The Sun.
London, England, 1869-02-16 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 16, IE6O

secret of the whole affair. The King of HANOVER
was to have his own again, not as a right, not as a
favour, but as a bribe. What an ingenious device of
buying off a troublesome customer, and gaining a
good name before the nations of Europe. Infa-
tuated and misguided Monarch, not to have compre-
hended the situation with more perspicacity, but he
must take the consequences. There is the doctrine
of chances for all, and no doubt some compensating
agency is at work even for this exiled son of Royalty,
who might, bad fortune taken a different turn, been
seated on the most powerful throne in the world, in-
stead of ending his days in poverty and misfortune,
the scorn of the oppressor, and the tool of the

designing.
Well, then, King GEORGE may remember, with the
French King of old, that if honour and good faith
are banished from the rest of the world, they
ought to be enshrined in the hearts of
Princes, and thank HEAVEN that the loss of his
worldly goods leaves him in the possession of
better things than the world can give or take away
with its gains and forfeitures. He is independent at
any rate, and cannot have it said of him that he has
been bought up to keep silence when those who re-
spect his misfortunes sympathise with his wrongs.
Of all the lowest depths of degradation none is more
bitter than the state of him who is obliged to
keep on terms of amity with his oppressor, and pre-
tend to recognise virtues when he is all the time
burning with a sense of his cruel wrongs. In recol-
lection of what it has suited the court of Berlin to
forget, the close connection and near relationship of
King GEORGE to the throne of this country, we re-
joice that he has not the fortune which was to have
been bought at such a price. We feel convinced
that the House of Commons would far rather vote an
adequate sum for his maintenance than let the nation
bear the stigma of such an affront as this. Prussia

in the arrogance of her conquering soldiers may be

insupportable, but Prussia in the insolence of her
bargaining Ministers is really intolerable, and we
consider it an escape that the direct descendant of a
crowned king of these realms did not submit
to the indignity proposed to him. It is

the last thing that a high-minded conqueror
would say of his fallen foe, that the fortunes of war
put his wealth at his disposal. When BYRON sought
to crush NAPOLEON with the sting of his satire he
could not conceal the real grandeur of him whom he
assailed, and there was a covert homage in the very
form of his censure :

Whose game was empire, and whose stakes were thrones ;
Whose table earth, whose dice were human bones."
At all events there is nothing small in suLth a venture,
for to gain a like cause is magnificent, and to fail is
to sink like SAMSON with the ruins of all around him.
But not so Count BISMARCK, his aims are mean and
his views most narrow ; he has been long the chosen
confidant of royalty, but he pays the rulers of the
earth a poor compliment when he deems that gold and
silver can compensate for the loss of power and posi-

tion, or be made the means of arbitration when cha-
racter is at stake. After all it may be for the best as
it is, for these trivial sums to common eyes are, in
the opinion of the Berlin Government, of most
weighty import. The fortune of the Elector of Hesse
Cassel was buying up the French press, and
causing the people " sensitive on points of honour,"
to look askance at the people across the Rhine who
cannot at auy rate have that sin laid to their
charge. We make bold to say that the gain is not
all to the possessor nor the loss to the despoiled.
He that is unjust let him be unjust still, is one of
the most effective descriptions of the fate of the lost
spirits, and thus it may be said let Prussia keep
and multiply a hundred fold, this money that seems
more precious in the sight of her Senate, her coun-
sellors, and her statesmen, than honour, good faith,
or national respect—let the exiled princes rejoice
that they are the vanquished and not the victors in
such a contest, let the lookers-on the other kingdoms
of Europe.take warning by the spectacle, and let
England be proud of him, who, though German by
ancestry, has imbibed enough of the English spirit,
to refuse the fortune of his inheritance if offered to
him in the form of, hush money. It appears to be of
great moment to those who have laid rio'cut hankL
on it, but to him as a man of honour, whether private
individual, or king past or present, as the case may
be, it could have been of no more account than
dross or tinsel. Count BISMARCK seems to be proud
of his bargain, but could he pierce the veil of the
future he might even now be glad to be quit of it ;

it may yet prove as the burden in the fable that
could not be moved notwithstanding all the arts that
were essayed, and judged by the standard of lasting
worth the despoiled princes will not be the poorest
when the historian shall reckon up accounts.

WHEN a doctor finds his remedies useless he gets
rid of a troublesome patient by advising him to try
fresh air. When a family is burdened with a ne'er-
do-well, it recommends that he should leave
his country, if not for his country's good,
for his possibly, for theirs certainly. Exactly
the same course is being pursued by the State doctor
with regard to a patient who has long baffled his
skill—by that great family whose home is England,
with regard to a member who is a burden to himself
and to his friends. To him both statesmen and
community are saying " Emigrate ; you will do no
good here ; there is good air and plenty of room for
you beyond the seas, and there you are sure
to prosper." The eagerness of our desire to
get rid of a troublesome burden blinds us to the
illogical character of the assumption that failure here
is the best preparation for success elsewhere. Selfish-
ness makes us take for granted that the man who
has shewn neither skill, industry, nor providence
enough to lift himself out of the low level of pau-
perism, will be sure to do well under circumstances
which need a special manifestation of all those quali-
ties. No doubt the colonies offer a noble field to the
energetic and the prudent man, a nobler field than he
will find in this crowded country ; but it stands to
reason, if we will only reasonably consider the matter,
that they are the worst of all countries for a man
who wants either the brains or the heart to work.
The family of which we Britons form a partoontains
some ten hundred thousand recognised and regularly
relieved paupers ; and we have ten times that number
of persons in our midst, who are paupers in reality
if not in name. This latter class of paupers is not
composed of the people who find begging at once
more profitable and pleasant than work. It has
nothing in common with the prowling thief or the
miserable sneak, who meanly creeps into the casual
ward for the sake of being enabled to expend upon
gin the money he would otherwise have to
disburse for a bed and breakfast. Nor is
it to be confounded with the man who, for the sake
of saving his wife and children from the pauper
taint, seeks the poor compensation and the degrading
labour of the " test-yards "of workhouses. The
paupers of whom we speak are strong and willing
men and women. They understand the nature
of the various industries of the country, and obtain
regular work and receive regular wages for doing
it. They are known by various names, and
exist in every part of the country. The greater
number of them have been described as a " bold
peasantry, their country's pride ;" in towns they are I
called labourers. Whether in town or country
they are simply paupers. They are so because the
" fair wage " they are paid for a " fair day's work " is
not sufficient to supply them with the necessaries of
life. The means derivable from their labours have
to be supplemented by the money, the coals, the
milk, the soup, and the clothes of the charitable ;
and hence they become pauperised in feeling
and in conduct, The transition to the state of a

' pauper whose condition is marked by the name is an
easy and a constantly-occurring one. When it is
remembered that recognised pauperism costs the
country £6,000,000 sterling per annum, and that
the cost of the unrecognised pauperism is
simply incalculable, there need be little won-
der that, following the example of the family,
the nation should be desirous of "getting rid"
of its inconvenient and unpleasant adjunct. To the
ordinary ratepayer or the zealous poor-law guardian
the matter is purely a commercial one, and the aid
of figures is called in for the purpose of deciding
between the relative cheapness of starving a man at
home or sending him abroad. The most obtuse of
guardians possesses penetration and sagacity sufficient
to understand that the cost of the keep of a pauper
for twelve months would more than pay his passage
to another country, in which he might be lost sight
of for ever. Hence emigration is the pet panacea
for pauperism just now.

Unfortunately for the political economist, the large
employer of cheap labour, and the selfish of every
class, there is a principle involved in the matter above
and beyond the mere cost of the keep of a pauper, or
the inconvenience he may cause by remaining at
home. First of all, the mere fact of a man being
destitute and without the means of living here, is
not necessarily conclusive evidence of his fitness
for emigration, or for assisting in the pro-
cess of colonisation. A man may possess
many of the ordinary excellencies, and all the
faults of an unsuccessful man, without having one
single element calculated to fit him for the regions of
a Canadian winter, the quiet toils of a Queensland
sheepwalk, the hazards of a Brazilian forest, or even
to aid satisfactorily in promoting the prosperity and
partaking of the comfort of a Victorian settlement.
However lightly a sense of the " fitness of things"
may hang upon individuals, communities can scarcely
afford to overlook the probabilities of success that
may attend a change made, presumably, for the
benefit of the whole body politic. Then, again, the
circumstances of the country to which these unhappy
ones are deported should be considered. It may
fairly be taken for granted that no colony is worth
emigrating to that would willingly receive la* acces-
sions of a pauper population to its people. • Twenty
years ago the squatters of Australia would gladly
have had sent to them any number of men and"
women that would have tended to reduce to £lO
the £2O sterling per annum they paid to their
shepherds and hut-keepers. When there is nothing
to steal a thief may be trusted, and when nobody
can hear what he says a lion may indulge in his
weakness without much mischief happening to anyone
but himself.

Accepting, then, Z-,he proposition that paupers
proper are not necessarily fitted for emigrants,
and that colonists are indisposed to receiv
masses of men into their midst who are unfitted for
the work of colonising, it remains for Englishmen
to discover some other plan of meeting the require-
ments of the mother country and her offshoots
at the same time. There is plenty of room abroad
for a greater number of persons than those who are
"crowded out here." The one inevitable necessity
is that only those who are fitted for the peculiar
work of new countries should be sent, or rather
induced to go, abroad. There are thousands of well-
to-do men in England who could do a hundred
times better in Australia than at home, whose
absence from England would at once forward the
interests of the colonies and relieve the labour market
here far more effectually than the forced emigration
of ten times their number of pauper labourers. Two
things have to be borne in mind—the relief
that emigration is to afford to pauperism must be
effected without the colonies being injured or annoyed,
and the home labour market must not be unduly
acted upon.

ships in respect of rating, which appear to be cap
able of remedy.

You will also be invited to direct your attention
to bills for the extension and improvement of edu-
cation in Scotland ; and for rendering the con-
siderable revenues of the Endowed Schools of Eng-
land more widely effectual for the purposes of in-
struction.

A Measure will be introduced for applying the
principle of representation to the control of the
County Rate, by the establishment of Financial
Boards for Counties.

It will be proposed to you to recur to the subject
of Bankruptcy, with a view to the more effective
distribution of Assets and to the Abolition of Im-
prisonment for Debt.
The Ecclesiastical arrangements of Ireland will
be brought under your consideration at a very early
date, and the legislation which will be necessary in
order to their final adjustment will make the largest
demands upon the wisdom of Parliament.
I am persuaded that, in the prosecution of the
work, you will bear a careful regard to every legiti-
mate interest which it may involve, and that you will
be governed by the c3nst ant aim to promote the wel-
fare of religion through the principles of equal jus-
tice, to secure the actionof the undivided faelingand
opinion of Ireland on the side of loyalty and law,
to efface the memory of former contentions, and
to cherish the sympathies of an affectionate people.
In every matter of public interest, especially in
one so weighty, I pray that the Almighty may never
cease to guide your deliberations, and may bring
them to a happy issue.

The Commons then withdrew, the Royal Com
missioners replace their cocked hats, and, withou
further observation, retire to the robing-room.

The sitting is suspended until five o'clock, shortly
after which hour their Lordships assemble to vote
an address to her Majesty on the occasion.
In the House of Commons the proceedings were
entir?ly confined to the interest attaching to the
reception various leading members meet with on
taking their seats.
On the return of the Speaker from the House of
Peers he informs the house where he has been to,
and then the sitting is adjourned until four o'clock.
There was a very large number of persons assem-
bled in Whitehall and Parliament-street, in the
hope of seeing her Majesty open Parliament, and
it was not until after two o'clock that they began
to resign the places they had taken.

Ixr
,t
'
--

HER MAJESTY.

OSBORNE, Feb. 15.

The Queen, accompanied by Princess Beatrice
and Prince Leopold, went out in the grounds this
morning.

PRINCESS'S THEATRE.

Last night Mr. Palgrave Simpson's new drama,
entitled "Marie Antoinette," was prOduced with
the utmost success at this theatre. The drama, as
many of our readers are aware, has been written
for Mdlle. Beatrice. It has been acted with great
effect at many of the largest theatres in the coun-
try, and last night the approval of the metropoli-
tan public had to be added to that of the provinces.

Mr. Simpson, in the programme, modestly states

that his drama is simply an historical panorama of
action, formed of many events in her (Marie
Antoinette's) life, connecting the Ist of October,

1789, with the 16th of October, 1793 ; bound
together with no more fiction than is neces-
sary to give the coherence and continuity
essential to a dramatic form, and certainly- the
skill that has been displayed in linking those events
together is worthy of the highest praise. The
curtain rises on a banquet of the Boiy Gnarl in
a Hall of the Palace at Versailles, at which the
Queen, in the prime of youth and beauty, regally

attired, holding the little Dauphin by the hand,
appeals to the loyalty of the guard, who tear off
the national cockade, and, drawing their swords,

swear fealty to the Queen and Dauphin. Then
there is an interview in the salon between the King
and Malsherbes, which exhibits the weakness of
the Monarch and the strength of the Minister,
followed up by the interruption of a wild, armed mob,

who break into the palace and carry off the Royal
family captives to Paris. The flight to Varennes fol-
lows; the whole of the incidents are most graphically
told and illustrated. Finer grouping and scmery
than that in scene 6 —the Gate of Varennes, where
the Royal family arc detected and stopped, the
soldiers going over to the side of the people—have
seldom been presented on any stage. The humilia-
tion inflicted upon the Queen, her children, and the
King in the Temple, the agonising parting of Louis
with his family when condemned, and finally the
trial of the Queen herself, her condemnation, her
last toilette—the cutting off of her long hair,
white with accumulated sorrows in so brief a
time—her arms pinioned, and her arrival in the
tumbrel at the Place de la Revolution, were all most
stirringly represented. Of Mdlle. Beatrice's perfor-
mance of the part of " the Austrian woman," Marie
Antoinette, we can say nothing but praise ; it was
dignified in the earlier scenes, pathetic in the latter,
and, taken altogether, was one of the finest pieces
of dramatic art seen for a considerable period. Mr.
George Vining, as Louis XVI., acted with rare
ability ; his conception of the part was perfect,
his costume and general appearance was as
perfect as if he had stepped out of a
picture frame in the Louvre. Little Lydia
Howard played the Dauphin, and had it been pos-
sible for the ladies to have added caresses to ap-
plause, the tiny actress would have doubtless been
almost killed with kisses for the heroic manner in
which she, as the Dauphin, slapped the face of the
brutal Simon for blowing his tobacco in the face of
the fallen Queen during the time she was a prisoner
in the Temple. The other parts were all excellently
filled. Count de Fersen was sustained by Mr.
William Reynold, Turgy by Mr. D. Murray, San-
terre, the brewer, by Mr. Leeson, and Sergeant L 3
Beau by Mr. J. G. Shore, the latter gentleman
showing how much can be made of a small part by
a careful and judicious actor. The piece has
been
put upon the stage in the most admirable manner,
and the spirit and effect infused into the
various stirring incidents of which the drama is
composed, are worthy the highest commendation.
The act drop had to be raised on each of the four
tableaux, and at the termination Mdlle. Beatrice,
Miss Lydia Howard, and Mr. George Vining had
to appear and bow their acknowledgments of the
applause their acting had elicited.
The piece is another hit for the fortunate lessee
and manager of the Princess's Theatre.