The Sun.
London, England, 1865-11-16 00:00:00

rnE SUN, LONDON, THURSDAY EVENING, NOVEMBER 10, HU.

(From Ryland's Iron Trade Circular, Nov. 11.)
Having some personal experience of petroleum,
its discovery, its raising, and its refining, I gladly
accepted instructions, to proceed to Flintshire on
Monday last, for the purpose of examining into
certain statements, which to us all had appeared
extraordinary—respecting the productions of oil in
Flintshire.
Passing Cefu without stopping, although strongly
tempted to halt—not by the beauties of the Vale of
Llangollen, but by a remarkable pit of cannel coal
at Plas Kynaston, just by the railway side—l
pushed for Padeswood, a. small station about two
miles from Moldi in Flintshire, and landed at once
in the very heart of the mineral oil region.
'Twas as if I had fallen asleep- in the train at
Chester, and woke up among the ' oil wells" at
Enniskillen (Canada West), or Pennsylvania.
There was the identical mud, about the same quan-
tity of smell (lightly diminished in strength), the
same run of land—the same rough people, the same
sort of fires and furnaces, cauldrons, retorts,
ketties, stewpans for oil, and distilleries—the same
heaps of lime, and the same carboys of sulphuric
acid—everything the same but the primeval forest,
for the trees are all fast disappearing.
Here were the " oil wells" in fact, with all their

wealth of production, minus their uncertainty in
production, and the never-failing crop of open
cheating and miscellaneous roguery that springs up

'rom the fattening soil all around them.

The stuff they make here is actually petroleum.
It has the green colour, the smell, and gives out, to
the same treatment, the same products, saving that
it is less rich in turpentine, or that the turpentine it
contains has less volatile spirit. The taste is the
same, and—well I know it l—the effect of tasting
it exactly similar; again reserving the medicinal
effect of extr. Terebinth ; which my medical readers
will comprehend. Curiously enough at the door of
the very first refinery I visited there stood a young
girl who had been sent by her mother to beg a smal
phial of coal-oil for her chest. Now, I remember
seeing the Mayor of London (Canada West) sell a
bottle of it for a shilling to a girl at the door of his
refinery for a similar purpose ; and I have, over and
over again, known it to he taken for chest and lung
diseases, and heard it almost sworn to as having
curative effects equal to cod liver oil. The Indians,
indeed, use it for their spavined horses, and those
rheumatisms to which the uncomfortably dwelling
savage--(a weedy lot are those Red Indians, in
spite of all that novelists and travellers tell you)--
is always liable. It was known a century ago in
our pharniacopia as " Seneca Oil," and if you sleep
in a shirt saturated with it, as they do in the Toronto

Hospital, your aches and pains will surely disap-
pear. There it was, in Flintshire, running out of
the receiver frotn the retort, unmistakeably crude
petroleum ; and this, in my opinion, settles the
question for geologists as to the character and the
method of its original production in nature.
When I last saw petroleum in its crude state
in its native home —now three years since—l could
have bought a thousand barrels at half a dollar a
barrel in Canada West, or a dollar a barrel in Penn-
sylvania. There was no persuading any one in Eng-
land to believe in it, an 3 those who knew something
about its uses were afraid of it ; for a senseless
alarm was being worked-up by certain patentees of
burning fluids, paraffin oils, and the like, who were
making it all the while on the sly, and profiting at
the rate, as I then heard, of £lOO,OOO a year by it,
while preventing honest men in the country from
manufacturing similar products from coal by force
of patents which they held, but which every one but
the Vice-Chancellors knew not to be worth the
parchment they were written upon.
In America, however—where I believe the first
patent (of the renewed discoveries) originated with
Dr. Gesner and the Kerosine Light Company—the
coal oil production was enormous, until the petro-
leum, which was to be had for nothing, knocked
over the profit of the destructive distillation of coal
then in vogue, and drove it altogether from the
market. But when petroleum grew into favour, it
lose to a price, and the war made it more expensive
still—so that at last, what with freight and taxation,
we, in England and Wales, can make this petroleum
from coal and sell it to our own market—possibly to
that of America—for here I see some lubricating oil
and grease barrels marked for Liverpool and the
United States—at prices which leave us a large profit
in comparison with American petroleum ; while our
oil is the same thing,quite as good, and bearing nearly
equal prices, as the following extract from that most
matter of fact witness, a " Trade Circular," will
prove :

ARTHUR BROWN AND CO.'S PETROLEUM REPORT.
15, Rood-lane, London, E. 0.,
Monday Evening, Nov. 6, 1865.
Refined Petroleum—Since our last advices the market
has been steady, and quotations fully maintained, owing
principally to'a rise in the Antwerp market and export in-
quiry; the trade demand, however, continues limited. On
the spot good American is held for 3s to 3s ld ; for De-
cember 2s 10d is asked, and first three months offer at 2s 6d
without finding buyers. American for arrival can be had at
2s 11d. A cargo for continent sold at 3s. English refined
on spot at 3s.

Crude—Pennsylvanian £22, Wallachian £23.
Spirit—Small sales at. 2s 8d to 2s 9d.
Coal Oil—Unchadgod ; best•oil offers at 2s 10d, but con-
sumers buy only for present requirements ; forward, 2s 9d.
Welch crude, £lO to £ll. Scotch, £l2. Once run, £l2 lOs
to £l3.
To-day the market is quiet as above. -
ARTHUR BROWN AND Co., Brokers.
That they make a capital profit on this spot by its
manufacture there is tolerable evidence about us.
I do not speak so much of the companies' works
that are belching out fire, and blowing and steam-
ing and smoking a way, but in the numerous single
furnaces and distilleries that are dotted all over
the three or four miles in view. Like the
oil wells at first, it is a gold diggings to the
" small man"—and you can trace its effects in the
well-lined pockets, the well-filled shops, the general
air of comfort, and the plenty-to-eat-and- drinkish-
ness visible everywhere. The little men have been
quietly making the money.
Any one that can buy a ton or two of coal, or get
it from hand to mouth—no hard thing where coals
are more plentiful than blackberries—can set to work
and turn it into oil by sticking up a few bricks and a
retort with a pipe. That gives the tar or petroleum.
Another boiling does the " run over," that extracts
from it the lubricating oil, which fetches £9 or £lO
per ton. Now there are three kinds of cannel coal

(Ist, the curly cannel, at 295. ; 2d, the smooth at
lls. ; 3d, the shale, at 9s.)—and there are certain
mysteries in working these together, about which I
am likely to know more in a few clays. One ton of
the best cannel coal will produce 80 gallons of crude
oil, worth Is. 9d. to 2s. per gallon, and scwt. of
refuse, which may or may not be used to light the
furnace for another two batches. Each batch con-
sists of half a ton, and occupies 24 hours in the
crude distillation.
In this condition the oil goes to the refiner, whose
agent travels about to buy of the small men, and
pick up bargains from the needy.
The oil is made up in
barrels of 36 gallons, about

I will not tell you here what more skilful hands
would do with much of this ; but some will be able
to judge how gold is running to waste, or, rather,
the candle being burnt at both ends, in such a pro-
cess of manufacture. Be this as it may, the plaice
all round, for miles, is boiling over with coal-oil.
The cannel—once so despised--that judges and
juries and wise men were seven years trying to
settle whether it was coal or not—is abundant
everywhere just in this vicinity—and I rather think
farther towards Shropshire—at any rate, I saw it
in the Vale of Llangollen.

I will not trouble you with the particulars of the
coal field—you will have them to the full next week.
The Coppa Company's works, which lie close to
the Leeswood Colliery, from whence, I believe they
draw a portion of their great supply, are neighbour-
ing to the station, and cover seven acres of ground.
They are like gas works on a small scale, only the
tanks are underground. Theyhave 198 retorts, each
of 15 cwt. capacity ; and 16 stills, so that they pos-
sess a capacity of producing 1,500 gallons, equal to
120 tens of oil, weekly. The shares of this company
are chiefly held, I think, in Birmingham, and they
have been doing a comfortable 10 per cent. business
for the last three years, through all the difficul-
ties attendant on the first experiments. Of this
Company, the Saltney, the British, the Flintshire,
the North Wales, and the Mold, I intend to speak
in my next, as well as of the first discovery and
manufacture of this oil.

Meantime, my purpose will be sufficiently served,
if the features I have indicated should impress
themselves upon your North and South Stafford-
shire readers, and lead them to direct their consi-
deration, in some measured degree, to the subject
of this discovery of petroleum in Flintshire.

A LooKER-ON.

---
SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—The French Minister of Public Instruc-
ion, with the approbation of his master, has invited
the world to a competition which we ought, of course,
to hail with transports, but which we are weak
enough to regard with a mixture of curiosity and
dismay. At the Paris International Exhibition of
1867 there is to be a department which, to the pass-
ing throng, will look like a bookseller's stall or a
counting-house, and will hardly pretend to vie with
jewels, plate, porcelain, silks, and lace, courting the
eye all around. But when the homely volumes are
opened and carefully studied by the discerning and
enlightened public, they will be found to contain
matterwastly more precious, more interesting, and
more enduring than all the material products of in-
dustry and art. They will be Reports by eminent
men, already secured for the purpose, upon the
triumphs of the national mind during the last twenty
years, which, roughly, may then be called the period
since the February Revolution. The heart, mind,
and soul of France—that is, her entire spiritual
nature—have advanced quite as much as the arts,
which present themselves, so to speak, with their
workmanship in their hands. It cannot be denied
that France is wiser, and even better, than she was
when she continually menaced the peace of the
world, neglecting and even oppressing her people at
home in order to win territory from hr neighbours.
England, above all, is bound to recognise French
progress. So why should not this be exhibited ? We
can test impalpable essences, though only imagined
to exit, and why may we not take stock of such sub-
stantial accumulations as our stores of knowledge,
of refined sentiment and matured opinion ? If one
nation differs from another nation in glory, has not
that glory a measurable magnitude ? Indeed, the
proposed addition has been long anticipated, by no
others than the supercilious objectors to these perio-
dical displays. These critics urge their vulgar, mate-
rial, and sensual character. They call the Interna-
tional Exhibition a mart, a bazaar, a shop, a purely
commercial speculation, and denounce the tendency
of the noisy, manufacturing Babel to drown the
secret workings of the spirit and the quiet utterances
of the soul. It is all matter, say they • all flesh ;
tangible, and therefore perishable. guch critics
suppose themselves the representatives of the highest
interests of the.mind. So the Emperor and his
Minister of Public Instruction come out to hear their
criticisms, and invite them to enter and take a de-
partment themselves, thus to remedy the defect they
have been so forward to note. The competition, we
presume, will be free, though the Government has
taken its place among the competitors ; and France,
we may naturally suppose, will not be ellowed to
tell, without correction -or qualification, a story
which concerns the whole human race, and touches
the pride of every people. The English will hardly
allow M. Duruy and a few gentlemen of his personal
acquaintance to sum up a trial and to pronounce a
judgment which for each period anticipate the deci-
sion of posterity and the final award. If their minds
be not partial, their knowledge certainly will be.
The invitation, therefore, is a challenge to all the
world, which everywhere will suffer judgment by
default if not duly represented. But we can hardly
conceive a more painful, more difficult, or, indeed, a
more laborious task. The three heads proposed
differ considerably in these respects. Progress in
mathematical, physical, and natural science is
capable, we presume, of exact statement specifi-
cation, and measurement. There are journals which
contain periodical announcements of new discoveries,
new formulas, new methods of investigation, new
species and varieties, new theor;ies, and new laws of
nature. A twenty years' summing up may be labo-
rious, but no doubt there are people to whom it
would be a labour of love, and who could do it well.
Even here, however, there are a good many points in
which France, England, and Germany, running
abreast, and aily interchanging light and aid, will
be apt to differ on the delicate question of merit due
to each country. Even in such a matter as the dis-
covery of a planet by a wonderfully ftbstruse and
ingenious method, France and England are compe-
titors for priority. Do we allow France the palm in
photography ? Does she allow it to us in elasticity
and magnetism? In Africa, and on the islands and
shores of the Levant, England and France are
very eager competitors in more than one inte-
resting branch of investigation. The second head
of exhibition, and therefore of competition, is much
more delicate, and also more difficult. It is the pro-
gress of the moral and political sciences in their
application to the necessities of society. If our
_necessities are to be the test, what are those neces-
sities ? There are necessities felt by an Englishman
and not by a Frenchman. The Englishman is not
happy, and hardly feels himself to exist, if be can-
not express his political and religious opinions very
freely indeed, and if he is not free to take a share
in the government and actual policy of his parish,
his town, his county, or his country. Even if ma-
terial necessities be all that is intended, the English..
man wants many things that a Frenchman can dis-
pense with, and it cannot be denied that few French-
men, above the lowest classes, could exist on the
food that satisfies our strong and healthy middle
classes. This is a point upon which explanation is
needed, for we really do not see what limitation or
direction our necessities can give to the moral and
political sciences. But it is when we come to tlie
third head that we find ourselves not only puzzled
but staggered. It is the part fulfilled by literature'
in its effects upon general education. The litera-

ture itself is mercifully and wisely spared from the
competition. The judges will not be called upon
to measure and sum up the great achievements
in poetry, in history, in philosophy, and other
branches of literature. Besides that, in some well-
known instances, they would find it difficult to steer
between the Scylla of public indignation and the
Charybdis of Imperial displeasure, it is obvious, as
M. Duruy suggests, that this is the mission of
criticism—that is, of the Academy. Even in Eng-
land we should find it not easy to obtain a public
decision, satisfactory to the country at, large, upon
the merits of a dozen volumes of poetry, or philo-
sophy, or history that have appeared within the last
20 years. So criticism is left to its own haunts,
and literature—good, bad, or indifferent—is to be
measured by its services to general education. This
is not felt to be sufficient, and therefore the theme
is expanded. The liberal arts, we are told, can only
enter the Exhibition by showing that they bring to
a people not only noble amusement, but moral
strength and dignity. France, it is evidently in-
tended, has advanced greatly in moral strength and
dignity during the last 20 years ; and for this she
is partly indebted to her literature. Of course we
shall all be charmed to see the proofs of this im-
provement and the sublime theory of its causes ; but
all nations are not agreed as to what is moral strength
and dignity ' • and they will differ accordingly as to
the worth of the literature which has produced this
or that national tone claiming these high-sounding
titles. The moral strength and dignity of our own
country under recent difficulties have been largely
and freely canvassed, and we venture among our-
selves to differ upon them. We certainly should
take not less licence in our estimate of the moral
strength and dignity of our neighbours. As, too,
this is a political question, we conclude that politics
are not to be excluded from the consideration of the
French international judges. M. Duruy does not
stop here. He evidently feels that his explanation
is incomplete ; so he places himself and the Empe-
ror in an attitude, surveys France from the infant
school to the highest speculations of science, casts a
pitying though candid eye at certain defects in the
mind of France, and finishes with a grand period
of which the human race is the chief personage.
But if this be the scene, this the arena, this the aim
of the proposed literary competition, we cannot see
where it is to stop, or how a purely French ideal of
moral strength and dignity is to be the test of
failure or success. All that we ask is mere explana-
tion, which, in this case, means distinct specifica-
tion, without which we should certainly not advise
our. own countrymen to accept this novel challenge.
HERALD.—Englishmen who wish to know how
they are to be governed should read with particular
attention our report of the proceedings at Lambeth
Police-court in the case of the detective Warren.
This guardian of the public peace—to whose great
activity, intelligence, and excellence his superiors
were only too ready to testify—appeared before the
presiding magistrate in answer to a summons charg-,
ing him with what was rather mildly described as an
excess of duty in the discharge of his office as con-
stable. The complainant was Mr. Edward Meade,
a gentleman who has for 23 years filled a respon-
sible position in the Bank of England, and who
would therefore seem prima fade a very unlikely
person to have any dealings with detectives. The
time, and place, and circumstances under which he
made Warren's very undesirable acquaintance were
peculiarly unlikely to bring about such a consum-
mation. But as misfortune makes strange bedfel-
lows, so it appears pleasure-taking may introduce
us to queer companions. Mr. Meade is a Crystal
Palace season-ticket holder, and on the 9th of last
month he availed himself of his right of admission.
He met his wife and child at a pre-arranged tryst-
ing-place, and the party were taking tea when they
were surprised by Warren's intrusion. We suppose
detectives do not stand on much ceremony with
the objects of their vigilance ; but the conduct
of this particular detective seems a little singular,
even on the supposition that he was really talk-
ing to a person of suspicious character. He
asked Mrs. Meade what she had got there ; and,
though somewhat annoyed at the interro-
gatory, the lady replied that she was giving her
child some tea. " Let me taste it," were the con-
stable's next words, from which we suppose that
the,force have a general tea-tasting order, to be used
whenever it seems to them right and proper. Or it
may be that there is some connection between the
quality of the tea and the character of the person
drinking it, and that, as Mr. Meade was an object
of suspicion, the taste was wanted to make suspicion
certainty. But no one will be surprised to hear that
by this time Mr. Meade's patience was pretty well
exhausted, and that he apostrophised the impudence
of the intruder in a manner more forcible than
elegant. And then came the explanation. Warren
said that he was a detective officer, and that he had
been watching the complainant for half an hour, and
charged him with having twice attempted to pick
pockets. After some further parley, Mr. Meade was
arrested ; and his request to be taken through the
concert-room, where few people would have seen
him, was refused. Warren, who was in plain clothes,
laid his hand upon his shoulder, and called him to
" come along," and that there might be no mistake
about his being a prisoner, he was escorted down the
centre transept by his captor and a couple of officers
in uniform. Mrs. Meade was naturally agitated at
her husband's arrest, and that, no circcumstance of
indignity might be wanting his endeavour to reas-
sure her was made the pretext for a fresh insult by
the defendant, who, with true police delicacy and
discrimination, called out to his brother officers,
" Separate that woman—l will allow no con-
versation." At the Crystal Palace Police-office Mr.
Meade was searched, and a season ticket and a pri-
vate letterwere found upon him, which ought to
have satisfied the constable that he had got the
wrong man. That no excuse might remain the pri-
soner asked to see Mr. Bowley, the Crystal Palace,
Company's general manager, and he also mentioned
the names of several gentlemen in the neighbourhood
to whom he was well known. But neither Warren
nor his superiors at the palace condescended to make
any inquiry into the accuracy of these statements.
They took Mr. Meade to the station at Gipsey-hill,
where he was placed in the dock; charged with pick-
ing pockets, and cautioned that anything he said
would be used against him. The sergeant in charge,
however, had sense enough to see that it was at
least possible his man had made a mistake. After
" the prisoner" had been kept waiting ten or fifteen
minutes, lie and his wife were asked into the waiting-
room and accommodated with seats, and inquiries
having been meanwhile made into the truth of Mr.
Meade's statements, that gentleman was set at
liberty, Warren professing his very great regret for
what had occurred. Had the matter been simply
and solely one of mistaken identity no one would
wish to press the case hardly against an officer of
several years' standing. But Warren's misconduct
is not to be excused on any such ground. His first
interference with Mr. Meade and his family would
have been a piece of needless and unmannerly
impertinence even if he had known him to be
the oldest pickpocket in London, and his persis-
tence in wrong-doing was at least as remarkable as
his original blundering. And though the sergeant
at Gipsey-hill is entitled to some credit for the part
he took in the transaction, it is worthy of notice that
the charge against Mr. Meade was not made in that
gentleman's presence. But it is only bare justice to ,
Mr. Heade to say that, notwithstanding all the in-
dignity and injustice which he had endured, he not
only gave his evidence very temperately, but was
willing up to the last moment to accept a public
apology. To this offer we are indebted for apiece
of information which has all the charm of novelty.
The solicitors on both sides were engaged in settling
the form in which Warren was to make the amende
honorable, when their endeavours were rendered
useless by Inspector Dunlop's standing upon a point
of police etiquette. Being present to watch the case
on behalf of the defendant's superintendent, he
" felt it his duty to say that a consent on the part of
a constable to make an apology, to be published,
was contrary to the regulation of the force, and
he must, therefore, object to Warren's making
such an apology." In other words the public
admission of a mistake is contrary to
police ethics.
As " the Tenth don't dance," so the police don't
apologise, or rather they will not consent to the
publicity which gives an apology its chief value.
Of course they may have very excellent reasons
for this rule. It may be that the public confidence
in police infallibility would be shaken if it were
known that even policemen might have to confess
in public that they are not above the ordinary
liability to err. It may be that there are reasons why
the ordinary rule, which teaches that when you have
been so unfortunate as to make a mistake the only
manly and honourable course is to confess and re-
gret it, and to render your expression of regret at
least as public as the infliction of the injury, should
not apply to the police. But if there should be such
reasons they are not patent to ordinary minds. The
authorities of the bank could not sanction a com-
promise which made an indignity to one of their
staff, in the most popular place of entertainment in
the kingdom, a subject for a hole-and-corner pro-
fession of penitence. They were perverse enough
to insist that the reputation of their officer must be
vindicated, even though the police etiquette wereto
be violated, and they demanded either a published
apology or a conviction. But the police were equal
to the occasion. They would not save their constable
by the sacrifice of a rule which has neither sense nor
reason to recommend it, and so the case was dis-
posed of by the infliction of the very light penalty of
forty shillings, which of course was immediately paid.
Important as this case is in itself, it derives a spe-
cial, interest from the test it affords of the value
of -police iestimony. Some years ago a lady was
convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for steal-
ingn, crochet collar, which she said she had picked ,

up, but which a couple of policemen swore she had
deliberately taken from a fancy fair stall in the
Crystal Palace, to which it had been pinned, It
might be interesting to inquire whether Warren, or
his confrere who gave evidence on his behalf last
Tuesday, was a witness on that occasion. Had
Mr. Meade been committed for trial there can be
no doubt that his captor would have sworn with the
utmost distinctness. to the two attempts to pick
pockets with which he charged him, and as it might
have been impossible to procure directly rebutting
evidence, he would have had to rely on the pre-
sumption his character would raise in his favour,
in answer to the positive testimony of his accuser.
And Warren is not the only policeman who shows
badly. Sergeant Robbards, who was one of the
defendant's witnesses, swore that Mr. Meade was
not searched at the instance of the police, but at
his own desire and request—a statement sufficiently
improbable, even if it had not been positively and
solemnly contradicted by Mr. Meade, as were also
some other parts of the sergeant's testimony. Yet
it is worth remembering that men are sent to prison
every day on supported evidence of this kind, and
that a person accused has no opportunity of pitting
his own oath against that of the policemen, whose
vocation predisposes them to adopt a theory which
is least favourable to a prisoner, and whose continual
appearance in the witness box seems to beget in
them that familiarity with an oath which breeds
contempt for its sanctity. It is true that Mr. Bowley
added his testimony to that of Sergeant Robbards in •
favour of Warren's character. But we fail to see
how the facts to which the general manager deposed
lead to the conclusion at which he arrived. He con-
siders Warren a most useful, active, and intelligent
officer, and he tells us that the day after Mr.
Meade's arrest a foreigner was robbed of a ten-
pound note by some card sharpers. The active
and intelligent officer, then, who takes a respect-
able bank clerk for a common pickpocket, who
treats him and his 'wife with unbearable insolence,
and persists in a groundless charge long after he
has reason to suspect that he is in error, is neither
active nor intelligent enough to detect the presence
of card-sharpers within his domain, though their
operations require some little space, and a few mi-
nutes of time. However, we dare say, Mr. Bowley
is right, and it is lucky for Warren that he has thus
gained the good opinion of his superiors, for he has
had the full benefit of it in the mild sentence passed
upon him. But he public, who frequent the Crystal
Palace and similar places, may well feel uneasy at
the possible multiplication of instances in which re-
spectable people may be charged with infamous
crimes, made prisoners in the presence of a crowd of
spectators, taken through the streets, searched, and
called upon to answer a charge taken down by a
police-sergeant in a way the law forbids. Every
one is liable to suffer as Mr. Meade suffered, but
every one is not sure of escaping serious conse-
quences as he escaped them. Be it remembered
that charges so made are preferred by men who have
the strongest interest in making good the impression
on which they have acted, and who object "on
principle" to make such poor and pitiful reparation
as words can afford; for great and grievous and
conclusively proved mistakes.