The Sun.
London, England, 1869-09-17 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC jOURITALI3.

The Times observes that the Revivers of British Indus-
•try, as it appears the Neo-Protectionists style themselves
assert that Free Trade is answerable for the reduction of
one in every twenty in the population to pauperism, and
they declare that the present want of work is the result of
the same "gigantic mistake." Mr. Ashworth meets the
first charge by showing that for several years prior to the
adoption of a Free Trade policy one man in every eleven
was a pauper. In answer to the second he adduces figures
which prove that in the last twenty-one years the quantity
of cotton consumed in Lancashire has been doubled, and
that our export trade altogether has doubled in the last
fourteen years. The result has necessarily been an enor-
mous increase in the demand for workmen, and a vast
general impetus to industry. We do not believe Free Trade
a delusion, notwithstanding all that the Revivers of British
industry have to say against it. The country at large
ought to have benefited by it, and it has benefitted. It is
possible to argue that tho fact of the acceptance of the
principle of Free Trade and the immense development of
British industry aro not cause and effect, but independent
effects of some unknown cause. But their injunction is
fatal, at all events, to the view that Free Trade is incom-
patible with a prosperous condition of industry, and the
co-existence of two such facts would generally be con-
sidered to warrant, further, a belief that there is a certain
necessary connexion between them. Nevertheless, cases
are conceivable in which there may be good reason for

charging Free Trade with having proved injurious to some
particular class or interest at some given time. Coventry
can hardly be said to have come scatheless out of the
change from a system of Protection. In other cases,

there may bo plausible, though not really substantial
grounds for accusing Freo Trade. The whole manufao-
turing interest, workmen as well as masters, would, doubt-
less, suffer from the restoration of a system of thorough
Protection, and it profits from a system of thorough Free
Trade. But by picking out a fragment of Free Trade
hero and rejecting one there, one or both sections of the
manufacturing class might call up before its imagination a
phase of Protection which would seem very conducive to
its own personal comfort and profit. To be allowed to buy
bread in the cheapest market, and yet have no French, or
Belgian, or Prussian competitor underbidding them when
they raised the price a their cotton or iron goods in their
own home markets, would be pleasant to the feelingP
of most manufacturers. This relief of their own special
industries from foreign competition is probably ajj
that is understood when a cry is raised, as now, tor Pro-
tection.
The Standard says that whether trades unions are good
or bad institutions on the whole is a question on
which very divergent opinions may be held. '„` Whether
the good which they may be capable of achieving can out.
weigh the evil which they certainly may bring about when

they grow tyrannical, as at Sheffield, is a question which
cannot yet be regarded, at all events, as proved conclu-
sively in the affirmative. But the British Legislature has
always been deeply reluctant to circumscribe individual
liberty in any way, and trade unions are still permitted to
form themselves and beguile their members only
too frequently into courses of action by which
they are bitterly the losers. Apart from the
objects of mutual assurance, which could be ful-
filled equally well by societies which were indifferently
composed of workmen belonging to all trades, the assis-
tance which societies may sometimes render to small
bodies of men over whom particular capitalists, taking ad-
vantage of local circumstances, may attempt to tyrannise
may be healthily exerted for the protection of the weak
It does not follow by any means that a society must always
be in the wrong because it supports a strike. Masters have
no monopoly of wisdom or justice, and may sometimes try
on their part, to overthrow the balance of supply and
demand in their own favour. In such cases a trades union
may be doing good service
.in supporting men, who, if left
unaided, might be compelled by poverty to submit to wrong:
Such support might bring an unjust and overgrasping
master to his senses and restore the balance of the labour
market at a smaller cost in suffering than it would be
ultimately re-established in any case by the operation of
the laissez-faire principle. Mit the power of trades unior
never ought to bo exerted except in cases of this nature
and when it is exerted not only to force masters int(
granting certain terms, but for the further and wholly
different purpose of forcing men to refuse them, the leader*
who thus misuse their functions are guilty of an act which
is detrimental to the true interests of all classes concerned;
hostile to the welfare of society at large, and which, ie
closely examined, will be found to differ in degree only,
and not in kind, from such outrages as those which were
revealed at Sheffield.

The Daily News quotes Mr. Helps, saying that " tbt
careless cruelty in the world almost outweighs the rest r
and the truth of the remark will be obvious to anyone
familiar with the habits of the lower classes. It would
seem as if they took delight in the misery or destruction
of the inferior animals—as if pity for bird or insect were
looked upon as maudlin and effeminate sentimentality
The humane man dis-glisted 'with sights of cruelty in the
streets of the City and in country lanes will naturally remon•
strate with the aggressors, but the look of blank stupidity
or the shout of insensate laughter with which his remon•
strance is received shows him but too plainly the
hopelessness of interference. Humanity is assuredly
not inherent in the race; gentleness and sympathy
are virtues to be gained only by special training, but the
want of this training in England, although chiefly con-
spicuous among the uneducated and ill-educated, is not
confined to them. While pigeon matches are so cruelly
conducted as at present ; while men of rank and education
can join in the wholesale slaughter of game and call it
sport ; while the epicure can allow of the slow torture of
animals in order to please his palate with an expensive
rarity; while men can be found who for mere pecuniary
considerations will subject domestic fowls and domestic
animals to protracted torment, it is idle to say that inhu-
manity is confined only to a section of the community
What, then, is the remedy for an evil so prevalent I
Men are often restrained from cruelty by the
fear of punishment, and the Society for tht
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals deserves a far
larger share of public support than it has hitherto
received. But although a cruel nature may be in some
measure restrained by the dread of exposure, it is obvious
that neither punishment nor the fear of it will eradicate
the taint. What is moat needed is a better state of
feeling, and this can only to produced by special education.
If "pity for the meanest thing that breathes" be not a
natural sentiment, it can certainly be taught, and we
think that Miss Burdett Coutts has done great good ser-
vice by suggesting in the columns of a contemporary that
there should be "systematic education for the humane
treatment of animals." In this inculcation of humanity
some of the best English poets hold a distinguished place
and there are passages in the works of Shakspere, or
Cowper, Wordsworth, and others, which might be taught
with advantage in all our public schools.

The Telegraph thinks that the shore-loving cynic who
said that a ship was " a floating prison with a chance of
being drowned," ought to have lived in these days of
petroleum, paraffin, nitro-glycerine, and other diabolical
compounds, which would have added a new horror to his
definition of the perils of landsmen afloat. Ho should have
read the account given by a passenger of the voyage made
by the steam-vessel Lady Wodehouse, on Saturday last,
from London to Portsmouth: In the interest of a public
resigned to drown at sea when Heavens so wills,
but decidely reluctant to be burned alive there,
we should like to know who shipped these
diabolical goods, and whether the conductors of the vessel
were aware of their character. The fact that the casks
and boxes were placed upon the deck, instead of being
stowed below with the rest of the freight, might make tts
suppose that the authorities of tho Lady Wodehouse did
know what the tubs and boxes contained. ' If that be so,
they lie open to the very gravest censure ; and the incident
will help to shew that, for the sake of freightage, steam
companies do not hesitate to carry the most dangerous
commodities. If the combustibles were shipped without
proper information, the owners of the vessel are
bound to proceed against the merchants who,
by such -an infraction of the law, nearly
consigned a number of their fellow-creatures to
a ghastly and cruel death. The fault must be fixed in
one of these two quarters ; for one party or the other is
guilty of exposing the passengers and crow to frightful
peril, and it must be discovered where the blame lies.
The law is already sufficiently clear and strong against
those who put inflammable or explosive material on board
a vessel without describing the consignment. It is certain,
however, that other regulations are systematically disre-
garded, and that either the law itself or the practice of
shipowners, affords room for the gravest criticism. The
case which we have cited is but one out of many, and the
whole dread subject imperatively challenges the attention
both of Parliament and the country.

It is not very long remarks the Post sinco Westminster
Abbey opened to receive all that was mortal of one of the
most illustrious statesmen of our time ; and it is a singular
coincidence that the next claimant for its honours, in
virtue of qualities which birth can assist but cannot
confer, is the wife whose love sustained her husband's
ambition with the devotion woman can alone supply.
They were both octogenarians when death severed them ,
but there was no decay in their affections, and no failing
either in the ambition of the husband—though it was not
an ambition after the common stamp—or in the desire of
the wife that it should be crowned. In all the varied his-
tories of this land of ours there are few pictures more
affecting than thatvd-The venerable lady who, night after
night, watched for the return of her husband from those politi-
cal contests, in which ho 1.1 to encounter the intellectual
virility of men much younger than himself, but in which
ho almost always came off victorious. Hope must many a
time have sat anxiously in her heart. Wo can imagine
few things more touching. They now meet again in the
repose of death. But whenever Lord Palmerston is men-
tioned as ono of the English, worthies of this century, it
will not bo forgotten how much ho owed to the love and to
the abilities of a wife in whom, as the personal beauty of
youth kded, the more lasting vigour of thq mind took its
place.