The Sun.
London, England, 1851-12-10 00:00:00

a Wiling 51,tito

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 185

Already we have commented at some length on the
unfortunate circumstances attendant upon the last
expedition in search for Sir Joule FRANKLIN. Be-
fore the publication of the Parliamentary Blue Book
recently printed, we asserted that according to our
view of the matter Captain PENNY had been treated
somewhat unfairly, because of his unluckily having no
title whatever to add "R.N." after his signature. This
impression, forced upo❑ our judgment solely by a
correspondence which appeared in our columns and
in those of our Contemporaries, baa been con-
firmed by an examination of the official re-
port since then issued from the Minutes
of the Evidence taken before the Committee.
That such has been our deliberate conviction we have
declared in very explicit language subsequently to the
distribution of those remarkable documents. While,
however, this is the case, we are impelled to revert
again to the transactions referred to, in consequence
of viewing the whole affair as one of very singular
importance, both to the cause of humanity and to
the interests of the naval profession. Those who,
like ourselves, have turned over the pages of the
Blue Book here mentioned, with feelings of mingled
curiosity and inquietude, will, we are persuaded,
coincide in the opinions we have already ex-
pressed as to the lamentable manner in which
the late search, made simultaneously by Captain
PENNY and Captain AUSTIN, was brought to a prema-
ture and most unsatisfactory termination. In ex-
pressing once more the sentiments with which we
feel compelled to regard the incidents related of this
expedition, we may premise that those sentiments
have spontaneously arisen out of the sincerity and
earnestness of a judgment unbiassed by any private
prejudices or personal predilections. Strangers to
each and all of the parties associated together in these
transactions, we have observed the course pursued by
them with a calm and dispassionate self-possession. It
is solely from a consideration of the factsbroughtunder
our notice, in the form of printed and official docu-
ments, that we believe the ill success of the recent en-
terprise to be attributable to the petty jealousies
before particularized. This belief, moreover, we have
proclaimed in those fervent terms of indignation, which
were forced upon us by the reflection that the conse-
quences may prove to have been been most disastrous
to one of our most illustrious navigators. Henceforth
we would see all these miserable little punctilios of
rank set at nought, neglected, and despised—because
of one important consideration, the thought that
these might interfere rather calamitously with
the chances of conveying assistance to Sir Joule
FRANKLIN and his missing companions.
Returning to that portion of the Blue Book on
this unhappy Arctic expedition which gives in detail
the whole of the examination of Captain PENNY, it
will be found that every additional reply that fell
from the lips of that very intelligent officer tended
only the more decisively to remove from his shoulders
the responsibility of the premature return homewards.
Speaking of the proposal which it is well known he
had submitted to Captain AUSTIN, with a view
to the continuance of the search still higher,
Captain PENNY says not merely that he
asked Captain AUSTIN for a steamer for the purpose

of piloting her up the channel to the ice, to remain

until that ice had cleared away, but adds, " I would
have waited there a month." When interrogated
again as to whether he is still of opinion that the ice
would really have cleared away, Captain PENNT re-
plies that he was among it as recently as the 22d of
July, on which day he saw the last of it. "It was
then," he observes, " broken and much decayed, and only

wanted a strong north-east wind to clear it away."
Notwithstanding all these very forcible repre-
sentations of his opinions on the part of
Captain PENNY, not withstanding his expressed
anxiety to go himself further up the channel,
notwithstanding his plainly worded requisition for a
steamer—he was amazed to receive, on the 11th of
August, a letter from Captain AUSTIN, wherein he
requests to be informed "Whether you (Captain
PENNY) consider that the search of Wellington Strait,
made by the expedition under your charge, is so far
satisfactory as to render a further prosecution in that
direction, if practicable, unnecessary." On receiving
this most unexpected inquiry from an officer to whom
he had so often, so clearly, and so recently expressed
his views upon this subject, Captain PENNY was not
only amazed, he was very grievously annoyed. This
we conjectured immediately on reading the correspon-
dence in question, and as far back as the 11th of Oc-
tober, declared as much in an article, written by our-
selves, in the leading columns of this journal. We
there alluded to Captain PENNY'S reply to the in-
quiry of Captain AUSTIN as a " sententious let-
ter, written in a moment of irritation." O❑
the 27th of October, namely, sixteen days
after that leading article was penned, Captain PENNY
himself acknowledges the truth of what we had then
conjectured in the evidence given by him before the
committee at the Admiralty. He then observed, in
answer to Query 59, " I am free to confess that I
was ♦ery angry at being written to et all by Captain
AUSTIN, when we had conversed so long upon the
very same subject, and I had told him all in my
power, giving him my chart, and begged of him to let
me pilot one of his steamers through Wellington
Channel." Nay, further on, speaking of his
written rejoinder to Captain AUSTIN, we
find Captain PENNY, in answer to Query
61, saying on the 27th October, " that letter
was written under strong feelings of irritation"—
we ourselves having on the 11th of October spoken
of that letter, as we have already remarked, as a
" sententious letter, written in a moment of irritation."
The admission is important as a testimony that there
was no retractation of the previously expressed opinions
of Captain PENNY, but merely a brief and by no
means intemperate evidence of his indignation.
" Sir, your question is easily answered," says
the reply, and thereupon it simply goes on
to observe, with an air of petulance most

comprehensible under the circumstances, that
of course Wellington Channel requires no
further search whatever "—Captain AUSTIN knowing
perfectly well what were the real views entertained
upon the subject by Captain PENNY—that Captain
PENNY, unluckily, not being Captain PENNY, RN.

By a somewhat suggestive coincidence the communi-
cation was penned in " Assistance Bay"—and with it
terminated thus abruptly the last expedition car-
rying aid to Sir Joins FaANKLis and his companions.

If the inhabitants of the boroughs of Lambeth
51e" Southwark are not each and all of them most
with all
fur
icthyo-entomologists, it is certainly not
t want of making a personal
the animalcules contained in a drop of
which the acquaintance
water, but rather from asonuotnh-wimarpkrovaenmd evntauoxfhtahlie,
opportunities
ander Waterworks Companies afford
and Lambeth
them every day,
stir,
will be
portion of this
study of this science. In
another
long! for the
day's impression of The
engravings of the principal animalwainidi
vegetable
et foundbl two
pro-
ductions contained in the water supplied bye the
Southwark and Vauxhall Company and hy
the Lambeth Company to the liege, 0-f
the metropolis inhabiting the southern bank
of the Thames, which so-called water, or to speak more
properly, sewage, many of the said lieges not inhabit-
ing premises in the neighbourhood of springs, are
forced to consume, and all are forced to pay fur,
whether they consume it or no. By their Act of
Parliament these companies undertake to filter
the water they supply from all impurities,
and when:examined before Committees of the House
of Commons the officers of these companies state that
twowhatcustomers,whenthese engravings
ap-
plied to by their customers on the subject,

they candidly declare that it is impossible
for them so to filter the water as effectually to pu-
rify it, and on a very recent occasion, when a gentle-
man, whose premises are supplied by the Lambeth
Company, complained to one of the officials that the
water supplied was swarming with animalcules and
filth, he was coolly told that if a flannel were tied
over the mouth of the pipe while the supply of water
was flowing in, it would probably free the water from
some of its impurities. And this is the stuff, the
poisonous, putrid stuff, which upwards of 350,000 of the
inhabitants of the metropolis are compelled to consume
as the nearest approach to pure water which they can
procure. With this stuff stagnating in tubs and
butts and cisterns in every house, can we be surprised
that typhus and other fevers of a putrescent type, all of
which are engendered by malaria, should be con-
stantly prevalent in the districts to which it is
supplied P Is it astounding that the persons who
daily take into their stomachs large quantities of the
revolting and disgusting insects, and of the filthy
organic matter held in solution or suspension by the
water supplied by these companies, should be among
the earliest victims of cholera ? Great complaints are
made of the propensity of the people to use intoxica-
ting liquors—how can they do otherwise than use
intoxicating liquors when the only liquid supplied to
them under the name of water is such a filthy com-
pound ? Unwholesome as gin may be, it is less
so, at all events, than Thames Paramesium,
and before the advocates of teetotalism revile
the unfortunate inhabitants of the southern bank of
the Thames for their addiction to intoxicating liquors,
it would be well that they should secure to them an
ample supply of pure and potable water. But filtering
alone, albeit it may remove the more visible filth from
Thames water, will never render it pure ; it will,
so long as it continues to be made the great open
common sewer of the metropolis, containing in solution
large quantities of chemical salts which are deleterious
to the human systeni, continue to be unfit for use as a
potable fluid. It is obvious to the common sense of
every man that whosoever drinks daily, habitually,
and exclusively: the contents of a cesspool, is daily
and habitually imbibing poison, slow it may be, but
not the less certain in its effects, and the Thames
is and, according to all present appearances, must
continue to be, for aught the Commissioners of
Sewers or the Board of Health intend to the con-
trary, the great common sewer not of the metro-
polis only, but of every town situated on its banks,
and consequently no supply derived from the
Thames can be potable or wholesome. To procure
potable, wholesome, and pure water, we must look
elsewhere for our source of supply, and we are re-
joiced to find that there is a company in the field
which undertakes to supply water to the inhabitants
of the southern section of the metropolis of pure
quality (the river Wandle is to be the source of
supply) at all times, at high pressure, and at a cheaper
rate. From the advertisement, which will be found
in another column, it appears that the company pro-
pose to preserve the water pure by establishing a
complete system of intercepted drainage to carry
off the impurities of mills and houses ; they
also undertake to supply the whole of the metropolis
with this pure water in ample quantities, whilst, by a
compulsory limitation of profits, the abuse of high
charges is effectually guarded against.

We have not time at present to do more than
refer cursorily to a highly important deputation which
waited on Mr. LABOUCIIERE at the Board of Trade
yesterday, in reference to the proposed incorpora-
tion by Royal charter of the West of Ireland
Land Investment Company. The principal pro-
moter, Mr. WILLIAM DIGDY SEYMOUR, has ably
stated its claims on the Government in a clever biv-
chum, which goes into the subject fully. The idea
of developing contemporaneously in the naturally
rich, but hitherto much neglected province of Con-
naught, those agricultural and manufacturing re-
sources which are admitted on all hands to be
unsurpassed, perhaps unequalled, in the United
Kingdom, seems to us to be the true panacea
for the distressed condition of that portion of the
country. Agriculture of itself is insufficient to em-
ploy even the present diminished population. No
matter at what price land may be abtained in Ireland,
it will not tempt our farmers and capitalists to invest
in it, so long as the poor's rates are swollen
to a ruinous amount by crowds of unemployed
peasantry. To solve the difficulty, manufacturers
must be brought into immediate connexion with the
production of the soil; and we know of no better me-,
thod for Ireland than that suggested by Mr. SET.
MOUR--.40 introduce and extend the cultivation of
flax, sugar, beet, and other " commercial plants,"
which may afford suitable subjects for the redundant
labour of Western Ireland.