The Sun.
London, England, 1862-06-17 00:00:00

Scarcely has Lord CANNING returned home to

receive the Garter from his SOVEREIGN, and the

heartfelt welcome of his fellow-countrymen after

his brilliant and memorable rule over Hindostan

—when we, have to announce to the wcmld the

lamentable tidings of his disappearance from

ltulongst us. The news of Lord CANNING's death

Which took place at twenty-five minutes past

I.x o'clock this morning—will excite but one

-feeling throughout the United Kingdom. It
/611 Pass with a sudden shock of regret through all
ranks and classes in these islands, as the mournful
intelligence (itself also but very recent) of the death
of his amiable and beautiful Viscountess, passed
with no affected pang of sympathy through all
ranks and classes in Rindostan. It seems but yes-
terday almost that the telegram was flashed to us
announcing the arrival again upon our shores
of the ex-Governor-General. A week or two
ipuly can flit by—the Gazette intimates the noble
by Her MAJESTY as K.G.—
lord's nomination

there is a talk within the last twenty-four hours of
hia health failing him more seriously than 111aR.
rat
ailments seemed to threaten—and now we have
briefly to record, just before going to press, the fact
that Lord CANNING breathed his last this morning.
Like his predecessor as Governor-General of
India (Lord Dalhousie), Viscount CANNING returns
to this country from his oriental viceroyalty with
his constitution shattered. Not merely undermined
but shattered. Unlike the late Lord DALHOUSIE,

however, this last of our ex.Governors-General
of Hindostan lingers but for a very brief in-
terval indeed, in repose, after his return home-
wards. The interval that might be counted
for Lord DALHOUSIE by months, could be
counted for Lord CANNING only by days, almost,
one might say, by hours. He barely has time
allowed him—happily, however, he has had time al-
lowed him—to come back here amongst us, to lay
his bones in England. It is impossible not
to recognise, in the premature death of this dis-
tinguished servant of the Crown, the results of
his toil and care during the last five or six years,

in that position of awful responsibility in which he
was placed, in the flower of his manhood, by the
favour of his SovtnEIGN, and with the assent of the

great mass of his fellow-countrymen. It will be re-
membered of Lord CANNING that he held the reins
of authority over the Oriental Empire of Great
Britain through two of tho grandest crises in
the
annals of Hindostan ! That he held them firmly,

calmly, resolutely ! And that he handed them over

to his successor strengthened rather than weakened!
Those great crises in our Oriental Empire follow-
ing each other in rapid succession : the first being
the deadly revolt of the Sepoys in engal—the
second the transference of the governing power
from the East India Company vicariously to the
direct representatives henceforth of the British
SOVEREIGN.

It is not, of course, yet forgotten how, in the first
agonies of the great revolt, rumours were afloat in
this country, suspicions were whispered about at
the clubs, charges were at lenth articulated in Par-
liament, militating seriously against Lord CAN-
NING'S reputation for vigour and aptitude as
Governor-General of Hindostan. Events have long
since shown how idle were those rumours, how
unmerited were those suspicions, how wholly
unfounded were those charges—charges pre-
cipitately proferred against a conscientious servant
of the Crown and of the country at a juncture so
appalling as to have propitiated the sympathy, one
would have thought, and the earnest good wishes
of all. Not more signally did Sir HUGH (now the
veteran Lord) GOUGH live down the storm of oblo-
quy raised against him after the frightful carnage of
Chilianwallah—lived it down through every subse-
quent event of that glorious campaign, ending upon
the foughten field of Sobraon—than Lord CAN'
NINO lived down, in his turn, thc) obloquies
cruelly and hastily directca against him shortly
after the first dreadful outbreak of the mutiny that
was led, among other wretches, by NANA SAHIB,
and that was signalised, among other hideous
atrocities, by the crimes the memory of which still
blacken and brand the very name of Cawn-
pore. Under Lord CANNING'S rule the
Rebellion was suppressed, and the last
embers of that formidable conflagration triumph-
antly trodden out. Under Lord CANNING'S rule
the extinctign of the anomalous authority of the
East India Company was successfully and tran-
quility accomplished, the sceptre of British Power in
Asia, being, for the first time, placed in the firm
but gentle grasp of VICTORIA. Daring the period
of Lord CANNING'S rule there, as Governor-Gene-
ral, how many benignant and beneficent changes
for the better have ,there not been introduced,
improvements social, political, legal, commercial !
Their date will not be forgotten. Lord CANNIN'S
share in them will not be lost to popular remem-
brance, They constitute altogether the guarantees
for him, in the history of the British Empire, of
a conspicuous, and lasting, and honourable repu-
tion. Peace to his memory. Lord CANNING was
a man who deserved well of bis country—for he had
laboured. honestly and energetically in her interests :
for the glory and wellbeing of her cause—it is not
extravagant to say this—giving up his own life
prematurely. The melancholy demise of his fair
young wife in the flower of her age doubtless tended
to hasten his departure; but the seeds of the disease
to the force of which Lord CANNING'S own exist-
ence succumbed, were sown, we all of us now recog-
nise this upon the instant, by his devotion to the
interests of England at a period of exquisite anxiety
in the radiant but ruthless climate of Hindostan.

What would be perhaps impossible in this coun-
try has just been done in the Congress at Washing- '
ton with the full consent of the Rouse. A Mr.
WOOD wished to make a speech, which he had care-
fully prepared, and even written out on—concilia-
tion. Fearing whether he should have nerve to
meet the temper in which it would probably be
received, he informed the House that he had all
ready, that he preferred not to deliver his speech,
but should like to have it printed and circulated
among the members with the debates of Congress.
Whether at his own cost or that of Congress we do
not know ; if he was to pay for it, we should suggest
to a certain lord in the Commons who is sensitive
on the subject of " counts-out," whether he might
not adapt the Washington plan—unusual it seems
there, still as we see acted on at the wish of a mem-
ber—and have his speech printed and sent round.
When no business is intended—when it is
in reality but a lecture for the country from
the House of Commons platform, why should not
a bore, instead of submitting to coughing, noises
and interruptions of all kinds, or as a last resort,
to a count out, ask leave to speak in print to honour-
able members and the country. The Lord Chan-
cellor, in his businees, is determined to get print in
the place of writing, why should not the House of
Commons save its time and patience by allowing
bores to print what no one will hear if he can
help it.

The reader must not suppose, however, that Mr.
WOOD'S speech would have been a bore. Judging
from what we have seen of it, whether we agreed
with the speaker or differed from him, we should
have heard him with pleasure. In the main point
we should certainly have agreed with him, in the
details we might have differed very widely. The
abject of the speech was to urge on the North a
policy of conciliation, but we fear that that policy
was to be pursued wholly irrespectively of four
millions out of the Southern eleven or twelve mil-
lions. Still the general sentiment was quite just,
that nothing but holding out a fratornal hand to the
South could render a reunion under one Government
possible. The North is now in the position, Mr.WooD
contends, to conciliate, and the South to accept a
policy of conciliation with honour. To attempt to
crush freemen into reunion is hopeless. Freemen
who would throw down their arms and crouch, and
sue for mercy would be unworthy of acceptance as
brother freemen. But the thing is impracticable,
the South will submit to endless defeat: and die be
fore it will yield in this manner. It must be brought
back b.. .._egotiat
.
J uion or be lost for over, Conquest
would be the renunciation of
.Republicanism. Indeed
all the encroachments of the President now on the
legal forms and -
nights of the people are steps toward
a despotism. With a
genuine American feeling
Mr. WooD exclaims towards
the conclusion, " We
want a union, sir,
of sovereigns not of subjects."
Now all this reads well--but in the mouth of Mr.
WOOD it
means, that the South is to be restored
with all sorts of guarantees for its slavery,
we fear for the extension of
slavery into
the territories also. After fighting ' all this
time the South would never consent to rejoin the
North without a second Missouri compromise, while
the North must have lessons enough on the folly of
compromises. Conciliation is a right, an amicable
looking thing in itself; but the negro question ren-
ders it impracticable. Both parties are almost
equally guilty on that score, end it will punish
both, until perhaps it ruins one or both. The
North never wanted more than the limitation of
slavery to the vast area already polluted by it. It
hates emancipation. It shudders at the thought of
an " ugly rush" of free negroes to the North. If it
can limit slavery to the Slave States, and keep the
territories for ifs emigrant whites, that is all it
cares for. All it has done in regard to Hayti,
Columbia, compensation for emancipation, and the

Slave Trade, it has done to aid the war, to secure
the Border States for the North, and to punish the
South. At the bottom both sides are equally
wrong.minded, and the union of the two wrongs
would never result in one right.

Pour 'gentlemen, utterly unknown to us, and
probably to all our readers, except the few who i
may have personal dealings with them, have sent I
us, and we presume our contemporaries also, a copy I
of a petition respecting a crotchet of their own. If
this very long sermon on pew-rents had been sent
as an advertisement, of course we should have had
no right to decline insertion of what any English-
man was willing to pay for, provided it did not
violate the rules of public morality. Had it been
an intelligent attack upon any opinions we had
ever expressed, we should have printed it with the
greatest pleasure, but a long, heavy, dry, half
legal, half popular argument in a petition against
pew-rests, as we are sure no one would read it, so
we must decline to fill up our space with it.
There is a sort of a grievance, no doubt, in some
parish churches, where enclosed pews have become
the private property of families to an undesirable
extent. We cannot, however, say that is a subject
in which we feel much interest. The Bishops and
the parishes, and the clergyman, ana the stele'
siastical courts must settle it all as best they can.
But what etrik us on the face of the documents :
sent us is that they are redolent of cant—of that
silly cant which affects to regard the parish
churches as the chosen resort of the poor. The
nonsense of the poor man's church is at the
bottom of it all. Whereas, every employer
of servants knows that if he has one of a
peculiarly religious turn, the man or the girl is
sure to bo an attendant at the Methodist chapel ;
perhaps one of the stipulations on hiring is that
some evening in the week permission shall be given
to " attend class," a permission generally accorded
by a prudent master, seeing that the managers of
these classes have an interest, for their own credit's
sake, in giving good advice to servants, and being
near their own level, are generally listened to by
them much more than a gentleman instructor
would be. The "Poor Man's Church" we take to
be priestly cant for—save me Church-rates ; and
when we read of pew rents as a " great national
sin," to be not only " amended" but " atoned for,"
we leave our readers to conjecture the ecclesiastical
quality of the four gentlemen who ask them to sign
their petition.
The whole truth we take to be this—Church-
rates are in danger. Our opinion, as our readers
well know, is, that by this time they ought to be
out of danger—that they ought long ago to have
breathed their last and gone to the eternal home of
all religious impositions. To meet their loss Sir
G. C. LEWIS and Mr. ESTCOVRT, too, propose to
enable the churchwardens to make a small charge
on the occupiers of pews, for the repair of the
church in which they hold them. What on earth
can be more fair ? All other places of public Eaten•
dance in which seats are required meet their expenses
by a charge, greater or smaller, for their seats, As
to the poor it is notorious that they never object to
paying for their seats according to their means.
We have even penny theatres, as well as theatres
with guinea boxes ; and there are plenty we believe
of penny seats in chapels which the poor, in their
love of honourable independence, prefer to gratui-
tous accomodation. The truth is, the poor like other
people do not grudge what they can afford, if what
is offered them is worth paying for—and if the
parish church offer them spiritual fare as adapted to
their taste as that at Bethesda or Zion, the seats
at the church will be paid for as willingly.
We object therefore to an attack upon the pew

system as a whole. That any individuals, without
payment, should appropriate public property to
themselves is of course wrong enough, but to
attempt to relieve the regular occupants of seats
in a parish church from paying the costs of what
they take the seats to enjoy, is dishonest. It in-
volves, in some way, making other people pay for
the relieved seat-holders. Like one apostle, to whom
no successors are desired, we do not believe these
anti-pew rent men care aught for the poor—they
care to keep Church rates, that is they care to keep
up their own worship at the cost of other people.

" Dilly, dilly : come and be killed !" Sir HUGH
CAIRNS had not the slightest hostile feeling against
the Land Transfer Bill, but—at the same time—he
sorely wanted last evening to have it referred to a
Select Committee. About this exceedingly cool pro-
position of the ex-Solicitor General's under Lord
DERBY'S Government there was a pretty warm dis-
cussion, in the which Mr. COLLIER, and Mr. WAL-
POLE, and Mr. MALINS, and others among the big-
wigs, or, at any rate, we may say confidently,
among the future big wigs, took part. According
to the opinion of the hon. and learned gentleman
the member for Plymouth, the reference of the bill
to a Select Committee, as proposed by the hon. and
learned gentleman the member for Belfast, would
certainly tend to shelve the measure for this session.
Nor is such the opinion by any means of Mr.
COLLIER alone. Others had already come to pre-
cisely the same conclusion. In effect who can
seriously think for a single moment other-
wise ? Particularly at this late period of a
sluggish and nearly exhausted session ! Now
that the Lord Chancellor's Bill has actually
passed all its stages in the House of Peers, and,
having come down thence to the Commons, has
there in due and proper sequence been read a first
and a seec'nd time, it does appear particularly
tantalizing to think of the mere chance of its having
been denied the possibility of being taken clause by
clause into consideration in the regular course of
things in Committee. Anything of that kind
would have been the cruellest case of cushioning
that could well have been imagined ! Happily the
House last night recognized the folly of attempting
to do anything so insensate and ill-considered.
Even the siren-voice of the right hon. member for
the University of Cambridge was raised all in vain
when he dulcifluously assured the House that—
(surely the height of effrontery, this, in. Mr. WAL-
POLE !)—the reference of the bill to a Select Committee
as proposed by Sir HUGH CAIRNS would save tinze
(save—the mark !) and " ensure the passing of the
Bill" through the House ! The oddest way of bring-
ing about both these desirable results—the saving of
time and the passing of the measure—one may
safely aver, that ever yet perhaps has been seriously
projected. A non sequitur in its way, the whole force
of which is as extravagant as the most " outre
and " bizarre" ever yet imagined by Lord DUN-
DREARY. One, in fact, that is only comparable to
the JOE MILLER reply of the raw recruit to the
prostrate Frenchman crying " Quarter !" " I can't
stop to quarter thee ; but I'll cut thee head off."
Precisely in the same benign spirit of concession to
his legal rivals—and as he appears erroneously to
imagine them
also his legal antagonists in the
endeavour, if
practicable in any way, to reform
the laws relating
to the transfer of land
—Sir HUGH Careais
of assenting
to cannot possibly think
quietlythe Lord Chancellor's bill
being considered at once
promptlyutbisczethweiHnionugs,e
to
Commons in committee
save time" and to " ensure the passing of the bill,"
by referring it—to a select committee ! The sugges-
tion of such a course as that could hardly be called