The Sun.
London, England, 1853-03-01 00:00:00

, iseq AL',
0,

LONDON, TUESDAY, MARCH 1, 1853.

Each successive arrival from Australia not
merely corroborates, but far surpasses, the ao-
"lnts previously received—miraculous, almost
fabulous as they appeared to. be. The apoplithe-
•_
is
441) that " truth is stranger than fiction,"
receiving a new and powerful illustration. iWe
hear of men, illiterate and inexperienced—with
nothing but the raw materials cf labour--the
thews and sinews with which they were gifted by
nature—acquiring handsome fortunes after a few
weeks' toil. Hard it may be, and accompanied
Bond-street
sundry privations sufficient to deter the
174-street lounger, or possibly the smirking
ha'berdasher's assistant, from trying the experi-
Ille4t, but trivial in comparison to what the sturdy
Nricultural labourer has to encounter day after day
ding
a long-continued course of years, and that
without the faintest hope of 'materially improving
his condition, or being enabled to enjoy rest and
eo
111Petence in the evening of his days, from the
energetic exertions of the moment.
There literally appears to be "no limits" to the
arileld of gold. New fields are daily discovered
I,;_!•Passing those previously worked, and even the
3 that had been worked by many parties prove
Iremunerative to new comers. It would appear as
le %fire were some foundation for the miner's
legend,a and that " gold really grew" almost as
tefPi'llY as mushrooms. What one casts away as
hallso after an ordinary washing will yield a
g,:(1801na amount to his more persevering succes-
; while a third, who comes with more suitable
i'Pliances, will reap the largest harvest of any.
Nvelsw, if any, are disappointed—few are those
40, after providing themselves with comforts,
at' as the Americans say, " notions," purchased
(34 most exorbitant price, cannot lay by in a
ba
labour
more than they could earn • by incessant
ell'. in England. Nor is it the miner alone
Rai° reaps the golden harvest. The carter will
he . or 4/. per diem—the skilful mechanic has
4ftelleed to look for employment; he will be sought
*4ll by numerous applicants for his services, all
€c
ages
to pay handsome—shall we call it-
- fo "----no • ? that is scarcely a fitting term,
r,
114,1404 i implies something of servitude, but
is " remuneration" for his assistance. It
ee he
k„tbat bestows the favour—that confers the
boaiviument—that acts the part of the coy
sal rejecting numerous eligible propo-
-444„,, An are alike—there is food in abun-
"'" for,. all, and there is no need of
to Pe0r..44. where there is no pauperism
gli be provided for. The wants of all are-amply
slue' led) and each man may apply his own acqui-
llttilEL for his own use in obtaining unwonted
ur Utile 78) and making suitable provision for the
to tben old age or ill-health will compel him
abandon the more laborious occupations.
Let it
_., not
be supposed that these are the mere
Nviv
.a traveller—the amusing exaggerations
arouaW inch the weak minds of the stayers at home
fro:;usedanclexcited. No ; the intellio-ence comes
able brustworthy sources—from men who scarcely
the believe
to ae, their own senses, rather understate
tual facts
tacit Wh_ • There is but little need of men-
,(lreallaa
,rlll the simple realities exceed the wildest
buliie, °I the novelist, and where the arrivals of
the
lie'ia,re not merely by the Government escorts to
g"b°llri
itself lig towns, but in the port of London
able tO well-known consignees—no inconsider-
baleoorrtion
having been already delivered at the
/10 4erda •
Mace Y was our pleasing duty to an-
and the'ile arrival of the Roxburgh Castle
stated Chowriiighee, with what we then
`43 be more than 800,000/, worth

of gold, but which we have since learned
' to be of the value of nearly a million sterling ;
for it must -be remembered that the superior
purity of the Australian gold renders it worth
more than 4/. per ounce. On Saturday we stated
that the Alert had. arrived from Sydney with
172,0001. worth of gold. It was also stated that
the Frances Henty and other vessels were at the
Cape with large freights of the precious metal ;
while the steam-packets Sydney and Great Britain
were hourly expected. There has thus been re-
ceived from Australia, within the last three days,
bullion to the amount of 1,200,0001. sterling,
and there is every reason to anticipate a still
larger amount within the current week. Mean-
while 'well-organised expeditions are sending out,
with everything that the true ALADDIN'S lamp,
enormous capital, can obtain, or science can sup-
ply. Large vessels are chartered by single com-
panies, who have made every provision that fore-
sight can suggest for the successful prosecution of
their undertakings, as for instance the Cordillera,
Company, that have chartered the ship Tory,
which is to sail on Thursday next, and other
associations, which have already dispatched
well-selected bodies of men, bound to fulfil
in the colonies • the engagements they have
entered into in this country—and some of which
are already in active operation on the gold fields.
What, we ask, may be expected from the labours
of these skilful and experienced men, possessing
every possible advantage, when the unskilled and
rude efforts of common labourers, with the rough
cradles, have been attended with such truly
astonishing results ?
But it is not to gold only that the rapidly-
increasing population of Australia may look for-
ward for permanent, and perhaps unprecedented,
prosperity. The coal fields are no less important
than the gold fields. The " black diamond" pro-
mises to yield almost as extraordinary profits as
any " nugget vein " that has yet been discovered.
It is to her coal fields that the British empire
owes her present proud position —"that the
sovereign of a few small islands in the
Western Ocean has been enabled to control
the destinies of hundreds of millions of
human beings, and to acquire dominions on
which the " sun ne'er sets." The extraordinary
value, of One portion of these dominions is now be-
coming apparent. The gold and the copper of
Australia will insure its material wealth—the
coal fields of Australia will enable its inhabitants
to develope all its miraculous resources, and to en-
sure inexhaustible opportunities for the profitable
employment of capital and labour. The Austra-
lian Coal Company is . already in the field,
and will reap the legitimate benefits of its
priority. Others may also spring into existence.
All judiciously-devised and honestly-conducted
projects of the kind cannot fail to prove remune-
rative, although, of course, on the well-known
principle of first come first served, the earliest
will have the greatest advantages. One thing at
least is certain, that the prospects of Australia
are more auspicious than those of any other
country hitherto known.

Farringdon-street promises at last to rival the
celebrity of St. Paul's Churchyard. Hitherto,
the latter has been regarded as the central point
from which the City of London has radiated.
Henceforth, the former may aspire to the dignity of
being regarded as the nucleus of all the energy
or vitality of the British capital. For, happily,
we are at length permitted to regard as definitively
settled, that magnificent scheme which will, on its
completion, render the site of the Old Fleet Pri-
son the core of the vast system of railroads inter-
secting with its iron network the provinces of
Great Britain. After the decision arrived at by
the Common Council on Thursday, we may, with-
out any overweening confidence, count upon the
feasibility of the enterprise, and, in doing so, we
Would here at once most cordially proffer our con-
gratulations to Mr. CHARLES PEARSON, its origi-
nator. That gentleman, more fortunate than most
intelligent innovators who are in advance of their
age, has lived to witness the approval, and we can
now add, moreover, the acceptance of his extra-
ordinary project by the metropolitan municipality.
Whatever annoyances, and vexations, and disap-
pointments he may have heretofore experienced in
the opposition displayed towards his favourite un-
dertaking, must at this moment, we feel convinced,
be considered by him as to the full compensated
by the before-mentioned really memorable resolu-
tion. It will have been perceived by the interest-
ing analysis of the division in the Court of Com-
mon Council given with copiolis detail in our
impression of yesterday, that the conclusion ar-
rived at by the rulers of the great municipality is in
no respect either dubious or superficial in its cha-
racter. On the contrary, it was arrived at by an
overwhelming majority, and that majority like-
wise pronouncing its opinion, remember, after the
most mature deliberation 1 It rejected the.adverse
Report of the Committee on City Improvements,
,and it did this through the adoption by eighty-
five against sixty-nine, of Deputy BENNoCH'S very
admirable " Amendment." That amendment—
provoked by a blundering motion complacently
and unconditionally agreeing to the report of
the good old leaden-headed committee—appears
to us altogether too important not to be
here reiterated verbatim et literatim; suggesting as

it does, rather may we observe, now deciding as it
does, " that the report of the Improvement Com-
mittee be referred back to the Committee, with in-
structions to confer with the Government on the
whole of the projected improvements in Holborn-
valley and Farringdon-street, in order to ascertain
if Government will co-operate with the Corpora-
tion in accomplishing the whole of the plan pro-
posed, and that in the meantime the Bill now
before Parliament be suspended." Nothing could
be better than this, because nothing could be
more explicit, and, at the same moment, while
signally resolute, altogether devoid of rashness or
precipitation. Harm cannot possibly come of it
to any one, even under the most unpropitious cir-
cumstances, seeing that it is virtually a demand
for—what ?—a more carefully elaborated investi-
gation, and an investigation, too, carried on in
conjunction with, and under the sheltering influ-
ence of, her MAJESTY'S Government. So—the
Report of the Committee is referred back to the
Committee ! And the Corporation is to seek the
co-operation of the Government in carrying out
the whole of the projected enterprise ! Such is
the gist of Deputy BENNockf s Amendment. It
constitutes, in other words, the approval and
acceptance of Mr. PEARSON'S splendid plan for
the construction of a grand Central Railway
Terminus. It is pleasant, after all that has oc-
curred in this matter, to bear in recollection that
the decision thus arrived at, was one pronounced
at no hole-and-corner meeting by two or three
tailors of Tooley-street hobnobbing with his grace
Duke HUMPHREY. It was the deliberate conclu-
sion formed, in fact, by 154, out of the aggregate
of 232, individuals, making up the sum total of
the Corporation. Eighteen, out of the 26 Alder-
men of London, abstained from voting at all : the
seven who took part in the division being thus
opposed to each other—one against, and six in
favour, of the amendment. Again, out of the
206 Commoners of the municipality; 'the propor-
tion present on Thursday were thus arrayed in
the division—sixty-six against, and seventy-seven
for, the amendment. These, with the Aldermen
already mentioned, and thetwoleaders on each side,
constituted the 85 pros and 69 cons, leaving to
the former a clear majority of sixteen ! Invidious
allusions we are by no means solicitous to
introduce in the consideration of this very
singular division, but one circumstance we are
irresistibly impelled to particularise, namely,
that the gentleman who had the peculiar infelicity
of being the solitary alderman ranked among the
antagonists of the amendment was Alderman
CUBITT, of the Ward of Langbourne ! Opposed
to him, however, as supporters of Deputy BEN-
NOCH, were six others, whose names deserve to
be more distinctly specified, those six being Alder-
men FINNIS, of the Tower ; FAREBROTHER, of
Lime-street ; DuxE, of Farringdon Without ;.
SIDNEY, of Billingsgate ; LAWRENCE, of Bread-
street ; and HOOPER, of Queenhithe. Encouraged
by these, and by so many other members of the
Corporation, the noble project of Mr. CHAS.
t PEARSON for a railway terminus in the heart of

the metropolis may at length be regarded as in a
fair way to its ultimate, and let is
,hope,
over, its speedy realisation.
Philosophers have expatiated upon the truth,
that the most delightful sense of existence is that
derivable from a consciousness of daily improve-
ment—lingering with a sort of tenderness over
the pleasure of that suavissim,a vita, Indies sentire
se fieri me4tiorem. As with individuals so with
states, as with states so even with municipalities.
What though a learned wag once enunciated
that a- corporation had neither a body to be
kicked nor a soul to be damned ! Certainly if
this be the happiest condition of life at once
for states, municipalities, and individuals, if the
sense of daily improvement be of all the most
delectable luxury of existence, the municipality
of the British capital has, of all such bodies in
the wide world, the largest, and therefore the
most enviable, capacity for future enjoyment.
Here, for example, is Mr. CHAS. PEARSON'S
famous scheme_ by way of appropriate illustration.
What a lesson-to after times, when the Central
Railway Terminus shall be at last really completed
in Farringdon-street—what a lesson to after
times will be visible in this site of its foundation.
There—instead of that notorious structure where
Poverty was punished as a Crime by long years
of blighting and hopeless imprisonment, there—
instead of the structure celebrated in the fictions
of shrewd TOBIAS SMOLLETT and of gentle-hearted
CHARLES DICKENS, there—instead of dungeons
for misfortune—will have started forth a
fabric such as will tend more than any
other ever before built within the boun-
daries of the metropolis to diffuse comfort,
and wealth, and happiness among all classes of its
inhabitants. It will enable those who have
hitherto been compelled to reside in squalid gar-
rets, in unwholesomely populous thoroughfares, to-
dwell, at once for economy and for pleasure,
among the suburban meadows of Surrey and Mid
.dlesex. It will thereby materially diminish the
amount of the annual mortality—almost as much,
we feel assured, as the closing of our intramural
graveyards. It will impart, in the most effectual
manner, the glory and the bloom of the rus in urbe
to London ; for it will render its citizens the ha-
bitual associates of Nature beyond the limits of
what has been expressively termed the " brick-
and-mortar invasion." Fleet Ditch may then be
transformed into a channel conducting the poor
clerk and the small tradesman, day by day, from
the desk and from the counter to the hedgerow'
and the hayfield. There is mention made in one
of MOORE'S recently published letters, of a
court-project once upon a time matter of town
talk, by which it was proposed that a villa should
be built upon Primrose Hill for the delectation of
" Firm the Fourth," then PrinCe Regent of Eng-
land, a noble street or avenue, " straight as the
crow flies," connecting that pastoral retreat of
Royalty in the unclassic neighbourhood of Chalk
Farm with the town palace in St. JAMES'S Park,
the then gorgeous and epicurean Carlton House.
A more bewitching scheme than this is surely
that Central Railway Terminus enterprise by
which it is proposed to give the toiling
population of the capital the benefit of an escape
into the green fields, away from all the din and
dust, and squalor, all the pestilential atmosphere
and deteriorating influences by which they have
heretofore been uninterruptedly surrounded. The
metropolis will in this manner be effectually ven-
tilated. Its impurities will be diminished by the
residence of so large a portion of the citizens out-
side its more crowded localities. For these ines-
timable advantages the people of London will be
directly indebted to the ingenious philanthropy
and unflinching public spirit of Mr. CHARLES
PEARSON. Immediately the citizens of the me-
tropolis will be indebted to him, mediately to the
intelligent majority of the members of the Corpo-
ration. It remains now that the scheme originated
by Mr. PEARSON, and adopted by the municipality,
should receive the active and earnest support of
her MAJESTY'S Government. Let that support be
yielded at once and with cordiality, and the enter-
prise will not continue much longer denied the
opportunity of realisation. A Central Railway
Terminus will then rapidly spring into existence, '
crowning those wonderful labours which may be
said to have concentrated upon the capital of
England the iron-ioads of the steam-engine, and
the metallic threads of the electric telegraph.

It is very unpleasant for one Member of Par-
liament to pick holes in another's electioneering
manners, and very awkward work to get bribe-
takers to confess their delinquencies ; it is, there-
fore, wonderful that our Election Committees
elicit what they do. These chance nuggets show
what rich diggings there must be in every case
for Parliamentary Commissioners. Indeed, by
boring through the evidence of the " sitting.
Members," and occasionally that of the defeated
candidates, it is proved that glorious deposits of
sterling gold have filtered through them to the
electoral strata immediately below. At Bridg-
north, for instance—a nice little borough, regis-
tering only 717 voters, though returning as many
Senators as Middlesex or the West Riding—it
cost Mr. CADOGAN 5501., neat election expenses,
to loss ; i. e., nearly 21. per man on his 284 sup-
porters. Mr. ECCLES did not get off so cheaply
at Blackburn ; skilful cradling and washing of
the electoral ore there ought to find at least
2,0001., for the Hon. Member signed a cheque to
that amount : that comes to 3/. Bs. 111 d. per
head. Rather dear ; but then he got in, and was
in till the 24th of this month. There is a mys-
terious question about his son's signing another
cheque for 5001. of the precious metal, though
Mr. ECCLES had not heard of it before. Proba-
bly Commission diggers would find that
besides ; nearly a pound a man more on
the 580 voters ! Where 'the gold went to Mr.
ECCLES cannot conjecture ; he only knows the
whereabouts of five shillings, which he once gave
to some drunken iwn-electors to get rid of them.
Things did not go quite so smoothly at Clitheroe.
There bludgeons, and " poachers" to wield them,
seemed to be most in request. There was little
fighting, however, for Mr. WILSON, like Lord
PALMERSTON in the Don PACIFICO business,
thought that a show of force which should make
opposition folly, was the truest humanity.
" There
iwere lots of rough fellows about the town
on ASPINALL'S side, There were stick-men on
both sides, but there 'was not much fighting, for
WILSON'S party were too strong." Mr. WILSON
would certainly be the man to keep the peace of
Europe. We cannot yet calculate the bounty
offered, but he appears to have obtained his militia
very easily. One order for 300 of the best fight-
ing men and poachers was not executed ; but
2,000 ! at least colliers and operatives mustered
at the " Craven Heifer," and drank amongst them
1301. worth of Lancashire Falernian. No doubt
it was better for ASPINALL'S men to keep their
sticks quiet. Like.PHILIP of Macedon, however,
liisphalanx was by no means Mr. WILSON'S sole
reliance ; he knew the potency of gold. A Mr.
TAYLOR, a tradesman, who held out rather awk-
wardly, received 301., his vote having • been
first openly recorded. The wife of Mr. WHEL-
LEY, one of the agents,
locks up the money in a
box; she gives TAYLOR the key and retains the box.
receipt
returns, i n blacka n dis andal-
TwAhyitLeoaßt
tghoees and
polling-booth; a;
p
o'
lowed to take out the money and walk off ; and
he does walk off with it, and takes it to one of
lli
Mr. ASPINALL'S clerks. It would seem he was
e f he
paying off a grudge incurred bethfore the el
tecattiothn,
but the proof of bribery, and proo
.ballot would have prevented it, are equally clear.
There seems to have been some electoral virtue
after all, of a certain kind, at Clitheroe. RICHARD
ADDLE, a farmer, was offered 401. by WiLsoN's
agent, but , refused it, and voted for ASPINALL.
CHRISTOPHER HOLDGATE, also a farmer, and tenant
of Mr. ASPINALL, would have given his vote to
Mr. WILSON for 150,7,2 but as they offered him only
1001., the undervalued' faan gave his vote to his
landlord. Vast as the demands, too, upon the
Craven Heifer, heavy drafts were made elsewhere.
SUSAN WINDLE testified that, after her husband
had been canvassed by WILSON, they kept open
house till the election, and a great deal of beer
was drunk, which nobody paid for. RICHARD
WILSON, another beer-shop keeper, did- tip 44pv.
In addition to lots of beer he furnished 120 lbs.