The Sun.
London, England, 1863-01-17 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

Timm—A looking-glass is a looking-glass, but
two looking-glasses will tell very different tales. One
will suffuse a rosy tint over the most pallid cheeks.
It will fill up the furrows ; it will soften the outline.
As you look in it the temper becomes kinder, the
memory lights up, and there is an illusion even of
hope. The
other glass makes truth unpalatable.
It tells that you are quite as old as appears in the
parish register, and that you are as yellow, as
wrinkled, as rough, and as hard-visaged as people
generally after knocking about for half a century.
Mr. Bright is the candid friend who imparts to
truth additional horrors. It is not enough for him
to be humble ; he insists on a white sheet, a taper,
a foolscap, and a retractation. Should England
ever stand before the tribunal of nations, to demand
a crown, or to repel an indictment, Mr. Bright will
act the part of the adverse advocate. 11l as we are
all opt to think ourselves, he makes us a good deal
worse. The more usual explanation of John Bull's
foliies and infirmities is that he is rather muddle-
headed, that, like Sir Roger, he feels there is a good
deal to be said on both sides of the question, and
either remains in suspense or is the victim of cir-
cumstances. Mr. Bright tells the old gentleman
that he is a proud, selfish, base, arrogant, merce-
nary, deceitful, tyrannical old scoundrel. The
British empire and everything in it are all of a
sort. Our Government is bad; our press is bad ;
our statesmen are all bad; our merchants are bad ;
there is nothing good among us. Amid the general
wreck and corruption—amid open violence and
secret villainy, there stands one man who alone
sees things perfectly right, who approaches every
question without prejudice or favour, and is
always the same, and says the same thing at all
times—the only true prophet, the only disinterested
adviser, the true friend of his country, and the peace-
maker of the world. Need we say who this is
It can be no other than the member for Birming-
ham. Patriotism forbids us a separate defence, and
compels us to make common cause with all whom
Mr. Bright accuses. We have committed the
unpardonable crime of giving the Government of
'Washington and the Northern States some credit
for good sense, consideration, and humanity. We
have predicted that sooner or later the Northerners
must see that their enterprise is hopeless, and
that they must submit, as the mother country
submitted eighty years ago. We have been mis-
taken thus far, not in the fortunes of the war,
not in our calculation of the Confederate strength
and perseverance, not in the cost of the war or the
condition of North American finance, but in the one
single hope that the Federals would see what all
the world, except themselves, uses. Mr. Bright
has always had a juster estimate of Northern pride,
and obstinacy, and blindness. We plead guilty to
the weakness of an estimate which it appears the
Northern States do not deserve. As to the mask
which Mr. Bright threatens to tear from us, there
can be no occasion for the ceremony, much as it
seems to that gentleman's taste to assist at any
execution. Here we stand, confessing the error
that we did not despair of returning good sense in
the United States, whose only safety lies, Mr. Bright
himself does not dispute, in an amicable disunion.
This he calls ungenerous to the Northern States.
Generosity required that we should goad them on
with continually renewed promises of success,
founded on their overwhelming power, and not less
on the entire justice of their cause. We did not
believe them able to drive the Confederates into the
Gulf of Mexico; nor did we think them wholly
blsn.eless in the quarrel. Under these convictions
we could not write otherwise than we have written.
As it happens, we have nothing to give up, except
our hope of an early return to right reason. The
fever has not gone so soon as our diagnosis led us to
believe possible, though certainly no kind of deple-
tion has been spared. We have no right to complain,
however, for we come off easy compared with our
fellow-criminals. The successive Governments at
the beginning and the end of the Russian war are
told that they issued the proclamation for respect-
ing enemy's goods in neutral ships, and agreed to
the proposition to that effect in the Congress of
Paris, for one reason, and only one—the fear of a
war with the United States, had they not done so.
No credit is given them for those wider and less
interested considerations which, in one instance,
led a statesman to go very much further than
the apprehension of an American war could have
carried him. The question of the blockade being
itself rather intractable just now, Mr. Bright only
notices it in order to say something unpleasant
of the whole mercantile class. The cessation of the
blockade, whether by an armistice or by any other
means, would instantly lower the value of about
400,000 bales of cotton, now in our warehouses,
worth from £3O to £5O apiece. It would there-
fore be ruin to many friends of Mr. Bright. So,
whenever peace is talked of, there rises up a set of
merchants, who do something or other, it is not
exactly said what, in order to prolong the blockade
and the war, and who actually, as Mr. Bright
would have us imagine, have some influence for
that purpose. We presume he means that they wish
us not to interfere in a bodily form and raise the
blockade—but, as neither he nor anybody else
wishes this, it is not easy to see the force of the
accusation. The next blow is at Lord Palmerston.
Instead of arguing the Trent question with Mr.
S: ward, who would certainly have been arguing
about it to this day, he sent 10,000 men to Canada,
and made the American Government do what it
said was both right and expedient for it to do.
This proceeding, Mr. Bright says, is a conclusive
proof that England conducts its international
effrirs in the manner of the Red Indians—with as
much violence, injustice, and brutality. If Mr.
Bright could have aVed either that our demand
was Unjust cr that wu were likely to succeed in any
other Way, there might be some ground for his
complaint. But it is enough for Mr. Bright that
when the Americans had
themselves an army of a
million of men enforcing
loyalty
to
the Federation,
we sent a bare hundredth of that number to protect
a frontier of 1,500 miles, which the Americans have
threatened a hundred times to overrun in 'a. day.
If England is complimented for her pecuniary
dom in offering to give up the lonian Islands,
only to furnish an occasion for telling Spain that
our continued occupation of Gibraltar, won by a
y
foolish war and a dishonourable peace, is an in-
salt to her which justifies her obstinate refusal
to deal with us as neighbours. If she will not
lower her import duties, or pay her lawful debts to
individual English creditors, or meet us on any
terms, she has a perfect right to be as shabby and
dishonest as she pleases, inasmuch as we hold by
force some of her natural territory. We hold it, he
bays, for no manner of good, either peaceful or war-
like, but simply as the focus of a smuggling trade,
and an insult to Spain. Forgetting the Peninsular
war, he tells us that France is doubly formidable so
long us we hold Gibraltar, and make Spain her ally
instead of ours. Tbis topic he winds up with the
inther sweeping end very uncomfortable statement.
tllut the injustice and immorality of England make
Jar detested by every country in Europe. General
Peel said so, Mr. Bright observes, and what he said
is quite true. From this
he passes to casual and off-
hand remarks on the folly of our statesmen
particularlyrally, in dropp'n gene-
g retwalis to which
they don't themselves attach much importance, but
which create disturbances in the cotton-mEaket.
There are, it seems, about twenty million
pounds'
worth of cotton in thia country, which may any day
be worth either thirty millions or only teu, involv.
ins in tither case the ruin of many estimable
spe-
nn!tfors in that article. Such being the case, a good
and wise man will take care never to say a word
about cotton or the American war. He will neither
hope ncr fear, or, at least, he will take care to keep
those sensations to himself. What is to be thought,
then, of Lord Russell for saying that he hoped the
North would boon consent to the independence of
the South, and of Mr. Gladstone's still less reserved
expectations? If a miscreant puts a lucifer match
to a heap of cotton or jute, he burns, may be, twenty
thou-;and
Pounds' worth. But here were a Foreign
Secretary and a Chancellor of the
tonly lowering all the eottou in England penny
Exchequer wan
aa
poured, or more, and
- losses surge: ClOl.l
sands apiece, on Mr. Bright's
meritorious friends
Nor is this all ; it' a Minister talks
of cotton with a
(smile, or drops a prayer for peace across the

Atlantic, letters forthwith speed to India and every
other cotton-field, informing mankind that Mr.
Gladstone has looked happy, " Therefore sow no
more cotton seed." If we err, then it is in good com-
pany_

After England and everybody in it has come in
for a share of Mr. Bright's amenitii s, he very
naturally wishes to wind up with a blaze of glory,
like a Christmas extravaganza. The blaze on this
occasion consists of two splendid effects—the Eman-
cipation of the Serfs, and that of the Slaves in the
United States. Mr. Bright chides us for the ardour
of our hopes, and the precipitancy of our predictions.
Will he pardon us if we suggest that he is rather
premature in his congratulations to the favoured ob-
jects of the latter of these two great acts ? When
the Federals have emancipated the million negroes
now in their hands it will be time to offer emanci-
pation to those who are wholly out of their power,
i
and apparently have no wish to be in t.
HERALD.—Sailors are in turn courted, petted,
When there
and turned adrift by the Admiralty.
is the smallest cloud on the horizon, flaming posters
are ordered by the Secretary,
r ipmupbsl. acn- hd casesbo boarding
r d
ianrge
hired by the score, and all
house keepers, whose service can be secured, drive
through the streets in great waggons with bands of
music and immense Union Jacks flying. The
honour of the country must be maintained, and if
sailors are slack in accepting a £lO bounty, why,
give them £2O, and set the price down as a very
moderate insurance premium for the many blessings
we as Englishmen enjoy. The Admiralty at such
a time are in the best of humours. They have a
great public duty to perform, ample means at their
disposal, and they are not aware of any reason why
every grievance of which sailors have complained
should not be redressed at the earliest moment. The
bait takes; sailors make their way to coast-guard
stations and receiving ships, or are carted to re-
ceiving ships in a half or whole drunk condition, by
the crimps and boarding-house touters of the Ad-
miralty. The country then breathes once more freely
and when Lard Clarence Paget visits Chatham he
receives an ovation. By-and-bye, when the threaten-
ing cloud no longer alarms any cue, and war is
among the most improbable of contingencies the
Admiralty mount their high horse again, and people
generally come to think of sailors just as they do of
other classes. They even may be said to become so
stoical as to regard sailors as the reverse of
amiable, and, on the whole, as a set of foolish,
dissolute, and worthless fellows. When this re-
vulsion in public feeling is at low-water mark the
Admiralty, as a rule, improve the occasion by get-
ting rid of all the sailors possible in any kind of
way. The other day, for example, the newspapers
contained a long list of numbers of Naval Reserve
sailors who on some pretence or other are no longer
chargeable in the navy estimates with six pounds
each annually. Shipping masters and others are
warned against the so-called offenders, so that here-
after it may be presumed they will experience as
much difficulty in getting an honest livelihood as
ticket-of-leave convicts. Then, again, let the Ad-
miralty once make up their minds to disband sea-
men, and excuses are never wanting. The intro-
duction of steam was at one time said to render
sailors superfluous in the navy. Last year it was
said the Armstrong guns were lighter than the old
smooth-bore ordnance, and consequently fewer
sailors were required. What the next excuse will
be we must wait to learn, and to all appearance we
shall not have long to wait. Ship after ship is
arriving at Spithead and paying off, and 17 more
are expected shortly. Some thousands of sailors,
therefore, are likely to be cast upon the world within
the next few weeks, and to carry with them to the
ends of the earth the story of their wrongs. Allured
from the merchant service, or from peaceful avoca-
tions on the land, by the smiles and promises of the
Admiralty, they are now spurned by the Admiralty
and the country because times are changed and the
sword is at length to be made a ploughshare.
When Sir Charles Wood held the high position
of First Naval Lord he did not beat about the
bush in getting rid of all the sailors he thought
unnecessary. The continuous service sailors were
discharged by him in the same high-handed
manner as apprentices sometimes are by the
employers to whom they are indentured. Sir
Charles was in a retrenchment humour, and dis-
charging sailors entered for long-service periods
before these periods closed, was, in his opinion, not
a hardship of a kind to deter a minister from what
he deemed his duty, because the sailors, when
discharged, could seek, and no doubt find, employ-
ment elsewhere. Sir Charles, therefore, did his
duty without the least disguise of subterfuge. Lord
Clarence Paget and the Duke of Somerset have not
the nerve of Sir Charles in such matters, and if the
gossip of naval circles which reaches us from Ports-
mouth is to be believed they are to do the same
thing in a genteel manner. They are not to dis-
charge sailors who have a legal claim for pay as
long as their terms of service last, but they are to
assert the questionable prerogative of all employers
and make things very unpleasant. They are to
disgust and demoralise all those sailors whose ser-
vices they do not now require. The sailors now
paying off are, after a run on shore, to have the
hulks assigned to them for quarters from which a
few years we humanely withdrew the convicts. By
this means Lord Clarence and the Duke of Somer-
set believe the country will in the course of time be
relieved of a considerable amount of the present
charge for seamen. We do not doubt it. In,fact,
we cannot think that sailors of any spirit will con
fent to lead a life which Sir Joshua Jebo thought
uafit for convicts. We think they will prefer to
take leave of the Admiralty at once and allow Lord
Clarence the benefit of the whole saving on their
account, which perhaps he is only counting on next
year or the year after. We think, further, that
the Admiralty would have done better by sanc-
tioning the bad precedent of Sir Charles 11 ood
than by adopting this genteel, but, at the same
time, most insulting proposition to men who have
been serving their country on foreign stations iu
many cases for several years. Straightforwardness
is alwaya the best policy, and this'Lord Clarence
and the Duke of Somerset will, we dare say, find
out very soon after Parliament has assembled. If,
once more, the public faith is not to be kept with
sailors serving in the navy, the Admiralty and the
GoVernment ought to say so, and resolutely brave
the consequences.

DAILY NEWS.—Mr. Charles Kennedy's ingeni-
ous attempt to recover his £20,000 from the widow
Swynfen, now Mrs. Brow), has failed. Upon the
mere legal aspect of the case the judgment was tolerably conclusive. But when the Chief Justice
comes to deal with the principle of the rule which
forbids a counsel or an advocate to make a binding
contract for his fees, the cogency of the reasoning
is by no means so obvious. It would be difficult to
persuade anybody who has not entered his profes-
sion by eating a certain number ot dinners, that the
duties of a barrister are the most important in the
world', or 'that they are better discharged than
those of other ' professions. Physicians, surgeons,
and solicitors are men who have functions to per-
loan quite as delicate and confidential as those of
thO bdrrister or advocate. And it is idle to assume
that such functions are discharged less honourably or
lsss'efficiently than the duties of a barrister, or even
those of a Chief Justice or of a Lord Chancellor.
The solicitors and the medical men are drawn from
the same class of the community as the advocates
and the judges. They
are fathers and fathers-in-
law—the brothers and brothers-in-law of each
other. The standard of morality of the one class
is the standard of morality of the other clas3; nor
would any reasonable man venture to hazard the
assertion that the motives to perform their profes-
sional duties are less powerful in one case than in
the other. The Chief Justice passed a well-merited
eulogium upon the manner in which the members
of the English bar have for centuries performed
their duties towards their clients. No doubt, the
College of Physicians, the College of Surgeons,
the Law Institution, and any chamber of com-
merce would pass euloginens upon the members of
their respective bodies with equal eloquence and
equal self•satisfaction. Set a fit man up expressly
to praise himself and his professional friends, and
he will not be found wanting.
,But if any one but
a Chief Justice in solemn. session had ventured to
say that the high-mindedness and independence of
the .Bar were due mainly to the fact that barristers

i are incapable of recovering their fees in a court of
law, he would possibly have excited a titter amongst
the profane laity. Barristers, especially if they
are married and blessed with a rising family,
cannot live upon air—" promise crammed." They
must have the substantial fruits of their labour in
a balance at their bankers'. They have no access
to the ambrosial food of the gods. The client who
wants to have his case attended to must pay his
counsel a good fee ; for be may depend upon this,
that if he trust to that sense of wrong which, ac-
cording to the Chief Justice, rouses the advocate to
defend the life or property of a client, and to spend
his nights in poring over crabbed law books, he
will be grievously disappointed. The barrister is
no modern Quixote, who spends his early man-
hood in a Fleet-street garret, waiting for the
wronged fellow-creature who will call upon him to
defend his cause without expectation of pecuniary
reward. He must live, and he gets called to the
Bar in order to live. He does his best for his '
client, whoever be may be ; not because he thinks
his client right, but simply because he desires a re-
putation and a reward for his exertions; and the
certainty of obtaining these rewards, instead of re-
laxing, would probably quicken his exertions. The
only mode of effectually securing remuneration is
by the barrister making a contract with his client,
and enforcing this contract if payment of the re-
muneration agreed upon be refused. Chief Justice
Erie does not deny the propriety of the client
paying the fees, but he objects to the barrister
being allowed to compel the client by action to
perform his duty. To allow this, forsooth, would
be to degrade the dignity of the bar, and to de-
prive the client of a disinterested advocate.
It is marvellous to see how the tradition of a
profession can disconcert the most powerful intel-
lects. The Chief Justice knew well enough that
at the Bar mess such high flown purity would have
excited peals of laughter. Did any barrister ever
hear of a brother barrister undertaking a cause
without the hope of definite remuneration ? If
the client is unknown, does not the faithful clerk
take good care not only to finger the guineas, but
to see that the number of them is according to the
tariff? If the client is trusted and proves untrue,
is there any counsel foolish enough to take another
brief from the same quarter ? Is any one Quixotic
enough to suppose that any member of the Eng-
lish Bar keeps his chambers open to give ad-
vice gratis to anybody who chooses to
enter ? On the contrary, the counsel who ventured
to open his chambers for any such purpose would
certainly be excluded from the Bar mess of his cir-
cuit, and would probably be disbarred. Barristers,
like other men, ;work for money, and neither their
independence nor their zeal is weakened by follow-
ing the example of ordinary mortals. Noue can say
Mr. Kennedy failed in his duty to his client because
he expected £20,000, and if he had been entitled to
recover this sum by an action at law the motive for
exertion would only have been increased. No doubt
the facts disclosed by Mr. Kennedy must be incon-
venient to Mrs. Broun ; but they are not more in-
convenient than if they had been disclosed to a soli-
citor or attorney in case he had brought an action,
which he might, of course, have done, for the re-
covery of his fees. It is, no dcubt, true that if a
barrister is to be allowed to sue for his fees, he must
submit to be made liable for negligence. But with
this alternative it is difficult to understand how the
honour of the Bar would be diminished by its mem-
bers being allowed to recover in a court of law the
fees which are justly due to them.