The Sun.
London, England, 1869-02-22 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

The Times, in discussing the present difficulty about the
volunteers and the Government grant, observes that
nobody can deny that the element of national defence
now constituted by our volunteer force is both valuable
and economical. It is valuable because it supplies us
with numbers, and numerical weakness is the great
defect of our regular army. Nor should it be forgotten
at this point of the case that our volunteers have their
own reserves. The effective strength of the force at
present is about 160,000, but we may probably
suppose that as many more have passed through the
ranks since 1850, and retired after more or less
training. The great majority of these would be still
available in case of actual emergency, so that we may
regard our volunteer army as being 300,000 strong. The
force, too, now comprises upwards of 20,000 trained
artillerymen, and when we turn to the cost of all this
establishment, and find it put at no more than 2380,000
a year, it becomes impossible to say the charge is
exorbitant. Up to this point, indeed, we mai assume
that in no one item of the national expenditure does the
country get more for its money. Nevertheless, it is
not to be forgotten, and, indeed, it has been rather
bluntly stated in our correspondence, that if a
volunteer force is far cheaper than a force of regular troops
it is also far less available for the manifold exigencies of
actual service. The cost of the article is certainly within
compass, but so also is its utility, and if the price is to be
reconsidered, the product will naturally be reconsidered
also. We suspect the concluding words of the memorial
go very near the truth of the whole matter, and that
" the organisation of the force might be greatly improved,
and its consequent efficiency increased," without any fresh
charge on the Exchequer or fresh tax upon the volunteers
themselves.

The Post says that it is the especial misfortune of this
country, and perhaps the direct consequence of our system
of party government, that particular questions, involving
a political significance, and frequently occasioning the
rise and fall of Ministries, acquire a fictitious importance,
ind occupy almost entirely the time of the Legislature,
which might on some occasions be more usefully devoted
to other subjects. We are far from maintaining, of
course, that the great party questions of the
day—Reform, the Ballot, the Irish Church, and two or
three others which might be mentioned—are not important;
but we are insisting that there are other questions
which are at least as important, but which, as they involve
no political consequences, unluckily excite a minor interest,
and are either neglected altogether, or, if they are not
neglected, are dealt with in a patchwork fashion by thinly-
attended houses. And yet there can be little question
that there are many of these subjects—we might instance
local taxation, municipal government, poor law administra-
tion—in which reform is really needed as urgently as it is
in the Irish Church. The destinies of a Church, con-
nected as they are with the destinies of a party, will engross,
there can be no doubt, the attention of overcrowded
Houses. The comfort of a few thousand paupers, if it
is referred to at all, will certainly excite only a languid
discussion in a thinly-attended sitting. There is danger,
therefore—a danger which must be apparent to everyone
who studies the proceedings in Parliament—that Parlia-
ment may not devote the time to the solution of the great
administrative problems of the day which their importance
and their difficulty equally demand, and this danger is
increased by the fact that these questions really affect so
many interests, and involve so many distinct issues, that
it would be impossible for any private member to deal with
them from the broad point of view from which, if they are
touched at all, they ought to be regarded.

The Herald regrets that Lord Malmesbury's retirement
from the Conservative leadership in the Upper House
should have passed unnoticed. No statesman of the
present day has been so unfairly and ungenerously treated
by his political opponents as Lord Malmesbury. Because
the organs of the Radicals and the rank and file of the
party had hardly heard of his lordship before he accepted
the Foreign Secretaryship in 1852, they assumed that
he could know nothing of foreign affairs, and have ever
since repeated the same ridiculous assumption. The
fact is that we have hardly ever had a Minister at the
Foreign Office so thoroughly conversant with the whole
range of foreign politics as Lord Malmesbury, and never
one who took a sounder and more dispassionate view of
the questions with which he had to deal. The
characteristics of Lord Malmesbury's foreign policy are
caution and coolness, and these are precisely the qualities
which we want in England from a Foreign Minister. His
lordship never caressed any grand projects for setting the
world to rights, or wrote dispatches with no other purpose
than to tickle the groundlings, like Earl Russell. His
policy was always a sensible an 1 judicious one, and its
soundness received on both occasions when he left office
the testimony of his successors. Lord Malmesbury led
the House of Lords well. He would have continued to
lead with ability, and to the perfect satisfaction of his
political friends, the Conservative party, if his health had
been equal to the task. Unfortunately the experience of
last year shewed that his forces are unequal to the labour,
and he retires with the thanks and the good wishes of the
party generally, as well as of his colleagues and friends.
The retirement, however, is not au abandonment of poli.
tical life, or a withdrawal from that part in the guidance
of the Constitutional party which has, for so many years,
devolved upon him.

The Telegraph approves of the manner in which Mr.
Forster deals with the religious difficulty
j in
his new mea-
sure on education. Nor should we be justified in post-
the removal of the last traces of sectarianism from
post-
poning
national schools of England. It is a scandal that, in
schools which are supported by national property, the son
of a Dissenter or a Roman Catholic must attend the
ministrations of the English Church, or else leave the classes.
By all means let education be religious ; but it is not a reli-
gious duty to make a boy take part in a service which,
though good and holy in itself, evokes in him or his
parents feelings of hostility or even of malevolence.
Mr. Forster proposes to repeal, without delay, those
rules which convert the national class-rooms into scenes
of religious dispeace ; and also the regulation, which
applies to many endowed schools, that the head master
must be a clergyman. At one time, when the whole
nation professed the same creed, and when the ranks of the
clergy supplied the greatest number of scholars, no harm
may have been done by the decree that grammar should
be taught by none but gentlemen in holy orders. That
time has long passed. The country is now split up into
sects, and by far the largest number of scholarly men
are most decidedly not clergymen. Hence, under the
present system, the masters must be chosen from a
limited class, and the best scholars must be excluded.
That is another absurdity which Mr. Forster means to
remove by what has been infelicitously designated as the
" temporary " part of his bill. In some quarters it has
been assumed that the whole measure is " temporary."
That is a complete mistake. The commission by which
the reform is to be executed will, of course, speedily cease
to exist, but the effects will remain, and when a complete
system of educational machinery shall be created, the
changes proposed by Mr. Forster will fit into the further
alterations that may be necessary. His bill points the
way to so great a reform, that, if passed, it will suffice in
itself to make the session memorable.

The Standard refers to the Thames Embankment, and
condemns the scheme of the proposed viaduct. Even
before the Thames Embankment has been open to public
traffic it is first to be invaded and cut up from below by
the navigators of the Metropolitan Railway Company, and
then to be oppressed from above by a viaduct passing
along the finest portion of its length, in connection with a
roadway from Charing Cross to Wellington-street.
The ratepayers have already been put to a great
expenditure in the construction of the Embankment ; they
are now to be taxed in a further sum of £245,000, which is
to be spent in undoing the best part of that costly work.
As usual, no one knows precisely who has committed us
to this absurd muddle. It is our privilege only to learn
that the job is to be undertaken —just on the eve of its
commencement. We are told that there is no room for
any surprise in the matter. The roadway has been in
contemplation for many years. The ratepayers have
known all about it from the beginning, and if they have
not given the subject their deliberate consideration they
ought to have done so. Both the Board of Works and
the Commissioner of Works profess to be equally ill-
pleased with the undertaking ; yet Mr. W. Cowper
declares, in the true spirit of officialism, that the
thing has been regularly discussed and settled.
and that being settled we have no remedy but to spend our
money and spoil the Thames Embankment. It is not
unreasonable to demand that where we have so many
authorities, boards, and departments, all devoted to the
one purpose of public works, there should be someone at
least who should be responsible —someone to check noto-
rious abuses and to abate acknowledged nuisances ; some-
one to exercise a general supervision over the local bodies ;
and if without any authority to originate what is useful
and good, to preserve us at least from such evil and
mischievous designs as this of the roadway across the
most important and valuable portion of the Thames
Einbankment.

ATROCIOUS MURDER IN SUNDERLAND. —On
Saturday night an atrocious murder was committed in
this town. About ten o'clock an unfortunate girl named
Fitzsimmons was found in a room in Baines's-lane, by a
neighbour, under the bed, dead, in a pool of blood. There
were two punctured wounds, penetrating the heart, and
four stabs in the breast and back. She was last seen alive
at two in the afternoon, and was then in the company of a
sailor, who accompanied her home. The murderer escaped.
From his appearance he is thought to be an Irish American.
ll*lll.lipppmci to hgvg left for LowlOnt