The Sun.
London, England, 1869-01-02 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC jOITRNALS.

The Saturday Review is not disposed to join in the
sanguine anticipations of the future which most
people indulge in at this season. Perhaps there
is more cause for being sanguine now than we
could find usually at the beginning of a year.
But the long experience of English history, and the sad-
ness in contemplating human life which Christianity has
taught to the modern world, forbid us to find much
pleasure at the beginning of any new period in cheering
ourselves and making merry and shouting out what a fine,
prosperous, noble people we are. There are times for such
things, as, for example, when Yankees or Frenchmen
seem not to understand our superiority to them ; but the
beginning of a new year is not one of them. And if there
are no imminent dangers now pressing on England, there
are dangers of a somewhat remote kind which must fill us
with anxiety when we think of them. Patience and fore-
sight and good humour will, we trust, carry us safely
through them ; but at least we may be sure that they will
afford us ample room for exercising these qualities to as
full a degree as we are capable of exercising them. Many
special causes of apprehension might probably be found
to exist at present if we went below the surface of
English politics, but it will be enough to men-
tion two or three of the most strikin4 There are, for
example, the present position of the House of Lords
and the present position of Prussia in Europe. If we
begin to reflect on any one of these subjects, we soon find
that it is full of thorny and complicated questions, and
that it is only by resolutely showing patience, foresight,
and good humour that England can hope to arrive at a
proper solution of them. What are we to do with our
good poor, with our half-good poor, with our bad poor,
with our criminal poor ? These are not questions of a
remote and speculative interest, Londoners find that they
are crushed by rates, the burden of which increases every
month, and the payment of which only seems to intensify
the misery it is destined to relieve, and they walk about in
a city where life and property are not much safer than in
Mexico or Bologna. How is it possible for anyone, except-
ing for the sort of people who believe, on the faith of
burlesques and Christmas extra-numbers, that they are
bound to be jolly at this season, to exalt much or whoop
over the new year, when we know that starvation is going
on all around us, and that if we try to diminish the evil
by giving money we only aggravate it, and that almost the
only people who can walk about London with perfect com-
fort and impunity are the fortunate beings who have been
twice convicted of a felonious offence?
The Spectator thinks that in Sir Richard Mayne the
State has lost a servant of very unusual merit, and that
the mistake of holding office a little too long must not
blind us to the fact that forty years ago he organised the
London police on a system which for more than a gene-
ration has worked well, and that for the whole period he
has maintained external order among a population greater
than that of many sovereign States with a force of only 7,000
men, and at an expenditure of only half a million a year.
Latterly, no doubt, owing to the disuse of transportation
and to the unexampled spread of London, and, to a certain
extent, failure of reverence for law as distinguished from
force, Sir Richard Mayne's task grew too heavy for him ;
the tendency to militarism, which is the first sign of an
overtaxed Government, grjw stronger within the police,
and the old security of London, which impressed foreigners
as an inexplicable wonder, became seriously diminished.
The task of selecting his successor is all the
harder because the public wants something new
very vehemently, and does not quite know what.
We trust that whoever may be selected, the opportunity
will be taken to make a thorough overhaul of the condi-
tion of the force and a careful inquiry into its needful
strength. The public insists a little too strongly upon the
first only of these recommendations. No doubt, with
more care and higher pay, and a few better posts as prizes,
we may get a better class of policemen—more especially if
we give up regulations about size, under which Tom
Sayers would have been rejected for want of physique— but
after all, there is one defect which no amount of efficiency
will remove, and that is the want of sufficient men. Vidocq
cannot be in two places at once, any more than the
merest country lout, nor will any extent of energy enable
John Smith to patrol the street and the mews at one and
the same time. The best six detectives in the service
could not really watch a square mile of London
all night ; and that, as " Custos " has explained in a
pamphlet intended apparently to make the police a reserve
army, is the highest number that can be allotted to the
duty, a number only attained by overworking the men,
and neglecting watchfulness during the daylight and dusk.
More men, we know perfectly well, can only be secured
by more money ; but inquiry may reveal new modes of
economy ; or if not, Londoners must either pay more, or
affirm deliberately that they prefer the partial insecurity
now felt in almost all the great cities which, under the
name of suburbs, are now left pretty much to take care of
themselves. We may murmur as much as we like, but it
is in the incidence of our London taxation, and not in its
total weight, that we must seek relief. Deduct the poor
rate, which is peculiar to England, and there is scarcely a
capital city in the world, unless it be Calcutta, which is
governed anything like so cheaply as this vast metropolis.
The London Review makes some remarks upon the state
of affairs at the Foreign Office, and the apparent dissimi-
larity of the views entertained by the Premier and the
former under-secretary in that department. Some perplexity
exists as to the policy about to be pursued, and it is said that
anyone accustomed to the House of Commons must often
have been tickled by the absurdity of Mr. Gladstone's
position since Lord Pahnerston's death in reference to that
of Mr. Layard. In the latter was recognised a politician
of no mark or character, but he was also recognised as the
sole remaining depository of the preposterous pro-Turkish
traditions of our Foreign Office. Mr. Gladstone sat and
listened to Mr. Layard with a sort of half-smile on his face,
and led everyone to think that all this nonsense would be
banished to the moles and the bats if he came into power.
He has come into power, and Mr. Layard has come into
place.
He has not come into the Foreign Office, and this
impressed many people with the conviction that Mr,

Gladstone was about to give play to his own ideas. But
this is now very doubtful. Mr. Layard was the only
member of the' Government who spoke about foreign
affairs on the hustings. When he had bemoaned his
exclusion from the Cabinet he proceeded to lament the pro-
Christian tone of Lord Stanley's speech at Lynn, but he
denied he was the friend of the Porte, and declared he was
for non-intervention in the East, so long as no other Power
intervened. Is Mr. Gladstone then, with Mr. Bright and
the Duke of Argyll by his side, about to adopt a less satis-
factory Eastern policy than even Mr. Layard would
prompt ? Have we really lost by Mr. Layard's not being
at the Foreign Office ? We do not suppose so, because
Mr. Layard is as much of a Jesuit as a hot-headed man
can be, and even when advocating non-intervention does
so in support of a most mischievous organisation of inter-
ference. But we ask these questions because, whatever
Mr Layard's practice may have been, and whatever Mr.
Hammond's routine may be (which is more to the pur-
pose), the course which our Government is alleged to
have chosen is wrong, judged even by the standard which
Mr. Layard set up in the railway arch at Southwark.
England is seemingly about to intervene with the rest of
the Great Powers ; and she does so at a moment when no
one Government has provoked intervention by chewing
the smallest intention of meddling.

The John hull criticises the new Cabinet Minister, and
seeks to shew that the right hon. gentleman is more zealous
than wise in his Utopian theories concerning the working
man. Mr. Bright, it is said, is the hero of the hour, and
therefore it is allowable to put him on the right
track when he wanders in a wrong direction.
Now that Mr. Bright is Right Honourable, and his educa-
tion has been taken in hand, not only by peers, but by the
Royal Family, it may be as well to point out the fallacy
of that recent declaration, that if the tea, sugar, and
other duties were removed, the workman would be
materially benefited, while his wages would remain
undiminished. He may as well say if raw cotton
became cheaper, the manufacturer would be a
gainer, and calico retain its price. Mr. Bright
above all men, professes to be a political economist, and,
we believe, once recommended that Adam Smith should
be learnt by heart, as some clergymen know the Bible.
But workmen cannot be so stupid as Mr. Bright sup-
poses. If common sense does not belie Mr. Bright,
all political economists do. Nothing is more clear
than that, other things being equal, the price of
labour is regulated by the price of food ; and it makes
no difference whether food is cheapened by the removal of
duties or by any other cause. If bread were a sovereign
the four-pound loaf, no labourer would work for a sove-
reign a week ; and similarly, if it were no more than
twopence, cheaper means of living, reacting on compe-
tion, would lower the rates for labour in that ratio.
The same remark applies to every commodity which
the workman thinks it necessary to consume. Mr.
Bright pretends that a tax on consumable commodities is
a tax on labour. Labour only pays the tax by deputy, as a farmer does who pays tithes. If there were no tithes, I
his rent would be higher, and the landlord the gainer. It
there were no taxes on consumable commodities, wanes
would be lower, and the community the gainer.
The workman, by the removal of tea and sugar
taxes, could only gain indirectly, and to a small
degree,
like any other member of the community. An illustra-
tration of what we mean is afforded I,y the position of
labour in the Channel Islands, where Mr. Bright's
terrestrial paradise of untaxed commodities is realised.
Except an inappreciable tax on spirits, neither
customs nor excise exist. What is the result to
the workman ? His wages are lower there than in
any part of the United Kingdom. That commodities are
untaxed is the reason alleged for paying less wages than
elsewhere. Mr. Bright has a smooth tongue for the
working man, and may be often sincere ; but in this case
we think his sincerity questionable. As a student of
political economy, he must have known that a reduction
in the price of the workman's food will, in its general
effect, reduce the price of his labour in the. same degree.
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