The Sun.
London, England, 1869-11-24 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

lomatic service in connec-
tion with Mr. Laya:c1:::: reccnt appointment, and affirms
that the first thing to be considered in diplomacy is, or
ought to be, business ; the second is state; the last,
economy. An Ambassador or any head of Legation, if he
no longer need go forth as a Sovereign to another
Sovereign's Court, ought at least to be on a par with the
highest subjects of that Court. Any attempt at saving,
any suspicion of meanness, detracts from his own or
his country's character. A diplomatist loses nothing
by being in rank, wealth, and manners a grand
seigneur. If accredited to Democratic States especially,
the " guinea stamp is valued as much as the gold.
We do not, however, mean to deny that great and impor-
tant economies might be introduced into our foreign
Diplomacy, like the army and like politics, in
our country should be a career, not a profession. An am-
bassador should certainly not be driven to the necessity
of srending a fortune of his own ; but he ought hardly to
asrii-e to make one. These remarks, however, apply only
to rei.-!::,ions cf the highest rank, and it is, in our opinion,
merely in the le::;ations to the minor States that reduction
should be iatrof:tv:ed. There arc hardly more than seven
or eight States in Europe with which real internationilbusi-
nesa need Le carried on. We admit that a policy of absolute
non-intervention would not be becoming, expedient, or even
safe for this. country. We are interested in the world's
peace, and we must labour at maintaining it. We are
convinced that diplomacy has its true uses, and we must
shrink from no outlay that may keep it up to its highest
efficiency. But, in order that the plant may live and
thrive and bear fruit, we must lop off its parasitic
branches. We want diplomacy, like any other branch of
the public service, to be a career and n sinecure. Ten
thousand pounds may not be too much for a Paris Embassy;
but we would grudge one-tenth of that sum for a Pumper-
nikel Legation.

ar

service.

The Daily News remarks that while the French elections
engage the attention of Europe, the Irish elections may
profitably occupy the people of the British Isles. Water-
ford has declined to avail itself of the services of Mr.
Bernal Osborne. It has preferred Sir Henry Winston
Barron as its representative in Parliament. We cannot
rebuke its choice of a Catholic Irish gentleman, of consis-
tent Liberal opinions in politics, who represented Water-
ford in the first Parliament summoned after the Reform
Act of 1832, and who has continued to do so at intervals
since. Lord Grey's Bill gave him the seat of which
the Bill known, on the sic vos non vollis principle as
Mr. Disraeli's has not permanently deprived him. The
venerable Baronet is still in better form, and more
thoroughly.np to his work than many younger men ; and
" auld lang syne" should count for something. Still we
hewail our Osborne. His presence in the House of
Commons would have enlivened the season; and been one
of its intellectual features, like the new poem which Mr.
Tennyson promises us, and the serial story which we look
for, simultaneously with the green leaves of spring, from
Mr. Dickens. The Rev. Mr. Ryan, in proposing one of the
candidates for Tipperary, who was apparently put
forward only to be withdrawn, used remark-
able language. • Mr. Ryan is beyond the reach
of apology ; but the fact that in a crowded
meeting such language as his is received with
applause and cries of "bravo," instead of with a storm of
execrations, is a fact too momentous for rhetorical denun-
ciation. For the safety and good government of England,
Ireland, or that part of it which listens to the Rev. Mr.
Ryan and his fellows, must be brought to its right mind.
In private asylums, humane methods have superseded the
use of the chain and the lash. So, with regard to the Irish
lunacy, while we restrain the patients, by force, if neces-
sary, from doing injury to them.3elvel and to others; the
cure must be sought in a gentle, but firm and just system
Of treatment. Violence find coercion have been tried in

vain,

The Standard thinks that he must be a very poor, narrow-
minded sort of Christian who looks coldly upon " The
Twelve Days' Mission." It appears to have originated
with the High Church party, and not a few of the ritualistic

clergy are identified with it ; but no one who regards the
spiritual condition of the metropolis, and takes into
account the mass of downright heathenism which exists in
our very midst, can refuse to admit that some special effort
to bring home the truths of religion to the masses was
imperatively called for. In every quarter of London there

are districts where Christianity and its teaching are as
practically ignored as they are among the wildest

savages who ever engaged the labours of our missionaries.

The Sunday services and week-day lectures are open all
the year round, buS fail to attract some people, and hence
it is necessary to go out of the beaten track to get hold of
them. " The Twelve Days' Mission," with its round of
short services and stirring sermons, going on from the
early morning to, in some cases, past midnight, seems to
be just the kind of "attraction" which is needed, and what-
ever may be the measure of its success, it is certainly a

noble enterprise. The staid sobriety and impassiveness of
demeanour which characterise the Sunday lecture would
fail to win the attention of the kind of people who have
been brought within hearing distance of the pulpit during
the last few days, posssbly for the first time in their
lives. We are glad to hear that, as tho result of a com-

parison of notes, the clergy who have been connected with
this work see every reason to be satisfied with the measure
of success which has attonded it. The Roman Church,
with its church.doors ever standing open, and Dissent with
its frequent week-day occasions of worship and edification,
set an example which the Church of England would do
well to study and profit by. Can anything be more mon-
strous than that it should be regarded as something
"special" that the two grandest fanes in the metropolis,
St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey, should be thrown open
for services "for the people" on Sunday evenings? Is it
not a scandal, rather, that they should be closed on these
evenings for eight months out of the twelve ?

The Telegraph says that melancholy tidings come to us
from Cornwall. No giant, it is true, has been reported off
St. Michael's Mount ; no rumours are afloat as to there
being anything the matter with Trelawny—rumours which
would at once incite the "thirty thousand under ground"
to " know the reason why." The news from the country of
Tre, Pol, and Pen is simply to the effect that large num-
hers of Cornish miners, mostly of the better class, continue
to leave their native land for foreign parts in consequence
of the low rate of wages at home. Nearly fifty superior
workmen aro going otet to Brazil and Peru ; and two or
three of the Australian emigration agents' lists are again
filled. Nothing, it is alleged, is done to check this exodus
of the most intelligent among the Cornish miners. It is
a sad thing, we are told, that t':e "bone and sinew" of the
country should be thrust from its shores by slack trade or
low wages; but, in the case of the Cornish miners, at lelst,
a little reflection will considerably modify such regrets. In
the first place, they will go to foreign parts, because in dis-
tant lands they can command wages which, in comparison
with their earnings in England, may be termed splendid.
High up in Mexico, in the rocky fastnesses of the Real
del Monte, the great silver mines of the Aztec land—high
up at Pachuca and Belasco and Regla—may be found
little villages of Cornishmen employed as "gangers"
and miners in the surrounding shafts and adita.
Their wives and children share their lot ; their
homes are trim and comfortable ; and although the
men generally wear the Mexican costume, crino-
lines and chignons flourish among the feminine part of the
community. They have their churches in the mountains,
although they are often obliged to ride thither with
swords by their sides, pistols in their holsters, and Sharp's
rifles across their saddle-bows. These good fellows work
very hard; but they make money—a great deal of it—and
they come back. There are few towns in the West of Eng-
land without some of these returned emigrants, living on

a snug independence, and astounding the gossips of the
chimney-corner with terrible tales of encounters with
guerrilleros and. ladrones. Cornwall is an odd corner of
our island, but the Cornishmen love it very dearly, and
rarely indeed do they "go out foreign" without enter-
taining hopes of returning to the oldest county of Old
England.

The Herald thinks there are manifold objections to any
measures which would diminish the power of the Irish
landlords over their estates. In the interests of Ireland
generally, and of the Irish peasantry themselves, it is not
wise to deprive the landlord of control over his own
estate. Nothing but that control could save us from
indefinite sub-letting, sub-division, over-crowding, and
a return to the state of things which had grown up
in the generations preceding the famine, ending inevi-
tably in the return of the famine itself. It is surely
the paramount interest of the Irish people not that A,
B, and C should remain farmers instead of labouring
for D, but that the soil should produce as much food per
snan as possible. Now this can never be best attained
under a system of minute farms ; and in Ireland, above all
countries, it requires considerable lictlin2,-s, capital, skill,
and the convey sion of great- Fart cf the present wretched
and unprcatable arable land into good pasture. I:•cland is
meant by nature to be a grcat Lrazing r.nd cattle-raising
country, not a land of wheat and coin, and the lug .s
amount of food can be raisA by turning the soil t
that purpose for which it is beat fitted. The more foo,l
the higher the wages of labour, and the more
prosperous the people at large. Anything that tails to
stereotype the present distribution and occupation of the
soil tends to prevent this best use of it, and to keep the
people poor and miserable; and therefore any legislation
looking to fixing as many tenants as possible for as long a
time as possible in their present hold;ngs—and this is the
real meaning of all proposed limitations on the landlord's
powers over the soil—really aims at. preventing the enrich-
nient'of the country, and perpetuating the present poverty
and wreigkeAniaLyf a very large proportion of the
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