The Sun.
London, England, 1870-01-06 00:00:00

SPIRIT or7Trtt PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The Times observes that by deciding on a liberal course
:or himself the Emperor of the French has solved the
doubts of most of the time-servers, and the danger is that
freedom in the present Chamber will have only too many
And too eager friends. The so-called " old parties," as we
learn from our Parisian correspondent, have lost their
hold both of the people and their representatives, and
the reconciliation of that stanch Orleanist, TA. Darn—
than whom there is not a man of higher honour in
France—to the Second Empire proves that the
cause of the banished dynasties is lost in the opinion
of their most sincere supporters. Truly, the same
correspondent and many grave politicians think that what
ever is lost to the old Monarchy is so much clear gain to
the Republic. But we trust that society in France, as in
other countries, will at last learn to take care of itself.
with all the freedom that since last July has been
allowed to the press, and in spite of the hazardous experi-
ments that were made of mob agitation in public meet-
lugs, in the midst of the excitement of popular elections,
what is it that we have witnessed? We have seen a
people sobered, as it were, by the sight of the drun-
kenness of their would-be leaders ; we have seen
Paris elections going against all the candidates of extreme
democracy except in one single instance, and in that single
case—that of M. Rochefort—we now see the multitude
very mu ch at a loss what to do with their idol, and ready
b feel ashamed both of it and of themselves. And all this,
b:., it remembered, occurred long before the Emperor's let-
t to M. 011ivier and the new Ministry had removed every
d uibt as to the Emperor's fidelity to his engagements,
before it was quite clear whether the Message of last July
boded any greater good than the January letter of 1867
or the Decree of November 1860. Even amid the heart-
sickness of hope deferred, the French people refused to
listen to the voice of their Ultra-democratic charmers.
Are they likely to be more easily seduced now, when,
under the Ministry of such men as M. 011ivier and his col-
leagues, France may have as much liberty as she really
aspires to, when the Empire is not unlikely to be hailed as
"the best of Republics ?"

Where was St. Patrick born ? asks the Daily News. The
question, we are persuaded, will appear to the vast majo-
rity of our Irish brethren as ridiculous as to the compa-
ratively few students of ecclesiastical history who have
t iken the pains to ascertain the acknowledged facts of
the case. Nine-tenths of Irishmen, we fully believe, and
of Englishmen, too, for the matter of that, would treat it
a 3 a joke of the "festive season" if we ventured to
suggest that the great Apostle of Ireland was anything
but an Irishman native and to the manor born. The
ilea of St. Patrick being an Englishman, a Welsh-
man, a Scotchman, or a Frenchman! Why, every
Dublin boy knows that Nelson and Wellington were
Irish heroes. One might as well pretend that the first of
the royal race of O'Brien was a native of Middlesex, as
that St. Patrick was born out of the Emerald Isle. It so
ppens, however, that while there has never been the
slightest reason to believe that St. Patrick first saw the
light in Ireland, the controversy about his birthplace has
raged among English, Scottish, Welsh, and French anti-
quaries almost as fiercely as the contest among the Islands
of the Agean Sea for the birthplace of Homer. Was the
Saint born at Dumbarton, at Eristol, at St. David's, at
Boulogne, in France, or at Glastonbury? In the preface
to the second volume of the collection of Ancient Laws
and Institutes of Ireland, the Irish editors of the
" Senchus Mor " have thoroughly examined the interest•
ing question; and have arrived at the conclusion, sup-
ported as it seems to us by the incontrovertible testimony
of the Apostle's own confession, that St. Patrick was born
at or near Glastonbury, in Somersetshire, and that he
returned in his old age to end his days in the land of his
birth, and amidst the scenes of his early youth, and
was not born, according to the prevalent belief,
in / Ireland, at Downpatrick, near Saul, "where ho
had made his first convert, and founded his first
Church in Ireland." It will be rather a shock
to Irish patriotism to learn that her patron Saint
was the descendant of Roman colonists, a young Somerset-
shire gentleman, and son of the Roman Decurio, or Mayor
of Bath. But it may console them to reflect that Glaston-
bury,

"where the winter thorn
Blossoms at Christmas, mindful of our Lord,
and where Joseph of Arimathea had deposited

"The Cup, the Cup itself from which our Lord
Drank at the last sad supper with His own,"

under the shadow of the Tor of St. Michael, was no unfit-
ting or unworthy birthplace for this immortal confessor of
the Christian faith.

The Standard remarks that the present weekly return
from the Registrar-General shcws eleven deaths from
relapsing fever in London, between December 18 and 31.
"A merry Christmas" truly, with such a return as this.
For every one that dies of this disease there are at least
twenty sick, and the disease itself is the direct result of
starvation. Those who suffer from relapsing fever are
famine-stricken, that is all ; and those who are killed by
the disorder are the victims of destitution.
Another weekly return, from another department
of the State, gives further information as to the
condition of the London poor. By it we learn that
the pauper list continues to rise. 1% ith occasional
excep-
tions, the weekly return of metropolitan pauperism sliews
a progressive increase during the last four years. The
Poor-law Board are observant of the fact, and it troubles
them. Next to pauperism itself, the Poor-law Board
seem to dread the exercise of charity. One great object
of the famous minute of November last was apparently
to prevent an inflow of charity towards the distressed
districts. The device has not been wholly unsuccessful.
It is a remarkable fact that durfrig the last three
years charity has declined as pauperism has increased.
We derive one comfort from the present agitation
of the subject. Attention is thereby drawn to the state
of the poor, and the facts way be expected to make them-
selves felt. Anything is better than apathy. If we do
but move, we may at last thunder into the right path. As
for the poor law, not a principle it professes is practised in
its integrity, and perhaps nothing would bring it to
speedier ruin than the rigid enforcement of its own rules.
Mr. Goschen seems conscious of the latter fact in his
recent confession that "no hard and fast lines can prac-
tically be drawn." The cable must be cut and the ship
must drift, for she cannot face the storm that is now
bursting upon her.

" Thou shalt not drink !" sap the Telegraph,might stand
first in the list
.of human commandments, if inborn con-
hcience were to point the way by whleh we should obey
the injunction. Of course, we use the word in its more
restricted and painful sense. We have not a word to say
against the physical worker's pint of beer, or theintellec-
tual worker's glass of wine, so that his moderation be
known to all men ; but when we write " Thou shalt not
drink !" we mean "Thou shalt not get drunk!" If our
fellow creatures would but keep this law, seven out of the
ttn other prohibitions would be more often fulfilled.
We will not be bold enough to affirm that it is
only the drunkards who covet their neighbours' goods;
but we do assert very emphatically that the gin bottle is
the Privy Councillor of the murderer and the thief. We
venture to go a little higher to-day. and to lift up the
corners of purple curtains ! How about the fine ladies
who drink? How about the fine ladies who get drunk?
How about the fine ladies who see snakes and go off in the
horrors—just like Flash Sall or Dirty Bet? This is to
run up the carnut of drunkenness with a witness. We
have the drunken men who are criminals and criminals
mainly because they are drunkards; we have the
men who are drunken sots, but not criminals ; we have
gentlemen—we mean oy the word people in good social
position—who, without gettin,, drunk, drink themselves
to death for all that; we have the female drunken
criminal, and the mere female sot ; and, finally, we have
the fine lady drunkard, and the fine lady who drinks her-
self to death. We have a coroner's inquest held at Skip-
ton upon a certain wretched lady ; the verdict was, "Died
from congestion of the brain, caused by excessive
drinking' Very lately another lady died, amid all
the horrors of delirium tremens—a result brought
about by her drunken habits. We fear that such
cases are of constant, if not of daily, occurrence. Put the
question to any physician or medical practitioner who is
in the habit of attending, families in the upper and mid lle
classes of society. Ask him, without mentioning names,
to tell you fairly what the result of his experience has
been, and mark his answer! He cannot avoid the admis-
sion that the charge is lamentably true. The evil, terribly
increasingas it is, must speak for itself ; and if it do thus
speak distinctly and loudly, it may—nay, it must—more
or less slowly work out its own cure, through sheer horror
and affright. Hence the advantage of plain words ; hence
the fatal mischief of silence.

The Pall Mall Gazette thinks the fact that the p nilhough through through no fault of its own—issieasdsi—ly
extending its lawful influence into an illegitimate
call scarcely be questioned. If the despotism of one
Empire is a peril for France, is the growing might of
the press no danger for good government in England?
Our
apprehension is, not so much that the
press
exceeds or abuses the influence that rightly belongs
to it, as that the exertion of that influence has results
which it is not bound to contemplate, and which it has no
business to take into account. The fault lies with the pub-
lic men who live in nervous dread of public opinion, who
try to conciliate it by letting its professional repre-
sentatives think for them, while they hold their
posts on the tenure of independence of thought.
The greater the danger, the more difficult the
Bair, tion, the more eagerly do our governors
now listen for the predominant note in "public opinion."
They go for guidance to the journalist, and that, we take
it, is a new and dangerous, just as it is a fast-increasing,
disposition. And it is likely to increase yet more.
Journals are made to cell, as. the frime3 reminded us the
other day; and the way to make them sell in large num-
bers is to flatter the prejudices and pander to the
interests of the general public from day to day.
The response to heee flatteries is called "pub-
bile opinion," just s the response to more noble
preaching is ; and we aro greatly afraid that this " public
opinion'' is followed with loss discrimination and with
greater cowardice by our rulers every day. The English
press, like the Enelish Cm:still-Wien, has been the slow
growth of generetioes, and has conquered fragment
by fragment the liberty it enjoys. Its most
distinguished representetives have accepted this in-
•• h - full r -.se of the responsibility it entails, and
to abuse it. But the responsibility
right direction of their influence,
it may go. When the func- 1
tor and the critic blend in
sinister waits upon journalists for
,nd the ether get into a hopelessly
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