The Sun.
London, England, 1870-06-22 00:00:00

SKETCHES IN PARLIAMENT,

TUESDAY.
The House of Commons was, if possible, hotter and
fuller than it was on Thursday, the night of the storm.
No one can accuse our legislators of neglecting their duty,
and though the Irish members were again conspicuously
absent, it must be remembered that they worked double
tide before the Whitsun holidays. The first business of
the evening was the presenting of an enormous number of
petitions, which occupied a very considerable time. About
five o'clock there was a knocking at the door, and the cry of

"Black Rod" announced that the Commons were to be
summoned to the Upper House to hear the Royal Assent
given to new bills. The number of Commoners who
obeyed the summons and attended the Speaker was not
very large, for hon. members who had not taken the pre-
caution of being present at prayers, were not minded
to lose their seats by leaving them to the group of
weary wallflowers who stood leaning against the door.
The questions were numerous, many of them were
important, and Mr. Ayrton, of course, had something dis-
agreeable to say, and that something amounted to an
announcement of the indefinite postponement of the New
Law Courts. The Speaker then, amid great cheering
announced that he had received from the Chancellor of
the University of Oxford a communication, inviting him
to attend to receive the honorary degree of D.C.L.,
and he asked the permission of the Honse to absent
himself from Parliament on that day. Universal accla-
mation shewed how popular Mr. Denison is, and Mr.
Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli vied with each other in their
compliments and congratulations. So it was arranged
that Mr. Dodson should take the chair to-morrow in order
that the Speaker might go to Oxford and come back as
Dr. Denison, entitled, if he pleases, to wear a gorgeous
scarlet robe over his sombre black breeches and stockings.
Then came the business of the evening. "The question
is that I now leave the chair." Alas for the paulo-post
future D.C.L., there was no such good luck in store for
him. It was to be a field nigh, with great speeches from
great speakers, bent uponshe r jghow difficult it is to teach
little children the three R's ithout infusing into them
some of the thousand and ne " isms" which vex the
theological world. Mr. Henry Richard opened the debate.
A bald-headed, black-browed, white-bearded man is this
ex-dissenting minister and leader writer in the defunct
Morning Star. A very able man, moreover, with
such a gift of language, and such decided
views on theology, that the Welsh Calvinists,
Methodists, and others of Merthyr Tydvil,
at the last election preferred him to the present
Home Secretary. He spoke with deliberation, and with-
out hesitation. He never seemed to be at a loss for a
word, but always had the right one close at hand. No
doubt his speech had been carefully prepared, but
he had the art to conceal the art, and while most of our
great orators have evidently finished, and refined, and
worked up before hand, Mr. Richard seemed rather to be
thinking out his argument as he went along. The
strongest part of his speech was where he contended that
Mr. Gladstone, profound theologian though he was, skil-
ful constructor though he was, would find it impossible to
invent a religion that would please everybody, and leave
out everything which displeased anybody. Very humorous
was his enumeration of the religions in the House of Com-
mons, concluding with, " and for aught I know Turks,
Infidels, and heretics." The weakest part was where Mr.
Richard quoted amid ironical laughter the argument of
Mr. Edward Baines against denominational education, argu-
ments which all the world knows Mr. Baines has recanted.
He was loudly cheered by both sides when he asserted
that education must be religious, and there were cheers
from below the Liberal gangway when he said that the
State must give that which it could give—a literary, scien-
tific education, and leave the churches to give religion,
thus fulfilling the precept of Him whom nearly all then
present acknowledged as their Master, " Render unto
Caesar the things which be Caesar's, unto God the things
which be God's."

During the whole of this speech Mr. Gladstone had sat
stretched out, with closed eyes, and face up-turned, pale
and weary looking, but evidently listening to all that
was being said by this Dissenter of Dissenters, this repre-
sentative of the party for whom he had lost Oxford and
Lancashire, and, as it seemed, all in vain.
Mr. Forster leant forward with head buried in
his hands, as if he, too, found the burden of legislating
too heavy to bear. In striking contrast to both was Sir
John Coleridge, who sat fast asleep. He was aroused, I
think, by the noise of members rushing out to dine when
Mr. Richard sat down, at 6.17, after exactly an hour's
speech. Sir Charles Dilke rose to second Mr.
Richard's amendment. The young baronet is not
an orator, and never will be—his voice and
manner are against him. But he generally has
something to say worth hearing. It soon appeared that
it was not from any love of Nonconformity that he sup-
ported the member for Merthyr, but by reason of his
secular notions ; and he addressed himself very little to the
religious, and a great deal to the compulsory question. As
soon as he began to perorate Mr. Forster prepared to get
up, but glancing across the table at the Opposition bench,
an interchange of signals took place between him and Mr.
Hardy, and the result was that the ex-Home Secretary rose
to speak. He spoke for seventy minutes, and it was
without doubt, one of the ablest speeches ever delivered

in the House of Commons. lam not referring to the
arguments, for this is not the place to pass judgment upon
them. I refer to the speech as a specimen of eloquence
and logic, and I am sure that all who heard it, however
much they might differ from the speaker, would admit that
this speech places Mr. Hardy among the very first rank of
Parliamentary debaters. He took up one point of his
opponents' after another, and dealt with each in
a really masterly manner. Granted, he said,
that the religious education is not satisfactory,
we seek to improve it, you to forbid it. Who,
he added, will guarantee that if the religious edu-
cation of the children is left to the ministers of religion,
the children will get it? Will the parents demand this
religious education ? If so, how comes it to

pass that so many of them never attend
any place of worship ? Then he referred to
Mr. Baines's retractation of the opinions quoted
by Mr. Richard. He added, amid great cheering,
that what he contended for was freedom to teach religion.
Have your conscience clause if you will, but do not do

anything so unwise, so unjust as to forbid religious teach-
ing. But the finest part of Mr. Hardy's speech was the
close, where, with fine sarcasm, he asked the Secularists
what they had been doing all these years. The two great
religious societies, the National and the British and
Foreign, representing the Church and the sects, had
covered the land with more than 15,000 schools. Shew
us one that you have founded, said Mr. Hardy. You
will, at all events, have no excuse in the future, for
Government will aid you whether you teach reli-
gion or not. You have subscribed 250,000 ; but
unfortunately it is for destroying the present means of
education. Devote your energies, your money to filling
up the gaps which you say we have left, and then you

- _
will deserve the thanks of the community. Mr. Hardy
sat down amid great cheering, and I should add that,
during many portions of the speech Mr. Gladstone joined
in the marks of approbation which the eloquence of his
old rival at Oxford excited.

It was now twenty minutes to eight, and Mr. Melly
rising to speak, it became clear that the debate would
last all the evening. So the Treasury Bench, the front
Opposition Bench, and many another bench were cleared,
as if by magic, for it faut manger. Mr. Samuel Morley's
disapproval of Mr. Richards' amendment was one of the
incidents of the evening. The member for Bristol
has at least as much weight with the House
as the member for Merthyr. The first has more than
once shewn that he will not adopt the extreme
programme of the Liberation Society. Last night it was
clear that he feared the alliance of the Nonconformists
with the Secularists—feared that it would imperil religion.
So he would have none of it. Next to the handsome Dis-
senter came the grotesque Anglican, Mr. Beresford Hope.
He raised many a laugh by his oddity. Dr. Lyon Playfair
made a very able speech from his side. Sir John Pakington
followed, and repeated the wish which he has always
uttered, and which he has loyally striven to fulfil,
that the education question may be settled this session.
Then at last Mr. Forster rose, and in a speech which I
will not attempt to summarise, and which occupied the
best part of two hours, he defended the bill, and an-
nounced, amid much excitement, that the Government
would not consent to any further alterations, and threw
upon the opponents of the bill the responsibility of delay-
ing a settlement of this great question.

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THE LATE EDITION of " THE SUN" at
Mr. BEAVINIQNT'S, " The Wellington," Wellington-street,

Strand

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 22, 1870.

During several years past the terrible conviction
has been growing upon us that the crime of infan-
ticide here iu England, but more particularly here
in Loudon, has been increasing and multiplying.
Nearly ten years have elapsed since the late mem-
ber for Finsbury, Mr. DUNCOMBE, as about the last
act of his political career, moved for certain sta-
tistics, which were therefore, in due course of
time, produced and laid upon the table of the House
of Commons, showing the prevalence between 1850
and 1860 of this same heinous atrocity of infanti-
cide. In one sense, it is surely the cruelest and the
most dastardly of all murders that is when
one takes into account the utter helplessness and the
touching dependency of the tender victims sacrificed.
So far from this infernal crime in any way diminish-
in frequency, it would actually appear, from many
ghastly witnesses to the contrary that have been
but very recently brought to light, to have become
systematized into a trade, known for some time
under its significant title of Baby Farming. As if it
were so many head of cattle that were being dealt
with, infants have been trafficked in quite delibe-
rately and systematically. They have been
cleared out of the way at the rate of £5
a head. Little EMILY, and FREDDY, and JOE,
and WILLY have been left, for a five-
pound note a piece, to the tender care of Mrs.
WATERS, or Mrs. OLIVER, or Mrs. HURLEY, or Mrs.
WILLIS, or Mrs. BLACKBURN—for the miserable crea-
ture has been known by those, and it may be other
names indiscriminately. The disclosure brought to
our knowledge through the agency of a sergeant of
detectives within these last few days, beyond a
doubt surpasses all that had been feared through
our recent investigations. The public had heard
with a shudder of abhorrence that here and there
all about the waste places in the neighbourhood of
Brixton, the dead bodies of infants had been picked
up, in old rags, in brown paper parcels, in this
place and in that place, and all of them
in a more or less advanced stage of decomposition.
At length, step by step, the den in which these
atrocities had been perpetrated has been traced
through the sagacious investigations of the detective
bent on its discovery. A detestable advertisement
inserted in one of the weekly newspapers, one of
the foulest of the foul aborninatioLs, dubbed by a
Saturday Reviewer the garbage of journalism, affords
the clue by means of which we seem to have got at
last to the heart of this horrible labyrinth. Then,
when WATERS, otherwise OLIVER, otherwise NURLEY,
otherwise WILLIS, otherwise BLACKB URN, was at length
discovered, it turned out that her house-room
was littered with the dirty, neglected, emaciated
forms of sickly and some of them seemingly dying
infants. A narcotic drug labelled " Paregoric
Elixir" was found in a bottle upon a table
close by a sofa on which five of these poor
little helpless mortals were huddled up together.
Laudanum was frequently sent for by the baby-
farmer under the pretence of toothache, but presum-
ably for insidious administration. Lime had been
procured, a lump of it had been placed for an hour
in a jug of water, a dessert spoonful of which had
been then put into each infant's feeding-bottle. One
of the dead infants picked up the other
day was wrapped in a piece of brown
paper on which was found written the
name of Mrs. WATERS. And it is Mrs. WATERS,
who is now iu custody charged with cruelty
in carrying out her trade of Baby Farming, and
more than that under dire suspicion of the @rime of
infanticide. The question as to this woman's guilt
or innocence, it is earnestly to be hoped, will be, as
rapidly as possible and as clearly as possible, de-
monstrated. There is all the more reasonable
hope that it will be so, seeing that the investigation
of the case has been now entrusted to the watchful
care of the solicitor to the Treasury.

THE round of time has brought us the periodical
sacrifice in the shape of a great railway accident. 411
our precautions fail—it is scarcely to be hoped that
they ever will succeed—in securing absolute immunity.
Human care is fallible ; mechanical contrivances are
liable to flaws. Get as perfect an organisation of
men as you will, and some one will break down in some
detail at a critical moment. Employ machinery of
the most skilful construction, and some flaw will
throw the whole out of gear, at an instant when
tremendous interests are at stake upon the integrity of
metal. There can be no question that anxious atten-
tion and scientific skill have contributed to diminish
the liability of railway travellers to disaster. As a
matter of fact, great accidents have diminished in
frequency. One disaster of very serious extent, and
sometimes two, were wont to form part of every
year's tale of misfortune; it is now two years since a
collision similar in effects to that of yesterday took
place. When an event of this kind occurs there is
some consolation in noticing signs of improvement;
hut it is evident enough that more preventive mea-
sures are still open to adoption. In the accident
near Newark, yesterday, figured the old performers
—a goods train and an excursion train. The axle
of a waggon in the former train broke, and the cars ran
off the rails so violently as to be precipitated on to
the other line, blocking up the way. Immediately
afterwards an excursion train came up, ran
into the mass of disarranged goods waggons,
and then all that remained was to collect the dead
and the wounded. It is difficult to attach responsi-
bility to a disaster of such a remarkable origin. The
waggon with the faulty axle tree belonged, not to
the Great Northern, but to another company ;
it is impossible, however, for either one company