The Sun.
London, England, 1862-01-24 00:00:00

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TII E SUN.

LONDON, FRIDAY, JAN. 24, 1862.

•
Further particulars from Hartley only tend to
impress our minds and hearts the more painfully
with a sense of the fearful character and magnitude
of the calamity that has fallen upon the devoted
heads of the widows and orphans of that little in-

dustrial community. Within a single week the
whole adult male population has been swept out of
existence as by the crash of a thunderbolt. It was
literally thus—remembering what was the actual

origin of this dire catastrophe, A ponderous beam
of cast iron, spanning the mouth of the coal pit,
suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, snaps asunder,
and half of it, weighing, it is estimated by those
competent to form an opinion upon the subject, over
twenty tons, whirls like a gleam of lightning down
the shaft, crashing away all the woodwork and filling
up the one sole orifice of the mine, the one solitary
means of ingress to it, or egress from it, with a
jumbled mass of crumbling earth and shattered
timber. The mainshaft of the Hartley coal-pit is,
in consequence of this instantaneous accident,
sealed up for nearly one whole week, and sealed up
during the first part of that week hermetically.
Efforts more than Herculean, because guided by all
the aid of arts and sciences wholly unknown to
HERCULES, are made during many days and nights
of breathless anxiety in regard to the fate of the 215
men and boys entombed 100 fathoms below the surface
of the earth—and are all made in vain.

The perillous nature of these endeavours on the part

f of the gallant fellows who eagerly volunteered their
services on this occasion it wou!d be difficult, if not
even impossible, to exaggerate. A frightful death
seemed to threaten them at every moment while
they worked—heartened at every instant of thought
by the reflection that time was vitally everything
to the poor fellows whom they were bent if possible
upon rescuing. The very walls of the treacherous
abyss over which they were working, appeared at
each instant of their labours to threaten destruction,
by collapsing bodily around them. At every beat
of the pendulum in the neighbouring village church
there was a possibility of what actually came to pass
at last, when the obstruction in the shaft was so
far broken through that the accumulated pestilen-
tial vapours, hitherto denied escape, burst forth upon
the little Forlorn Hope toiling there, mattock and
pickaxe in hand, for the extrication of their im-
prisoned mates. This was the deadly gush of the
"sty the," which all but destroyed the volunteers at
its first outbreak—one of their number, upon
being drawn up out of the poisonous atmosphere,
apparently being for a while at the point of death
in consequence. In all this there was undoubted
heroism : as afterwards, in a still more remarkable
manner, when two or three of the volunteer workmen
were at length lowered fur enough down into the pit,
to admit of their entrance into the fatal yard-
seam, where the majority of the unhappy victims
of this dreadful disaster were found huddled toge-
ther, as we related yesterday. The Victoria Cross,
though most judiciously distributed hitherto, has
alreldy been awarded for lesser deeds of heroism
than this. Futile though the effort was in its
result, save inasmuch
fate of those whose caosndiittiorielvebaaledd
baeetnlaustp theto
then problematical, the conduct of those who
penetrated, at the hazard of their own lives, into
the foul gases still lingering over the clustered
bodies of the colliers the I'
•
Ives
the breath, doubtless, of carbonic of whom
oxide had
in every instance destroyed—the conduct of those
noble-hearted Volunteers, we say, was as Worthy
of our admiration as though they had brought the r

whale of the 215 men and boys unscathed to the
embraces of their weeping kindred in the upper

world.

The names of the victims of the late appal-
ling accident at Hartley have already, for the most
part (so far at least as anything like an accurate
list of them could be procured thus early), been duly
chronicled. Let us hope that the dauntless and
hardy colliers who were toiling in the choked-up
pit-shaft at Hartley, and particularly that the select
few, three altogether we believe, who were at
length lowered as we have here mentioned to the
entrance into the fatal yard shaft thence to bring
back to those who were waiting breathlessly above
for their return, tidings of the full extent of the
dreaded disaster—let us hope that the humble names
and heroic labours of these brave fellows may not
be altogether overlooked.
That the bereaved relicts and orphan children
of the dead miners will be cared for by
a sympathising and generous-hearted nation
there cannot be a doubt of : indeed already
there are evidences of the depth of the interest
felt in their behalf by high and low since the cala-
mity that befell them has been realized far and wide
throughout the United Kingdom. Her MAJESTY'S
instant and generous message of condolence is
but the forerunner of her accustomed benefactions.
Every one upon reading the simple and touching as-
surance conveyed to the poor widows and orphans,
at Hartley, though the Royal telegram, will have
said, " Just like the QUEEN !" And it is so—it is
one of the secrets of her universal popularity—Her
MAJESTY never misses an opportunity of evidencing
that gentle and womanly sympathy for those
among her subjects of all ranks and classes, who
are known to have been stricken down by some
dire and peculiar calamity. The records of little
instances like these will be among the brightest
spots upon the history of her glorious and bene-
ficent reign. Individual instances of this genial
sympathy of the QUEEN with the griefs of
others start to recollection upon the instant, Of one
the Lord Bishop of LONDON could tell—an incident
occurring not long before the close of his career in a
less elevated position as Dean of CARLISLE. The
enumeration of others were superfluous. Ex uuo
disce omnes. It is the same throughout the quarter
of a century that has now very nearly elapsed since
the accession of VICTORIA to the throne of these
realms. Wherever a gentle word or a generous
deed to assuage some more bitter anguish than
usual among high or low, wherever of course
the calamity has fallen peculiarly from the mys-
terious dispensations of Divine Providence,
that gentle word has been spoken, that gener-
ous deed has been done by our " Lady of the
Land." The present is a case in point. And the
benignity of this immediate expression of sympathy
from the Queen of ENGLAND to that poor little
desolated colliery village down in Northumberland,
will be inexpressibly enhanced in the estimation of
all by the remembrance that the QUEEN herself is
still in the freshness of her own home grief.
From all, however, the same universal and imme-
diate sympathy will flow—now that the deplorable
particulars are brought to light about the wholesale
destruction of the 215 victims without one solitary
exception, and the desolation of all the humble
homes fromwhich they have been torn by the wrench
of that deadly beam as it swept down the main shaft,
in an instant, upon Thursday, that is yesterday
se'nnight. Corporations, public bodies of all kinds,
private individuals of every rank and class will vie
with each other, we may be certain, in swelling
the funds that will now be immediately collected
together for the relief of the destitute colliery vil-
lage now desolated within a single week as by a
bolt from Heaven.

Mr. SEWARD is doing justice to his conversion.
His is quite the zeal of the neophyte compared
with that of the old steady professor of his here-
ditary creed; We had recently to notice that in
three instances, without any demand on our part
having reached him, he did prompt justice to Eng-
land. In two of the cases, indeed, before he had
received official information from his own seivants.
We have now to acknowledge an act of politeness
equal to that of the PACHA of Egypt, who per-
mitted our troops to cross his country on their way
to India. Mr. SEWARD has most courteously per-
mitted our men, on their way to Canada, to pass
through Maine, and thereby to escape the severe
trials and inconveniences of a sledge journey
through New Brunswick, round Maine, to the Grand
Trunk Railway.

Round Maine—it is not easy to forget that. We
ought to do so perhaps. Yet, when confronting the
hardships of the eledge journey in an almost unre-
claimed country, or the cost of a railway which
alone can prevent the danger of similar inconveni-
ence on any future occasion, it is not easy to forget
the gross diplomatic fraud of WEBSTER, by which
he cozened Lord ASHBURTON out of territory really
British—territory, too, which connected British pro-
vinces, and the fraudulent deprivation of which has
compelled us to the alternative of asking a passage
through the land that should have belonged to us
now, or of exposure of hundreds of men to all the
inconveniences of the winter journey by a forest
route. Against all we may, perhaps, set the fact that
these troops are going, avowedly, to render the
Canadian border safe against the attacks of the
Federal States. By this, at least, Mr. SEWARD
is more generous than the PACHA—our Indian
troops were not marching to defend India against
him. The proprietors of the Portland Railway,
which connects the Grand Trunk of Canada with
the sea, were doubtless not indifferent to the addi-
tion to their dividend which the carriage of the
troops would make, and they will be quite as much
obliged to their own Foreign Secretary as we can be.
This time he was quite lucky; ho did not lot the
occasion slip as ho did that of refusing to make
prisoners of the Commissioners ; he had the oppor-
tunity of pleasing at once the British Government,
people, and troops, and at the same time the Ameri-
can shareholders in the railway, and he had the
good sense to use it at once.

The Senate cannot forget the Trent affair yet.
Mr. SUMNER'S long oratorical speech fills the
columns of the American papers. Mr. SUMNER is
a noted abolitionist— a martyr for abolition—
though evidently now quite recovered from the
effects of Mr. BROOKES' cudgel. He had naturally
therefore, a more marked leaning than most of his
colleagues to Abolitionist England. Hence he seemed
to feel that some vindication of his Americanism
was necessary ; emancipation, and partiality to the
country which had emanipated its slaves, rendering
his Yankee orthodoxy rather doubtful in the North.
He has put all right by an elaborate speech, of
which one great merit, the American papers tell us,
is that it does not even mention the negro. The
other, that he proves that America has, if she has
stooped at all, stooped to conquer. He showed,
beyond all dispute (in an American Senate), tha
England had got the worthless prisoners, but had
given up her old and persistent claims ; that
England, in fact, is beaten. He went at
great length into the legal question, threw
the blame of the brave WILKEs' acts
upon his reliance on British text-books, and
proved to the satisfaction of every true American
that the hero WILKES and the statesman SEWARD
had gained between them "a political and diplomatic
triumph of the highest value." Well, be it so, if