The Sun.
London, England, 1869-05-24 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, MAY 24, 1869.

RY6TAL PALACE.---The GREAT DISPLAY
) of FIREWORKS and ILLUMINATION of tho
FOUNTAINS will take place at Nine o'clock precisely
THIS EVENING.
Reserved Stalls may be secured by telegram to the
Ticket-office, Central Entrance, Crystal Palace.

eiRYSTAL P ALAC E. —THIS DAY and EVEN-
IJ ING.—COMBINED FETE and GRAND DIS-
PLAYand magnificent ILLUMINA-
TIONooffFIOIRNtTWAIRIS,SITIIIS DAY (Monday), May 24.
Tho Dragon Troupe of Japanese, having met with such
marked success, will give a Special Evening Entertain-
ment, including all their principal feats. This troupe can
only appear in England up to Friday next, and this will
also be the only opportunity for witnessing their great
feats late in the afternoon.
The Palace will he opened as usual at ... 10. 0
The Orchestral Band, the Coldstream Guards
Band, and Organ, at intervals up to ~. ... 4. 0
Mr. E. T. Smith's Burlesque, " Blue Beard," at 4.30
The Groat Dragon Troupe of Japanese from
6.30 until 8. 0
Grand Fireworks and Illumination of Fountains 9. 0
Palace Brilliantly Illuminated for Promenade
until ... ... 10.30
The Fireworks will be on the most unusual scale of
splendour. Particular attention may be directed to the
newly-erected immense Fire Cascade—nearly 20,000
square feet of the most brilliant and dazzling golden fire,
falling from a height of 120 feet, surmounted by a brilliant
" chevaux de friss," in silver.
The Illumination of the Water Temples while in full
play will be found a feature of peculiar interest, present-
ing is favourable contrast to the architectural temples and
devices prepared with so much cost for the Italian Fetes
last year on the Marriage of Prince llunabert.
The Sister Magnesium Balloons, lighting up the Palace
and landscape in the most extraordinary manner.
The Golden Birch Tree, an entirely new device. Its
introduction for the first time on this occasion may be
looked for as introducing an entirely novel and pleasing
effect in pyrotecbny.
The- Spiral Star and Gold Piece, another novelty.
S.aucissone, gold and silver rain shells, mammoth parti-
coloured shells, with new colours, fiery comet from lofty
water tower, and grand illumination of fountains while
• playing to their fullest height, inte,mingled with batteries
• of Roman candles, and terminatiug with a bouquet of
2,000 rockets and shells, will present a spectacle of un-
usual magnificence, taxing to the utmost the successful
efforts of Messrs. Brock and Co., of Nunbead, the, Com-
pany's able pyrotechnist& These displays are always
more beautiful, as well as more enjoyable, when the
foliage and verdure are in their freshest condition ; -the
Park and Gardens were never in a more lovely state than
new.
Extra railway trains on all lines leading to the Palace;
but visitors should avail themselves of early trains. Spe-
cials from Kensington at 7 and 8, returning at 10 and
10.30 to Kensington, where specials to Moorgate, Euston,
(tc., will meet them. Ample trains for departure.
Admission by payment, ss. ; guinea seaeon tickets free.

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ASHLEY, now the Earl of SHAFTESBURY ! Nay,
all this is so flagrantly set forth, la apparently
sober seriousness, in Mr. JOSHUA FIELDEN'S astound-

ing letter, that that 'gentleman has actually the effron-
tery to say, towards the close of his preposterous
vituperations, " I cannot complain of Lord SHAFTES-
BURY for doing honour to the memory of RICHARD
OASTLER, but it should have been done in sackcloth and
ashes!" Now, the indecency of this attack upon Lord
SHAFTESBURY is only matched by its absurdity. To
deny him the honour of having been the first and for-
most among all:the promoters of the Ten Hours' Factory
Bill, would be about as nonsensical as it woald be to
deny to Mr. COBDEN the glory of having achieved
the triumph of Free Trade !As it would to gaio -
say WATT'S right to be regarded as the corfect er
of the Steam Engine ! As it would be to discredit
Old GEORGE STEPHENSON'S claim to be looked
upon as the fabricator of the Rocket
Locomotive ! Ask the factory population—Who was
the Victor in the fight for and ag dust the Ten
Hours' Factory Bill ? And nine hun lred and
ninety nine out of every thousand will tell you
—Lord ASHLEY, meaning Lord SHAFTESBURY !
Not RICHARD OAST LE:, 110 t JOHN Ft ELDEN
—strenously and nobly though they and others
laboured in the cause—but Lord ASHLEY, now (as he
has been for eighteen years past) the Earl of SHAFTES-
BURY. That is the popular conviction. And —as
uNrus said in the last century—" The people are
seldom wrong in their opinions—in their sentiments,
never !" The sentiment cherished throughout the
factory districts is certainly this, that to Lord
SHAFTESBURY more particularly than to any other
individual is attributable the triumph of the Ten
Hours' Factory Bill.

A witness as to what the sentiment war,
in that particular case, before the triumph
was accomplished, while the parliamentary battle was
still raging—a dispassionate and a perfectly credible
witness, it is really worth while, at this moment,
that we should adduce. We turn to one, therefore, who
speaks—not ex post facto,but —at the time, now three
and twenty years ago. A popular novelist of that
day, then writing in the early bloom of youth, and
speaking out of the earnestness of a gentle heart, in-
tensely sympathising with the over-worked factory
folk, but especially with the poor little children, wrote,
in 1816, thus—the words occur at p. 220, in volume
ii., of " Evelyn Stuart ; or, Alight versus Right," writ-
ten under the pseudonym of ADRIAN, a three
volume novel published by Mr. BENTLEY—
"Sir James Graham's New Factory Bill had now come to
the third reading ; but before it passed that stage, Lord
Ashley made another impressive appeal in favour of his Ten
Hours Bill. He was now certain of defeat, yet he spoke with
confulenee
years of difficulty and disappointment, yet he has always con-
of victory. It has often been his to toil on for man y
quered at llst, and kno ling this measure to b 3 realfy good and
beneficial, he felt sura of a like success, thxsgh perhaps at a
distant day."
And so on--not only at that particular portion of
the narrative, but throughout ii EVELYN SWAM',"
passim, in regard to Lord ASHLEY and the Ten Hours'
Factory Bill. The date of the novel, as legibly printed
at the foot of the title-page of the copy now lying at
our elbow, being-1846. And yet, now, in 18G9, three
and twenty years afterwards JOSHUA FIELDEN
has the effroutry to talk of Lord SuarrEss uRY clothing
himself in " sackcloth and ashes" when inaugurating
the ()AMER monument ! Sackcloth and ashes, for-
sooth ! Those symbols will henceforth be only associ-
ated in this matter of the Ted Mars' Factory Act
with the hitherto honoured name of FIELDEN.
While the Palm of. Victory will ba recognisel
as, more securely than ever, in the grasp of Lord
SHAFTESBURY—to whom (all these years after his
' most memorable success as a philanthropist) " GOD
bless you !" was called aloud ou the 15th inst., by so
many of the factory labourers, men and women, and
—sweetest of alt in his ears—by the tender voices of
the little factory children he, more undoubtedly than
any other individual whose name coul I be mentioned
hashad the great happiness of helping to emancipate.

IF we were to credit some of our contemporaries,
there is a sort of general conspiracy on the part of

our rulers to prevent the lower classes from going
to the dogs. It is urged that we have been tyranni-
cally interfering to prevent the drunkard from
getting drunk, and now we are displaying our
despotic tendencies by putting hindrances in the
way of the better ruining himself by gambling. All
this shews great cruelty ; the more so because
it is only the weak that we venture to treat in this
harsh manner. We dare not rescue the patrician
' from the devil. It is only the plebeian who has to
submit to that wrong. And yet we call this a free
country—a country in which the rich and the poor
are equal.
The latest grumble ' 44,;q ~,...4. ;-. 4.. L. e........ 1 ;..
the Daily Telegraph. Our contemporary, after turn-
ing out the encyclopaedia in order to give the
history of gambling, goes on to complain of the
recent police raids upon certain betting " specs."
These " specs" are really lotteries. Lotteries are
forbidden by law, and that law the new -Metropolitan
Chief of Police is determined to enforce. But, says
the Telegraph, why not interfere with TATTERSALL'S ?
The " Corner " is as much a beting-place as any
City or East-end public-house. The reply that the
law gives power in the one case but not in the other
does not satisfy the Telegraph. This reply means only
that the law is made by the rich for the benefit of
the rich, that benefit being, as we have said, tjie
right of the rich to ruin themselves. The Tele-
graph would have the law altered ; would have
it made the same for all. Apparently, our contem-
porary would level up, rather than level down—
would put the City clerk and the small tradesman in
the same desirable position as the Guardsman and
the peer plunger. In this land of liberty every
man ought to be at liberty to ruin himself in the
best and shortest way. There must be no unfair
obtstacles put on the steep incline down to the Lake
of Avernus.
We should scarcely be prepared to accept this
theory under any circumstances. If there is to be a
levelling movement of any kind, we would rather
see it in the opposite direction—would rather shut
up TATTERSALL'S and the Grand Stand than open an
unlimited number of " Deptford Specs." True, the
gambling which goes on there is not much worse than
that which takes place in the region of the Stock
Exchange; true, the fall of the Marquis of HASTINGS
will scarcely adorn a more disastrous tale than the
disclosures just made by that eminent person, Mr.
STEFANOS XENOS. But after all, the gamblers of
Capel Court and the parts adjacent do get pulled
up pretty often, do get punished pretty severely,
not only by the loss of their money, but by enforced
appearance before the LORD MAYcat and perchance
before the LORD CHIEF JUSTICE. Moreover, there is
an essential difference between such institutions as
TATTERSALL'S and the 46Deptford Spec." The first
is not a trading institution for the carrying on of
betting, as the second is. If gentlemen choose to
meet and say that they will pay each other ten
thousand pounds according as the nose of a certain
horse happens to be one inch before or behind the
nose of another, they are arrant fools, but no law can
protect them against their folly. If they do not
play the fool at TATTERSALL'S, they will do so in
their own houses. No braying in legislative
mortars will cure them. But the "specs" are funds
got up by interested persons as a source of profit.
They are lotteries in which, whosoever loses, the pro-
moters will win. The English Government has for
nearly a century refused to sanction such lotteries,
saving only in cases such as the Art Union, where
can be no harm to anyone in " raffling " for a work
of art, except in so far as it encourages the gambling
spirit. But lotteries for the sake of getting money,
whether by the subscriber or by the promoter, are
clearly demoralising, and cannot be permitted without
injury to the national character. The principle
of which the Daily Telegraph complains is extended
to other matters. There is no law to prevent women
from offering their bodies for hire; but tlitre is a

law to prevent anyone from profiting by this action '
on their part. There is no law against fornication :
but there is a law against brothels. The law does
not say to the man or the woman " Thou shalt not
commit this or that vice;" but it does say, " Thou
shalt not profit by the vice of another." The
reason is plain. The law cannot restrain
the action of the individual when it affects
merely himself ; it can and ought to restrain the
action of the people who promote vice in order to
gain by it. It is for this reason, and not because of
any distinction between rich and poor, that the law is
now being enforced against the promoters of " specs "
while TATTERSALL'S is unvisited. It is for this
' reason that the law is invoked in behalf of
the artisan, while it is not invoked in
behalf of the peer. It is for this reason that the
SNIITITS and the BROWNS are arrested in their down-
ward career, while the ll sT I S Eti and the
CI.INToNS are allowed to " plunge" headlong.
Perhaps. if the second were asked which of the two
has the more reason to be grateful to our legislators,
they would reply that it is certainly not they.

COLLIERY MANAGEMENT IN NOTTING-
HAMSHIRE.

After two days' protracted sitting, the inquest on the
four men killed by the inundation of the Molyneux coal-
pit, near Mansfield, Notts, on the 2nd of April, has con-
cluded. The proceedings throughout created thetlepest
interest, from the allegations madeltgOlnst the conductors
of the mine. Mr. ITAnnay (barrister, Midland Circuit),
represented the Countess of Carnarvon, the lessor, and Mr.
J. Boot, the surveyor of the pit ; Mr. Busby, Chesterfield,
appeared for Mr. Eastwood, of Derby, the proprietor; and
Mr. Cutts, Chesterfield, for the wives and orphans of the
deceased men. A great mass of evidence was taken. It
was shewn that the pit, into which the water from some
old and unused workings burst, had long been in an
unsafe condition. Besides being ill-ventilated, the
water used to come in upon the miners while at work,
and they were often completely drenched. Com-
plaints were made to Mellership, the under viewer,
but very little notice was taken of them, and
several of the men actually left in consequence. The
plan on which the mine was worked was also proved to
be wrong in several particulars. The old workings were
known to be near, but were improperly indicated, so that
the carrying on of the mine was rendered extremely dan-
gerous. The person who made the plan was Mr. John
Boot, and when examined he stated that he did not survey
the pit himself, but made it from an old plan in the office
of Mr. Twigg, agent to Lord Porchester. At the time of
the accident, three men who were in the pit with the
four who were drowned were kept waiting at the bottom
of the shaft nearly four hours before being rescued.
The reason was that no night engineman was employed—
a direct contravention of the rules. The coroner said a
worse case bad never come under his notice, and some
regret was expressed because there were legal doubts as to
the verdict of manslaughter against the managers of the
mine. The opinion of the coroner was that the managers
wanted to get coal, but how they got it they did not care,
even at the expense of their workmen's lives. The jury
returned a verdict of " Drowned by the inundation of
the mine," but the jurors considered it had not been
safely worked either by Mellership the under viewer, or
Eastwood, the proprietor, and that Mellership in parti-
cular was guilty of the most culpable negligence. Had
proper bore-holes been made for water, the deceased men
would not have met with their deaths. They also thought

that the responsibility for the incorrectness of the colliery
plan rested with Mr. Boot. The Government Inspector
said he should proceed against MeUership and Eastwood
for the fullest penalties.