The Sun.
London, England, 1863-07-18 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF T.

TIMES.—The veteran Londoner, who has learnt
patience and meekness from long years of disap-
pointment, will peruse with a melancholy smile Mr.
Bass's pretest against organ-grinding in the House
of Commons last night. There must be much fresh-
ness of spirit and hope in any one who believes it
possible that we can be ever rescesd from our tor-
mentors. The man must have a good m inory for
distant events who can recollect when the first in-
dignant outcry was made against the disturbers of
the public peace, and in those days they were few
end far between. A Buy a-brcom, or Jim Crow,
or an old-fashioned organ ornamented with little
rotating figures was t:.e worst invader of the in-
valid's or student's quiet. But now every street
or square of dwelling-hoes-es resounds from morn-
ing till night with the crash of German
bands, the rattle of niggers' "bones," the
melancholy drawl of women and children pre-
tending to sing something, sacred or sentimental.
Nebuchadnezzar himself could not have brought to-
gether such a variety of extraordinary instruments
as may be heard within a few hours by a gentleman
seated in his own library in a London house. It may
be that some day outraged humanity will revolt,
and London householders, headed by Mr. Babbage,
will take vengeance on their persecutors ; but that
time has not yet come, and to look for a remedy
from Parliament is only the delusion of a simple and
sanguine mind. But if we must still endure all that
these terrible melodists can inflict, there is a better
hope with regard to a class of nuisances which,
though very old, and having, of course, many
warm friends, have been boldly attacked during the
present session. We speak of those which it is
the object of the London (City) Traffic Regulation
Bill to remove. It need not be said that things
must have become very bad indeed when the most
conservative and immovable of Corporations felt it
necessary to interfere. Perfectly content with itself
end things in general, the City Corporation has not
been able to bear any longer the anarchy and
confusion of its own streets. The state of the
thoroughfares from 9 to 5 daily, and particularly
towards the hours when the morning and evening
tides or vehicles flow to and from the City, is such that
the business of the community is seriously impeded.
What is exceptional in other cities at the time of
some great pageant or solemnity is the normal
state of London, particularly in the thoroughfares
which converge on the Bank. There is every day
something equivalent to an Alexandra procession;
every day witnesses a state of things which no
police can control or bring into order. Much of
this is irremediable. The witnesses examined before
the Select Committee of the House of Commons
say that the omnibuses will take their old routes,
though new routes have been opened to them; that
Cannon-street has done much less than was ex-
nected to relieve Cseapside ; and that the obstruc-
tions are continually increasing, not only from what
is legitimate traffic, but also from the great quan-
tity of unnecessary business which is transacted in
the daytime, instead of at night, or early in the
morning, as in Continental capitals, In Paris, for
instance, not only is heavy traffic of all kinds, such
As the passage of carts, drays, vans, pieces of tim-
ber, ladders, &c , put under strict regulation, but
one of the hief causes of annoyance—the loading
and unloading of goods—is avoided altogether by
the law or custom which provides that it shall take
place at en early hour in the morning. With these
and many other matters a Traffic Regulation
Bill endeavours to deal. The traffic of heavy,
vehicles, such as waggons and omnibuses, the load-
ing and unloading of vans at unseasonable hours,
thepassage of scaffold poles and long girders through
the streets during the busy parts of the day, are
among the nuisances proposed to be remedied; and
the City further asks the power of directing more
completely the stream of traffic, and dividing it be-
tween the thoroughfares. After some opposition
by the London General Omnibus Company and some
of the London traders, the Select Committee have
roported in favour of the bill, with some limitation
of the powers originally sought. It is to advocate
the passing of the bill this session that we have
mentioned the subject. 'Whatever powers are neces-
sary to prevent the delay and confusion in the public
streets from increasing should be conferred at once,
for the evil admits of no remedy except the strict
control of a municipal body. The provisions of the
bill are so harmless and so useful that we trust it
will not be thrown over to another session.
POST.—Austria has advanced another step with
her centralised Parliament. In a quarter in which
she had apparently the least claim to anticipate
sympathies in her modern and revolutionary policy
of centralisation, the general scheme of government
of which the Reichsrath is a mein example appears
to have obtained support. Transylvania is the most
remote dependency of the Austrian Crown. More
distant from Vienna than either Galicia on the north
east or than Venetia or Illyria on the south, it might
have been fairly expected to have presented one of
the greatest government difficulties of
u Austrian
statesmen. Transylvania lies to the east of Hungary,
and bounded by Wallachia onsouth and
the by
Moldavia on its own eastern frontier. This little
community of two millions, formed of four distinct
nationalities, has long held aloof from its immediate
neighbours. Neither the Hungarians, nor the Mol-
davians, nor the Wallachians, nor the Polish Scla-
vonians, have succeeded in uniting
it. T g
ransylvania has so lonthemselves with
presented itself in
the character of a petty State struggling for its
independence—or, at least, for its distinctive pri-
vileges—against all these formidable neighbours,
that the Austrian Government,
with its usual in-
stinct,
has put itself forward as its protector. In
just that invidious spirit which led Maria Theresa
to support the Lombard peasantry against their
nobles, it has been the Austrian policy to support
the Transylvanians against the Hungarians and
all others who have encroached upon their rights.
Thus Transylvania has long been a favoured State;
and in that little country representative govern-
ment, annual parliaments, religious toleration,
secular and ecclesiastical education, and even Pro-
testant endowment, have existed
even in a period
in which any such liberalism was unknown in Eng-
land. The foundation of the favours thus showered
in past ages upon
Transylvania by Austrian princes
has thus lain in policy, and not in abstract liberality.
But whatever may have been the motive, the result
has been the same. Transylvania
has for the most
part been an ally of
Austria when Hungary has
been the enemy of Austria. The privileges, indeed,
thus guaranteed to her have often been invaded, but
far less frequently than in the case of Hungary ; and
if Transylvania is not uniformly grateful, she is at
least grateful foe the exceptions tb:it have been made
in her favour. It would seem that the Transylvanian
Diet, which has just been opened, is fully disposed
to support the Reichsrath, while Hungary still
holds herself aloof. An address of thanks has
been voted by its members to the Emperor, on ac-
count of the Imperial rescript, confirming the dis-
integration of these two States of the Austrian
empire. This is certainly what the Hungarian Diet
would refuse to do; and the tone and temper of the
Transylvanian deputies lead to a belief that they
are desirous to adopt the Austrian alliance. Thus,
the scheme of a centralised representation, which
the present advisers of the Emperor have invented,
appears to prosper. Of this we are sincerely
glad, for we believe it is the best practicable
mode of securing at once freedom and strengtt
to the Austrian empire. For the last three years
Austrian statesmen have been content to hope
that their dream might be realised. When the
catastrophe of their Italian war had awoke them
to the illusion of their former centralising and
military despotism, they hit up ,n a new scheme of
government. The provinces demanding liberty and
eutonomy on the one hand, and the Executive in-
sisting upon despotism and centralisation on the
other, a compromise was devised. The Emperor
agreed to surrender the element of despotism if the
provinces in turn would surrender, in part at least,
the element of autonomy. In other words a central
Parliament was devised. This was the Reichsrath.
But it was not entirely to overrule provincial dis-
tinctions, for the provincial Diets were stilt. to meet,
and were required to delegate deputies to the Cen-
tral and Supreme Parliament or Reichsrath. To
this proposal some of the component States of this
composite Austrian empire agreed and some objected
to it. Thus the Government of Austria has remained
in an anomalous condition, the Legislature consist-
ing of half a Parliament. By degrees, however, this
Reichsrath seems now likely to be amplified, and,
on the whole, we believe it to present the fairest
scheme for uniting the different interests, or, at least,
for compromising the different hatreds, in the Aus-
trian empire, The pervading error of Austrian
policy, both at home and abroad, has long been that
it has been founded, not upon moral principle, but
simply upon fear. Austria has been the enemy et
Italy, J ust because she has feared that Italian Libe-
ralism would rob her of Lombardy and Venetia.
On the other hand, she has been the friend of Turkey,
because she had feared that Russian encroachment
would endanger and overlap her eastern ft
ntier.
motive
In her domestic relations the same guidinja
she t
ced_
has been equally apparent. She long
Lombard and Heneetien people, because:.Teamorre"
die Lombard uno Hungarian arietocrece ;
cone

pie, it is impossible, or at least difficult, to put trust
in it. Thus it is that the Hungarians still hold out
where the Transylvnians are disposed to compro-

mist. The two millions of Transylvanians era CO
parcelled out that no one of the four nationalities,
can gain an appreciable ascendant over the other.
There are the WuHacks, the Szdtlers, the Magyars,
and the SAxons. Each of the three latter has its

distinct territory within the limits of Transylvania.
But the Wallacks, on the other hand, are scattered
over the whole or nearly so. Of these four ele-
ments of the Transylvanian population, the Saxon
element is naturally Austrian in point of political
sympathy. And even the Magyars, who are least
so in point of national connection, are apparently
too much dissociated from the Magyars of Hungary
to be any longer strongly drawn into their policy.
For all these reasons the Austrian Government has
succeeded, at a great distance, in conciliating the
Transylvanians more perhaps than any of her ex-
tra-German subjects. The present loyalty of Tran-
sylvanian to Austria affords another pledge of the
security of the political system of that part of the
east of Europe, as well as of the consolidation of the
Austrian rule in the remotest provinces of the

empire.
HERALD.—The provision for Fortification Ex-
penses Bill, debated on Monday night, brought the
question, " What are our future ordnance to be,"
again prominently into notice. After the expendi-
ture of some four years of time—and as it now
appears—three millions sterling money in experi-
ments to determine the best sort of heavy ordnance,
it is not a little humiliating that the War Office and
Admiralty have arrived at no conclusion, and that
hon. gentlemen who defend the war administration
before Parliament still point to hope for the solution
of difficulties that are probably no less great at
present than when the era of iron-coated war ships
and rifled ordnance was first inaugurated. On
many grounds it is to be regretted that any high-
flown announcements of what the guns of certain
ordnance constructors had achieved—or rather had
been said to have achieved—should ever have been
promulgated. In the early days of heavy rifled
such exaggerated records of the range and penetra-
tion of heavy rifled shot and shell were published
that favouritisms grew up in behalf of this or that
inventor—blind and unreasonable prejudices mostly
hence the more to be regretted, seeing that public
obstinacy has been substituted for public opinion in
a matter concerning which it is high time that some
salutary control of the latter should be made mani-
fest. Very frequently have we had to enunciate the
proposition—oneundeniable in the abstract, though
constantly evaded, if not denied, in practice—that
acmal demonstration constitutes the only authority
in matters of experimental science. Names are
valueless as authority in such matters, except so far
as they may be received as provisional guarantees
pending repetition of trial of experiments already
performed. Applying now these postulates to the
case of heavy rifled ordnance, we affirm that it would
be well if the public were to disabuse their mind
of whatever fame and prestige may have been
accorded to this or that ordnance contractor—
this or that peculiarity of gun ; deliberately con-
templating the evidence as it stands today, after
more than four years of anxious waiting and
costly experiments. Speaking plainly, then, as the
case demands, and as our own sente of fair play
prompts, the hope so commonly entertained not
very long ago, that one, at least, of the many breech-
loading systems of heavy ordnance would be found
efficient—that ordnance thus constructed would dis-
place muzzle-loading ordnance—all such hope, we
say, has been rudely dissipated. Whatever differ-
ence of opinion there may be in respect of the com-
petence of any particular breech-loading system, as
restricted to field-pieces, there can be none, to any
unprejudiced comprehension, in the case of ordnance
beyond the size of field-pieces. However great the
shock may be to national hopes entertained, or
opinions formed, or principles vouched for, that
which we announce is the issue made manifest by
experiments conducted assiduously for at least four
years. Whether the problem of ever adapting suc-
cessfully a principle of breech-loading to heavy
ordnance admits of affirmative solution or the con
trary, is of course a pure matter of opinion ; one,
however, the negative probability of which is
greatly enhanced by the fact the two cannon-
builders best known to fame, each in connection
with a breech-loading gun, have retired from this
arena of contest, and have for several months past
been associating their names respectively with two
forms of muzzle-loading cannon. Theme explana-
tions made, let us clearly understand that the hopes
of British artillery constructors are limited to the
accomplishment by main force of what had been
expected to he achieved by science. After so many
years of waiting and experiment we seem to have
come back to the point of acquiring that sort of
artillery power which was sought by the Turks,
when soon after their accession to the Eastern
empire, they planted their enormous cannon along
the Dardanelles. Mere increased dimensions of
bore and strength of metal seem all that our lead-
ing artillerists have to rely upon for penetrating the
iron armour-plates of war ships, All the beautiful
devices of breech-opening, which a few years ago
tound such favour,whereby loading should be f .cili-
tated and gunners protected—whereby portholes
should he capable of diminution to mere round aper-
tures scarcely larger than the muzzle of a gun—these
are abandoned, and seemingly for ever. All that
faculty of accomplishing enormous ranges so much
vaunted awhile ago counts now but little,seeing that
penetration, not range, is the quality of paramount
importance- The case, we say, is provoking, not
to say humiliating. After complacently speaking of
muzzle-loaders as remnants of barbarism, and vaunt-
ing breech-loaders as alone worthy a nation so gene-
rally advanced in science as ourselves, so pre-emi-
nently distinguished for our competence in metal-
lurgy, the return to muzzle-loading effected by
English artillerists is anything but consolatory.
Better know the truth, however, than go astray
under any self-imposed blindness: we have posi-
tively no heavy breech-loaders in the practice of
which any confidence is placed either for land or
sea service. For broadside guns it Is still question-
able whether any sort better than our old cast-iron
68 pounders have yet been constructed ; and
amongst such naval authorities as think well of
rifled ordnance for certain special uses the impres-
sion is beginning to prevail that cast-iron guns
rifled and jacketted would be equal—size for size—
to pieces of the more costly construction which
have so frequently during the past four years been
brought under notice. As for the monster ordnance
which are alone competent to effect the destruction
of armour-plates at ranges from 1,100 yards, these
it is conceded, are not yet manufactured. Lord
Clarence Paget professes himself strong in hope as
zo the speedy advent of these, and points by way of
confirmation to the development of artillery during
the past twelvemonths. All we can aver as to this
matter is, that if any such development there be
published records have failed to make it known to
many lookers-on not less watchful than Lord C.
Paget.