The Sun.
London, England, 1846-10-23 00:00:00

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, has been criti-
cised by some of our Contemporaries. We do not our-
selves say that the journalists are called upon to offer a
anegyric 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 in a more respectful tone. The Mo'niag
Chronicle calls the Bishop an ecclesiastical Peel, and sa) a
that, in perusing his Lordship's Charge," the curious reader
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. lie 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 he 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 performance 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 thinks
he was right in his rubrical recommendations, only he
has miscalculated his power of withstanding demon!
This is not a fair representation. What is true is, tha.
ho did not calculate upon any such clamour arising
as that which did arise. He found a great Mficulty
which he did net anticipate. Worldly-wise men will say
that he should have foreseen the probability of all that
happened, and thus have avoided the position of diffi-
culty in which ho subsequently found himself, unless he
were determined and prepared to fight his way through
it. But in our opinion a Bishop of the Church i 3 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, among the
merits of a railway scheme, the moral and sanatory con-
sequences attendant on its successful completion, ho
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-vorSr:micious, and stiwlatim,t,hp owners of
propNy to the erecflun ofoew bMaint‘, The brokeq.
and irregular portions of old' housls exposed on eacYi
side 2( .
tte, line must completed and 'faced
with few -erections ; -ape by this means the
beat ~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 geneeal
disturbance, and in a few or no instances known be 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, tho 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 number of houses at first appropriated.
A short period is sufficient to bring within the eventual
limits of a narrow strip of land the works which 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 that 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. On the whole there can
be no doubt that the community in whichh
suchso chine adanvagnes-
are effected reaps a permanent and
Ifthtehehdauwnetlslinogfs
vice a
of poverty
qryedisgorge their foul-
u areal l
y°occasionally,e uprooted,
e-
rtt rcr
recepta
cles of confederated depravity
intesscs,onacnedhttrhaetipoh.rofligate contagion of crime is robbed of

We understand de rtand
publisher, t hoaft
EMdri
n.
blu'arigtthe eminent
h, ,
intends
book
to re
retire
.
in
seller an
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 coniract,
as well as the copyright of Tait's Illagazime, a work
which has been conducted for so many years in an ex-
tremely creditable manner.
EXTRAORDINARY FATAL ACClDENT.—Wednesday
morning, an aged female named Sarah Tuckliffe, an in-
mate of Slater's Almshouses, Kingsland-road, was found
dead. The old lady, who had a wooaen leg, had appa-
rently risen in the course of the night, and unfortunately
her wooden leg had hitched between the bedstead and
another piece of furniture, throwing her head foremost
into a corner, from which she was unable to extricate
herself, and she was strangled by her cap string.
RAILWAY ARRANGEMENT.—It is stated that terms
were on Wednesday agreed upon between the Ambergate,
Nottingham, and Boston Company and the Eastern
Counties, they having amalgamated at par ; it makes the
former at 71. premium, and gives to the latter not only
the East Coast ene, but the direct trunk line across
the country; cross& also the Midland line in several
parts, and also the Direct Northern. The arrangement
is subject to the approval of both companies, to be im-
mediately called together for that purpose.