The Sun.
London, England, 1853-12-30 00:00:00

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LONDON, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 30, 1353.

As anticipated for some time past—Parliament
will meet "for the despatch of business " at the
beginning of February. It was so resolved at
the Privy Council held yesterday—the Legisla-
ture being again prorogued, but this time until
Tuesday, the 31st of January. So that before
cockcrow on the morning of Wednesday, the Ist
of February, the session will in real earliest have
commenced. This is exactly as could have been
desired, as well as precisely what had been
anticipated. Once assembled, the representatives
of the people will summon the occupants of the
Treasury Bench to the bar of public opinion. The
people of England themselves will, at length, have
an opportunity of deciding upon the culpability, or
freedom from culpability, of the Coalition—so
soon as the prominent members of that Coalition
shall have favoured the House with their expla-
nations. For these explanations must no loiter,
cannot very well any longer, be merely par-
tial—or distinguished, as heretofore, by enor-
mous and wholesale reservations. The time
has gone by for the continuance of the
reserve hitherto found so efficacious for
evading the inquisitiveness of the Opposition,
and so convenient for screening the difficulties and
demerits of the Government. The country has
had enough, and more than enough, of the diplo-
matic etiquette which last session sealed the lips
of the leaders of the Administration. The Earl
of ABERDEEN in the House of Peers, and Lord
JOHN RUSSELL in the House of Commons, will
have to make a clean breast of it in regard to the
foreign policy of the Cabinet, as well as in refer-
ence to the convulsive shifts and twistings of
its internal organisation. For—not one—
but two • bones of contention will be at once
wrangled over by the Ministry and the Opposi-
tion. The Eastern Question and Lord PALMER-
STON'S reBiglaatiOß. The Eastern Question—not
settled eight months ago as it might have been by
the adoption of an energetic policy by our Ad-
ministrators, but eo
rapncated more and more until
it has emerged into a
difficulty involving the
perils of a general war, the fruit of ministerial
fatuity, nourished by diplomatic incapacity,
and ripened by a protracted
course of
abortive negotiations. For this odious fatu-
ity and criminal incapacity, th© Cabinet will
now in a few weeks have to account in the
presence of the observant country, and 1, the
hearing of the assembled Legislature—for this
fatuity and incapacity, as well as for the folly of
the late retracted resignation. Happily for the
peace of mind of the community, it can now cal-
culate the time that must elapse before the arrival
of the long-wished-for day of reckoning.

It has long been regretted by the humane that
provision has never been made, either on our
steam-boats or on our railroads, for the better
accommodation of even the second, but especially of
the third-class passengers. Again, and again, and
again—STERNE was right in his preference of our
neighbours. Again, and again, and again be it

said—they do manage these things better in
France. At any rate upon the railroads. Enter
a continental railway carriage to-morrow, enter
one at Calais, or at Boulogne—and you will find
that the comfort of the traveller has been cared
for in a manner that would excite astonishment
in the minds of those accustomed only to the sys-
tem heretofore in vogue among ourselves. There
the " second"-class railway carriage is in all
essential particulars equal to our " first"—padded
with cushions, rendering enjoyable the otherwise
irksome and perhaps intolerable time consumed
in the process of locomotion. There the " third
class," with its ingeniously arranged benches,
windows, curtains, and jalousies, will be found—
more peculiarly in summer time—a vast deal
better than our " second :" that dingy structure
of planks, especially contrived, it would seem, for
the realisation of any one's most distressful
notion of the uncomfortable. If, however, our
railroad system in this respect is objectionable,
the system adopted on our steam-packets must be
condemned, surely, as something worse than
simply objectionable--as actually cruel—and,
therefore, as demanding our sternest reprobation.
Everybody who has ever crossed either the
British or St. George's Channel—and who among
us, nowadays, has not visited either France
or Ireland ?—must have remarked the miserable
plight in which the poorer voyagers have been
compelled in bad weather to arrive at their desti-
nation. It must there and then have been ob-
served that the alternative offered to the public
has rested exclusively between the cabin and the
deck or steerage. Either the traveller must be
a cabin passenger or a deck passenger. Either
he must purchase simply and solely a " passage"
(in the 'latter capacity) without finding him-
self supplied with even the smallest or most
trivial pretence at accommodation —or he
must pay very largely in comparison (iu the
former capacity) for shelter from the in-
clemencies of sky and water. To families re-
moving with restricted means across either
channel the pecuniary difference involved in this
alternative between the cabin' and the deck or
steerage, is a matter, of course, of really serious
consideration. It is important, to be sure, even
for individuals but especially important for
families, including, perhaps, a delicate mother
and a sickly group of children. We have wit-
nessed the extent of the evil here alluded to, not
only in steam-boats crossing over to France and
Ireland, but in others likewise—such, for example,
as the packets skirting our own coasts, and direct-
ing their course towards Wales and Scotland.
During stormy or simply rainy and windy nights,
the discomfort to which the unfortunate deck
passengers are frequently doomed by this culpable
lack of consideration, is something absolutely dis-
tressing to contemplate. Men . and women, girls
and boys, even sometimes infants at the breast,
are huddled about deck anywhere and everywhere
among the ropes or under cover of the paddle-
boxes, exposed to sleet, snow, rain, spray, dew,
wind, frost, fog, and all manner of inclement
weather, accordingly as the season of the year may
be when they are compelled to buy a passage in
the steam-vessel. Those who are better off in
the world—those who are, as the phrase is, " well
to do" among the fellow-passengers—sleep com-
fortably through the night, snugly tucked up in
their blankets below, in a berth, or on a cabin sofa
—but the unlucky wights who can't pay more than
moderately for the luxury of the journey, are
enduring some one or other, or perhaps it, may
happen two or three at a time, of the ills
above enumerated. What adds deplorably to
the hardship is the circumstance that these
poor " deck passengers" are more frequently the
worst clad of all on board—the most thinly
clothed—the least prepared to brave through a
whole night the trials and tortures of foul weather.
Nothing is done for them. Their situation has
not even the solace of the shabbiest attempt at
alleviation. If the rain, or snow, or sleet, floods
down upon them in a torrent, they must shield
themselves as they best may under some thread-
bare coat or ricketty umbrella. Now surely,
in the name of common sense, and of very
homely benevolence, these evils might readily
enough be obviated. They might be got rid of
cheaply and speedily enough by some such
simple device as the construction of a sort of
supplementary cabin, or plain, unadorned saloon,
capable, at a trivial cost, of accommodating the
deck passengers, and of screening them from much
physical wretchedness. Happily, this sensible
notion has of late been adopted on board one of
the Belfast steam-vessels—the Minerva—a packet
in which, between the cabin passage at 10s., and
the deck passage at 35., there is now (in a second
cabin passage at 55.) the option of an intermediate
price, and reasonable accommodation. It is ear- '
nestly to be hoped that this rational and humane
arrangement—made by Captain LYAL, the com-
mander of the vessel here (we conceive, judici-
ously and honourably) particularised—may be
imitated before long very generally in the packet
service alongshore or across either of the Chan-
nels. It is an aspiration that must command
the sympathy of every practical philanthropist.

Are women regarded in the City of London as
animals of an inferior grade, whom any ruffian
may insult and abuse with comparative impunity ?
Are they to receive even the inadequate protection
afforded by law in the ancient domain of Gog and
Magog ? or are they to be exposed to the most
outrageous and wanton injuries without redress ?
It would certainly seem as if the Aldermen had
combined together to shelter the cowardly mis-
creants who indulge their " mysogonism" by
assaulting women without the slightest provoca-
tion, and who think that they exhibit a manly
spirit by refusing even the poor satisfaction of an
apology, or expression of regret, for the brutality
of which they have been guilty. We frequently
blush for our country when recording the dis-
graceful conduct of some uneducated and depraved
scoundrel who had assaulted his inoffensive wife
on his return from a drinking bout, in which he
had squandered the means so urgently required
for the support of his miserable and neglected
family. We have felt it to be a blot upon the
national escutcheon that such a wretch should
merely be sent off in the police van for a few months'
imprisonment, although "hard labour" for the
time be incidental to the sentence. We have re-
luctantly recognised the necessity for the applica-
tion of the " cat-o'-nine-tails" in such cases, and
the scourging soundly administered in public, so
that the indelible disgrace might be even more
dreaded than the pain of the flagellation. But
what must be the feelings of every man when they
find a well-dressed person, said to be the member
of a respectable body, permitted to escape on pay-
ment of a trifling pecuniary fine, from the conse-
quences of a most outrageous assault upon a lady
whom he had never seen before, against whom he
could have entertained no feelings of animosity,
but whom he assailed merely because she was un-
attended by a male companion, and therefore, as
the ruffian conceived, unprotected, and a fitting
object for insult and injury ?
On Monday evening a lady—on whom we shall
not inflict the pain of repeating her name in rela-
tion to this atrocious outrage—was returning with
her daughter from a friend's house, where she had
been spending the evening of the day granted as
the Christmas holiday in the city. On Ludgate-
hill she found that her boot-lace had got loose,
and stopped in order that her daughter might
fasten it. While thus engaged, JAMES TRACY, a
person who described himself (we trust errone-
ously) as a commercial traveller, passed by. Ac-
cording to the statement of the injured lady, he
was not tipsy, although he had evidently been
drinking. He could not, it appears, resist the
temptation of " a lark" at the expense of an un-
protected female. He accordingly pulled up a
portion of her dress. Naturally indignant at the
wanton outrage, she pushed him from her, and
told him to go away, upon which he struck her a
violent blow in the face, the marks of
which remained when she appeared in
Court. TRACY was not alone. He had
a companion of a congenial disposition, who was
very drunk, and used very bad language to the
complainant. Unfortunately, however, the ine- 1
briated scoundrel was permitted to escape without
the exposure he so richly merited. TRACY was,,