The Sun.
London, England, 1847-02-25 00:00:00

CAP rAIN WAliEli'S LONG RANGE.

On the motion of Sir C. NAPIEIt, the report of the
officers appointed to inspect the trial of Captain Warner's
lung rango was ordered to he presented.
EXPIRING LAWS.

On the motion of Mr. PARKER, the following
gentlemen were appointed the Committee on expiring
laws:—Mr. Parker, Mr. Tuffnell, Mr. Attorney General,
Mr. Labouchere, Mr. Greene, the Lord Advocate, the
O'Connor Don, Viscount Ebringtnn, Mr. Gihson
Mr. Hawes, Mr. Ward, Mr. Milner Gibson, the Soiiei-
tor-General, Mr. Shed, and the Secretary at War.
COLLEC ['ION OF RATES, IRELAND.
Mr. CRAWFORD rose to more the second reading
of the Bill for the better collection of the poor rates in
Ireland, and he might say that his first object in this
Bill was to render the landlord, as well as
the tenant, responsible for the poor-rates. His
first principle was, to protect the poor tenant
from his landlords rates as well as his own.
He proposed after the Bill was read a second time, if the
House should consent to read it a second time, not to
press the further stages of the Bill until the whDle
of the measures of the Government were brought before
the attention of the House.

Colonel CONNOLY vas sorry to be compelled to
Nippose a measure introduced by the lion. Member for
Rochdale; but he felt it his duty to do so on the present
occasion. The Bill proposed to confer most unheard-of
and most uncalled-for powers on the Government; he
believed also that there would be great difficulty in
carrying out the provisions of the Bill. lie had no
objection to support the second reading, on condition that
it was not proceeded with until atter the Government
measures were laid upon the tables of the House.
Sir G. GREY concurred in the opinion expressed by
the Honourable and Gallant Member, that there
would be considerable difficulty in the practical
part of the measure ; the principle might be
a sound one. Re would therefore recommend the House
to consent to thy second reading, and postpone the fur-
ther consideration of the measure till the measures of
her M.jestys Government had been brought before the
114 else.
After a few words from Mr. I'. SCROPE and Mr. B.
ESCOTT, the Bill was read a second time.
FAIRS AND MARKETS CLAUSES (IRELAND)
BI LL.
The House then went into Committee on this Bill.
Mr. HUME, on asking whether the Government had any
Bill under their attention for the object of town improve-
ments, was told that that was not the subject then before
the Committee. The Ron. Member said he merely asked
the questions, as several inquiries had been made at him
on the subject.
After some desultory observations from Mr. HUDSON,
Mr. HUME, and several other Members,
Mr. HANDLEY remarked that it was useless to
adopt any general Bill for the direction of private Bilk,
unless the clauses which were intended to apply gene-
rally were more carefully drawn than they had been
hitherto.

Lord G. BENTINCK thought that the practice of
read ng four Bills a second tirue, and passing them
through Committee on the next day, was certainly
something like acting with very great haste. He had
no doubt that considerable opposition would be made to
the Bills, when they were well considered by the House.
Mr. GISBORNE was understood to approve of the
principle of the Bill.
The clauses of the Bill were gone through seriatim,
and agreed to.
Lord J. RUSSELL said there were certain clauses in
the Bill, which would bare to come under the considera-
tion of the Select Committee on the Standing Orders,
and if any aruen,:ments were deemed necessary, they
could be made on bringing up the report.
Lord GEORGE I3ENTINCK hoped that some time
would be allowed to elapse before the report was con.
sidered, in order to give the country time to examith
the provisions of the OW.
The House then ...,uined wie n t,.e Chili/man report,-
progress. and the report wits ordered to be brought up
Thursday next.
Co til MISSIONERS CLAUSES BILL.
The House then went into Committee on this Bill.

The several clauses of this Bill passed through Com-
mittee without amendment.

(LEFT SITTING.)

-
LEGISLATING IN THE DARK.—Some short-righted
Member (Mr. Hume, we think) complained of the very bad
lighting of the House. We should say that, considering
how very obscure most of the public measures were, there
wAs a sad deficiency of light in the House of Commons which
prevented Members seeing things as clearly as people out of
doors. The light seems to come all from one side—a kind of
party light—which may account for such onesided views
being always taken of the laws of the country by those who
have been legislating in the dark. There appears to be the
Tory light, the Whig light, and the Radical light, and that
farthing rushlight, the Protectionist lig,:t. Now, the sooner
these lights are merged into one, and a good central light in-
troduced, by which members shall be able to see the same
on all sides of the House, the better it will be for those who
have an antipathy to taxes. We do not know of a better
one than the light of truth. It is cheap—requires no snuffing
—trims itself—never goes Out, and L ives the light of we don't
know hew many millien catiole, ? Will any tallow-chandler
inform the House whkre it is to be had ?—Punch.

UNIVERSITY REFORM.
(From the forthcoming Oxford Maylitzine).
"As water, whether it be the dew of heaven or the springs
of the earth, (loth scatter and lose itself in the ground, ex-
cept it be collected into some receptacle, where it may by
union comfort and sustain itself; and, for that cause, the in.
dustry ot man hath trained and made spring.htatis. continuo,
cisterns, and pools; which men have accustomed likewise to
beautify and adorn with bccomphstiments of magnificence
and state, as well as ot use and nectosity. So knowlede,
whether it descend from • divine inspiration or spring from
human sense, would soon perish and rmisii to oblivion, if it
were not preserved in books, 'traditions, conferences, and
places appointed, as Universities, Colleges, and Schools for
the-receipt and comforting the same."

The trusty squire of Don Quixote had no misgivings what-
ever, touching his capacity for governing the island, which
the all-conquering knight of La Mancha was, in due course,
to confer upon him. In this respect worthy Sancho is no bad
representative of many hopeful and well-meaning men of
these days. They think reform is "as easy as lying" to the
liar. Th• best men are often most open to these delusions.
Honest themselves, and desirous of conforming everything
to the rule of right, they think, that it is only necessary to
show that an evil exists, in order to secure the ►application of
a remedy.
Experience, however, has shown how visionary such plea-
sant expectations are. Wrongs are rarely, perhaps never,
redressed by logic. Moral force is not yet so irresistible as
amiable enthusiasts would have us hope and believe. If this
be so in respect to the reform of glaring and notor►ous evils,
much more is it so with the less obtrusive, but more dan-
gerous ills which affect the vitality of nations.
Injustice and exactions, which press upon the millions,
after being long endured and struggled against, are thrown
off by convulsive throes and a dangerous crisis.
Wrongs which affect the moneyed interests, the commer-
cial enterprise of weal.hs- classes, are comparatively short-
lived. But evils agaii;st which the excited passions of the
wronged many, or the resentment of a powerful class cannot
be pointedly directed, are long-lived.
And of this class are the evils of our public schools and
universities. Parliament may be reformed, and being re-
formed, may be argued and coerced into the repeal of a law
hateful as the sanction tf a bread tax. University reform—
public and grammar-school reform, is quite a different mat-
ter. Amidst all the talk of " education," the meaning of
the word is not yet understood. What education can, and
what it cannot do for the moral elevation of a people is by no
means strictly defined. It is not yet felt, that the nation
cannot live on bread alone, or what is required for its perfect
development. It is not felt that both the heart and the brain
of the nation require nutriment in order to give vital force to
the body politic, and, that the mere husks of educational
forms are insufficient.

But though there is not a distinct appreciation of what
education is, and what it is not, yet the continaed dis-
cussion of the subject renders the present time most
favourable to a movement fur university reform ; and a
well-constituted royal commis lion would be hailed with de-
light. The public ear is open to and• who shall address it in
clear tones, with lofty aims, with an appreciation of the diffi-
culties to be overcome, as well as the glorious object to be
attained.

The difficulties are neither few nor small. The public
miad is but partially enlightened on the subject. A large
majority of our legislators view public schools and univei-
sities, through a false medium. They see the school or
university at which their youth was spent' through an at-
mosphere of poetry. To them it is scarcely less than irre-
verence to think of defect either in the constitution or the
working of institutions which, by a mischievous delusive
figure, is personified to them as a mother.
Then there is little to be hoped for from within the
universities. It is not surprising that with possession, a
feeling of absolute, personal, exclusive right should grow up
in the minds of the few who have, and the larger number who
expect to have, wealth, honours, and social distinctions under
this exclusive system.
There is also the further disadvantage, that the sense of
responsibility, political and religious (using the terms in their
largest sense and as almost synonymous), is deadened, if rut
lost, in men who are associated as a privileged body : so that
it has come to be a proverb, that coruorations have neither
bodies to be kicked, nor souls to be damned.
Yet, as we have said, the times are favourable to the great
and holy enterprise of making the universities and public
schools national institutions in truth and reality, part of
the national life, and working t• the mire perfect develop-
ment of the national mind.

A great preparatory work has been done, and that uncon-
sciously. Within a recent period the heriditary, instinctive
confidence of the nation in the universities has been broken
by painful revelations. The nation his been compelled to
believe, what once it would fain have rejected, as a mon-
strous libel. The nation has been compelled to accept as a
fact, that for years the universities have been the seat of a
dangerous, and too successful conspiracy against the faith of
which they were supposed to be the bulwarks. Everywhere
throughout the land a newly-ordained graduate is received
with well-founded distrust; all the while no correcting or
opposing influence is seen in operation; and the faithfulness
and the power of academical rulers is alike doubted. The
conviction has spread that there is not health enough left in
the system to throw off the fatal and pervading taint. The
public is prepared to hear, and to assent to the declaration,
that the leprous house must be taken down.
This on purely religious grounds: but the idea of univer-
sity reform must be both comprehensive and minute. Organic
principles must be broadly laid down, and all details be
worked out in accordance with them.
It cannot be suffered that statutes of founders, which
time may have repealed, should sometimes be held to be
binding tiy fellows of societies, and other times at their ca-
price held to be naught, to the deadening of mural feeling.
It cannot be, that instead of a university, we should have a
mere collection of classical and mathematical schools, carried
on for the advantage of the separate societies which hold
these establishments. Profess .rial chairs cannot remain un-
tenanted, even by the ghosts of the past. Revealed religion
and natural science cannot be for ever banished from Oxford.
The universities wait for reform. The intellect and the
piety, and the patriotism of the nation say, Reform an..;
there must, there will be reform, and perhaps the larger and
more complete for being deterred. We can afford to wait.
There is a great work to be dote, and it cannot be that
men will be wanting for the glorious labour.

PROVISIONS FROM THII UNITED STATES.—The
Oxford and Orphan, from New York, Richard Anderson
front Baltimore, Defence and Radius from Charleston, and
Larne trom NOV Orleans, which were reported at Liverpool
on the 22d inst., bring 8,091 barrels of fl ,ur, 8,608 bags and
and 36,471 bushels of Indian corn, 2,108 barrels of Indian
corn meal, 657 tierces of rice, and 200 boxes of biscuit.
STOCK OF CORN IN DUDLIN.—SO unusually large
is the stock of corn at present in the Custom-house Stores in
Dublin that no room exists for a further supply, nor can
there be any more warehoused there until a new loft in one
of the large stores, which is at prerent being erected, shall
have been completed.--Pilot.
SUDDEN AND AFFECTING DEATII—The sudden
and affectieg death of Mr. Charles Thornton Cunningham,
Lieutenant-Governor of St. Christopher's and of the Lee-
ward Islands, is announced in the West Indian papers which
have just arrived. It appears that this gentleman had
driven in from the country to Basseterre, the seat of Govern.
ment, in apparently vigorous health and cheerful spirits, to
open the newly-elected houses of Legislature. After trans-
acting. some business with his private secretary, and
dispatching a note to invite some officers in a French ship
of war just come into port to luncheon at Government.
house, he rode down to the mail-office, to meet his let-
ters, and a box containing a picture of a much. beloved
sister, recently deceased in England. lie had stated to
more than one person, that his earnest desire to possess
the picture was not unmixed with fear as to the effect
the sight of 41.-... might produce upon him. So strongly
had this apprehension fastened itself on his mind, that,
on the arrival of the box at the Government- house,
he sent a servant in quest of a friend who might be with
him when the box was opened. Having failed in find.
ing him, he proceeded to open the box His butler, who was
present, reports that he looked at the countenance earnestly,
turned pale, whispered a few words to himself, walked
hastil) up to his own room, was heard almost instantly to
fall as he entered it, and his servants following upstairs
found him stretched on the floor a corpse. The St. Christo-
pher's Gazette, as well as many other public and private
communications, bear the strongest testimony to the ability,
vigour, and high moral character of this gentleman, and to
the tenderness and munificence with which et all times, and
(specially under a recent heavy visitation of Island fever, he
had ministered to the wants and sorrows of the negro popula-
lion. The Houses of Assembly met immediately utter his
death, and passed an unanimous vote for a funeral at the
public expense, to testify, as they expressed it, at once their
h
e
respect for his official rank and the high esteem in which
was held by all classes of the community. On tee nextdav
tillhieguaiusthheodritie
in the colony, and by thousands of grateful and per-
sons;thhe e wma se
nfit el owedrs ol t thoe two roahvsee bjh ae
ll
he had largely contri uted.
ing i.egroes, to whose welfare obset (phis'
mbourn-
Mr. Cunningham assumed the Government of St. Kitts in
May, 1639, and fell a victim, as his physician states, partly
"to the exhausting influence of tropical climates on the
nervous powers," and partly to the intensity of brotherly
affection, in the 36th year of his age.
MONEY MARKET.—The premium on gold at Paris is
10 per mile, which, at the English Mint price of 31. 178.
1014 d. per ounce for standard gold, gives an exchange of
25.40 ; and the exchange at Paris on London at short being
25.27, it follows that gold is 0.49 per cent. dearer in Paris
than in London. By advicesfront Hanaburgh the price of gold
is 431 per mark, which, at the. English Mint price of 3/. 17s.
101/2d. per ounce for standard gold, gives an exchange of
1:3.8; and the exchange at Hamburgh on London at short
beingainti
hlr3g.h6, t ith h lho ei:so
htdhoant. gold
The
feerxceehnat.hgdeeahrteNr in
icsouor.9s3e (p)
York on London is 106
per cent., and the par of exchange
between England and America being 109 23-40 per cent.,
it follows that the exchange is 3.33 per cent. against Eng-
land. But the quoted exchange at New York being for
bills at 60 days'
sight,
tke interest must be deducted from
the above difference.

GREECE.—We find the ibllowing in a letter from
Ancona, of the Bth, published by the Aucsburgh Gazette:—
" The last courier from Greece brought letters which state
' that a misunderstanding had occurred between M. Mus,urus,
Ambassador of the Ottoman Porte, and .11. Coletti, President
of the Council. It is thought that M. Mussurus will be re-
placer; by another ambassador. It appears that the King
had himself undertaken t.. be the I.; uarantee of his Aide-de-
camP, Colonel Karatassos, whose passport for Constantinople
M. Mussurus had refused to sign. At a Court ball, which
took place shortly afterwards, the King approached M. Mus-
surus, and said Is I. t hits you treat Of, 101,0 OW ee °L at.
ding?" atm immediately v, ithinew, withuutaiving M.
tints atis%er. Soul, ‘nlys ,liter,Mussucuz, C4lled
M. tOr all tXplailatiUll Kier'-
uy received an evasive reply. M. Coletti,
however, ad-
•ressed a note to the Greek Ambassad,r at Constantinople, ,
.hrecting him to inform the Woman Porte of what had oc-
curred.