The Sun.
London, England, 1865-11-27 00:00:00

GRAND TRUNK OF CANADA.

The traffic receipts on this company's lines for the
week ending the 4th inst. amounted for local pas-
passengers to £3,653,
mails, &C., to £829, for
local
efreightemigrants
7 a,
nt70d2311 ,
i3vf6eo
or foreign
for
stock
to
£14,240, and for fo-
reign freight andlive stock to £2,349—total, £29,064,
and for corresponding week last year to £24,010,
showing an increase of £5,064. The total traffic re-
ceipts from the Ist July to the above date amounted
to £504, and for the corresponding period last year
to £433,930, showing au increase of £70,375, or
16.2 per cent.

PANAMA, NEW ZEALAND, AND AUSTRALIAN

ROYAL MAIL.

A general meeting of the company was held on
Friday at the London Tavern--Mr. E. Colville in
the chair.

The report, an abstract of which has appeared in
The Sun, was taken as read.

The CHAIRMAN, in moving the adoption of the re-
port, said they had incurred a considerable outlay,
but he hoped that at the next meeting the share-
holders would hear of a considerable diminution in
that respect. The receipts of the company for the
six months ending the 30th of June were—for
freight and passage money /60,429,- and for Go-
vernment subsidies £20,534, making a total of
£80,963. The disbursements, exclusive of charges
to repair, renewals, &c., were £65,155, leaving a
surplus of £16,808, which surplus would have been
larger but for the further loss sustained in working
the new line between Melbourne and the northern
and central provinces of New Zealand. This line
had been discontinued, and as the loss incurred
was included in the disbursements above mentioned
no further charges on this account could occur.
Notwithstanding this loss the directors were in a
position to recommend a dividend at the rate of 5
per cent. per annum clear of income-tax, leaving
£8,500 otherwise available. The Government of
Now South Wales had agreed to pay an equal
moiety of the subsidy for the service between Mel-
bourne and Otago, which had just been commenced,
and for which the company were to receive £4,800
a year. The Government of New Zealand had de-
cided in favour of the higher rate of speed. He was
sorry to have to speak of the . lawsuit which was
awaiting judgment in the Court of Queen's Bench.
It was an action brought' against those persons who
had taken shares but who had refused to pay up.
He only hoped the judgment would be in their
favour, but he had not much doubt of that.
Several shareholders asked how much the cost of
this suit was likely to be.
The SOLICITOR said he thought the cost would
amount to about £l,OOO.
The report was then unanimously adopted, and a
divident at the rate of 5 per cent. per annum was

declared. • A vote of thanks to the chairman con
eluded the proceedings.

EAST INDIAN IRRIGATION AND CANAL.

The report of the directors states that the past
season had in India been specially obstructive to
open-air operations ; nevertheless, most praise-
worthy exertions had been made by the staff gene-
rally, and so that the anticipated satisfactory
state of things had been delayed only for a short
period. The commencement of irrigation only to a
small extent before the end of the current year was
confidently expected by the chief engineer, who
stated that further portions of the canal between
the Hooghly and Midnapore, and of the canal be-
tween the Roopnarain and Balasore rivers would be
opened before January next, and other reaches in
continuation before June next. All in the service.
of the company appeared to have worked with dili-
gence and energy. and the result had been the ac-
complishment of a very satisfactory amount of work.
According to the statements by the chief engineer,
it would appear-1. That an early realisation of
profits from irrigation may with certainty (though
to a small extent at first) be anticipated ; 2. That
by July next the company would be able to supply
a large area of land with water for irrigation from
the three main irrigating canals in the Cuttack
Delta ; 3. That by the same time further portions
of the canal intended to connect Calcutta with
Midnapore, and of the tidal canal intended to con-
nect Belasore with Calcutta, would be opened for
traffic. 4. That the tolls upon the still unfinished
first section of the Calcutta and Midnapore Canal
(the Oolaberiah Canal) had steadily increased, al-
though from the scarcity of boats, caused by the
cyclone of October, 1864, trade had become re-
strained for a time. 5. That the tolls on theßanka
Nulla Canal—the first section of the tidal canal—
had also increased. 6. That an arrangement had
been concluded with the Bengal Coal Company for
the carriage of their coal through the Oolaberiah
Canal by the boats of this company. And 7, that
the remainder of the company's boats had been fully
employed with other freights. The receipts on ;ac-
count of tolls and other sources in India to June 30
last, and in England in respect of interest upon un-
expended capital to the 31st ult., showed a total of
£17,917. The six several works now in course of
execution would be more than provided for by the
present capital of £1,000,000 ; on the 31st ult. a
sum of £582,737 had been received on account of
capital ; and the expenditure in England and remit-
tance to India amounted to £519,109, leaving a
balance in hand in England of £63,628, of which
£lO,OOO had since been forwarded to India.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

-4,

TIIE "SATURDAY REVIEW" ON THE DYING OUT
OF MINISTERIAL JAUNTINESS.-Sir Robert Peel did
not care a straw for the mass of his colleagues, but
he was staunch in his admiration and loyalty towards
Lord Palmerston. This, however, is a quality
which Lord Russell is commonly supposed to set an
extremely small value upon. The poet's injunction,
" To thine own self be true," has contained the
whole of his simple faith, and it does not appear to
have gone unrewarded. If Sir Robert Peel had
acted rather less disinterestedly on this not very
exalted principle, he too might perhaps have been
on the winning side in the new arrangements. had
he but served himself with half the zeal with which
he served or imitated Lord Palmerston, he would
not have been left naked to his enemies. Most
characteristic of all his services was his onslaught
upon the contumacious elector at Tamworth some
two years ago. This was a vastly successful asser-
tion of the great principle so fashionable at the
time, that, in politics, nerve and muscle are more
important than soundness of views or liberty of
private judgment. The fallen elector may be taken
as the unconscious representative of earnest convic-
tions, and laborious searchings after what is best,
and of the gravity of politics. All these disap-
peared before the muscular impetuosity of the
Irish Secretary. But the thrashed elector is
avenged. Muscular politics are in their decline,
and, in the nascent revival of political earnest-
ness, how are the jaunty fallen ! Jovial Privy
Councillors are not to chaff Chartist butchers' nor
administer lickings to recusant voters. Perhaps
Lord Russell will even interfere to prevent Sir
George Grey's continued patronage of his muscular
friends, the garotters ; and, if the new Government
is really going to consult the bodily safety of the
lieges, it will well either to remove Mr. Milner
Gibson, or else to urge him to give up aiding and
abetting the railway companies in their misdeeds.
After all, a Privy Councillor who occasionally re-
freshes himself by knocking down an elector, is pre-
ferable to one who lets other people sacrifice holo-
causts with comparative impunity. We cannot but
think that the retirement of Sir Robert Peel will.
act in some measure 'as a *al-din& to Mr. Gibson.'
He, too, has on many occasions betrayed a fatal
leaning towards the jaunty style, and jauntiness is
for the future to be a mortal sin in British politics.
We are all going to turn over a new leaf. Lord
Russell deems it unworthy of a member of his illus-
trious family to crack a joke or to assume an air of
gracious gaiety. Mr. Gladstone is so sore perplexed
with those " humble faculties' and " feeble efforts"
of which he is never tired of speaking, and alto-
gether life . presents itself .to him in so dread-
fully serious an aspect, that he cannot have
any inclination ever to take things a little
easily. Under these circumstances it would
be very unbecoMing in obscurer mortals to
introduce anything like levity into discussions which
concern, however remotely, the interest of the com-
monwealth. Every member of Parliament must
always be conscientiously recognising the responsi-
bilities of his august position. From a vast question
of peace and war which affects the whole empire,
down to a nomination:to a competitive examination
for a berth in the Irish constabulary or a tide waiter-
ship, every public act is to be performed in a prayer-
ful and conscientious spirit. A privy councillor who
should use his fist will deserve impeachment at
least. A pun or a jest of any kind will be an out-
rage upon the public sensibility, a mark of disre-
spect to the grand principles which arc going to
govern the universe. Anybody who is so basely
indifferent to the truth as to think that each of two
courses has about as much to recommend it as the
other; will be held a wicked and reprobate Gallia.
Considering this revolution in the orthodox official
tone, . Sir Robert Peel is wise to leave Ireland
to her fate and to retire from office. The grand old
doctrine that " it will be all the same in a hundred
years" has, so we are assured by our instructors,
ceased to be a rule of our national administra-
tion. As Sir Robert Peel's tenure of office could
only be justified, and his administration of it I
could only be explained, on this comprehensive
principle, it is natural that as soon as the principle
is abandoned, or said to be 'abandoned, the
Minister for whom it in a manner ac-
counted should be sacrificed also. Still the humane
will feel some commiseration for the scapegoat of
jauntiness, thus sent forth into the wilderness of
unofficial life. Sir Robert Peel was always believed
to take an interest in his work, and even a Conser-
vative opponent - has voluntarily come forward to
protest that he always answered letters by return
of post. But industry and a kind of will-o'-the-wisp
enthusiasm are not enough in themselves. They
are very good in their way, but in a man without
discretion they are as a pearl in a swine's snout.
And not even office could make Sir Robert Peel dis-
creet. Probably, when we are finally handed over
to a too earnest Government, a sort of political
Serious Family, we may occasionally look back to
the days when statesmanship was none the worse
for being a little free-and-easy on the outside. Still
second-hand jauntiness, based on that of a great
master of the art, is not a very good thing, as Sir
Robert Peel's official career showed. The best that
can be said of it is that it is better than the solemn
priggishness and overdone humility which may take
its place.
THE " EXAMINER" ON THE NEGRO RIOTS IN
JAMAICA.--Philanthropy will never make black
white, or change one race into another. The reader,
however, may prefer having the facts stated in an-
other form' and in more detail, and this we do from
the colonial blue-books. In 1850 the value of the
sugar exported from Jamaica was £585,096, of Bar-
badoes £596,551, and of the Mauritius £892,840.
In 1861 the value of the Jamaica sugars was
£595,084, or in twelve years' time it had increased
by a good deal less than 2 per cent. The
sugar exports of Barbadoes in 1861 were of the
value of £751,170, or had increased by better than
25 per cent. The sugar export of the Mauritius in
1861 was of the value of £1,771,867, or had in-
creased by better than 98 per cent. But this is not
all. The returns for the two West India colonies
come down only to 1861, while those of the Mauri-
tius come down to 1863, when the value of the
sugar exported was £2,494,526, or above four-fold
the value of the produce of Jamaica, which is seven
times its size. The distress of Jamaica is partially
ascribed to two years of extraordinary drought. But
Jamaica is a well-watered land, and if it has been
injured by unusual droughts, that is a calamity
from which other countries have suffered, and this
even in a far higher degree, as, for example, Aus-
tralia ; yet those countries make no bemoaning
poverty-stricken cry on this account, but go on

flourishing in spite of such ephemeral calamities.
The misfortunes of Jamaica, according to Dr.
Underhill, are coeval with the American Civil War,
the very- event which has benefited other countries
similarly circumstanced. During that war the
price of cotton increased at least threefold, and, in
consequence, millions of English capital were
poured into India, Egypt, and Brazil ; but money
would not go to Jamaica, because in that island
there was no effective labour to till an exuberant
and plentiful soil. Dr. Underhill, in his bill of
indictment against the authorities of Jamaica,
insists that the taxes are onerous, but his own
facts do not prove this. The only example he gives
does not prove this. It is a tax on the cottons with
which the negroes are clothed. This, he says, is 38
per cent. on the value. If it were so, that would
be a great deal too high, but not a starvation tax,
for the people of the Southern States of the Arne
rican Union paid their brethren of the North one of
12 per cent. higher, and did not on that account
go naked, as Dr. Underhill says that negroes of
Jamaica often do. But his statement is a blunder.
The tax is, just as it used to be, 12i per oent., but
the cotton famine produced by the American Civil
War so raised the price of goods that the ad valorem
duty became, like the price, as 38 to 121 upon the
former cost of the article. As to Dr. Underhill's
empirical notions of governmental help by precept
and example, we must take leave to tell him that
they are obsolete. The worthy doctor does not, in
fact, understand the first rudiments of the science
in which he hazards to give advice. The truth is,
that the Baptist and other over-zealous friends of
the negro are mortified and disappointed at the
utter failure of their predictions. They are hoping
against hope for better results than have yet come,
in the elevation of the negro race, after 32 years of
emancipation. The negroes of our West Indies,
free for a generation, and the negroes of Hayti, not
only free, but their own masters for two genera-
tions, are still, in despite of generous hopes and
vaticinations to the contrary, barbarians of Africa
who have but changed their sky.

THE " ANGLO-AMERICAN TIDIES" ON IMPORTED
BEEF.—We are now paying in England an average of about
tenpence per pound for beef, and proportionately high for
other varieties of flesh-food; while in some parts of the
world cattle are .slain for their skins, and enormous
quantities of good meat are thrown away for want of pur-
chasers at any price. Yet, the triumphs of commerce are
among the greatest glories of this century; and the greatest
of commercial triumphs has been in articles of food.
Thousands would literally perish -with hunger were the
present natural flow of food from agricultural Ame-
rica to manufacturing England, suddenly to cease. It
is perfectly evident that the greatest perfection of
commerce must consist in such an interchange of com-
modities as will produce the nearest approach to
universal equilibrium of cost, especially in those articles .
which are necessary for the people. In this direction im-
mense progress has been made with bread —immense pro-
gress with the less bulky articles of clothing ; but prices
.would seem to show little progress in the article of meat,
which, though altogether beyond the reach of some of our
people, is still to be reckoned among the necessaries of life.
The reason why commerce in flesh-food partakes little
cf the general progress is to be found in its perishable
character, and the special appliances which are therefore
necessary for its transportation to great distances in a state
of perfect preservation. The difficulties thence arising
deter careful merchants from embarking in the trade ; but
it is worthy of consideration whether those difficulties are
not really less than they seem. If this should prove to
be the case, men of capital and enterprise, who would
thoroughly master the subject, and embark boldly in .the
business of bringing us flesh-food from South America
and other places in the best forms under which it is
capable of transportation, would certainly reap abundant
profits, besides conferring a great benefit upon the
country. In anticipation of practical endeavours
of this description wo venture a few suggestions.
The vessels engaged in such commerce should be
steamers, especially adapted for the purpose. This will
certainly add to the cost of transportation, but it will also
insure a rapid transit, which, with such perishable articles,
is a very important matter. If transportation by steam
.should cost £9 per ton that would be less than ono penny
per pound of meat, and the South American beef would
not cost the importer more than threepence per pound,
delivered in Liverpool. Considering the quick transit,
and consequently quick returns, fourpence per pound
would yield a heavy profit to the merchant. Another
penny would be a good profit to the retailer, and the
public would still get an excellent article at fivepenco per
pound. We say the public would get an excellent article,
because it is to be presumed that merchants who under-
stand their business would not attempt to bring us bad
salt, seasoned with meat, after the fashion of the Charqui,
which is offered to the public at fourpence per pound. The
meat is really good, and if it were well packed in good salt,
and quickly transported in a suitable vessel, there would
be little need of over seasoning. Charcoal packing for the
deck, and metallic pipes iu the hold, communicating with
the water, would keep the cargo very much cooler than
the atmosphere of the tropics. A tithe of the steam-power
of the vessel applied to a suitable freezing apparatus, would
make the hold a vast refrigerator safe, in which meat
could be kept fresh for a couple of months if necessary.
Other ways of keeping the meat could be used with ad-
vantage. The dried or hung beef of the United States is
very. palatable, awl not over seasonal. It costs little for
curing, and would stand a reasonable voyage. Beef Slightly
'salted, -boiled, steamed, or roasted, and then pUt down in
its own rendered fat, will keep well. In nitrogen gas meat
will keep perfectly fresh for an indefinite period. Sugar
will preserve it perfectly, and will not snake it unpala-
table. There aro still other modes of preserving, which
would doubtless prove economical when applied on a large
scale; but we have already mentioned enough to show that,
with skilled packers and steam transportation, a trade in
flesh-food could be done with America which would bo
very profitable to the merchants, and highly advantageous
to the people.