The Sun.
London, England, 1865-06-26 00:00:00

rnE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, JUNE 26, 1865.

then advocated is now universally admitted—the
permission for the principal parties to a suit to give
evidence respecting it. Lord BROUGHAM and Sir F.
KELLY are both anxious to extend this principle
still further, and to admit it in criminal as well as
in civic cases. But as Sir FITZROY KELLY reminded
his hearers, it is difficult to estimate the immense
obstacles in the way of the reformer, whether
social or legal. Interested opposition is always
strong and persevering, while there are num-
bers of cautious or indolent men who dislike
change and innovation of every kind. There are
some minds with whom as a late poet finely says—
" Oppression has grown sacred in its venerable
wrong," and men who have occupied an official po-
sition for a good many years are apt to grow fet-
tered by the prejudices inseparable from their posi-
tion. Red-tapism unconsciously influences them,
and the dislike which they feel to every proposed
change arises quite as much from a reluc-
tance to interfere with the established order
of things as from any real or apparent
danger in the change itself. This renders it
very difficult for the law reformer to proceed, since,
as Sir F. KELLY pointed out, any such reform was
usually referred to the judges for their opinion, and
the judges as a body were almost always averse to
a change in the administration of justice. In the
way of social and political reforms, too, there are
often very embarrassing obstacles to surmount, and
rapid progress cannot always be looked for; still
steady and unflinching perseverance will usually
carry all before it. We are glad to find Lord
BROUGHAM supporting his old reputation as a poli-
tician by boldly advocating the extension of the
franchise, especially in the direction of the skilled
artisans.

LATEST INTELLIGENCE.

(REUTER'S TELEGRAMS.)

SPAIN.

MADRID, June 23.
Marshal O'Donnell delivered the following address
yesterday in the Congress :
Gentlemen Deputies,--•

Called by the will of her Majesty to occupy this
position, I believe it to be my first duty to state my
political programme to the national representation.
The first thing done by the Government, gentle-
men, is to hoist this flag. The Ministry belong to
the Liberal Union, but are conciliatory, and desire
to see around them Liberals attached to the country
and its institutions.

The Ministry not only desire that this may take
place, with all the detached fractions of the Liberal
Union, but will accept with pleasure the support of
all the individuals of these Chambers who may wish
to array themselves under the banner of their party.
The Ministry have no idea of exclusiveness.
The programme of the Government, gentlemen,
is already determined. The Government have re-
solved to settle all questions arising in this house
in accordance with the proposals they have made
from these benches.

There are three serious questions to be settled
with regard to home policy. The first is the ques-
tion of the press. The Government declare that
they withdraw from the other legislative body the
two bills brought forward by the former Cabinet.
They consider that the present press -law satisfies
all necessities, being accompanied by the establish-
ment of the jury, which ought to be the tribunal of
the press. The Government have decided to act as
follows : common offences, under which category
are those committed against the fundamental bases
of Spanish society, may be and will be tried by the
ordinary tribunals. As regards special offences of
the press, the Government believe that the jury will
be sufficient to repress them as well as to protect
their liberty of writing.
I now come to the question of the electoral law.
The present law, gentlemen, not only in the opinion
of him who has the honour to address you, but in
the opinion of all, has unfortunately fallen into
complete discredit. This is a matter upon which
all parties agree. The Government hold the same
opinion ; and wishing to render the legal contest
open to all parties, to enable them to come here and
advocate their doctrines in entire liberty, and de-
siring also that that those obtaining the majority of
votes in the country should be those to represent it,
the Government will immediately request authorisa-
tion to bring forward a bill adopting the principle
of large electoral circumscriptions—the elections
taking place by provinces and the qualification
being reduced one-half.

In this bill also the Government have endeavoured
to combine all they consider necessary, and every
possible precaution in order to avoid abuses of
power, and to render the elections really free, so
that all the electors may give their votes without
being exposed to any sort of constraint.
Relative to the question of ecclesiastical liquida-
tion, the Government believe that great resources
still exist in the country to carry out all the public
works and other means of development of which
Spain stands in need. These measures consist in
ecclesiastical liquidation. The Government have
resolved to effect this liquidation with the greatest
activity, in order to carry out the compact concluded
between the civil and ecclesiastical powers.
In foreign questions the Government will endea-
vour to preserve the good relations now existing
between Spain and the other nations of the world,
doing everything upon all occasions to maintain the
dignity and independence of the Spanish nation.
A grave question, gentlemen, to which I must call
your attention is that of Italy. The Government
consider that the time has now come to take a de-
cided course in this question. They believe that
without prejudicing the interests of Catholicism, a
resolution can be taken consonant with the _ideas
and interests of Spain, considered as an European
and constitutionally governed nation.

Finally, with regard to the interesting questionof
public order, the Congress is aware that the Mi-
nistry have come to power under grave and difficult
circumstances. It is not I who say this, you have
heard it froin the lips of those who sat in these
benches, and the same idea has been expressed in
the preamble of the bills recently brought forwar4
by the preceding Cabinet. Nevertheless the Go-
vernment assure the Congress that they fear no-
thing for public order, that they believe they have
the means of maintaining it, and that to uphold the
law they will employ no other means than the law.

LITERATURE,

Charles Dickens's Serial Story,

Our Mutual Friend. By Charles Dickens. No.
XIV. Chapman and Hall.

Since the first appearance thirty years ago of our
Great Humorist, the Greatest of all our Humorists,
then a very young man—since his first memorable
appearance as the author of what, all things
considered, we must still regard as the most
humorous book he has ever written, the im-
mortal " Pickwick," his audiences, work after
work, have been perpetually increasing in number.
Each successive book he has produced since then has
had a wider and a wider circulation. He has
mentioned this pretty frankly, indeed, once
or twice, in his later prefaces. And, that the
fact should have been so is only precisely what
might reasonably enough have been predicted.
The circulation of a new serial story by Charles
Dickens is a thing quite apart and exceptional.
There is no sort of parallel to it in the annals of

light literature. Coupled with the rare originality
of his own genius, he was himself the originator of
the system of the shilling monthly serial
illustrated. Since the first issue in that form
of " The. Pickwick Club," he has proved, himself
to be, in the mere circulation of his books, beyond
the reach of competition. Story after story—
and he has written now altogether some thirteen or
fourteen elaborate works of fiction—has proved as
distinctly beyond its predecessors in the extent of its
circulation, as the enlarging rings in the grain of
the trunk of a growing oak, or as the expanding
circles upon the surface of water that has been moved
by the dropping of a pebble into it. Apart from this
customary advance beyond any ono among its re-
markable predecessors, the current serial story now
in its fourteenth number, " Our Mutual Friend,"
to wit, has secured to itself a peculiar, and we be-
lieve an unprecedented evidence of its author's
increasing popularity beyond the limits of the
language in which he writes beyond the
boundary line of our own empire whether insular or
colonial. Our Mutual Friend" appearing, now, long
before its completion, in a serial form, translated
into French, as the feuilleton of a Paris newspaper 1
L'Ami Commun appearing in this way, at uncer-
tain intervals, chapter by chapter, at the bottom of
the front page of our Parisian contemporary
L'Opinion Nationale. The translator—who acts in
that capacity " avec autorishtion de l'autour"—is
Madame Henriette Loreau, a lady who, it
should be said, is doing her part, alto-
gether, as an idiomatic interpreter, very cre-
ditably. This is a fresh, and, we believe, an un-
exampled, certainly in any case, a very signal
attestation of the firm hold acquired, even,
so to speak, through the gauntlet of a trans-
lation--the sensitive and vigorous hold acquired
by our author upon his new world of readers over
yonder in France. The fourteenth number of
_ _

" Our Mutual Friend"—in the original—the present
number, that is, for this month of June, is chiefly re-
markable, by reason of the very noticeable advance
made within its four chapters in the general develop-
ment of the plot. After reading it, much of the be-
wildering haze and mist hitherto enveloping the plot,
seems to be so far clearing away, that while we re-
cognise more distinctly than ever, the complication and
elaboration and manifold intricacies of its machinery,
we nevertheless apprehend with more accuracy than
has been in any way possible to us hitherto, the
relative bearing, so to speak, upon one another, of

its constituent parts. "In the Dark" is the sig-
nificant title of a chapter relating to us, as
Dickens alone could so relate it, a conversation held
at midnight in the London Streets, between the in-
furiated and malignant rival of Eugene Wrayburn,
the Schoolmaster, Bradley Headstone, and that
Honest Man who earns his living by the sweat of
his brow, one of the most original of our author's
creations, Rogue Riderhood. His indignant way
of explaining himself to Bradley when the latter is
bewildered for the moment by Riderhood's talk
about " T'other Governor" can anything in
its way, be more whimsically ridiculous ?
" Why, look here," hooking his proposition
on his left hand fingers with the forefinger
of his right, " There's two Governor's, ain't
there ? One and one, two—Lawyer Lightwood, my
first finger, he's one, ain't he ? Well ; might you be
acquainted with my middle finger, the T'other 2"
His indignation afterwards, when avowing his in-
tention " to have the law of a busted b'low-bridge
steamer which drownded of him"—declaring " I
" ain't agoing to be drownded and not paid for it !"
—is equally comic. Bradley looking at him, while
he talks thus, as if he were claiming to a Ghost—
and, doubtless, not the less intently when Mr. Rider-
hood crowns all by saying, " I mean to be paid for
the life as the steamer took !" The apparently
trivial and quite casual circumstance of this
same Mr. Riderhood stumbling thus across
the pathway of Bradley Headstone, gives
promise of the knitting together of two
threads of the narrative hitherto wholly apart from
one another. And the same might be remarked in
reference to the incident closing the last of the four
chapters in this new number—a very important
chapter, so far as relates to the plot of the story,
achapter
Mr.
" . Wegg prepares
a Grindstonewhimsically
for
Al r entitled
.Boffin's
nose"—the said Boffin

" that foxey old grasper and griper," as the literary
man with a wooden leg gratefully dubs him, being
brought there at the close of that chapter, in other
words at the very end of this current number of
" Our Mutual Friend," face to face with the earissima
sposa of Alfred Laramie, or as we may surely
call her, if only on the strength of her pearl
powder, the fair Sophronia. Boffin's being secreted
by Venus, very hurriedly, behind the smile of the
crocodile, when they are suddenly surprised by the
approach selfish old rascal Wegg,
is n
laughable incidents in the whole
o eof
th o f
e most that odiously
number—'.'"Get your head well behind his smile,
Mr. Boffin, and you'll be comfortable there ; you'll
find plenty of room behind his smile. He's a little
dusty, but he's very like you in tone. Are you
right, Sir ?" The rascality of that old vagabond
Wegg is brought out more than ever with strong
-relief to the vivid apprehension and appreciation at
last, even of his benefactor, the Golden Dustman.
Out of ' this circumstance alone we begin to have
glimmerings of what it May all come to—though
the miserly demonstrations of the once open-handed,
open-hearted Boffin still remain—to say the least of
them problematical ! Intermediately between
these chapters, the first' and the last in this four-
teenth number of Our Mutual Friend," there are
othet_ two not yetTarticularised—chapters each of
these wonderfully elaborated in the humour of the
dialogue— in fact, hardly do we know in which of
the two the more effectively. One is entitled
" Meaning Mischief,"—What Hamlet, the Dane,
calls Miching Malecho_the other taking as its
heading, the old proverb, " Give a dog a bad name
and hang him !" The former relates, with inimit-
able whimsicality in every minute touch of it, a
confabulation between Sophronia and Alfred
Lammle (betwitching creatures ! prospective
claimants surely for the Flitch of Dunmow !) fol-
lowed up by an equally amusing interview between
Alfred and that other delightfulinnocent, Fledgeby !
The upshot of this
being the most delectable of
non - sequiturs a new illustration of the
biter bit. As to the pennultimate chapter in the
number, it tends more vividly than ever to
realise to us the double-dealing of that
whiskerless mouser---the smooth-cheeked and close-
fisted principal of Pubsey and Co., usurers and bill-
discounters, and takers-in generally. Mr. Fledgeby,
revealing more plainly than ever, his rare powers of
most despicable dissimulation indiscriminately upon
every one who approaches him, whether it be a person
as conventionally innocent, as poor little Twemlow,
a keen-witted atom such as the Doll's Dressmaker,
or such ruddled old black-sheep of society as the
gentle-minded Lammle and his unsophisticated
Sophronia. Altogether, while we are thus getting
deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of the plot, we
begin to catch glimpses here and there of that
central goal, or heart of the maze, towards which
we are now only too rapidly approaching.

THERE WILL BE NO MINISTERIAL WHITEBAIT
DINNER at Greenwich this year, says the Observer, in con-
sequence of the probable absence of many members of the
Government in the Lower. House, the business of the see-.
Aiwa in the souse of Commons being virtually over.

MARKETS—This Day.