The Sun.
London, England, 1863-05-07 00:00:00

copy of our own journal under that same date, we
find in the two little newspapers—then stripling
journals of no more than six or twelve years
each, since aged by nearly 65 years additional--
we find now in one, now in the other of them
such contemporary scraps of intelligence as
the following :—" Mr. CURRAN, the Irish
Barrister," is mentioned in The Times as
having " arrived in town," and as "residing at Lord
MOIRA'S." A Treasury messenger, one Mr. COUR-
VOISIER, is spoken of in The Sun, in another pare-
a few evenings previously been
graph, as having
stopped, about two miles on this side of Maiden-
head, by two highwaymen, who robbed him of
about three pounds in money." No such great
" haul" for the two highwaymen I The messenger
from the Treasury carrying with him apparently no

very large amount of the contents of its coffers. "Mr.
PITT," The Times informs us, " is not confined with
the gout at Weimer; we saw him yesterday in the
park in perfect good health." Still having an eye to
the Day's News, "BIIONAPARTZ'S Dispatches" says
The Sun," are in possession of Admiral NELSON."
One announcement in The Times reads rather start-
lingly to us nowadays, viz., one to the
effect that " The Keepers of Several Read-
ing Rooms in Fleet Street have been fined
£5 for lending newspapers for hire." The Sun of
that date, it may be remarked, indulges in various
odd little devices among its typography—every-
thing of that kind being disdained apparently
then, by its contemporary. Between The and Sun
appears the rayed Effigy of the same, having
traced within it Sol Clarier Astro. A wreathed
Harp divides IRE from LAND —a wreathed anchor
NAVAL from NEWS. The organ itself had been
from its foundation, was then, and continued
still for some time afterwards—the organ
of that " Heaven-born Minister " who was
seen by the Writer in the morning jour-
nal walking in the park the previous
afternoon in such perfect good health. An official
advertisement in The Times, signed by the Secre-
tary of the Post Office, no other than Sir FRANCIS
FREELING, offers £240 reward for the capture of
the Highwayman who, on the 3d of the July pre-
vious, had stopped The Post Boy, and robbed the
Mail, between Bromley and Sevenoaks. An adver-
tisement in the Sun, the first advertisement in that
number of our journal for the 3d October, 1798, an
nounces that the next evening, "at half after six," for
the " first time this season," "His Majesty'sservants
will act a Tragedy called HAMLET." And glancing
down the list of the dramatis personae, we observe
that Mr. KEMBLE is to be the Hamlet, Mr. Dow-
TON the Polonius, Mrs. JORDAN the Ophelia,
and Mr. CHARLES KEMBLE the Laertes.
Time runs on, two generations pass away, No. 4,298
of The Times has expanded to No. 24,652—N0,

1,881 of The Sun having multiplied simultane
ously to 22,107.

The journals meanwhile expand in size—The
Times, repeatedly nowadays (as in effect it did
but this very morning), becoming magnified,
by means of its double supplement and a
half sheet extra, to absolutely leviathan pro-
portions. Existing during so many years, wit-
nessing and recording the while so many strange
vicissitudes,Tour own journal cannot but direct
attention for a moment in passing, and this too, as it
were, with a sense cf contemporary exultation to
the manuer in which that first little sprouting of
the acorn has grown and strengthened, and ex-
panded into the giant oak of the limes news•
paper.

The necessity of finding employment for our
Lancashire operatives has long been only second in
the minds of the wise and thoughtful to the urgent
need of supplying them with the means of sub-
sistence for their families. It was felt that long
months of enforced idleness were hard to bear by
intelligent and active men accustomed to the excite-
ment and bustle of a busy commercial life. Content
and industry are, moreover, closely allied, and there
are other evils attending this compulsory inaction
besides the additional discomfort it inflicts upon the
unemployed " hands." It is not probable, scarcely
possible, that so large a standing army of idlers
should be able to maintain during a lengthened
period unbroken order and unshaken resignation,
There will always be demagogues, whose object it
is to inflame and irritate the people against the
governing powers, and their efforts, which produce
but partial and limited effects in the busy seasons
of activity and prosperity, may act like firebrands
among a large host of idle men and women,
if they are once persuaded that their misfortunes
are in any way the fault of their superiors. The
conduct of the Lancashire operatives has been on
the whole most admirable. Their dignified patience,
and the fortitude with which they have borne their
undeserved sufferings, have called forth the ap-
proval and respect of the civilised world. Even in
the late distressing riots at Staleybridge it was
found that the disturbances originated with a band
of giddy and excitable young people—not with the
regular working men and women of the district,
who complained bitterly of the discredit thus brought
upon them. But however admirable the conduct
of the people may be, it is the duty of those whose
province it is to rule them to provide for their needs
and necessities, no less moral than physical. Many
benevolent schemes have been suggested and par-
tially developed by private exertion and kindliness.
Some hundreds have been shipped off to our colo-
nies to transport into young and thinly peopled
States the energies that could find no room in
the overcrowded arena of the old country. Others
have been removed to different parts of the country,
and set to new kinds of labour. But the school,
the field, and the colony have not as yet disposed
of a twentieth part of the great body of unemployed
hands. The question is what is to be done for the
remainder ? They cannot be left longer in that
idleness which is intolerable to an honest English-
man, and it will be yet some time before our mills
are all fairly at work again. A system of compre-
hensive emigration un:er Government auspices has
been thought of by some, which should transplant
into other lands the vigorous offshoots of English
industry. But is such a wholesale deportation wise
or necessary ? Are these honest and hard-wailing
sons and daughters of toil the ones that England
can best spare ? Are they not part of that steady
substratum which neutralises the efforts alike of
anarcbs and despots, which enables her to smile at
the thunders of Chartist eloquence, which offers the
beat safeguard to the liberties of her Constitution.
Young, daring, adventurous spirits may do well to
carry to another land those energies and powers
which the routine of an old civilisation might
cramp ; they are fitted to be the pioneers of Eng-
lish liberty and intelligence. They are qualified to
wrestle with nature and man on the wild outskirts
of civilisation, or to aid in developing
a young
colony in the dawn of its rising fortunes. English
worth and English enterprise have by such means
been wafted, like the wind borne seed, into every
latitude of the habitable globe, and their country
applauds them for their courage. It is the fitting
work
for youth, and energy, and hope, untram-
mellsd by home ties, unworn by home labour.
But it is not the work for fathers and
mothers of families, who once had no thought
nor wish but to end their days in
the old land as their
,parents did before them