The Sun.
London, England, 1853-05-05 00:00:00

LONDON, THURSDAY EVENING, MAY 5, 1853.

ANCHOR ASSURANCE COMPANY,.
67, Cheapside, London.
For the younger ages the premiums of Life Assurance required by
this Company will be found lower than those of most other offices ;
while the bonus additions that are periodically made from the Com-
pany's profits tend still further to lessen the cost of assurance. Life
annuities are granted by the Company on equitable terms.
The prospectus may be had at the offices in London, or at any of
the agencies in the principal to T
.sn of the kingdom.
BELL, Secretary and Actuary.

LAURENT'S CASINO, ARGYLL ROOMS.-
Lessee, CHARLES E. LAURENT, Onslow-house, Fulham-
road. Open Every Evening. The Orchestra will perform, during
the wees, "The Thistle," "Shamrock," "Rose," "Amina" 'Gran-
ville " "Loch Vogel," and "Windsor Castle" Waltzes; he "Napo-
leon" Galep; "Le Cirque" Quadrille ; " The Gold Hawk' and
" Jano" Polkas.— Admission, Is. Doors open at Half-past Eight ;
Dancing to commence at Nine o'clock, and terminate at Half-past
Eleven.

EXCISE-OFFICE, in Old Broad-street.
To be SOLD, by AUCTION (in one Lot), by Mr. Gadson,
at the AUCTION MART, on FRIDAY, the 13th of May, 1853, at 12
o'clock, by order of the Commiss!oners of Inland Revenue, the
PREMISES in Old Broad-street, in the city of London, known for-
merly as the EXCISE-OFFICE, and lately as the Inland Revenue-
office.
Particulars may be obtained at the offices of the Secretary and
Solicitor of Inland Revenue, Somerset-house; and of William 11cr
hell, Esq., the Board's Surveyor of Buildings, at his office on the
premises, in Old Broad-street (where a plan of the property may be
seen), and of the Auctioneer, at his offices, No.lB in the same street.

SPIRIT OP THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

(Prom the Times.)
Mr. Gladstone's is not the only budget. The Regis-
trar-General makes up his .account as regularly as the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, and his figuees, while
equally interesting, are far more incontrovertible. It is
curious, indeed, to observe how closely in some respects
the two statements arc connected. The prosperity of
the public finances is reflected immediately in the aspect
of the public health and in the condition of public morals.
We remember once to have seen a concordance or table
of comparative statistics, carefully drawn out, and pre-
senting in parallel columns the price of bread and the
number of criminal convictions in the several counties
of England during a series of years, and we believe that
the idea might be most instructively carried out with
every issue of the Registrar-General's returns. When
taxation is evenly and justly distributed, to the emanci-
pation of industry, the relief of trade, and the encourage-
ment of enterprise ; when class legislation is set aside,
and no party interests are exclusively consulted, to the
prejudice of others, then the country flourishes—mar-
riages and births increase and deaths diminish. Yet
both accounts are liable to unexpected disturbance. A
Chancellor of the Exchequer finds the savings of a twelve-
month consumed by a Kafir War, and now the Regis-
trar-General is compelled to record that the pleasing
results of social prosperity have been seriously neutralised
by the unparalleled character of the weather !
There is really a certain satisfaction in finding this
staple topic of Englishmen exalted at last to the dignity
of a scientific principle. People have been right, after
all, in talking so perpetually about the weather. In this,
as in other cases, instinct was in advance of intellect, and
what was described as an impression was positively a fact.
There is a plain, discernible connection between the na-
ture of the season and the state of public health—a
connection, indeed, so strong that other influences
appear- to be fairly overpowered by that of-'the atmo-
sphere. The past quarter, for instance, ought, according
to all calculations, to have been unusually fortunate,
and in some respects it was so, for the marriages were
greatlyin excess of any previous, return, and the births
showed little abatement, from tht,o44lished rate of
progress. But, though these °Vents maintained 'them-
selves independently of the weather, others could not.
" The increase of families," says Mr. Farr, " implies
that the condition of the great body of the people is
prosperous ; but the prosperity of a nation," he adds,
"is sometimes overpowered by death, and has hap-
pened that the mortality of the last three months has,
notwithstanding the activity of trade, been unusually
high, through the inclemency of the season, the preva-
lence of epidemics, and perhaps the partial destruction
of the potato crop."
On perusing the catalogue of the phenomena made
accountable for these unfortunate consequences, we
certainly experience a vivid impression of the strange-
ness of the season. The whole " meteorology of the
quarter" was disturbed. We had temperature of ex-
traordinary height in January, and of lowness as re•
markable in February and March ; indeed, even April,
although it does not enter into Mr. Farr's present ac-
count, was scarcely an improvement upon the months
preceding. To these chronic influences were added
"extreme transitions of heat and cold • unusual falls of
snow, hail, fogs, thunderstorms, lightnings, zodiacal
lights, solar and lunar hakes, and auroras." Altogether,
but with especial reference to "the depressed tempe-
rature of February and March," ,the deaths in the
quarter are reported to exceed by 11,559 those of the
corresponding quarter of 1852, and the " natural increase
of the population," notwithstanding the progress of
marriages and births, is less than it should be by some-
thing like 12,000. This, it must be admitted, is a most
striking exemplification of what the weather can effect.
Of the two other causes to which the Registrar-
; General ascribes a portion of these results it is obvious
that one—" the prevalence of epidemics"—is in all pro-
bability nothing but a symptom of the atmospheric in-
fluence itself. The other—the partial failure of the
potato—would operate more independently, but also, as
we imagine, to a less extent. We have once before put
on record the extraordinary importance which is now
attached in sanitary science to the use of the potato as a
common esculent. It appears that no single vegetable
will supply the place of this root in the economy of the
table, and that even wholesome bread is but a defective
substitute. When, therefore, the crop of 'the year- so
far failed as to raise the price per ton from 708. in 1852
to 1275. 6d. in 1853, disuse of the potato succeeded ;
and the consequence, as the Registrar-General presumes,
was a general prevalence of sickness. It is known, in-
deed, that after the first great failure of the crop, some
years ago, an outbreak of scurvy ensued exactly like the
epidemics seen on shipboard after similar privations. If
all these premises are true, it follows that the destruc-
tion of the potato can scarcely be compensated by any
general abundance of work or goodness of wages, and
the crop, therefore, must acquire an extraordinary im-
portance in the eyes of sanitary economists.
The report reads us the usual homily on the con-
nection between dirt and disease, and inculcates the
standing moral of our obligations in this particular ; in
fact, although the influence of season as a morbific
agency is less felt, comparatively, in towns than in the
country, the defects of drainage, ventilation, and water-
supply more than counterbalance the difference, and
leave the balance of mortality still against the former in
the proportion of sto 4. The agencies of the atmo-
sphere are discernible in the increase of bronchitis, in-
fluenza, and diseases oftho respiratory organs generally ;
whereas it is in the old types of fever, in typhus,
scarlatina, and small-pox, that the errors of human
arrangement make themselves seen. The growing pre-
valence of the small-pox—that hall-eradicated scourge of
Britain, is noticed in many of the local reports, which
bear at the same time a general testimony to the un-
doubted efficacy of the vaccine antidote ; but such are
the prejudices of the poor, and so insufficient in many
instances the medical supervision exercised, that the pre-
servative is neglected, and the fatal malady is left to
an epidemical vigour. It will probably be in the recol-
lection of our readers that Lord Lyttelton, the other
day, in introducing a bill upon this subject, showed that
other countries, by the adoption of stringent rules, had
succeeded in almost entirely extirpating the disease which
among ourselves has thus been permitted to revive. That
there is no essential renewal of vitality in the pestilence
itself is plain, for on the continent it has been effectually
kept down ; in England alone it has been allowed to ga-
ther new strength by the neglect of those precautions
which had been proved sufficient to disarm it.
A general survey of the return shows us that the births
for the whole quarter last year were, in exact numbers,
161,598. The annual proportion since 1843 has been 1
in 30, with an average for the winter quarter of 1 in 29,
whereas in the present year the average has been 1 in 28.
The deaths in the same period were 48,241, leaving a
balance, when set against the above aggregate of births,
of 43,357 in favour of the population. 'This balance, ac-
cording to the usual results, shopld be above 50,000, but
has been reduced by the exci* in the deaths previously
mentioned. The mortality Bch a period of 10 years has
averaged annually 3'252 per/ cent., and on the winter
quarters 2.467 per cent., but this quarter the percentage
has risen to 2'620. The actual statistics of the mar-
riages have not yet been quite completed, but they are
known to be highly favourable, and we can only hope
that the general " prosperity of the nation," which Mr.
Farr so thankfully chronicles, may not in his next report
be qualified by the defects of such a season as that from
which we do at length appear to be now emerging.

which we shall be allowed to use, either as to what Mr
Disraeli's serious views may be, or as to the abilities and
the information which he may have derived from nature
and from study, for political life. It would bej just as
reasonable to bid us look in the pages of that strange
novel which the first
,Emperor Napoleon composed in
early'youth, for whatever knowledge and whatever capa-
city he could have possessed at that time, or acquired
and improved afterwards. It would be even more rea-
sonable to, tell us,that we must consult the wild political
pamphlet, which the same famous man produced and
published while still loyal to the Republic, and which he
ordered to be bought up and burned *hen he had deter-
mined to close the revolution, and to obey the general
desire of the people that he should be their Emperor.
It would be iirmeasurably more reasonable to go to Mr.
Gladstone's own book on Church and State, written as
a book of politics, not as a novel—written with the feel-
ings of manhood, not with those of boyhood—written to
make opinions, not to give amusement ; and then to
revile and reprobate Mr. Gladstone for the ideas con-
tained in that production, if they were assailable, and
still his,—but much more for having changed or aban-
doned them (if he had), however erroneous. Goethe
got rid, as he said himself, of the "perilous stuff" of his
mind by writing his Werther ; and, indeed, wrote in
that spirit once, in order that he might think in that
spirit no.more. But it is loss of time to answer the
howl of personal enmity in the language of dispassionate
reason.' The party now in power are remarkable for
cherishing several holy hatreds.
• Observe how consistent with themselves are the ob-
jectors to the political existence of Mr. Disraeli. Hav-
ing stigmatised his early literary profnsions as things
which it was digraceful to publish, they next tell us that
he ought to have stuck to literature ; that he had ac-
quired in youth a fame which many able authors had
not succeeded in gaining in their old age ; "that the
world was very kind to him," &c. This was the un-
pardonable sin. He entered politics ; for this he is "a
bravo"—" a mercenary"--"a prostitute genius." His
friends and supporters, and the great party who have
accepted him into their foremost rank, are " a pirate
crew."

And is thistheEnglish of gentlemen who debate together
le the languake in which political
controversy ought to be conducted, or even political
censure conveyed ? We are concerned for the effects to
which this new and savage vein of discussion is leading ;
and we blush for the brutal ferocity and vindictiveness
which seem to be its sole possible cause. As for Mr.
Disraeli, the right hon. gentleman is marvellously well
able to defend himself. No man has been crushed so
often, and survived. The light of no man's genius has
been "extinguished" so often, and then flamed out
brighter than before. No man has been " ruined" so
often, and then lived to triumph. This sort of crushing,
of extinction, and of ruin is to be borne ; for somehow
victory is behind. We have noticed it, ere now, in more
cases than that of the right hon. gentleman, whose
calumniators have, by the unmeasured violence of their
abuse, called forth these remarks.