The Sun.
London, England, 1856-02-19 00:00:00

JOZE...kII'S COPAHINE, or SACCHARATED
CAPSULES, approved of by the french College of Physicians,
asuccneoswsfulelld y
administered in the Paris and London Hospitals, and
ck
them to be the best remedy for a certain disorder.
(see" Lancet" of Nov. 6, 1852.) A copy will be forwarded on appli-
cat'on.—Price per 100, 4a. 6tl, ; 50, 2s. 9d. To be had of the inventor,
GABRIILL JOZEAU, French chentist,;49, HA,ymarltet, London, and
all the principal chemists.

The importance of.regular and rapid communication be-
tween our Australian colonies and the mother country is
every day becoming more apparent ; and if anything were
required-to demonstrate it, the late commercial crisis
would suffice, when it may be said that the whole mer-
cantile interest looked with breathless anxiety for the ar-
rival of even a single ship laden with the precious metal
which was to relieve, were it ever so little, the pressure
on the money market. 'While we at home were, perhaps,
anxiously waiting the arrival of the costly freight, it was,
through our own mismanagement, tossing for so many
weeks upon the ocean that the mere interest of the hun-
dreds of thousands of ounces of gold thus for the time sunk
would have more than covered the price of a steamer to
convey it. In the same way, for the want of a speedy in-
terchange of letters, the Australian markets have been al-
ternately starved and surfeited, so that at one tim 3 an ar-
ticle has been sold at more than ten times its value, while
a few months later there has been such a glut of imports
that traders were only too happy to dispose of the very same
article at lislf its value--at less than the cost price in Eng-
land. We thus ourselves suffer very considerably; the
colonies are still greater sufferers; and oar mutual inju, les
act and react upon each other. It will be remembered
that the General Screw Steam Navigation Company cern-
tracted to carry a mail by the Cape of Good Ilope, and the
Peninsular and Oriental Company by Si, gapore, in every
month alternately. The former company has abandoned
the contract ; the latter has been temporarily released
from it ; and the mails are now carried by sailing ships-
the fast sailing clippers, which may possibly be the best
means of conveyance for passengers and ordinary goods,
hut which certainly do not afford so rapid a transmission
of letters and general intelligence as the Australian colonic s
in these days of steam have a right to expect. They have,
in fact, been rather hardly treated in this matter, large
subsidies being given to the companies that carry the Ame-
rican, West Indian, and East Indian mails, while a mere
pittance in comparison is offered for the conveyance of the
Australian letter-hags. Our Post-Office gives 210,000 e for
the-ceildeyanee of mails to the 'West Indies, and 30 0001.
more for their further conveyeneo to Brazil. Nearly
100,009/. is given to the American line of steamers.
The mail to India has a subsidy of more than
210,0001., of which the East India Company
pays only about one-fifth. And what is given for
the conveyance of the Australian mails ? The sum is
not to be found in the estimates of the packet service,
where it might be brought into comparison with those im-
mense rewards ; but in those of the Post-office, where it
looks very respectab!e as 14,0001. Why, we give more
than that for the conveyance of the mails across the Chan-
nel. That sum is little more than three times what wo
give for the carriage of letters between Southampton and
the Channel Islands, where the communication on other
grounds must necessarily be very frequent, and the mails
can be carried at a very trifling cost.
The inconvenience has been so great, the loss has been so
enormous, that the Australian colonies are willing at
length to go to any definite expense rather than undergo
the hardships of slow and the risks of uncertain communi-
cation. Victoria alone is willing to pay 50,00 e/. as its
share of the burden. Almost all the colonies, indeed,
have separately offered rewards for the establishment of a
line of steamers under certain conditions ; but, from not
acting in concert, the stipulations of one are at utter
variance with those of another. The Legislative Council
of New South Wales offers a reward for steam commu-
nication by the Indian route, through Torres Straits,
the distance from Sydney to England and back be-
ing performed in 120 days. South Australia will be
content if the diStance to England be accomplished in
70 days, but then it demands a lino by way of the
Cape. 'Western Australia, on the 'other hand, is the most
inconsistent of all—is quite willing that the mails should
go by Torres Straits, that is round the north-eastern cor-
ner of the continent to Sydney, but on condition that they
first touch at Fremantle, at the very opposite corner,
alrcoet on the line of the Cape steamers. Then Victoria
lines a scheme of its own, by which it is proposed that the
mails may go either by the Cape or by the Red Sea—it
don't much matter; only in any case they must go round
the south-west corner, that is by King George's Sound, co
as to reach Melbourne in not less than 55 days from the
date of leaving London. The contradictory character f
these stipulations is evident, but we believe that, even if
the matter rested entirely with the colonies, they are too
much in earliest to lot local rivalries interfere with the
general good. They have shown this desire so strongly,
and have appealed to the home Government in so liberal a
spirit, that, although the contract cannot ultimately he
decided until we heer definitely from all the colonial Go-
vernments, the Lords of the Treasury have come forward
with a scheme which they propose for the acceptance of
Australian Legislatures, and in which they have so much
confidence that they do not hesitate at once to invite ten-
ders, iu order that the contracts may be completed and
the servico commenced at the earliest possible period.
With regard to a route they make no selection. They
have wisely left that to the contractors. Let it be by
Panama, by the Cape, or by the Red Sea, —the contrac-
tors are most likely to fix upon the most expeditious, con-
venient and profitable highway. The Treasury, by its
recent minute, however, has decided that the points at
which the steamers of the main lino shall touch shall be
restricted to three—namely, King George's Sound, Mel-
bourne, and Sydney, and that branch lines shall bo estab-
lished at the general expense for the other colonies—for
South Australia, for Van Diemen's Land, for New Zealand.
With regard to expense, the Governor of New South
Wales has calculated that the maximum, cost of the service
would be 10),(,00/.,_ or about half what we five -to
,the_
,Amerriemfe'steartiersi ' Tffe'relirrilllfar an'a 'Orme-tar dem -
pany has, in fact, already offered to convey the mails in
connection with their Indian boats for a sum of 84,11001. :
and, subtracting from this sum 21,000/., or two-thirds of
the postal revenue, the portion of it 'applicable to the sea
service, the surplus required to meet the expense would be
00,0001. But whatever be the amount required for the
contract, the home Government proposes that the colonies
shall divide with us the lose, and shall share with us the
profit. This will he effected by rendering the pre-payment
of all letters compulsory ; the colonies will retain their
own postal receipts, anti wo ours, it being presumed that
the number of letters to and fro is about equal. The num-
ber of letters which each colony receives will also afford
a pretty fair test of the proportion of the expense which
each ought to bear. The arrangement is very simple ; the
need is very urgent; the colonies are very willing;
the contract ought to be made very soon ; and it is to be
hoped that after all our delays and disappointments the
service will at last be very effective.

(Front the Times of this day.)

Thorn aro two parties very much aggrieved by the pre-
sent condition of Church rates. Their grievances, however,
are by no means the same. The clergy and churchwardens,
backed by the more zealous members of the Church, have
an ancient customary right to levy rates for the repair of
the church and for the maintenance of divine service; but
while flattered with the pretence of this right, they can
only enforce it with the assistance of a majority in the
vestry. It frequently happens, therefore, that they cannot
enforce the light, and have not done so for many years—
in some parishes never at all in the memory of man.
Having, however, a legal maintenance, they find it all the
harder to collect voluntary subscriptions, or to put the
church on the same footing as religious and charitable in-
stitutions of a minor character. They find it difficult to get
either the one or the other, and between the two stools of
law and goodwill the church often falls to the ground.
This grievance rankles in the mind of many a clergyman
and many an earnest Churchman. They do not like to sur-
render the rights of the church, and give up the bat-
tle for Church rates so long as the shadow of a right
remains. Hence the most venerable and august institution
in the country, the very edifices of which are many of
them as old as the Conqueror, and far older than Perlis-
went, subsists in many places in a state of proud poverty,
or a medium between despotic pretensions and actual
squalor. Such is the hardship of the Church. That of
Dissenters is also considerable. They are liable to be
called on to pay to an institution which they think little
better than the Popery that Churchmen, in common with
themselves, have long ago renounced, and to support a
rival at the demand of a tyrant majority. Notwithstand-
ing all that the bolder class of Church advocates choose to
say about rates being an obligation, not on parishioners,
but on houses and lands, they certainly are felt to be a
burden on the conscience and an insult to independence.
Nor are these the only classes aggrieved. They who pay
rates for the support of a church two or three miles off,
they who have built churches for themselves without the
power of levying rates, they who find nearly the whole
area of the church monopolised by large pews, and they
who have the pleasure of hearing the sermons preached
and the service conducted in a manner which grates against
all their wannest feelings and profoundest convictions, do
not like to pay a tribute which, besides its cost, is the
symbol of an abject subjection.
Wtvil
ahhceetnuwa thl
ihoyil ser
aoigfs e
the
thohene k
tish.
ega
(ti eo mo ,f subjects
ot hotifhn
that
tsh,
raienandornawltychsae ntql
auraeo
suctigi
wouatr
on
of time how long they will be collected in any given parish,
it is a wonder that no decent plan has been hit upon for
putting an end to a scandal and a nuisance. The only re-
sult, besides the civil war itself, with such superciliousness
on the one side and rudeness on the other, has been a series
of bids on both sides. Now it is the advocates of the Lis-
seating interest, now the friends of the Church, that corns
forward with a plan for putting the Church out of its
pain by determining the question one way or another.
Nothing shows so ill for the sense and temper of the Church
as that it has not ere this settled upon some scheme for
the satisfaction of all reasonable people. The Church of
England at this moment does not possess any extraordinary
amount of eloquence ; it hardly professes to be learned ;
it eschews philosophy, and lays little claim to those
austere virtues which won the reverence of a simpler
age. It ought, at least, to exhibit some of that
practical good sense with which most men supply
the want of genius, poetry, and romance. In no matter
has it so great a call and so good an opportunity to exhi-
bit this one redeeming grace as in devising some plan for
settling a wretched pecuniary squabble. So long as it
simply looks on the breach widens, parish after parish
falls a victim to the epidemic resistance, the rates, once
refused, are never more granted, and there is an end of
the question as far as that parish is concerned. Mean-
while,
every session is producing schemes from other
quarters, all coming with the immense recommendation
that, at all events, they settle the question. Many a man
has acquiesced in a very strong remedy because ho could
not stand the worry, and fret, and discussion about a mild
one. In like manner even quiet Church people will soon
consent to the amputation of Church rates altogether in
order to save the perpetual blistering, plaistering, lancing,
probing, cutting, and hacking, that goes on at present.
Indeed every year that the Church declines to come for-
ward with a remedy we are drifting nearer to the most
summary possible treatment of the disorder.
The bill just introduced by Sir William Clay, Mr. Hutt,
and Mr. Miall to abolish Church rates, and to make other
provision in lieu thereof, will probably not be very accept-
able to those Church people who have stood out for the
Church's common law right to a maintenance by rates. It
proposes to substitute for the rates voluntary subscrip-
tions, to be spent, as the rates are now, by the church-
wardens, subject to five auditors, to be nominated, one by
the clergyman, the other four by the congregation. This
part of the bill is of the less importance, inasmuch as the
auditors would not be wanted if there were no subscrip-
and, if there were, the eubmeribero would probably