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

LONDON, TUESDAY, JULY 7, 1863.

Foremost among the most liberal of our weekly
contemporaries, the Examiner has, during the
chief part of its existence, been also very conspicu-
ous indeed for its shrewdness, its wit, and its
general ability, alike in the world of politics and in
the world of literature. Who amongst our elders is
there, who does not bear in more or less agreeable
remembrance the days of its once youthful viva-
city, when the Examiner's volatile humour rose
almost at times to a sort of arch impertinence ?
Those were the days when LEIGH HUNT
wielded the editorial pen, there, with so
sprightly a turn to each sentence that its every
movement one might say was inevitably suggestive
of a wag. Those were the times, in fact, when the
blithe young poet-journalist could quote with a
grave face, but the sliest twinkle in his eyes, the
preposterous phrase of adulation applied to King
GEORGE the Fourth upon his Majesty's coronation
by the inane Curt Newsman—LElGH HUNT
capping the compliment of the Court News-
man with a cruelly matter of fact addi-
tion, to the effect that, in his coronation
robes, King GEORGE TLIE FOURTH " looked like
an ADONIS—of Sixty !'' An innocent jest enough,
dvserving only to be laughed at, but one that in
those bewildering days had actually to be expiated,
as we all know, by LEIGH HUNT'S endurance, for
several months consecutively, of incarceration. A
later, but it may even be added a yet more brilliant
epoch for the Examiner was that during which
ALBANY FOWBLANQUE penned, currente calamo,
Contomperary history, as it opened up be-
fore his shrewd glance, week by week,
both at home and abroad. As caustic, as witty,
as sarcastic, as all the Saturday Reviewers rolled
into one, ALBANY FONBLANQUE) session after ses-
sion, reflected in the pages of the Examiner the
fluctuations, the changes, and the transformations
of several successive Governments. His congenial
coadjutor—eventually, and for several consecutive
years afterwards his vigorous and gifted succes-
sor—was, as the town well knew during his
regime, as it still remembers not ungrate-
fully now that his connection with the
Examiner has for some time ceased, that able
man of letters, barrister at law, scholar and gentle-
man, who has securely associated his name from
this time forth at once with our political history
and with our literary history—as the annalist of
many of the most remarkable scenes and worthies
of the Commonwealth, and as the Biographer par
excellence of OLIVER GOLDSMITH. True to the
liberality of its principles to the last, true to its re-
putation also for ability, and for vivacity, and for
vigour, the Examiner, however, does occasionally of
late—as HOMER sometimes nodded—stumble into
errors both of manner and of matter. In its very latest
number, the number, that is, published only last
Saturday, it has floundered thus, and floundered, as
it appears to us, very notably—both in regard to a
mere matter of style and in regard to a mere matter
of fact. Referring to that certainly very remark-
able speech recently delivered by the Right
Honourable Gentleman the leader of the Op-
pcsition, the speech delivered by him to what
is called the National Conservative Associa-
tion, the Examiner quotes, among other things,
from that harangue of Mr. DISRAELI, or, as our
contemporary is so very fond of printing his name,
with spiteful pertinacity, D'IsRAELI, as a tediously
iterated reminder, usque ad nauseant, of Mr. DB-
RAELI'S Jewish origin ! The _Examiner, we say,

quotes among other passoges from the recent
speech addressed by the leader of the Opposition
to the Conservatives, the following► surely suffi-

cien tiy comprehensible passage :

" I would on this occasion recll your memory to
he state of the Tory party only some few years cgc.
Why, only twelve years ago there was no record
in the history of England of a political connection
so utterly forlorn, so hopeless, so prostrate, as was
then tho Tory party. That eminent man whose
great sagacity and great heart had rallied us round
him at a moment so unforeseen and unprecedented
had just met an untimely end. I will never men-
tion his name or recall his memory without ex-
pressing the sentiments of admiration and affection
which I feel. At that moment V7B did not literally
count in the House of Commons by any means one-
fourth of its members."

The italics noticeable in the above, we would here
"Pee-Lally remark, are the Examiner's own and not
OUTS. And the words thus signally emphasised by

-----
the Examiner are the very words inregard to which,
as we will now show, the Examiner, itself has so
egregiously blundered. Among political observers
of every party, or section of a party, nine hundred
and ninety-nine out of every thousand could hardly
fail, we feel perfectly well assured of this, to recog-
nise, in those particular words of Mr. DISRAELI'S
another of his already numerous allusions, graceful
and generous allusions always, to his friend,
his colleague, in one sense even his prede-
cessor, as the Leader of the Conservatives—
the noble son of a noble house, Lord GEORGE
BENTINCK. Yet, with its eyes wide open, but
blinded by one of its most doggedly-cherished
antipathies, its antipathy of Mr. DISRAELI, we beg
our contemporary's pardon, of Mr. D'ISRAELI, the
Examiner—how shall we express it?—runs
its head against the stone wall of a mis-
apprehension the most obvious, takes a deliberate
header into a very quagmire, or Slough-of-Despond,
of a mistake ! The leader of the Opposition, in the
above passage from his recent speech, refers—as we
have already said, to the apprehension, we should sup-
pose, of almost anybody else but his implacable foe
the Examiner—to the late Lord GEORGE BENTINCK.
For the life of it, however, the Examiner can't in
any way perceive this,but absolutely makes a totally
different application of the words it
quotes and italicises—thereupon plunging
at once into the following obtusely
sarcastic commentaries; "'We remember one occa-
sion," it says, " upon which Mr. DISRAELI con-
gratulated the eminent man to whom he has here
referred with such high praise, on his ' most
courageous conscience;' and a most courageous
conscience the utterance of this eulogy re-
quired, considering that up to to the time of
the great man's untimely end he had been
incessantly the object of Mr. DISRAELI'S most
biting sarcasms and unsparing onslaughts. He
may have corrected his opinion, it is never too late
to do that ; but in such case surely the grace of some
expression of penitence for past injustice was due.
And when Mr. DISRAELI speaks of Sir ROBERT
PEEL'S great sagacity and great heart, which had
rallied " us round him," is there not an error in his
Parliamentary history ? for as well might it be
'said that BRUTUS was rallied to CIASAR in the
Senate House. There was an ancient superstition,
that if the assassin touched the body it would bleed
afresh. Is it in defiance, or in challenge of
this ordeal that Mr. DISRAELI touches the
fame of PEEL." The Examiner forgets, it is ob-
servable, in the midst of all this taunting bitterness,
that another besides Sir ROBERT PEEL came
to "an untimely end !" That while Sir ROBERT
was picked up speechless on Constitution-hill
upon the stumbling of his horse, Lord GEORGE
was found dead in the water-meadow, near his old
ancestral home. It is an error—it is a misappre-
hension. But, the recognition of it, might
at length induce our contemporary to recognise
that it is actuated by over bitterness of
feeling whenever it undertakes to comment
upon the words or upon the acts of the right lion.
gentleman, the leader of her MAJESTY'S Opposition.
We say this as advocates no less earnest than our
contemporary of those Liberal principles, and
of those still unrealised reforms which the
Examiner has for years past so consistently and so
energetically championed.

As to the mere matters of taste referred to as
having been dragged under notice by a certain curi-
ous manner of late adopted by the once refined
as well as scholarly Examiner. What shall we say
to its remarking in the very article to which we
have, here, been making reference 9—" Instead of
referring to past greatness, he has to refer to past
littleness, and the burden of half his speech is the
cry we hear every hour in the streets from the
hawkers of plants ' a-growing.' The Tory party
is all a-growing, &c." Or referring to the
article which immediately follows this bungling
onslaught on " Mr. DISRAELI"—What shall we
say when we find that next article beginning its
first paragraph thus—" In Swift's Polite Conversa-
tion some one runs a dozen miles to suck a bull."
And when we find it beginning its second para-
graph thus—" Mr. ROEBUCK returned in something
like a state of pregnancy. He was big with
Imperialism." What.'--is it asked ? Why, simply
that vulgarity is not vigour.

We are glad to see that the second reading of the
Anchor and Chain Cables Bill is fixed for to-mor-
row. We have for a lengthened period urged upon
the Legislature the necessity that existed for a mea-
sure of ti is description. It is needed not only on
account of the loss of life occasioned by the penu-
riousness of the small shipowners in providing their
vessels with cheap and inefficient anchors and
cables, but also in the interests of the consignees of
cargoes and the insurers. A short time since a
large number of cables were tested at Liverpool-
-80 per cent, of which were found wanting—i. e.,
not capable of holding a ship to her anchors in a
gale. A few years back an American trader rode
out a hurricane at San Francisco, in a most exposed
situation, at single anchor, with her top :gallant
yards crossed, while the majority of the vessels
under comparative shelter drove ashore, notwith-
standing every precaution that seamanship could
suggest. The Yankee knew that his cable was
sound and that his anchor would hold. A similar
instance of justifiable reliance was shown not long
ago on the N.E. coast, when a brig being observed
life-
boat nocrthreon a shore in a heavy tideway, the
station put off to her assistance, calcu-
lating doubtless from previous experience that she
could not hold her own and must drag ashore. On
coming alongside and tendering assistance, the
gallant boatmen were thanked for their trouble,
but the mate observed coolly that he had two good
anchors and plenty of cable, and could ride it out
comfortably where be was. So much for good
ground tackle. But turn the page; consult the
wreck chart, or the statistics of the National Life-
boat Institution, and it will be found that in
nine cases out of ten, when the lifeboat
has been unable to rescue life from shipwreck, it bas
been either from the dragging of anchors or parting
of cables. The Bill now before the House has been
introduced at the suggestion of the Peninsular and
Oriental and other leading companies, who soli-
cited Government intervention in this matter. They
know by experience the value of sound tackle, and
as from the number of vessels forming their fleets
they are their own insurers, it stands to reason that
it is their interest to take the best possible care of
their ships. Nut so the small shipowner. It is
too often to his advantage to lose an old worn-
out vessel end buy a new one out of the insurance
money. The lives of the craw are of no value to
him—there are plenty more men in the market.
Such selfish reek lessness deserves the severest re-
probation, but there is no doubt that it exists to a
great extent. We have row made a step in the
right direction, but more is required. We do not
call upon the Legislature to enact too stringent
laws regarding cur mercantile navy, nor do we
wish for a moment to embarrass honest and up-
right shipowners with a surveillance which
is un-
necessary; but while there are thousands of money-
grasping adventurers who speculate, not on the
profit of the voyage, but on the profit of the insur-
ance, we are sure that honest men will gladly sub-