The Sun.
London, England, 1849-01-29 00:00:00

tuning .11111;

LONDON, MONDAY, JANUARY 29, 1849.

.~~ _ ~~~
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The labours of the Financial Reform Association
are beginning already to produce beneficial results.
The Government recognises the spirit of thrift with
which (according to the Lord Provost of Edinburgh)
the entire nation has been seized. They respect the
voice of public opinion, and measures of economy
and. retrenchment are now seriously canvassed, and,
wherever practicable, brought into operation, which
were wholly despised and disregarded for a long se-
ries of years, and tinder various Administra-
tions. The first fruits of the movement
may be discovered in the series of Minutes
that have just been issued from the Board
of Admiralty to the several dockyards, and the new
regulations thereby introduced for the management
of those gigantic establishments. These Minutes
(26 .in number) will be found in extenso in another
part lof our impression. Generally speaking they
are movements in the right direction. They - are in-
tended to produce an improved system of economical
management, to remedy obvious defects, and to give
a regular and uniform action to all the component
parliament
parts of the existing system ; +
" ..o satisfy
and the country that these great national establishments
are conducted with the same regard to economy the
same honest desire to make promotion dependent
on
merit, and the same scrupulous attention to those
minute details of management upon which the /vB3 r
gain of a manufacturing establishment depends, that
in ail private enterprises have constituted the secret
of success. 7 These are undoubtedly correct princi-
ples, perfectly unexceptionable in every respect. It
is less surprising that the light should at length have
fallen upon their Lordships, that, yielding to the in-
creasing prssure from without, they should so tardily,
and at the eleventh hour, have adopted those obvious
rules, without which a private firm would speedily
be involved in bankruptcy and ruin, than that a
pr,vtr,system should su long have been neglected;
c'7'' tb`at ("pi abuses which sprung up during the pro-
--ii tricted`nt le of Lord MELviLLE, and which prevailed
o
--', dun short tenure of office of his late MAJESTY
'''''' fil Lint
4.- h Admiral, should hare_becu continued

without notice or obz,ervation during the quasi-econo •
mical regime of Sir J. GRAHAM, whose resumption
of office was lately solicited, and also of Lords AUCK-
LAND, DE GREY, MINTO, HADDINGTON, ELLEN-
, BOROUGH, and even during the second assumption of
office by Lord AUCKLAND as First Lord of the Ad-
miralty. Surely some persons must have been re-
sponsible during that entire period for dereliction of
duty so scandalous. It would really appear as if the
superintendents of the several dockyards had sup-
posed that there was an unlimited fund on
which they could draw ad libitum; that con-
siderations ofexpenses:were wholly beside the question;
that their only duty consisted in providing
work, without considering whether that work was
really beneficial or otherwise. ' We have read of per-
sons evekieg evil spirits, who were compelled to keep
the attendant demon in constant occupation lest he
might turn on his emplo3er, and rend him limb from
limb, if there was the slightest cessation of labour. It
would seem as if the superintendents and heads
of departments considered that some such ne-
cessity existed, that they were bound to keep the
men in full occupation, and if that object were at-
tained, that they were relieved from every other duty;
that there was no necessity for a vigilant supervision
over their subordinates, or a cordial and friendly co-
operation among themselves. Hence the costly and
useless experiments—the unnecessary works—the ex•
travagant demand for stores—the carelessness of ex-
penditure, and the absence of any efficient check on
malversation of any kind—or of any audit of the
large pa 3 ments made annually for wages. The
entire system is now to be changed, and
all will be right if the new regulations can effect
the objects proposed by their Lordships.
The first five Minutes regulate the future working
strength of the dockyards, the admission of appren-
tices, the hours of labour, the mode of muster, and the
present amount of superintendence. By the first,
the number of shipwrights now employed in the
several yards are to be reduced to 3,500, and corre-
sponding reductions are to be made in the other
branches of skilled labour according to the scale now
in use for regulating the proportions between the
shipwrights and other classes of artificers. Now we
must confess that we do not quite approve of
this working at the base of the column,
this sacrificing in the first instance the hard-
working and badly paid labourers, who maintain
their families by their own honest industry. It is,
unfortunately, too much the practice, whenever the
public indignation has been strongly excited, when
an outcry has been raised against the shameless jobs
perpetrated, and the overgrown salaries paid to use.
less drones and sinecurists, to attempt to pro-
pitiate public favour by making some show
of retrenchment, and cutting off those who
have no Parliamentary influence or powerful friends
to defend their interests, and to speak out boldly and
resolutely on their behalf. The unfortunate ship-
wrights who are thus driven from employment, and
ruthlessly consigned with their families to poverty
and destitution, have no friends or relatives in either
branch of the Legi-lature, no Noble or Right Hon.
Cousins to depict their probable sufferings or the ex-
treme hardship of their cases. No voices will be up-
lifted within the walls of Parliament to expatiate
on the impropriety of discharging them from
the public service, although their conduct had
been perfectly unexceptionable during the period that
they were retained in the employment of the nation.
Nothing will be alleged respecting the grievance of
arresting their well-merited hopes of promotion. It
is only Post Captains that would have a just cause
of complaint, it their chances of obtaining " a flag"
were in any degree diminished. For their sakes, the
number of Admirals must be retained at 150, or
about one for every three vessels in com •
mission, including cutters, sloops, ketches, brigs,
convict hulks, &c., &c., and about ten times the
number that could be engaged in duty on any
possible emergency. If any reduction is suggested
in that number—if the savings that could thereby be
effected are only hinted at, a hundred sympathizing
voices are heard in indignant remonstrance. The
Secretary of the Navy will own the soft impeach-
ment, and acknowledge the great hardship to de-
serving officers; and yet those officers receive good
pay, although many of them render no services
therefor. We find that the first 70 on the list are
paid 143. GI. per diem, the next 100, 12s.
and the remaining 362, making in all 532, obtain
103. 6d. per day ; this, be it remembered, is wholly
distinct from the pay and allowances when in actual
commission. They are, therefore, objects of the
deepest sympathy, but no compassion is entertained
for the hard working shipwrights or the other classes
of artificers that may be engaged. They can only be
driven to the workhouse, or compelled to
Earn a scanty and precarious subsistence in
any manner practicable. They have no
fine feelings of ambition to sympathise with, and
therefore they may be discharged without compunc-
tion or remonstrance.

In other respects we have no fault to find with the
Minutes. They are, as we have stated, steps in tht,
right direction, but we trust that they may be
speedily followed by some more important reductions
in the higher'branches.

Again and again we have considered it our duty
as journalists to insist upon the necessity of greater
caution in the management of the collieries. Again
and again our arguments have been enforced by some
gha-tly explosion, carrying death and desolation to
many honest families, and mutilating limbs that
might otherwise have toiled on manfully until the
age of decrepitude. Another of these grievous catas-
trophes has recently started the public anew into an
appreciation of the dangers to which we have so fre-
quently and so earnestly made reference. On Wed-
nesliay last, in a pit situated in a beautiful dale in
Yorkshire—known as the Darley Main Colliery, near
Barnsley—t-ighty persons out of one hundred and
five labourers, were sudd2nly destroyed by the
ignition of the inflammable atmosphere. Up to the
latest intelligence received from the neighbourhood
the result of the search among the sufferers had
proved as follows :
Number of men and boys in the pit at the time of
_ the explosion ... 105

Dead bodies found up to eight o'clock on Wed-
nesday ...
Ditto found on Wednesday night and Thurs-

day ... ••• ••• - ... 70
...
Persons brought out alive, who have since _

died
••• ••• ••• ••• ... 2
Persons found alive, and still living ... 25
Persons still missing and supposed to be dead 3

-105

The details of the calamity are, moreover, as is
usual upon all such occasions, sufficiently horrify-
ing. Some were charred and distorted, some had their
bones shattered, others their flesh lacerated, others
their clothes burnt and blackened as with gunpowder,
while the majority of the unfortunate creatures who
were killed had received so many bruises and dis•
figurements as to be wholly unrecognizable by their
nearest and dearest relatives. While we are still
shuddering from the relation of these hideous suffer-
ings, while we are still conscious that the relicts and
children of the poor men who have perished while
labouring for their maintenance are yet bewailing
their misfortunes, it may not be idle to revert to the
subject so intimately connected with the catastrophe--
the origin of all these sufferings and the cause of all
these misfortunes. We mean the culpable negligence
with which the collieries are too frequently con-
ducted. .

Without intending by any means to include in our
censure all the collieries in the northern and midland
counties, we are, nevertheless, compelled to regard
the ill•arranged collieries as the rule, and the well-
arranged collieries as the exception. Even in those
cases where the accident can never be positively traced
to its source, it is invariably conjectured by all expe..
rienced men that it has arisen from an insufficiency of
nakeventilation, coupled with the careless exposure of a
d
light. In the vast majority of these explosions
we may safely aver, without any dread of contradic-
osights.
tion, that the cause of the calamity has been the
simultaneousv
concurrence of these two dangerous
er
lhceirrecum is
s no fear,
s
fear, there can be no fear
under ordinary
take place, in consequence
of
fhatht the detonation
estrikingoutcaonf
a spark from the collision of a pebble
ainheaanviilyn.miroanneadged
l
st.ugaalitniests tmheaynaoicicoufr
shpooew.
deSrumchagcaa--
zine when the attendant fails to slip on the flannel
slippers before his entrance, but in a coal-pit—the
mere supposition is preposterous. Now taking this
negation for granted—and no one we conjecture will

have the temerity to gdinsay its correctness—it is
manifest that there are no insurmountable obstacles
to the prevention of any such occurrences as this ex-
plosion at the Barley Main Colliery. For the ven-
tilation of the mine the proprietors should be held
responsible under the heaviest penalties; and the
possibility of uncovering to the subterranean
atmosphere the lights contained in the Davy lanterns
might be wholly precluded by having the " catch"
of the wire•guaze effectively padlocked. Supposing
by any improbable chance that the light should be-
come extinguished, it would surely be preferable for
the miner to grope his way from the darkness than
to hazard his own life and those of his companions by
negligently uncloaking the smouldering wick. Any-
thing, in short, would be better than the constant
endangerment of the existence of a whole community
through the foolish inattention of an indolent over-
seer, or the absua temerity of an ignorant
workman. Until some brecautions of the nature here
f
suggested shall have been taken, we shall continue to
insist upon the urgent defamed for interference on the
part of the Executive ; and shall never tire of bring-
ing the perilous position of the unfortunate colliers of
Derbyshire and Staffordshire, and the other mining
counties, under the consideration of the Home Secre-
tary. Unhappily, we are in no expectation that
there will be any dearth of opportunities. Numerous
and appalling as these explosions have been, we are
satisfied, from a deplorable experience, that the ca-
tastrophe which took place at Darley Main Col-
liery on Wednesday will be anything but the
last of the same description. Unless the Government
interferes, promptly and peremptorily, these casualties
will continue to be cf perpetual recurrence. By
mulcting the owners of the pits of heavy penalties,
wherever it shall be proved that there has been a
gross insufficiency of ventilation, and by rendering
the padlock an essential accompaniment of the Davy
lantern, we may put an end at once to the possibility
of these destructive explosions. Not otherwise.

THE FRENCH REPUBLIC

We have received the Paris papers of Saturday and
yesterday.

Paris was on Saturday in a more agitated state
than it has been since June last. The reactionary
proceedings of the Ministers have excited a spirit of
detestation towards themselves and their measures
which is only equalled in intensity by that with
which M. GUIZOT and his Ministry were regarded
twelve months since, and we are sorry to perceive
that their sins are in some degree visited upon the
PRESIDENT of the Republic. The appointment of
M. LHERMINIER. one of the most violent of the parti
pretre, to a professorship in that university, the au-
thority of which he has for years past been endeavour-
ing to destroy, has excited the just and natural indig-
nation of the students against the obscurantist Minister
of Public Instruction, M. DE FALLOUX, who seems
to have taken M. DE FRAYSSINONS as his model,
and to have accepted office solely for the pur-
pose of disorganizing the University of France.
The students assembled on Saturday at twelve
o'clock, a deputation of them presented themselves at
the entrance to the National Assembly to hand in a
protest against the nomination of M. LHERMINIER to
the chair of Legislation in the College of France.
The Questors on learning their object ordered the
gates to be closed, and the guard to turn out. One of
the officers of the Assembly then advanced to the de-
putation, received the protest from them, which was
af, erwards presented to the Assembly by M. MARTIN
BERNARD. The deputation then returned and re-
joined their fellow-students who were awaiting their
arrival at the office of the Democratic Pacifique in the
Rue de Beaune. While these young men (about
1,000 in number) were quietly waiting in the court-
yard of the house in which the office of the Demo-
cratic Pacifique is situated, four of the Gardiens de
Paris arrived and attempted to arrest the student who
appeared to be acting as leader—his comrades rushed
forward and rescued him, and a crowd assembling,
the porter closed the gates of the house. Soldiers
soon after arrived and occupied the whole of the
street. They entered the court of the house, and
arrested twelve of the students. The remainder
formed themselves into a procession, and proceeded
to the quarter of the University, singing " A bas Fel-
loux," to the air of Des Lampions.
The Gardes Mobiles, too, incensed at the recent
reductions made in their pay and appointments, are
by no means well affected to the present Ministry—
indeed, they are on the verge of open insurrection.
Several of the officers of the Gardes Mobiles were ar-
rested on Saturday by order of General CHANGAR-
NIER. Open war has at length been proclaimed be-
tween the Ministry and the Assembly, and it will be
a war a routrance. It will be in the recollection of
our readers that M. LEON FAUCHER on Friday pre-
sented a measure to the National Assembly for the
suppression of the clubs nominally, but really for the
suppression of every public meeting of every sort and
description. The law presented was in direct breach
of one of the articles of the Constitution, and the in-
tention with which it was presented was to lay a trap
for the Assembly.

The National thus exposes the flagrant attempt on
the part of the Minister to violate the law and to com-
promise the Assembly :

" ART. 8 OF THE CONSTI- " BILL PRESENTED BY 31
TUTION. LEON FAUCHER.

" Citivns have a right to " Clubs are prohibited.
meet together, to assemble Will be considered as such
peaceably,qnd without arms, every public meeting which
to petition, to manifest their shall be held periodically,
opinions by the press or or at irregular intervals,
otherwise; the exercise of for the discussion of politi-
these rights has only for cal questions."
limit the rights or liberty
of others, and public secu-
rity."

This simple comparison is sufficient to characterise the
Bill, and to show its unc,:nstitutional character. It is
that policy a ontrance which M. Guiast practised a year
back with the success and results which are known to
every one. It is the right of meeting, the violation of
which by the old Government led to the revolution of
February, violated again by a Ministry of that revolu-
tion itself, or rather by a Ministry of the counter-revo-
lution. It is the Constitution slighted in its spirit, and in
its lt ter. What is the object of the Ministry, wheth. r
with respect to the Ass( mbty, or with respect to the repub-
lican masses, in presenting such a Bill? Let us first
speak of the Assembly. The Ministry lays a trap for it. It
thinks that it ((pally attains its object, whether the As-
sembly rejects or sanctiors the Bill. It it be rejected,
the Ministry hopes that the Assembly will thus render
itself suspected by a certain part of the country of
' anarchical tendencies ; if on the contrary, it sanctions
the prosisions submitted to it, the Ministry hopes that
in so giving itself an example of violation, it will render
ulterior violations more easy ; it hopes also that the As-
sembly, will become unpopular with the energetic, and,
at the same time, sincere opinions which have looked on
the Pt public as a bona fide Government. But the Mi •
nistry will fall into its own snare. The Assembly, which
has already passed a law to regulate the clubs, and which
may modtly it if necessary, will know how both to re-
cognise, and cause it to be recognised, this double prin-
ciple—respect for individual right, and punishment of
attacks made on the right of society. It will thus show
.hat it is neither anarchical nor counter-revolutionary.
As to the masses, as to those energetic and sinecre opi-
nions of which we spoke just now, it would appear that
the design is, by this audacious policy, to drive them to
despair. Such, no doubt, is not the design of the Mi-
nistry; it is blinded by its false ideas, as to the normal
conditions of democratic societies, and, in virtue of these
ideas, it comes to decisions of which it does not measure
all the signification and all the importance. However
that may be, the good sense of the masses will show more li
respect for the law and the Constitution than the reac-
tionary system of the Ministry."

The bureau appointed to consider the urgency of
M. LEON FAUCHER'S proposition reported on Satur-
day against its urgency, the members of the bureau
declaring their hostility not only to the urgency of
thermeasure but to the details of the measure itself.
M. SENARD was the reporter. In his report, M. SE
NARD clearly lays down that the Committee proposed
the rejection of the " urgency," because it did not ap-
prove of the principles of the Bill itself. It was not,
he said, the tutelary regulation of a right consecrated
by the Constitution that was demanded; it was the
right itself that was contested • for the exposé des
motifs read by the Minister of the Interior had
frankly admitted that the whole pith of the mea-
sure was in the words " the clubs are pro-
hibited." However much the disorders which
had resulted from the clubs might be deplored,
and however anxious the Assembly might
be to put an end to them, the Committee could not
accept a measure which would have the effect of an-
nulling a right consecrated by the Constitution. So
far the report was opposed to the principles of the
Bill. As regards the urgency of the measure, M.
SENARD also declared that the explanations given by
the Minister of the Interior did not justify its neces-
sity, as it appeared that the clubs, instead of in-
creasing, were rapidly diminishing. On the 28th of
July, when the decree regulating the clubs was
passed, there were thirty-seven clubs existing in
Paris, while at the present day there were only
eleven ; and of these five had been closed within the
last few days by judiciary decisions. He therefore
thought that there were no grounds for urgency ; but
that, on the contrary, if the Assembly should think
fit ultimately to adopt the measure, it ought to do so
after solemnly considering the question, with all the
usual forms and guarantees.
The. Assembly confirmed the decision of the Com-
of 76 40t to
raittee, and determin?d by majority