that can be said of it
is that everybody will perfectly understand that it
is a farce. It may have one advantage. It may
teach persons in high station the dangers .of con-
versing too freely with the Roebucks and the Lind-
says who may find their way into their presence.
We have a very strong suspicion that there is no
one more heartily sick of the names of his illustrious
visitors than the Imperial personage whom they
assumed to represent. The moral of the whole
matter may perhaps be nothing higher than this—
that frankness and politeness are very good things
in sovereigns as well as common people, but are
not the only qualities requisite in an interview with
a gentleman who cannot resist the temptation of
publishing to the world that he has actually had a
conversation with a real live Emperor apon affairs
of State.

- -
HERALD.—The accident of London life which
allows us to live without any knowledge of our
next-door neighbour, has had a curious exemplifi-
cation in the state of things which has just been
discovered in the interior of a respectable trades-
man's shop. Who would have thought that in a
genteel part of Hackney the worthy inhabitants
have been having through months an undertaker in
their midst who has been systematically turning
his house into a burial-ground, and evading the
dues of sexton and parson by taking charge of the
corpses of his neighbours as permanent members of
his household ? The skeleton was not in his cup-
board, but under his work-bench. The memento
mori never took a more palpable form even with the
skull and open grave of the Trappist Brothers.
Death was here, and death there, and death every-
where. Three children lay about him in as many
eoffins in various stages of decay. One had been
so long with him that it had shrunk to the skeleton.
Another was so far decayed that the head fell off as
the body was touched; and all three bore traces of
attempts to subdue the effects of decomposition by
the corrosive action of lime. There were two other
large coffins enjoying a like family distinction, but
were void of their adult tenants. As we run
through the catalogue of the inmates of his house
and home, and recal the months through which they
were allowed to sojourn with him, one is tempted
to ask with Hamlet, " Has this fellow no feeling of
his business that he sings at grave-making ?" and
to inquire how it happens that houses under the ken
of the police, and subject to visits from all sorts of
legal authorities, can have been allowed to have
remained under such ghastly tenantry. " The
custom that made it a property of easiness" to the
Danish grave-digger, no doubt had a like effect on
the English undertaker; but the public have in-
terests that hardly allow of so free an indulgence
of taste; and it would be charitable to hope that
there was no worse motive in action. He had
the coffin in the cases of the adults, the skeletons
in the case of the children, and he saved possibly
some paltry fee in reference to the burial ;
but, except for these trivial considerations,
the only repayment which this respectable trades-
man, enjoying the full confidence of the parochial
authorities, received for the proximity of the most
offensive and revolting of nuisances, was that "feel-
ing of the business" that had at last given it a
"property of easiness." The long use of the most
repulsive calling will end in giving an artistic re-
lish for some of its traits and characteristics. The
associations growing up of time are like the lichens
covering the rock, they give a new surface to ideas
nakedly not prepossessing. The daintiness that at
first repelled is succeeded after long use by another
that appreciates, and the enthusiasm of the laun-
dress, in "Dickens," over the corpse of the dead
husband, is, perhaps, quite as natural as the refined
appreciation of a Correggio or a Canova by a higher
class of connoisseurs. But, beyond the study of a
phase of character that we may well wish to be
unique, there are some important public considera-
tions involved in this strange neglect of all the de-
cencies a healthy state of society associates with the
treatment of the dead. There is no better law than
the old Roman one—lntra muros mortuos ne sepelito
—but it asks some vigilance as the price of its full
utility. The passing of the Burial Act, which in-
hibits the use of cemeteries not situate at some dis-
tance from towns, has made interments at once
mere expensive and troublesome, and the tempts.
tion to offences like those of the Hackney under-
taker must be too strong to be resisted by many
poor persons who are not aided in their duty by the
fact that their professional calling obliges them to
visit cemeteries and bury the dead. We have re-
peatedly been hearing complaints of the length of
time poor Irish families are accustomed to keep
shut up with them, in narrow rooms, the todies of
children or deceased relatives; and accordingly, as
occupation may prove pressing, money wanting, or
the people themselves indolent, it is easy to see that
the cae of the undertaker may be that of hundreds
through the different parts of the metropolis every
month. For a week or more the corpse is retained
in an every day increasing state of offensiveness ;
but when the decomposition is past tolerance, the
first expedient may be expected to be adopted
which offers itself as a means of relieving them-
selvest of a nuisance, whose existence they must
suspect to be a legal offence, and which they
know to be a serious danger. It is as
.s
to know that a contingency is
notby
appoint
likely to be growing less 5 prowyhhiidiccehhd
the provisions of the statutes
nuisances; and the public, but especiaol n
medical inspectors for districts anwd.
linsrectpoorlsicaefs
should not be slow in bringing for it. The
interposition whenever a case
Hinaacyl-ney undertaker,
intee
licence, too, assumed by this
b'e made to cover
fight,health were
ght
ot be made
allyeration the
r
ias ogreatne which,
d alo iff
and the
lidentity.of the dead is
ttedle
p crime.ermi
certificate that applied to,
of another. There Nv
still more uneertainthbavnittohhneaetindosfepatethchetomi
to facilitate the covering Lp
two coffins discovered
found, and
which no tenants were whatever the
arance kh
manner of their disapc
that it 0 w nothing
might
which prohibits our thinking
be ex-
tended to subjects reaching such a place
less ho-
The encouragement to infanticidenestly. spri g
jog up has already been a subject of painf n-
rumour, and w® are not certain that thereu public
shoul
be an increasingly active use of whatever not
we have, in order that the public legal forms
better guarantee in reference may have some
to the furtive
infants supposed to have be burial of
innovation which tends to cheapenen still-born. Every
in any of its stages is a , the value of life
we have all the most important
public calamity in which
public authority cannot
j)ortant of stakes, and the
be too vigilantly or merge
tically interposed to
protect society from the mis-