The Sun.
London, England, 1862-08-01 00:00:00

THE SUN.
LONDON, FRIDAY, AUGUST 1, 1862.

The Lancashire people have at last obtained very
nearly all they have asked. On Wednesday they
carried a majority of the House with them, in
asking, as Mr. VILLIERS rightly understood it, the
power to borrow, as well as the power offered by
the Government to obtain aid directly from the
union. Last night Mr. VILLIERS brought up an
amendment of the kind they wished; but as the
power to apply for a rate in aid had been fixed at
the rates reviling 58. in the pound, he had adopted
the same rate as the line at which borrowing powers
should commence. This arrangement, however,
gave general dissatisfaction to those who advocated
liberty to borrow, and ultimately Mr. VILLIERS
capitulated for a line of 38. in the pound ; he
marched off, however, as he considered, with the
honours of war, because this was nearer the rating
at which he had originally proposed that the rate
in aid should commence.

As we understand Mr. VILLIERS' language last
night, when be stated his modification of the
amendment he bad brought up, the union is to be
the borrowing party, and is to have the option—
parish exceed 3s. in the
when the rates in any
the excess on the common fund
pound—of charging
of the union, and so on ail the parishes in the union,
immediately ; and then to borrow on the security of
the union rates, when the rating of all its parishes
exceed 35., thus lightening the immediate rressure
on the union. If this be his meaning, the excess of
rates above three shillings in the pound in any
parish will be in any case thrown upon the union
but the union will have the option of borrowing
for a term of years. When the union expenditure
exceeds five shillings in the pound, Mr. VILLIERS
proposes to throw the excess upon the county. Mr.
PULLER'S proposal was, on Wednesday, that the
union, as the better security, and therefore able to
raise money on better terms, should be enabled to
borrow for the distressed parish ; the parish, we
presume, when able, to reimburse the common fund
of the union. As it now stands, the union is to
meet every excess above three shillings in the
pound either by a rate in aid on all its parishes or
by borrowing, and when the maximum of ss. is
reached, the county is to be responsible.
The advocates of borrowing are taunted with in-
consistency in wishing borrowing powers to com-
ence at a lower point than 55., but we cannot think
with reason. They preferred not to go begging for
help to their neighbours, for one thing; but they also,
with the fall persuasion that the calamity is tem-
porary, wished to save the parishes from being
crushed by exceptionally heavy rates for a short
time. They are composed of shrewd men of busi-
ness, some of the wealthiest of whom have known
what it is to save their general course of busi-
ness from derangement by some exceptional pres-
sure through a loan on good security. It may
probably be looked upon as almost the habit of
these enterprising men to balance the inequali-
ties of the action of trade by obtaining advances.
They cannot bring themselves to believe that
even Americans will go on eating each other up
for ever; India, they know, must soon feel—in-
deed, Mr. CRAWFORD showed it was now feeling
—the effect of high prices, and hence all they
ask is to be allowed to manage their own business
in their own way. Mr. COBDEN, with perfect con-
sistency, declared his preference for fixing no sum
at which borrowing powers should commence, but
leaving it entirely to the discretion of boards of
guardians. We have not the smallest doubt that
this is the wiser course. The Poor Law Board
can hardly believe that it has not the wisdom to
prescribe by rule for all the varied cir-
cumstances of all the parishes and all the
unions in the kingdom. We have much
more faith in the guardians themselves. They
are, with the exception of the magistrates belonging
to them ex officio, composed of gentlemen wl.O
have shown their business capacity by conducting
well, first, their own business. And we should
think they, of all persons in the world, may be
trusted to manage it in the present case. For no
man's integrity and fair ability as an administra-
tor has the country more respect than for those of
the President of the Poor Law Board ; but we can-
not think that he and all his staff will manage a
Lancashire Union's pecuniary difficulties so well as
the guardians themselves of the union.

We have reason to be thankful that the Lance
shire members succeeded by the aid of numerous
To"y coadjutors in carrying their main point,
Sudden collapse is the danger in many of these
manufacturing parishes. When the mills close all
must close. Not only the hands who watch the
spindles and the looms, but the numerous artificers
and workmen directly employed by it, are thrown
out of work, and the numerous tradesmen who sub-
sist entirely on the custom of the workmen. No-
thing can be more correct than Mr. COBDEN'S com-
parison of such a parish, to an agricultural one
in which sterility had smitten the entire soil. If
the cause of that sterility might be with certainty
removed in a year or two, there could not be a worse
P°lleY than to annihilate the property of the few
who
had nothing left, so that they should be in-
capable
fer-
tility
ret°:_eueltivating again the fields when '
cl• A loan would be infinitely better.
This is the r s
ea' drift of the Lancashire people.
They want to p.m"
Ott a present calamity from de-
stroying
resources of those who, when
it has entirely the r
passed away,,
be able
see the country gen-
able to regain their old
It seems Bi
nu
nosition.
so readyi to back th.
?Jaen of Manches-
ttelern:enbut their interests
this
The former cannot 'wish
case are
identical,
the rates in
aid to reach too soon the agricultural uuions
latter desire to save their own communities . the
which would require from
the crushing rates W a rate in
aid.

The facts mentioned by Mr.CRsALWFOeZb y exactareenl
ccursging, as far as they go. He ow
information from India, that it has been a raja-
statement when the Indian supply of this year was
represented as certain to be less than that of last
year. The reverse is the fact. Up to the end of
June the cotton coming
from India was sixty th,ou•
sand bales more than last year at the same time ;
the numbers being 405,751 bales this year, and
last year, up to the same time, 345,394 bales. A
larger quantity also, happily, remains. to be sent

than last year; and it was anticipated that
the present prices would bring much excellent
cotton from Madras, and larger quantities than
ever from the interior, the poor ryots stripping
themselves we may suppose willingly and making
their rags do double service, to take the benefit
of the present prices for their raw material. Had
Manchester but looked after them by proper buyers,
in a climate where clothing is almost a luxury, it
can hardly be doubted that the natives would have
sacrificed a great deal of what they use in ordinary
times in their desire to make money while they
had the chance. Had they but seen " the sahibs
among them," as Mr. SAUN D ERS says, looking after
it, there would have been an increased growth cf
cotton, which would have been a most valuable
relief. As it is, we may well be thankful that India
will at least somewhat alleviate the pressure this
year.

We may be sure of one thing—these debates will
afford infinite pleasure throughout Yankeedom.
To see the Parliament of England busied in dis-
cussing the deep distress of thousands of men turned
out of work and bread by their blockade—this is a
trophy indeed. Conscious of the moral u njustifi-
ableness of their position, the Yankees have been in
a constant feverdt through
with
,gah and
malign
fearal
ig have
nv oesfadtoisnf
eacutEuropeansatisfaction
inter-
vention—halftheir hatred of us is due to the wrong
and
fact their
ofps
our tthey
injuryres
exults
distress being greater than theirs.

It is very unfortunate. But it appears to be in-
evitable. There is a sort of fatality, we suppose,
about the whole neighbourhood. Yet it is—fatality
or no fatality—deeply to be regretted, more espe-
cially just at this particular period, within the very
year of the Great Exhibition, when all the World
and his Wife are up from the country, when
Monsieur, Madame, et sex enfans, are over from the
continent—it is, indeed, deeply to be regretted
that such a deplorable accident should have oc-
curred ! Everybody who has passed through the
Finest Site (observe, not Sight !) in Europe
must have remarked it. There in that fatal spot—
in that place, so like "another place" that
should be nameless, seeing that it is, in a manner,
as one may say, literally " paved with good inten-
tions"—there in the very centre of Trafalgar-square
it has occurred, this melancholy little casualty. It
6.filicts each side alternately. Sometimes both sides
(of the centre, that ir) together. The turncocks of
the parish of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields—(so called
pertinaciously notwithstanding that there is not a
blade of grass anywhere within the range of obser-
vation)—the parish turncocks, we say, ought de-
cidedly to look to it. For it must surely come, by
right, within their jurisdiction. The fact appears to
be, so far as it can be in any way correctly regarded,
that a number of water-plugs have burst there in
clusters, in the immediate neighbourhood of
what Londoners have for the last dozen years
or so got linto the habit of facetiously designating
the Trafalgar Square Fountains. Instead of our
two charming ginger beer bottles being allowed to
foam over at their own " sweet will" upon the top
of that melancholy pair of dumb-waiters in front of
the National Gallery—these unfortunate water-
plugs seem to have burst, out of sheer malice, to dis-
grace our principal square more flagrantly than
ever by squirting in rivalry with the ginger beer
bottles aforesaid. It is sheer malignity to insinuate,
as some have ventured to do, that these squirtings an
cross-squirtings are absolutely intentional—that
they have been designed in cold blood, as well as
realised in cold water by some ambitious wight con-
nected with the office of Public Works, that is to
say, of course, in the public waterworks
department. The base insinuation is only no
doubt to be scouted as utterly ridiculous. It
must be set aside at once as a " miserable invention
of the enemy." And, instead of reprobating Mr.
COWPER and his assistants for another and a worse
blunder even than any they have yet perpetrated,
we ought—(we endeavour to encourage ourselves to
believe this)—to commisfearla
litneg them wherethethemuponi
unto-
ward casualty casualty that, befalling
done, and when it has done, must be considered
seriously to amount to little less than a misfortune.
It is the result of that fatality, therefore, we
will presume, which has always been attendant
upon everything connected with that ill-starred and
ridiculously miscalled "finest site in Europe,"
Trafalgar-square. It is another and the latest.
(would that we might hope that it will prove the
last !) result of that old familiar fatality—this
lamentably ill-timed bursting up of the water-
plugs around the soi-disant Fountains. A fatality to
which we already owe so much ! For example, the
incompleteness to this day (to our disgrace as anation)
of the only open-air public monument here in London
to the memory of him who has been well called " the
darling hero of England !" Or, the retention of that
empty pedestal in the north-west corner of the
square ! A national emblazonment of the fact that
we despair of ever finding a match (thank Heaven,
however, be it said, in sober seriousness, for that !)'
to that tailor's dummy of a King [" waistcoat, under-
waistcoat, more under- waistcoat—nothing !"] for-
merly entitled by our infatuated sires " the First
Gentleman in Europe," but more aptly described by
Mr. THACKERAY " the Royal Snob," his most gra-
cious Majesty Fum the Fourth ! Again there is—
in the place of honour—that miserable abortion of
a public building, the stone cruet-stand ycelped the
National Gallery; conspicuous alone for its onate pep-
per-castors. There is Funs theFOIIRTH'S own statue
—ostler-like, mounted on a bare-backed steed, with
a horsecloth gracefully covering his shoulders, and
a rolling pin held truncheon-like against one thigh.
Would that the horsecloth were but large
enough to cover the effigy altogether from our
eyes, and place it effectually beyond reach of prov-
ing a provocation to more horse-laughter. There is
CHARLES the FIRST, again, on that wonderful
charger of his--saddled without anything what-
ever in the shape of that girth which is found re-
quisite to keep all ordinary mortals erect when
figuring away as equestrians ! Sir EDWIN LAND-
SEER, too, is certainly paying the authorities
in their own coin, now that they have
been inconsiderate enough to select a painter to do
the work of a sculptor—for in lieu of placing the
four couchant lions on the empty pedestals, so long
waiting for them at the four angles of the base of
the Nelson Column, Sir EDWIN LANDSEER, we
are seriously told, is only beginning to prepare for
bis work by studying the habits of the lions in the
Zoological Gardens in the Regent's Park ! Looking
around us there in the midst of that jumble of absur-
dities littered about the stony waste of Trafalgar
square, we can only regret that—while the foun-
tains and the burst waterLplugs are in full play—
the floodgates of the neighbouring washhouses at
the back of the National Gallery cannot safely
be opened in a discharge of sufficiently copious
streams
of cold water, to sweep all this stone and
bronze
rubbish clear away into the Thames, leaving
Only
"1 beautiful Corinthian pillar in solitary
grandeur in
the midst of the otherwise vacant and
vacated site.

I
An admirable suggemiee
, as it appears to us, has
just now been thrown out by the
anonymouscor-
resndent of a contemporary It has reference ;o