The Sun.
London, England, 1860-05-01 00:00:00

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THE SUN.
LONDON, TUESDAY, MAY 1, 1860.

For what earthly purpose is the business of the
country suspended for mere speech-making ? II it
be agreed that the bill of the Government is to be
read a second time, why do second-rate speakers
thus waste time in the merest iteration ? Not a
single new idea relieves the irksomeness of a whole
evening's discussion, and yet members are doomed
to listen and newspapers to print what is to hare
no practical result whatever. The House of Com-
mons prides itself on being the most businesslike
assembly in the world; but we certainly see nothing
very businesslike in occupying the public time with
some threescore speeches when what is to be done
has been already settled. To us this looks much
more like the conversation or gossip of a tea party
than the proceedings of a businesslike legislative
assembly.

Some " dodge," some " cunning tactics," are na-
turally suspected. They were pretty successful on
the Church•rate Abolition Bill; it is naturally
supposed that they may be resorted to again.
Rumours of all kinds begin to circulate. A morn-
ing contemporary, never behind hand with " assur-
ances on the best authority," has such an assurance
that Lord JOIN RUSSELL'S franchise is to collapse
into a £l6 one for the counties and an £8 one for
the boroughs. Another rumour furnished to our-
selves by a very good authority--we will not say
an infallible one is, that it is determined
to delay the passing of the bill till the registration
in force under the existing Act has been completed.
It is considered that by this means Parliament
cannot be dissolved at the end of this session, as the
old registration would be the one in force, and it
would be absurd to elect a Parliament by the old
constituency while a more limited one was still on
the registers. If anything like this be the real
meaning of the inexcusable waste of time to which
the public business is now subjected, better far to
announce at once that the passing of the bill should
not be followed by an immediate dissolu-
tion. The whole country knows that this would be
a concession most agreeable to members, who have
so recently incurred expense more or less heavy for
their• seats. Nor would it be so very objectionable.
If it did but secure the passing of the bill, the pre-
sent members would feel the full effect immediately
of the enlarged number of constituents to whom
they must appeal next time. It could not be long
before they rrnist do so, and we can sce no great
harm likely to result to the Liberal cause from the
present memb, ers having a year's grace before they
gave an account of their stewardship before the
new as well as the old auditors.

One of the naost common grounds on which the
Government Rill is assailed is that, if any predomi-
nance of one class over another is permitted, our
representation is gone. Sir E. B. LYTTON set

forth the objection with all the grace of his oratory,
and humbler speakers of all grades have brought it

up again and again. But now, looking at the
whole representation of the country in the Legisla-
ture—including, as it does, Queen,. Lords, -and
Commons—has no class hitherto enjoyed an un-
questionable ascendancy ? If so, what class ?
Will it for a moment be denied that it is the very
class which uses this argument P Aristocracy says
—Let no class predominate. Then the reply is—
Give us an elective House of Peers, freely chosen
by appropriate constituencies of the whole people.
It is surely the height of absurdity for Ray mem-
ber of the privileged classes to hold such language
as this. Mr. BRIGHT was taken to task last
night for saying out of the house respecting
the aristocracy what he does not say in the house.
We leave him to assign what reason he thinks best
for his silence in one place, but we do not see how
those who denounce class predominance can defend
a House of Lords composed of the great territorial
landlords of the country. We are not attacking
such an institution, but we do assert that those who
defend it had better not generalise their argument
against the predominance of a class in the Legis-
lature.

The statistics of the Government were, of course,
attacked forthe twentieth time, no doubt from kind-
ness to members who wished to take a few minutes'
nap. The subject must remain where it was; it is
plain that the Government returns were carefully
and honestly prepared, and no private information
will be relied on so much by the public generally.
But it is not a question of numbers—it is a ques-
tion how far householders ought to be entrusted
with the franchise. Now, in the times
of Chartism, an advanced Liberal was thought
very moderate who went no further than
household suffrage; and what proportion of house-
holders do the public suppose will be enfranchised
by the bill ?—as nearly as may be, just one in four.
The inhabited houses of the kingdom amounting to
4,800,000, the proposed constituency to 1,200,000,
surely one in four of the householders of the coun-
try, and one in six or seven of the adult males, need
alarm no reasonable man with the fear of a flood of
democracy.
We heard again last night, as we have heard
before, of the extension being chiefly amongst the
most corruptible class. We are by no means sure
of that. The class which works for wages is not
at all more venal than that of small tradesmen—we
should say less so. They are less frequently per-
haps in difficulty and debt, accustomed to live on
their week's wages, and to know no care beyond ;
they are perhaps less accessible to purely
sordid considerations than the class which
must depend for its livelihood on adroit
bargaining with the wholesale dealer and
with customers. But, be that as it may, what
shall we say to this indictment of the House of Com-
mons by itself. It is but saying in other words—we
—we, the uppermost classes, are uppermost in cor-
ruption also. There is such a deep taint on us,
that if you enlarge the constituencies you will en-
large also the circle to which our corruption will
extend. Now, the infection is limited—do not ex-
pose more to the moral contamination of our im-
morality. The reply to all which arguments ought
to be the stern one—" Then, gentlemen, put down
bribery." The House of Commons, it has been
said again and again by its own members, is not
honest in his attempts to put down bribery. It
can do it and won't. The whole country knows it.
But of all the self•condemning impertinence we
ever heard of, nothing exceeds this—to look work-
lug menu iu the faun anti assign as a reason for
refusing them the franchise—" WE are so utterly
corrupt that if we grant you a vote we shall soon
corrupt you." Surely the working men would
reply—" Then, gentlemen, cease yourselves from
corruption, and don't deprive us of our rights
because of your depravity."

A pertinent inquiry was addressed last evening
in the House of Peers to her MAJESTY'S Govern-
ment, by Lord EBURY, with a view to the dis-
covery, if possible, of the future use designed for
what was formerly Smithfield Market—now like
many another vacated site in this great metropolis
—like the waste land on which erstwhile stood the
Fleet Prison—like the forlorn south-west corner of
Downing-street—a howling wilderness ! Year
after year we are talking about metropolitan im-
provements. Nay, for that matter we are session
after session voting large sums of money for carry-
ing them out. Yet still we seem only in many
instances to get just so far in that direction as the
pulling dowa of some doomed edifice—as the girdling
of the plot of ground on which it formerly stood, with
a barrier of hideous timber called " hoarding," the
very paradise of the bill-stickers ! Even in some
instances we are actually so far advanced towards
the realisation of our proposed metropolitan im-
provements as to have erected within the hoarding
an unsightly puzzle of ropes and poles in the shape
of a scaffolding. So far in a few exceptional in-
stances we have advanced—but no further. There
is the Guards' Testimonial, for example, at the junc-
tion of Waterloo place and Pall-mall—for months
past a very enigma of a pedestal to the thoughtful
foreigner ! A granite pile carefully caged inside
the customary scaffolding and the inevitable hoards
—that variegated chaos of advertisements, among
which we occasionally recognise the Sydenham
Trousers, either standing-at-ease, or sitting cross-
legged, or foot in stirrup going out for a canter-
Where again we behold the effigies, let us say, of a
group of exceedingly cadaverous men in a cellar
smacking their lips over glasses of very pale Cape
that would be about as palateable to the connoiseur
in vintages as the distillation of verjuice or the
squeezings of a gooseberry. Or where,
in a more generous mood of illustra-
tion, we have revealed to us the likeness
of a full-bodied elderly gentleman, sipping a bum-
per of fine fruity port, at 245. the dozen, with an
eye for the ruby and the beeswing, like a vignette
to the loyal song of the late Mr. BRAIIAM—a song
once so popular, now almost forgotten, " Here's a
health to the King, GOD bless him !" With the
exception of the advantages (sufficiently question-
able in themselves) thus gained in the shape of in-
formation from these familiar "posters"—there to
this day stands without use or ornament, on the
contrary, a very eyesore to the passerby—the Guards'
Memorial. Something, we were assured the other
day in the House of Commons, is really going to be put
there—one of these days ! That is our only conso-
lation. And in the same way we have been pro-
mised ♦aguely for many years (we can scarcely
recollect how many) those four granite lions at the
base of the NELSON column in Trafalgar-square—
that are still, so far as we can learn, no more sub-
stantial than S 3 many " baseless visions" in Sir
EDWIN LANDSEER'S zoology-crowded imagination.
The good time is coming, of course, when we shall
have the Lions—when we shall have the Guards
Testimonial—when the site of the Fleet Prison will
again be filed up, say, by a Grand Central Rail-
way Terminus—when the vast area, once known
as Smithfield Market will have been turned
to some use again as a dead meat market, or in
some other way rendered really conspicuous as one
of our veritable metropolitan improvements. While
we are yet waiting " a little longer" for the good

time that is to bring us these good things among
many others—that good time that is always coming
but never does come after all—let us at any rate
avail ourselves of the present opportunity. to put
for our own part just one little additional query to
the Right Hon. Gentleman the Minister of Public
Works, or whatever his official title may really be
—head of the Woods and Forests, Chief Commis-
sioner of Parks and Palaces. We ask Mr.
COWPER then very earnestly, very eagerly,
♦ery anxiously How much longer is the
northern extremity of the Serpentine, or as we
believe that part of it is called, the Long Water in
Kensington Gardens—How much longer is that
beautiful corner of Kensington Gardens, how much
longer is that hitherto charming margin of .the
Serpentine to be disfigured by the chaos of rubbish
littered together there by Mr. HAWKSLEY for the
purpose of carrying out his now solemnly tabooed
scheme of filtration ? We " pause for a reply."
The Committee of Inquiry in regard to Mr.
HAWKSLEY's scheme has sat and has reported. Its
decision is happily conclusive. It sets aside the absurd
project as worse than valueless. It puts a stop to the
further waste of those £17,000 voted last session
by the House of Commons in a moment of inexpli-
cable hallucination. The filter-beds, the force-
pumps, the drain-pipes, the gravel and the
cements, the urns and the statuary, bricks, and
mortar, and cement, and plaister of paris, and all
the rest of that trumpery—are now of no further
use whatever. Whenragain we ask, is all this rub-
bish to be carted away ? We want to see a good
riddance of it. We want a total clearance without
any more frivolous procrastination. We want again
to see there the green sward under the trees, the
water lapping upon the gravelled margin, the
rus in urbe, the sylvan solitude even within sight
and sound of the highway-traffic dividing Ken-
sington-gardens from Bayswater.

Is the Green Isle a part of the United Kingdom
or of the States of the Church ? Or is it preparing
itself to become a compensation to his Holiness for
the loss of the Romagna ? We do not remember
more than one MORTARA case in the POPE'S domi-
nions, though we may have overlooked others, and
still more may not have come before the eyes of all
Europe. But in Ireland not less than five Catholic
kidnappings have just occurred, and the strong arm
of the law and the ingenuity of detectives have as
yet failed to discover any clue to the whereabouts
of the children, or even of their captors. It seems
incredible, yet it must be true, as the facts have
come before the Court of Queen's Bench in Ireland,
and the judges have authorised the necessary legal
means to recover possession of the children.
In the first case, no fewer than four children were
carried off in the light of day, and from a railway
station ; and it seems to us unaccountable that the
railway officials should permit it, and, if they did,
that they can be held innocent. The mother, a
widow, whose husband, at least, was a member of
the Established Church, had sent the children by
railway to the care of the matron of a " Protestant
Orphanage." They were furnished with tickets, and
plaeed in charge of the guard. Now, surely, the
guard was either bound to see them safely into Mrs.
HARNETT'S (the matron) care, or to tell the mother
that he could not undertake the care of them.
Having arrived at the station, they were, however,
met by the matron, but against her will and con-
sent they were forced away from her into a covered
car—the railway servants, we presume, witnessing
the whole—and from that time to the present have
been detained by their captors.
The principal actor in this kidnapping case was
aiL attorney's clerk named M. ROBINS. He took
the children to a house in Galway, nine miles
off. On the 20th of March, Judge HAYES,
then on circuit there, ordered Mr. ROBINS
to produce the children. Instead of obey-
ing, the attorney's clerk, two days after took
took them to Dublin, and since then all clue to
them has been lost. Two men named O'CONNOR
aided in the business, and one of them has been
captured ; but ROBINS and the other O'CONNOR
still elude the search of the officers. In the other
case a Miss AYLWARD, " matroness of a religious
establishment," is the kidnapper. She will also
have to answer interrogatories, but declares she will
abide the consequences rather than produce the child.
We hope the consequences will be confinement, and
pretty rigorous confinement too, till the child is re•
stored to its proper guardians.
We know that religious party feeling is sadly
strong in Ireland yet, and while Orangemen, and
CULLENS, and MACHALES last, it is not likely to
be otherwise. If, however, either of the sects can-
not even refrain from such breaches of the peace as
abducting innocent children to train them up in
its dogmas, the law ought to deal with them more
severely even than with a PULLINGER himself.
Bad enough to steal money, but child stealing, of
all things in the world, can never be endured in a
free country. Laws cannot touch superstition,
and bigotry, but laws can surely prevent bigots
from stealing our bodies to save our souls.

His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge, as
General Commanding in Chief, held a levee yesterday, at
the Horse Guards, at which there was a full attendance of
officers. The duke is still suffering from gout.

The Duchess of Hamilton visited her Royal
Highness the Duchess of Kent yesterday at Buckingham
Palace.

DEATH OF THE DOWAGER LADY LANGFORD.—
Frances Dowager Lady Langford died at her 'residence in
Berkeley-square yesterday morning. Her ladyship was the
only daughter and heir of the Hon. Clotworthy Rowley,
brother of Hercules, Ist Viscount Langford. Her ladyship
married, in 1791, Clotworthy, first Baron Langford, great
grandfather of the present peer. Lady Langford was
mother of Colonel the Hon. R. Rowley, M.P., and of the
Hon. Mrs. Ferguson of Pitfour.
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER.— We are
sorry to state that the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone has
been unable since Thursday to attend to his parliamentary
duties in consequence of a severe cold. The right hon.
gentleman was somewhat better last evening.
ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON.—The anni-
versary meeting of this society, for the election of council
and officers for the ensuing year, was held at their house in
Hanover-square yesterday—Professor Owen in the chair.
Reports from the council and auditors were read, detailing
the proceedings of the society since the lasi anniversary.

CURRENCY OF INDIA.—The official correspondence
upon this subject has been laid before Parliament. It com-
prises the two Minutes of Mr. James Wilson—the one on the
establishment of a paper currency, and the other on the pro
posal to introduce a gold currency; which proposal Mr.
Wilson rejects. The former paper discusses at length the
subject of paper currency, and sketches a plan for its intro-
duction into India. The correspondence closes with Sir C.
Wood's despatch of the 26th of March last, expre'Ssing the
general concurrence of the Home Government in the out-
line of Mr. Wilson's plan, but reserving questions of detail
for further consideration. Especially Sir C. Wood stipu-
lates that the circulation of Government paper is to be kept
entirely distinct from any banking operations, the Govern-
ment establishment merely exchanging bullion for notes,
and the converse; and that the amount of notes issued on
Government securities must be confined to the limit (a fixed,
not a variable limit) which shall be found, on experience, to
be the smallest amount of notes necessary for the monetary
transactions of the country, all issues beyond to be upon
bullion in the bank. He observes that, as provision will
probably be made by arrangement with the Bank of Bengal
for the withdrawal of their notes from circulation, it migt
be safe to assume the amount of their issues as the minimum
circulation for Calcutta and the neighbouring. districts. He
considers that the notes had better be manufactured here,
and says that measures have been taken for forwarding a
supply to Calcutta early in the autumn ; the notes to be for
5, 10, 20, 50, 100, and 500 rupees. He gives a characteristic
suggestion that all the arrangements be devised with regard
to strict economy. This plan is to be adopted gradually,
beginning with Calcutta.

THE GROWING CROPS.—The young wheats are
considered to present, on the whole, a satisfactory appear-
ance in Norfolk, although__ the plant is backward and thin
in some plat s. Barley sowing has not yet been quite com-
pleted, but great progress has been made. The harvest
will probably, in consequence of the long continuance of
the winter and the backwardness of the spring, be rather
later than last year, but with fine weather and seasonable
showers vegetation will make rapid progress. A favour-
able change took place on Saturday, which was a bright,
mild day.