The Sun.
London, England, 1846-10-22 00:00:00

_ _ te. hfitliniAN Ar t{trust yi,so
riti tits sett for *
hersivi,ll
11011$ ihd IttittO rd' 444 ithti 41
411
The quantity aetually ittiperted, that is, breuilat to our
shores, during the first eight months of this year, under
the pressure of a very great demand, has fallen' ,a:n-
siderably under 3,000,000 quarters. But it must be
considered that we have not so good a period for the
importation of our estimated deficiency as that( (rein
January Ito September 1. To avert a famine we trust
have nearly all in before next August. Should an un-
safe and improvident cheapness in these islands send rho
disposable stores of the world to other countries, and
should we only realise our state next spring, it will then
be absolutely impossible to bring to these islands what
will then be needed. It will be impossible to divert the
shipping from its other distant or pressing engagements.
Gradually, of court e, the importation can to effect( d,
but with difficulty, and with a coesiderable sacrifice to
other interests. But it cannot be done at all unless it be
taken in time.'
POST.—We observe with very great regret the tone
in which the Visitation Charge of the Bishop of this dio-
cese, published in our paper of Tuesday, lf.,s been criti-
cised by some of our Gontemporaries. We do nit our-
selves say that the journalists are called upon to otftr
panegyric instead of the severities in which they have
indulged; but we think they might have been silent, or,
if they criticised at all, have done so in a more impartial
spirit, and is a more respectful tone. The Mo. ning
Chronicle calls the Bishop an ecclesiastical Pe el, and says
that, in perusing his Lordship's Charge," the curious rt ader
may have been more than once reminded of the Minis-
ter of promise and expediency, who first got his party
into an awful scrape, and then patriotically betrayed
them for their own and the public good." We cannot
excuse the malignity of likening the respectable
Bishop of this diocese to such a public cheat and
counterfeit as the late Premier. This, to use the words
of the Right Rev. Prelate himself, is " an imputation
which no person who did not wilfully misconstrue, or
strangely misunderstand the language of his Charge,
would have thought of casting upon him." It should be
distinctly borne in mind that while Sir R. Peel wheeled
round and joined the camp of those he had previously
opposed, he could give no intelligible reason for doing
so. He could give no reason at all, which would not
have been as cogent, while he was doing his. best against
the free-traders, as it was when he made it the excuse
for joining their side. Not so the Bishop of London.
He frankly and fairly tells the reason why ho gave
certain advice to his clergy in public, and then told them
in private that he would not hold them bound to follow
his advice. Finding a diversity of practice to exist in
the perfbrmance of Divine service in his diocese, he re-
commended a strict adherence to the law, so as to ensure
uniformity. The Chronicle says that the Bishop has not
any homage to render to truth and reason. He still think&
he was right in his ruhricAl recommendations, only ha
has miscalculated his power of withstanding clamout
This is not a fair representation. What is true is, tba,
he did not calculate upon any such clamour arising
as that which did arise. He found a great difficulty
which he did not anticipate. Worldly. wise men will say
that he should have foreseen the probability of all that
happened, and thus have avoided the position of clifn.
culty in which he subsequently found himself, unless he
were determined and prepared to fight his way through
it. But in our opinion a Bishop of the Church is not to
be blamed because he had a rather better opinion of the
general reasonableness of his people than they deserved.
He might have calculated more shrewdly, and had he
read Voltaire more, and the Bible less, he possibly
would have judged more accurately as to the extent of
popular fanaticism, and the " clamour" which shallow--
minded persons would be ready to make when the key-
note of their most violent prejudices was touched.
But we think it perfectly clear that the Bishop has
frankly and fairly explained those questionable points
which have been made the subject of so much complaint
against him.

HERALD.—If any sanguine projector, some sixteen
or seventeen years ago, had enumerated, atnonr, the
merits of a railway scheme, the moral and sanatory con-
sequences attendant on its successful completion, he
would inevitably have found his speculations over-
whelmed with unmitigated ridicule.- That scepticism
which spared not the mechanical and commercial pro-
spects of such undertakings would have shown even less
mercy to this satellite crotchet of social improvement.
The dryness of mere engineering controversy, and cal-
culation would have been often relieved by discussing
the moral tendencies of a tunnel or the sanatory charms
of an embankment. But time is a grand revolutionary
agent. The full development of the railway system
itself has not more completely overshadowed the sneers
which attended its birth, nor more entirely exceeded
the commercial expectations of its early promoters,
than would this hope of moral and physical bene-
fits. A Parliamentary " blue book, " published last Monday, contains certain evidence relating to
railways in the neighbourhood of the metropolis,
which strongly illustrates the local consequences of
their completion. The incumbent of St. Matthew's,
Bethnal-green, attributes a considerable improve-
ment which has taken place in his parish to the building
of the Eastern Counties Railway. New houses, better
adapted to the wants of the inhabitants, more soundly
constructed, more completely ventilated, and, of course,
perfectly clean, have replaced the old tenements in which
the vicious and profligate classes of that parish formerly
vegetated in darkness and in dirt. The passage of a
railway through a metropolitan district doubtless occu-
pies much space upon which buildings were previously
crowded ; but its chief and most important effect is in
disturbing the old arrangement of streets, cutting
through and exposing to public gaze courts, alleys, and
recesses known only to the criminal or the police, at-
tracting public attention to the dwellings of the very
poor or the very vicious, and stimulating the owners of
property to the erection of new buildings. The broken
and irregular portions of old houses exposed on each
side of the line must be completed and faced
with new erections ; and by this means the
best portions of the Building Act, under the
control of which every new tenement must
be raised, extend their beneficial operation to
that vicinity where its provisions are most
needed. The practical working of the whole is well
shown in the fact that new houses have been built in
Bethnal-green, on each side of the railway, of a better
and more wholesome description than those which had
previously occupied the same spot. The tendency of all
evidence upon this subject is to show that the honest
and hard. working artisans, who had previously dwelt
almost in foul and squalid wretchedness, being compelled
to seek new residences, have invariably got better lodged
in consequence of the removal. They have gone into
other streets in the immediate vicinity, they have taken
houses built expressly on a speculation of this general
disturbance, and in a few or no instances known to the
parochial authorities have they changed from houses
close or dirty to those which were closer or dirtier. As
the mere herding together of great numbers propagates
every corrupt and depraved tendency, so the occasional
dispersion of a dissolute aggregation, by destroying the
influence of evil example, entails a social benefit. On
this account also, therefore, the erection of a great
public work in the neighbourhood of a large town ex-
ercises a secondary or reflected influence in promoting
the combined morality of its inhabitants, and diminish-
ing the reproductive virulence of crime, by an extensive
dilution and dispersion. Bat we are not on that account
wholly insensible to the overcrowding in other districts
which for a time must necessarily follow the expulsion
of many inhabitants from the site of a railway. That
pressure upon other portions of the same town is, how-
ever, only temporary. The space really covered and
permanently occupied by a railway bears a very small
proportion to the numberof houses at first appropriated.
A short period is sufficient to bring within the eventual
limits of a narrow strip of land the works whieh origi-
nally spread over an acre; and the undertaking is no
sooner completed than new structures rise on every
side, perfecting the angular remnants of squares and
streets, and affording by the rivalry of their land-
lords every inducement to the labouring poor to
enter new tenements. Those persons only whose pro-
fessional labours, or whose humane impulses, have
carried them frequently and constantly into the dwell-
ings of the industrious poor, can have any clear concep-
tion of the callousness to dirt which necessity entails,
and such only can appreciate the importance of occa-
sionally urging the labouring population into a change
of residence. The poor man cannot remove his family
to a country residence, or to a watering-place, while his
town house undergoes repair. Painters, whitewashers,
and nightmen, jostling the ricketty infant, or disturbing
the daily meal, where whole families live in a single
apartment, constitutes an effectual process of ejectment.
The single proposition for any such purification is inva-
riably met by the tenant with objections and diffi-
culties. He alleges that he is quite content with
the existing condition of his wretched room,
chiefly under the apprehension of an increased rent
being the eventual consequence of augmented clean-
liness. Few things are more remarkable than the
small amount of money expended in house rent by the
industrious population of towns. Men earning steady
wages for years do not expend one-twentieth part of
their income upon lodging. Both on moral and econo-
mical grounds it can be successfully shown the.l, the tem-
porary disturbance consequent upon the formation of a
new thoroughfare, the erection of a public, building, or
the construction of a railway, tends eventually to im-
prove the dwellings of the poor, by the compulsory
soundness and purity of every fresh arrangement. The
industrious and the dissolute poor are equally exposed
to the operation of these causes, and though affected in,
different ways the entire benefit rendered to both far
transcends the entire injury. pa the whole there can
be no doubt that the community in which such change.%
are effected reaps a permanent and wholesome advan-
tage. If the dwellings of poverty are occasionally dis-
turbed, the haunts of vice aro equally uprooted, the
receptacles of confederated depravity disgorge their foul-
ness, and the profligate contagion of crime is robbed of
its concentration.

We understand that Mr. Tait, the eminent book •
seller and publisher, of Edinburgh, intends to retire in
the course of next year from the business which he has
so long carried on. The whole of his printing materials
and machinery are to be disposed of by private contract,
as well as the copyright of Twit's Magazine, a Aork
which has been conducted for so many years in an ex-
tremely creditable manner.
EXTRAORDINARY FATAL ACCIDENT,`
morning, an aged female named Yesterclax
Sarah mat® of Slater's Almshouses Tuckliffe, an in,
dead. was fo,and
rently risen in the Kinah
dead. The old lady, who had a wooden leg, had appa-
her wooden lam. course course of the night, and unfr,rtunately
another
had hitched between the bedstead and
piece6of furniture, throwing btir head foremost
tic() tt corner, from which she was linable to
herself, and she was strangled by her cap strin extricate,
g.
TILE CITY BLOCKADE.—Yesterday, the Commis•
sinners of Sewers gave notice that the thoroughfare of
thatNe
w gstartee- et
ets,tricEnmw d be stoppede,doivaltelyoni completionduring the
othorep,:epavvriipngg
in Cheapsidet _
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