The Sun.
London, England, 1870-06-23 00:00:00

LONDON, THURSDAY, JUNE 23, 1870.

The worst Commissioner of Public Works Eng-
land has ever had—surely a bold assertion, yet
alas ! one which, in the words of the convivial
chorus, " nobody can deny "—gave utterance only
the other evening to a most disheartening announce-
ment. It was one that had reference to what is
about the biggest blot—and that, too, is a bold
assertion—in all London. A blot, moreover, in the
very centre of the metropolis!—meaning that great
howling wilderness of brickdust, and brickbats, and
potsherds, and rubbish generally, and hoardings
covered with posters coloured like the rainbow—
situated midway between Chaacery-lane and Drury-
lane, between Lincoln's-inn-fields, and that portion
of the Strand which is bounded on the east
by Temple Bar, and on the West by St. Clement Danes
—in, other words, the site of the New Law Courts
Are we ever to have them, those New Law Courts ?
That was the inquiry put with not unreasonable
curiosity, by Lord EUSTACE CECIL on Monday even-
ing. The answer vouchsafed by Mr. AYRTON being
simply this, that " questions had arisen of a very
complicated character which would take some time
to solve in relation to the New Law Courts."
Satisfactory, certainly ! after all this waiting, and
haggling, and wrangling we have had in regard to
what came to be known, a year or two ago, as the
Battle of the Sites. We seem altogether to be
about as far removed as ever from anything
like a definitive settlement of the diffi-
culty. We are listening eagerly for Mr. AYR-
TON'S explanation, when lo ! into our ears he pours
this " leprous distilment." Not a glimmering of a
notion will he afford anyone as to whether there is a
hope of our having, sooner or lister, any Law Courts
at all. He merely gives us the certain prospect of a
still further and a wholly indefinite procrastination.
It c annot even be conjectured, from the enigmatical
utterance of the Chief Commissioner, whether the
Battle of the Sites may even yet be opened up all
over again. " Questions have arisen of a most
complicated character." What questions ? As to the
rival claims of Carey Street and the Embankment?
As to any claims at all on the part of
Howard-street, that at least, we may presume, is no
longer to be spoken of, we should conceive, even by
a man—not " with throat of brass and adamantine
lungs," but—with self-sufficiency of brass and ada-
mantine obstinacy like the Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer. It is simply preposterous, however, to
suppose that the House of Commons would ever
threaten the revival of the contention as to the
whereabouts of the future Palace of Justice. The
site bought, the site paid for, the site cleared, is the
one upon which the New Law Courts are
to be, and can alone now be erected. That
we take it is to be regarded in this matter as the
foregone conclusion long since arrived at, alike by
the country and by the Legislature. Is Parliament
helpless, by the way, in regard to the settlement of
an such supposed difficulty as the one hinted at by
the Chief Commissioner? Gordian knots of this
cobweb kind can surely be severed by the House
of Commons—can surely be swept aside at its fiat,
as by a legislative besom of destruction. Cannot
the bricklayers and stonemasons be sent in, there, at
once, or must we first of all rid ourselves of this in-
tolerable Chief Commissioner?

FULLER details of the lamentable disaster near
Newark afford no reason for any modification of the
conclusions which the earlier news immediately sug-
gested. The great railway accident of 1870 is an
example, not of ignorance, carelessness, or
neglect, but of the utter fruitlessness of all
precaution in the presence of certain accidental
combinations. Death is so mixed up with life that
by no contrivances can we precipitate the hostile
ingredient, and leave pure certainty in any enterprise.
Everything promised safety to these two trains.
There was nothing defective in the arrangements for
the conveyance of the excursionists. The goods
train, too, was an unusually inoffensive specimen of
its class. It contained no deadly compounds such as
that which charred thirty bodies at Abergele—its
cargo was chiefly iron and potatoes ; and it was
smaller than usual, for whereas a goods train on the
Great Northern usually numbers about thirty-five
waggons, the fatal train consisted of only
twenty-eight. The truck which was the immediate
cause of the accident was made to carry seven tons,
but it contained on Tuesday morning only half the
quantity of load. When its axle gave way it had
run but eighteen miles after being examined and
greased. Here are a combination of circumstances
not one of which is suspicious : but just at the
moment when the excursion train approached
the luggage train, the axle gave way, the wheel
thus let loose ran backwards under the next truck,
threw it off the line, and with it the remainder of
the waggons. Thus some six trucks were thrown on to
the adjoining line of rails, and at the same instant
the excursion train dashed into them. A railway
accident is always the work of a moment, but here
the disaster itself, and the circumstances which led
to it, were all wrought in the space of a few seconds.
So quickly was the entire massacre accomplished that
the driver •of the goods train knew not what had
happened to his trucks before the excursion train ran
into the disarranged mass, and this apparently purest
of accidents was at an end.

Mr. GILPIN was well primed with his subject
on Tuesday night. He is wearied of the
unnatural amount of business which is
transacted in the House of Commons after
midnight, and he therefore moved a resolution that
only unopposed motions be brought on after that