The Sun.
London, England, 1865-03-13 00:00:00

N°. 22,692.

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, MARCH 13, 1865.

NEW STORY BY THE AUTHOR OF " JOHN HALIFAX."
Now ready at all the Libraries, in 1 voL, 10s, 6d.,
CHRISTIAN'S MISTAKE.
By the Author of "John Halifax."
From the Times, Feb. 4.—" A more charming story to our
taste has rarely been written. Even if tried by the standard
of the Archbishop of York, we shrtu:d expect that even he
would pron,unce Christian's Mistake' a novel without a
fault."
Hurst and Blackett, 13, Great Marlborough-street.

CRYSTAL PALACE.-GREAT TRIENNTAT,
HANDEL FESTIVAL.
MESSIAH-, Monday, June 26, 1865.
SELEC PION, Wednesday, June 28, 1865.
ISRAEL, Friday, June 30, 1865.

REMEMBER ! WE WAIT SUPPER
FOR YOU, atter the Pantomime, at EVANS'. Fail
IlLt! - •

Act ; third, Crown Solicitor to the Court of Bank-
ruptcy, Walter William Aldridge, Esq., who mar-
ried a niece of the Lord Chancellor, appointment
created under the New Bankruptcy Act; fourth,
Architect to the Court of Bankruptcy, Augustus B.
Abrahams, brother-in-law to the Lord Chancellor,
appointment found necessary under the New Bank-
ruptcy Act. In addition to these there was a sec-
retaryship of presentations, given to A. B. Abrahams,
Esq., and a Mr. R. J. Abrahams was appointed
second clerk in the Land Registry Office. There
is another little job in my own immediate neigh-
bourhood, where the Lord Chancellor has been
induced to appropriate an appointment for the
benefit of his own son-in-law, the official assig-
neeship to the Exeter district. Now, I say that
gentleman knew no more of the duties of the
official assigneeship than I know of the duties
of the Lord Chief Justice of England. His
lordship has recently removed his son-in-law from
that district to the London official assigneeship, at
a salary of £BOO a year." Even this, however, does
not appear to complete the list; for it has been
asserted, and the assertion we believe has not been
contradicted, that another son of the Chancellor,
the Hon. W. Bethel', has been appointed to a place
of £4OO a year, though he is still an undergraduate
at Oxford. Under ordinary circumstances, it might
be judicious so far to consult public prejudice as to
wait until his sons had completed their education
before he provided for them at the public expense.
In these days it is usually supposed. that salaries are
only paid in exchange for work done ; and it is an-
tecedently probable that a youth who is still an
undergraduate at The University will not, either in
point of leisure or of ability, be worth £4OO a year
to the public service. But these considerations
were overcome in the mind of the Lord Chancellor
by the menacing aspect of the political horizon.
" Trust not the morrow" is a maxim which should
never be forgotten by public characters who have
large families to provide for. After all, it is but a
sacrifice of repuation in exchange for so much pub-
lic money ; and whether the bargain is a good or a
bad one must depend in each case on the amount
which there is to sacrifice.

The Programme of arrangemen s, with the price of Tickets,
and the block plan of Stalls, may now be had, on written or
personal applicati m. at the Festival Ticket Offices, Crystal
Palace, and Exeter Hall. It may also be had at the principal
Music Warehouses in London and the Provinces ; and be-
sides numerous other places abroad, at the offices of the South-
Eastern, and London, Chatham, and Dover Railway Compa-
nies, at Paris, Brus els, Colagne, Calais, Boulogne, Ostend,
Ghent, Antwerp, &o.
The two Ticket Offices as above will be open from 10 a,m.
till 4.0 p.m. To-morrow, for the issue of vouchers s' cur-
ing seats according to the numbered plans which will then
be open to inspection. Written applications, whether direct
or through agents, containing remittances, and arriving at
either of the Ticket Offices on or before the fir t post on the
13th. will be attended to alternately with personal appliza-
Hons. by order.

KINAHAN'S LL WHISKY v. COGNAC
BRANDY.
This celebrated Old IRISH WHISKY rivals the finest
FRENCH BRANDY,
It ij Pure, Mild, Mellow, Delicious, and very Wholesome.
Sold in Bottles, 3s. Bd., at the Retail Houses in London ; by
the Agents in the principal towns in England; or wholesale

8, GREAT WINDMILL-STREET, LONDON, W.
Observe the Red Seal, Fink Label, and Cork branded
"Kinahan'a LL Whisky."

Crystal Palace and Exeter Hall, March 13th, 1885.

NOTE.—Persons preferring seats in any particular block
are recommended to apply for them as early as possible atter
the opening of the Subscription Books on the 13th of March
Even the Crystal Palace, with its vast space, has limits of
accommodation which cannot be exe,eedea ; and the demand
at each of the three previous Festivals for seats in particular
blocks having been greatly in excess of any possible supply,
the necessity for the foregoing intimation must be apparent.

THE EXAMINER.—Mr. Edmunds held four ap-
pointments, two in the Commission of Patents, and
two in the House of Lords. In the office of Patents
he was charged with default, confessed himself
debtor to the amount of nearly £B,OOO, which he
paid, and resigned his appointments. A farther and
larger sum is claimed by the Treasury, but disputed.
by Mr. Edmunds. In these circumstances the Chan-
cellor had to consider the course to be taken with
reference to the offices held by this gentlemen in the
House of Lords. Mr. Edmunds asked the Chan-
cellor to suspend his action till he should have made
his answer to the last claim of the Treasury, and
partly upon this plea, partly upon another, and
vaguer, for time, a short period of grace was
granted. And on the very day when the Chancel-
lor, in conformity with the opinion of the .Govern-
ment, was about to communicate the whole affair to
the House of Lords, Mr. Edmunds put in a petition
for leave to retire with a pension, which petition
the Chancellor himself presented. It then devolved
on a committee to consider the claim to a pension,
which they did without any knowledge of the charges
against Mr. Edmunds beyond floating rumours.
And so the pension was granted. The Chancellor
justifies his inaction on the ground that he was not
bound to " pursue" Mr. Edmunds into the Com-
mission, and thwart his application for a reward for
eighteen years' servises. But as the Chancellor, by
silently presenting the petition, had given it some
silent sanction, we think the better course would
have been to have acquainted the committee with
the facts, and to have left the matter altOgether to
its judgment. And the Chancellor gives a most
extraordinary reason for not having done any-
thing which could prevent the grant of the pension,
that it could be taken in satisfaction of any debt
which may be be proved due to the Trea-
sury 1 In other and plain words, that the public or
the Crown, no matter which word is used, should
pay itself with its own money. According to this
view, the only fault is that the pension was so small,
for if it had been thousands instead of hundreds
there would at once have been the wherewith to
satisfy the Treasury claim to some £9,000. We have
here given a mere rough outline of this affair,
avoiding all minor details, for all that we have in
view is to enable our readers to judge of the Chan-
cellor's part in it. Lord Westbury is not a popular
man. He has no consideration for the self-love of
the people with whom he comes in contact, and has
a peculiar art of bringing home to them unmis-
takably a mortifying sense of their inferiorities. No
one has a greater command of oil, of which he only
makes one use, to give the utmost smoothness to
his incisive weapons. His temper and his talents
are of equal edge. At a safe distance his great
abilities are seen and justly admired, but near they
inspire more of apprehension than any other feeling.
THE ‘‘LONDON REVIEW."—The Lord Chancellor
has given the town what it always dearly loves—
a great scandal for its clubs and dinner tables. If
Cmsar's wife should not even be suspected, what
shall be said of the keeper of the Queen's conscience,
if it appears that he has abused his position to con-
done a gross offence against the public service, and
use it as a means of promoting his relatives ? This
is the scandal, and it was all the more readily be-
lieved, inasmuch as Lord Westbury has bestowed
his patronage upon the members of his family to an
extent which has been the subject of general remark.
It is not, of course, to be supposed that a lawyer
who attains the woolsack, or a clergyman who is
made a bishop, will be entirely oblivious of the in-
terests of his sons and sons-in-law in disposing of
the good things which fall within his gift. But to
think of them to the exclusion of every one else, is
placing other candidates, equally well, and perhaps
better, qualified, at an unfair disadvantage. Lord
Westbury has done this ; and thus the scandal which
on Tuesday he endeavoured to explain away has
acquired force and probability. And we confess that,
even with hisexplanation before us, we find find it diffi-
cult to resist the supposition that the prospect of put-
ting Mr. S Bethell, his son, into one good appoint-
ment, and Captain Cardew, his son-in-law, into
another, had something to do with the resignation
by Mr. Edmunds in the Patent Office and in the
House of Lords. But, whether this is so or not,
there are other points, to which we shall presently ,
draw attention, with regard to which there can be
no doubt whatever, that the Lord Chancellor's con-
duct is open to the gravest inculpation. In review-
ing the case two considerations suggest themselves.
Both turn upon the gravity of Mr. Edmunds'
offence. Lord Westbury tells us that, when the
Law Officers of the Crown were consulted, they
were of opinion that there was no ground for crimi-
nal proceedings ; and that, even if such proceedings
could have been instituted with success, " they would
have been unfair and unjust, because the whole of
the information attaching to Mr. Edmunds' defalca-
tions, or, at least, the principal part of it, had been
obtained from his confession." " It was, therefore,"
Lord Westbury says, " a matter of civil liability."
" If," he adds, "it had turned out, or if .it should
hereafter turn out, that Mr. Edmunds has paid the
whole amount, it would have been wrong to deprive
him of his pension." Nay, "if it should turn out
that Mr. Edmunds is still a debtor, the pension is
liable
at be
to
deb taken, e nivaen d will
confess e
we
aretaken, na s
tsoant
ss fhaecdt in oat
these admissions. If Mr. Edmunds is entitled to his
llia-
bility n
respect pensn
o why
oee of two things follows--either Mr. is true, he is still entitled to it ;
will says that, whether he has discharged or
to the public or not, he is entitled
to his pen-
hwyhiwchashe he
cflaoirmceded toit
?resLigndh theis Westburyf officeui
wouldif
the h a beenvaelle
gat
ow wrong o
that
tt toedeprivestill
il h him
fowes
the public £9,100
be applied in payment of his
dioeorbin, ;
he says,t it
Edmunds has not disqualified himself, by his con-
duct in the Patent-office, for holding his places
it
in the House of Lords, or, if he has, he is not
pen-
sion
tt
. ; that
Nha aotv
one
entitled to a pension for his services in
those places. Lord Westbury's statement to
the House on Tuesday was, in one respect, exces-
sively uncandid. He gave it no means of judging
what the nature of Mr Edmunds' defalcations in the
Patent-office were. As far as we can gather the
facts of the charge against this gentleman from his
lordship's speech, it seems to us very doubtlul indeed
whether Mr. Edmunds has been guilty of more than
an irregularity, for which, though he is deserving of
blame, a much lighter penalty than that which
he has been forced by Lord Westbury to inflict
upon himself would not have fully met the justice
of the case. He was bound by the statute of 1833
to pay over all fees received by him, and make his
account to the Exchequer. But the statute makes
no provision touching the audit of his accounts. If
the fact be, as Lord Derby says he has been in-
formed, that Mr. Edmunds, instead of handing over
a sum of money which he had received on behalf of
the Government, placed it in a deposit bank and
received the interest upon it till it was called for—
though such a proceeding was excessively improper,
it was not of that gross character which would de-
mand that he should be removed from all the ap-
pointments he held.
6‘ TILE SrEczaToa,"---The Lord Chancellor's can-

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dour approaches nearer to that white and sparkling
lustre which we attribute to the saints than any
other result of the bleaching power of the world's
fuller's earth. When he has to narrate the history
of transactions not altogether clean or edifying,
there is a soft benignity and a stainlessness in his
treatment which affect us like the compassion of
nature burying the foul places of the earth in a spot-
less garment of driven snow. Lord Westbury's ex-
planation in the House of Lords on Tuesday of the
unpleasant transactions in connection with the
Patent-office, of which we gave a brief notice last
week, was full of this tranquillising beauty. True,
the feathered words, the flakes of compassionate
candour, did not fall till a heavy cloud had rested
for a whole day on the firmament of his own
official purity. But this perhaps only enhances
the lustre of the the effect. Till Duty's stern voice
was heard the. Chancellor listened to the pleadings
of pity. He could not bear to cut off a possible
culprit from the way of repentance and tears. Yet
when the voice of conscience became at last impera-
tive, the sentiment of Wordsworth's great " Ode to
Duty" at once prevailed with that pure and single
mind

Stern Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear
The Godhead's most benignant grace ;
Norknow we anything so fair
As is the smile upon thy face,
—nothing quite so fair, but the next thing to it is
the bright selection of that serene smile on the up-
turned face of the earthly lawgiver who keeps the
conscience of England. The Lord Chancellor's
heart seems to have got the better for a time of his
stern sense of duty. When he received an earnest
request from Mr. Edmunds' solicitor to postpone
that communication till Mr. Edmunds could hear
from abroad. Why it would have been a consola-
tion to Mr. Edmunds to hear from abroad before the
Lord Chancellor could be permitted to set his con-
science at rest does not very clearly appear, but it is
said that the Lord Chancellor had again intimated
to Mr. Edmunds that for the second time he might
avoid a trial more or less public, by resignation,—
perhaps he wished to give Mr. Edmunds time to
take the advice of friends abroad whether such re-
signation would be desirable. This Lord Westbury
does not deny, but he repudiates with great fervour
the imputation of having tempted Mr. Edmunds
with the hope of getting a pension as well as avoid-
ing the publicity of an inquiry ...by the House of
Lords in case he should resign. No doubt Mr. Ed-
munds had a difficult calculation to make. On the
one hand, it is pretty clear that his friends in the
House of Lords were numerous. Lord Derby, for
instance, does not scruple to palliate the
rather alarming practice (hypothetically attri-
buted to Mr. Edmunds) of paying State money
to a private deposit account and drawing the
interest of that deposit account as your own. With
powerful friends willing to draw (if necessary)
strong moral distinctions in one's favour between the
practice of holding a capital not one's own in one's
own hands while actually drawing the income and
spending it, and the practice of annexing capital and
interest at once, what might there be to hope from
an inquiry in the House of Lords ? On the other
hand, a pension of £BOO a-year without inquiry
might be in every way preferable—preferable to all
parties—to Mr. Edmunds himself, and to the patron
m whose gift was the successorship to Mr. Edmunds.
And considering especially that this patron was the
powerful and compassionate Lord Chancellor him-
self, what might there not be to hope from the policy
of resignation which seemed to be expressly indi-
cated by the merciful Judge as the only condition
of his silence? Might not the Lord Chancellor have
conceived the benevolent idea of conferring the post
on some deserving relative of his own ? And might
it not be very gratifying to his feelings both as a
Christian and as a father to be spared on the one
hand the pain of a public censure of Mr. Edmunds,
and on the other the uncertainties arising from the
long delay of an investigation, and the possibility
that the House of Lords might after all take the
same high moral ground as to the broad difference
between spending the capital and spending the in-
terest of public moneys as Lord Derby takes, and de-
cline to dismiss their Clerk for his little peccadillo in
another department? These considerations—or some
others equally weighty—determined Mr. Edmunds

(after heladheara from abroad) to place his resig-
nation in the hands of the Clerk of the Parchments,
accompanying it with a petition for a pension in
consideration of faithful service. Lord Westbury's
pity now triumphed. It was not in his nature, he
4.,mmitbcc.
So—apparently without again consulting the Govern-
ment—he held back his revelations—presented Mr.
Edmunds' petition himself, and made no commu-
nication to the committee appointed to consider the
pension concerning his alleged misdeeds. Doubtless
he had not promised Mr. Edmunds to favour his
pension in case he resigned—but Mr. Edmunds had
calculated rightly on the compassionate temper of
that gentle heart. Ile resentment of the judge
was satisfied by the resignation of the culprit ; the
tenderness of the father was gratified by the new
opening for the son. The committee appointed to
consider the pension had heard generally of the
unfavourable rumours, but these rumours were not
officially before them, and Mr. Edmunds's friends
in the House of Lords are many and earnest.
What the Lord Chancellor did not feel it his duty
to explain, the committee did not feel it their duty
to ask. A pension of £BOO a year was granted
without asking questions. What if it should turn out
that Mr. Edmunds had appropriated money in the
Patent Office did that diminish his merits as Clerk
to the House of Lords ? Would not every reason-
able man feel it his duty to pension handsomely for
faithful service the confidential servant who had
punctually discharged all his duties as a house ser-
vant, but had been compelled to leave his place only
for occasionally abstracting money from the count-
ing-house, and putting it in his own name to a
separate account at the savings' bank, of course
drawing the interest (pro tempore) for himself ? At
all events the committee were not affected with-notice
of the truth of the various rumours, and "did not wish
to test it, so the pension was given. And in the mean-
time the Hon. Slingsby Bethell succeeded to Mr.
Edmunds as Reading Clerk to the House of Lords.
Thus it was arranged in a manner very soothing for
all parties—when the story oozed out into the press,
and that coarse stimulus furnished by public
opinion was applied to the motives of all con-
cerned. However, we cannot regret a circumstance
which has resulted in these second " confessions
of a beautiful spirit." The delicate sense of respon-
sibility, the atmosphere of " soft compassion's feel-
ing soul," the lowliness—almost Augustinian—of
that last sentence of the Lord Chancellor's, in which
he urged upon their lordships an investigation into
his own conduct—" I humbly beg to move your
lordships that a Committee of this House be ap-
pointed," &c., almost force us to cry out " A saint,
a saint is here 1" Then the self-sacrifice ! He only
just touches upon his self-denial in not filling up
that second Patent appointment of £6OO a year.
What a lesson, in lowly self-abnegation it reads us 1
The spirit of Wordsworth's prayer, " Give unto me,
made
ein thelowlywe,the spirit of self-sacrifice," seems
realised great English lawgiver. In short,
we can but be thankful for events, however unto-
' ward, which have resulted in opening the gracious
glimpse of
" The image of a Chancellor's soul,—
How bright, how solemn, how serene !"

"And then he drew a dial from his poke,
And looking on it with lack lustre eye,
Says very wisely, ' It is ten o'clock :
' Thus we may see,' quoth he, "how the world wags."

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MENAI AND CONWAY BRIDGES.-A Parliamentary
return shows that the principal debt still duo on account of
advances for building the Menai-bridge, and purchasing the
rights of ferry, amounts to £231,498. The interest on the
debt amounted in April, 1864, to £432,902, towards which
£41,421 had been received for tolls, and £106,768 for ad-
ditional postage received on Irish letters. Adding the cost
of maintenance, the total .duo to the Exchequer a year ago
was £539,065. In respect of the Conway-bridge there was
£68,720 due to the Exchequer a year ago, but the tolls taken
at this bridge exceed the expenditure.

LADTERTISEMENT.I—HoIIoway's Pills.—A specific remedy
for complaints to which females are liable.—After the ex-
perience of many years, it is incontestably proved that
there is no medicine equal to Holloway's pills for the cure
of diseases incidental to females. The invigorating and
purifying properties of these admirable pills soon produce
a sanative revolution in the system. They are composed
of rare balsams, and are so mild and innoxious that they
may be taken by females of all ages. As a medicine for
family use Holloway's
pills are unequaled, because power-
fully efficacious as they are in the banishment of disease
they act so gently on the stomach that they may be given
with the Utlll9fit cgadollQo and period safety to young