The Sun.
London, England, 1869-10-12 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF TILE POBLIO JOURNALS,

4The Times, in referring to the Fenian amnesty meetings,
31:alp that when such inflammatory language is need by
the ostensible leaders of the movement, and enforced by

mass meetings evidently designed to manifest the strength
of Fenianism, it matters little in what form the actual

petitions may be drawn up. If they wero ever so cautiously

worded, they would be none the less appeals to a motive
very different from mercy; but, in fact, they are usually so
worded as to exclude the least implication of censure

upon those on whose behalf an amnesty is claimed. In
short, the Crown is invited to pardon rebels who do not
even pretend to be penitent, not because their conspiracy

has been finally crushed, but rather because it is still for-
midable enough to rally large bodies of sympathisers. It
is from this point of view that we must regard the difficult

question now under the consideration of Mr. Gladstone
and his colleagues. It is essentially and solely a question
of political expediency. No reasonable person can
doubt for a moment, we do not say the right,
but the duty, of a Government to put down with.
vigour all violent outrages against law and order. If ever
this duty was imperative, it was imperative when a bans
of lawless men, chiefly led by foreign adventurers, under-
took to found a so-called Irish Republic upon a general
confiscation of property. The characteristic of that move-
ment is that it seeks to attain its object by arguments
bordering on menace. The release of the Fenian prisoners
is not solicited as an act of grace; it is openly demanded as
a right. What Mr. Gladstone has to consider is, not
whether the Fenians would be propitiated by the indis-
criminate release of these prisoners, but whether the Irish
people who are not Fenians would see in it a proof of
magnanimity or a proof of weakness. The more resolved
we are to remove every ascertained grievance, the more
inflexible we mast be in the administration of the law
against the enemies of social order. We have settled the
Church question, we are prepared to settle the land ques-
tion, but to deal with treason as a trivial crime and impiir
the ascendency of law is assuredly no part of justice or
kindness to Ireland.

The Midland metropolis, says the Daily News, promises
ence more to become the head-quarters of a powerful poli-
tical movement. Forty years ago Birmingham suddenly
made itself a political power, and by its critical demon-
strations in favour of the Reform Bill, did much to secure
the enfranchisement of the middle classes. The same
practical common sense and uncompromising vigour are
now applying themselves to the question of education.
The National Education League, which now holds its
meetings in Birmingham, is already a powerful body.
Its object is to build up a complete national system of
education, and to see to it that no child grows up untaught.
It does not propose to abolish the present system, but to
establish another by its side which must speedily absorb it.
Starting with the principle that every child must be
taught, it lays . down some points as essential to any
system which even aims at so large an object.
Local authorities are to be compelled to see that
sufficient school accommodation is provided for
every child in their district; and, where necesssary,
to found schools and maintain them out of the local
rates, supplemented by a Government grant. All schools
aided by local rates are to be under the management of
local authorities and open to Government inspection. All
schools thus aided are to be unsectarian, admission to
them is to be free, and local authorities are to have power
to compel the attendance of children not otherwise
receiving education. It remains, however, to be seen how

far the public are ready to accept the principle of Local
Rates, Unsectarian Schools, Free Education, and Com-
pulsory Attendance, which the League assumes as
the basis of its action. On every one of these
points conflicts will arise, and a long fight may be

needful to its establishment. Yet if there were
any question as to the growing popularity and
power of these principles, the list of members of the
provisional organisation would set it at rest. The League
starts as a powerful body, with the immense advantage of
a clear programme and a definite policy. Amid the discus-
sions to which the question of education is now giving
rise, it will probably speak with an influential voice ; and
whether the measure which will finally deal with the great
educational necessities of the people does or does not
embody the principles for which the League contends, it
will certainly contain some of them, and look in the direc-
tion of them all.

The Post thinks that the conclusions to be drawn from
the disaster upon the Midland Railway would appear to
be, in the first place, that if the block system had been in
operation on the line from Nottingham to Trent, the:oecur-
renee would not have taken place, for the mail train would
have been detained at the next station Lefore Long Eaton
until the special train had quitted the latter. In the
next place, that even without the block system being
worked at all, the preservation of a reasonable interval
of time would equally have caused the avoidance of the
danger mentioned. We shall be told, probably, that
the block system is a question of money, and that
companies cannot afford to work it. But sceizig that
such a large number of fatal and very ccstly disasters,
that might clearly be prevented by its adoption, occur
every year, it seems to us that if the amounts paid in com-
pensation on account of killed and maimed passengers were
considered as interest on the necessary cutlay, there would
ultimately* be a saving rather than a loss. Be this, how-
ever, as it may, the time is evidently approaching when
the public will demand of the Legislature that protection
which some of the railway companies refuse or omit to
grant spontaneously. As to the immediate cause of the
collision, the inquest will decide upon whom the blame is
to rest for permitting only some ten or fifteen minutes'
interval to divide a mail, travelling at forty-five miles an
hour, from a heavy special train with several other trains
of the same kind in front of it.
The Standard remarks that the Empress of the French
is a lady who, without much pretence, has played a con-
siderable part in the politics of Europe. All the world
was interested when Napoleon 111. announced that he
would lead her soon to the high alter of Notre Dame.

There was a mixture of marvel with chance in the lives of
both which almost betokened a future career romantic and
curious. Such a reputation, so established, accounts for
the interest felt in her present travels. They
are of a kind not often undertaken, in our genera-
tion at least, by ladies of her rank ; they re-
semble rather the pilgrimage of an olden day. There is in
her nature much of the devotee, blended with a great deal
of the woman of the world; and with so many preoccupa-
tions engaging the supreme mind in Prance, with the
health of the Emperor criticised in every public column,
her son's chances and her own treated with rather offen-
sive freedom, and, indeed, all the predictions for or against
the dynasty squandered about in random profusion, this
tour is not a slight sign of good spirit, independence and
resolve. In ancient times, throughout Asia, it was a
custom for royal parents—at any rate in romance—to
encourage their children in travel. In modern ages the
principle has often been reversed. Some countries, indeed,

have prohibited the sovereign, or the sovereign's consort,
from going abroad. Ali this folly is abolished
now. There is not a more wandering class, at present,
than the Princes and Princesses of Europe ; they aro con-
tinually visiting one another, in far separated capitals;
they are the most indefatigable tourists in Europe. And
there is no justification whatever for fancying that the
Empress of the French is travelling in any other than a
tourist character. That her incognito should be transparent
is not her fault ; that Italy should throw flowers at her feet
is a sign of national and poetical gratitude ; that she
should kneel among the mingled graves of ➢lagenta, and
give her benediction to the dead, is simply proof that she
Is a pious-minded lady.

The Star says that in England we have rigs ; in America
they have rings. There is very little difference in the spelling
and as little in the meaning of the words. A rig is the
thing done ; a ring is the people who do it. A rig, say in
iron, has for its object to buy up all the iron in the market,
to rule the price of the metal, and, when it has reached a
paying height,to sell by a sudden and combined movement,
and net the proceeds of an arbitrary and contrived rise. A
ring, say in gold, has for its object to do precisely the same
with the more precious metal. The principle of buying in
combination and selling at the price thus created is
common to the rig and the ring. We in England make
less noise about our rigs than the Americans do
about their rings. Nevertheless, the iron rig of
some years ago was a worthy predecessor in its main
features of the Gold Ring which has just been creating
such a wonderful furore in America. To parallel the
excitement by anything that has happened in this country,
we must go back to the railway period, one cf the few
occasions on which the ordinary aspect of English society
was really disturbed by the vicissitudes of pursuits usually
left to those professionally engaged in them. Crowds
filled the streets in the money quarter in New York, and
in every great city in the lTnion. It i' s:tid that t‘'le-
graph wires were fused by the heat uf the currents which
passed through them, and it is certain that the bank stairs
broke down beneath the extraordinary load of work
which the complicated transactions golog on cast upon
them. Only in the gr-eat railway smash of 1647
has there been any parallel to these days in New
York when the Gold Exchange liank—or Clearing House
--held at the mercy of a mesh of unascertainable totals
the solvency of every man directly or indirectly concerned
with the price of money. .It is stated as a literal fact that
numbers of men did not know whether they were rich or
ruined, even long after the action of the Government had
brought the Gold Rite; to a collapse. The Gold Ring has
ended-in loss and ruin to individuals, as the railway mania
in England ended, simply because it was unnatural, base
less, and fictitious gambling, in which nothing was pro-
duced, and no production was encouraged. Real money-
making is not done in this way, as Englishmen and
Americans well know, though both Englishmen and
Americans aro liable to be entrapped into sudden out►
bursts of speculative mania.