The Sun.
London, England, 1870-01-17 00:00:00

SPIRIT. OR. TP;:listllnaltATlOAlL 8,

. ~;:;

'The Times, in diseassinp,
.ihe moration of Mr. i3right's
ipeech at Birmingham, declares that most instances of
,rational decay are dui to national weakness or faults of
character. The people themselves are of necessity the
material out of which all institutions in a country syring ;
they possess, and always have possessed, the power, if they
possessed the spirit, to modify their.own creations as they
might need. Mr. Bright inVitir—si If we could subtract
from the ignorance, the poverty, the suffering, the sick-
*less, and the crime now witnessedamong us the ignorance,
the poverty, the suffering, the 4okness, and crime caused
by the single vice of drinking," would not the country be
so changed for the better that we should hardly know
again? That single improvement—a mere matter of morals
which has been successfully effected in the higher and
middle classes—would regenerate thonands of homes, and
bring a new life and spirit to bear on public affairs. Is it
quite impossible for the poor of England to acquire the
habit, which the poor of some other countries possess in a
far greater degree, of remembering that every summer is
followed by a winter, and of not only making hay, but
storing hay, while the sun shines? We are far from
saying the poor are alone to blame. Employers are far
too ready to throw off all responsibility for their workmen,
and to act vs if they counted on palish and public
charities to relieve them of any anxiety for the welfare of
the families which depend cn them. But the middle
classes, whatever their other faults, have at least possessed
the virtues of independence and self-reliance, and it
would bode ill for our legislation, as well as for
the use which is to be made of it, if it were to fall into the
hands of a class who expect things to be done for them,
and are not reluctant to be assisted either morally or
materially. What is the meaning, one cannot but some-
times reflect, of that tendency of working men to clamour
for compulsory laws—laws to prohibit Sunday trading,
laws to enforce education? Is it a confession that they
are sensible of some moral weakness in their class ; and do
they look to laws to supply them with the energy and
stubbornness they know to be necessary ? It would be a
much more hopeful sign if they displayed the old English
repugnance to laws of this character, and felt they would
sooner take care.of their own business than have the
wisest Legislature in the world look after it for them.

The Standard observes that the four great telegraph
companies, whose systems of communication connect the
New and Old Worlds, have wisely agreed to work together
in peace, dividing their receipts in an equitable propor-
tion. A little over sixty-three per cent. of the aggregate
revenue will be assigned to the Anglo-Arnerican, the
Atlantic, and the Newfoundland Companies, while the
remaining thirty-six per cent. and a little more, will
belong to the fourth—the French Atlantic Company.
It
.is to be hoped that, with the great physical
and commercial advantages possessed by these
combined authorities, the directors will be en-
abled to effect some important reforms in ocean
telegraphy, so as to develop° its capabilities in a degree
hitherto unknown. There seems no reason, for instance,
why the telegrams should not be divided into first second,
and third class, like the passengers on a railway. We have
every confidence that the intelligent men at the head of
these companies will not be backward in the course of im-
provement. • They have given the best proof of their
ability in agreeing to a plan of co-operation, The policy
with which they have thus identified themselves is
worthy of the,:enterprise for which the companies were
formed. Of all commercial undertakings perhaps none
is nobler than that of ocean telegraphy. The benefits
which it is calculated to confer on the human race are
great, and no body of men can be entitled to more, consi-
deration than those who have invested five millions of
money in these cables, thereby rendering ocean telegraphy
an accomplished fact, despite the great commercial risks
which beset it at the outset. These telegraphic lines are
really a goldenbridge, and it is pleasant to see three great
nations, like those of England, France, and America,
baiting in a scheme for effecting rapid and friendly inter-
course between the two hemispheres of our globe.

The Unforeseen, says the Daily News, has often played
an important, and sometimes a fatal, part in French poli-
tics. It has destroyed a good Government, and saveda bad
one ; ruined the hopes of liberty, turned a peaceful into a
violent revolution, and renewed for an indefinite period
an expiring lease of arbitrary power. If ever an event
was unforeseen, and of a nature to derange the soundest
policy and the best intentions of honest men, such was
the sanguinary "drama of Auteuil," as it is characteristi-
cally described. Have the Emperor's advisers acted on the
whole with equanimity and discretion in this unex-
pected crisis ? Louis Napoleon, at all events, is en-
titled to congratulate himself en the progress of
that "pacific revolution" 1-- last
July. Let hint suppose that instead of a responslhie anti
united Ministry, consisting of honest and int'el endent
men, committed to the cause of public libel ty and to
Parliamentary institutions, a Rouher were still ruling
over a silent Senate, an ab;ect Legislative Body, :Ind a
mutilated press. Why all classes of French society
would have risen as one man to call the Second Empi,
to account for the savagery at Auteuil, and all Marsi, I
Canrobert's Chassepots would scarcely have prevent;;,
a revolution of disgust. •Ner was the Government
of the Emperor unequal to the occasion. Their predecessors
would probably have gone out to meet and to provoke an
insurrection by way of simplifying the difficulties of the
situation. They would have done wonders with the Chas-
sepot. M. Chevandier de Valdrome and his colleagues, on
the contrary, acted as the freest constitutional Govern-
ment in the world would act in the presence of a perfectly
sincere and justifiably popular manifestation. It had been
proved to the gratification of all true Liberals, and to the
disappointment of some Imperialists, that a Liberal
Government could preserve order without provoking an
insurrection and without provoking a state of siege.

It was three hours, remarks the lost, after the fire at
the Star and Garter was discovered before it was possible
to obtain water, and it would not have been obtained even
then if the chief turnkey had not despatched his deputy
on horseback to Battersea to entreat the authorities of the
Vauxhall Water Company to put on sufficient pressure to
supply the engines. 'Week after week, though the vestry
knew from their surveyor that the supply of water was de-
ficient, and that in the event of fire their stand-pipes would
be as useless as their antediluvian engine, they do not
appear to have made any complaint to the water
company. It is all very well to say that the company was
to blame. No doubt it was; bi.t the inhabitants of Rich-
mond look to the local authorities for protection in such a
matter as this, and they have every reason to be dissatis-
fied with their conduct. It is possibly nearly a year since
the vestry conceived the idea that it might perhaps be
useful to have such a thing as a fire-escape in the town. As
far back as August last they applied to the vicar and to
Colonel Henderson to let them place one in the old church-
yard or at the police-station. When their application failed
they did not become insensible to the fact that a fire-escape
Is a useful machine, particularly in a town boasting many
old and inflammable buildings ; but, though they were
alive to its utility, they appear to have exhausted their
power of suggesting any other stations for it than those
which had been refused. In the same way, when they had
covered Richmond with stand-pipes, they had no energy
left to compel the Vauxhall Company to supply them
with water ; and thus it came to pass that the manager of
the hotel perished for want of a fire-escape, and that the
h
hotel itself, with eight engines and at least one stand-pipe
in immediate proximity to it, was burnt down for want of
water.

The 1(z Mall Gazette states that tho Cambridge Conser-
vatives -*have just published a declaration, or rather two
declarations, of their sentiments. The zeal of a fraction
has. outrun that of a majority, and, 'as we shall presently
3, there is a gap between the irreconcilables and the
• 'party which does not reject all thoughts of a compromise.
The ...Liberal. Party published a similar manifesto a
month ago, and a . comparison of the documents will
throw some light upon the state cf o,inion within
the university, as the signatures were in both
cases obtained from the same class, namely, the heads of
houses, 'professors, the resident fellows and es-fellows, and
the officers of the colleges and university. It may be said
with tolerable accuracy that public opinion at Cambridge
•divided into three Parts. Half the university openly
demands the abolition of all tests by a summary and com-
Prehensivo measure. Considerably more than half the
remainder, is willing to give up a share of the government
hut wi,hes to re'ain certain safe-
and the fellowsbil ,
'guards, to be hereafter speaded. About a fifth of the
whole number, (that is, 43 out of 237) is still of the
opinion, which very lately was that of an overwhelming
majority, that no more concessions should be made. This
thoro can be no reasonable doubt that as soon as
a Liberal Government choe.'es to insist Ilion the ra ;asuie,
te,ts v-Lil be tdtofzethei. abo'lishe(l. A majority of four-
fifths ever. within the Lnivi'n;ity is in favour of some
lase coneesr;:on, and we need nub run over the ec.nsidera-
Lions which prove how futile and unsatisfactory any at-
empfi,nt satisfying the tierszarli are certain to be in this
41 many otb,er cases.

THE GALWAY MURDER.—An application has
been Made in the Court of Queen's r.ench, Dublin, for a
I,.ange of venue in the trial of "The Queen against Bar-
t-44;C' The prisoner was indicted at the last assizes with
!hooting Colonel Lambert, and the jury being unable to
agree, were discharged. Serjeant Dowse wa-i fur the Crown,
act the court having heard Mr. Heron, Q.C., against the
plication, granted the motion.

TOWN 7 ALK.

(From the London Correspondent of the Western Mail.)

An impression is getting about just now that the
Gladstone Government will be brought to grief by
the Chancellor of the Exchequer. That is the club
talk. the financial system inaugurated by Mr.
Lowe won't work. It is a mere snatching at Time's
forelock. Even if successful as a ministerial ruse,
it never could be repeated. But it has proved and
is proving anything but successful. It has pleased
nobody. From the first hour of its revelation it
has been looked at askance ; and the more it comes
to be examined the less it is liked. It bristles with
as many paradoxes as the wildest theories put for-
ward by William Cobbett when he wrote as Peter
Porcupine. Two and two, according to Mr. Lowe,
make five—and so on throughout the whole be-
wildering haze and maze of his calculations. The
Budget of 1869—now that 1570 has barely dawned
upon us—is regarded with disfavour alike equally
by taxpayers and by tax collectors. It shows the
State as having for neither of them the bowels of
compassion. From east to west, from Pall-mall
back to the Poultry, there are beginning to be
audible mutterings about Jonah, with a view to
one at least of the ministers being thrown over-
board. Clubland, no less than the Tom Tiddler's
ground of the city, has nowhere to be found upon
it one single apologist of Mr. Lowe as a Financier.
The discussion as to the Conservative Leadership
may be regarded as having ended after all—for the
time being at any rate—in what, for want of a
better phrase, may be termed the compromise of a
postponement. Lord Cairns is still, in one sense,
master of the situation. According to the proverb,
possession is nine points of the law—and that of
ireAf gives him an advantage. But beyond this he
has still fresh upon him the prestige of that master
stroke of dictatorship, by which he severed the Gor-
dian knot of the Irish Church difficulty at the very
caisis of the last session of Parliament. Besides
which, there is a vivid conciousness among the Con-
servatives of the looming up of that other Irish dif-
ficulty, in dealing with which a skilled lawyer may
be to themselves a matter of the very first import-
ance. The new Earl of Derby's hesitation to as-
- same the post of Leader has rendered the retention
of that responsible office by Lord Cairns, for a little
while longer at any rate, almost inevitable. A dull
Duke certainly might have been substituted, but
with so little advantage to any one that the party
might just as well have reinstated the Earl of
Malmcsbury. As for the Marquis of Salisbury being
inducted at this moment into the position of Leader
of the Opposition in the Lords, the notion involved
in itself a complete political bouleversenzent
among the Conservatives in both houses of the
Legislature. Another Leader must, in that case,
have been selected in the Commons, as a suc-
cessor to Mr. Disraeli—supposing, first of all, that
the Tory peers could have accepted the guidance
of Lord Salisbury. Able man as he is, Lord Salis-
bury has
_a passion for sitting upon people—and
the Lords, somehow, especially the Tory Lords,
don't like to be sat upon. Yet, supposing even
they did—how, in that contingency, about the
Conservative Leader of the Opposition in the
House of Commons ? The marshalling of the Tory
phalanx in the House of Peers, under Lord Salis-
bury, would have involved by necessity—it is im-
possible not to insist upon this—the substitution of
some one for Mr. Disraeli in the House of CJM-
mons. Whoever that some one might be (Mr.
Gathorne Hardy or any one else you may like to
name)—imagine the happy time of it he would
have had, with such a rival on the back benches,
with such a withdrasVn Achilles, with so formidable
a Parliamentary tactician, so keen an observer, so
scatheing a master of irony as the member for
Bucks, ever close at hand, and ever on the watch.
Denied, for a while at least, the opportuity of test-
ing whatever advantages might have accrued from
the assumption of their leadership by the fifteenth
Lord Derby—the Conservatives have, to all ap..
p3arance, discreetly made up their minds to con -
tinue in authority as their chief, for a little time
longer at any rate, the sometime Lord Chancllor
Mr. Thsraeli's Government.

• Consequent,no doubt, upon the recent transfor-
mation of the Pall Malt Gazette—now doubly
weighted as a twopenny morning and evening
newspaper—the Globe, without any increase of
price, will be enlarged on the Bth of February, and
printed in entirely new type. Another instance of
the courageous enterprise of the new proprietor,
who might certainly adopt as his motto the familiar
words of Addsou's Cato—
" 'Tis not in mortals to command success,
But we'll do more, Semprouius, we'll deservo it."

Our palaces in Loudon, nowadays, are certainty
our clubs—the last addition to which, the Junior
Carlton, is, in every sense, pal itia/. The grand
staircases are worthy of an imperial residence. The
appliances throughout the building comprise
among them every latest luxury in the way of im-
provement. The numerous bronze pendant gas
chandeliers lighting up the double sweep (at right
angles to each other) of the grand dining saloons
—each cost 500 guineas.
One marvels as to whether frost and thaw, alter-
nating with each other, produce more apoplexy
than the dog days. For, only the other morning
in a single issue of the Times obituary, now, in
mid-winter, I counted up in rapid sequence,
thirteen as having died in a few hours or sud-
denly ; five in a few hours ; eight suddenly or
very suddenly.
On Monday evening last, at New York, Fechter
made his first appearance before an American
audience at Niblo's—wisely selecting for represen-
tation on the occasion one of his very finest parts,
that of Ruy Blas. It will be matter of curiosity to
note how the Yankee critics take to the French-
English actor. Mr. Fechter was born in Hanway-
passage, connecting Oxford-street and Tottenham-
court-road at right angles, so that with all If s
broken English, he is a true Londoner.
As for literary intelligence while there is little
enough to remark upon just now of immediate in-
terest, there are three matters connected with it
that are certainly not unworthy of passing mention
here ; inasmuch as they refer to the three chiefs of
our living literature. There are the expectations
awakened in regard to Charles Dickens's new serial
story, now in a few weeks forthcoming. There is
the recollection of the brilliant success achieved by
Alfred Tennyson's last book of poems, now running
into its fiftieth thousand. And there are the
astounding muddle and confusion into which the
critics as a body have blundered in dealing with Lord
Lytton's new comedy of " Walpole." The reviewers
have altogether failed to recognise what one might
have thought was sufficiently apparent upon the I
very face of it, in regard to that elegant and radiant
comedy, in three acts, with its pungently significant
sub-title of " Every man has his price"—cer-
tainly not by any means the least original or
the least remarkable among the multiform
achievements of the Bulwer of old, or of the
Lytton of nowadays. They have entirely missed
—these reviewers—any recognition whatower of the
fact that this same comedy of Walpole is the very
first attempt that has ever been made to add to the
varieties of English comedy the metre of Moliere!
That of itself must of necessity, one might have
thought, have lifted the work into instantly recog-
nised importance. But, together with the metre of
Moliere, the dramatist employs here that treatment
of large typical creations of character (cosmopoli-
tan, not local), that good-natured satire embodying
philosophy and conveyed in epigram, together wi h
that closely woven plot in which there is not a
single superfluous incident, which belong to the
pure classical comedy that Moliere may be
said at once to have created and to have
perfected. It would be no extravagance to
assert, what I for one am certainly convinced of,
that some day or other this comedy wid, for the
reasons I have cited, assume a position of import-
ance in the records of our dramatic literature as
having first accordLd to the comic muse of England
what she has hitherto been entirely without, and
with out which she can hardly, one might say, claim
to be any muse at all—to wit—au appropriate comic
rhythm. Blank verse in tragedy is, of course, un-
ri-ralled. In comedy it is simply detestable, or at
any xate in the comic parts of comedy. And wby ?
BRCAVSe it never lends itself to point and epigram