The Sun.
London, England, 1869-05-11 00:00:00

LONDO2:, TUESDAY, MAY 11, 1869.

Confusion worse confounded is all that can as yet
be said in regard to the last addition to the list of
rival plans for the Ne-w Courts of Law. Three
courses are still before us—and from those three
propositions we have yet to make our selection. It
is still an alternative as to whether the Palace of
Justice, or whatever else the structure is to be called,
shall stand to the North or to the South of the
Strand—upon the Carey-street site or upon one or
the other of the two sites proposed to be
chosen by preference ou the Thames Embank-
ment. Economy is the chief plea in favour of
the third arrangement—the one introduced
last night, virtually at the Eleventh hour, by the
Chief Commissioner of Public Works. But that
economy is obviously secured through the medium of
two very glaring, and by no means attractive sacri-
fices. First of all, the Strand frontage is to be alto-
gether foregone. A back street is to be the northern
boundary of the site originally indicated a few weeks
ir.ce by the Chancellor (1 the Exchequer. Howard-
street, or at any rate the northern side of t hat street,
is to be the screen behind which the frontage of the
design cf the New Law Courts on that side
shall be hidden away from public view. 'Thereby the
architect will be enabled to devote his energies to the
consideration of the ornamental design of the fac:ide
of the Palace or. Justice ! ou the southern or river side,
the side looking directly on the Thames Embank-
ment. Very much in the same way, it strikes us, as
Mrs. CRUPP was enabled to direct all her attention
to the cooking of the potatoes upon the occasion of
the memorable dinner given to STEERFORTII and his
companions by DAVID COPPERFIELD. Looking to
the mere figures we can certainly have hardlyaword to I

THE SUN, LON

say in favour of the Carey-street site. The original
calculation as to that site was, it will be remembered,
that its total cost would amount to no more than
£750;000, and that another sum of £750,000 would
suffice for the cost of the superstructure—altogether
£1,500,000. Already, however, there has been ex •
pended upon the site £880,991 7s. 5d., but the cost
of additional land yet to be purchased to complete
that site, the cost of the building afterwards to be
erected upon it, and the cost of opening up to
the North, to the East, and to the West, suitable
and all-essential approaches, must inevitably swell the
total not merely to £3,200,000, as latterly sup-
posed, but to a grand aggregate of very nearly
£4,000,000 sterling. Sir CHARLES TREVELYAN'S
plan for purchasing and using a much grander site on
the Thames Embankment, would involve, according
to Mr. LAYARD, an outlay not far short of that—
namely, of at the least, as the Right Hon. Gentle-
man asserts, not much less than £3,250,000. Finally,
there is the more modest and more economical site
proposed by Mr. LOWE, the cost for the erecting of the
Law Courts, upon which, according to Mr. LAYARD,
would not be hazarded an outlay altogether of
£2,ooo,ooo—land, approaches, building, furnishing,
everything included. Asum not exceeding £1,900,000,
he maintained, would cover it all. Mr. LOWE
has hitherto enjoyed the credit or endured the odium
of having suggested this Howard-street site, hid
away at the back of the Strand, between the Temple
and King's College, and looking southwards across
the river at that particular portion of the Thames
Embankment. The credit or the odium whichever it
may be, Mr. LAYARD now claims absolutely for him-
self. He it was who suggested it to the Chancellor
of the Exchequer. And much honour it does him !
The proposition appears to us, the more we
think of it, a singularly mean and paltry proposi-
tion. It looks chiefly to the economy of the whole
arrangement. The adornment of the metropolis in

any way is a very secondary consideration. The New
Law Courts are to be as few as possible. The build-
ing is to be as small in its dimensions as may be. One
side of it alone is to be clearly visible. The other
three sides are to be mere boundary walls perforated
with windows for lighting and ventilation. On the
east and the west respectively, these New Law Courts
—no longer spoken of collectively as a Palace of
Justice—are to be squeezed in between the Temple and
King's College. As moderate a bill as can be arranged
for, is to be run up, and the Government of England is
thus to contrive upon the shabbiest terms possible
about providing a central home of some kind for
THEWS. Clearly the proposition is anything but
attractive 1 The House of Commons, or we are very
much mistaken, will think once or twice Leiore de-
ciding definitively upon its acceptance.

CAN nothing be done to improve upon that ludic-
rous and dolorous pageant, an English funeral ?
The "grander" it is the more grotesque it is. The
poor man's funeral is ugly enough, with its black
coach and one black horse and long black box on
black wheels, called a hearse. But it is when we
come to the millionaire's obsequies, it is when our
BANTINGS and GARSTINS have to carry out the last
sad rites " regardless of expense," that death becomes
not only hideous, but ridiculous. Some days ago there
was a disturbance at Falmouth because a " ritualist "
funeral offended certain fervid Protestants, who
upheld the glorious principles of civil and religious
liberty by a physical-force attack upon some one who
ventured to exercise the right of private judgment in
a way that they did not approve. Do the Falmouth
roughs know that all the paraphernalia of
the modern undertaker are " rags of Popery ?"
that the red-nosed mutes, with- their black-
silk-laden staves, care the representatives of the
crucifer with the veiled cross, and that the other
Bardolplis with brass-tipped wands are the suc- •
cessors of the acolytes, who carried lighted tapers ?
We own that of the two a cross, which is the symbol
both of death and resurrection, seems more appro-
priate than a stick swathed in silk, and looking
for all the world like a negro doll. We own
that we never could see the meaning of the brass-
topped sticks, nor for that matter of the plumes,
nor of the hatbands, nor of many other items of th e
"ritual" which the undertakers get up for the special
purpose of swelling out their bills. Let us have One
of two things : a " ritual " that shall be wholly sad
and mournful, or one in which the sadness and the
mourning shall be relieved by symbols of the future

life ; by colours which shall be to us as the rain-
bow w;:s to Noah, a token of the time when
our tears shall cease; by flowers that shall tell us of the
bright fields into which we trust our beloved ones
are gone ; by everything, in short, that shall comfort
the heart with the thought that the end is not in
the narrow pit wherein we have laid the dead.
Either mode would be seemly, either would be
appropriate, though the latter would be more
worthy of Christians than the former. But funerals
of the ordinary kind, funerals such as Falmouth
roughs will graciously allow to pass through the
streets unmolested, are unredeemed by one single
merit. They are neither solemn nor aesthetic ; they
are both costly and monstrous. They tend neither
to impress the careless, to comfort the afflicted, nor
to honour the dead.

" Two can play at that game, Mr. SumNEn," is
the sum and substance of a very remarkable speech
just made in the Canadian House of Commons. Mr.
SUMNER, as all the world knows, contends that we
did, by improper recognition of the Confederate
States as belligerents, double the length of
the war, and thereby involved the United
States in a needless expenditure of some 300
millions sterling, which we must be called
upon to pay. Mr. GALT very cleverly and very
fairly says that if Great Britain is thus responsible
to the United States, the United States are respon-
sible to Canada for the heavy expense which the
Canadian Government has had to incur in resist-
ing the Fenian raids organised on the terri-
tory of the Great Republic. These raids were the
more unjustifiable because during the war the Cana-
dian Government preserved a strict neutrality:
because the Canadian . people sided strongly
with the North, sending no fewer than
40,000 men to the Northern army ; because when
an attack upon a Northern town was made by Con-
federate refugees in Canada, the Canadian Govern-
ment took prompt steps to punish the delinquents ;
and because, after the murder of President LiNcor,N,
the same Government went so far as to alter,
unasked, the Alien Act, so as to enable the Govern-
• went to order anyone out of the country who could
not give a satisfactory account of himself. In spite
of all these proofs of loyalty, the United States
Government professed to be dissatisfied. It corn-
plained of acts which were never done ; it attempted
to fasten upon the Canadian Government the utter-
ances of private per Sons ; it witnessed with scarcely-
concealed satisfaction the organisation of the Fenian
conspiracy and the march of a Fenian force upon
Canada. " For months, aye years," says Mr. GAT,T,
"an organisation of the most formidable character
was in the States, armed, I will not say from
the arsenals of the United States, but cer-
tainly having United States arms, and drilled
by United States officers, held public meetings, in
which they stated their object to be the invasion and
conquering of Canada. They entered the province
in armed bands by thousands ; and not from any
want of will on their part, but simply want of power,
they failed to deluge the Western Peninsula with
blood. When the invasion was over, then, and not
till then, did the United States Government stretch
out a hand to. help Canada. Was there no injustice
here ? Are not these claims quite as strong, morally,
as any the United States Government can bring
against Great Britain ?" It is natural, perhaps, that we
should say they are a great deal stronger, especially
when we remember how our Government stretched'