The Sun.
London, England, 1865-03-27 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

THE " SATURDAY REVIEW" ON THE FUTURE PRE-
MIER.— Mr. Gladstone's speeches are scanned just
now with a peculiar interest beyond that which his
official position would naturally command. They
are as important in the eyes of political speculators
as-the performances at Newmarket are to those who
have books upon the Derby. The great Premier
stakes are to be run for very soon. Nobody knows
exactly when the race will come off, but it cannot
be far distant now. Of course, the nearer it comes,
the more absorbing is the interest with which the
prospects of the various competitors are compared.
The peculiarity ,pf the race is that, supposing power
to remain in the hands of the party which now pos-
sesses it, there is no decided favourite. If the for-
tune of war were to turn the other way, Lord
Derby would, of course, hold the office as long as
his health and the Division List permitted him to do
so. But if it falls to the Liberals to select a Prime
Minister after the retirement of Lord Palmerston,
their choice will not be an easy one. Lord Russell
is doubtless of opinion that nature herself has
assigned the leadership of the Liberal party to some
scion of the House of Russell, and that it would be
profanity, if not blasphemy, to resist her decrees.
But then it is a sufficient reply to his claim that he
is in the House of Lords, and that the difficulty of
his party is the leadership of the Commons. His
hopeful son is not old enough for the purpose,
though he bears the holy name; and it is clear that
he must execute several more summersaults in the
mud before he has learnt the impossibility of
leaning two ways at once. Lord Hartington
is in the Commons, and is distinguished by that
surly and tedious mediocrity which, conjoined
to high rank, is looked upon as a valuable qualifica-
tion for office in this country. But it may be
doubted whether, at the close of a long and exciting
debate, his persuasive voice would materially influ-
ence a division. There remains only Mr. Gladstone,
who has the advantage of far surpassing all the
others in talent, and of possessing already a position
only second to the leadership in the House of Com-
mons. His course, therefore, is anxiously watched,
to see whether he displays the qualities necessary for
a leader in the House of Commons. Of his marvel-
lous eloquence there can be no doubt. ' But elo-
quence is a power which impresses those who hear
it for the first time, or have heard it rarely, more
than those whose vocation forces them to listen to it
constantly. The judge in a criminal court listens
with provoking indifference to the flowing perora-
tion which is moving the jury to rapture. Members
of the House of Commons are rather in the position
of the judge than the jury, in regard to eloquence.
On the other hand, they have weaknesses of their
own which it is necessary to humour. Most of them
have paid so much to gain the seats they occupy, that
they value the grandeur of them very highly, and in-
dulge in a corporate dignity of incredible sensitiveness.
The house may be led by the nose, but the feat can
only be performed by a show of exceeding deference.
It must be treated as firmly and as humbly as
Christospher Sly was treated by those who found
him drunk. This is the point in which Mr. Glad-
stone is likely to fail. His temper is far too uncon-
trollable to suffer him to play out the play with his
Christopher Sly. He cannot even prevail on him-
self to treat the House of Commons with ordinary
civility. His announcement to the house upon
Tuesday night that, except in certain specified cases,
the Government were not, in his judgment, bound
to treat the resolutions of the house with any
great consideration, was decidedly the most imper-
tinent speech that any Minister of the Crown has
made to the House of Commons since the Revolu-
tion. It must have been made in a pure fit of
temper, for there was no good purpose it could pos-
sibly be expected to serve ; and it certainly, as the
event proved, was not the way to secure a favour-
able division. The only other occasion on which he
committed a similar mistake was upon the third
reading of the bill for repealing the Paper Duty.
He then defended himself against an opposition
which especially irritated him by telling the House
of Commons that they had no right to refuse any
remission of taxation whiCh was proposed to them
by the Ministers of the Crown. The upshot on that
occasion was not so disastrous, but the remark was
nearly as unfavourable in its operation. The Ministry
obtained a majority ; but it was only a majority
of nine, for a Bill of which the previous stage had
been carried by a majority of fifty-three. These ac-
cidents only happen when Mr. Gladstone is, or is in
danger of being, in a minority. Ai long as the
water is smooth he is courteous, and even be-
nignant in his phraseology. But unluckily it is
just in moments of doubtful fortune that the skill of
a clever leader is required. Any one can lead well
so long as he has a firm and loyal majority at his
back. Mr. Gladstone is a pilot who weathers a calm
admirably ; but in a storm it is better to send him
to bed. Much cannot be said for the motion which
was the occasion of Mr. Gladstone's humiliation on
Tuesday last. Taxing fire insurances is a bad prac-
tice undoubtedly, but taking bits out of our financial
system without the slightest regard to the balance
of the rest is very much worse. If the House votes
away each tax in succession without having the
balance of income and expenditure before it, the
public service must necessarily suffer. A number of
taxes will continue to exist marked for the axe, and
consequently will be paid reluctantly, and exposed
to so much agitation that no Minister can long up-
hold them. The inevitable result must be that
many more taxes will be taken off than the Ex-
chequer can spare, and the deficiency will be made
good by stinting the expenditure of some of the
most indispensable branches of the service. The nn-
policy of the vote is so obvious that it is exceedingly
improbable that the House would have adortel
unless it had been acting on some secondary motive.
The conduct of Mr. Crawford and Mr. Goschen,
whose constituency probably suffers more from the
tax than any other, shows that the pressure of con-
stituencies cannot have been very severe. The desire
of doing something that was unpleasant to Mr.
Gladstone was probably far more widely operative.
No doubt it is impossible to defend the patriotism
of an assembly that comes to a decision upon so im-
portant a subject from mere feelings of irritation,
even though they knew perfectly well that their vote
would be wholly without effect. But it shows still
more strikingly Mr. Gladstone's unfitness to lead
in such an assembly. The humours of the House
may be unreasonable, but the man who has so
strong a tendency to affront them is not fitted to
persuade it. The fact that you have the gout may
indicate your intemperance of living, but you do
not on that account like to have a friend who is
perpetually treading on your toes. How deeply Mr.
Gladstone takes these defeats to heart was betrayed
by his conduct to Mr. Sheridan last year. He went
out his way to mar an admirable speech by includ-
ing it in an attack upon the commercial honesty of
Mr. Sheridan, in matters connected with a Life
Assurance Society, for which he was able to furnish
no valid grounds whatever ; and there was no mo-
tive could be assigned for so gratuitous an imputa-
tion, except the fact that Mr. Sheridan had been the
leader in the yearly attack upon Fire Insurance.
His extreme intolerance of opposition, and his ten-
dency to supply the want of votes by increased.bit-
terness of language, are fatal disqualifications for
the position of leader of his party in the House of
Commons. But it is difficult to suppose that he
will suffer it, without a struggle, to pass into other
hands. He is not a man who can afford to take
up an independent position for the time in order
to baffle a rival among his own colleagues. If
he rested upon his own influence alone, without the
aid of any recognised position, either as Minister or
as leader of Opposition, he would be almost without
a following in the house. His religious and political
views, secreted. •at different periods of his life, and
borrowed therefore from two different schools of
opinion out of the many through which his mazy
course has lain, set against him different kinds of
antagonists. The Conservatives detest his political
views; the Radicals cannot abide his Church views ;
and the Whigs will not comfortably follow a man
whose family was unacquainted both with Lord
Somers and Mr. Fox. The struggles of so powerful
a wrestler, whether he succeed or fail, will shake
the arena on which they take place ; and we may
therefore anticipate lively times whenever the long
deferred day for the adjudication of Lord Palmer-
ston's succession arrives.

THE "SPECTATOR" ON THE APPANAGE OF THE
PRINCE OF WALES.—The Prince of Wales is going
to strike for wages. At least journals which are
supposed to know all political secrets, and which
really do know much political tittle-tattle, affirm
that an application is to be made to Parliament this
session for an increase to his allowances. The Prince
is not in debt, as his friends are careful to affirm,
and not extravagant, witness his circular to his
tradesmen about servants' per ceutages, but he
wishes to keep up a state as the chief of English
society, of which his income, as at present settled,
does not conveniently admit. He will therefore, it
is stated, apply to Parliament for an increase, the
amount of which varies in every report from £20,000
a year to £50,000, but which will, if his advisers
are wise, be large enough to preclude any chance
of a future application. The demand, whatever it
is, is pretty certain to be conceded without much
resistance by the House of Commons. No leader

. of any party ever cares to quarrel with the Court
upon any question not of deep national interest, and
. least of all upon one of money, Princes in these
days being nearly as tenacious, not to say unreason-
able, upon that point as English bishops, or Indian
officers, or workmen everywhere. William IV. is
said to have refused to dissolve Parliament because
it had voted his wife so much money, and one great
cause of the zeal with which German Princes object
to mediatization is their fear of losing control of the
immense Crown estates. Private members are not
much more likely to get up an opposition than their
leaders. The House as a body is very rich—its in-
come, though not its property, being probably
greater than of the Peers--it contains a great many
men who know quite well that £lOO,OOO a year will
not do everything, and it is very impatient at all
times of much talk upon things which it does not
quite like, but which it knows have to be
done. There is very little pressure either from
the constituencies. There may be exclamations
and interrogations on nomination-day, but the
Prince is personally popular, in London very decid-
edly so, and the voters, with light taxation, a large
surplus and no very extraordinary amount of distress,
will probably feel that they need not resist the in-
clination to heaviness which almost all Englishmen
feel. The only real difficulty to be surmounted will,
we suspect, be that impatience of dotations, of great
direct grants to members of the Royal House, which
Parliament has almost always expressed. English-
men who will waste half a million in purposeless
dockyard experiments with perfect complacency,
would get very angry if asked for the same sum to
construct what is really wanted, a regal reception-
hall, and they vote a " compensation" salary of
£9,000 a year without half the ill-feeling excited by
a similar demand for the dower of a princess. Why
they so much dislike paying for the trappings of
royalty while they all adore royalty itself might
have tasked Mr. Hallam to explain, but they do so,
and it is to this latent feeling, this dislike of dota-
tions as a sort of superfluity of waste, that the
Ministry, if there is any opposition at all, will have
to address themselves. Fortunately their task will
be smoothed by the extreme pecuniary carefulness
which has marked the present reign, and by the
existence of a new argument which the House will
acknowledge, though the country at large may not.
A hundred thousand a year is ceasing to be a for-
tune of the very first class, and the Prince has
barely a hundred thousand a year. Lord Palmer-
ston's statement when introducing the subject two
years ago only brought the income up to that sum,
and of this £60,000 is derived from the revenues of
the Duchy of Cornwall. These belong to the
nation, it is true, but still they were almost created
by the businesslike capacity and strict management
of the late Prince Consort, and have been assigned
to the Heir-Apparent from a very remote period.
If they were handed over to the Treasury they
would probably disappear under departmental ma-
nagement, the leases, like those of Crown lands,
being made very " easy" whenever there was a chance
of endangering any important support. The actual
payment through the Treasury is only £40,000 per
annum, very much less than any Prince of Wales has
of late years received, for we object altogether to
add the Princess's income to the gross amount.
That certainly was not granted to pay butchers'
bills. Of course to ordinary men the income looks
ample, or even magnificent, and it might no doubt,
and if Larliament so decrees it probably will, be
made amply sufficient for the maintenance of the
Prince's rank. But the Prince, besides performing
the duties of his hereditary place in the empire, has
for the nonce to perform many of those which
usually fall to the Crown, and the real question the
country has to ask itself is what kind of court it
prefers. Does it at heart desire a cheap monarchy,
a court of the Louis-Philippe kind, very respectable
and slightly bourgeois, a Prince living simply and
unostentatiously among equals? or does it wish for
a court with the colour, and movement, and splen-
dour, and visible magnificence which royalty, if well
paid, can secure? Does it wish for regal ceremonial
or not ? This is the true point to be decided. Ninety
thousand a year will keep a Prince very well, even
though he happens to live in London, and to be
heir to a great monarchy, but it will not keep a
great court, or a brilliant court, or a court living
even on the scale maintained by first-class Eng-
lish nobles.

THE "LONDON REVIEW" ON CAFES VERSUS GIN-
PALACES.—London is the city of gin palaces; Paris
the city of cafés ; and in this respect Paris has the
advantage of London. However high the rent,
every corner house in our streets is eagerly pounced
upon as a homestead of sensuality, a resort of all
who are most degraded,
,a reservoir of liquid fire.
Brightly burns the gas, and the notes of harp and
viol mingle merrily, but it is a vision of sin. Fair
hands with smiling faces deal out the poisonous
draught ; but there is a grim skeleton clattering his
ghastly bones among the revellers, and pressing the
cup of Circe to their lips. The young and the old
are met to hob and nob with Death. The night is
drizzly without, but strong waters are good for
withered lips. Noggin after noggin loosens their
tongue, and they troll carelessly their tavern catch
as they stand around the bar. There is no comfort in
that noisy drinking hall, no refinement. None are
seated, none read, not a newspaper is to be seen.
Excitement is all that is asked, and that of the most
unhealthy kind—excitement not of the mind, but of
the corruptible body. Drug the memory, stimulate
the passions—that is the order of the day. Mean-
while the wives sit at home in rags and tears, and
the children, waking from uneasy slumbers, cry for
bread. The tide of civilisation is doubtless flowing
on, but the advancing wave has many a recoil.
There is a counter-current in the mighty stream,
which gets broader and deeper, and that counter-
current is—gin. It threatens society with tremend-
ous evil, because it comes from below. In the Lon-
don Directory we find the names of about six thou-
sand publicans ; and the British spirit charged with
home duty, most of which is either gin or whisky,
has varied from twenty or twenty-six million gal-
lons annually in the last few years. Besides this,
an enormous quantity of Geneva and Hollands is
imported. Country squires no longer lie under the
table. No Master of the Horse now reels in the
presence of Majesty, nor does the heir to the Throne
celebrate Bacchanalian orgies amid " the roar of his
drunkards." But did the sport of huntsmen and
county members ever work half the misery and de-
solation produced by gin ? If a beggar accosts you
in your walks, or besets your carriage, he is asking
perhaps neither for food nor clothing, but for gin.
He has a morbid thirst for that elixir of death, and
would forego all else for it. Or if, indeed, he wants
the necessaries of life, what has brought him to
beggary ? Gin ! Trace his wretchedness to its
source, and you will probably find that, directly or
indirectly, that " cup of devils" is the cause of it all.
That haggard mother who sits on your door-step,
with an infant clinging to her exhausted breast and
other children to her trembling knees—what but her
husband's intemperance has driven her from her
home ? What brought Atkinson to the scaffold the
other day at Durham? What excited him to beat
his wife for upwards of an hour with murderous vio-
lence ? Gin ! While he flogged her, the Furies of
drink were lashing him. It is gin that fills the
streets of our opulent capital with mendicants, more
numerous though more scattered than in the cities
on the Continent. It chokes our workhouses, peo-
ples our prisons, and degrades our national charac-
ter, while it prepares the lower classes for some
fearful explosion at a future day. Thus Nature's
best gifts are abused. Thus the Kilt XEvOv, the pure
grain that waves so gracefully in the warm
wind, is destined to stifle the conscience and over-
cloud the senses with heady fumes. The berries of
the juniper and the oil of turpentine will be added
to make the fiery potion piquant. Sugar—for
Sweet gin is in favour in the metropolis--will mask
some adulterating substance that facilitates dilution
with water ; and strong poisons—creosote, sulphate
of zinc, caustic potash, and sulphuric acid—will be
mixed sometimes even with English gin. Of all
adultered gin, that which is sold retail is most dele-
terious. And is there no remedy for this growing
evil ? Is not the drunkard an enemy of society and
a disgrace to his country? Shall the fruitful cause
of his crime become cheaper and cheaper, and the
haunts of midnight revellers multiply without
check ? Will not our rulers some time be com-
pelled to make intoxication a more serious offence
against the law, and to chastise it as it deserves ?
Such a return to Puritan legislation would, indeed,
be deplored by every man of sense ; but may it not
become inevitable in spite of ourselves ? May not
civil discipline sometime or other require it, as mili-
tary discipline does even now ? Will one Father
Mathew in a century suffice to stay the plague?
Will sermons and tracts have weight with intellects
already besotted ? In Paris a different scene pre-
sents itself from that which we see here. Instead of
gin-palaces elegant and airy cafés open wide their
doors in every street and boulevard. The walls are
glittering with mirrors and gilded mouldings, the
tables covered with the news of the world. , An
intellectual repast is spread, not indeed of the
.highest order, but certainly a most useful and en-
taining one. The refreshments are good, and
moderate in price ; and their chief merit is
that they do refresh without stimulating and
undermining the moral and physical strength of
man. Friends meet friends without brawling ; the
weary find repose ; the moody are cheered ; the
joyous give vent to their gladness. There the
bachelor eats his breakfast in comfort, instead of
being ill-served in dull and lonely lodgings ; there,
too, when the business of the day is done, he finds
chess, dominos, conversation and picket. 'There the
noble and the bourgeois, the foreigner and native,
meet side by side ; for a café on the boulevards is
not for a class, but for all. Elsewhere, indeed, there
are cafés essentially plebeian, but formed on the

same model, and far above any gin-palace in the
scale of civilisation. Enter one of them. It is filled
by men in blouses, but they are orderly and sober.
Some read, some talk, and many play billiards ; but
none are intoxicated, nor will be, even though they
should stay till midnight. Why is the cafe system
unknown in London ? Why are wretched coffee-
houses, frequented chiefly by cabmen, their only
representatives here? Why are foreigners obliged to
prowl about long before they can, in the neighbour-
hood of Leicester-square, light upon what they have
been accustomed to find within a stone's throw in
every continental town ? Why are Englishmen, who
have learned in travelling the advantage and coin"
fort of cafés, deprived of the innocent recreation
they afford the moment they set foot on the shores
of their native land ? Hotels and clubs are no
adequate substitute for this important desideratum.
They exist in Paris as in London. The first are
frightfully expensive; and the club to which one
belongs, though in itself an invaluable luxury, is
not always at hand. Clubs, again, are exclusive and
capricious, as we have seen very lately ; and in 3
general way they are accessible only to persons of a
certain status in society. A café is unique in it,!
adaptation to various purposes and conditions-1
is a caravansera where every pilgrim is welcomed
and well entertained.

Frightful Accident at Croydon.—Six Men
Killed and Wounded.

Yesterday morning a frightful accident occurred at Croy'
don. The Brighton Railway Company are about connect-
ing the Balham and Victoria line of railway with West
Croydon, by means of a short loop line between Gloucester-
road-bridge and the main Balham line at Dugnall's-park'
The Gloucester-road-bridge is the third from West Croydon,
and is about being replaced by a wider and more commo-
modious one; and in order to expedite this work and ac-
complish the removal without stopping the traffic, Sunday
morning, when few trains run, was fixed on for the work.
At half-past 8 o'clock a locomoiive with a chain attached
was employed to pull down the brickwork, which consisted
of two small arches used as abutments to the centre arch,
which was also brickwork. Preparations for a grand haul
had been made, and a number of men were employed in weak-
ening the supports of the bridge, on the supposition that the
power of the locomotive was insufficient for its destruction.
On a sudden, without any warning, the whole fabric gave
way, and six poor fellows were buried under the mass of
brickwork. Two were as soon as possible taken out, quits
dead; one of them, George Mills, literally smashed to s
pulp. The other man's name was William Edwards. Four
others were extricated alive, and three of them were con-
veyed to. Guy's Hospital, where we understand one of thew,
named Bigley, has since died.
Dr. Cole; of Dingwall-road, was quickly on the spot, but
his services were of little avail, as two of the men were dead,
and the others gone to the hospital.
Mr. Rigby, the company's superintendent, was soon at
the scene of the accident, and under his direction a WV
staff of labourers cleared the line, so that no interruption of
the traffic occurred.

The bodies of the two unfortunate men were removedt°
the Earl Russell public-house, adjoining, where an inquili
before the coroner will be held.

Shocking Accident at Dover.

THE BELGIAN AGENT KILLED BY AN EXPRESS

TRAIN.

A very lamentable accident occurred at the Dover 110"
bour station of the London, Chatham, and Dover
way on Friday night, resulting in the death of
Sochaczewski, the agent for the Belgian Government, 311„14
mail packet service at Dover. Upon the arrival of the 10.3 e
p.m. expressttrain, M. Sochaczewski was running along the
down platform, when he came in contact with a post, which
supports the temporary roof of the station. The concussion
threw him backward, and he fell powerless over the side °f
the platform. The train coming at this moment the engin°
and tender passed over the unfortunate. man ; and his ex°
and one leg were completely cut off, while his body w... 35
also frightfully mutilated. Life not being extinct when nl•
Sochaczewski was taken to the platform he was removed in
one of the waiting rooms, and Dr. Gill was immediately
attendance, but he died in about an hour, during which
time, however, he was sufficientlyconscious to acknowledge
that it was purely an accident, and that no fault could 11
attributed to any one. The deceased was a middle-Wu
man and much respected.

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