The Sun.
London, England, 1851-06-27 00:00:00

THE SUN,

Mr. BANTUS moved as an amendment that it be read
a third time that day six months. _

Mr. HENLEY and Mr. STUART supported the amend-
ment, which, on a division, was negatived by 37 to 16,
and the Bill was read a third time and passed.
At the evening sitting, on the order for going into
Committee of Supply,
Mr. ROEBUCK brought the Danish claims once more
before the House. These were claims, he observed, of
British merchants, in consequence of losses sustained
by them in the Baltic in 1807, under the following cir-
cumstances:—The expedition under Lord CATHCART
and Admiral GAMBIER, in that year, ended in the bom-
bardment of Copenhagen and the seizure and confisca-
tion of 3 000,0001. of Danish property. The Danes re-
taliated by confiscating the property of British mer-
ahants, whose claims for indemnification he advocated
on the grounds that the English Government had misled
the merchants by assuring them that they might safely
send their goods to the Baltic; that at the time of the
seizure of the property at Denmark there was an under-
standing on the part of England that she was not going to
war with Denmark; that the act of the Danish Govern-
ment, in seizing the property, was one of mere reprisal;
,nd that England had still in her hands 3,000,0001 of
Danish property seized before a declaration of war, out
-f which indemnification ought to be made for a wrong
done to individuals by the Government of this country
tor the benvtit of the community. He moved a resolution
that on Wednesday the House would resolve itself into
a Committee to consider an address to her -MAJESTY
upon the subject of these claims.
The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER opposed the
motion, contending that the seizure bad taken place
during a state of war, and that consequently the claims
were unfounded.
Colonel SIBTHOBP supported the motion, which, on
a division, was negatived by 126 to 49.

_ • -
The 119U80 then went in toCommittee of Supply, Mr.
BERNAL in the chair, and proceeded with the estimates
fur Civil Services, Civil Contingencies, and the Com-
missariat.

The various orders of the day having been disposed
of, the House adjourned at a Quarter past One o'clock.

Yesterday our columns were adorned with the
official report of the Government Commission on the
question of a supply of water to the metropolis. Con-
spicuous among the declarations embodied in this
inestimable document, we observe one to the effect,
that " rivers must always be the natural and indispen-
sable channels of drainage"—drainage being em-
ployed here, most erroneously, as a synonym for
sewerage. Remember this is the language used, not
by a City functionary enamoured of old abuses,
not by an Alderman infatuated with the igno-
rance and ordinances of a former age, but
by men supposed to be men of ability and
information, men selected for the inquiry
because of their supposed enlightenment, men who
appear to carry a guarantee of their intelligence in
the initials appended to their signatures, those three
magical letters F.R.S. Yet from personages like
these we find emanating such miserable indications
of fatuity as that afforded by the preceding quota-
tion. According to them drainage means sewerage,
for which the rivers of a country are the natural and
indispensable channels. Now both of these assertions
we beg leave to pronounce most contemptible for
their glaring and self-evident inaccuracy. Drainage
and sewerage are words by no means synony-
mous ; their signification is essentially different—

drainage implying, forexample, the carrying off of such
superfluous quantities of water as may result from
rain, from the melting snow of the mountains, and
from that aggregate of rills, and brooks, and runnels,
and rivulets which go to the making up of every
river, while sewerage is restricted entirely to the
conveyance of the foul and putrescent outpourings
of every locality distinguished as a place of human
habitation. Using drainage, therefore, in its right
signification it would, of course, be correct
to say that rivers are its natural and in-
dispensable channels, though, at the same time,
it would be ridiculous to announce, with an air of
formal solemnity, a fact so very plain and self-evi-
dent. It reminds one of SAM WELLER'S illustra-

" A self-evident proposition, as the cat's-meat
man said, when the servant girl called him no gentle-
man." It would be as absurd to advance such an
opinion officially, through the medium of a report
from a Government Commission, as to remark,
with the same air of sagacious circumspection,
that the atmosphere is the natural and indispensable
channel for the falling shower. After protesting
however, in the first instance, against the quibbling
phraseology in which the document above-mentioned
has been couched, we have a stronger protest than
this to enter against the argument which that phrase-
ology is intended to advance, namely, that the rivers
are the necessary means afforded to the inhabitants of
a city fur the carrying off of its sewage matter. Such
an asertiun is in accordance with the memorable re-
marks of the London Aldermzn, that PROVIDENCE
had evidently intended that rivers should be
thus employed by the fact of His having directed
their currents through every considerable capital--

:ion—'

quite forgetting, poor silly man, that the rivers were
not directed through the cities, but that the cities
were constructed on the banks of the rivers. Silly
as was the opinion of the municipal potentate, it has
been endorsed with all imaginable formality and de-
liberation by the Government Commission for the
supply of water to the metropolis.
For ourselves, we can never cease proclaiming the
truth that rivers are most unnaturally employed as a
means of carrying away the sewage matter of a town
or city until we can find the system at length happily
abandoned by a more wise and humane generation.
Experience in regard to the noble stream of water
flowing through the heart of this vast metropolis has
assuredly taught us long since the folly and atrocity
of polluting its current as it has been so long polluted,
and transforming it from the blessing to the curse of
the surrounding population. Let it not be forgotten
that the Thames, if properly cared for, that is
to say, if permitted to convey to us the
pure filtrations of the land accumulated in its
course to the channel from its fountain-
head in the vicinity of Cheltenham, might
supply the citizens of the capital with an
abundance of life-giving nutriment, instead of poison-
ing them daily, as at present, when employed as a
means of city irrigation. Whereas, according to the
position of things as they are, the metropolis is not
only supplied with a foul beverage from this source,
but there is perpetually floating to and fro among
the bridges the collected filth of London and West-

minster, during the summer in the broiling sunlight,
the river being as far up as this subjected notoriously
to the agitation of tidal influences. Yet with these
evils glaring upon their comprehension, the mem-

bers of the Government Commission are not ashamed
to assert that rivers are and must always be the natural
and indispensable channels of drainage, meaning
sewerage, as we have already sufficiently well indi-

cated ! Against every such monstrous perversion o'
the truth we never can protest too loudly, whether ii

come from the lips of an ignorant City functionary,
or from those of an enlightened (!) Goverment
Commission. Never can the people, living
in _ a capital situated near the mouth of

a large river like the Thames, listen to
the enunciation of opinions such as those here par-
ticularised without profound sentiments of disgust
and indignation. They tend, indeed, to declare that
the dispensations of DIVINE PROVIDENCE are ne-
cessarily realign instead of beiag always beneficent,
and to aver that the course of Nature is one of cruelty
and violence, instead of being one of unbounded lore
and of maternal and perpetual conservation.

considerable
The Honourable Gentleman the Member for Kerry
is entitled tohas credit
displayedon
for
behalf
of h
the zealis
and
it
un-
fortunatebiwhichn he stitu e n t s , the defrauded depositorsr in the
inflicted
on thealy
nTralee and Killarney Savings Banks, in bringing their
hascas he
su
beennder the
in d i
ffn
eortei cnet
too the injuriesfthelegisia
sufferers at Rochdale and Scarborough, for
whom he
has likewise endeavoured to obtain redress,
and he has certainly succeeded in establish-
ing a strong claim, not only upon the
compassion, but also upon the justice of the country.
Expediency and equity alike demand that full consi-
deration should be given to the condition of those,
who, to say the least of it, supposed that they had
Government security for their hard earnings. Pro-
vident habits should be sedulously encouraged by
thosa entrusted with the administration of public
affairs. Nothing could be more impolitic than to
enable the drunkard and spendthrift to exult over the
prudent and careful, and to boast that they had at
least the satisfaction of spending their money, and
that they were after all in no degree worse than those
who had appropriated a portion of their wages as a
provision for old age, sickness, or any other emer-
gency that might arise, but who had their stores
swept off by the infamous frauds of some parties and
the culpable usgligeuce of others. The Government

LONDON,

itself is not so completely free from blame as to
make it by any means clear that it is not legally
as well as equitably bound to reimburse the
sufferers to the full extent of their losses.
Such a liability was unquestionably established in
the case of the Cuffe-street Savings Bank. Sir
CHARLES Woos, however, while acknowledging the
propriety of the demand, with that peculiar littleness
of mind for which he is so remarkable, reduced the
payment to about one-half of that to which the
claimants were entitled, thus setting the first example
of national breach of faith by compromising debts
fairly due by the country.

There is a dilemma from which the Right
Honourable Baronet cannot escape, on one or the
other of the horns of which he must neces-
sarily be tossed. The claim of the Cuffe-
street depositors was either well- founded or
not ? If well-founded, what could be more
discreditable than for the Government to com-
pel them to accept a composition of los, in
the pound, to exercise its power for such a purpose,
substituting " might for right:" But if the reverse—
if the grant of 30,0001. to those persons was a mere
act of charity, arising from compassion for their suffer-
ings, had not the Tralee and Killarney, the Roch-
dale and Scarborough depositors equal claims t) the
favourable consideration of the country ? By resist-
ing the motion of Mr. HERBERT for an address to her
MAJESTY, praying that she would be graciously pleased
to extend the same measure of relief to the depositors in
the banks above alluded to, that had been already ex-
tended to the Cuffe-street depositors, Sir CumtLes
WooD has afforded the best evidence that the claim
was well-founded, and has thus reflected an indelible
stain on the national honour and integrity.
Up to the year 1844 there was adequate security
afforded to all persons investing their savings in these
institutions. The Government was responsible for
all moneys placed in the hands of the Commissioners
for the Reduction of the National Debt, while the
trustees and managers, who were invariably persons
of sufficient solvency to make good any possible
loss that might arise, were liable for any stoppage in
transitu, or fraud, or malversation, on the part of
their servants. By the 7 and 8 Victoria, c. 83, it
was, however, provided that no trustee or manager
should be liable to make good any deficiency which
might thereafter arise in the funds of any savings
bank, unless they bad declared by writing under
their hands, and deposited with the Commis-
sioners for the reduction of the National Debt,
that they were willing so to be liable, or'
they might limit their responsibility to such sum
as should be specified in such instrument. From the
moment that this ill-advised and impolitic enactment
received the Royal assent, all security for future de-
positors was practically withdrawn. It was by no
means probable that any trustees would take active
measures to incur heavy personal responsibilities. The
persons who were likely to become depositors had no
means of ascertaining whether any, and which of the
trustees had assumed any, and what amount of liability.
And while they were deluded with the idea that they
had the security of the nation, or at least of the nume-
rous influential gentlemen cf undoubted solvency whose
names induced them to place implicit confidence in
the stability of the concern, they were awakened
from their dream by discovering that they had
neither one nor the other, and that they themselves
would be the innocent victims of the crassa negli gentia
of the trustees and of the Commissioners fur the
Reduction of the National Debt.

The most ordinary care must have shown the
parties whose duty it was to inspect the accounts,
which were required by Parliament to be lodged
with the Commissioners, that some gross fraud was
being perpetrated. For instance, in the statement
furnished by the actuary of the Killarney Bank,
for the year ending November, 1844, it was stated
that there were 129 depositors above 501. and not ex.
ceeding 1001., and that the gross sum to their credit
was 6,1251. 6s. 4d., whereas if each man had only the
minimum amount of 501. to his credit it must
have amounted to 6,4501. at the very least.
And, in like manner, that twenty-six de-
positors of 100/., and not exceeding 150/., had
to their credit 2,409/ ss. 6i., when it could not by a
possibility be less than 2,6001. To show the advo-
cates for a Government audit of railway accounts the
advantages to be derived from such an interference
with the shareholders' rights, we may add that this
absurd statement passed muster, and that similar
freaks were attempted in each successive y ear, uutil we
find, in 1847, the actuary returning that 41 depositors
of 1001., and not exceeding 1501., had to their credit the
gross sum of 1,3511. 18s. 2d. (!!) when it could not
by any possibility be less than 4,1001. If any private
person so shamefully neglected the duty imposed on
him he would unquestionably be considered liable for
the losses occasioned by what must be considered his
wilful default. Sir CHARLES WOOD, however,
refuses to sanction the claims put forward,
and, for the honour of the House of Com-
mons, we regret to say that he obtained a ma-
jority of 7 against the motion of Mr. HERBERT. 'We
commend these cases to the consideration of every
man of probity and integrity in the country,
and ask whether it is conduct befitting the
minister of a mighty nation ? and what effect will it
have on the general body of depositors when it is
known that this session, as well as the last, has been
suffered to elapse without anything being done to
amend the laws relating to savings banks, or to give
increased security to the depositors ?