The Sun.
London, England, 1851-09-26 00:00:00

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LONDON, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1851.

Wonderful as have been the achievements already
accomplished during this memorable year of 1851,
perhaps the most extraordinary of all has yet to be
recorded. It may be calculated with some degree of
certainty that by the time our broadsheet of this
evening goes to press England and France will be
effectually linked together by means of the electric
telegraph. From the report of yesterday's proceed-
ings in the Channel in reference to this remarkable
enterprise, it will be perceived that every preparation
had been made for the immediate completion of a
project hitherto conducted under the most brilliant
and encouraging auspices. The marvellous and
almost miraculous annals of science contain no chap-
ter more enthralling than that already dedicated
to the narrative of this unparalleled under-
taking—one which cannot fail to shed a
lustre on the age, while it must tend inevitably to
unite the most hostile nations by a friendship not the
less calculated to prove permanent from the circum-
stance that its continuance will be mutually advan-
tageous. Everything associated with the great work
here adverted to cannot fail to be peculiarly attrac-
tive even to the most phlegmatic members of the
population, appealing irresistibly to their sympathies,
and exercising a boundless charm over their imagina-
tions. Even when the inhabitants of the two coun-
tries have become habituated to the marvel of this
submarine interchange of intelligence, the record of its
original establishment will still continue to be fraught
to them with fascination. They will revert with
undiminished, or rather, if possible, with increasing
interest to the facts narrated this day by ourselves and
our contemporaries, and will ponder over those de-
tails as having transpired in the famous year when
the peoples of the world flocked to the capital of
Great Britain to witness the unprecedented splendour
of the Great Industrial Exhibition.
Reference to the account furnished elsewhere in
this evening's impression of our journal, will show
the satisfactory manner in which the wire of the
submarine telegraph between Dover and Calais was
payed off in the Channel yesterday. It will be seen
from the narrative of the reporter, that the vessels
having charge of the great cable destined to connect
together the shores of France and England arrived in
Dover Harbour by four o'clock in the morning —the
vessels engaged in the enterprise, consisting of three
steam tugs attendant upon the Blazer, on board of
which latter bad been duly coiled the whole of the
twenty-five miles of gutta percha and metallic tubing
required in the operation. Several distinguished
members of the scientific world appear to have taken
part in the expedition, which shortly after sunrise,
namely, at seven o'clock, A.M., started for the shores
of the Republic, having previously landed one end of
the cable on the South Foreland, and placed in
guard over it a party of competent superintendents.
While the distance between the extremities of the
wire gradually increased as the Blazer receded from
the English side of the Channel, the maintenance of
the line of communication was announced by a feu
de joie being fired through the whole length of
twenty-five miles of wire to the temporary station
established on the South Foreland, constituting, as
is well said, a species of " electrical cannonade," the
detonations of which were continued at regular in-
tervals throughout the day, the several discharges
being responded to by reiterated acclamations.
Those who were fortunate enough to witness the
proceedings could not but be profoundly interested in
an event so eminently attractive to the philosopher and
the experimentalist. So triumphantly successful was
the conduct of the entire enterprise, that long before
midnight the submarine telegraph had been laid to
within two miles and a half of the French coast, cu-
riously enough, in a position exactly between the
little fishing place of Sanngat, in the Pas de Calais,
and the Kentish village of Sandgato. This morning
will, of course, have witnessed the completion of the
whole of this arduous and wonderful undertaking, so
small and comparatively insignificant a portion of the
enterprise last night remaining to be accomplished.
Throughout the passage of the Blazer across the
Channel, it may be interesting to mention that
repeated communications were dispatched to and fro
between the vessel and the South Foreland, not
merely by the needle telegraphs of HENLEY, REID,
Coos and WHEATSTONE, but also by the printing
apparatus of Messrs. BRETT, the original projectors
of the submarine telegraph, and by the monosyllable
" fire" being given from side to side, followed by the
ignition of fusees and the consequent detonation of
what has already been termed the "electrical can-
nonade." Each of these explosions must have sounded
in the ears of those parties who were engaged in the
operation as an additional encouragement, and as a
kind cf supplementary augury of the success likely
to attend the whole of the transaction. Nothing, in
short, could by possibility have been more satisfac-
tory in every respect than the progress made in
the carrying out of the intentions of the two Go-
vernments.

Immediately on the establishment of the station on
the coast of France a direct line of instantaneous
communication will have been fixed between Dover
and Paris, a line extended in England to London and
on, on, on northwards to Edinburgh, while it will
ultimately stretch across France through many of the
principal capitals of Europe to the further extremity
of the continent, branching off ulteriorly by the upper
shore of the Adriatic along that direct route which is
to unite, by a series of trunk railways, the mother
country with Hindostan. Imagination becomes
bewildered indeed by the unlimited specula-
tions suggested by this most astonishing
enterprise, an enterprise which will at
once render immediate communication possible be-
tween Paris and London, between the Foreign-office
in the Rue des Capucines and the Foreign-office in
Downing-street, between the Councils of her Britan-
nic MA3ESTY and those of the Republic PRESIDENT.
An enterprise, moreover, which will, before long, by
necessity, enable us to hold a correspondence within
an interval of a few minutes with persons resident in
the capitals of Spain or Belgium, of Austria or Russia,
of Italy or Switzerland—messages flashing back-
wards and forwards perpetually between London,
Madrid, Brussels, Turin, Lucerne, Vienna, and St.
Petersburgh. Incredulity may be expressed by some
on the perusal of these conjectures, but whoever
would gainsay the speedy possibility, or rather, we
should say, the certainty of these things, must have
forgotten, or may be ignorant of the marvels which
have long since been of daily recurrence amongst
ourselves : they must overlook the fact that
while they may be strolling indifferently over the flag-
stones of the Strand there are questions and answers
flashing to and fro between the offices respectively
situated at Charing•cross and in Liverpool—a few
inches under the pavement—silently, but with un-
erring certainty—outstripping the winds—bewilder-
ing the fancy—and rendering man little less than a
magician by means of the simple but everlasting laws
of electricity. Familiarized as we are by this time
with such astounding wonders, we can, in some
measure at least, realize the likelihood of the miracles
of science we have spoken of as approaching just
now the period of their accomplishment.

The feeling of satisfaction which we experienced
from the aimouncement by Sir GEORGE GREY, in
reply to a question put to him by Mr. CHARLES
LUSHINGTON, that the subject of amending the law
for the regulation of lunatic asylums was under hie
consideration, was considerably allayed by the subse-
quent statement, made in the last week of the late
session of Parliament by the Earl of SHAFTESBURY,
that the task of introducing a measure to effect that
object would, during the course of the ensuing ses-
sion, be in all probability confided to his care. The
antecedents of the Noble Earl are not such as to in-

duce us to place the slightest trust in any measure
for the amendment in the laws relating to lunacy in
the framing of which himself or his colleagues of the
Lunacy Board shall have any share. We cannot but
remember that, whilst the only good and efficient
portion of the present law was introduced into it by
Mr. THOMAS DUNCOMBE, in 1845, in spite of the
strenuous opposition of the Noble Earl (then Lord
ASHLEY), all the bad portions of it are exclusively the
Noble Lord's own handiwork. In the year 1845
Sir JAMES GRAHAM, then the Home Secretary, re-
ceived the Parliamentary support of the Noble Lord ;
and the Right Hon. Baronet imagined, it would
seem, that, like " the wizard MICHAEL SCOTT," he
was bound to find perpetual employment for the mis-
chievous and meddlesome activity of his supporter;
accordingly, in order probably to divert the attention
of the Noble Lord from the factory measure, a
Lunacy Bill was suggested to him, and the present
law is the consequence. " The principal feature," as
the late Lord CASTLEREAGH would have said, "on
which the measure hinges" is the appointment of a
Board of Commissioners to license and to inspect
all the lunatic asylums in England; the chairman of
that has been, from its first appointment, the Noble
Lord himself. He has been its chief director and
manager, he has attached his signature to all its reports,
and he is consequently responsible for the manner in
which it has performed its duties. We have from
time to time directed the attention of the public to
the manner in which those duties have been
neglected ; we have frequently denounced that Board
as " a mockery, a delusion, and a snare." The facts
brought forward in various courts of justice by the
Alleged Lunatics Friend Society have proved to de-
monstration the continued existenee of the worst
abuses in the very best managed private lunatic
asylums, yet still, year after year, the Commissioners
of Lunacy
,have inserted; in their reports the stereo-
typed statement, that " the abuses which formerly
existed in private lunatic asylums no longer take
place in those under their superintendence," and to
these reports we invariably find appended the signa-
ture of the Noble Lord: Time after time we have
indignantly denied the truth of this assertion; in in-
stance after instance has the Alleged Lunatics' Friend
Society proved its absolute falsehood ; and from a
quarter from which we least of all expected to re-
ceive such a confirmation of our views, we have
at length a distinct admission that the Alleged
Lunatics' Friend Society have been all along right,
and that the Noble Lord and the Commissioners have
been all along wrong. In the debate in the House of
Commons on the Bill introduced by Mr. LACY for
placing religious houses under the surveillance of the
civil authority, the Noble Earl (then Lord ASHLEY)
is reported to have said, on the 15th May, 1851—
" If this Bill is framed on the principle of the Lunacy
Act, I do not hesitate to say nothing can be more
defective. The inspection of private asylums is not
only imperfect, but is performed most unwillingly."
Leaving to the Earl of SHAFTESBURY to justify as
best he may the statements of the Chairman of the
Lunacy Board with the assertion of the Noble Lord
the Member for Bath, we respectfully submit to Sir
GEORGE GREY that the author of those conflicting
statements, the legislator who on his own confession
stands convicted of having framed a law " than which
nothing can be more defective," is not exactly the
person to whom should be entrusted the task of pre-
paring a measure for the amendment of the laws for
the regulation of lunatic asylums, and to the LORD
CHANCELLOR that it is his duty to lose no time in re-
lieving from the further discharge of their duties
gentlemen who, according to the statement of their
own chairman, perform those duties not only imper-
fectly, but most unwillingly. To the imperfect man-
ner in which those duties are performed the very
valuable report of the Alleged Lunatics' Friend
Society for the year 1851 furnishes abundant evi-
dence. From that report it appears that "various
applications have been made to the com-
mittee by persons who have been confined as
lunatics on the most frivolous grounds, as set forth in
the medical certificates, such as having adopted the
Vegetarian system"—what says Mr. BROTHERTON
to this ?—" religious delusions " (not specified)—this,
we presume, was before the delivery by Lord ASHLEY
of his celebrated Lydian speech—" aversion to family
or friends, excessive drinking, propensity to indulge
in the grossest slanders, a.total disregard of truth, and
other similar reasons." And the Committee also
find that, "in some cases, where the original certifi-
cates have been informal or insufficient, the Com-
missioners in Lunacy have allowed them to be
amended after the party has been placed in confine-
ment, although the Act requires that the medical certi-
ficate shall be signed and dated the same day on which
the patient shall have been examined by the medical
man, and before the party can be legally confined."
Indeed the Commissioners seem to imagine that their
principal duty is to screen delinquent proprietors and
medical officers of private lunatic asylums from the
consequences of their misdeeds, and to aid, assist,
and connive at their violations of the laws ; for in
their last half-yearly report to the LORD CHAN-
CELLOR, the Commissioners of Lunacy have omitted
the names of the medical gentlemen and others who
are proprietors of asylums, thus adding to the diffi-
culties of discovering the place of confinement of any
patient, and rendering it impossible to detect whether
or not any of the Commissioners in Lunacy, or the
medical men signing the certificate of any patient, are
or are not connected with the proprietors of the asy-
lums, and consequently rendered by the law incom-
petent to act, and when their attention was drawn to
the omission their only excuse was that it had been
done for abridgement and convenience in printing
their report. The entry by Mr. BRANSBY PURNELL
(the excellent chairman of the Gloucester Quarter
Sessions) and his colleagues, the visiting justices of
Gloucestershire, in the visitors' journal at the asylum
of HENRY HAWES Fox, M.D., at Northwood, which
is published as an appendix to the report of the
Alleged Lunatics' Friend Society, abundantly proves
how imperfectly the Commissioners in Lunacy must
have performed their duty of inspection. This report
which is dated 17th June, 1851, and is signed WIL-
LIAM FRIPP, EDWARD SAMPSON, PURNELL B. PUR-
NELL, and GILBERT LYON, M.D., commences as
follows :

" The visitors have felt it to be their duty to inquire
into the cause for the extraordinary entries which they
found in the books of this asylum, made by Dr. Henry
Hawes Fox, and which were there unexplained; the first
on their visit on the 7th of January last, of the discharge
of four of his patients on the previous day; the others
on their next visit on the :24th of February last, of the
re-admission of such four patients on the Bth of January,
after an absence of only ono day ; of the admission,
under a new order and certificates, of a patient on the
10th of January last, who was then, and had been for
many years previously, a patient in the house, and who
had not been discharged from it, and of the discharge of
another patient on the 10th of February last, and of his
admission on the 22d of the same month, no cause being
entered for such charge and admission. At this last
visit, Dr. H. H. Fox, having verbally assigned
as the reason for these discharges and re-ad-
missions, that he had been advised to have these
effected, the visitors requested him to produce the
orders and certificates in these cases. This he declined,
acting, as he said, upon the same advice, and though the
law was shown and explained to him, he persisted in his
refusal. The visitors told him that they had no wish, if
he produced them, to animadvert upon mere inaccura-
cies, but that they could overlook nothing untrue, no-
thing fabricated, nothing interpolated by him or by
others of his establishment to make what was not legal,
legal; and that he must take the consequences of their
non-production. He stated that all the orders and cer-
tificates had been carefully examined, and he assured
the visitors that ho had legal advice that all these
papers were correct, so as to be received and passed by
any court of law; still that there were some trivial in-
accuracies and informalities, such as the t-s not tailed
and the i-s not dotted, which prevented their being in
exact accordance with the requirements of the Act of
Parliament.' But be still refused to produce them, and
asked for five days' delay to obtain fresh advice."
The result of that fresh advice was that the Doctor
thought it best to produce the documents, and the
result of such production was to show that " by his
acts (we quote the words:. of the magistrates) Dr.
H. H. Fox has rendered himself amenable to prose-
cutions for raisderannours especially created by the
Act to the number of above 280." Among other
things, it appears that Mrs. Hewxn, the matron of
the asylum, was in the habit of signing the name of
Dr. Fox to various documents, and of transmitting
copies of such documents to the authorities ; that
of patients illegally received by Dr. H. H. Fox upon
the authority of one certificate only, without due
cause assigned for the same by the person making the
order, there are fifty-four. Altogether of patients
illegally received there are one hundred and five. A
wife has been admitted into the asylum upon the
order of her husband, and upon the authority of one
certificate only, and that certificate aigned by her

husband. A letter from Dr. H. H. Fox to a person
making an order states, "If there be any inconve-
nience in getting a second certificate it can be dis-
pensed with until after admission." And to another,
" The second (certificate) can be procured at my
house if more convenient."

We have not space sufficient to go into the details
of all the facts recorded in this most valuable docu-
ment, to which we would fain direct the attention of
all those who during the course of the ensuing
session may be called on to legislate on the matter ;
but we do most earnestly invite the attention of the
LORD CHANCELLOR to the manner in which the Com-
missioners of Lunacy have performed their duty of
inspection as regards the Northwood Lunatic) Asy-
lum. During the whole period the visitors' book of
the asylum shows regular entries of all the Commis-
sioners of Lunacy, those entries are of a laudatory
character, and the Commissioners either failed to dis-
cover, or neglected to report the existence of (to use
the words of the Gloucestershire magistrates) " a
system in which all the barriers created by the law
against illegal and improper orders and certificates,
and against the illegal reception and detention of
patients, have been broken through and utterly disre-
garded." 'We trust that ere this the Loan CHAN-
CELLOR has called upon the Commissioners to state
how it comes to pass that they failed to discover the
facts which the inquiries of the Gloucestershire ma-
gistrates so soon brought to light.

THE FRENCH REPUBLIC.

We have received the Paris journals of yesterday.
The responsible editors of the Avenementdu Peuple
and the Presse, MM. VACQUERIE and ROUY, were
tried on Wednesday before the Court of Assizes of
the Seine for publishing the letter of M. VICTOR
HUGO, with comments said to be seditious. M.
Rout made default. M. DESMAREST, for the de-
fendant, M. VACQUERIE, addressed the Court at
great length. M. VACQUERIE also made some ob-
servations, and the President summed up. The jury
brought in a verdict of guilty without extenuating
circumstances. The Court condemned M. VAQUERIE
to six months' imprisonment and I,ooof. fine. The
Advocate-General then: demanded judgment by
default on the responsible editor of the Presse, M.
Rout, and the Court condemned him likewise to six
months' imprisonment and I,ooof. fine.

The Government has issued a decree dissolving
the Municipal Council of Melun, and suspending
the mayor of that town for three months from his
functions.

The National Guards of Pontevy have been dis-
armed.

On Wednesday the PRESIDENT of the Republic
passed a portion of the garrison of Paris in review
in the Champ de Mars. Some other reviews are to
follow.

Mme. GRIM and M. Kum have arrived in Paris,
en route to the Russian capital; TAMBURINI is also
on his way thither, and M. ALARY will follow shortly
after.

We read in the Patrie—" The calm and stagnation
which now reign permit the PRESIDENT of the Re-
public to go and reside at the palace of St. Cloud,
where he will pass some time. The Council of Mi-
nisters will be held alternately at Paris and St. Cloud.
This fact is a sufficient answer to the rumours which
still agitate, though feebly, the political circles."
JOBAED, the young man who assassinated a re-
spectable young married female at the theatre at
Lyons a few days ago, though she was a perfect
stranger to him, has been subjected to several inter-
rogatories by the examining magistrate, and a
minute investigation is being made into all the cir
cumstances of his past life. In compliance with his
request the Abbe COGNET went to him three days
ago. The moment the venerable priest entered the
cell the prisoner flung himself on his knees, and
attempted to speak, but sobs and tears choked his
utterance. After a while he became calm enough to
refer to his crime ; and he demanded, with the most
affecting earnestness, if he would be allowed to live
long enough to expiate it, by repentance. He spoke
of his father, who is a gamekeeper near Dijon, and of
his mother and sister, and expressed profound grief
at the agony he had caused them to endure. He
expressed the wish to attend divine service; but, as
he is in secret confinement, that could not be allowed.
On being told so he cried, " Alas ! not many days
ago I attended mass at Dijon—and who would then
have said that to-day I should be here ?"
The Debats, examining the late Customs returns,
says:--
" The importations for the last eight months give
Customs duties to the amount of 70,406,000 f. In 1850
the amount for the same period was 81,229,000 f.; and in
1849, 84,277,000 f. Here, then, is a continuous falling
off, and it is idle to put it on the sugar duties—the latter
show, it is true, a decline of 4,000,0001., but this deft
oiency has been largely compensated for by other pro-
ducts, especially by that of coffee."

On the other hand the Debats notices a steady in-
crease in exportations of wines and spirits, and of
corn, as well as of machines, millinery, porcelains,
glass, and crystal, with cotton, woollen, and other
goods. This paper complains of the low state of the
merchant marine. The amount of tonnage of vessels
in and out for the eight months of this year is
2,741,000 tons, or 276,000 tons more than for the
corresponding period of 1850 ; while of the increase
only 62,000 belong to French vessels. There is
something wrong here, adds the Debats, either in our
tariffs or our navigation system, and calls for inquiry
into the subject.
The Bourse was feeble, with little business doing,
The Five per Cents. opened at 92f., rose to 92f. 40c.,
and closed at 92f. 15c, for the end of the month; the
Three per Cents. opened at 561. 55c.; Rouen, 565 f.;
Havre, 231 f. 25c.; Great Northern, 458 f. 75c.; Avignon,
208 f. 75c.; Vierzon, 427 f. 50c.; Basle, 1481. 750.; Bor-
deaux, 385 f.; Paris and Strasburg, 355 f.; Tours and
Nantes, 263 f. 75c.; Amiens to Boulogne, 258 f. 75c.

BUSINESS DUN E. IN FOREIGN itAILWAY AT THE
LONDON STOCK EXCHANGE, SEPT. 25.
Boulogne and Amiens, 1014—Central of France (Orleans
and Vierzon), 17 - Dutch Rhenish, 3—East Indian, 21
Great Indian Peninsula, 4—Luxembourg, 134—Namur and
Liege, 6—Northern of France, 143—Paris and Rouen, 22%
—Paris and Strasbourg, 11- Rouen and Havre, 93g—Sam-
bre and Meuse, 31,x.

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