The Sun.
London, England, 1869-09-27 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

The Times after examining the statistics of the cotton
trade asks what is the meaning of Lancashire distress ? If
notwithstanding the high price of cotton, Lancashire it
actually spinning as much stuff as formerly, how can the
trade be bad ? The French Treaty, on which all eyes now
seem to ba fastened, and almost uniformly with dissatis
faction, cannot be answerable for t)re mischief. Silk-
weavers and lath-renders and cigar-makers may, as Mr
Odger tells us, be getting rather hard measure under the
effects of the Convention ; but cotton-spinners, at any
rate should be little the worse. What is the explanation
of the story ? If as much cotton was spun last year in
Lancashire as was spun ten years ago, and if, neverthe-
less, 1859 was a year of full work while 1861
is a year of stagnation, it seems reasonable tr
surmise that more mills must have been erected and mor
hands taken into the Trade, so that the quantity of mate
rial which sufficed for the consumption of Lancashire; ten
years since is altogether insufficient now. But has that
actually occurred during this interval of complete pros
tration and incomplete revival of the Trade ? Has there
been over-production, or is the rate of production which is
required to keep our mills going in excess of any con-
sumption to be reasonably expected? We put these
suggestions in the form of questions, because we really
feel quite unable to arrive at any positive conclu-
sion from the statistics recited. What seems to us
a possible explanation of the case we have already
stated. If cotton is dear notwithstanding its in-
creased production because now cotton-spinning
countries are bidding against us and each other for the raw
material, then the quotations of the Liverpool markets
become intelligible. If the people who thus spin cotton
not only carry off the raw material from our mills, but
curtail in proportion their demands for manufactures, then
the condition of the trade is intelligible also. But on these
suppositions it is usless to cry for more cotton or cheaper
cotton, seeing that the evil arises not so much from loss of
material as loss of monopoly and loss of markets, and that
cheap cotton for us would only be cheap cotton for our
rivals too.

The Daily News declares that a correspondence has just
taken place which illustrates very pleasingly the amenities
of literature and the graces of Christian charity. On the
day which followed the announcement of the late Bishop
of Exeter's death, Sir George Bowyer contributed a personal
reminiscence of that prelate to the Times. To this letter
responded the Rev. W. J. Phillpotts. "Sir," writes Arch•
deacon Phillpotts, "Sir George Bowyer has waited till my
father was dead and could not contradict him to say what
I and all who knew the Bishop of Exeter's opinions or.
the Irish Church must hold to be absolutely untrue regard-
ing him." The answer is contained in a single sentence;
the meaning it is intended to convey might be ex-
pressed in a single monosyllable. Sir George Bowyer
says that Bishop Phillpotts was a prophet ;
Archdeacon Phillpotts rejoins, in effect, that Sir George
Bowyer is a liar. His answer proceeds on the assumption
that a man cannot foresee anything of which ho does no•
approve. As to Sir George Bowyer waiting until the
Bishop of Exeter was dead, it is not customary to publish
biographic anecdotes of the living. Sir George Bowyer, io
his final letter, lifts the controversy above the pothouse
level to which the Archdeacon had degraded it ; and while
temperately repeating his statement, does so with a cour-
tesy to which his opponent cannot, we should think, be
insensible. Archdeacon Phillpotts testifies with authority
as to his father's opinions ; and he need not quarrel with
Sir George Bowyer's witness to his keen political foresight
in matters in which the wish certainly did not suggest the
thought.

The Standard thinks that the Marquis of Hartington has
done a public service by the speeches he delivered at Lis-
more on Friday evening. They will dispel a dangerous
delusion, and greatly allay, if not entirely remove, a very
mischievous apptehen.sion. Lord Hartington has dashed
to the ground the cup from which Irish and English
socialists were taking such pleasant draughts. He declares
that the Cabinet has not yet had an, opportunity of con-
sidering what shall be its policy upon this question. Since
Parliament separated the Cabinet has not met, and what-
ever projects Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright may have
conceived, the Government has adopted none, and its
members will assemble, when the season of cabinet
councils comes, to discuss this Irish question, which
admittedly is to be among the first to engage their atten-
tion, no further pledged or committed to any particular
solution than they were in the summer. The danger was
that Mr. Bright and Mr. Gladstone had resolved upon a
scheme of confiscation, and that the Cabinet when it did
meet would tamely accept it. That danger is removed by
Lord Hartington's emphatic assertion that the Government
"will never consent to any inroads being made upon the
rights of property legally acquired and legitimately used."
Nothing, of course, is more natural than that Lord Har-
tington, the son of a great Irish proprietor, should enter-
tain such a view for himself, and we dare say that he will
be denounced as actuated only by selfish motives. If Lord
Hartington will hold firmly, as we believe he will, to the.
views he expressed at Lizmore, he will save the Irish
tenants from a severe disappointment and his colleagues
and his party from a great disaster,
The Herald refers to the late Lord Justice Clerk, and
says that the sudden removal of such a man in such a
manner is well fitted to excite the deepest sorrow in the
minds of all who had the honour of his acquaintance, or
who had marked the stages of his professional career. In
a measure which few Scottish advocates can compass, he
knew how to win the favour of juries, without for ono
instant forgetting what was due to himself or to the
courts in which he practised, and when addressing the
bench on points arising under a cumbrous and uncouth
system of jurisprudence, no ono knew better than he
how to shape the requirements of modern society in
the way best fitted to compel the adaptation of
rules normally rigid beyond a Southern's belief to
the altered circumstances of our own time. His skill and
ability secured him a great practice, and ultimately made
him successively Solicitor-General, Lord Advocate, and
Chief Justice Clerk. On his elevation to the bench, in
accordance with Scottish custom, he took title as a Scot-
tish peer. Had he followed his own bent he would have
been called Lord Cairnies, from the name of his estate ;
but dreading possible confusion from the similarity of that
name to that of another eminent Conservative lawyer, he
chose that of Glenalmond, which he bore when he came to
his untimely end. Since the death of Lord EllenborougL
no British judge has met with a fate so tragic, but never
has any gone down to his grave more highly esteemed or
more deeply mourned than the late Lord Justice Clerk of
Scotland.

The Star observes that Lord Glenalmond, which was the
titular style adopted by Mr. Patton on his elevation to the
bench, was, according to the testimony of those best
acquainted with him, a man of highly nervous and sensi-
tive temperament ; and the prospect of his examination on
the subject of a notoriously profuse expenditure might
well have completed the disorder of a mind which had
been already overwrought by family affliction and the pre-
mature announcement of his own death. The ordeal of an
election inquiry is trying enough to a private individual,
but in the case of a minister of justice in tho position of the
deceased it must have been doubly distressing. There is no
need for reticence in this matter, because, in imputing
to his lordship a morbid sensitiveness arising from the false
position in which he found himself placed, we really pay
a tribute to the delicacy of character which contrasts
sharply with the vulgar indifference to personal honour so
noticeable in a far coarser and lower type of politicians.
Even those who have been hitherto unmoved by the gross
revelations which have been made during the last few
weeks will now surely be induced to open their eyes to the
rottenness of our electeral system. The ghastly suicide oib
a high-minded judge is an occurrence which all parties
must deplore; but all parties, too, should learn a salu-
tary lesson from it, and make up their minds to
revolutionise the system which has so dangerously lowered
the standard of public and of individual morality. Ele-
vated to the bench by an unexpected piece of good fortune,
Mr. Patton, although he exhibited no brilliant qualities as
a judge, yet gained the respect and confidence of the bar;
and now that the grave has so sadly closed over him, few
will be disposed to think harshly of his memory, or to
regard his fatal weakness with any other feeling than that
of compassion.

The Telegraph says that though England has given up
her leadership in Arctic research there are plenty of foreign
labourers in the field. Mr. Gustave Lambert's French
expedition hangs fire for want of funds; but there was
a satisfactory report of progress the other day from
the 6,7lnans off the Greenland coast. The account
given, inde,7l•
was remarkable -chiefly for the sin-
gular naiveté
' N,f4,h which it described the ordinary
sights; and sounds of the North, as seen and heard
by an intelligent observer for the first time ; and we
imagine that the learned Teuton's bulletin would be read
with considerable amusement by tough old whalers at
Stornaway or Peterhead. It is not, however, for English-
men generally to join in the good-humoured mirth. The
Germans, at any rate, are doing something, or trying to do
it. It is only the countrymen of Davis and Hudson, of
Parry and Franklin, who hang back ; whilst the Germans.
at whose "fleet" and whose " professors " it was once sO
fashionable to sneer, have, at any rate, vessels within the
Arctic circle carrying out the plan of a Gotha
geographer. Congratulating Captain Carlson, and
wishing success to Captain ilieck, we have only
to add that this latest evidence testifies to a singu.
larly clear and open season in the Arctic reds; and that if
the Germans also will but bestir themselves, they may
easily got ahead of " England's farthest," if not to the
North Pole itself. The exploit would be humiliating
indeed to our national pride; but, after all, there is no
use in maintaining a sham by false pretences ; and it is
simply foolish and arrogant for Great Britain to call her-
self the chief maritime nation when she recoils from an-
honourable and fruitful enterprise on the very eve
accomplishment, simply because she shirks a little clof itser
and faudggaii Low_thouand pounds.