The Sun.
London, England, 1863-01-05 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MO .:\ DAY EVENING, JANUARY 5, 1863,

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

--~-----

LONDON REVIEW.—We are now staying at the
Prince Albert Hotel at London-super-Mare, with
our wife and child, and servant. We are paying
six guineas a week for a small slip of a sitting-
room, and two small bed-rooms, which scarcely
suffice to hold the enormous beds which lumber
them up. For our breakfast, consisting of very
coarse tea, very thin milk, very bad butter and
toast we pay 2s. a head. We pay ls. each for com-
position candles, which cost 4d. in the shops. We
pay 2s. a day for a coal fire, in a grate scarcely large
enough to warm our small room. Our dinner ge-
nerally consists of some common fish, whiting, soles,
or herrings,---mutton chops or veal cutlets, and a
sixpenny apple-tart, for which we pay ss. a head.
Sherry and port, which our landlord, who is also a
wine merchant, is glad to sell out of his hotel at 30s.
a dozen, he retails to his inmates at 725. a dozen.
Medoc, which he advertises as a wine merchant
at 245. a dozen, he retails as an innkeeper at 60s. a
cloven. For a bottle of soda water, which the che-
mists sell for 3d., he charges ls. ; for a sandwich,
ls. ; for three penny worth of gin and water, to
dilute our evening cigar, ls. Ladies and children
not being admitted to take their meals in the coffee-
room, we are compelled to breakfast and dine in
the small closet dignified by the name of our private
apartment, and to smell those meals for hours after
we have swallowed them. Our servant's board
costs us 6s. a day; and we are charged 6s. a
day for attendance. These various items con-
stitute a very formidable bill at the end of each
week, no matter how frugally we live, but
then we have the comfort of reflecting that we
are staying at the very best hotel in London-
super-Mare—indeed, some people go so far as to
say it is the best hotel in England and perhaps
they are right. Its coffee-room is low, dark, and
hot, and is pervaded by a chronic odour of cheese,
and of the dinners of the day before yesterday ; and
the melancholy and silent guests who haunt it ap-
pear seldom to exceed a pint of the low-priced
six -shilling fiery sherry at their meals, and to
eschew carefully the curious vintages of claret,
champagne, and Tokay to which the wine certe on
the mantelpiece pompously invites them at prices
varying from 10s. to 245. a bottle. Latterly the
obliging landlord has condescended to supply the
common wines of France and; Germany, for which
he charges but 48s. and 60s. a dozen ; but they are
of such a scourging and acrid quality that no pru-
dent man ventures upon them twice. On the wall
hang the memorable resolutions arrived at by the
confederate hotel-keepers of England assembled at
the London Tavern in 1853, reminding their custo-
mers,and opportunely too, for it might riot otherwise
occur to them, that the accommodation they are
receiving is admirable, that they are not paying at
all too much for it, that at no continental betel
are they treated better or charged less than at the
Prince Regent Hotel at London-super-Mare, and
that the Times is a most calumnious and unprin-
cipled journal. As long as we have been staying
at it, the Prince Albert has been full to overflow-
ing ; its magnificent concierge assures us that it is
always full to overflowing, and that although the
quality of its guests varies with the time of year,
their numbers never vary. At some seasons, he
tells us, it contains more lords than Jews, and at
others more Jews than lords; but the house is
always full. Indeed, it has been so often hinted to
us that there are several distinguished noblemen and
opulent stockbrokers anxiously waiting for the rever-
sion of the three small closets which we occupy, that
we do not dare to find fault with anything, and pay
our modest bill every Saturday with simulated
cheerfulness; for the air at London-super-Mare is
very pure, its esplanade is clean, dry, and sunny,
and our child is recovering satisfactorily from a
long illnoast. We should probably not better our-
selves were we to migrate to St. Leonards, or to
Brighton, or to Dover, or to Folkestone ; we should
certainly meet at all those places with precisely the
same small closets at six guineas a week ; the same
dingy coffee-rooms, flavoured with cheese and fried
fish ; the same fiery port and sherry at 6s. a bottle ;
the same meagre breakfasts ; the same monotonous
mutton-chop and veal-cutlet diet ; the Bailie pre-
posterous charge for everything, great and small.
And we should find hanging in all their coffee-
rooms the same London Tavern resolutions, expres-
sive of the perfect satisfaction of the Confederate
English hotelkeepers with the existing state of
things.
SPECTATOR.—It is a very common thing to hear
people moaning grievously over the deterioration
which has taken place in the character of the Bri-
tish merchant. That miracle of uprightness " whose
word was as good as his bond" is considered by
these prophets of evil to be for ever lost ; and they
recount with gloomy satisfaction the many gigantic
frauds which have come to light within the last
eight or ten years, as if these alone were sufficient
to establish the soundness of their opinion. As a
matter of fact, however, it is remarkable how very
few of these are to be attributed to persons who
can with any propriety be called merchants. They
have been more commonly either of the higher class
of employes like Redpath, or men of a certain social
position like Colonel Waugh and Roupell ; and
even where it has been otherwise, as in the instance
of Cole, Davidson, and Gordon, the utterers of the
forged dock warrants, the case has owed its noto-
riety rather to the extent of the defalcations than
to the mercantile importance of the perpetrators of
the fraud. Sir John Dean Paul's case, again, is
more than equalled by that of Fauntleroy, who
was the offspring of that past which it is now the
fashion to praise ; and it may, besides, very well be
doubted whether the increase of fraud is at all dis-
proportionate to the increase of the business of the
country. But nevertheless, however little the
popular feeling may be justified by the popular
reasoning, there are grounds for thinking that it has
in it a certain substantial element of truth. It is
certainly a matter for serious consideration when a
most experienced advocate thinks it for the interest
of his client to attempt to justify, before a London
special jury, " keeping back information from
shareholders" by directors, " managing the market
and declaring a fictitious dividend;" and when
the Chief Justice of England doubts whether " the
unhappy frequency of similar operations" may not
have " produced a different view of these matters I
in the commercial world from that which would
be taken of them in any other circle of
honourable men," and thinks it necessary
to denounce such "fraudulent and dishonest tran-
sactions" in a "passage which was pronounced with
great energy." Or, to take an illustration of
another kind, who of modern writers would venture
to depict the character of the "merchant of great
eminence in the City" in the colours in which Ad-
dison has painted Sir Andrew Freeport. Think
over the creations of modern novelists, from
" Cheeryble Brothers" to the "Newcomer," and
you will find mercantile men remarkable for charity,
for that kind of honour which is the result of per-
sonal pride, for every kind of good or evil quality ;
but where is there one the staple of whose character
is simply " indefatigable industry, strong reason,"
and stricter integrity than that of ordinary
men ? And what is this but a proof that such
a type would no longer be in harmony
with the experience of their readers ? The
fact seems to be
that
osas ctehratnainthne desirenscrupuloof gainusness. h alst
crept into modern commerce, which is the result
more of the fear
is not that " the City" has avowedly abandoned
any one of its old frugal
and honourable maxims,
still less has adopted the
'
put
sense moneyeve
even
n thanthy purse"iag 0
of lago, in a more shameless
theby hight
a t -dpressurefor
s Ls: lavish
oi intended tend ed
competition,it. B
stimulatedut , under
y
personal expenditure which seems to burn more
fiercely
ini
each t
y succeeding generation, traders
d ; they are willinghe to
gamble more

incur greater risk for the sake of large immediate
gains, and great risks- in the long run mean heavy
losses. But among men whose hearts are set on
making a great fortune, the courage to make a loss
seems to be the only courage which is wanting.
Nat Ural vanity, too, whispers that their calamity
is entirely undeserved. They have been cheated—
or they were over-persuaded into it by some san-
guine speculator, whose facile tongue, after all,
was less efficacious in disarming their better judg-
ment than their*Ovvn cupidity. Then comes a con-
fused notion of the right of self-preservation--that
between them and the public it is only a question
who of two innocent men shall suffer that they
do no worse to others than has been dono to them ;
and that everybody will always take care of him-
self. And so gradually even scrupulous men are
drawn into practices which they would be the first
to blame in others, and from which, had they been
nakedly stated at the commencement IA the unlucky
enterprise, they would have shrunk with horror.
There is a vast deal of worldly wisdom in the old
maxim we have so often heard, " They that make
haste to be rich shall not be innocent."
SATURDAY REVIEW.—A sense of thankfulness
and surprise at the ease with which the shock of
the American war has been borne ought to be the
predominant feejing in every one who reflects on
the financial histtry of thspast twelve months. We
have escaped the danger which was imminent when
the year commeced, of being ourselves dragged
into reluctant hostilities; but, at the same time, we
have lost the measure of relief that the forcible
opening of the blockaded ports would have brought
to the suffering industry of Lancashire. Either by
thus cutting the knot, or by securing a largely in-
creased supply of cotton from India, it was hoped
that the impediments to our staple manufacture
would by this time have been removed. Neither of
these anticipations has born realised. The Trent
affair was settled in a manner which leaves little
probability that the offensive language of the Fede-
ral Government will again be translated into offen-
sive action ; and unless the course of events should
render our intervention acceptable to the majority
of Americans both in the North and the South, the
struggle may be expected to drag itself on to its
natural termination in the exhaustion of the com-
batants, and the final separation of the two Confe-
deracies. For various reasons, the development of
cotton production in India has been less rapid
than those who knew the capabilities of
the country had anticipated, and the ag-
gregate imports front this source have only sur-
passed by a fractional percentage those of .1861.
This has been chiefly owing to the excessive appre-
hension of the glut which might at any time ensue
from the cessation of the American blockade ; but
it is probable that the enterprise of Lancashire
would not have shrunk so entirely from encounter-
ing this risk, had not the enormous stocks of manu-
factured goods rendered a pause in production de-
sirable, if not .absolutely essential. This is an
influence which time alone is certain to counteract;
and-already the improved tone of the markets has
begun to show its effect in a partial renewal of the
industry which had been almost entirely suspended.
The crisis of the cotton famine has, to all appear-
ance, been reached, and a gradual, though probably
a slow, revival may with some confidence be antici-
pated. We are therefore in a position to estimate at
its true measure the weight of a calamity under
which it was supposed .that England must
sink into irretrievable ruin. Continental ob-
servers, and many men among ourselves,
shared the belief of the American plan-
ters that without cotton England could not exist.
To absorb the raw material and to secrete calico in
constantly increasing quantities, was supposed to
sum up the whole destiny of England; and
the distress which has been felt so sharply
and endured so bravely has not been with-
out the compensating advantage of overthrow-
ing this idle superstition and proving the
wonderful stability of our commercial system.
Years of brilliant prosperity are valuable enough
as showing what England is capable of doing. A
year of trouble has proved evenmore
ausefsuhladine
showing how much our commerce can en-
dure. It may be said, without
of exaggeration, that none of the dreaded
consequences of the blockade of the cotton ports
upon our commercial and financial interests have
been experienced. Even in Lancashire no one has
starved, for local and national benevolence has been
found fully equal to the demand upon it. There
has been no panic and convulsion, and less than the
usual amount of commercial failures. Trade has
never been checked by a want of accommodation ;
but on the contrary, gold hes been more abundant than
usual, and the rate of discount has fallen to the lowest
point which has been reached since the opening of the
first International Exhibition of 1851. What is
still more surprising is the absence of any material
reduction in the aggregate amount of our foreign
commerce, the total falling off being less than 2 per
cent. on the figures of the previous year. The di-
minution in the export of cotton has, of course, been
large; but it has been almost exactly balanced by
the increased trade in other commodities, and in
particular by the expansion of our commerce with
France.

EXAMINER.—Without wishing to say anything
hard of the dead, we must be permitted to hope
that we are entering upon a yeat as unlike the last
as may be. Nationally our occupation during 1862
may be said to have been little more than that
which in the drill ground is called "marking time."
At its commencement the country stood to its arms,
with the word " ready." Soon afterwards the rash
defiance which had in mid-winter led to the assump-
tion of that attitude was withdrawn, and since then
it has not been repeated. Nevertheless, the toil
and cost incident to preparation for defence has in
no material respect been lightened. The estimates
for the year gone by for army, navy, and ordnance
were as great as they used to be in time of actual
war ; while the outlay upon incomprehensible pro-
jects of fortification has gone on steadily increasing:
and the best that can be said for our gigantic ex-
penditure during the past twelve months is, that its
prodigal sum has not been inscribed, as in America,
in the blood of the brave. Financially and fiscally
we have neither retrograded nor advanced. With
the exception of the hop-growers of Worcestershire
and Kent, we are paying the same taxes to-day that
we paid a year ago. Mr. Gladstone consented to
find Ways and Means once more for an expenditure
which he vehemently denounced as inordinate. Mr.
Stansfeld made a flash-in-the-pan motion about
economy which he took care should not alarm the
spendthrifts, and Mr. Walpole, after threatening to
snatch the weapon out of his hand, in order to aim
it with party intent, took a trembling fit, and, with
penitent sobs, asked to be permitted to run away.
" Dear Mr. Crawford," who once tried to make the
City believe he was in earnest about retrenchment,
took care to be silent until the £70,000,000 for 1862
were voted and half spent; and when, with a view
to the future, Mr. Cobden, later in the session,
sought to fix public attention upon the duty and
need of reverting once more to the long-forgotten
principles of economy, Mr. Bright, true to the un-
practical part he loves to play, was nowhere to be
found.

HERALD.—We have no right whatever to attach
to our recognition any conditions bearing on the
internal affairs of the South. Recognition is not
an act of favour, but of justice. If the recognition
of the Confederates would be a favour to them, it
could hardly be otherwise than an affront to the
North. To withhold it may or may not be proper ;
to tender it in exchange for certain concessions af-
fecting, not the relations between the Confederacy
and foreign Powers, but the domestic laws and in-
stitutions of the States,
would be to offer a direct
end wanton insult. This will be clear if we suggest
a few parallel cases. England was not bound
i
in-
stantly to recognise the Government established n

France by the revolution of February, or that sub.
stituted by the coup d'etat of December ; bat she
would have had no right whatever to make her re-
cognition conditional, to demand from M. de La-
martine guarantees against Socialism, or to insist
that the Emperor should maintain a constitutional
form of government. Again, we might have de-
clined at present to acknowledge the King of Italy ;
hut we were not entitled, and should not have pre-
sumed, to make acknowledgment the price of reli-
gious liberty for Protestants throughout his domi-
nions. Similarly, we have no right whatever to
ask from the Confederate States any change in
their municipal legislation as the condition of our
consenting to hold diplomatic intercourse with
them; and were we to do so we should be guilty
of an impertinence as gross as that which Lord
Russell has just offered to Denmark in the matter
of Schleswig. It may be said, indeed, that we
could do what we did in the case of Naples : we
could diplomatically " cut" a poWer, which, accord-
ing to our judgment•, was not fit to be received into
the family of civilised nations. If we could do this
it would simply be very silly, very inconvenient,
and utterly useless. But we cannot do it while we
hold intercourse with Spain and Brazil. We cannot
pretend that slavery is a loathsome abomination in
the Southern States—on which we ourselves forced
it—which is so offensive to us that we refuse to
associate on terms of international courtesy with
those who tolerate it, and that in Cuba and Brazil
slavery is a thing objectionable indeed, but by no
means disentitling its upholders to their natural
place and position among nations_ Therefore, we
have no right to make the abolition of slavery a
condition of the recognition which, sooner or later,
must be accorded to the Confederate States of
America. And if we had the right we should be
very unwise to exercise it. Any engagement which
could oblige us to interfere in any eventuality in
the domestic affairs of an American Federation
would be inevitably productive, some day or other,
of most disastrous consequences.
Further, there is not the slightest chance that the
Confederate States would listen to such a condition.
They do not think of slavery as we do. In their
view it is morally a great and sacred trust ; econo-
mically, a successful system of labour; politically,
the only form of civil government suited to the in-
ferior race whose presence among them could be
endured on no other condition. To ask them to
abolish it would be asking them to incur endless
trouble And difficulty in order to get rid of that
which they hold to be a right and beneficial insti-
tution.

Naval- and Military Intelligence.

THE NAVY.

VALETTA, Dec. 30.—Her Majesty's screw sloop
Chanticleer, 17, Commander C. Stirling, left Malta
harbour on the 29th inst., for Corfu, taking with
her despatches and a general mail for the lonian
Islands. This vessel is to relieve the Icarus, 11, Com.
N.Salmon,V.C. on the Santa Maura, and Missolonghi
station. On the 20th inst., the Edgar, 89, Capt.
the Hon. F. A. Foley (bearing the flag of Rear-
Admiral S. C. Dacres, C. 8.), and the Shannon, 35,
Capt. C. J. Tones, were at Corfu. The Foxhound, 4,
Commander the Hon. A. C. Hobart, was at Nanplia,
and the Queen, 76, Capt. C.-F. Hillyar, the Liffey,
39, Capt. George Parker, the Pelican, 17, Com-
mander P. Brock, and the Alacrity, 4, Commander
I. Baird, were at the Piraeus. The Liffey took from
Marseilles to the Pincus the Hon. Henry Elliot,
our Minister at Athens, who was accompanied by
his brother, Admiral Elliot and Mr. Grant. The
following English men of war are at present in
Malta harbour :—The Marlborough, 131, Captain
H. Stewart, C.B. (bearing the flag of the Vice-
Admiral Commander-in-Chief) ; the Hibernia,
recci-ring .hip, Commandor 14_ 13. Ilarvey (bearing
the flag of Rear-Admiral H. J. Codrington ; the
Phoebe, 35, Capt. T. Fortescue ; the Magicienne,
16, Capt. his Serene Highness the Prince of
Leiningen ; the Firefly surveying vessel, Com-
mander A. L. Mansell ; the Psyche, despatch boat,
Commander R. Stave ; and the tenders Boxer and
Growler. Accounts received here this day from
Gibraltar state that the Firebrand, 6, Commander
Piers, and the Procris gunboat, were lying at the
latter place ; and that the Meeanee, 60, Capt.litode-
house, and the Megcera, Commander Henderson,
were daily expected there from England.
The Leander, 51, screw steam frigate, 2,654 tons,
600 horse power, which has been fitted for the Ist
division of the steam reserve at Sheerness, in place
of the Berme, commissioned, was taken out of
dock in Sheerness-yard,gm Saturday, and will be
removed to moorings in the harbour on Monday.
The Columbine, 4, screw steam sloop, 695 tons,
200 horse power, was taken into dock at Sheerness
to be fitted with Lumley's new patent steering
apparatus on Saturday last.

The Scylla, 21, screw steam corvette, 1,467 tons,
400 horse power, Captain Rowley Lambert, from
the Mediterranean, was paid off by Captain-Super-
intendent Charles Wise, Aide-de-Camp to the
Queen in Sheerness Dockyard on Saturday. The
crew were granted a month's leave. The Scylla
will be placed in the third class steam reserve at
Sheerness.

Early on the morning of Sunday her Majesty's
ship Formidable, flagship of Vice-Admiral Sir W.
J. Hope-Johnstone, at Sheerness, parted from her
moorings in a heavy squall, but was fortunately
brought up at the Little Nore without sustaining
damage. She was towed into harbour by the Me-
dusa and Otter steamtugs, and placed at temporary
moorings until her own can be replaced.
The line-ot battle screw steamer Hood, 90, 600
horse power, attached to the second division of the
Chatham steam reserve, has been fitted with a spare
(Griffith's) propeller, and is also to be supplied with
fittings for her Armstong guns.
Messrs. John Penn and Son, the eminent engi-
neering firm at Greenwich, have received orders
from the Admiralty to construct a pair of oscillating
engines of 160 horse-power (nominal) for a yacht
ordered to be built for the service of her Majesty
when staying at her Marine Palace at Osborne.
The following appointments were maae on Satur-
day at the Admiralty :—Commander W. R. Hob-
son to the Osprey; Commander J. B. Scott to be
Inspecting Commander of the Coastguard, vice Com-
mander Dalyell, deceased ; Commander A. P. H.
Helby to be Inspecting Commander of the Coast-
guard, vice Commander Bouverie, promoted ; Dr.
Robert Borrows, surgeon, to the Ariel ; Richard
Godden, master's assist., to the Rhadamanthus ;
and Wallace B. M'Hardy, midshipman, to the
Resistance.