The Sun.
London, England, 1860-12-31 00:00:00

atm by the noble earl the honoured chief of her
MAJESTY'S Opposition. It was am incident espe-
cially worthy of commemoration, that as= emblage
of the northern Volunteers at the ancestral home
of the Earl of DERBY—peculiarly and especially
worthy of commemoration in this retrospect of the
Volunteer movement if only from the circumstance
of its evidencing in a remarkable manner
the unanimity with which all classes of politicians
have coincided, with a total forgetfulness of party
distinctions and party differences, in wishing God-
speed to the mustering of England's Riflemen !
Another particularly noticeable circumstance in
regard to this resplendent movement is the now
perfectly obvious fact that it has tended from first
to last to bring frankly together, ;Is man to man, the
various sections and classes of oar diversified com-
munity. Insomuch is this the case that the social
barriers hitherto dividing class from class may be
said, with a perfect regard to truth, to have been
broken down and trodden under foot, as hence-
forth contemned obstructions and encumbrances,
by the simple but all-sufficient force of this
very movement of our Rifle Volunteers.
The manhood of these islands, rich and
poor, patrician and plebeian, shopkeeper arid aristo-
crat, representatives of the working Million and
representatives of the Upper Ten Thousand, hare
manfully put shoulder to shoulder, they have all
assembled upon one common footing, brothers &L
arms, clad in the same grey or green uniforms
common to the members of the various corps of our
Volunteer Riflemen. Again we say that if only
regarded in the light of this one noble movement,
the year 1860, now fast coming to its close, cannot
but be borne by us all in grateful recollection.

The old babble about invasion has now been
effectually scattered to tho winds as little else
than ridiculous. Particularly bearing in mind that
simultaneously with this prompt creation and
permanent organisation of a National Guard of
Volunteer Riflemen, we have during this same
twelvemonth seen the wise regard paid by the
nation to the improvement and development of
both our great warlike services : insomuch that the
Royal Navy and the Royal Army are fast ap-
proaching a state of efficiency such as they have
never previously attained at any period of our
history. Consequently, if we have been expend-
ing in a year of peace, so-called, the enormous sum
of thirty round millions sterling, upon our mili-
tary and maritime armaments, we have at any
rate, in this their rapid approximation to a state
of complete efficiency, a result, we will venture to
say, in spite of all the peace-at-any-price econo-
mists of the Manchester school, amply compensa-
tive.

The inclemency of the weather in 1860 turns out
again upon the reliable evidence of the Registrar
General to be in its consequences absolutely matter
of congratulation. The mortality has actually
diminished, under the influence of this almost unex-
ampled humidity of the spring, summer, and
autumn seasons—the flooding rains having washed
clear of all impurities the drain-channels of our
towns and cities, and at the head of them all, with
conspicuous good results, the shores of our -vast and
densely populated metropolis. It is a result, this,
eminently calculated to inspirit us all in the more
and more rapid development of our Sanitary Im-

provements.
If we cast a retrospective glance at 1860 in a
purely commercial point of view, our attention
becomes almost entirely absorbed in the still
problematic advantages promised to the coun-
try by the new Treaty of Commerce negotiated
(by Mr. COBDEN of all men !) between France and
England. A commercial Treaty, we are still
encouraged to 1,,,1:5ve by those who have faith in
it—negotiated nominally at least in the interest of
the great Free Trade Principles, though based
throughout upon the old and, we had imagined,
obsolete crotchet of the Monopolists the old bung-
ling and blundering crotchet of Reciprocity. It is
singularly inauspicious in regard to this still
dubious mercantile transaction between France and
England, that it is reprehended, root and branch,
body and soul, by no less authoritative and en-
lightened a Political Economist than Mr. M'CuL-
LOCH, the Author of the "Mercantile Dictionary."
Whatever benefits may eventually accrue to
England from the prudent effects of its
operation—there is not a doubt of this—
can only come to us, after long waiting !
During all which weary lapse of time we shall
have to make up the deficiencies of the revenue,
consequent upon the abolition of so many indi-
rect taxes (never complained of !) upon luxuries,
by the clumsy and cruel device of an indefinite
continuation of the direct Tax upon Incomes,
according to its • present unjust and infamous
mode of assessment. Here in fact is the chief blot
of the year now dying out—a year of financial folly
and financial profligacy, of commercial blundering
and commercial experiment. It is Mr. GLADSTONR
who is the arch-offender. He of all our public men
is the one who has most blundered. He has secured
to himself the distrust of the great mass of his
fellow-countrymen—he has unhinged the whole
machinery of the mercantile system and of our
financial organisation. He has done this by a
series of elaborated and complex, of rash and
blundering Budgets—Budgets more erroneous in
themselves and more glaringly miscalculated than
even those notorious Budgets that bewildered the
the House of Commons a dozen years ago when
Sir CHARLES WOOD wore the gold robe of England's
Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Turning our regard now to the various stages
of advancement noticeable in the social condition
of the community at large, it is parlicularly
gratifying to remark the perceptible rise in the
character of the education of the middle classes
from the influence, among other things, of the
scheme known as that of the Oxford Examinations.
The educational cause of nearly all classes of the
population indiscriminately, is still further ad,
vanced, from year to year, by the discussions pro-
voked (this last twelvemonth it was through
the gathering at Glasgow) by the Social
Science Association. Nor are the interests
of popular education other than aided (more
particularly among the employees of the shop-
keepers) by the extension of the Saturday Half-
holiday and Early-closing movements.
If the general mortality has been happily dimi-
nished during 1860, we have yet, alas! reasons
enow to lament over the many illustrious
names numbered up in the Obituary of this last
twelvemonth. Among the Peers of the realm,
have We not had grief in noticing the premature
disappearance
from the scene of the good Duke of
NORFOLK and the gallant Duke of RICHMOND?
Have we not had to record the deaths of Lords
STRAFFORD, and ITEYTESBURY, and LONDES-
UGH ? have not two statesmen of historic
reputeCi passed away in the persons of the Earl of
ABERDEEN and the Marquis of Daerrousre ? Has
not another NELSON breathed his last, full
of years,
it is true, but (shame to the
nation !) not full of honours, in the
instance of the late venerable and glorious
old Sailer Earl of DUNDONALD ? Locitiz,
the engineer, following fast his two renowned
contemporaries, BRUNEL and STEPHENSON—G.
P. R. JA3LEs the novelist--sir CHARLES BAIRT,