The Sun.
London, England, 1860-04-27 00:00:00

ROYAL

ITALIAN
COVENT-GARDEN,
SUBSCRIPTION NIGHT
First night of II TROVATORE,
First appearance of Signor GRAZ lANI,

THURSDAY next, May 3, will be given as a Subscription
Night, in lieu of SATURDAY, August 18, on which occasion
will be performed (for the first time this season) Verdi's Opera

IL TROVATORE,
with the following powerful cast :
Leonora, Madame Grist (being the third of the twelve repre-
sentations to which her engagement is limited); Azucena,
Mdlle. Csillag (her first appearance in that character); Inez,
Madame Tagliafico ; Il Conte di Luna, Signor Grasiani (his
first appearance this season) ; Fernando, Signor Tagliafico ;
Ruiz, Signor Lucchesi ; tin Zingaro, Signor Rossi ; and
Manrico, Signor Mario (his third appearance this season).

THBATRE-ROYAL, HAYMARKET.
Lessee, Mr. J. B. Buckstone.
THIS EVENING, will be performed THE OVERLAND
ROUTE. Messrs. C. Mathews, Buckstone, Compton, Chip-
pendale, Mrs. C. Mathews, Miss Weekes, and Mrs. Wilkins.
After which, a new fairy romance, THE PILGRIM OF
OVE.
And THE BOARDING SCHOOL.

ItO YAL PRINCESS'S THEATRE.-
Lessee, Mr. A. Harris.

THIS EVENING, to commence with MY WIFE'S
OUT. Mr. Widdicomb and Miss L. Keeley.
Followed by THE FOOL'S REVENGE. Bertuccio, a
Jester, Mr. Phelps.
To conclude with the extravaganza of THE SYLPHIDE.
Miss C. Leclercq, Miss Louise Keeley, Miss Helen Howard,
Miss Rose Leclercq, Mr. Shore, Mr. Saker, and Mr. Frank
Matthews,

Commence at 7.

ADELPIII, NEW TEIEATRE-ROYAL.
Sole rroorietor and Manager, Mr. Beni. Webster.
TIIIS EVENING, the popular original Adelphi drama of
THE DEAD HEART. Robert Landry, Mr. B. Webster •
Messrs. P. Bedford, J. L. Toole, David Fisher, Stuart, C. J.
Smith, Billington, Eburne, Powell, Romer, Page; MissWool-
gar, Miss K. Kelly, Miss Laidlaw.
After which the Grand Fairy Extravaganza, THE FAIR
ONE WITH THE GOLDEN LOCKS. King, Lachrymoso,
Mr. J. L. Toole ; Count Plenipoao, Mr. P. Bedford ; Viscount
Verysoso, Mr. C. J. Smith ; Graceful, Miss Woolg,ar ; Queen
Lucidora, Miss Emily Thorne ; Mollinopsa, Miss K. Kelly.
Box-office open from 10 till 5.
Private boxes, £2 2s. ; Family Boxes, £l.
Orchestra Stalls, ss. ; Balcony, 45. ; Front Circle Stalls, 3s. ;
Pit Stalls, 25.; Pit, is. 6d. ; Amphitheatre, Is ; Gallery, 6d.
Engagement for a limited number of nights of 31issJULIA
DALY, the celebrated American Actress.
Mr. LEIGH lIIURRA.Y is engaged, and will shortly appear
in a favourite Drama.
Acting ifanager—Mr. Wm. Smith.

ROYAL LYCEUM THEATRE.-
Under the management of Mr. Wm. Brough.
THIS EVENING, a new comic drama entitled NEXT OF
KIN. Messrs. Emery, S. Calhaem, Tilbury, &c. ; Mesdames
E. Travers and K. Saxon.
After which, the burlesque of THE FORTY THIEVES.
Miss Lyd!a Thompson, Miss Clara St. Casse, Miss E.Travers,
Miss K. Saxon, Mrs. Wallis ; Messrs. Emery, Tilbury, &c. ;
and a numerous Corps de Ballet.
Followed by WHITEBAIT AT GREENWICH. Sir W.
Don.

---
To conclude with THE MIDDY ASHORE. Miss Lydia
Thompson.

Commence at 7.

ROY AL ST. JAMES'S THEATRE,
Kin,-street, St. James's. Lessee, Mr. T. B. Chatter-
ton. Directress, Miss Wyndham. The nearest Theatre to
Chelsea, Pimlico, and Westminster, the Park being open to
oarriag;es and foot passengers all hours of the night.

E V ENING- the performances will oommenap with
a new and original comedy, entitled A FRIEND IN NEED.
P Robinson, C. Young, &c.
After which, A LADY AND GENTLEMAN IN A PE-
CULIAR PERPLEXING PREDICAMENT. Mr. Charles
Young and Miss Wyndham.
Followed by a new burlesque, LUC REZIA BORGIA AT
HOME AND ALL ABROAD. Mesdames Wyndham, E.
Scott, Cecilia Banos, Miss Clara Morgan, and the Corps de
Ballet.

Reduced Prices—Gallery, 8d ; Pit, la. The Bog-offtoe open
from 11 to 5 daily. Doors open at half-past six ; perform
antecommences at 7.

ASTLEY'S ROYAL AMPHITHEATRE.—
Proprietor, MT. WM. BATTY.
The
New Sole_ Manager, Mr. EDWIN Il mums.
management, in announcing the Triumphant
Success of the ite-o ennin of this Popular Theatre, have the
utmost satisfaction Pi stating they but re-echo the senti-
ments expressed by the entire Press and the Public nielitly,
that the NEW GREPitilkyeliltelsTe ARY SPECT ACLE, with its
unprecedeatedly ma
inents, and grand mis-en-
appropriate costumes anent appeo'ilneTY and effects, splendid and
scene, is the most perfect and int g hippo-drama ever
liviind British Eques-
proluced. The renolvonerdeceCio,.nediire.Eal
and zing with the un-
trian Artistes are al.
delighted audiences.
bounded approbation of astonished
of the
The novel and elegant arrangement and
Acena give the mest complete satisfaction ; and with the truly
gorgeous decorations render the ev,uing's aniusem
_ ent in this
far-famed Establishment oue of the most varied, trilliant,
and recherche in this great metropolis.
THIS EVENING, and during the Week,
To commence with the Great Military Spectacle, In Four
Acts, entitled "THE HISTORY OF A I LAG." To be suc-
ceeded by an inimitable rontive of Equestrian Achievements
in the Scenes of the Arena, supported by a host of Star Riders
of the day, and Last Nights of the Wonder of the World,
Jonathan Jack.

Doors open at half-past 8 o'clock, performance commence
at 7.

Box-pillee open daily from 11 till 4.
Stage Manager—Mr. W. WriT.

Sir E. B. LYTTON is the avowed advocate of
government through the middle classes. It was
this point on which he dwelt with so much earnest-
ness last year. This year the drift of his speech is
the same. You may lower the franchise to £lO in
the counties with safety, that will give us in them
but an addition to middle class electors; you may
not lower it to L 6 in towns, for that will introduce
the class which works for weekly wages. The
eloquent baronet and the cooler Lord STANLEY
both seem to regard the middle classes as the
safest depositories of power. There is something
plausible in this. They are, as it were, the average
of the population. Between the aristocracy and
the labourer it might seem as if they would hold
the balance impartially between both. The illusion
is indeed apt to fade away when it is remembered
tkat they are but a class—the Schedule B class—
the trading and professional class; and, though
one portion of them must be near the highest
social stratum, another near the lowest, yet that
there is quite as much community of interest as
amongst those below the magic line of the £lO
householders.

In reading, however, the brilliant speech
of our great literary baronet, one thought
struck us most strongly. Admitting all his ar-
guments for distrusting the working men of
England, admitting that they are liable to act at
times under the influence, as he several times said,
of " passion and poverty," admitting for the moment
that they are not to be trusted as electors, we ask
why is it now sought to introduce them ? We know
that the middle classes in 1832 entered everywhere
into a virtual and an honourable—or what should
have been an honourable—compact with them.
The tone of the former was, at every public meet-
ing, "Help us to get the franchise, and we will then
help you to get it." All of us who are old enough
remember this well. The compact was fulfilled,
however, much after the manner of the chief
butler's with Joseph, or of the. German potentates
who promised constitutions to their subjects if they
would first drive the French out of Vaterland.
Yet, strange to say, since the times of Chartism,
the operatives have ceased to demand of the middle
classes the fulfilment of their promise. Perhaps,
good employment and rising wages have had much
to do with this. The political exigencies of finality
Whigs have also been suggested as the reason why
we have been favoured with two or three Reform
Bills, but this suggestion overlooks the fact that had
there not been a demand for reform, no Ministry
in extremis would have offered it as a means of

regaining popularity.
The truth we take to be, that the very middle
classes whom Sir E. B. LYTTON so eulogises, de-
manded Reform because they felt themselves in an
unfair position. They felt they had not the influence
on the Legislature which fairly belonged to them.
There was a galling conviction everywhere that they
were either subjugated by influence in the coun-
ties and small boroughs, or their votes neutralised
by the hired ones of the poorer electors. Had every
middle-class elector felt that he really could
vote as he pleased, there would have been none
of that sense of oppression which has produced in
the present constituency the conviction that some
reform—some means of enabling the real voice of
the people to make itself heard—was needful.
We are speaking now of what is at present under
discussion—of the franchise merely. The actual
apportionment of seats has always been a notorious
and confessed injustice. But, on the subject of the
franchise, the desire of Schedule D was not to add
a host of voters who did not enjoy the honour of
belonging to it, but to thwart, if possible, the
unfair influences by which their real opinions were
so generally overpowered.

The extension of the suffrage was the only means
to which even the liberal portion of the aristocracy
would consent. The Tories, avowedly of necessity
only, consented to it also. But they all, while
lauding the middle class constituency, refused to
enfranchise it. Had they offered it the ballot,
there would have been, we fear, no need to talk of
suffrage extension. That Sir E. B. LYTTON and
Lord STANLEY, while they are so loud in praise of
the present constituency, are unwilling to give it
real rower is evident, by their refusal of protection
to the voter. Hence it is that they have to submit
to a £6 borough franchise, which all Conservatives,
whether termed Whigs or Tories, would yet in-
finitely prefer to rendering the middle classes in-
dependent by the ballot. We do not distrust the
working-men of England. We rejoice that an offer
is made them which, let the Opposition or the
Lords do what they may, it will be hard to recal.
But we also think that trusting instead of
praising the present electors should have been
the first principle of a Reform Bill. Had the
county electors been enabled to vote "freely and
indifferently " under the protection of the Ballot ;
and had the better class of electors in boroughs
seen the venality which virtually disfranchised them
neutralised by th same means—this itself would
have been a large and satisfactory extension of the
suffrage. It would have conferred a vote on the
vast majority in the counties who now are com-
pelled to surrender it to another, and would have
given honest electors to the numerous corrupt
boroughs. For the petty boroughs we confess it
would not, frequently, have done much.

But as to the main point of Sir E. B. LYTTON'S
speech—the unfitness of the class to be introduced
by the present bill for the elective franchise—as

Lord JoHN observed—this, neither he nor any of
the Opposition speakers attempted fairly to prove.
Plenty was said about the danger of unlimited de-
mocracy, but nothing or scarcely anything to prove
that an addition of 150,000, or thereabouts, to the
borough electors would be such a democracy. Our
eloquent baronet drew a picture, which he might
have inserted in sense of his novels, of
an imaginary Smith —an honest fellow
but in debt to the amount of £3, and
therefore by a little political reasoning
on a Chinese war, and a little appeal to the desire-
ableness of being out of debt, disposed by his very
honesty to look at the best side of a Chinese war,
and vote for that and the payment of his debt to-
gether. Even the ballot would not mend the case
with him, since, being an honest fellow, he would
keep his promise. It was forgotten that the £3
would hare been a very unlikely offer when no
poll-book receipt could be given for it—forgotten,
too, that in proportion to the number of the
SMITHS will be the cost and the difficulty of deal-
ing with them. All arguments of this kind are but
arguments to prove that the House of Commons
does not want to put down bribery. The House
well knows how to do that.

We could but observe that the common fallacy
ran through several speeches, Mr. BLACK'S, we re-
gret to say, among the rest, of dealing with the
subject as if the electors were to be members or
even Cabinet Ministers, and not merely persons to
choose fit men to deal with political questions.
Doubtless, not many men living on wages
could be found competent to correspond with
M. THOUVENEL, or to introduce an important
bill into the House of Commons; but this
is altogether a different question from their
fitness to choose qualified men to do such things.
There are innumerable ways in which work-
ing men, as well as the rest of us, can
ascertain who are the persons most competent to
attend to matters wholly out of their own province.
We all do it, daily, in every department of life. Of
course a few FERGUS O'CoNNoRS might gain the
popular ear in some constituencies, but nowhere are
such men more innocuous than in the House of
Commons. The great mass of the working people
would, we believe, but too easily follow
the lead of more educated men, and the change
to be apprehended from the proposed franchise ex-
tension, we fear, be only too small. Of one thing
we are quite certain, that confidence, not mistrust,
is the true key to the hearts and judgments of
English operatives. They deserve it. And we
think all these calumnious reasons for withholding
the franchise from them are of the worst tendency.
They do indeed tend to " set class against class."

It is not so very long ago since what was called
the Crimean Banquet was offered in evidence of a
cordial reception on their return home to the 33d,
or "Duke of WELLINGTON'S" Regiment. A simi-
lar demonstration of good feeling has now been
very recently offered by the citizens of Auld Reekie
to the gallant Ross-shire Buffs, or, as they are
otherwise numerically entitled upon the roll of the
Army List, the 78th Highlanders. A magnificent
greeting, in truth, was thus accorded on Tuesday,
the 24th instant, to this valiant corps in the grand
hall of the Corn Exchange in the Grassmarket of
the city of Edinburgh. As many as nearly fifteen
hundred persons, including ladies, and numbering
amongst the convivial concourse, both the soldier-
guests and their entertainers, partook together of
the festivities and shared in the enthusiasm
which signalised in a remarkable manner
this genial and gracious entertainment.
Elsewhere in our impression of this evening will
be found as full a report as we have been able to
procure of the proceedings of Tuesday last in the
Grassmarket of Edinburgh. From this report it
will be recognised by our readers how kindly was
the spirit in which the banquet was offered to the
78th Highlanders, and how manly, simple, and
thoroughly soldier-like was the feeling with which
the three spokesmen who returned thanks in suc-
cession, in their own names and in those of their
gallant comrades, proffered their acknowledgments.
Nothing, we unhesitatingly assert, could have been
in more exquisite taste than the tone of the remarks
in which the toast of the evening was responded to
by Colonel EWART, now in command of the 78th
Highlanders ; by Lieut.-Colonel HENRY HAMIL-
TON, who has for thirty years past, he says, found
a moveable home with that regiment ; and by the
brave Sergeant-Major Pocoex, speaking in his turn,
too, peculiarly in behalf of the non-commissioned
officers and privates of the Ross-shire Buffs. Each
and all of these three little model after-dinner
harangues will, we promise our readers, be found
eminently worthy of perusal, being characterised
throughout, quite naturally, simply, and, as it were,
spontaneously, by a highbred and chivalrous solici-
tude, in no way te arrogate to themselves any
peculiar merit, apart from the heroic service to
which it is the pride and glory of the gallant corps
to belong. Colonel EWART, whose name was imme-
diately coupled with the toast of " The 78th High-
landers' " from the circumstance of his now being in
actual command of it himself, in the first
place disclaimed any right to such honour (apart
from that circumstance), although at the final re-
lief of Lucknow, for example, he had taken part
individually in the warlike doings through which
the Ross-shire Buffs have so recently passed—
Colonel EWART at that period holding re-
sponsible command in the 93d Regiment.
After particularising (immediately upon the
utterance of this modest disclaimer) the senior
Lieutenant-Colonel of the 78th Highlanders,
namely, Colonel WALTER HAMILTON, and enume-
rating besides no less than three other Lieutenant-
Colonels (Colonels HENRY HAMILTON, WINTYRE,
and LocKHART), " all of whom," said the gallant
speaker, " at different times commanded the 78th in
action ;"—and all of whom, moreover, were then
present while he was speaking : Colonel EWART
said, " I have been asked hew many are here to-
day who fought with the 78th in India ? and I am
proud and happy to say that there are around me 15
announcementh
lldoeerunydt
an d p rol
or
ne
gc ee iav e
ade, e al
as
officers and about 350 men who fought abroad ;.' an
l-
ma
amt
oa
ot tse.r ofF For
ro utrhs
ee ,
dwriot
wiint h
thew hich
recentC ohl
snt eolt
yE
ofw theRT nßaorerea- te ehdi r
ea nB ionffc
Buffs,
an incident dating from the Ist of April—for his
facetious allusions to certain evil-disposed persons
by whom the regiment had thereby been not
"bearded," but, on the contrary, partially unbearded
—the result being, as Colonel EWART observed, a
dreadful " shave," and the secret author of that re-
sult being evidently " a most barbarous fellow"—
we refer the lovers of innocent fun and frolic to the
report given elsewhere of the gallant Colonel's
humorous harangue. From Colonel HENRY HAMIL-
TON'S speech which followed, we must (if only for
the fine feeling which dictated the modest words
now following) be allowed to make ono brief
but sufficient quotation. It is where Colonel
HAMILTON has remarked, " The 78th cannot but
feel that in the succession of entertainments and
manifestations which have been accorded to them
since their return to this country, a sort of undue
prominence appears to have been given them over
their comrades of other arms, and regiments who
served with them in the same operations, and who,

in common with them, endeavoured to do their
duty. The 78th are fully conscious that this is ow-
ing to the peculiar circumstances in which they have
been placed. A national regiment returning after
a lengthened period to Scotland, going first to tho
country whose name they bear—Ross-shire Buffs
—then coming tothe capital of Scotland, they have,
as it were, fallen into the arms of their friends

—(hear, and cheers)—and they are fully conscious
that the distinction with which they have been re-
ceived is to be attributed, not to any superior merit
of theirs, but to that warmth of feeling, that gene-
rosity of sentiment, that largeness of heart which
has over characterised the people of Scot'.
land in general, and the inhabitants of Edinburgh
in particular." And as if crowning all these evidences
of the chivalrous modesty of the 78th Highlanders,
the brave Sergeant-Major Pococx, who spoke as
we have before intimated on the part of the non-
commissioned officers and privates of the regiment,
exclaimed in words thrilling with manly sensibility
" We must not take all the credit to ourselves for
our successes in the field. To those who reared us
and instilled into our minds the principles of obedi-
ence, courage, and discipline—(cheers)—to the
women of Scotland be all the honour which is due
to a mother for the success of her son. (Loud and
continued cheering.) You have shown that you
approve of what we have done, and I hope if ever
the opportunity :should arise we shall have the
honour of showing, in the defence of our fatherland,
that your confidence has not been misplaced." The
reverberation of the tremendous cheering which
greeted the gallant Sergeant's mention of the name
of OUTRAM, will be carried, we trust, through the
echoes of the Press to the knowledge of that daunt-

lest geeeral—recognised no less heartily here in
Europe than far away in Asia, as the BAYARD of
our Indian Army !

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THE SUN.
LONDON, FRIDAY, APRIL 27, 1860.