The Sun.
London, England, 1869-12-01 00:00:00

HIE SUN, LONDON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, DECEMBER 1,
_1869.

hitherto used pressure in behalf of the official candi-
dates. The prefects and sub-prefects have been ex-
ceedingly zealous, and as their power is
much greater than that of the mayors, they
have been proportionately more successful. We
imagine that the French people will not be content
until official candidates are abolished altogether.
They are the one real grievance which gives the
lie to the EMPEROR every time that he declares he is the
elect of the nation. Another most important reform
which is not announced in the imperial manifesto,
but which will certainly be demanded, is responsible
ministerial Government. This was to a certain
degree conceded by the declaration of June 28th, to
which the E3IPEROR refers : but throughout his
present speech there is little if any indication that he
means to grant it now. Five months ago he endea-
voured to reconcile ministerial responsibility with
personal government by stating that Ministers would
be responsible both to him and to the Chambers. This
impracticable idea is involved in the manifesto now
before us. "For order /will answer," says the EMPEROR,
and again "aid Ine, gentlemen, to save liberty." There
is nothing here to imply that if the Corps Ldgislatif
will not accede to his request he will not take the
matter into his own hand. It remains to be seen if
he can. We incline to think that he cannot, and
that the nation which has shown during
the last few weeks marvellous powers of
self-restraint may be able to work out its
own salvation both from anarchy and from despotism,
and thus remove from it the old reproach which
once attached to it, and which our Poet-Laureate
embodied in one line, when he spoke of "The red-
fool fury of the Seine."

Concerning the other measures promised by the
EMPEROR there is little need to speak. It is some-
thing, no doubt, that he means to maintain Free
Trade, and this announcement is the more satisfactory
just now that the ten years' term for which the
Anglo-French Commercial Treaty was passed is
nearly at an end, and there is in both countries an
agitation for protection. The promise to develope
education is praiseworthy, considering that imperialism
is strongest where education is most backward, and
republicanism is strongest where education is most
advanced. Savings banks, reorganisation of the octroi,
the regulation of infant labour, and such like measures
are all unexceptionable. Only they will not in them-
selves suffice to meet the present crisis. That
demands changes which the EMPEROR has not yet
promised, but which he will have to grant if he means
to save his throne.

THERE is an amazing difference between a reform
from within and a reform from without. The second
is usually unsatisfactory. It is either a compromise
made in order to propitiate powerful opposition,
or it is a revolution effected by those who
have a giant's strength and tyrannously use
it like a giant. A. reform from within, when
heartily and honestly carried on is the best of all
reforms. Unfortunately it is very rare. The mem-
bers of the body which it is proposed to reform very
seldom see any reason for change. It is generally
necessary to override their opposition with more or
less of violence. For this cause the meeting held at
Cambridge on Monday, in order to consider
the abolition of university tests is one of the
most cheering incidents that has taken place for
a long time. Cambridge has more than once lately
taken the lead in the path of progress. It set
an example to the older University with regard
to the admission of women to the advantages
of university teaching, and it is now doing so with
regard to the admission of Dissenters. Be-
lieving as we do that the universities are
national institutions, and ought to be the
great centres of instruction for the whole nation,
without regard to creed, we rejoice at a step which
will do more almost than anything else could do to
reconcile Nonconformists with the English Church.
When such men as the Master of Trinity and the
Master of St. John's, the two principal colleges of
Cambridge, declare that Sir JOHN COLERIDGE'S bill is
objectionable, not because it goes too far, but because it
does not go far enough—not because it is compul-
sory, but because it is only permissive, we may be
sure that the end is not far off, and that the happy
time is at hand when the universities will be, as they
were intended to be, centres and sources of sweetness
and light to the whole people.

I'HE result of the Board of Trade inquiry into the
loss of the Carnatic is another example of a
popular decision being set aside by an
accurate investigation. The court acquitted the
captain of the charge upon which public opinion very
generally condemned him ; and punished him for
an act of carelessness which has excited little atten-

tion. The general impression was that the captain
was blameable for events which occurred
after his vessel had struck ; the inquiry has
shewn pretty clearly that the loss ought not
to have occurred at all, but that the conduct of the
commander after the first catastrophe was not such
as to render him liable to punishment. The
leading facts of the case may be briefly re-
counted. The Carnatic, one of the Peninsular
and Oriental Company's fleet, left Suez on the 12th
of September under the command of Captain JONES,
with thirty-four passengers and a crew of 176 men
on board. On the next day, in calm and clear weather,
she struck on a coral reef near Shadwan Island,
at the further end of the Gulf of Suez. Every
effort was made throughout the remainder of the
day and part of the next to get the vessel off, the
boats being provisioned and held in readiness. By
Tuesday forenoon the attempt to save the vessel was
found hopeless, and the work of getting the passen-
gers and crew into the boats was commenced. About
sixty of the whole number had been safely trans-
ferred when a terrible calamity occurred. The Car-
natic slid broadside off the reef, the starboard side
and stern being high in air, and the deck sloping at
an angle of sixty or seventy degrees. Most of the
crew were rescued from this perilous position on an
inclined plane, but twenty-six slipped into the
!water and were drowned.

In giving their decision upon this catastrophe the
court were guided by that distinction between errors
of judgment and carelessness which ought always to
have weight in such cases. Some of the passengers
urged that any attempt to save the ship
was clearly hopeless, and that Captain JONES
ought to have got the passengers into the
boats at once. They declared that they expressed
this opinion at the time. But the court held that
though the passengers were right and the commander
wrong, the question between them was only one of
judgment. Captain JONES had confidence in the
strength of his ship, and in his ability to get her off.
,lie, therefore, took what precautions he thought
needful and persevered to the last. He was in error,
but his mistake was not of a nature to call for censure

or punishment. It is for the original error,
the running of the ship upon the reef,
that the commander has been condemned, ' and
suspended for nine months. On this count the court
held that he had been guilty of inexcusable care-
lessness. There was no fog, there was no
storm, and the position of the reef was well
known. Why, then, did the captain allow
his ship to founder in this way ? The
truth is that no observitions were taken. The sur-
rounding objects were all distinct both before and
after the shock, and if Captain JONES had taken a
single bearing of a revolving light on Jubal Island, he
would at once have perceived the error of his
course. lle did perceive it—when the clanger was
not to be averted. The commander pleads that he
was taken out of his course by some " disturbing
currents ;" but if he had taken an observation, neither
a current nor any other mysterious influence would
have led to the disaster. In condemning the
captain for this carelessness, the court has only acted
up to the necessary requirements of jus-
tice. There are many persons,
,indeed, who
hold that the sentence is too light ; that
the captain was guilty of culpable error both before
• and after the stranding ; that, in fact, by remaining

so long on the ship he sheaved greater solicitude for
its safety than for the lives of the passengers. There
is much to be said in support of this view. But
nothing can be more dangerous in every sense than
punishment for errors of judgment, and it is only in
such extreme cases that such inflictions can be justified.
The court took the safest course, and, one with
which no fault can be found.

POLICE IN2ELLIGEIVCE.-Ihis Day.

WESTMINSTER.

ROBBERY AND ASSAULT.—CharIes Davis and Thomas
White, hawkers, were charged with stealing 40 yards of
flannel, value 275., the goods of John Stone, and they
were further charged with assaulting Walter Barrell and
Edward Shaw, detective constables of the B division.
The prisoners were watched by the officers, and were
seen to cut the flannel away from the cord that held it to
the prosecutor's door. The detectives each collared one,
and a determined resistance was commenced, in which
White was soon overpowered by Shaw, and Barrell was
roughly handled by Davis and kicked in a dangerous
part.
They had nothing to say, and were remanded for in-
quiries.

THE IfI.NC, OF THE BELGIANS.

On Tuesday the Lerd. Mayor of London rcceiveg
a letter from the Earl of Clarendon, Secretary for Foreign
Affairs, enclosing a copy of a telegram sent by his Majesty
the King of the Belgians to the British Minister at Brus-
sels on the night of Wednesday last. The telegram, which
was in French, was to this effect I could not wait till
my return ;home to let you know how much I have
been touched by the sympathetic addresses presented to
me this morning, and by the reception accorded to rue at
the Mansion House."

MR. BRIGHT AND THE WARWICKSHIRE
FARMER.

The Board of Trade requires annual returns from agri-
culturists of the statistics of their ground crops, acreage,
&c. A Warwickshire farmer the other day returned the
printed foam to Somerset House, filled in with the follow-
ing remark, in lieu of the statistics required:—
"John Bright's instruction to farmers in ono of his
speeches was `not to meddle with figures, but to watch
the sunshine and showers at home, and not bother the
Government with their affairs.' I will take his advice in
this matter.—T. MANN. Radway, 1869."