The Sun.
London, England, 1869-09-13 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF TRE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

The Times thinks the Cobden Club may soon find better
employment for themselves than dining together at Green-
wich. If the signs of the times are not delusive,- the
battle of Free-trade may have to be fought over again.
Associations for the restoration of Protection are actually
at work publishing their pamphlets and enrolling their
converts, like the Anti-Corn Law League thirty years
since. One of these effusions seems to have been sent to
Mr. Bright, who very naturally lost all patience at the
folly of the appeal. But the matter is not to be dismissed
so cavalierly. Nobody desires a duty on imported cotton,
for the simple reason that cotton is a raw material ; and
nobody asks for the old corn laws, because there are no
trade unions among the producers of corn. The imports
which our modern Protectionists would tax are imports
of manufactured articles, supposed to lower the value of
similar articles manufactured at home. These men would
oppose and prevent any legislation tending to reduce the
rate of wages current in a trade. They do, it is true,
with a very edifying unanimity, still declare for Free
Trade in corn, and they would atm keep bread cheap,
though they would make all other product dear. But
that is simply because the producers of corn are unre-
presented in trade combinations. Split the land up
into small holdings, with TracTe Unions among the cult:-
Tatars, and we shall soon hear of a demand for a duty on
corn. Mr. Bright is evidently disposed to regard the
whole agitation as a passing ferment, due to bad tradeand
incidental suffering. It will vanish, he thinks, under the
influence of a good harvest, and things will all come rounc
again with the improvement of business. We doubt it
that is a statesman's view of the case. The movement
was perceptible before trade was bad, and it has been con-
tinued with little or no reference to current affairs. The
principles of some new system, which, whether it be
Protectionism or Socialism, or both or neither, is, at any
rate, absolutely opposed to the system which Mr. Cobden
spent his life in preaching, are gravely advocated by
writers claiming, as all innovators do, to be in the van of
opinion.

Impatient as the British public habitually is of colonial
questions, it must now, says the Standard, be prepared to
face that first and most important of all colonial ques-
tions—are the colonies to remain a portion of the British
Em2ire cr not? The Ministry of Mr. Gladstone hate
apparently made up their minds to answer in the nega-
tive. Is it true that the great majority of Englishmen
arc agreed to accept this decision—to cut off their out-
lying limbs one after the other—to adopt as the highest
wisdom that which may be called the crustacean policy,
which consists in letting your members fall off lest they
should be violently captured ? It will be a bad day for
England—worse, perhaps, than for the colonies—if
ever this relationship is forgotten or made light of. If
anything ever does lead the colonists to alter their feeling
towards that country which it is their greatest pride tc
call " mother," in a sense which seems to be quite incom
prehensible to the Liberal journalists, it will be such
insolence as that which marks the whole attitu le of the
present Government towards the colonial claims. Either
England is or is not the "mother country" in the Impe.
rial system. Is the Times prepared to accept the
negative ? In that case the colonies must continue in one
of two relations. If they are not our children they must
either be allies or rivals. We shall not put the not
impossible hypothesis that at seine future day they may be
our enemies. Is it not, then, worth while to cultivate the
colonies if only as allies? But are we goingthe right way to
keep them friendly in the future by our manner of treating
them now? Even if we should prefer to cast them off as
children (for which we hold that there is not the smallest
reason), it is still our duty surely to let the separation
take place in such a way as not to leave behind it a feeling
of bad blood. What our Liberal statesmen seem to he
utterly unable to understand is, that there are two ways
of turning colonies into enemies; one by foiciug them to
remain in subjection as children after they Lad arrived at
their full stature, which was Lord North's plan ; and the
other, which is not less efficacious, by turning them off
abruptly while still children, which is Lord Granville':
method.

The Star, in discussing the Irish land question, says
there are many ways in which the State may interpose tc
regulate property, and we must once for ail grasp firmly
the idea that in all such dealings the State has absolute
right, and is limited only by what it may deem to be
expedient. We establish different rules in different locaii-
ties. In Kent the rule of descent is not primogeniture, but
equality of inheritance more strict than in France. In
some districts of our country it is not the eldest, Lut the
youngest son who by law inherits. Only a few years age
there were different rules of descent in the province of
Canterbury and York, and in the City of London there is
a special code of its own. But with all these arrangements
Parliament is perpetually interfering. And as in our
own country, so in India and our colonies, Persia
meat daily enacts such rules as it sees ht respect
leg inlittance, leasing, and every other disposition of
property. Thus we must recognie that property is the
creatin of the State, and subject always to State control.
For the benefit of society we agree to secure to a man
what he makes in his lifetime, but even that we take
from him when a higher benefit to society demands Ls
measure. For convenience we allow men to bequeath tc
others what they cannot carry with them to tile grave ; but
this privilege we are always modifying, or limiting, as we
think best for the general good. There is, therefore,
hardly any possible way of dealing with Irish land, Low
ever radical or extreme, which is not within the confessed
competence of the State, and which is not in principle
asserted by Parliament every session. We repeat that
we do not conceive that any measure which can justly be
called extreme will be required in the case of Ireland, but
it is absolutely necessary to remember that nothing can be
proposed which can be said to be beyond the power and
the right of Parliament to enact.

The Daily NCW3 declares that the Emperor of the
French has braced himself up for what possibly was the
greatest effort of his reign. When he embarked in the
Russian war, when he issued the manifesto which pro
nounced the liberation of Italy from the Alps to the
Adriatic, when he sent the expedition to Mexico.
when he entered on the Commercial Treaty with
England, and on other occasions, he did great and
decisive things. But these enterprises cost him
less probably than the resolution to undertake a
six miles journey from St. Cloud to Paris, and to make a
little circuit of the principal streets of the capital. On
Friday the Emperor went through a kind of trial by
ordeal. The irony of fortune was shewn in his melan.
choly progress. Even the bitterest enemies of the man
and of his rule must feel some pity for him. His posi
Lion resembles that of the infirm slaves whom Roman
masters exposed on an island of the Tiber to die
and who, shrinking from their fate, make convul
sive efforts to shew that they are yet good for something
that their strength is not wholly gone, and that they can
sustain the burthens laid upon them. The Emperor's
health is such that a recurrence of the disease in an ag
gravated form may take place at any time ; and in a
constitution thus impaired and weakened, ordinary
maladies, a cold or a fever, may be more than ordinarily
dangerous. This being so, the re-establishment of confi
dence in the durability of the present order of thing-
is impossible. No wonder, therefore, that every
now and then startling whispers are overheard, and
bold counsels are offered. The Emperor is recommended
to try the chance of another coup d'etat, and the state
stroke which is advised is abdication. What, however, is
there for him to abdicate ? At the last general election,
half France declared against Bonapartism, and many wbc
voted for the official candidates Toted merely for the
Government that was in possession, as they would have
done if it had been Republican, Legitimist, or Orleanist.
Not only is the man failing, but the system had disap
peared before him. The Emperor had renounced it. The
Senatus Consultum was its epitaph.

The Telegraph observes that in Lady Palmerston not
only a great lady, but a great political personage. has
passed away from the scene. Under our system of
parliamentary and party government, the influence
of the sex must always be. considerable ; and
no one in our day has exercised that influence
to a higher degree, or more for the public advantage
than the excellent woman whose death we record to-day.
Lady Palmerston's was a long and a brilliant life. Take
it for all in all, it might Le difficult to name any lady in
English society, or in our century, who has 'played a
more prominent part on the stage of public life in Eng
land. It requires as high and as rare qualities to be
the wife of a Prime Minister, as to be Prime Minister.
Lady Palmerston held her seals of office worthily.
The companion of the masculine worker, who shares hie
life, who knows his feelings in their full force and scope,
who has the intellect to comprehend his thoughts. becomes
the referee to whom his meditations are sullnitt ed in the
first instance. She lends him another mind, Ail] his own,
and wholly trusted, in which his own bleat are inirrinsed
with a living light, and his judinent is thus doubled and
corrected. Nor could any better (-Y.:lli:pie be giv;...n
we believe, than that of Palmerston, w hose
manly and cordial nature was so admirably
companioned. It is i(lle, then, to say that
women are without influence in political affairs.
So long as they have influence over the feelings and affec
tions of men—and we do not observe much falling off ir
that respect—so long can they be of supreme assistance Ix
their husbands. The sternest philosopher who ever medi
tated upon the destinies of. the race in a two-pair back,
might indulge a reasonable hope of working out Lis
theories in practice if he hail ail the women on his side.
No woman in this century has exercised this influence ir
a greater degree than the distinguished lady of whose
death we make sorrowful mention to-day. Lady Palmer
stun did good public work in her time ; we doubt if sh'
has left an enmity or grudge behind her.