The Sun.
London, England, 1863-02-05 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—If the usage of a few years still pre-
vailed, we should this morning present our readers
with the Speech from the Throne, slightly varied in
language and amplified by our remarks. But the
custom of communicating beforehand to the Press
the words of the Sovereign on the only occasions
when she addresses the nation in person has been
reasonably discontinued, and we, therefore, without
pretending to predict what will be said, ale content
to take a survey of the national position, and point
out the light and shade on the prospect before us.
Happily, the light largely predominates. The very
fact that a Queen's Speech is not in these days a
matter of interest; that no stubborn aristocracy, no
timid mercantile class, no angry multitude is wait-
ing with anxious ears for the announcement of a

Ministerial programme, is in itselfa blessing. Any
political storm must be a sudden and abnormal
phenomenon. No set of statesmen, no unduly
powerful class, are expecting to reap the whirlwind
as the reward of what they or their forefathers have
sown. The Session begins without the foreboding
of a conflict; with hardly the promise of a measure.
The keen intellects of the Chancellor and his sub-
ordinates may have been employed during the recess
in framing new simplifications of our anomalous
laws, and their labours may result in useful addi-
tions to the Statute-book; but, unless they affect
such popular subjects as a marriage law, the lay
public can hardly be brought to take en interest
in legal Bills. These schemes of technical legisla-
tion remain beyond the sphere of public curiosity,
and generally of Royal notice. Of more exciting
domestic subjects there is a complete absence. The
name of Parliamentary Reform is never heard. The
Church Rate discussion is little more than an oppor-
tunity for the two parties of an evenly-balanced
House of Commons to show the gains and losses of
the preceding twelvemonth. The usual crop of
annuals in the shape of the Ballot and a number of
little bills in some way connected with ecclesiastical
grievances will spring up and live their life of a day;
but of regular political measures to be proposed and
opposed, debated, and divided upon, we know none.
That there will be something done, and that by the
middle of August some hundred Acts of Parliament
will have become the law of the land, must of course be
believed. But we foresee it onlywith the eye of faith.
All our thoughts are, in fact, directed to what is
passing beyond the limits of these realms. Her
Majesty in her Message may congratulate or con-
dole, but she will in most cases refer to the acts of
foreign nations, their civil wars, and their revolu-
tions ; the ambition of one, the weakness and decay
of another, and the prospect of their one day learn-
ing wisdom and imitating the prudence and self-re-
straint of her own people. Among the most legiti-
mate subjects of congratulation will be the bearing
of the nation under the heavy trial of the cotton
famine. Though all is not over, yet we may fairly
believe that the worst has passed. Within five
years the two great calamities which, as long as we
can remember, the world has been predicting as cer-
tain to prostrate the power of Britain have come
upon us, and the old ship has weathered both storms.
The Indian mutiny established anew our power in
Asia ; the shutting of the cotton ports by an Ame-
rican war has but shown the possibility and the ne-
cessity of becoming free from dependence on one
foreign nation. But the courage with which dis-
tress hasbeen borne, and the munificence with which
it has been relieved, are still more worthy subjects
of Royal comment. As if to contradict all the
theories of desponding philosophers, the population
of the towns, which, from its numbers and its sup-
posed principles, has always been viewed with sus-
picion, has given the most perfect example of good
behaviour under sudden privation, and the events of
the past year have united class to class in a mutual
confidence which could never have been formed in
the sunshine of prosperity. With respect to the
two communities whose unhappy feud has been the
cause of these sufferings, what can an English
Queen do except utter a fervent hope that their
passions may soon be allayed so far as to permit
reason and humanity to be heard Any thing
more than the vaguest expression of good wishes
would probably be viewed with anger by the sen-
sitive community on whom the continuance of
the war depends. But it is certainly a cause of just
satisfaction to the nation that no act of its own has
embittered the contest, and that from first to last
its almost unanimous opinion has been in favour of
peace. Many are the subjects relating to foreign
nations which might deserve a place in the Message.
The expedition of the French to Mexico, the conso-
lidation of Italy, the renewed struggles of unhappy
Poland, are matters on which the country would
like to hear something, though Ministerial pru-
dence may think it better to disappoint its curiosity.
But there is one interestiug event a reference to
which cannot be omitted. Since the last session of
Parliament ended a crown has been offered by the
Greek people to the second son of our Queen. All
the world has felt that the election of Prince
Alfred, so enthusiastic and unanimous, was a sin-
cere tribute to the English character and policy, as
well as to the constitutional principles of her Ma-
jesty's House. Although circumstances seem not
to allow the Prince to accept, yet the Queen can-
not but express a hope for the prosperity of the
Greek kingdom, and her satisfaction that the crown
is likely to be taken by a near connection of her own,
a Prince distinguished not only by his high Euro-
pean station, but by his ability, his attainments,
and his proved constitutional principles. The true
chord, however, will be struck should her Majesty's
Message contrast, not in boasting and presumption,
but with real thankfulness to Providence, the peace-
ful state of this Empire with the troubles of the
greatest States in both hemispheres. The heir to
this world-wide Sovereignty is about to contract
his marriage of affection at a time when the vast
dominions which he will one day be called to govern
are in profound tranquillity. No political discon-
tent, no serious quarrel of race, or class, or caste,
exists in all this system of communities. But be-
yond the limits of the British Empire all is diffe-
rent. There is nothing but war and civil dissen-
sion; Kings falling from their thrones, or tempting
fate by blind provocations of their subjects; republics
destroying themselves by internal war, or wasting
away by misgovernment and the decay of their
people. What is the state of Russia and Poland ;
of Turkey, still distracted by Christian seditious ;
of Prussia, where Charles Stuart and his Parlia-
ment seem to have come on the stage again; of
Austria, which can neither conciliate nor coerce
two of her chief provinces ; of Italy, where the old
monarchies have left many a legacy of trouble ?
England alone stands free from the solicitude of
any domestic quarrel or any foreign war. The
declaration of the Sovereign that she is at peace
with all Foreign Powers rises on this occasion
above the usual commonplace. It is, indeed, a
triumph of administration that in the midst of all
these commotions we, who have interests in every
part of the globe, are at peace with every one.
While asserting our just rights wherever they have
been denied or violated, we have so far combined
self-respect with moderation that the country has
at this moment no enemy in the world, and may
soon reap by diminished imposts the benefit of its
just policy.

HERALD.—We all remember with what quaint
and strenuous frankness Thomas the Rhymer pro-
tested against the proffered kiss of the Queen of
Faerie, which was to give him " the tongue that
could never lie." If any malicious sprite could con-
fer upon the present Cabinet the gift of involuntary
veracity, we conceive that the Speech which will
this day be delivered in the name of their Royal
mistress would be the most damning record of Minis-
terial crimes and follies that ever was presented to
a scandalised Parliament. It could refer to nothing
creditable in the past ; to nothing hopeful in the
future. It must acknowledge a series of abortive
conspiracies and detected intrigues—conspiracies
against the Church and the Constitution, entered
into solely with a view to keep together a disor-
ganised party and sustain a Government divided
against itself ; intrigues which seem to have had
for their sole object the dishonour of the country
in the eyes of the world and of her rulers in the
eyes of their countrymen. her Majesty's Com-
missioners would have to inform Parliament that
the career of the Ministry has been, even in their
own opinion, one of defeat, failure, and discredit
from first to last, and that there is not the slightest

reason to suppose that its termination will be one
whit less inglorious to themselves or less mis-
chievous to the country; that they have betrayed
their principles without conciliating their partisans,
and sacrificed their honour without securing their
offices; that they have attacked the Church with-
out winning the confidence of the Dissenters, and
endeavoured to undermine the constitutional bal-
ance of power without thereby confirming the
wavering allegiance of the Radicals; that they have
insulted the Pope without contriving to ingratiate
themselves with any Protestant adversary, except
Mr. Steuart, of Cambridge, and won the lasting
hatred of the Catholics without shaking the firm
adherence of the Orange party to the Conserva-
tives; that they have completed the ruin of that
Liberal Coalition which was so laboriously pieced
together in 1859; that they have lost the confidence
of their friends while they have justified the dis-
trust and embittered the antagonism of their adver-
saries ; that they keep their hold of power only by
sufferance, and have no idea of using it for any
other purpose save that of keeping it. But heartily
must they congratulate themselves that on this sub-
ject they are not obliged to speak the whole truth.
They need not say how they have insulted the
country from which the Prince of Wales has chosen
his bride, and the Royal head of the family which
confers almost as much honour as it receives in this
happy connection. They are not compeller to dwell
on the deliberate and wanton affront they have put
on Denmark; on the advice given to a friendly
and most respected Sovereign to dismember his
own ancestral dominions in compliance with the
insolent and utterly unfounded demands of an
encroaching neighbour ; and on the imperti-
nent lecture addressed to him when he civilly
but decidedly declined to follow that unwar-
rantable and pernicious counsel. It is possible that
Lord Russell is not ashamed of this exploit ; but
we hardly give his colleagues credit for so much
insensibility. And yet they must let the Foreign
Secretary have his two or three paragraphs of self-
gratulation, and on what are those paragraphs to
touch ? Will they announce the preservation of
that cordial understanding with France of which
Lord Palmerston was so proud, and which has been
so strikingly manifested in Italy and in Mexico?
Will they express satisfaction that we have not
been involved in war with the United States by any
rash attempt to assert the honour of our flag and
the immunity of our ports, and take credit for the
prudence of the Ministry in forbearing to join in
any endeavour to restore peace to America and
prosperity to Lancashire Are we to be congra-
tulated on the success of our diplomacy in Italy,
which has resulted in confirming, for an indefinite
period, the French occupation of Rome, or on the
fortunate but inevitable failure of the strange in-
trigue which was to have brought the Pope as our
pensioner to Malta P Or will Lord Russell com-
placently refer to a subject which makes every
honest Englishman blush with patriotic shame—
such shame as Englishmen have not had occa-
sion to feel since England was a nation—
the infamous outrage offered to the high-spirited,
enlightened, honourable, and most friendly
Government of Brazil ? What, indeed, can he say
of which we shall not be ashamed to hear ? Will
he boast of the inextricable difficulties in which he
has involved us in China, where a chronic state of
warfare seems to be the inevitable consequence of
a Whig Government in England ; or of the disre-
putable quarrel with Mexico, or the still more dis-
reputable fashion in which we have backed out of
it P What is there of which he dare speak, unless
it be of the happy prospect of getting rid of our dis-
contented subjects in the lonian Islands, and of our
power in the Eastern Mediterranean, by a sacrifice
which has the peculiar merit of injuring everybody
except those who may hope to avail themselves of it
to the injury of others; and of the intrigue which
resulted in the choice by Greece of a King who
never could have been allowed to accept the Throne,
and whose election, therefore, should have been at
once rendered impossible by a frank and honest de-
claration that he would not accept it ? We must
expect to read the Royal Speech to-day with less
indifference and more indignation than such a docu-
ment can ordinarily provoke. But we may console
ourselves that it will be very long before bar
Majesty's present advisers will again have the
chance of addressing the nation in their Sovereign's
name. We cannot believe that those who have so
signally dishonoured themselves and their country
will be allowed further opportunities of exercising
their talents to serve the enemies, to alienate the
allies, to imperil the interests, and to sacrifice the
dominions of England.

COUNTRY MARKETS.

. .4.

LYNN—TUESDAY.
White ..50s to 53s I 8ar1ey...... 38s to 41s
..49s to 51s grinding ...... ..32s to 33s
Beans .34s to 39s Oats..
New —s to —s Peas —s to —s

HULL—TUESDAY.
A poor supply of English wheat to-day at market, which
again met a slow sale at about last week's currencies. Fo-
reign neglected. Barley for malting sold atfully late rates ;
grinding in limited sale. Oats, beans, and peas were un-
altered.

Wheat.... Old white per qr. 5OB Od to 53s Od
Old red
)1
New white .. „
New red .... „
Dantzic Keith , &c. old white 52s Od to 578 Od
Dutch, Belgian, and French. 58s Od to 62s Od
Baltic and Hamburg, red. . 498 Od to 51s Od
St. Petersburg and Riga, old. 50s Od to 52s Od
Barley.... English malting 3ls Od to 38s Od
Grinding 3OB Od to 33s Od
Saal and Oderbruck
Holstein and Danish 2Bs Od to 29s Od
Grinding 2Bs Od to 31s Od
Oats English, old 26s Od to 288 Od
Archangel and Riga, per at Osl2ld to 13d
Friesland and Dutch oBl3d to 08130
Swedish and Danish oBl2ld to 0613 d
Beans ....English, old, per qr. . 4ss Od to 46s Od
New pigeon 42s Od to 418 Od
New tick. 4OB Od tc 42s Od
Egyptian 34s 6d to 35s Od
Peas Foreign boilers ... 36s Od ti. 38, 6d
Grinding
Tares ....Spring —s Od to —s Od
Indian Corn
Linseed, feeding
crushing
Linseed cakes (Hull) £lo 5 0 to £lO 10 0
Foreign Bl5 oto 9 0 0
Rape cakes 6 5 oto 610 0
Bones 5 5 oto 610