The Sun.
London, England, 1848-11-04 00:00:00

THE WRIT OF ERROR.

The following communication has reached ns from a
most accurate source :—*‘ The counsel and agent of Mr.
Smith O'Brien hava got Mr. Napier's opinion on the
writ of error from Clonmel. The learned o•eutleman,
who is a high authority on Crown law, hss no doubt that
the writ of error is g.iod.

SPIRIT of the k-ÜBLIC JOURNALS.

TIDIES.—The e:argl in the curriculunt of Cambridge
education has taken evterybody by surprise. We knew
the event root co-ne, but we did not look to its at-
taioment without a long and arduous struggle. The
Comte de Neltilly did not multi' a speedier exit
from the littlf• p of the TuPeries than a wlio!e
host of prejtvii,e from this ary,ient vat o

thr
5 will read th rlUtnETC-
gh, and regret that it was sl hwg

Many thousands
country and the

ment with a

deferred. Thry will see opportunities given to others
that were denied to them. The .curse which had been
fulminated at Cambridge azainst all branches of human
knowledge save one has at length been raised. The
heads of the University have been compelled to admit
air and sunshine into the regions over which they preside.
The report of the teyerlicate is an acknowledgment of the
individuality of intellectual capacity; it admits the
principle, and cieleaveurs to give the admission a
practical effect. Many hundreds of young men, taken
from the highest families in the three kingdoms, will
every year have cause to bless the change which opens a
career to their praiseworthy desire for immediate dis-
tinction, and tits them for a more important
sphere of action in after life. Whatever may
be the profession or calling they may choose for
the future—and at two or three and twenty years of
age most young men have made up their minds on
the subject—Cambridge now affords them a fitting nur-
ture. Opportunities of distinction are offered them now
which will hereafter stand them in good stead. Will it be
believed in after ages that, in the middle of the nineteenth
century one of the two seats of education for the middle
and upper classes of England practically debarred its
pupils from access to all knowledge but that of abstract
science in its most arid and distgustful form? If, upon trial,
the young men gave evidence of incapacity or distaste
for the one pursuit, no more was said, the college tutors
abandoned them to their fate—that is, to apathy or idle-
ness, to indolence or despair. Will it be believed that
classical learning, the only other branch of knowledge
recognised at Cambridge, was denied as a test of merit
to all but those who had previously submitted to a ma-
thematical ordeal of a nature so stringent, that to pass
through it unscathed argued a singular aptitude if the
subjects were really comprehended, or a marvellous me-
mory if they were simply retained. Such, however, has
been the case at Cambridge. The best years of youth and
dawning manhood might have been devoted to a diligent
study of those exquisite monuments of ancient literature
which quicken the feelings, interest the imagination, chas-
ten the taste, and develope the various faculties of the mind ;
but, however great the diligence, or considerable the
attainments of the student in these pursuits, he has
hitherto been denied at Cambridge thegratification of an
honourable distinction, and that at a period of life when
distinctions are more valued than when experience
of the world has done its work and erased the
gilding from the gift. The answer given to
such an accusation as this isi usually delivered in
a very few words by a successful representative of
problems and
the system, who in his youthful days swallowed
theorems (long since quite, quite for-
gotten)as a jack-pudding might strings of sausages at a
country fair. " Ave sir, but we are a mathematical
University!"
anedven to
t plead
the
de This-i;simply to meet the accusers half-
way,guilty to the charge. But for one for-
tunate
for the change which countryh might have waited long enough
the curiosity and industry has opened so many sealed books to
nation owes a debt of
fstry of the youth of England. The
the Chancellor of the gratitude to the Prince Consort,
University, for having been the
first to suggest, and the most determined to cary out, the
alteration in the Cambri system. We can conceive the
surprise of an intern gen fle;•emeallciter at being initiated in the
rucatna. Re would not at 11
mysteries of these acadt
bad,soexbeerz_o_uld quietly reflect
first reject it
iafsaesn;sirteelnay
.ht reasonably
He
retteisipelletnhteory could
with himself,
bear good fruit in practice.
ex-
pect to find Newtons and Laplaces
which I
rooms in a country where every effort of tyluaseitmiounsirs
directed to evolve the peculiar faculty of theviremigitn?etahattemeln.l
is necessary for the pursuits in which these
won their reputation. Now, is this so?
eeption of Airey, and perhaps one or two others, haa
Cambridge produced of late years a single man whose
name is illustrious in science beyond the limit of the first
milestone on the Trumpington-rosd? It it be contended
—and we believe the argument to be perfectly just—
that the absence er nresenee of these exceptional cases
proves nothing; that Newton would have been Newton,
and Herschel -Herschel, in a Moravian village, at Paris,
or in Sweden ; does the system work well for
the mediocrities ? What kind of nurture does
.the University offer to those who are to take care of
our souls, bodies, and properties, as Divines, Physi-
ciens, and Lawyers in after years? What kind of
training does it give for the House of Commons or
for the diplomatic mission ? Let it be remembered that
we are talking of the find education of young men, not
of the'first awakening of the nascent intelligence of the
child. There is no question of big A and little C ; of
deciding whether it be more advisable to show the people
in the lecture-room the picture of a cow and require
them to name the animal, or first to name the animal
and then require them to draw the cow. ‘Ve are speak-
''
ir e!e) two or three year:, or perhaps
ye- of oung
in''a few months, mu !(-, thrown out into the world to
make the best fielit :if it t ley cen ; and, unless they be
to fellow the bias
ooreer. The
sandowed with exlrtortiintlty Prince
ca:ergy,
received durins
Consort might

a'7,tlJUlShers
ry and P '

:sso:
ba t a
ruled

ships of Modern 1

He mi4h

vhcn he
and the

Xhat the study of tr,- _
for degrees in this faculty,
were as great a . Mashing
stock at Cambridge as the a;sing of tae line on
r
board -ship ; and . that. anything like a study of Eneri-
Itsh law—even so much al the perusal of Blackstone 's
Commentaries—was a thug unknown in the University.
The Prince, it is not improbable, would next make in-

Civil L

manager.; of the Lombard-street restrvoirs to open their
sluices. It occurred to the wisdom of Sir R. Peel,
I in 1844, to put ?in end to this remedial power in the Batik
thc, jof En.4land. `.lTho Legislature consented to what S.r
Poel propo_ii,l, arid the consequence is that re;vv, not only
is there no warning given to the public of c probable ebb
in the currency, but, when it arrives, there is no pssible
remedy for th-, evil but that of authorising a violation of
the law. This remedy was actually resorted to in Octo-
ber, 1847. But even I nis-se,uns to hive taught no useful
lesson to the stupid Peel and Wood bigotry in the Legis-
Lture. Peel, Wood, Russell, and the rest, voted that
there was no occasion for a relaxation of the law of
1844, though 'Russell and Wood had themselves been
obliged (for fear of something worse) to authorise the
Bauk to violate that law the pressure of which had pro-
duced awful commercial calamities. From these calami-
ties the commerce of the country is still suffering, but
still the currency bigots ,affect a mighty superiority of
wisdom, and nothing has been done to guard the country
against the recurrence of such a fearful crisis as that of
October, 1847.

ASHFORD MECHANICS' INSTI-
TUTION.
(From the Kent Herald.) . . .

llt appears to us a delightful assurance that civilization
is rapidly extending to what were so lung the neglected
,
classes of society, and that the resources and delights of
pure intellectual pursuits are as properly appreciated in
a mechanics' institute, as they are in higher establish-
ments. To all such societies, well constituted—and as
far as our knowledge goes, their constitution is uni-
formly irreproachable—ind to all such " Introductory
Lectures" as that delivered by the Rev. John Dufton,
Rector of Warehorne, before the Ashford and Alfred
Mechanics' Instutes, at the Assembly-rooms, Ashford,
on Thursday evening last—it will be our paramount
duty to give every assistance we have it in our power
to bestow. Ignorance is an evil, the pressure of
which becomes now every day heavier on grown-up
people, who see the young ones outstrip them
in cultivation and knowledge. We rejoice, there-
fore, to see Mr. Dufton, periodically come for-
ward to speak of the benefits arising from mechanics'
Institutions, and prove the weakness of the objections
1 which have been taken against their establishment. It
is consoling to see subjects like these discussed in such
quarters by a clergyman of the :Established Church. We
hope the time is not far distant when more clergymen
will willingly come forward with a spirit of active and
anxious benevolence to promote the great cause of ge.
neral education, 'and better the condition of the working
classes by securing to them the full advantages of which
1 these institutions may be made productive. Those who
cry out, and many there are from both extremes of party,
that education is no remedy against poverty and hunger,
are blind to the fact that, although a starving man will
get no bread at the school or institute, yet schools and
mechanics' institutes, and such like, are the best means
of pr eventing in future thousands from being reduced
to the condition of starving. How much loss of
time, and labour, and of capital is occasioned by the
unskilfulness of workmen 1 How much of their money
and resources is daily wasted by the poor from not
understanding the principles of domestic economy and 1
sobriety! How much unhappiness is entailed upon them-
selves
and their families by their violent tempers and 1
passions, from not having their minds early brought
into moral training! Is it not a truth susceptible of
demonstration, that by far the greater number of those
who are now in distress might have in time prevented
their being reduced to it ? And is it not equally cer-
tain that the want of education—we mean moral and
intellectual education —made them careless of the future?
If we cannot now at once put a stop to the misery they
have thus brought upon themselves, ought we not at least
to guard against a perpetuation of the evil, by affording
every man the means of acquiring that information
clubs
which may be of use to him through life and in his par-
ticulargood Work isre forming
tilli sphere ? In towns, especially, and in some of
large villages, the mechtsn:ca' institutes and book-
speed as it aszi
I part of the
ci)
as
each of
every piny, attest how fast the
, -going forward.rt will move at an accele-
-1 ra-ea
But' the day, we trust, is
1 near at ha", when v:lisTail stock of books shall make
contain.
I niture as any other artiscle our cottages, and shall be
appropriate a part of their fur-
use or of ornament which
universally
' it is held decent for them to
we again say
1 Concurring as we do with
eboutti'fbtthne'se societies and
I that we chiefly look to the increase
thoroughly
for anrar'ies'
1 to the eitablishment of good district
accessible to the industrious poor, incalculable in-
crease of individual happiness, and national honosir and
prosperity.

A NOVEL ASSURANCE COMPANY.---An assurance
company, we are informed, has been established for the
assurance of horses in Paris, under the title of the Com-
payne d' Assurance pour les Chevaux. This is a branch
of life tsiurance to which wo imagine our Bridsh actu-
aries have not hitherto turned their attention. W also
chniht much whether any stltistics are in exi:ALl3ca on
which our French- frkrrig can form their data. Why, if
you assure horea, should you not also assure cattle,
sheep, dogs, swine, aid cats? The study indeed a
novel one. The promoters of the above company are
sanguine as to their success.— Theßeporier and Assurance
Chronicle.

PBRMANEDIT PAUPERISM -It is a curious fact that
on one thy last week three orders of removal were taken
out before the magistrates of a Yorkshire borough in the
eases of paupers who had been respectively eighteen,
thirty-eight, and fifty-three years in uninterrupted re
ceipt of parish pay.