The Sun.
London, England, 1865-09-01 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIDIES.—No one has paid any attention to the
government of India without coming to the conclu-
sion that our Eatern Empire is too big and too far
off to be ruled with success by any single authority.
We at home have long since come to the conclusion
that we had better abstain from interference except
upon rare occasions, and that then we should con-
fine ourselves to the enunciation of principles, and
not venture upon the elaboration of details. It is
often difficult to determine where principles end and
details begin, but we have on the whole succeeded
in making the distinction, and we have undoubtedly
been stimulated to do so by the sense that no admi-
nistrative ability could rule India from England.
The men who are to hold the chief offices in the
East are chosen at home, and are sent out with some
general instructions for their guidance, but a wide
latitude is allowed to them in interpreting them. All
this is perfectly understood, but it is not sufficiently
acknowledged that India is as much too big for the
Governor-General in Council as it is for the Secre-
tary of State at home. Two papers recently issued
from the office of the Secretary of State for India
strikingly show the amount of chance that exists in
the Indian Government. They give the results of
so-called reproductive works undertaken in different
parts of the Empire, and it is impossible to look at
them without perceiving how much the success or
failure of these works has depended upon the good
or bad choice of the officer of Engineers who con-
structed the one or the other of them pretty much
on his own responsibility. One of these returns re-
lates to the reproductive works undertaken in the
Presidency of Madras. The figures contained in it
are not altogether trustworthy, for the accounts
upon which it is based are, as often happens in India
improperly made up; but, after making every al-
lowance for errors, enough remains to strike us with
astonishment. It is evident that there are almost
unlimited opportunities for the construction of pro-
fitable works if they are properly planned. The re-
turn is made up in the following fashion :—ln the
first column is a statement of the actual amount
standing to the debit of the capital account of each
work—that is to say, the total sum expended on its
construction, less such portions of it as have been
written off from time to time on 'account of the de-
terioration of the work by wear and tear. The
next columns contain the net profit or the net loss
for each year, after deducting from the income
actually received interest at the rate of 4 per cent.
on the capital standing to the debit of the work,
and also the estimated deterioration. The last
column gives the aggregate sum of profit and loss
realised from the work in question. Thus we have,
with reference to the Godavery Anicut and its sub-
sidiary Works in the year 1862-3, the following
figures :
Capital. Year's Profit. Aggregate Profit.
£337,750 £145,992 £949,839
the meaning being that the actual sum expended on
the Anicut up to 1862-3, after allowing for dete-
rioration in the work, was £337,750, the profit in
that year upon this capital was £145,992, and the
total sum returned to the Government by these
Irrigation Works was £949,839. The only objec-
tion to this statement at the first sight is that more
than 4 per cent. ought to be charged by way of
interest on capital expended. The Indian Govern-
ment pays its creditors more than 4 per cent., and
it ought to charge at least as much as it has to pay.
A more serious objection, however, appears when
we examine the way each year's profit is calculated.
This is got at by deducting from the revenue re-
ceived from all the land irrigated by the Anicut the
average revenue of the same land in the five years
previous to its construction, and the balance, less
the allowance for interest, &c., is all put down as
the profit of the Anicut. It is obvious this is much
too favourable a mode of calculation. The land
revenue or rent may have risen, and in fact has
risen, from circumstances quite independent of the
improved irrigation of the land; prices have gone
up in Madras as in the other Presidencies, and rent
has risen with them, 'although more slowly. The
Indian Government, in attributing to its Irrigation
Works the increase of its land revenue, has acted
as a landowner would who, possessing a farm
near a rising town, should attribute every in-
crease of rental to his expenditure upon
drainage. 'The true plan would have been to
ascertain, from the comparative rentals of
lands which had not been benefited by Ir-
rigation Works, how much of the increase in the
land revenue where they existed was directly due to
them, and how much to the general progress of the
country, and until this is done a certain suspicion
hangs over the Returns. We may, however, be
satisfied that a considerable part of the increase is
due to Irrigation Works, and the increase is such
that ample allowances may be made for other causes.
Thus the Godavery Anicut, as we have seen, re-
turned in one year a profit of £145,992 on an out-
lay of £337,750, or 43.2 per cent. ; an Anicut in
South Arcot, which cost only £11,647, brought in
in 1862-3 a profit of £39,924, or 342 per cent. ;
in another case £8,215 produced £lO,lBO, or 124
per cent. ; and an Anicut in Tanjore, which cost
£23,956, returned £175,090 in 1858-9, or 730 per
cent., though it must be added, the profit on this
Work fell in' ater years to 265 per cent. These are
among the most profitable Wo.ks in the Madras
Presidency, but most of the Anicuts in it have been
more or less profitable, and those which have re-
sulted in losses have, with the single exception of the
undeveloped Works in the Coimbatore district, only
small balances against them. There is enoughvariety
to show the existence of chance in the Public Works
of India, but the Engineers of Madras have, on the
whole, been able and successful. Simultaneously,
however, with the Madras Return has been issued an
account of the Canals in the North-Western Pro-
vince, which tells a very different tale. Among them
is the notorious Ganges Canal, upon which alone
' more than two millions of capital have been sunk,
with such results that in 1862-3 the-expense of its
management and maintenanance exceeded the in-
come by £17,860. This unhappy canal, with a
discharge of a cubic foot per second, irrigates on an
average no more than 77 acres, while the East
Janina Canal irrigates 236 acres ; and the con-
sequence is that, instead of the loss on the Ganges
Canal, a capital of £143,449 sunk in the East Jumna
produced a net income in 1862-3 of £11,871, or
more than 8 per cent. The incomes of these and
the other Canals in the North West are made up of
actual payments by the cultivator of the soil of
so much per acre for the irrigation done, and in
this respect the administration of these Provinces
has an advantage over the Madras Presidency, but
otherwise the Canal accounts of the North-West
appear to be in the greatest confusion. The sums
levied by way of charge for irrigation vary consider-
ably, the work done is extremely irregular, and though
it is difficult to discover what is the cost of manage-
ment in each case, it is sufficiently evident that it is

out of all proportion to the income received. The
Governor-General in Council has already ordered
many important reforms to be adopted in the Pro-
vinces with the hope of obtaining some return from
the Canals for the capital spent on them ; but the
faults of construction of the Ganges Canal threaten
to prove a source of constant expense, and to thwart
every effort of the Administration. There cau
no reason in the nature of things why Reproductive
Works undertaken in one province of India should
be eminently successful, and in the next as eminent
failures, and we are driven to the conclusion that
the diversity of results is directly due to the diver-
sity of skill in those who plan them and superintend
their construction. The Governor-General in coun-
cil is obliged to trust to subordinates, and the latter
are not always of the same ability. The enormous
profits which are derived from works properly con-
structed may, however, point to a way of escaping
from the dilemma of doing nothing or of working
in the dark as to results. There seems no reason
why Irrigation Works in India should not be under-
taken by incorporations of capitalists, just as rail-
ways are. The experience of the last few years has,
indeed, shown that in India itself there is great
readiness among the wealthy natives to combine to-
gether for the prosecution of any work that pro-
mises to be profitable, and with a little encourage-
ment at starting private enterprise would take up
the work of irrigating the peninsula to such an ex-
tent that the Imperial Government might almost
retire from it. Some jealousy might at first be felt
of intrusting such important works to independent
speculators, but jealousies of this kind are fast pass-
ing away, and the development of Irrigation Works
would be one of the best possible means of making
English capital useful to India.

HERALD.—The minor German Powers, on whom
rests so large a share of the responsibility of the
Danish war, are by no means content with the solu-
tion of the question which Prussia and Austria have
offered them. The two latter States have not only
eaten the oyster and given Germany the shell, but
they have completed their repast in a manner so os-
tentatiously contemptuous of the sentiments of every
German who is not a Prussian or an Austrian, that
the outsiders are beginning to feel anxious about
their own rights, and to look with grave misgivings
on the brilliant example of successful force which
Herr Von Bismarck has been setting them. As yet
it is true the two great German Powers have only
profited at the expense of the foreigner, and that
foreigner the weakest and most disliked of all their
neighbours. For, although indirectly, the Duke of
Augustenburg has been quite as much despoiled of
his provinces as the King of Denmark, his sove-
reignty never actually existed. But when the Fede-
ral Diet is quietly ignored, and the claims of the
pretender in whose cause the war was actually un-
dertaken are snuffed out, with as little consideration
as if neither the Diet nor the Duke were in exis-
tence, we can understand that the petty potentates,
who have so long played off Austria and Prussia to
their own advantage, and who evidently hoped to
make them their mere tools in their aggressions
against a neighbouring State, already scent mischief
in the air, and feel the necessity of some kind of
action to avert the distant but still threatening
danger. The truth is the real union of Austria and
Prussia means unmistakeably the reduction of the
power, if not of the pretensions, of the rest of the
German Confederation to comparatively insignifi-
cant proportions. And if it be true that that union
has been cemented by them which confirms Prussia
in the undisturbed possession of the territory wrested
from Denmark, and gives to Austria a Prussian gua-
rantee for the security of her non-German provinces,
then the rest of Germany may reasonably feel some
apprehension. Bavaria has been the first on the
present occasion to sound a note of alarm, if not of
absolute defiance. The official organ of the Bava-
rian Government announces that Bavaria is no
party to the policy of the great German Powers
upon the Schleswig-Holstein question; that she will
oppose it in the Federal Diet ; and that she still
maintains the right of the Duke of Augustenburg
to the sovereignty of the Duchies. Whether the
other minor states will follow her example remains
to be seen. The organ of Von Beust in Saxony used
remarkably strong language a week or two since in
regard to the ambitious projects of Prussia. Possi-
bly the example of Bavaria may stimulate the Go-
vernment of Saxony to a similar course of action,
and Wurtemburg is tolerably certain to follow suit.
We shall then have a strong opposition in and out-
side the Federal Diet, and the result of the divided
councils can hardly be very satisfactory for any one
of the powers engaged in the spoliation of Denmark.
We cannot say we sympathise with the opposition.
Neither Prussia nor Austria are primarily responsi-
ble for the aggression upon Denmark. Both powers
have in their turn incurred considerable unpopula-
rity in resisting the aggressive fever which possessed
Germany, and nowherp is their inaction so violently
censured, as in Saxony and Bavaria. If, after all,-
the result of the war is to strengthen the two great
powers at the expense of the rest of Germany, the
rest of Germany has only its own crooked and foolish
policy to thank for the unpleasant change. One
thing is certain, the opposition will effect little.
Prussia is not likely to relax the hold she has gained
on the Duchies. She has fleshed her sword, and felt
her strength. She has apparently made Austria safe.
She has no fear, as she might have had some years
ago, of a coalition between the small German States
and a foreign power. The time is gone by for that.
So she may proceed quietly to digest and assimilate
her spoil, while Bavaria and Saxony amuse them-
selves with empty protests, which can only serve to
bring every day into stronger relief the fiction of
power they exercise in the councils of the Diet. At
present the Schleswig-Holstein question appears to
have received a definite solution. We see, or think
we see, the end of it. -Whether from its ashes there
will not arise .a serious complication in the internal
affairs of the German Confederation is a question on
which every one who watches the tendency of poli-
tics in Germany must entertain very grave doubt.

THE CONDITION OF SIGNOR GIUGLINI.—The
Diritto of the 25th August gives the following sad
account of the great tenor's state of mind :—" Poor
Giuglini ! the first physicians have examined him, and
there remains no longer any hope of his cure. This
famous tenor, who held so long the first rank at her Ma-
jesty's Theatre, has still, indeed, a ray now and then of
reason, but it is only of short duration. Three days ago
two Italian gentlemen whom he hadknown at Milan came
to see him at the house of the doctor who has the care of
him. Giuglini Was sitting upon a couch, in a dressing-
gown, with a portion of 'Faust' in his hands. When they
entered the great singer rose to meet them, grasped them
by the hand, and spoke for 20 minutes about London, Paris,
Naples, and Milan. During the conversation ho expressed
himself with clearness and good sense, and nobody would
have thought the unhappy man was mad. No sooner,
however, did one of the Italians pronounce the words St.
Petersburg' than his eyes began to glitter and stare, and
he said in a strange tone to his old friends, ' Will you go
to the opera to-night ? I will find you seats.' The Italians
humoured him, and said, Yes ;' whereupon he gave them
each a chair and went out of the apartment. By-and-
bye he returned in the costume of Gennaro, and sang in
his own sweet manner the romance, Anch io provai le
tenere.' Then he went on all alone to give the last scene;
his chest heaved, his face was lit up with pleasure ; his
voice, plaintive with sighs, struck pity to the mind as he
sang, with extraordinary tenderness, the words—
' Madre, se ognor lontano
Vissi did materno seno
A lui unisca Iddio.'

After that he stood up to his full height for a moment, his
arms Igrew rigid, and he fell flat like a man struck by
lightning. The medical attendant was summoned directly,
and found Giuglini in a state of the most complete prostra-
tion : nor from that time has he as yet recognised ani
one."

ELECTION OF LORD MAYOR OF LONDON.—The
ceremony of electing a Lord Mayor of the City of
London, in succession to Mr. Alderman Warren Stormes
Hale, the present chief magistrate, will take place on Fri-
day, the 29th inst. Those members of the Court of Alder-
men who have passed the shrievalty are alone eligible, and
those who have not passed the chair stand in the following
order :—Mr. Alderman Benjamin Samuel Phillips (Farring-
don Within), elected 1837 ; Mr. Alderman Thomas Gabriel
(Vintry), elected 1857 ; Mr. Alderman William Fernley
Allen (Cheap), elected 1858 ; Mr. Alderman John Joseph
Mechi (Lime-street), elected 1858 ; Mr. Alderman Abbiss
(Bridge Within), elected 1859; Mr. Alderman James Clarke
Lawrence (Walbrook), elected 1860 ; Mr. Alderman Thomas
Dakin (Candlewick), elected 1861; Mr. Alderman Besley
(Aldersgate), elected 1861; Mr. Alderman Lusk (Aldgate),
elected 1863. Mr. Alderman Dakin and Mr. Alderman Besley
are the present sheriffs, but their term of office will have
expired before the election for the mayoralty. The other
aldermen below the chair, Messrs. Gibbons, Waterlow, and
Stone, not having been sheriffs, are ineligible for the office
of chief magistrate. The ordinary course pursued at such
elections is for the livery to return the names of the two
senior aldermen below the chair to the Court of Aldermen,
who select one as the new Lord Mayor, and the Court of
Aldermen almost unanimously select the senior of the two.
In the event, therefore, of the old custom being adhered
to, Alderman Phillips will be Lord Mayor of London for
the year 1865-66. The livery may, however, return any two
of the aldermen below the chair if they please, and an
elector may, if he is so disposed, nominate the present Lord
Mayor for re-election, or any alderman who has passed the
civic chair in addition to those returned by the livery. This
was recently done when Alderman Cubitt was proposed for
re-election in opposition to Sir Henry Maggeridge, who
was the first in order below the chair. When three are
nominated in this way a poll must take place, and the Court
of Aldermen make their selection from the two who re-
ceive the largest number of votes from the livery.
CRYSTAL PALACE.-- ONE SHILLING DAY, Thurs-
day, Aug. 31.—Admissions on payment, 7,998; ditto by
season tickets, 2,lsB—total visitors, 10,156.

The Kurd6r by Germans at Stratford.

Yesterday morning Jacob Brenner, aged 24, and Charles
Heins, aged 24, on remand for feloniously cutting and
wounding Joseph Kuchen, aged 40, a master cabinet-
maker, were again brought up at the West Ham police-
court, before Major Suart and H. C. King, Esq.
The unfortunate man, Joseph Kuchen, having died on
Tuesday night in the London Hospital, from one of the
wounds received, the charge was altered to one of wilful
murder against Jacob Brenner, whose eyes were much
blackened and swollen, said to be received in the fearful
affray in which he was engaged.

Mr. Standage said he should ask their worships to re-
mand the case till after the inquest, but as there was no
case against Heins, he should apply for his discharge.
Mr. John Schwytze was again sworn as interpreter, and
the depositions already taken were again read over.
The depositions taken stated that Leonard Kuchen saw
the stabs inflicted in the arm.

The witness wished them to be corrected, and for it to
be stated that he only saw the stabs. The witness added
he was quite sure he saw the wound inflicted outside the
house in the belly, which the medical gentleman, Dr.
Mugliston, said was the dangerous one. It was done by
Jacob Brenner, and ho was wrestling with the deceased.
The stab inflicted in the belly was given after Brenner
had his hat. He did not see Heins till after his father was
stabbed the last time.

In answer to the prisoner Brenner, the witness said ho
was quite sure he saw blood on him.

Prisoner Brenner—Did you see any knife in my hand ?
Witness—l did. I saw it glare in the light.
The following dying declaration was then read. (John
Klaiber, K, 312, in this case acted as interpreter) :
" London Hospital, August 29, 1865.

"I, Joseph Kuchen, residing at No. 1, Edith-cottages,
Chandos-road, Stratford, New Town, believe I am dying,
and wish to make the following declaration—Yes. I know
Brenner and Heins. Brenner was going with me about 11
o'clock on Sunday night last. Brenner had a quarrel with
my son about three weeks ago, and while in the workshop
on the Sunday night in question, without saying anything
to me, he took a knife from the carpenter's bench, and
stabbed me in the abdomen and on the arm. I never gave
him any provocation to strike me. I always thought him a
quiet man. He worked for me. I never had a quarrel
with him before. I had been drinking with Brenner, and
believe he was drunk, but I was sober. I did not know the
reason he stabbed me, unless it was on account of the quar-
rel he had with my son about three weeks ago. I always
behaved very kind to him, and paid him for what he did
for me. I know nothing of Heins, nor did he strike me.
(Signed) " JOSEPH KUTCHEN.
" Before George Welland;Mackenzie, Stephen Standage,
and John Klaiber."

The Bench—Were those depositions taken before a
magistrate ?
Mr. Inspector Standage—No. I received information
from the hospital that the man was dying, and I went to
the Thames Police-court. I saw there a magistrate, and he
he told me that as the case had been heard before an Essex
magistrate the deposition had better be taken before one. I
told him I should have to go to Woodford, or to Chigwell,
and perhaps before that the time the man would be dead.
He would not go, and I took the deposition without.
The prisoner Heins was then discharged, and placed in
the witness-box. He said he had lodged for a week with
Brenner at Kitchen's house. He, on Sunday night, went
to the railway station to see a friend off in company with
Kuchen, Brenner, Mrs. Kuchen, and Leonard Kuchen, the
son of the deceased. Mrs. Kuchen and her son went home,
and he, witness, and Kuchen, senior, and prisoner, went
to have some beer. When they got home the deceased man
pulled the key of the door out of his pocket and then pushed
Brenner into the house. He, witness, then said to Brenner,
" Let him, Kuchen, alone, he is drunk." Brenner then
wanted to get through the window into the cabinet shop.
He eventually went through, and he, witness, then saw
the father go to him, and the father and Leonard, the son,
beat him. Leonard Kuchen, the son, then threw the pri-
soner's hat through the window, and Brenner then ran
away. He then heard Mrs. Kuchen say her husband had
got stabs in the arm. This was all he knew about it.
The case was then adjourned.