The Sun.
London, England, 1863-05-04 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF. THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

SATURDAY REVIEW.—The only thing approach-
ing to a novelty that was discoverable in the debate
of Wedn( sday last was the formal introduction of
Lord Ebury's compromise to the consideration of
the House of Commons. Amid the enormous crop
of suggestions that have been made for settling this
dispute, more attention appears to have been paid
to this one than to any other, chiefly, it should
seem, because of the assurance with which it was
offered. Lord Ebury gave to it the name of the
"Only possible compromise upon church-rates." It
is simple—almost as simple as Sir J. Trelawny's
total abolition. It merely provides that no rate shall
be leviable by legal process. It is left open to the
incumbent and his churchwardens, if they like, to go
through all the preliminary steps which now termi-
nate in the legal levy of a rate. They may hold a
make-believe vestry, and pass a mock rate, and
issue a fictitious wiper, upon which they may, if
they like, designate by the misnomer of rate the
voluntary subscription for which they may think
fit to beg from each person. Lord Ebury con-
cedes to every parish the liberty of going
through this farce; and he appears to think that,
in doing so, he has made so valuable a concession
that he is entitled to give the name of compromise
to total abolition enacted upon these terms. This
may possibly be the solution to which the Church-
rate controversy will ultimately come. But it will
not be a compromise. It will be an unconditional
surrender. Lord Ebury's impression appears to he,
that the formalities of the vestry and the printing
of a rate-paper are in themselves operations so full
of delight that clergy and laity will desire to prac-
tise them simply as a parochial recreation. It has
not occurred to him that they are now practised
solely with the prosaic object of doing that which
is legally necessary in order to raise a tax. But the
employment would lose whatever fascinations it now
possesses if those who assembled in vestry were pre-
viously informed that, do what they would, they
could not raise the tax. Under those circumstances,
it is probable that their gratitude to Lord Ebury
for enabling them to keep up the pretence to a power
of which they had been deprived would be very
limited indeed. It is easy to appreciate the value
of Lord Ebury's compromise by applying it over a
somewhat larger area. The King of Prussia and
his Chambers are involved in bitter controversy at
this moment. What would the Chambers think if
some member of the Junker party were to propose
to them, as a compromise, that the Chambers should
retain the privilege of meeting at Berlin, and should
be allowed to pass as many laws as they thought
fit, but that no legal penalty should be inflicted on
those who treated their enactments with disregard?
Lord Ebury might be at this moment advantage-
ously employed as an ambassador to mediate be
tween the North and South in America. A proposal
that the Washington Government should be privi-
leged to give as many orders and pass as many laws
as they pleased, but that no one beyond the Poto-
mac should be bound to obey them, might in all
probability be a "possible compromise" as far as the
South were concerned.
THE SPECTATOR.--The repulse before Charleston
is one of the heaviest blows the Federal Govern-
ment has yet sustained. The actual loss, it is true,
is comparatively insignificant—only two ships, re-
presenting £150,000, and some 20 or 30 men, But
the value of victories is not measured in blood, and
by every other reckoning the defeat is of the most
disastrous kind. It breaks the left arm of the
North. The ironclad fleet which was to give them
the command of the coast has proved a delusion,
and the Confederates are encouraged to believe
their ports beyond the range of attack by sea. That
conviction alone will release whole armies, and ter-
minate the inclination, so visible for example in
Georgia, to keep all men in the seaboard States at
home to resist invasion. All that is now required
for defence of Charleston, Savannah, and Mobile,
is a strong body of artillerists, and men of all na-
tions are very soon trained to work guns in posi-
tion, and fight behind walls and earthworks. The
experiment was as decisive in one way as it could
possibly be made. The management which left
the fleet unsupported save by a trumpery force of
7.000 men, who never advanced, and never could
have been expected to advance within twelve miles
of the city, may, it is true, be condemned, but we
must not forget the American theory. The Go-
vernment believed that the iron-clads were simply
ships impervious to shot, and expected them, even
if powerless, to suffer as little as the first Monitor
did in her contest with the Merrimac, Under that
belief, which, had the ships really beep Covered
with solid iron, instead of with iron plates, each an
inch thick and clamped together, might have proved
sound, Admiral Dupont-was ordered to enter the
water cul de sac, at the 'end of which Charleston
stands. He could not' have occupied the city
in any case until the arrival of the army, but
he could, had he reached it, have destroyed it,
or held it as completely under command as the
fleet holds New Orleans. Had the theory only been
sound, the ironc'ads would have inevitably destroyed
Sumter, silenced or passed the batteries on shore,
and anchored as floating batteries right against the
town. Even the people of Charleston—the fieriest
class in the South—would have been powerless
against floating batteries in such a position, and
must either have evacuated their city or surrendered
at discretion. The Washington Government had,
however, mistaken the strength of its ironclads.
The vessels steamed badly, steered worse, and were
not impervious at all. All along the deep lagoon
running up four miles into the land the Coot de-
rates had erected batteries armed with the heaviest
guns in their possession--guns which, if not Mr.
Whitworth's, were at least constructed upon his
principle, provided with steel-headed shot, and fired
by gunners who understood that impact depends on
velocity at least as much as on weight of metal.
With the singular inventiveness which the South-
erners share with the people of New England, the
defenders had multiplied obstacles within the bar
hour against which the weight and speed of the
steamers were alike powerless. Among them were
heavy cables stretched upon floating and unfastened
buoys, which of course fouled the screws. But for
the readiness of the captain of the Weehawken,
who backed the instant he perceived this obstacle,
the fleet might have been crippled by this device
alone. The cables could have been removed by
boats quickly enough ; but then the very principle
of these ironclads is that the men are never to be
exposed, and every delay left them within what
Americans oddly call "concentric range." Thus
stopped, the ironclads were exposed to a fire which,
without endorsing the magniloquence of men who
never witnessed a naval engagement, we may be-
lieve to have been unusually severe, and within hilt
an hour were proved unequal to the test. The in-
vulnerable boats were riddled.

EXAMINER.—The Orleanists and ex-statesmen
of the last French reign have planned to make an
irruption into the Legislative body. The Emperor,
in return, purposes to walk himself into the literary
Parliament of the institute, where his opponents
have hitherto held undisputed sway. With the
" Life of Caesar" in his hand, Napoleon the Third
claims to be a member of the National Literary and
Scientific Body. He has certainly as good a claim
to be there as M. do Carne or Bishop Dupaoloup.
The Emperor has had a long, an arduous, and a
patient struggle with that class of the nation who
were eminent as civilians before his time. The
politicans, the journalists, the lawyers, the poets,
the orators, the authors, and even the artists

•
frowned, the great majority of them, upon the
Emperor, and refused to pay him homage. Ic cer-
tainly does honour to France and Frenchmen to
m irk how few were the first converts, and how
,:lowly and gradually their numbers have been in-
ert; aged. The Emperor is outliving opposition of
this kind, which he has faced and borne with more
patience, we repeat, than most autocrats would have
shown. No persoes showed more inveterate repug-
nance to him than the members of the institute, yet
he has always received them blandly, and has
neither frowned upon them nor prosecuted them.
On the contrary, he has increased their annual
allowance. And except in the way of stifling the
exhibition of their political bile through the diurnal
press, he has given them little to complain of. The
EmperoL's political principles must soon he better
known and more frankly avowed. There is, first
of all, the "Life of Caesar" coming out. It surely
cannot be a work purely military, and must contain
the judgment of the writer on the political acts and
errand of the Empire. Will he take Caesar as a hero
in the Senate House as well as in the fields, or be
the admirer of evegardom mitigated? If it be possible
to publish such a work without the manifestation of
political opinion, equally difficult will it be to meet
a new Legislative Body in the same taciturn
way in which the present has been managed by the
French Government. It will be impossible to keep
such members as 'niers or Mon talembert from em-
barking on constitutional questions, and demanding
or making for themselves a liberty of speech hitherto
unallowed. Can the Speaker chosen by the Em-
peror continue to bully them, as he does inferior
men ? or must not the Legislative Body be gratified,
at length, with the liberty and latitude of a real
Parliament ? This remains to be seen. Hitherto
the Emperor has shown great repugnance to quarrel
with the representative assembly. He has yielded
very important points rather than do so. And in
this he is evidently more cautious and tolerant than
many of his Ministers. It remains to be seen
whether he will persevere in this wise copduct, and
admit the gradual extension of French liberty of
speech and action. These are curious problems,
which no doubt 1864 will solve.
THE LAW TIMES.—The Law Amendment Society
has been entreating the Lord Chancellor to sanction
some wild views of a section of its members on the
subject of law reporting, but the sagacious Chan-
cellor told them that the subject was beset with
difficulties, that large interests were involved, and
that it could not he dealt with as summarily as the
memorialists imagined. He therefore declined to
promise them the commission they asked for. This
was the answer of a practical man to a party of
visionaries. What do they want ? An official
report of the courts, taken and printed at the public
cost ? This seems easy, and not irrational, but the
difficulties are apparent when a definite scheme is
attempted. In the first place, what is to be re-
ported . ls it to be a shorthand note ? In such
case every word of every argument and judgment
must be taken and printed verbatim. If not a ver
batzm report, there must be selection and revision.
But if it is to be left to the judgment of any person
what shall be reported and how it shall be reported,
there is no reason whatever why a reporter paid by
the country should perform that task better than a
reporter paid by a publisher. No advantage would
be gained in correctness, certainly, and nothing
either in speed of publication or in cost to buyers.
If the reports could not be better nor cheaper than
the present ones, what advantage is to be gained in
return for the burden thus imposed upon the public
purse ? Only this, that there would be fewer of
them. We admit that the existing number of re-
ports is needless and inconvenient; but the compe-
tition is far more noxious to the proprietors than to
anybody beside. One of each class of reports—that
is to say, the speedy report, the omnibus report,
and the regular report—would amply suffice
for all the needs of the Profession. The Law Amend-
ment Society could not, by any expenditure, pro-
vide better reports than these three, and the success
of all of them proves that they supply a want. The
question is, not if they are perfect, but could better
reports be supplied by officials? We think not. A
Government monopoly of reporting would soon
come to exhibit the vices of all monopolies; and,
relieved from rivalry, the new reporters would study
ease, under the pretence of carefulness and caution.
LONDON REVIEW.—There is nothing so wearing
to the spirits and aggravating to the temper of the
truly Radical Reformer, as the continual tendency
of his most cherished friends to accept office under
Government. It is not as if the accident happened
only once or twice. Like Mr. Pickwick's sufferings,
[the writer here evidently means Mr. Pecksniff's]
this kind of misfortune is chronic. Never have Mr.
Cox and Mr. Medfield loved a young gazelle [here
the writer spoils by a feebler application of the joke
the most comical of all the comic sallies of Dick
Swiveller]—never have they trained him up to
cheer them with his glad bright eye, but when he
c fine to know them well, and love them, he was
sure to be carried off by Lord Palmerston to the
ministerial benches. This it is that makes political
life unutterably trying to the people's friend. It is
one long course of disappointment. By some curi-
ous fatality, he finds that it is invariably the Admi-
ralty which exercises this fatal fascination on his
companions. Perhaps it may be, that the unhappy
Government department in question is managed in
a way to attract the especial notice of a patriot--
who, however, little knows where he may expect to
go to when he looks up the subject of marine re-
trenchment for the first time. Perhaps, occasional
promotion is only Lord Palmerston's way of cutting
off the heads of the tallest Liberal poppies. At all
events, the thing occurs too often to be merely a
coincidence. It happened to Lord Clarence Paget.
It used to be always happening to poor Mr. Bernal
Osborne. No sooner had they laid their guns for
an assault upon the Administration trenches, than
they were picked off by some ministerial rifleman.
After a snort interval they used to re-appear on the
other side of the wall, radiant with new fcund glory,
very much as Romulus appeared to his astonished
countrymen after his deification. From their new
position these transfigured heroes used to waft the
fondest messages back to their old associates. Mr.
Layard's fate,:though slightly different, was equally
distressing. Cruel destiny had marked him out for
one of those Government offices of which he had
spoken slightingly so often. It is Mr. Stansfeld's
turn at last. Lord Palmerston has come for the
Radical pilgrim, as the angel came for Christian in
the "Pilgrim's Progress;" and Mr. Stansfeld has
taken leave of his friends at Halifax in the same
touching spirit of mingled resignation and hope.
Mr. Stansfeld is too clever a man not to know
where he is going to be taken. As Julius
Peregrinus was " banished into the Senate,"
Mr. Stansfeld feels evidently that in ac-
cepting office he is banishing himself to the
Ministerial benches. The erratum which Mr.
Stansfeld is so anxious to correct in the limes really
is of no consequence. Whether he was "kicked
out" of the Liberal camp or " picked out," is all the
same in its results. The virtuous Cox will think
nothing of him now. In time, Mr. Bright will
come to denounce him together with the rest of the
bloated oligarchs. The distressed Poles are already
beginning to give him up. The champions of the
runaway negroes seem to gaze after him more in
sorrow than in anger. They have taken a kindly
farewell of him, and they are good enough to say
that they think it right of him to go. But he can
no longer sincerely flatter himself that he belongs
to that bright baud. It must have been a harrow.
ing thought to any of the number who formed part
of the Halifax audience to feel the conviction creep.
leg on them as he spoke, that the white feathers of
office might already be seen growing on the new-
fledged official swan. Short as was the interval
that had elapsed, Mr. Stansfeld, by the, time he got
to Halifax, had begun to look on the Admiralty as
a rather ill-used public body. It was a great mis-
take to regard that excellent branch of the public
service as a mere Augean stall. When the Halifax
reformers saw their representative assuming the
part of charity, and hoping all things and believing
all things of the Admiralty board, they may well
have moaned in spirit, and thought that the world
was out of joint. Was this the LanceOt of debate,
who had so often shot like a star before the eyes of
lords and ladies in tournament at Westminster?
THE QUEEN.—Twenty years ago the gentleman
who represented Knaresborough was considered to
be the most violent man in the House of Commons.
He was perpetually in hot water; he was almost
invariably in collision with somebody; and the late
Sir James Graham and Mr. Cobdeu especially were
the objects of the hon. gentleman's attacks. He used
to make the most serious charges against those two
members in particular, and against the liberal party
generally—or rather that section of it of which Mr.
Cobden and Mr. Bright were the centre. When
the free trade measures of Sir Robert Peel were
adopted by Parliament and the country, Mr. Fcr-
rand beeeme legislatively extinguished, and he
ceased to be a member of the House of Commons.
For nearly 20 years nothing was thought of him,
and his name was never heard; but a month or so
ago he unexpectedly defeated a Government candi-

date at Devon pert, and he is once more a member of

the House of Commons, and it is worthy of remark
that in the very first observations he offered to the
House on the subject of the distress in the cotton
manufacturing districts, he referred to his almost
forgotten bete noire of " Devil's Dust." He had ❑ot.
been in the House a week before he gave notice of a
motion on the subject of the cotton distress, and this
motion came on for discussion on Monday last. For
two hours and 20 minutes, in a tone of voice that
made the very roof ring again, he opened out his
indictment against the manufacturing interest, and
during thatlong oratorical effort be rambled through
a story, the contents of which might have been well
told by a skilful speaker in half an hour. The House
was full when Mr. Ferrand began, but it became

_
very attenuated long before ho bad concluded. Sir
Bulwer Lytton had come down specially to see what
might possibly turn up in the Ferrand exhibition,
and he took his seat immediately under the honour-
able member. The right honourable novelist man'
fully sat out the ordeal for an hour and a half, but
he was not proof against a further infliction, and so
he walked away, and as we have said the attendance
very rapidly thinned down.
ATHEN2Eum —A little more than a quarter of
century ago, the old "Jarvey" began to die out. 11
the cart was glorified because the old Merovingian
kings had nothing better to move about in,so has the
hackney-coach had its glories and its day. In itself,
it was a melancholy and fallen greatness. The,
vehicle full of its eits had once been the carriage al
a peer, but had come to grief. It sometimes came ta
worse than that, and in Charles the Second's time it
was found convenient for the commission of murder.
Then a dead duellist was occasionally cast into one,
and sent home to his family. In William the Third's
reign, the hackney took to disreputable ways of an'
other sort, and lost for ever the privilege of driving
in the Park, because crowds of painted hussies
therein used to hoot the ladies who drove by in their
own carriages. Who forgets the story how Harle‘
quin Rich leaped out of one into a coffee -room and
back again after the driver had looked for bini in
vain ? and how Jehu ultimately refused his fare/
shrewdly suspecting 01.4 the gentleman was the
devil P Is the old prize-money days, it was the
favourite joke of half-a-dozen sailors to ride in a
dozen and a half of hackney-coaches. They were
almost as capacious as a man-of-war, and Fountayue
Wilson, M P. for Yorkshire, using one as a dressing
room, on going from the house to dinner, broke
down opposite the Horse Guards, where the hilarl'
ous mob, on rushing to his rescue, found that eceel3;
trio and rarely-washed gentleman with two pairs of
pantaloons and neither of them on ! But the glory '
of the old hackney-coach consisted in the fact that
for many years the regalia of England, crown,
sceptre, and other finery, thrust into blue beget
were brought from the Tower to the Parliament
House in a hackney. coach, whenever the monarch
required their aid in helping-him to show a kingly
face in presence of the Legislature. The glory
culminated when the Princess Charlotte ran away
in one, from Warwick House, to her mother, la
Connaught-place. When the number of dial,
happy carriage was known, all the foolish part of
London wanted to ride in it. It is a sad thing to
add, that the glory of the conveyance did not
honestly influence the character of the drivers.
These were so notoriously brigands of a peculiar
class, that when, in 1826, a Jehu of this tribe
deposited at the Hackney-coach Office in EsseS,:
street a bundle of bank-notes which had been le"
in his conveyance, his name, address, and number
were published abroad, as making in the aggregate
something marvellous and worthy of remembrance'
The French cabriolet, which had just previouslY
been introduced—a covered gig with the driver sit-
ting at your side—was an odious invention ; but 11'
was the forerunner of that cab which we now pr'
sass, and which conveys blushing brides to church,
fevered babies to the grave, smitten paupers to 1138
small-pox hospital, and bevies of children to pan:
tomimes. In no other civilised country is such
horrible state of things permitted by the Govern
went; and the disease and death thereby engendered
make the modern cab as dreadful a machine to our
selves as ever the old British chariots of Cassivelaa:
nus were to the invaders. Considering what the
cab has fallen to, with its driver, we rejoice to hear
that we are to have new and elegant vehicles, file
horses, courteous drivers, and low fares. All this 's
at least, promised in the prospectus of a new 0°13.3i
pany ; and we hail the halcyon days which are said
to be approaching, when we may enter a handsoale
carriage with complacency.
THE CRITIC.—The reputation of Mr. John Stuart
Mill is quite equal to his merits; perhaps soalie;
even of his admirers, may think that it is slighi
beyond them. Acute, lucid, logical to a note'
degree, Mr. Mill is seldom suggestive, never Pr°:,
found. We admit him to be one of the great Ollil
ters of modern thought, while aenying hint 0
claim to genius. He is a master of language scre,
as of thought—so far as language is a pure, Ithe:
loured medium. But we generally yearn for .18;
guage to be something more than this—to ha'of
warmth and colour. The extreme transparenoi t
Mr. Mill's speech charms for a page or two ; but
afterwards it grows wearisome, for, like a br?o,;
wandering slowly through a meadow, it never rises
above, or falls below the dead level of the clearest e%
position. We can never mistake Mr. Mills' meaningo/
but then the meaning is rarely weighty. As :0
intellectual discipline, Mr. Mill's books have:o
ordinary worth; but woe to him who expects fr"
them one single minutest particle of intellect°
food. Mr. Mill has carefully cultivated hie °lv-
,
mind, and all his productions are finished and elab();
rate. Yet the absolute lack of spontaneousness all;
imagination irresistibly repels us. In the absence
of the creative, Mr. Mill has a species of organising
facuity. But though the organism is syn3n3etricili
enough, Mr. Mill cannot breathe into it the breat
of life. Brought up by an able father, under
~
Bentharnite influences, Mr. Mill remains essential
a Ben thamite apostle. It is therefore fitting thild
he should expound and vindicate more fully eta
fervently than he has yet done the Benthall
evangel. The essay on Utilitarianism has alrea,
appeared in Fraser's Magazine. and doubtless,l‘;,
Mill's name will gain for it due attention. Ifieje
cussion it is not likely to provoke ; partly because '
it is not characterised by any novelty, partly becallto
Mr. Mill is at once too judicial and too judicious 0
annoy or to excite opponents; and partly beeall
the interest, in philosophical subjects, never Te orf,
strong in England, is, for the moment, feebler tilit
usual. Utilitarianism is confessedly a revival .°
7
Epicureanism; a revival without, so far as we
see, being an improvement. Epicurus taubo
metaphysical as well as moral principle; and it is
at
a metaphysical as well as moral system °lto
Epicureanism must be judged. But Bentham fa(
equally destitute of metaphysical insight 6"
re
poetical inspiration. Mr. Mid has not much lue
of either than the founder of utilitarianism.