The Sun.
London, England, 1862-02-05 00:00:00

THE SUN.

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, FEB. 5, 1862,

To-morrow Parliament re-assembles. No great
political battle, so far as yet known, is threatening.
It is not even certain that Lord DERBY, or rather
his subordinate generals, wishes to invade the Trea-
sury Benches if he could—since if he arrived thither
he certainly could not have a working majority
without a dissolution, and it is not likely that the
veteran Premier would give him that chance. Which
side has a majority of avowed followers, it might be
difficult to guess. There are at the present
moment so many Conservatives who believe Lord
PALMERSTON to be the safest man for Toryism,—so
many Whig Conservatives who help to enlarge the
extent of the marches between the two great parties
—that a considerable portion of the house might be
worked, on most divisions by the whippers-in
of either party. Just now, however, PALMERSTON
has the goodwill of the country, and it would not
be safe to drive him to a dissolution. The neutrality
in the American
war and the Trent affair have
unquestionably been managed in a way which the
vast majority of the country approves. There has
been boldness without insolence, and firmness with-
out obstinacy. There
has been no shabby taking
advantage of Northern Weakness, but there has been
enough said and done to show that the days of
such trimming to Yankee impudence as was com-
mon in the days of PEEL and ASHBURTON, are
past and gone. We cannot imagine a course
which could more commend itself to the electoral
class of England, than that which the Government
has pursued on the great and often difficult ques-
tion of the hour—the American war. Hence
we
cannot doubt that Lord PALMERSTON would wel-
come being factiously compelled to resort to an

approving country.
There seems also to be a general impression that,
besides the continuance of the American war ren-
dering a change of Ministry undesirable, the
session which first receives the information of the
QUEEN'S widowhood, and has to condole with her
on the sad fact, and the ses3ion ychich assemble
on the eve of the Great Exhibition, in which the
deceased Prince took so deep an interest, is not one
Which should be distinguished by any great fight
of political parties. No one can tell, of coarse, what
a Parliamentary day may bring forth; but the im-
pression seems to be that, if nothing more turns up
than is now known to all, the known circumstances
of the year impose a kind of political truce. Skir-
mishes there will certainly be. Wednesday

must hare its E ccleiica and, perhaps,
Parliamentary Reform tournaments; but there
will be no general engagements under the auspices

of the Commanders-in-Chief. Sir JOHN TRE-

LAWNY will not forget Church Rate Abolition, and

Mr, DISRAELI will be called on to propose his plan,

which the decision of Mr. SPEAKER last year re-
quires him in honour to do—Sir MORTON PETO
Will contend that all parishioners have a right to
the parish burial ground on equal terms—and Mr.
DILLWYN will demand that when grammar school
trust deeds specify no particular form of creed
or worship, no persons shall be excluded from
them on account of their creed. Probably, also,
Mr. LOCKE KING and Mr. BAINES will not allow
their respective proposals to rust. Why should
they ? The House of Commons and Cabinet Mini-
sters have affirmed their justice and fitness—why
should not the House be kept in mind of its incon-
sistency till it repents and becomes consistent ?
These motions, however, through Whig heartless-
ness and Tory vigour against all progress, will be
easily despatched in their infancy.
Possibly there may be a little disputation over
the Mexican war. Success, however, seems likely,
and is the most efficient of all answers; Poland,
Hungary, Austria, will all be probably discussed,
but opinion, so far as expressed, will be tolerably
unanimous, and non-intervention will cover a multi-
tude of sins. Aristocrats would like to interfere to
coerce Hungarians into submission—the people to
encourage them to be firm to the last ; but by
doing nothing our Government will adapt itself to
the practical opinion of the majority, which is that
we can do nothing. In regard to Italy, France,
and Austria, in their relations with each other, the
Government is presumed to be of the same opinion
as the country. Lord JOHN RUSSELL would
probably, were it of any use, counsel Austria
to sell Venetia, and pay her debts with the money,
and France to leave the POPE and ANTONELLI to
the Italians, with whom they say they are in
excellent relations. If papers had to be produced
they would probably be quite satisfactory.
India will present better prospects than for
many years. The expenditure and revenue are
approaching a balance, if they have not found it
already. The measure for selling waste lands,
originally enjoined by Lord STANLEY, will be
popular, and to that has been added a commence-
ment of even redeeming the land tax, and con-
verting the proprietorship into fee simple. The
cotton question has also been vigorously taken up
in India, and it can be shown that if the Govern-
ment cannot in one year make good the neglect
of 20 years, it has yet done all that was possible.
The great blame still lies with Manchester. The
manufacturers, as a class, persist in hoping for
American slave grown cotton, and refuse to make
the very slight alterations of their machinery re-
quisite for the successful forking of Indian cotton.
Possibly the Irish members, the " Pope's own"
at least, will show their teeth at the Government,
because in common with all the country, the
Foreign Secretary does not think it the duty of
France, or say other power, to keep the poor
Romans under the feet of the Pope and his Peru-
gian Cardinal ; but we suppose the Irish troublers
of Parliamentary peace will be bound over to keep
it by the unsettled affair of the Galway Packet
Company. The Education Minute will possibly
give occasion for a DISRALT onslaught ; and pro-
bably the Premier may incline to sacrificing some
of the more questionable details of the measure.
We can hardly, however, suppose that the House of
Commons will allow itself to be overpowered by the
clamour of an interested class, who have already
received, somewhat freely, the money of the coun-
try, for the most insignificant results. The main
position of the Government will surely be sustained
by the House—that we must have results for the
nation's money. The mode of ascertaining those
results, may, indeed, be modified, but it must not
be a sham mode. If we pay to have reading, writing,
and arithmetic taught, we must have this at least
done, or decline to pay.
Law reforms seem to be those chiefly looked for.
The Bankruptcy Bill needs to Ls perfected; and
tl4 sooner the better, all the laws relating to the
subject embodied in one statute. The Conveyance
of land, on which Sir HUGH CAIRNS tried his skill,
is a subject for which the materials are ready,
and nothing but the will is wanting to
sweep away the cobwebs of old rou-
tine objections. Minor matters also demand
attention, and will repay it. Our law-reforming
Chancellor will surely not allow his term of office
to pass away, without originating, in a house
which is appropriate to such measures, some which
shall be worthy of his reputation and ability. As
to her MAJESTY'S Speech, we need not attempt
to foreshadow what our readers will have in their
hands at an early hour to-morrow. Domestic
sorrow ; pleasant relations with other Powers I
regret for the war in America, and consequent
suffering in Lancashire ; perhaps an allusion
to the lamentable accident in the North, and a
hint at legislation for the future ; such things,
with Mexico, a hopeful finance, and the happy
results of the French treaty, will doubtless be
among the chief topics.

El Dorado appears to have been discovered after
all. Not in Peru or Mexico—net in Golconda or
California : but in those new and wonderful gold.
fields in British Columbia. The accounts coming
to us for some considerable time past from the
banks of the Frazer River have read quite fabu-
lously. The description of the " finds" there have
seemed to indicate an inclination on the part of the
writers to take a " rise" out of our credulity. The
flights of arrowy news coming to us across the
whole breadth of the American Continent and the
whole width of the Atlantic Ocean have apparently
been discharged in our direction by nothing less
than the long bow. We have listened and looked
at this intelligence from time to time somewhat in-
credulously. But after all even the wildest and most
improbable stories turn out literally to be within
the mark, to be perfectly veracious, to be the simple
and sober records of actual facts. The Timos'
correspondent, writing from Victoria, the capital of
Vancouver's Island, under date the 29th of last No-
vember, has given to the English public at home
authentic particulars as to the fruitfulness of
these gold fields of British Columbia, calculated
to lure the Youth of the United Kingdom to the
eastern borders of the Pacific, as fast as steam
and wind can bear them, armed with pick and
spade, with mattock and rocker. There, in truth,
in that last and almost, it would seam, richest of
our sixty colonies, the fabled El Dorado has at
length been brought to light—El Dorado, that
is, in the rough. No cities of palaces
are there, nor streets paved with gold, nor
houses roofed
with
dream-towns of childhood panca k: es,
but—in like tl
iheeu
of
unl dl etrhf
that
tl
—as flowery eflake
ryasndanfdruintnitl fu wilderness, with gold in
dust
2s scattered about the earth
in gorgeous litter, as though the banks of Fraser
River were TOM TIDDLEIeB Ground,
by the delight_
point of this auriferous region goes The central
ful name out there of Cariboo—a savage Corrup-
tions it would seem, of Cerfbosuf. Cariboo It
sounds already agreeably in one's ears, like the
chink of those opulent-looking canvas bags that

,--__. --
the banker's clerks bring up from the lower
r e
city,gi o n e
es e
a ofs i
etnhae greatu
nsttho
rr
ee
thtoi ue se
fora of
pblue lalsi o in h a
nn t
in
ttere-
val of counting and weighing—to pour out like gol-
den-fiakey grain upon the counter, and to shovel up
into scales with scoops, used like the meal measure
borrowed by Am BABA'S wife from her next door
neighbour. Cariboo! It rings with an irresistible
summons across the American Continent, bidding
all the stalwart Youth of England who have no-
thing better before them to do, at once to hasten out
thither, for the purpose not of picking up a mere
living, not of scraping together just barely
enough to keep body and soul together,
but to fill their now empty coffers as fast as their
strong young arms can shovel up the squandered
wealth lying there all along the banks of that modern
Pactolus. There in British Columbia, especially in
Cariboo, there would have been no necessity to en-
dow that wretched mythical King of old, the arch-
type of avaricious luxury, with power to turn every-
thing into gold when he touched it. There the auri-
ferous transformation is already accomplished for
all alike—for all kinds of corners promiscuously.
The voyagers to Cariboo have but to stoop and
gather up the common earth at their feet,
and lo ! it is full of it. The golden
plenty glitters within their grasp substantially,
and not like the fabled gold from Fairyland—gold
turning upon the morrow into dead leaves, or melt-
ing in the palm like a snow flake. Cariboo might
most appropriately have been the transatlantic
domain belonging to Miss KILMANSEGG of golden
memory. For there, as with all that golden-legged
lady's belongings, it is "gold, gold, nothing but
gold." It is the one exceptional spot, one might
say, reading the authentic and veracious narratives
now just coming to this country from Cariboo under
the hand of the Times' Correspondent—that really,
we say, would appear to be the one exceptional spot
upon the surface of the earth where the familiar
adage is contradicted, and where all is gold that
glitters.
The particular region where all these latest mar-
vels in the way of gold digging have been brought
to light, promises to be one of such wonderful
importance in the influence it is likely to have
directly upon the commercial enterprise of the
Anglo-Saxon race, and indirectly, of course, more
or less, upon the commercial enterprise of all
other trading communities that we give the account
of it precisely as it is told to us by the accurate
pen of this keen observer. Here is his descrip-
tion of it—and the spot ought, henceforth, to be
marked in "letters of gold" on every future map
of our North American provinces :—" The por-
tion of British Columbia which has yielded
nearly all the gold produced this year,
and which is destined to attract the notice of
the world to a degree hitherto not accorded to the
country in the 'aggregate, is a newly-discovered dis-
trict called Cariboo (a corruption of ' Cerfbsauf,' a
large species of reindeer which inhabits the coun-
try.) The district is about 500 miles, in the interior,
north (or north-east rather) from the coast of British
Columbia and the mouth of Prue,' River. It is not
far from the sources or ' head waters' of the south
branch of Fraser River and the Rocky Mountains,
and forms a patch of country—a broken, rugged
mass of mountains and streams, 50 miles from north
to south and 30 miles from east to west, as far as
yet known from recent exploration—round three
sides of which the south branch of the Fraser makes
a great bend or semicircle from its source to its
junction with the north branch, near Fort George,
a trading station of the Hudson Bay Com-
pany, in about lat. 53 deg. 50 min. N." The
geographical position is thus quite accurately
defined. No one can now plead ignorance as to its
whereabouts. There, and not in the mountains of
the moon, or in the flying island of Gulliver, or in
the imaginary regions of Cipango, or in the fabled
realms of PRESTRE JOHN, is the true El Dorado.
There, and not anywhere else, not in the " dig-
ings" of Australia, not the gold fields of California, is
the Treasure Trove—a treasure worthy of the name,
for never yet has there been such a " find" of gold
anywhere brought to light within so brief
an interval. It is but the other day,
as it were, that Sir BUMPER LITTON
marked out the site of the new colony—and
already it gives promise of taking its place ra-
pidly among the first and foremost of all our
colonies. It has a delightful and salubrious climate,
a fruitful and virginal soil, a magnificent seaboard,
a superb harbour in its immediate vicinity, mean-
ing that of Esquimalt, and above all it has strewn
affluently all along the borders of Fraser River
particularly at a spot already defined with the ut-
most nicety, and known (apparently but very
superficially known indeed) among the natives as
Cariboo—" Gold, gold, gold, gold"—in abundance.

His Highness the Maharajah Dnleep Singh has
arrived at Claridge's Hotel from Isfulgrave Castle, 'York-
shire.

The Archbishop of York has arrived at Claridge's
Hotel from the Archiepiscopal Palace, York.
The Marquis and Marchioness of Londonderry
arrived in town yesterday evening from Powerscourt Castle,
county Wicklow.
The Marquis and Marchioness of Westminster
arrived at Grosvenor House last evening from Eaton Hall,
Cheshire.
The Earl and Countess Howe have arrived at
Curzon House from Gopsall Hali, Leicestershire.

The Earl and Countess of Donoughmore have
arrived in town from their seat in Ireland.

Field-Marshal Viscount Combermere is prevented
attending the opening of Parliament by an attack of rheu-
matic gout.

Viscount and Lady Mary Sandon leave town to
day for Folkestone, on their way to the South of France.

THE HOUSE OF LORDS.—Some new peers, as well
as some new commoners, will be entitled to take their seats
in the assembly of Parliament to-morrow. In consequence
of the death of the Earl of Mount-Edgcumbe, Viscount
Valletort, M.P., will be called to take his seat in virtue of
the earldom, he being the sth earl. His lordship was born
in 1832. By the death of Baron Ponsonby, intelligence of
which reached England in October, his cousin, the Hon.
William Ponsonby, succeeds to the peerage. His lordship
is the only son of the late Hon. and Right Rev. Richard
Ponsonby, D.D., Lord Bishop of Derry and Raphoe. By
the death of the Earl of Yarborough, Lord Worsley, late
M.P. for Great Grimsby, succeeds to the peerage. By the
death of the Earl of Eglinton and the Earl Forteseue, the
number of peers has been reduced by two, the present Earl
of Eglinton being only 20 years of age, and the present
Earl Fortescue having for some time past had a seat in the
House of Lords as Viscount Ebrington.

1 THE PROTOSTSHIP OF ETON.—In conformity
with the statutes, the election of a provost, in the room of
the Rev. Dr. E. C. Hawtrey, deceased, will take place on
Tuesday next, the 11th inst. The appointment is worth
£3,000 a year, and is tenable with the incumbency of the
parish of Eton. A meeting of the fellows is summoned for
Tuesday to elect a provost, but there appears to be some
doubt whether the nomination rests with the fellows or
with the Crown. The college authorities and the Crown
have been in conflict in former times upon tho matter.
Somo years since the Crown nominated the Rev. Francis
Hodgson (a son-in-law of Lord Denman) to the provost-
ship, but the fellows resisted, and elected Dr. Lonsdale, at
present Bishop of Lichfield. The Ministerial appointment
was, after some legal difficulties, acceded to.
THE SOUTHERN STATES OF AMERICA.—Within
the last fortnight, the representative of a Liverpool house
engaged a nutater of engravers, lithographers, and copper-
plate printers to proceed to the Southern States of America.
They have been engaged for three years, and are to receive
each from £3 to £0 per week. So secret was the whole
affair managed that none of them knew how they were to
be conveyed to their destination, nor what particular busi-
ness they were to carry out, nor who were the real employers.
All they were, informed was that they were to be ready to
start on Friday night last, and that a &,rt!..tip firm in Liver.
pool would guarantee their wages and expenses, they having
power to break the bargain at the end of any of the years.
his surmised that they are to be employed in a Confederate
States Government printing office, to print paper money..
North British Nag