The Sun.
London, England, 1869-06-28 00:00:00

auction was accompanied by a short article which
lacked nothing in flavour, however defective it
might be in point of taste ; and when Mr.
CADOGAN was elected, the accusations against
him were repeated in a letter to the editor, which
also left nothing to be vished on the score of
vigorous language. For the injury done him by the
publication of the mock pan►phlet, the article, and the
letter the member for Cricklade has been awarded
£2O. The sum does indeed appear inadequate;
but a short resunze of the facts will serve to shew
why the jury did not allow more, and why many
juries would have hesitated before pronouncing for
so much. In the first place, Mr. CADOGAN was
represented by the election address to have employed
his position as deputy-chairman of the Submarine
Telegraph Company—an office which he filled from
1852 to 1857—in illicitly ascertaining the contents
of messages, and using the information they
furnished as a guide in Stock Exchange
speculations. The facts which the plaintiff
was bound to admit were, to say the least, an
unfortunate series of coincidences. It was proved
that Mr. CADOGAN did speculate to a considerable
extent whilst a director of the telegraph company.
It was likewise not contested that the member for
Cricklade was during this period constantly engaged
in the instrument-room of the telegraph offices. It
is not usual for directors to spend much of their
time with a company's clerks, but this excessive
zeal is explained by the theory that Mr.
CADOGAN was perfectly acquainted with the
art of telegraphy, and was able to translate
foreign messages. The clerks, however, soon
became proficient, and a knowledge of lan-
guages is not now-a-days usually confined to
directors. But still Mr. CA-)OGAN deemed his
presence indispensable to the conduct of business
at the Cornhill offices ; and, moreover, he adopted
another system of procedure which scarcely admits
of even this explanation. He gave orders that pri-
vate messages containing certain information should
be sent to him at his club. It is difficult to
see why telegrams, which ought to be as sacred as
letters, should have been submitted to Mr.CADOGAN'S
inspection before proceeding to its destination ; still
less is it clear why one important message was
published before it was received in the quarter to
which it was addressed. Yet the plaintiff could not
disprove that these things were done, nor is there
any doubt that during the exercise of this espionage
Mr. CADOGAN was largely buying and selling stocks.
In 1857 Mr. CADOGAN prosecuted a 111 r. EvaNs
and a Captain THORNE on a charge of attempting to
extort money from him as the price of suppressing
a letter sent to the 7 Mies. The two culprits were
sent to prison for twelve months ; but the letter in
question referred to Mr. CADOGAN'S position in the
Telegraph Company, and the trial created such a
scandal that he resigned. Whether EVANS and
THORNE were unjustly convicted is a painful ques-
tion into which we need not enter. The facts we have
given, respecting which there is no dispute whatever,
may suffice to indicate whether Mr. CADOGAN'S conduct
whilst deputy-chairman of the Submarine Company
is wholly free from blame. The mock election
address contained another charge. It was to the
effect that in 1802, whilst Mr. CADOGAN held an

important office under the Commissioners of the
International Exhibition, he procured a refreshment
contract for a Frenchman named VEILLARD, re-
ceiving a " consideration" in return. Here the
North Wilts Herald fell into error, for it was
shewn that the plaintiff held no office, and Earl
GRANVILLE testified that Mr. CADOGAN exerted no
personal influence with him. M. VEILLARD, how-
ever, got the contract, and Mr. CADOGAN got a
certain sum of money. But admitting that this portion
of the election address was a libel without justification,
the whole verdict is not intelligible to us, and Mr.
Justice HANNEN chewed pretty clearly that it was
not intelligible to him. For the jury found for the
plaintiff on both the charges—the telegraph manipu-
lation, as well as the refreshment contract.
Twenty pounds would have been no great sum as
damages for the paragraph about the VEILLARD affair
if the jury felt satisfied that it was libellous ;
but, by making their verdict apply to both
cases, they absolve Mr. CADOGAN from blame in the
one equally with the other. The public will be
able to form its own judgment from the facts. There
can be but one conclusion from such a story. The
language used by the North Wilts herald
was certainly not too mild, and the prac-
tice of concocting squibs in the shape of
false election addresses is one which cannot be
applauded. But this does not alter the facts as they
apply to Mr. CADOGAN. The question of whether
he ought to represent Cricklade after this exposure
admits of a very easy answer.

LITERATURE.

The Minister's Wife. By Airs. Oliphant. Three

Vols. Hurst and Blackett.

Another three-volumed novel from the author of
the famous " Chronicles of Carliugford" is, in
truth, at all times, a most welcome announcement.
It is as welcome, nowadays, to the lovers of fiction
as it used to be in the early part of the century,
when a new work was announced by the author of
the " Chronicles of the Canongate." Far more
welcome than it used to bo more recently when the
same tidings were made public in regard to the
author of the " Chronicles of Clovernook." Standing
upon a lower grade than that Master Novelist and
Prince of Romaucists, the great Sir Walter—Mrs.
Oliphant is not only, as a novelist and as a romancist,
but still more as a delineator of character, to our
thinking at least, raised as upon a dais far above the
level of Douglas Jerrold. Tozer the Butterman takes
his place by right among the humorous creations
peopling like actually human beings the wonder-
ful world of English light literature. " Salem
Chapel," the title of the particular story in which
that same Tozer was happily made known to us,
still remains, in our estimation of Mrs. Oliphant's
now voluminous works, her unquestionable master-
piece. Other popular, and many of them really
admirable, fictions she has written—some of the
very best of these, moreover, as additions
to that same series of the " Chronicles of
Carlingford." But not one of them yet, to our
mind, can be regarded as in any way comparable to
" Salem Chapel," with its Deacon Tozer, the But-
terman. Works as various as " Zaidee," and the
" Brownlows," and the " Athelings," and " Miss
Majoribanks," and " John Rintoul," and " Katie
Stewart," and a long radiant catalogue of others,
needless here to be accurately enumerated, have
rendered the name of this rarely gifted novelist wel-
come iu our ears and pleasant to our eyes, whenever
it has greeted us afresh upon any title-page. It is
rather in her character as the biographer of " The
Rev. Edward Irving," that she appears before us
here as the writer of these three volumes, entitled
" The Minister's Wife." It is rather as the cele-
brant of the phenomenon of the Unknown Tongues,
than as the novelist, pure and simple, that Mrs. Oli-
phant tells this tale about Loch Diarmid. The
picture she has here drawn—we must say at once
—is not in her old radiant colouring. It is rather
like a drafting in sepia upon toned paper. Besides
which, some of the characters are half crazed by re-
ligious fanaticism—conspicuous among these being
Ailie Campbell and her husband (eventually), Mr.
John, otherwise John Diarmid of Ardnamore. All
that relates to those two is repugnant to 113. We
are sick to death of it long before the story has
been half related. We are tempted to skip all the
duller portions relating to those tedious lunatics
and their eerie revivalism. The ir.terest of the plot,
iu truth, lies almost entirely in all that refers to the
twin sisters of the Glebe, the orphan daugh-
ters of the late Captain Duncan—Margaret,
the saintly elder of the two by a few minutes, and
Isabel, the reel heroine of the tale. Volume one
closes with the death of Margaret. Volume two
ends with the murder of Isabel's first husband. For
she marries twice, and, liorrible to relate, takes
(unwittingly) as her second husband the murderer
of her first—Mr. Lothian, the clergyman of the
Manse being the first husband, and the second one,
who is, as we have said, his ruthless and most des-
picable murderer, being a young Englishman,