The Sun.
London, England, 1863-08-03 00:00:00

THERMOMETER.

This morning
This day at Two o'clock
Barometer-30.02.
Wind—South ; with cloudy weather,

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
THIS DAL—Morning, 4h, 35m.—Afternoon, 4h. 56m,
To-xoßnow.-Morning, sh. 20m.—Afternoon, sh. 41m,

th a g,
i5t...14-4*10•1;-`1, )11111,
-

LONDON, MONDAY, AUGUST 3, 1863.

The Federal successes recently reported appear,
upon a re-examination of them,to be,after all, hardly
so very satisfactory. Two or three circumstances
now brought to light by these last advices received
per the Asia, via Roche's Point, seem to intimate far
more plainly than any mere words could do that the
tranquil recrossing of the Potomac, from Maryland
into Virginia, by General LEE'S army, bag and
baggage, foot, horse, and artillery, is looked upon,
alike at Washington and at the head-quarters of
General MEADE, as equivalent to something very
like a success achieved by the Confederates ! These
two exceedingly significant circumstances being
simply the tendering of his resignation by the
Federal Commander-in-Chief, and the Federal
Government's declining to receive it ! The sequel
to LEE'S recrossing of the Potomac, is remarkable,
indeed, in several particulars. For inasmuch, for
example, as simultaneously with this offer of resig-
nation on the part of his chief antagonist, the re-
puted author of his late so-called discomfiture, there
come distinct threatenings of an intention on the part
of the Confederate Commander-in-Chief to venture
yet once more across the recrossed river—back
again into Maryland ! That in effect is the most
startling fragment of intelligence now brought to
us from the American seat of war. It promises a
total reversal of the state of things recently de-
scribed there between the main armies of the
belligerents. It gives promise of a complete turn-
ing of the tables, and that, moreover, at the very
moment when any such turning of the tables could
have been least anticipated. The wonderful part
of these last rumours as to General LEE'S intention
to cross back again into Maryland being that
at the very time when rife
they
they are at New
York and at Washington, Where
regarded quite as reliable rumours,
are
Federal army under MEADE s the
i
to have bodily crossed over, in imagined pursuiot
LEE, from Maryland into Virginia. The Confede-
rate army all the while, from its position and from
its most recent movements, indicating the impoesi-
bility of its being pursued. Pursuit being only
practicable in reference to an enemy in retreat—
whereas the Confederates turn out not to be retiring
(as was lately reported of them) in the direction of
Culpepper. It will be remembered that the state-
ment conveyed to England by the last advices from
America ran to the effect that General LEE was
rapidly retiring with his whole army upon Culpep.
per. Instead of which the Cmifederate Commander-
in•Chief is yet in strong force on the Upper Poto-
mac, between Berk:ey and Jefferson—his position
extending from a little to the north of Williamsport
down to Harper's Ferry or thereabouts. So total
a miscalculation, in effect, has it been of late on the
part of the Federal pursuers (!) of these anything
but " retiring " Confederates, that a body of the
Federal Cavalry, which had indiscreetly advanced
in the direction of Winchester, only diecovered
their mistake to find themselves eurroooded,

cutting their way out, and beating a hasty re-
treat, as best they could, under the circumstances.
The transposition of things between the main
forces of the confronting belligerents—the Confede-
rates being placed, as we have intimated, in the
Upper Potomac, and the Federals, on the contrary,
rather perillously, to the south-east of the Blue
Ridge Mountains—this total transposition of things
there between the principal belligerents, serves to
explain, or at any rate to render comprehensible,
what were otherwise quite inexplicable, if examined
merely by the light of earlier tidings, namaly, first
of all, the proffered resignation of his command by
General MEADZ, and, directly after the announce-
ment of that most surprising step on the part
of a reputed victor, the formidable threatening by
General LEE of the immediate return of the Con-
federate main army into Maryland ! The truth,in
point of fact, comes out thus rather oddly, to the
effect—that the successes about which there has been
lately so much bounce and vapouring among the
Federals, from the PRESIDENT downwards,
turn out to be very little if anything of successes,
at any rate to be very equivocal successes after
all. The Federal advances have been all of a
sudden interrupted. The pas de charge is no
longer beaten upon the Federal drums. On the
contrary, the sounds coming to us, across the At-
lantic, from the Federal camp, opening and closing
these latest scenes, shall we say in the Fifth Act of
this direful tragedy of the American War,
are like the sounds indicated by the old stage direc-
tions in the opening and closing of the latest scenes
of the fifth acts of some of the historic plays of
SliAlisPEßE—" Flourish of trumpets," those were
especially audible, it may be remembered, in the

late Serenade of Mr. President LINCOLN ! And
k 4 Alarms," exceedingly audible these latter in the
resignation proffered by the Federal Commander-
in-Chief, and in the threatened recrossing of the
Potomac, back again into Maryland, by the Con-
federate Commander-in-Chief. One consideration--
perhaps the most startling of all—must press just
now heavily upon the Federal authorities, both
military and governmental—namely, that unless
the main army under MEADE retreats soon i❑ its
turn, or, at the very least, acts there with the utmost
possible caution, west of the Potomac, south of the
Blue Ridge, its flank may be assailed by the Con-
federates and 'Washington itself uncovered !

Of all remediable evils one of the most striking
and urgent in its demand upon public attentio❑ is
the mortality at present existing among our troops
in India. The State is in a measure answerable
for the lives of all its subjects; it is bound to see
that they are protected from violence and from de-

leterious influences which can be removed by its
authority. But it assumes an especial responsibi-
lity with regard to those whom it takes into its
own service, after ascertaining that they are in good
health and free from disease, transporting them
suddenly into a foreign country where the climate,
the ways of life, and risks to health and life, are
altogether different. When we are told that men
in India die at the rate of sixty in a thousand per
annum, that every three years the Indian army is
comparatively renewed, it is certainly high time
to inquire into the causes of such a rate of mortality.
The requisite information has recently been given
to the public in the shape of the report of the
commission appointed to inquire into this matter,
and it leads us, while lamenting over the many
valuable lives needlessly sacrificed hitherto, to hope

:hat for the future the risks to life in England and

India may be put more upon a level. The situa-
tion and construction of the barracks is, of course,
one prominent feature in the changes recommended.
The sites of those at present in use are often most
unfortunate, while they are ill-drained, ill-ventilated,

and ill supplied with water. We have heard of the

barracks at Madras which stood positively on the
shores yet were surrounded by a wall so high that
the rate of sickness and mortality inside was
alarming. Sir CHARLES had the wall lowered, and
increased the number of doors and windows, to the
immediate benefit of the inmates. Such in-
stances, while showing that the climate of
India is not answerable for all the sins
laid to its charge, proves in the
most melancholy and convincing manner how

greatly we have slighted the common laws of phy-
siulogy in a land where certainly men cannot afford
to truffle with their health. Men might languish
and die for want of fresh air in our own country,
as unhappily they too often do in our crowded
factories and workshops. If a dead wall is built

round a large establishment apparently for the very
purpose of keeping out the sea breezes, we need not
wonder at the baneful effects. Madras is, at the
best, an unhealthy place, and there is no reason
why the most salubrious spots possible should not

be selected for our troops. Thanks to the improved
means of communication we need no longer fear
to station them upon the hills, from whence the

electric telegraph and the train could bring them
at short notice when the lines are in working order,
The regiments could be removed from one spot to
another so as not to expose the men continuously
to the bad effects of an insalubrious locality. The
evidence proves that 58 out of the 67 per 1,000
who die yearly in India, die from the fatal zymotic
diseases which are engendered by the combination
of three evil influences—heat, moisture, and decay-
ing vegetation. The only cure for the first is to

select the most favourable spots possible for the

construction of barracks, the fullest and freest ven-
tilation, and the selection of the dress, food, and

customs most adapted for the climate, The mois-
ture is of course to be cured by drainage, and the

removal of the soldiers from the low marshy ground
where they aro now too often located. The effect'
of decaying vegetation should surely be espe-
cially guarded against in a climate which
the most thoughtless and ignorant must

perceive renders the evil so great. The
supply of a sufficient quantity of good water is an-
other indispensable reform which will be more easily
carried out when the canal and irrigation works are
extended. The plentiful use of cold water should
be encouraged among the men, instead of hindered,
as at present, by all sorts of obstacles. Then again,
it is a question whether the rations given the sol-
dier are altogether suited to the climate, and it has
been wisely suggested that the young recruits going
out to India should not be supplied with spirits on
shipboard, as spirit drinking is ono of those habits
which India renders dangerous. It would be well
if a little more pains were taken to show the men
what they must do and what they must avoid if
they would retain their health. They are mostly
entirely ignorant—how should they be otherwise?
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while for trouble and expense to be takenn.
life lost in India is a costly loss to the service. Bu
above this is the moral obligation. England hast
no right to send her men to another cc,untry to die
of preventible causes—she roust no longer send
them into known and open danger without taking
the smallest precaution against It is in truth

rather in ignorance than in wilfulness that our
authorities have erred, but this can no longer be
our excuse, and we trust before many months have
passed away the aspect of affairs in our Indian
army will be altogether altered.

Closely connected with the bill of the Lord Chan-
cellor for a certification of our statute law is the
subject of legal education. When once we have
succeeded, as we trust we shall ultimately succeed,
in reducing the pleadings and practice of our courts
to a single intelligible and practical code, embrac-
ing common law, equitable and ecclesiastical juris-
diction, and having for its object the solution in its
most genera' terms of the general problem how to
separate law from fact, and to state the questions of
either which arise for the decision of the court, it is
obvious that the substantive law of the land will
receive a consideration and attract a study which has
hitherto been denied to it. Heretofore so compli-

cated have been, and still are, the rules and princi-

pies which direct the conduct of a suit, and the

manner of stating the case of either party, that they
have occupied the attention of the practitioner, if not
to the exclusion, yet in some degree to the neglect, of
the systematic study of the law itself. Now, during
the last 30 years much has been done to sweep away
those abominations which in the coarse of centuries
had crept into our courts both of law and equity.
But still very much more yet remains to be done,
and it is not to be denied that when these

distracting and disturbing causes shall have been
removed the spirit of inquiry and improvement
which is now monopolised in the consideration of
the procedure of the Courts will find its natural
field in th 3 amelioration of the law itself. We shall
then no longer be content with a law founded on
obsolete principles, whose very origin is founded on
curious antiquarian r, search, and whose absurdities,
when applied to the views and transactions of
modern times, are remedied by arbitrary exceptions,
alterations, and qualifications, introduced to meet
the expediency of the moment without the slightest
reference to symmetry or coherence. The law will
have to be recast into a science resting not on his•
torical but on ethical principles; not on dark feudal
maxims, but on the dictates of an enlightened

jurisprudence. It therefore becomes extremely im-
portant to ask, where is the machinery in this
country for carrying out a legal education which
shad qualify our rising lawyers for the noble but

laborious field of enterprise which undoubtedly
awaits them ? We may put the question more
broadly and ask what machinery does there exist in
this country for imparting any legal education at all.
We have learned societies possessing the monopoly
of the bar, and able to annex what conditions they
please to the attainment of the rank of barrister-at-
law. Any one who should peruse the names of the
grave and learned persons who preside over these
societies, or who wander through their spacious
halls, their noble libraries, and their quiet gardens,
will of course suppose that not only is the character
of advocate reserved to crown the labours of the
successful, but that it is the pride and delight of
the benchers of the inns of court to organise and
superintend a system by which the thorny paths of
the law may be made accessible, and industry and
talent conducted at a moderate expense, and with
speed and certainty, through every stage of legal
proficiency. Alas ! such an observer would little
appreciate the functions which claim the exclusive
attention of these learned bodies. To receive the
rent of a certain number of chambers, to receive the
fees of a certain number of calls to the bar, and
to eat excellent dinners, are vocations so engrossing
that they have no time for legal education.
In the year 1852, eleven years ago, the year
after our first International Exhibition, when all
the world was wild with progress and advance-
ment, the Inns of Court made it compulsory an and
after Trinity Term in the above-named year to all
students who should not then have kept more than
four terms, either to undergo an examination, or else
to attend a year's lectures during four consecutive
terms. But even this small and niggardly instal-
ment of that legal education for which the Inns of
Court are debtors to the public has been regarded
by those who gave it in no friendly spirit, and has
not as yet been folio wed up by any attempt to foand
a school in which law may be thoroughly and sys-
tematically taught in all its branches and under all
ita aspects, practical, antiquarian, and ethical. We
fear that the power which is destined to supply this
mighty void in our educational system is to be
sought elsewhere. The business of the Inns of
Court is to give the degree of barrister, leaving the
person who seeks it to judge of his own fitness, or
to assume it if he choose with the consciousness of it.
Thus the legal profession is choked with useless mem-
bers, who seek access to it without the slighest inten-
tion of practising, but merely to give their friends an
excuse for placing them in situations requiring a
knowledge of the law which they have never learned,
but to the knowledge of which, by the gross neglect
of their trust, the Inns of Court have permitted
them to make pretension. Those students, on the
other hand, who wish to become not only barristers
but lawyers, have only the melancholy choice of
either embarking without chart or compass on the
vast ocean of law on which the keels of their pre-
decessors leave no track, and possibly losing a year
or two in misdirected studies, or of placing them-
selves at a heavy expense in the chambers of a
pleader or conveyancer to begin at the wrong end,
by applying to the emergencies of practice the prin-
ciples of a science they have never learnt. This
proceeding is about as reasonable as if we should
call on a student in divinity to preach a sermon be-
fore he has read the Bible, or in medicine to perform
an operation before he has learnt the use of the in-
struments and the position of the arteries. Yet this
is positively the only legal education we possess (as
far as the four Inns of Court are concerned), and it
is only wonderful that with no better assistance the
standard of legal acquirements is preserved. It is
not the etiquette of the profession to teach or learn
law in any other way. And though:the Inns of Court
are full of young men both able and willing to teach,
any attempt to form classes and to facilitate and to
cheapen the introduction into rudiments of law, has
been discountenanced by professional etiquette, and
would be opposed by the vis inertia of the Inns of
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attempt to supply their deficiencies is an implied
and very forcible censure of their scandalous re-
missness and inertness, their conduct and example

gdoin in
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quarter.
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The day will assuredly come when an account of
their stewardship will be demanded from those
learned societies, when it will be asked what use
they have made of their splendid position, as keep-
ing
the key of an enlightened and honourable pro-
fession,
towards carrying out the object for the pur-
pose of which power was entrusted to them, the
diffusion of legal knowledge, and the ascertainment
of fitness for tne trust which every advocate takes
upon himself. It will be found that they have done
nothing beyond keeping enormous taverns and
bartering the degrees, with the distribution of
which they were intrusted, in exchange:for fees and
compulsory dinners. They have been rigid about
eating but careless about learning, strict about
money but negligent about knowledge, lavish to
the stomach but niggards to the mind. if the degres?