The Sun.
London, England, 1869-11-02 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

The Times remarks that the most distinctive feature it
Mr. Caird's Irish pamphlet, and that upon which its author
chiefly insists, is the superiority of leases over customary
rights of occupation—that is, of a tenant-right by contract
over a tenant-right by prescription—as the groundwork of
a settlement which must cover all Ireland, A custom
which has apparently placed "Ulster above all the other
provinces in agricultural wealth, civilisation, and good
order is entitled to the greatest respect, and the study
of it offers a most valuable clue for penetrating
the labyrinth of the Land Question. Beyond this we
are not prepared to advocate recourse to it, and we
believe that any legislative attempt to stereotype it must
needs end in failure. Even in Ulster the custom is often
grossly abused by grasping tenants selling the very for-
bearance and kindness of landlords at a profit, and by
grasping landlords squeezing out the value of a goodwill,
purchased with their own sanction, through a constant
advance of rent. At this very moment an agitation
against the latter of these abuses is being carried on in
Ulster, and meetings are being held to demand legal
protection for claims hitherto secured by the custom
alone. Ulster tenant-right, in fact, if it means any-
thing, means fixity of tenuro without fixity of rent,
and it depends for its efficacy upon the diiposition
of landlords and the competition for land As
compared with a system of tenancy at will, it possesses
great advantages, notwithstanding the objection that it
strips an incoming tenant of his capital; but, as compared
with an equitable system of leases, it possesses no advan-
tage, except that it is established in certain districts.
Whatever scheme may be adopted should contain, on that
ground, a saving clause for Ulster tenant-right ; but it
must not propagate in the other provinces the characteristic
vice of Ulster tenant-right—that it mulcts the good land-
lord unduly, and gives the bad landlord an unfair hold on
his tenant. The policy of the Legislature should be
the exact reverse of this, and perhaps the best test of its
success will be its different reception by these two
classes.

The Daily Xeivs,in referring to the recent death of the
Marquis of Westminster, observes that the Peerages tell
us the family of Grosvenor flourished in Normandy a hun-
dred and fifty years before the battle of Hastings ; and
that its high importance in that province so early as the
year 900, or thereabouts, is proven from its name—
Grosvenor being Le Gros Veneur, or the Grand Huntsman.
Sceptical people not versed in genealogies may be reminded
of the barber-surgeon to Edward the Confessor, who was
the ancestor of the noble family of the Newcomes, of
Newcome. We are quite ready, however, to
take the Gros Veneur for granted. The reflec-
tion which he suggests is the strange one , that
a family nearly a thousand years old should not have
furnished a single great name in the history of its
country. In this respect the House of Grosvenor presents
a strong contrast with that other noble house, in the
neighbouring county of Lancashire, which has lately lost
its chief. The biography of the Stanleys of Knowsley, if
it were fully written, would comprise large fragments of
the history of England, from the fourteenth century to the
nineteenth. The biography of the Grosvenors would record
the fortunes of a most respectable family, affected by, but
not in its turn affecting, the course of English history.
The House of Westminster and of Derby both illustrate
on different sides of human nature that persistency of

family qualities through generations and centuries which
has been noticed by historians in some of the great
houses of the Roman aristocracy. The Stanleys were
for ever leaping in the dark, whether in a conspiracy
to enthrone Perkin Warbeck, or in a coup for
establishing household suffrage, and " dishing " now
Richard 111. at Bosworth, and now the Whigs in Parlia-
ment. The Grosvenors have exhibited, from the beginning
of their career to the end, the virtue of thrift; and this
virtue, exercised during nearly ten centuries, and telling
in each generation with accumulating power, has made
them the richest noble family in England, and possibly in
Europe and the world. If the rule adopted in the United
States prevailed in this country, of publishing income-tax
returns, the Marquis of Westminster's would have exceeded
the powers of ordinary conception. The popular imagina-
tion, in an attempt to realise the fact, has created for
itself the myth that the late
_nobleman had a guinea a
minute.

The Telegraph affirms that Mr. Layard is sent as Minister

to Madrid -ata. crisis when, if old precedents had power,
the nomination of a new Envoy ought to mean much.
Twenty-two or twenty-three years ago, half Europe would
have been agitated by the tidings, although at that time
Spain was about to select, not a King, but a King Consort.
Yet, although the selection of a husband was the only
matter in dispute, Cabinets were uneasy, couriers
wero hard - worked, Ambassadors agitated, Kings
and Queens set in motion, nations kept on the
alert, at every new move in the game. If Sir
Th•lwnr. Tulin then renresented England,
coughed twice, the French Minister sent off at once 'or
new instructions When a Spanish statesman laughed,
Heaven and earth were moved to discover why ? In M.
Guizot's Memoirs it is recorded how the French Ambas-
sador jumped out of bed at five o'clock in the morning to
end off a despatch, because lie had just heard that the
candidature of the Coburg Prince had not been abandoned.
All this went on for months ; and filially, when the crisis
was brought to an end, two Royal Courts—those of Eng-
land and France—were estranged, and Lord Palmerston
and M. Guizot remained diplomatically at daggers
drawn. We cannot flatter ourselves that Mr. Layard's
appointment will cause any Continental emotion.
One or two Paris papers will mis-spell his name ;
others will ( all him " Sir Layard, Prefect of the Thames "
others will assuro the it readers that his name in the world
is due to the discovery of an " Assyrian image of John
Bull—emblem national! incident so flattering l'amour
propre L'rittanique!" But when he arrives in Madrid nobody
will believe that he brings in his despatch-box a menace,
a hostile message, or a new king. Everybody will know
that Spain may select any person in the world—any
prince, ex-king, duke, or private gentleman—without
England's making the least objection or protest. Sir
Henry Bulwer, who fortunately represented a policy of
perpetual advice, still lives ; but between his work and
the task cut out for Mr. Layard the difference is so great
that one could almost believe a century, and not twenty-
three years, had intervened.
The Standard observes that Mr. William Brcadhead, the
arch rattener and high priest of " Mary Ann," has taken
leave of Sheffield under rather painful circumstances. For
many years a public character, and holding a position of
power and authority among the working men of his native
town, he has found that since the ill-omened inquiry into
the conduct of the trade unions in that locality he has been
somewhat under a cloud. After the fashion of malefactors
of the deepest dye he forgives all his enemies and
persecutors, and promises that " the good old town
of Sheffield," ungenerous and ungrateful as it has
proved to himself, will always retain a place in
his affectionate remembrance. We can readily under-
stand that it was a consummate piece of acting
from beginning to end, from the first appearance in
the garb of a pious minister to the last plaintive utterance
of Christian forgiveness. But the worst of it is that the
audience were not taken in. They were thoroughly in the
secret. They knew full well what manner of man it was
who was farting it before them. They knew what had
been his way of life as secretary of the Saw Grinders'
Union, and the various crimes of which, on his own confes-
sion, ho had been the instigator or the accomplice, were
fresh in their memory. Yet they thronged to do him
honour, they-welcomed him with "loud and long-continued
cheering," they listened to him with encouraging sym-
pathy, and when the protracted effort of cynical hypocrisy
was brought to a close they rewarded him with rounds of
enthusiastic applause. What must be the moral condition
of a community which could furnish such an audience for
such a criminal?
The Herald declares that the existence of a far-spread
depression of the manufacturing interest, and therefore of
English commerce abroad and industry at home, is no
longer denied. The task of the unconditional freetraders
is now, consequently, to discover a sufficient cause for a
fact so deplorable. Great Britain was to hay% been the
central bazaar of the globe ; her fabrics were to defy com-
petition everywhere, from Calais to the uninhabited
islands ; there was to be no more want, only a minimum of
pauperism, " a fowl in every poor man's pot," and never
again a murmur of discontent. See now. It is with
difficulty that the unemployed working classes of the
metropolis are restrained from brandishing their poverty on
the occasion of a public ceremony in which the Queen
will take a part. From all quarters come gloomy antici-
-1 ations for the falling winter. And numbers of the very
men, numbers ( f their successors, who believed in the
panacea, and thought that the cornucopaia of British pros-
perity could henceforth be carried in the left hand cf a
left-handed free trade, are, towards the close of 1869,
counting up their disappointments and the losses of the
country, especially since a Heaven-born statesman sur-
rendered to France so much and persuaded her into so
little. There is no great comfort in being assured we are
making no progress with our system of manufactures when
it is our coal freely exported which enables the French to
undersell us.

The foundation stone of a Protestant church, the
cost of which is to be paid by the King of Burmah, has
b 3en laid at Mandalay.

The American Indians continue to give trouble.
A party of Apaches attacked a mail coach near Ay ache
Pass, and killed the driver and military escort, but we: e
dispersed by a detachment of cavalry with a 1 s: of twelve
killed. The reported massacre of the Govormnoo
ireyinse rartr_on_thtZeinfoliamilkor. imagiralW