The Sun.
London, England, 1849-05-18 00:00:00

i•bontail 4Ant

LONDON, FRIDAY, MAY 18, 1849.

the Legislature—charges which it is now well known
were hastily put forward without any adequate
ft-undation. And yet it is at stash a moment and
under such circumstances that Mr. DIV•ETT brings
forward the absurd petition of the thirty-one
shareholders—to add to the annoyances and
the troubles of this reviled and persecuted indi-
vidusl.

Mr. HunsoN has, however, had no cause to regret
this piece of petty vindictiveness, of low and despi-
cable malignity. The cheers that were elicited from
every quarter when he bespoke the indulgence of the
House afforded the most satisfactory evidence that he
was surrounded by an assemblage of fair and impar-
tial gentlemen, who are not accustomed to condemn a
fellow-citizen without giving him ample opportu-

nities of vindicating his own character and of

being fully heard in his own defence.
The House of Commons is not prepared
to ostracize one of its Members because a certain
clique, interested in depressing railway property,
have raised an outcry against him, and have perse-
vered with an almost unprecedented degree of viru-
lence. Mr. HUDSON was listened to attentively while

he briefly explained the various points alluded to in
the petition, awl his statements were received with
general approbation on every side, and from every

party.

Mr. HUDSON was induced to join the Eastern
Counties Railway Company in consequence of a re-
quisition, signed by seven-eighths of the shareholders,
being presented to him, requesting that be would
become their chairman. At first he refused, but he
was subsequently prevailed upon to alter his de-
termination, and to take 'upon himself the responsible
duties of the office. At that period he had no shares
whatsoever in the company. So far as he was per-
sonally concerned, it signified little whether the divi-
dends were high or low. He was,however, at that time
in the height of his popularity, and the mere fact of
his sanctioning a project sent up the shares in the
market at least 20 or 30 per cent. It was a proud
day for the shareholders when Mr. HUDSON'S name
was announced as their chairman, and for a time it
checked the downward progress of the shares. His
chief object in joining the company was to effect
some arrangement a ith the London and York Com-
pany, which was then projected. In that ex-
pectation he was disappointed, in consequence of
the general depreciation of railway property.
He found that there had been an increase
of the gross earnings of the line of nearly 60,0001.
sterling within the half-year, the receipts being, for
the six months ending July, 1845, 114,0001., while
no less than 173,000/. was received in the following
half year. This great increase, together with the
improvements that would be obtained when the new
feeders opened, and the traffic properly developed,
appeared to Mr. HUDSON to justify a considerable in-
crease of dividend, and with the full concurrence of his
brother directors he acted on that opinion. It is now
asserted that sums were improperly placed to the
capital account that should have been charged to
revenue. Very different opinions, however, then
prevailed from those which are at present entertained
on that subject. It was considered that every ex-
penditure that might lead to future beneficial results
should be charged to capital. It was usual to insert
clauses in the various Acts of Parliament authorising
the payment of interest on the sums actually paid
up before the works were constructed, or any
sums whatsoever earned. that cpuld be ap-

plied to the purposes of dividend, and the

sanction of Parliament was thus deliberately given
to the system that is sow so strongly complained of.
On this subject Mr. MACGREGOR, the chairman of
the South-Eastern Railway says—
"lt has appeared to me indisputable, that all classes
of disbur:,ements, which affected the permanent interests
of the company, expended at any particular pressure or
emergency, did not belong to the current expenses of the
particular period, but should be charged in amount as an
expenditure of capital. Such disbursements are thereby
made to extend over all future years, and are thus com-
paratively unfdt.
" This principle applies equally, whether such expen-
diture be incurred in the payment of fees to the officers
of the Houses of Parliament during the progress
of the Bills promoted, payments to engineers, solicitors,
counsel, and landowners, or in large sums advanced, in
the management of the traffic not expected to obtain
immediate advantages at .the period when incurred, but
laid out from motives i f sound policy for the enduring
interests and welfare of the company, with a confident
trust that all such payments made were bona fide, were
properly chargeable to capital account."
Mr. flunsoN acted on these principles, and for a

time nothing could be more satisfactory to t:.e

shareholders. A season of adversity, however,
set in ; the sanguine hopes of the speculators
were disappointed, and the tide of prejudice set in as
strongly against him as it had once been in his favour.
He had no pecuniary interests of any importance ;
he had not trafficked.in the shares of the company ;
he had not taken advantage of the knowledge he had
acquired to "bear" the companies' stock, and thus to
gain large sums of money ; neither had he got
rid of a bad bargain by selling his shares at an
increased value in consequence of the dividends
declared. It might justly be said of him as it was
of his brother chairman, Mr. MACGREGOR, of whom
the committee said that his conduct was "honourable
throughout, and marked by a sincere, and, except
in his character of a very large proprietor,
an unflinching devotion to the interests of the
company."
No further step will, of course, be taken in refe-
rence to this very ridiculous proceeding ; but, as we
have already stated, it was fortunate for Mr. HunsoN
that so favourable an opportunity should have been
afforded of submitting his clear, straightforward, and
simple statement to the consideration of the House
and of the entire country.

During that great political earthquake which has
recently convulsed the greater part of Christendom
the people of this country have continually, and very
justly, congratulated themselves on their peculiar
felicity in being enabled to enjoy, together with
undisturbed tranquillity, a greater amount of liberty
than any of their revolutionary neighbours. The
interest of the present hour has been of such an en-
grossing nature that few have cared to investigate
the causes which have led to this most satisfactory
result. But the teachings of the past and the present,
like the deductions of theory and practice, mutually
xpound and illustrate each other, and perhaps there
never was a period when the page of history might
be conned with better advantage than the present. It
is, consequently, at a most appropriate time that the
great historian of our day has issued the first instal-
ment of his work; and now, closely following upon
Mr. MACAULAY'S history, we gladly welcome ano-
ther equally well-timed memorial of our revolutionary
history from the hand of the eloquent writer of the
" Crescent and the Cross."* We thus couple the names
of MACAULAT and ELIOT IVARBURTON simply because
they have (to a certain extent) treated of a similar
theme at the same appropriate period. In other
respects their works are avowedly dissimilar. The
one is the fragment of a continuous history, the other
the record of an episode, partaking somewhat of the
nature of biography. Call it what we will—history,
biography, memoirs, or correspondence, the newly-
published work, concerning Prince RUPERT and the
Cavaliers, apart from any intrinsic interest or elo-
quence of style, is worthy of profound consideration
at the present moment, when events at home and
abroad contribute to recal to our grateful recollec-
tion how " HasarDEN died in the field, and SYDNEY
on the scaffold." Mr. ELIOT WARBURTON himself
seems to be duly impressed with the importance of
this feature of his work. " It seems to me," he says,
" that we read or write of our great
civil wars to little purpose, if we look
upon them and their actors as mere abstractions—we
must remember that in the terrible scenes of these
01d times we see but ourselves in different circum-
stances ; 'lite behold Englishmen as they have been
and may be again." Not exactly as they "may be
again," for as this eloquent annalist of the Cavaliers
very truthfully observes in another place, "thanks to
our gallant forefathers, •Cavaliers and Roundheads,
there is but one real cause in England now. Loyalty '
And liberty are no longer at variance, since our fore-
:ethers dared to bring to issue and set at rest for ever
the question between the Sovereign and the subject.
Heroic and earnest men," he continues—and this
passage is at the same time an admirable enumeration
f the practical benefits of the civil war, and an evi-
,ience of its writer's impartiality—,' heroic and earnest
men strove faithfully on either side, with tongue and
ward, and prayer and blood, for what they deemed to '

Never, we believe, has a petition been presented to
either House of Parliament, similar to that which
the Ilonounble Member for Exeter thought proper
to bring before the House of Commons last night
from thirty-one shareholders of the Eastern Counties
Railway. It is, indeed, difficult to understand the
motives which could have influenced thirty-one per-
sons moving in a respectable station in society to
have affixed their signatures to such a document, or a
Member of considerable experience to have consented
to bring it under the consideration of the Mouse.
Charges were there brought forward against one of the
representatives of an important constituency, who
had not been convicted or even accused of any legal
offence—charges wholly unconnected with Parlia-
mentary affairs, in which the Honourable Gentleman
had not in any degree acted in his legislatorial capa-
city ; and it was prayed that inquiries might be
instituted with respect thereto, and that, if well
founded, the party accused might be expelled from
being a Member of the Reuse. This was the
modest request. The House of Commons was to
supersede the ordinary tribunals of the country, to
become a sort of Star Chamber, in which the most
inquisitorial proceedings might be carried on as to
the private conduct and character of its Members.
It was to ordain that trial by jury should be set aside,
and in lieu thereof that a Committee nominated by the
accuser should be appointed, who, after the fashion of
some of the Railway Committees, should con-
demn without giving the party on trial an
opportunity of being heard in his own defence.
Thirty-one shareholders of the Eastern Counties
Railway desired that the House of Commons should
act in a manner so unprecedented and unconstitu-
tional, and Mr. DIVETT sanctioned the demand_by
presenting this most extraordinary petition. ,
The time selected for bringing the subject forward
was (if possible) in even worse taste than the subjeo.,
Rua It was well known that Mr. HUDSON Vil-
suffering under a severe domestic affliction ; that he
had not entered into public life or left the shelter of
his own roof since the period of that melancholy
and fatal transaction. A Committee of the House of
Commons was actually investigating at the moment
other charges preferred, or we should rather say
hinted at, by the Eastern Counties Committee, im-
puting corrupt and venal conduct 0 Members of f

be the truth. Each found, as truthful and earnest
men will ever find, how: ver ranged on different sides,
that their ultimate object had been the same. Each
found not-the conquest that his human nature strove
for, but the victory that his higher nature yearned
for ; yet he found it in defeat. The Cavalier saw
much that he had been taught to reverence struck
down, buried, and put away for ever in the grave of
the STUARTS. The Roundhead beheld his glorious
visions of liberty eventuating in fierce anarchy and
final despotism, from which he was content to seek
refuge even in the Restoration." Mr. ELIOT WARBUR•
TON'S enthusiasm is occasionally, and very naturally,
excited in behalf of the generous devotion and daring
gallantry of the royal Cavaliers; nevertheless, if his
heart be with them his head is nut. His reason,
calm and dispassionate, recogniees the capital errors
of the cause, in spite of the individual heroism which
adorned and well nigh disguised them. "Fortunately
for us," he exclaims, " that cause was unsuccessful,
yet not altogether lost : shorn by the Parliament's
keen sword of the despotic and false principle that
disgraced it, its nobler and better elements survive,
imparting firmer strength and a loftier tone to our
constitution." " I do not presume," he continues,
" to canvass my readers' sympathies fur either Puri-
tan or Cavalier, I leave them to plead their own
cause in their own letters—l invite him to listen to
their own long silent voices, speaking once more—
eagerly, earnestly —as when armed men with
desperate speed bore these, their blotted, and often
bloodstained pages, from leaguered city or roving
camp—from faltering diplomatist or resolute warrior,
at whose beck men died. Every letter will possess
some interest for the thoughtful reader, and shed
some light for him on the heart of bygone times. He
will find them still animated by the passions that
were then throbbing in every breast. At first the
earnest rather than angry spirit of our memorable
English war is apparent in them ; but they gra-
dually become more intense in their expres-
sion, as if they were the work of a single
man ; the same note of triumph or tone of despair is
perceptible in all. Human nature and the nature of
each writer is transparent in them all ; the reader is
the confidant of kings, princes, statesmen, generals,
patriots, traitors; be is the confessor of the noblest
minds and the most villanous natures ; he sees the
very conscience of the war."
This most interesting revelation is, as we have
just said, marvellously well timed. It serves in a
peculiar manner to "point the moral" of the scenes
now daily passing round us, while at the same time
our personal experience invests with a new interest
and a double efficacy the records of events so similar
and yet so dissimilar to those of the present day.
" Prince Rupert " will be as welcome to the Liberals
of the nineteenth century, as his gallant original
was unwelcome to their predecessors two hundred
years back.

Another numerous meeting was holden on Wednes-
day evening upon the subject of intermural interment.
Another 1 How many more before Parliament can
be reused to an interference ? Not many ; be sure

of that. The necessity for Legislative interference
Yas become altogether too glaring to be " blinked "
even by the most impudent or the most lethargic
Government. It has even now been acknowledged
by one of the most distinguished members of the

Administration, that the Cabinet proposes very
speedily to lay the matter before the Houses in the
form of a remedial measure. For these reasons we
can refer to the proceedings of Wednesday's assem-
blage with the greatest satisfaction. We can
direct attention to the admirable speeche,
reported in another part of our impression with a
larger confidence than hitherto, that the melancholy
facts narrated in these speeches will shortly be num-
bered among the records made in what LESLEY used
to call his "Beastly Reminiscences." Nor when the
evil of the present demoralizing and suicidal system
shall have been definitively removed will it be for-
gotten to whom the population will be indebted for
the acquisition of that inestimable advantage.
Gladly and eagerly as we would recal the truth to
general recollection, the multitude scarcely requires
to be informed by us that the prime mover of the
present agitation for extramural burial, the origina-
tor of the great effort now on the eve of proving
victorious, is the gentleman who on' Wednesday
addressed the meeting immediately after its eloquent
inauguration by the representative of the Tower Ham•
lets. Very few need to be assured that but for the

generous and inestimable exertions of Mr. GEORGE
•

ALFRED WALKER, the effort to prevent the con-
tinuA corruption of the atmosphere of our great
cities, would not, in all human likelihood, have been
even by this time commenced. Whatever progress
has been made towards the prevention of the further
desecration of the dead, and thereby the further deci-
mation of the living, is due principally, and in
many instances, exclusively to him. The cause of
Extramural Interment is fully as much indebted
to Mr. WALKER, as that of Sanitary Im-
provement is to Doctor SouTuwooD SMITH, as
that of Catholic Emancipation was to O'CONNELL, as
that of the Abolition of Slavery was to CLARKSON and
WILBERFORCE, as that of Free Trade was toViudeas
and COBDEN, or as that of Financial Retrenchment
will be to the Hon. Gentlemen the representatives of
Montrose and the West Riding. The public should
never be allowed to lose a remembrance of these facts,
and as far as we can effect to the contrary, it shall
not lose a remembrance of the spontaneous and
untiring labours of Mr. WALKER during
the last fourteen years in regard to a subject so
repulsive, and yet, at the same time, so inti-
mately connected with the national health,
decency, and morality.
In referring to the urgent necessity for some
legislative interference in the substitution of suburban
cemeteries for city graveyards—it is very far from
our intention to dilate upon the filthy and loathsome
details which have been accumulated at interva's, as
to the condition of the premises adjoining such dens
of abomination as Enon Chapel. Every one is
familiar with the existence of an evil that has been
depicted in turns by the journalist, the pamphleteer,
the lecturer, and even the poetaster. Every one has
been sickened by the repeated contemplation of those
appalling scenes of depravity and putrescence.
Every one has been more or less nauseated by the de-
lineation of those dark spots in our own splendid me-
tropolis, where—
" In foul accumulation, tier on tier,
Each due instalment of the pauper bier,
Crushed in cense pack'd corruption there they dwell,
'Mongst earthy rags of shroud, and splinter'd shell.
A quagmire of old bones, where darkly bred,
The slimy life is busy with the dead.
Rock. hum that bloated earth miasma's breath,
The lull•fed taint of undigested death;
Thence, like the fumes from sleeping glutton's throat,
The noisome vapours of her surfeit Moat.
The accuracy of those deplorable descriptions is too
universally appreciated to require anything like cor-
frroobmoraa tni o
anxietyn . 0 u Our
to
fpurposenroe a
ni
ys vme rn yr a doi
fff et
ur ee ns
et ,
dti hs
ge rues ftoi rn eg,
particulars before the popular imagination. In place
of this we would earnestly commend to public con-
sideration the statistical facts submitted to the corn-
munityby the different gentlemen who addressed them-
selves to the subject on W ednesday—such facts, for
example, as that 600,000 individuals dying annually in
the United Kingdom, according to the estimate of the
Registrar-General, is a sufficient testimony that there
is ample reason for the interposition of the Legislature.
Again, it is impossible to conceal from ourselves how
requisite some change is, when we hear that out of
600,000, there are no less than 50,000 deaths annu-
ally in London alone ; and that the consequence of
that mortality, and of the present mode of burial is,
that from two millions and a half to three millions of
pounds weight of dead and decaying animal matter
are annually deposited in our metropolitan grave•
yards l Knowing these things, it is absolutely
impossible to hesitate. Further hesitation, in
tact, would be nothing leas than criminal. As
Mr. WALKER admirably hinted, to continue wil-
fully the present system of interment, and yet
at the same time to cry out, Sunday after Sunday,
" From plague, pestilence, and famine, Good Lord
deliver us !" is little short of being a blasphemous

mockery.
Befure the present session has closed, some distinct
pledge, at the very least, must be extorted from the
Government, to the effect that Parliament shall be
called upon very speedily to legislate upon the sub-
ject of interment. The popular expectation in this

* "Memoirs and Correspondence of Prince Rupert and soscie't‘yTihnebCeclmalertoefryE:
xatral3-rmieutrAalPruarilatlo,"theFlp'e.e3linCkgrnof•
the (:,IcTilliers. By Eliot Warburton." 3 Vol& geutley. Pickering. Loudon; 1844.