The Sun.
London, England, 1863-03-16 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC) JOURNALS,

SPECTATOR.—The London illuminations were, on
the whole, exceedingly magnificent—for London.
How far short we fell of the true theory of illumi-
nation, the inipte§elive spectacle of the Quadrant in
Regent-street, with its sweeping curves of flame,
brought out most clearly. We illuminate, as we do,
almost all other things, on individualistic and com-
petitive principles, instead of combining for unity
of design end continuity of effect. One heuse writes
a sentiment in coloured lamps, another puts up a
gas star, a third a transparency of the Prince and
Princess, and all is spotty and irregular. A conti-
nuous stream of light, however thin, sweeping down
each face of the great thoroughfares, would have
threaded together all the single illuminations into
an effect of infinitely greater grandeur. The only
real failure, :however, was the electric light, which
ant it ely disappointe,d the confiding hopes of its scien-
tific friends. People thronged to St. Paul's, at great
peril to their lives, to see a dome of fire, such as the
burning house in Paternoster-row lit up a year and
a half ago, and beheld what the class-books on optics
call an " oblique pencil of rays," and a very faint
one too, wandering in a desolate and dejected way
about the dome in the hope of effecting something.
A single beam of moonlight would have produced a
finer effect. St. Paul's cannot be lighted by a magic
lanthorn. The coloured Admiralty lamps round the
ball had the advantageof being seen from the howl-
ing wilderness of Smithfield—the nearest point
reached by many a cabful of patient explorers—and
certainly gave a striking impression of enormous
height, but also of great poverty of effect at that
height, looking something as a coloured glass-bead
necklace round a majestic beauty might seem to in-
fancy. The electric light on the National Gallery
did little better, except that which turned on the
top of the Nelson column, the whole height of which
remained:in darkness, it gave the effect of a sheeted
ghost in mid-air. Next to the Quadrant, St. James's-
street, Cheapside, Fleet-street, Boud-street, and Pall-
mall were most brilliantly and continuously lighted
streets, the Strand, except near Temple-bar, being
rather a failure. An eccentric and ingenious mind
in the Haymarket produced dissolving views of the
various members of the Royal Family, which excited
great interest in the crowd, the Princess of Hesse
(whom they call the Princess Bessy) developing
out of the Princess of Prussia with a rapidity that
even Mr. Darwin's newest species never rivalled.
SATURDAY RETIEW.—The present Home Secre-
tary is a typical specimen of the feeble race of
statesmen with which this conventional necessity
has often filled some of the most important offices.
At first sight, he has some qualities which would
seem to make him a useful member of a Government
that exists at the will of the House of Commons.
His gentle temper and extreme pliability secure
for him, among members of Parliament, that nega-
tive appreciation which is accorded to those who
do not disturb the even tenor of a lazy session by
importune activity. A man who never is provoked
into rough word, who never says anything suffi-
ciently definite to be by possibility indiscreet, and
who can always be squeezed by adequate pressure
into granting anything or withdrawing anything,
is sure of a certain amount of popularity. But it is
a success of a very fragile and delusive character.
No Ministry can exist long upon that negative
popularity which is based upon its inaction, and
which is therefore largely compounded of contempt.
Virtuous and courteous debility is a quality of mind
useful enough in a stop-gap or a sinecurist ; but the
Ministry that treats the 11°rue-office as a sinecure, to
be filled by the possessor of such qualifications,
dangerously trifles with its reputation. The Home
Secretary is the one official of the Government whose
personal ability presents itself in a palpable shape to
the experience of the people. If the Foreign-office
goes wrong, they are only wounded in their senti-
ments. If a Chancellor of the Exchequer blunders,
the chances are that he is simply blundering one class
in favour of another ; so that, if he makes enemies by
his mistakes, he is also making friends. But if a
hitch occurs in the mechanism by which the security
of life and property is assured, the evil results, or
at least the terrors of them, are felt by all classes
alike. If he so manages the police, or the punish-
ments of the law, that order is not preserved or crime
increases, the indignation which men who are not
politicians feel is something very different from the
grumbles that are elicited by a rash finance or a
wrong-headed policy. The Home Secretary is
clothed with the elementary functions of Government
—the protection of lite and goods from violence; and
if those functions are left unfulfilled, there is little
solace to be found in the exemplary discharge of all
the rest.

The past week has contributed two illustrations
of Sir George Grey's characteristic deficiencies. The
procession was a disgraceful specimen of adminis-
trative incapacity that foreign critics will not soon
forget. If the Grand Duke Constantine could have
been near Temple-bar or at the Mansion House on
Saturday last, he would have recanted his too hasty
admiration of the English system of police. A pro-
cession, indeed, it ceased to be. It was resolved into
its component atoms. Nothing remained but a few
carriages floating about at rare intervals in a boiling
sea of mob. The Princess had a narrow escape of
being received into the embraces of the English
people with a literal energy upon which sne did not
count. The reply on the part of the Home-office,
of course, will be, that all the disasters of the City
portion of the route were due to the break down of
that fragment of police which the vanity of the
Corporation has been allowed to keep asunder from
the general police organisation of the metropolis.
But there is no one who is so much to blame for the
existence of that anomaly as Sir George Grey. He
has had the reform of the City continually under his
hand for the last ten years. He has brought in some
half-dozen bills for its accomplishment, drawn from
the report of Sir John Patteson's commission. But
he has never even attempted to bring them
to au issue ; and after looking helplessly at the
difficulty for some six sessions, he has now aban-
doned it in, despair. Nor will it avail him to
say that the difficulties of Saturday were unex-
pected, and teat, had he foreseen them, he would
have put more pressure upon the lazy and selfish
Corporation. Unhappily, Saturday was but the
rehearsal of the real tragedy. Upon Tuesday the
inefficiency of the police under Sir George Grey's
management bore fruit in all parts of London in the
actual slaughter of many innocent persons. The
uncontrollable throng of Saturday might have
warned him. But the certainty of impending dis-
aster tends rather to paralyse than to rouse men
who are naturally iecapable of energy.
LONDON REVIEW.—No marriage can be regarded
as a commonplace event. Even when the sacred
rites unite the lowliest and the most obscure, it is
a crisis in the life and destiny of t wo human beings ;
the fertile source of happiness or sorrow not confined
to themselves ; the sweet or bitter epring of unnum-
bered blessings or curses to those who wed and to
the society of which they form part. How august,
then, must be the bearing upon a nation's future of
such a marriage as *e have just
.seen celebrated.
By it the Royal Venally, beneath whose title we so
love to live, renews itself under the happiest aus-
pices. We see in it a deliverance from all fear of a
break in the direct line of tihr native-born princes.
We trust that it will give us a young and buoyant
Court; not, as in timlee we willingly forget, ranged
in opposition to the elder and graver ene, but rein-
forcing its strength and increasing its influence by
the freshness of sympathy,, the natural enthusiasm,
the openness to new thoughts and ideas; with which
it is the privilege of youth to aid and inspire the
calmer wisdom, the more cautious steps and the
more sluggish feelings of mature age. It is desirable
that the influence of the rising generation should
be felt near the throne as it ie in every other part
of our political or social life. Never had prince or
princess a fairer opportunity of playing a great
part as faithful interpreters to the Sovereign of the
sentiments and ideas of their own contemporaries.
The nation confidently expects that they will not lose
sight of this duty ; that they will not, even in the pure
enjoyment of domestic happiness, forget the claims
of that public station to which they are born, At
the satee time it is keenly alive to the fact, that
domestic purity and devotion are the indispensable
foundations of their usefulness. Of these, however,
we do not doubt. The Prince of Wales has had be-
fore him the best example in his nether and father.
Even before we saw her, report had invested the
Princess with every virtue that may adorn a crown,
or shed happiness upon a family circle, Since she
has shown herself in our streets, he would indeed be
a rash man who ventured to hint a doubt of this, in
any assembly of his countrymen and countrywo-
men. But had our hopes and expectations been
based merely upon these reasoning considerations,
d
our rejoicings would have wante much much of
their warmth, and been characterised by much more
of self-restraint. The people were deeply affected
and thoroughly won by the romance of a love -match
in a rank where such things have been far from
common. This was the touch of nature which broke
down all the barriers which rank and etiquette in-
terpose between sovereign and subjects. Those
who thought about the matter found here the best
pledge for the realisation of our fondest wishes. To
those who did not think, the same conviction was
suggested by the unerring instinct of our hearts.
Therefore was it both natural and well that we
should do as we have done. Our generous outburst
of deep and genuine feeling will not fall fruitless to
to the ground. Nations, like individuals, gain im-
mensely by throwing off now and then the restraints
of conventional habit, and by giving vent to the
finer emotions and exercise to the more unselfish
capabilities, which are apt to languieh amidst the
routine of daily life. Such demonstrations as those
in which we have taken part sensibly raise the tone
of the public mind. They bring home to us how
much we all have in common ; they increase our

confidence that this is generally felt ; they give us
a new and sound reason for believing that in any
great crisis or struggle Englishmen will stand
shoulder to shoulder unto the last, Nor can they
be but a passing morning's gratification to those
in whose honour they are offered. All but the basest
are rendered better by being trusted. If there
is anything good in a man, the surest way of bring-
ing it out is to show that we know it is there, and
that we rely upon his doing justice to himself. The
marvellous reception of last S,turday, the universal
celebration of the marriage of Tuesday, were mani-
festations of so complete a trust in the Prince and
the Princess of Wales, that they must indeed be un-
worthy it they do not strain every nerve to deserve
the love which :is heaped upon them. They are
called to no ordinary inheritance—that of the un-
bounded devotion of the freest people on earth.
Reserved as we are, we have opened to them the
innermost recesses of our heart. They can have seen
nothing there but the most eMctionate loyalty, and
they are bound by the strongest obligations—by
the proudest recollections—to make the happiest
day of their lives the fertile source of happiness to
the country that rejoiced with them.
LAW TIMES.—The House of Commons has wisely
rejected the clause in the Corrupt Practices But
disfranchising solicitors and others employed by
candidates at an election. No contest could be
conducted without some assistance, and the only
effect of depriving the persons so employed of the
privilege to vote would he, as it was when
such was the law, an extensive system of evasion.
The vote of the solicitors were sacrificed,
of course, for no election could be managed without
them, and as they were generally pretty equally
divided, the loss of their votes had no material effect
upon the issue. But with the humbler classes of em-
ployed, the plan was to engage the services of
the son or daughter, or of some relative
or friend of the voter, who worked gratuitously,
the relative receiving the wages. The House knew
this, and, prudently deeming that it is better
to sanction that 'which cannot be prevented, has
resolved to leave the law as it is, the election
committee adjudging whether the employment
of agents was colourable or bona . fide ; reasonable
or unreasonable in its extent. Why not at once
acknowledge, what everybody well knows, that
no law that human wit could devise will put down
bribery; and content ourselves with doing all that
can be done to make it as difficult and dangerous
as possible?