The Sun.
London, England, 1846-12-26 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
FROM TILE MORNING PAPERS OF TDIS DAY.
TIMES.—Tne political and commercial interests con-
nected with the establishment of the principal lines of
railway ou the continent of Europe are of such imnort-
ance to the independence, security, and prosperity of the
states through whose territories these lines may pass,
that the subject deserves more notice than it has hitherto
received in this point of view. The effect of railroads in
England has been to concentrate the resources of the
kingdom, and to give a greater energy to our natienal
unity; but the system is interrupted by our coasts, and
our insular position relieves us from the necessity of
closely investigating the consequences of rivalry or con-
nexion with the railroads of adjacent states. On the
continent, on the contrary, it is obvious that the position
of railways with reference to the population and the go
vernment of foreign states is a matter of the greatest
moment. A common interest has suddenly commenced
between countries which viewed one another a
.few years
ago with jealousy or indifference; and, again, a new
source of rivalry has sprung up between other commu-
nities, hitherto united by the closest intimacy, which is
already leading to political consequences. In central
Europe the construction of railways involves
not only questions of domestic interest, but of
foreign policy. Russia and France may, from their
territorial position, construct their most important
lines without much reference to the policy
of other states ; but almost all the other lines of Europe
are parts of a great whoic, not subject to the same poll •
tical authority, and the real termini of all these lines
may be said to lie in some foreign territory, since they
are incomplete until they are prolonged to the sea.
Three great longitudinal lines of railway are now partly
opened and in course of construction between the coasts
of the Atlantic Ocean or the North Sea and that of the
Mediterranean. The first lies entirely within the terri-
tory of France, and will pass, when it is completed,
from the ports of Havre and Calais, through Paris and
the centre of the kingdom, to Marseilles. The second
line, and that which is by far the most advanced at the
present moment, extends from Hamburgh to Trieste;
and some of our readers will perhaps be surprised to
learn that, with the exception of about 160 English
miles, this line is already open to the public. From
Hamburgh to Berlin the line is now completed, which
unites the capital of Prussia with the principal port of
Northern Europe. From Berlin it proceeds to Leipzig
and Dresden, where it is interrupted by the unfinished
portion of the road between Dresden and Prague ;
but, passing more to the east, another line now
open extends through Breslau to Ratibor to Olmutz,
a distance of about forty English miles, the
line is as yet interrupted. But both from Prague and
from Olmutz the great Northern line of Austria takes
up the traffic, and conveys it through Vienna, and
thence by the Styrian line as far as Cilly, in Carinthia.
Cilly is about 120 miles from Trieste, and at no distant
period the whole of this line will be completed. These
two great trunk lines are wholly under the control, the
one of France, the other of Austria, Prussia, and the
North German states. But in the meanwhile a third
line of the greatest importance to central Europe has
been formed, and in great part opened to traffic, starting
from Ostend, Antwerp, and the Dutch ports, and pro-
ceeding (though at present with several interruptions)
to Basle. There it stops for the present, but it is pro-
posed to connect these Rhenish railroads by a branch
through Bavaria and Wirtemberg with another line which
would passlalong the valley of the Middle Rhine from Lan-
dau on the Lake of Constance, through the cantons of St.
Gall and the Grisons, to Dissentis. In the vicinity of that
place a passage of the Alps, said to be practicable by a
tunnel of two miles and a half long, has been sur-
veyed, by which the road would emerge in the Val
Blegno, and descend to Lugano, where it would unite
with the railroads of Piedmont, and proceed either to
Genoa or to the branches which may hereafter be
formed in connexion with southern Italy. The physical
obstacles to this line are probably not greater than those
which have been surmounted by the boldness and skill
of the Austrian engineers in carrying their line through
the valleys of the Styrian Alps. The more serious im-
pediments which may retard the execution of the scheme
are of a political nature, and it may not be without
interest or utility to point them out. It is
a matter of vital interest to southern Germany to
open a line of railway communication with the Me-
diterranean coast, and it is no less important to Pied-
mont to have this line connect Genoa with the
north of Europe. Both the states of the Zollverein
and the Court of Turin have everything to appre-
hend, and nothing to gain, from the competition of
the great lines of France and Austria, shackled as they
are by the duties and formalities of the prohibitive
system now in force in those countries. But, on thp other
hand, France and Austria are naturally disposed to view
with no little jealousy and alarm the project of a railway
connecting so many of the freest commercial states of
the continent, and establishing a direct communication
between the whole of Italy and the Rhine. The minor
Powers which are especially interested in the promotion
of the scheme, namely, Piedmont, the Swiss Cantons,
and the southern kingdoms of Germany, are, perhaps,
deficient in financial resources and political vigour to
carry it into full execution; but it concerns their inde-
pendence and their future prosperity not to allow it to
)e sacrificed to the rivalry of their more powerful neigh-
bours, and especially of Austria. The Austrian Go
vernment are resolved that, if they can prevent it,
northern Italy shall not be opened by a line of traffic
eassing on the western side el the Lego Maggiore, and
through the Cantons of Tessin and the Grisons; and
they have, not unnaturally, fixed upon Switzerland as
the weakest link in the chain, and the one least able
to resist their hostile interference. The Austrian
Charge d'Affaires at Berne has recently been detached
on a special mission to the Grisons—a canton in
ehich Austria has at times exercised a peculiar in-
fluence ; the Austrian forces in the Vorarlberg have
been augmented ; and if the course of political events
should give any colour to the intervention in Swiss
affairs which Austria meditates, she will not forget to
place herself in such a position as effectually to break
the line of communication across the Alps outside her
own frontiers. No doubt the Jesuits, and the Radicals,
and the convents, and the free-corps will be the osten-
sible grounds of such a measure ; but we suspect the
desire of thwarting the plan of this railroad will prove a
great aggravation of the political misdemeanours of
Switzerland in the eyes of the Austrian Ministers.
Meanwhile the open hostility of Austria to the scheme,
and the various intrigues she has resorted to in order to
defeat it, have irritated the Court of Turin, and roused
the indignation of that portion of the Italian people who
are not Austrian subjects. The time is come when the
House of Savoy, if we may judge from the incidents of
the last few months, refuses to acknowledge the control
of Austria in the affairs of Piedmont and the other states
of Italy. Not long ago Austria requested that two of
the most eminent literary men in Italy, who are known
by their adherence to the cause of moderate liberty and
national independence, should be sent -away from
Turin, although they were natives of the country ;
old we regret to add, that the French Minister at Turin
did not blush to support that impolitic and ungenerous
demand. The Piedmontese Government refused to
withdraw its protection, and even its favour, from the
gentlemen in question ; and on several other occasions
it has given proofs of a strong determination to perse-
vere in a vigorous and independent line of policy, which
may effect in northern Italy changes as great as those
which Pius IX. has commenced in the south. Amongst
these reforms awl improvements the construction of rail-
roads is not the least important, not merely for their
practical convenience, but because they are at once the
means and the object of national union and international
combination. The internal power and prosperity of Italy,
and her internal relations with the rest of Europe, can-
not be more effectually promoted at this time than by
the extensive introduction of railroads. Austria has
but, she
shown the immense importance she attaches to the sub-
ject by the rapid execution of her own great undertak-
ings of the kind, which would do honour to any nation ;
w-' may seek their advantage in following her example.
must learn to surmount her jealousy of States
CHRONICLE.—The discussion of the Edinburgh
Town Count..
the Edinburgh whichpub-
lished and Glasgow Railway, we 11 on the stoppage of the Sunday trains of
yesterda •
that very ), is
monstrous
andabsurd interference with the
tree agency of the a tolerab significant proof. that
Scotland. the m
liament by the glinslt:
Council should oppose public will not long be endured in
of Mr. C. B. Tait, that the Town
Com-
pany until the old facilities Sunday
h and Glasgow Railway any new Bill brought into Par-
restored, was evidently looked upon conveyance are
proved of his main object as
was, however, affirmed by the upon by some who ap-
proved
by a majority of
extreme measure. It
twenty to seven ; and upon
the speech of the
be thought by any one who
mover. The company, in obtaining
reads
grounds it will
right of enormous
made a virtual
it was
worse off
which upon public grounds gave it a its former Bill,
interference with the property of others,
wes before.
coaches, by
if not a legal compact to leave the
in respect to the means of conveyance than
But before the railway was made there were
which the poor man who had no
his own could travel upon the Sunday. vehicle of
railway The
coaches have been put down by the
as effectually as if they were prohibited ey
law, and it is a clear violation of an understood agree-
ment to deprive the public of their only substitute. The.
Edinburgh Town Council, as knowing and representing
the local interests of the city, is bound to submit this
breach of faith to Parliament as a reason against grant-
ing any new privileges to those who have been guilty of
it. In looking through the discussion everybody must
be struck with the contrast between the facility with
which Mr. Tait and his friends were able to adduce
practical arguments in support of their views, and the
extreme difficulty which there appeared to be in finding
anything deserving the name of a reason on the other
side. That the prohibition was a pharasaic imposition
of burthens upon the shoulders of the poor was made
sufficiently obvious. On the first day on which the Sun-
da). trains were stopped, 241 carriages of a private kind
drove up to the various places of worship in Edinburgh.
The day was not wet, or the number would have been
much greater. Here then were three or four hundred
servants ministering on the Sabbath to the convenience
of the wealthy in a manner essentially the same in
principle with that which is prohibited as irreligious in
reference to the poor. It is Dives, as usual, looking
sharply after the morality of Lazarus, while he is very
easy about his own. Even so, however, if ultra-Sabba-
tarian directors, who roll to church in softly cushioned
carriages, could understand how much better the sub-
stance of morality is than the form, they might have
startled with a piece of evidence produced by Mr.
Robertson, in the shape of a letter from Mr. List, the
superintendent of the county police of Mid-Lothian.
Mr. List, perpetually conversant as he must be with
the hard and stern realities of working-class life, finds
that drunkenness, the master vice which stands in the
way of the improvement of that class, is diminished
under the operation of Sunday trains. After the con-
stant toil of the week in the unwholesome atmosphere of
a town, excitement and relaxation will be sought on the
Sunday. The dram-shop was of old the resource, Of