The Sun.
London, England, 1865-05-15 00:00:00

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LONDON, MONDAY, MAY 15, 1865.

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change that would weaken their own power, the
moderate party has a difficult task to perform, and.
it has as yetlahown little inclination or ability to
accomplish it. Even now, when we find politicians
taking an active part in these demonstrations
it is impossible to forget that the approaching
election may have something to do with their
sudden enthusiasm for the rights of the working
classes. Undoubtedly it is the right time to agitate
if the new Parliament is to be composed of better
men than the old, and is to represent a little
more faithfully the convictions and the wishes
of the country. Still our elections had better
take care that they return genuine reformers, not
mere seekers after the popularity of the hour. There
is no doubt of the sincerity of the National Reform
League, but if they want to carry their purpose in
these days when political excitement has almost died
out, and the agitated aspect of America has increased
the dislike to change and innovations, they must
be moderate and consistent in their views. It is
easy to declaim on the rights of labour and the
tyranny of property ; but that is not the tone to
adopt if they wish to carry conviction to the
minds of sober, practical men of the middle
class, by whom after all the reform must
be carried. It is a mistake to adopt
manhood suffrage as a leading principle of the
League, for it is one which is by no means popular
in this country, nor, in spite of Mr. BEALES'S dis-
claimer, is it in accordance with the spirit of the
Constitution. Our whole system consists of a series
of checks and balances, whose object is to prevent
any one portion of the social machine from over-
powering another. The king is checked by the
Parliament, the Lords by the Commons, and the
Commons by the Lords, while the Parliament itself
is kept within strict limits so as to make it re-
sponsible to the people. The method of voting
the military year by year, the fixed duration
of a Parliament, and, on the other hand,
the brief period allowed even for its prolonga-
tion, all show the same watchful care that
no one class• should override the other. Now
that the diffusion of intelligence and education and
the wonderful increase of population has brought
forward another class anxious for their share in
political power, it should be granted to them with
the same safeguards that our forefathers appended to
the power of the Crown, the aristocracy, and the
Parliament. When their representatives talk about
our existing Parliament as an " aggregate despot-
ism," and denounce the rich as being the enemies of
the poor, they do. not satisfy us that no such
safeguards are needed. But what they have a fair
right to complain of is that, after men of all parties
have admitted the necessity of Reform, have openly
acknowledged the insufficiency and inconsistency of
our representative system, and the injustice of ex-
cluding so large a proportion of the peaceable and
respectable subjects of the QUEEN from any voice in
the elections, nothing whatever is done. It is quite
true that some steps should be taken, and as the
Ministers profess to be waiting for outside agitation,
the Manchester Reform League has done wisely to
inaugurate the association in London. If they wish
to carry the convictions of the country with them,
and to do real public service, they will
put aside the question of manhood suffrage,
on which they will have few supporters, and will
devote all their energies to the Ballot. Without the
Ballot the extension of the franchise will be only
the extension of bribery and intimidation, more dif-
ficult and more costly, of course, to the candidate,
and, therefore, very unwelcome, but by no means
an efficacious or certain remedy for the evils of our
present system. Even now a very large propor-
tion of electors do not go to the poll at all, either
disgusted with the uproar and dishonesty, or unable
to give an independent vote and unwilling to give a
false one. We shall have the same thing on a larger
scale if the franchise is extended without any pro-
tection to the elector, and the results will be that
the possession of wealth will be more and more in-
dispensable to the candidate, so that virtually the
possession of seats will be left, after all, in the hands
of .a few.

The working classes and their friends are appa-
rently determined to give active evidence of the in-
accuracy of the charge of indifference to reform
which has been brought against them in several
quarters. A public meeting was held in St. Martin's
Hall on Saturday evening as a sort of metropolitan
inauguration of the National Reform League. Mr.
BEALES, the chairman of the League, presided, and
took the opportunity of declaring the principles
upon which the association was established, and the
objects which it proposed to its members. A goodly
company of professed reformers supported the
meeting by their presence, and a considerable num-
ber of working men formed the audience, so that
altogether the proceedings may be taken as a fair
representation of the views and sentiments of the
Manchester and Metropolitan League. The opinions
of Manchester and London, however, are not gene-
rally identical. Manchester has done good service
in the cause of free-trade, and has boldly advocated
principles which London has cordially accepted and
adopted as its own. But in other respects the Man-
chester school, like the New Englanders of America,
is too often represented by men of strong character,
inflexible determination, and firm convictions, but
narrow and intolerant views. The same defects
which marred the excellences of the Puritans of the
Old World are repeated in their descendants in the
New, and show themselves on a smaller scale
in the advocates of similar principles among
ourselves. Foremost among the defects is the
impossibility of respecting the convictions of oppo-
nents. The absence of that mental mag-
nanimity which can believe in the sincerity
of men totally opposed to itself, and though it can
only see one side of the shield is willing to give
credit to the assurance that there is another aspect
of the question that is in other circumstances quite
as natural and as reasonable. Perhaps something
of this is inseßarable from the strong wills and the
earnest convictions which work reforms and over-
throw established abuses. But moderate men of
all parties will do well to remember that there is a
tyranny of the many as well as a tyranny of the
few, and that those pilgrims who crossed the Atlan-
tic rather than submit to the thraldom, "When the
Old World grew in dotage, and by priests and
kings was bound," were the precursors of those
legislators who forbade that a mother should
kiss her child on Sunday. The evils of Demo-
cracy do not exist alone in the imagination
of aristocrats, and it is this which forms the diffi-
culty and perplexity of genuine Reformers. But we
shall not avoid the difficulty by leaving it alone, for
it increases year by year, and the anomalies of our
representation have become so glaring that it is
impossible for politicians of any class to defend
them. We have boroughs with a population of two
or three hundred returning two members, while large
towns and districts, whose electors might be num-
bered by the thousand, are actually unrepresented.
The vast-outlyin' g districts of the metropolis itself,
which contain householders enough to people some
continental capitals, have no vote, and, consequently,
though they contribute largely to every tax, have
no voice in the regulation of the finances.
Then as to the constituents of the electoral districts
themselves, the anomalies of the present state of
things are absurd and intolerable. An English
Parliament is supposed to represent the people, and
the constitution is especially framed to include the
delegates or representatives of all. No one
can
pretend to say that we have attained this end, any
more than they can maintain that our elections are
always pure and honest. Yet, considering the vast
importance of our House of Commons, and the in-
fluence which it exercises not only on this country,
but on the whole world, it is not too much to expect
that it should move a little with the times, and en
deavour to approach a little nearer the Utopia of
Reformers if it cannot obtain absolute perfection.
Between the wholesale Radicals, who would carry all
before them, and the obstinate opponent 4 of every

At the present season there are always many an-
niversary festivals taking place, and numerous
meetings to advocate the cause of thosewhose claims
to public support and sympathy are great, and who
also possess particular claims on their own more
fortunate brethren. Last Saturday, Lord GRAN-
VILLE presided at the thirteenth anniversary festival
of the Royal Medical Benevolent College. This
excellent college was founded by the medical pro-
fession for the benefit of those of their brethren
who have fallen into poverty from any unfortunate
circumstances, and also for the service of their
widows. In connection with this college there is a
school for the gratuitous education of orphans of
medical men. The late Prince Consort opened the
institution, and
,thus the name of his Royal
Highness is associated with this charity as well as
with many others. The late Prince was distin-
guished for his readiness in coming forward to aid
these estimable undertakings, and,. doubtless, his
works will live after him in the good effects
which his influence produced in the fur-
therance of the cause at heart. Lord GRAN-
VILLE made an excellent speech, and displayed
his usual skill in presiding on such occasions. The
noble lord said that he considered the success of the
institution as " a great triumph of strong will and
power," because those who had created it were men
whose arduous avocations occupied them day and
night. It is satisfactory to learn that a considerable ad-
dition will be made to the school of the lodge,
because the trustees of the late Dr. GILBERT will
send a portion of that large legacy for their benefit.
Lord GRANVILLE truly said that the success of this
undertaking was creditable to the members of the
medical profession. As for the schools there is
every reason to expect that they will prosper ; and
those who are well qualified to judge of such mat-
ters had confidence in them. As the noble lord
remarked.; the teachers in these places would find
their Work`' rendered easier from the fact that they
had to deal with the children of intellectual parents
for the most part, and therefore would not
encounter great obstacles in their path. The
noble lord paid a compliment to the medical
profession generally, saying that its members were
generally well-informed men, and their conversa-
tion often most amusing and instructive ; that there
was no excuse for those who shunned the society of
doctors unless they were compelled to see them profes-
sionally. A humorous anecdote in connection with this
subject was told by the noble chairman of a cynical
individual who one day sent down a message to a
medical friend who called upon him, that he must
really excuse him, because he was not well that
morning. The subscriptions amounted to nearly a
thousand pounds, and those who study the arrange-
ments of the institution will be glad to find that it has
been so cordially supported. There are twenty-
fourpensioners inthe college, each of whom hasthree
rooms, a pension of £2O a year and coals. There
are
e 29n0stibtuotyiso,nf, being
forty of whom are, at the expense of
the I
boarded, clothed, and edu-
cated, and the rest are only charged £4O a year for
an excellent education, and all other usual charges.
Much is yet necessary for the carrying out of
the necessary arrangements to accommodate many
deserving applicants, and the recommendations of

the council are entitled to consideration when they LATEST INTTIT,LIGENnE
state in their report that " they have a right to V .
claim aid and support, not from the medical man (REUTER'S TELEGRAMS.)
only, but from that public in whose service the
medical man spends his days, for whom his time
and energy, and too often his life, are sacrificed."

It is always to be regretted if by bad manage-
ment the public money is wasted or misapplied, and
too much care cannot be taken to prevent such a
mischance occurring. The proposal to present a
gratuity of £lO,OOO to Mr. BAZALATTE, the engi-
neer, and his assistants, has met with disapprobation
in various quarters, and it is no wonder that it
should have done so, for it appears inconsistent in
the extreme. Communications have been received
from several places protesting against the plan.
One from the vestry of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields,
raised the question as to whether it was legal to
apply the rates, which were raised for the main
drainage works, to such a purpose. A more unwise
thing could hardly have been done than thus to pro-
voke a discussion of an angry nature and to create dis-
content among the public. There is already suffi-
cient hesitation displayed in paying rates without
adding to it by introducing fresh claims on the re-
sources, and thereby necessitating increased de-
mand, thus rendering the burden intolerable. The
irritation thus produced throughout the metropolis
has been very considerable, and fully exemplifies the
feeling created by the proposal. The St. Pancras
Representative Council and the Marylebone Repre-
sentative Council both passed resolutions to the
effect that the plan was an erroneous one, and these
were carried unanimously. It was truly obderved at
the Marylebone meeting that the proposal was as
yet premature, and that it would be better to wait
until the entire main drainage works were completed
in an effectual manner, and then
.the Government
should take the matter up, and there should be a
national grant " to the men who had designed and
carried out the magnificent and stupendous works
of the Metropolitan Main Drainage." This is a
very wise suggestion, and it is to be hoped that the
Metropolitan Board will take heed to the warnings
io has received, and abandon the scheme which re-
flects so little credit on their sagacity, and has
created so much ill-will and confusion among those
who are to be called upon to contribute to the sums
extravagantly disposed of. A more unpopular pro-
position has seldom emanated from a Board which
at no time contrives to win the confidence or secure
the favour of the numerous bodies who are concerned
in the furtherance of its projects.

WHIGGERY!

AUSTRIA.

VIENNA, MAY 9.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.

The third sitting of the Anglo-Austrian Com-
mercial Inquiry took place at the hotel of the
Ministers of Commerce yesterday. It was deter-
mined to allow no further reports as to the pro-
gress of the inquiry to be published. Count Eugene
Minsky is said to have been the mover of the re-
solution.

PLYMOUTH, MAY 15.

A Russian war vessel, in advance of the squadron
in charge of the remains of the Czarewitch, arrived
in Plymouth Sound this morning, and exchanged
salutes with the citadel and flagship. She will coal
and proceed again immediately.
The squadron is expected during the day.

As we are on the eve of a general election it may
not be amiss just to review what has been the policy
and actions of the Whigs during the last 70 years ;
and I think, sir, I can prove it has always been that
of imposture, pretence, and delusion. I will go as
far back as the session 1798-99, the latter end of the
last century, when they opposed strenuously Mr.
Pitt's Income-tax, which was then imposed for the
first time. In 1806, when in office, they increased
the tax from £.6f per cent. to £lO per cent. It
would be worse than idle to enumerate their blunders
during the old French War. I willtherefore go to the
period of the first Administration of the late Sir R.
Peel, in 1835, when Lord John Russell turned him
out on the Irish Tithe Question, yet three years
afterwards, in 1838, passed himself the very iden-
tical measure he had turned Sir R. Peel out upon.
In 1839 and 1840 both the late Lord Melbourne and
Lord John Russell declared that a man would be mad,
and worse than mad, who talked of a repeal of the
corn laws, yet in 1841 they both avowed themselves
openly convinced in favour of free trade. In
1842 they opposed Sir R. Peel's income tax, yet
in 1848 (following the example of their predeces-
sors, the. Whigs—commonly called the broad-bot-
tomed Government of 1806), they proposed an
increase of the income tax to 5 per cent.,
which, as most of us can remember, was
indignantly rejected by an overwhelming ma-
jority. After about a century's alliance with the
Catholic body, they, acting on the principle, of that
rule so very cleverly described by Fielding, that it
is a common practice of the devil in one of his many
visits upon earth, when once your friend gets up to
kick his stool away from him, or, in other words,
when you have made your fortune by your friend,
to throw him overboard. And so it was with the
Whigs towards the Catholics ; they made all the use
they could of them towards getting into power by
advocating their rights and exposing their wrongs,
afterwards turning round against them at the
first • profitable opportunity, as witness Lord
Russell's memorable letter to the late Bishop
of Durham, wherein, assuredly, the whole
Catholic body was most grossly insulted. Again,
their conduct during the Crimean war was any-
thing rather than what any honest man could ap-
prove; while the disgraceful peace made by them in
1856 with Russia, whereby we were humiliated and
lowered amongst European nations, cannot better
be illustrated than by the old phrase that a
glorious war is better than a disgraceful
peace." Later still, not six short years have
elapsed since they turned out Lord Derby's Govern-
ment on a very sensible Reform Bill, because, ac-
cording to the Whig argument, it did not go far
enough ; yet since then they have opposed and
resisted Reform in every possible way, until it
has been as completely laid on the shelf as
it was in 1827, towards the close of
the so-called Georgian era, when it was de-
scribed by the late Earl Grey as being in an
utterly worn out and even hopeless condition. It is
not to be denied by even the most strenuous advo-
cate of Reform amongst us that all our best,
wisest, and greatest reforms have been passed
by Tory Governments, and it certainly behoves
the people of England, now that we are on the
eve of a general election, to beware how they
entrust their interests to such an apology for a
Liberal Government as we have been for nearly six
years ruled by.—l remain, Sir,

Your Warm Admirer and Constant Reader
of many years, a Lover of Consistency,
and a Hater of Humbug, but One who is
Favourable to real Liberal Principles.

YANKEE PASSION FOR PIE I—The sallow faces,
the shrunken forms, the sunken eyes, the morose
looks, the tetchy temperament of the Northerners are at-
tributable not half so much to iced-water, candles, tough
beefsteaks, tight-lacing, and tobacco chewing, as to un-
bridled indulgence in Pie. Pie worship-is prevalent all
over the North; you have Pie morning, noon, and night,
every day, and all the year round. There is nothing open
and above board in Pie. It can be eaten stealthily and in
secret. A slice of a cut pie is never missed. I have heard
of young ladies'who took Pie to bed with them. The
" Confessions of a Pie-Eater" have just been published.
They are heartrending. Through an unconquerable hunger
for Pie, the wretched man who is their subject often in-
curred in infancy the penal visitation of hickory, and
brought the hairs of an aged grandmother with sorrow to
the, grave. He wasted in gourmandizing Pio those pre-
cious hours which should have been devoted to study ;
and in the end, not only failed to graduate at West Point,
but even to marry a niece of the late Daniel Webster. Pie
darkened his mind,' stupified his faculties, paralysed his
energy. Pie forced him to abandon a lucrative and hon-
ourable career for an unsuccessful whaling voyage from
Cape Cod. Pie drove him into exile. Deadened to all the
finer moral feelings by this ungovernable lust for Pie, he
obtained, under false and fraudulent pretences, a through
ticket for California by the Vanderbilt line; but, detected
in •' smouching a tom-cod" from the altar of the Chinese
temple in San Francisco, he was disgracefully expelled
the Golden State. It was for purloining Pie—a digger's
noontide lunch—that he was subsequently expelled the
territory of Arizona. Beggared, broken in health, he de-
serted his wife and family, draw cheques upon wild-cat
banks, and voted on the Bell and Everett ticket—all in
consequence of Pie. At length, after a course of " shin-
ning round the free lunches" in quest of eleemosynary
Pie, and wolfing the hideous meal with Dead Rabbits,
Plug-Uglies, and other unscrupulous politicians, he was
arrested in Philadelphia for passing bogus notes on the
Hide and Leather Bank, and was sent to States Prison
for ten yore. All ofing to Pie.—askei Diary in America.

Hunting Sketches. By Anthony Trollope. One Vol.,

pp. 115. Chapman and Hall.

The readiest writer of the day is surely Mr.
Anthony Trollope. No one living writes more dis-
tinctly, we should say currente calamo. Reading
him is, for all the world, like listening to the con-
versation—at times the small-talk, even at moments
the very small talk—of an exceedingly pleasant
companion. Glib as glib as can be are the periods
here run from the pen-point with all the idiomatic
fluency of a purely conversational style. With a
fluency so remarkable as to impart to the general
effect of the writing an air of absolute carelessness.
The present sketches, " Hunting Sketches" as they
are called—eight little harum-scarum papers in all
—indicate in a very vivid manner the peculiarities
of this almost slovenly mannerism of Mr.
Trollope's. They illustrate it in fact so
vividly as by their illustrations even to exaggerate

it. Insomuch is this the case from the outset that
the very first sentence is ungrammatical ! "It
seems to be odd," says Mr. Trollope, " at first sight
that there should be any such men ; but their name
and number is legion"—the italics, of course, being
our own. Dashed off helter skelter for our gal-
lant young contemporary, the Pall Mall Gazette,
these Hunting Sketches depict to the life—The Man
who Hunts and Doesn't Like it—The Man who

Hunts and Does Like it—The Lady who rides to
hounds—The Hunting Farmer—The Man who
hunts and never jumps The Hunting
Parson—the Master of Hounds—and How to Ride

to Hounds. He depicts them with a few seemingly
quite casual touches—and yet through those few
touches, jotted down by a true artist's hand, hits
them off to a nicety, as through the lens of a pho-
tographer. As Sketches they have some sort of a
resemblance—in their combination pretty equally
of vividness and carelessness—to several of

those wonderful pencil drawings of Hunting
Scenes, recently on view at Messrs. Christie and
Manson's—before being scattered to the four winds
by the dispersing hammers of those auctioneers.
Pencillings of men and horses and dogs, careering
over hedge and over ditch by the master hand of
that dear lamented friend of us all, John Leech.
What Leech had done there in those Hunting
Sketches with a pencil—Anthony Trollope has done
here in these with a pen. They are full of life,
humour, verisimilitude. A random touch, now
here, now there, upon the page, and
the hunting scene and the hunting people
are brought out vividly to view. It is next to impos-
sible to feel dull while turning over these Sketches
You look and smile, you read andlaugh. The morn-
ing air blows about you. The dew-wet branches of

the copse, splash your face as you make your way
onwards among the leaves. You are in thepigskin
the stirrup-leather taut under the pressure of the
ball of your foot in the gaunty apricot-tops. The
sweat-stained skirts of your " pink" flutter across
the flanks of your hunter as you ride
well to hounds, " through brake, through briar,"
over fence, over rasper, cheek-by-jowl, almost at a
dead heat with the pleasant comrade, who leads you
onwards close after the pack so long as the scent
lasts, or until the varmint is driven to earth !
Pencillings by the way though these are—more
strictly than any of those jotted down by N. P.
Willis—they are well worthy of having been col-
lected together thus for preservation upon our
bookshelves. They are fragrant of country life, and
with all their carelessness—a carlessness on the part
of the writer, oddly over emulated by the printer,
instance at p. 28, " the run of the reason," mis-
printed for the " run of the season"—with all their
flagrant carelessness, these are manly, honest, and
true as Hunting Sketches.

Church and Queen: Five Speeches delivered by the
Right Hon. B. Disraeli, M.P., 1860-1864.
Pp. 79. G. J. Palmer, 32, Little Queen-street.

The speeches here collected together in this
little sixpenny pamphlet, edited by a member
of the University of Oxford, have certainly been
issued from the press most opportunely. Oppor-
tunely, that is, with the prospect of a general elec-
tion before August, and with the certainty of a
pretty sharp contest upon the very questions dis-
cussed in these remarkable speeches of Mr. Disraeli's
—one of them about the most remarkable speech
he has ever delivered—a pretty sharp contest
in a good many constituencies besides that
of the University of Oxford. The fifth speech
in- this pamphlet, the last of the five speeches re-
ported in it, is of course the one we have but just
now alluded to—the one on Church policy de-
livered at Oxford on the 25th of last November
by the Right Hon. the leader of her Majesty's Oppo-
sition. By constituencies of both parties, or of neither,
by members of both sides of the House of Commons
as it now is, by aspirants to seats in its im-
mediate successor, alike Whigs and Tories, Libe-
rals and Conservatives, Radicals and Retrogrades,
that fifth speech, the whole of these five speeches
ought to be reperused, and that, moreover, very
attentively. The pamphlet is valuable, if for no
other consideration, for inasmuch as it is a most
timely and acceptable refresher !