The Sun.
London, England, 1869-11-09 00:00:00

SPIRIT OP THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The Times suspects that very few of its readers have
ever heard of Durham University. We know of the Scotch
universities; we see the working of London University;
and we arc familiar with the colleges and favoured studies,
and still more favoured amusements, of Oxford and Cam-
bridge. But who, except the Bar of the Northern Circuit,
ever heard of Durham University? And what has Dur-
ham done for learning that, alone among the provincial
towns and cities of England, she has been recently
selected by the Crown and Parliament for the honour
of a university town? The North of England, as we
all know, has energies and industries of its own. Is

Durham. University a centre of learning and enlighten-
ment to the mining and, manufacturing interests
of that busy and inventive people ? The Church of
England has no richer ecclesiastical bodies than the See
and Chapter of Durham, Is Durham. University a great
school to supply the growing demand for au educated and
laborious clergy ? It is neither. Tried by any test of
ability, it can give no sufficient reason for its exis4 once. It
remains to be seen if the new Dean of Durhan., .:ho is tha
warden and monarch of the University, can persuade the
local authorities that wisdom and prudence alike counsel
a radical change. If only they were content to be useful
and could resign themselves to some loss of pretentioul
dignity, they might render Durham University as
beneficial to the North of England as the Scotch
Universities have been to Scotland. They might
retain and extend their present theological school,
snaking it a rival of St. Aidan's or St. Bees, and
they might found and endow for lads of 15 and 16 a
useful school of practical science. Unless something be
done, and that something quickly done, to sender the
university a real benefit to the North, the cry will become
irresistible that its revenues would be better applied in
endowing thirty new districts in our overgrown manufac-
turing towns than in producing yearly a score of graduates
and licentiates in divinity. The new dean is an educa-
tional reformer, and has work here ready to his hand. He
will see at a glance that the model of Oxford, which he
knows so well, is in the present instance devoutly to be
shunned.

The Daily News observes that the advice which old
Polonius gives to his son, then setting out on his foreign
travels—" Beware of entrance to a quarrel ; but being in,
bear it that the offenders may beware of thee," has gene-
rally been considered very shrewd and sensible. This
apparently is not the opinion of two eminent Irish patriots
who have for the moment forgotten their common hatred
of the Saxon in hatred of each other. The O'Donoghue
and Mr. G. 11. Moore have rushed hastily into a quarrel,
and being in, prudential considerations have occurred to
them, and they have done their best to get safely out of
it. Their first thoughts were of war, but their second
were of peace; and second thoughts are prover-
bially best. Discretion, if not always the better part
of valour, is in some cases a good substitute for it;
and this function it seems to have exercised in the dispute
between the two Irish leaders. Under certain conditions
The O'Donoghue's second was ready to withdraw The
O'Donoghue's letter to Mr Moore; while that gentleman's
second saw no insuperable obstacle to the withdrawal of
Mr. Moore's letter to The O'Donoghue. The Chieftain of
the Glens, when he spoke of heartless spouters and of
fustian, was not thinking of Mr. Moore in particular; and
Mr. Moore, in throwing contempt on the title of clannish
chieftainship assumed by his antagonist, was animated by
the most respectful feelings towards an ancient Irish family.
All's well that ends well. We dare say there never was
any real danger. If the seconds had not withdrawn the
letters of the valorous enemies in Ireland, they would
probably have withdrawn the charges from their
pistols at Boulogne ; and the thing would have ended, as
it has done now, in a flash in the pan. The heroes who
have agreed to be preserved to their friends and their
country, and to the Imperial Legislature of which they are
ornaments, have incurred no worse evil than ridicule; and
to this they are accustomed. We are somewhat sorry for
The O'Donoghue, who has lately shewn a disposition to
cultivate sobriety and good sense; and from whose rising
reputation a large deduction must be made on account of
this silly escapade. One thing is consolatory in the
matter, and that is, that the latest attempt to revive the
folly of duelling should have been such as to cover the
practice with contempt. After the affair of The
O'Donoghue and Mr. Moore, we shall probably hear no
more of it, and what we hear of them, will, we hope. be of
a more creditable kind.

The Standard thinks that there is more than a question
of economy involved in the scheme for transplanting to
provincial gaols, many of which are at present half empty,
a proportion of convicted criminals from the metropolis,
and from the home counties in general. Twice has the
suggestion been laid before full assemblages of the local
magistrates, and three times have various authorities,
beyond their jurisdiction, expressed their willingness
to receive, keep, and discipline, a certain number cf
offenders upon terms to be hereafter settled. The
case is a curious ono, and stands thus : London
wants prisons ; the country want; prisons. That
is to say, the accommodation in the capital City falls
short of the necessities continually increasing, not, per-
haps, through any absolute aggravation of crime, but on
account of the incessant growth of population. We have
been accustomed to hear :of painful displacements of the
poor, consequent upon the clearing of crowded districts,
the ground taken for public works, the exigencies of rail-
Way companies, and so forth ; but in one quarter of London
--Clerkenwell—we are assured that the prison premises
have been, and are being, so enlarged that they are ejecting
the artisans from their homes and driving the watchmakers
eastwards. This is the assertion of more than one magis-
trate. It is shewn that, scattered far and wide, are thou-
sands of cells, and acres of work-yards, into which might
be draughted the excess of • the criminal popu-
lation, whether from London or elsewhere. We are not
alluding to such establishments as Kirkdale, the New
Bailey, the Preston House of Correction, the borough
gaols of Manchester and Liverpool, or even Lancaster
Castle, in Lancashire, although some of these are rarely
full; but to others, less conspicuous, though obviously in
the eyes of those magistrates who advocate, at all events,
an experiment. When, indeed, the long-deferred change
in the law is effected which will abolish the injustice of
condemning men committed on trivial charges to months
and months of almost penal suffering before trial, vast
prisons will be empty during the greater part of the year;
and while the fact remains so where can be the necessity
for new and palatial prisons ?
The Herald remarks that for some time past companies
have been remonstrating and agitating against the present
state of the law of compensation for personal injuries.
The other day an application was made to the Court of
Queen's Bench for a new trial in the case of " Farr v. the
London and North-Western Railway Company." The
plaintiff, a curate, 27 years of age, had been earning a pro-
fessional income of £250 a year, when he sustained a severe
cerebral and spinal shock in the Abergele. collision, which
was admitted to have reduced him from a condition of
health and vigour to one of the extremest
wretchedness • and suffering. There was some
discussion, but eventually the rule was unani-
mously refused, upon grounds which must appear
unanswerable to every disinterested person. The principle
of law ia, that if one man negligently injures another, he
must pay for the consequences of his negligence. If he
has not the means to pay, the sufferer may have to go
remediless, but the wrongdoer is clearly answerable to the
full extent of his means. We do not think that many
who have to travel by rail will willingly relinquish the
check- upon railway recklessness which this right to com-
pensation affords, and we are sure that, whatever may
happen in exceptional cases, most people will agree with
Sir Alexander Cockburn and his learned colleagues in
thinking that there is no reason for a reconsideration of
'he law upon the subject.

Westminster Abbey, says the Telegraph, has been enli-
vened by an event of much social importance and festal
display, which caused the antique fane to look as bright
and cheerful as anything could; for the Abbey witnesses
not only a wedding, but a double wedding; an espousal.
moreover, which united in matrimonial alliance some o;'
the. proudest houses among the nobility of the empire. Th-,
brides were,the two daughters of the Duke of Abercorn ;
and the happy bridegrooms were the Marquis of Blandford
endJ.hollEarquis of Lansdowne. Beyond questionthose pre-
sc,nt sawn chartning spectacle. Always-pleasant things to see.
youth, and beauty are certainly not rendered less so by the
Leta of high birth and wealth, or by the combination of a.
venerable and splendid ecclesiastical interior with a ga,l-
- of wedding guests, and all that delightful sense o'
hope-and happinesz,- which belongs to the scent of orang,•:
blossoms. The professional politic:an, who is, perhar,,
l,ss sympathetic than he should be, will not fail to notice
that the double wedding brinks together Whig and To:--y
twuses, in a manner rather foreign to par: y instincts. Till
bri :es of 31inday':; ceremony ere the daughters of Mr.
Disraeli's Lerd-l.ieutematt of Ireland ; and to th
side of the same leader in the political field belongs th
Duke of Marlborouel, father of one of the bridegrooms.
On the other hand, the Marquis of Lansdowne, the secorei.
`'happy man," is not only the scion and representative-ol
an established Whig family, but a member of the presen
Government, and one who, in the actual course of thin:.
may reasonably hope to take high place in the profession
of state:Allen:Ali!). What then ? All the old feuds e:
all the Cepulets and Montagues never prevented
Romeo and Juliet from falling iu love .witl-
each other, and " Whig " and "Tory' have never proved
words of power enough to interfere much with an eligible
match in the regions of the Red Book. roimir part, we
welcome the relations springing up between%the "grew`
old Houses" of Whig. and Tory; and if things' do but go
on "as merry as a marriage bell" in this way m
lord of the antique persuasion wil by-and-
longer,
Tory
a real old To
irik,
by, be as extinct_ as a dodo or megathorium. •'- - .- ' -- 1