The Sun.
London, England, 1867-06-06 00:00:00

STATE OF TRADE.

MAxamsTrn, June 5. —The market for cotton
yarn and cloth has been steady to-day, at the
prices of yesterday, which were id to id. generally
higher than last week, and 3d. per piece on India
shirtings. Mulls, jacconets, and light goods gener-
ally for the same market are rather dearer. Buy-
ers seem hardly willing to follow the recent ad-
vances in price, and the market is consequently
quiet, but spinners and manufacturers are generally
so well supplied with contracts as to be exceedingly
firm in adhering to quotations. The deliveries to
agents and merchants on behalf of the contracts re-
ferred to are now becoming large, and there can be
no doubt that at present the out-turn from the
mills throughout the district is again becoming very
great. It is expected that the shipments of cotton
from India to the Ist of June, when the season
ended, have been very considerable, and telegrams
stating the total will be looked for with some
anxiety during the next few days.

BELFAST, 4th.—Flax : During the past week the
markets of this province were fairly suppled, with
the exception of Monaghan and Aughnacloy, the
cause of which is farmers holding over their flax
for the approaching fairs to be held during the pre-
sent week. Yarns : The improvement last an-
nounced has continuod unabated. Tows have been
in active request ; prices of these show indications
of upward tendency. Stocks are slightly decreased.
Linens, brown, powerloom : No improvement in
this department to announce, except for drills.
Cloth suitable for the foreign clothing trade and
light linens for bleaching. Handloom : Light
linens for bleaching and linen handkerchiefs con-
tinue in fair request; prices of the latter are steady,
manufacturers demand higher rates for the former.
Bleached and finished Linens : Home trade as last
reported. Improvement in the trade with the Con-
tinent has been announced. Stocks are large, espe-
cially of coarse goods.
NoTTING.umt, sth.—The lace trade has under-
gone very little change since our last report. All
branches continue unusually dull, especially for the
time of the year, and at present not much prospect
is held out of a favourable alteration taking place.
A few houses are moderately active, but the gene-
rality have a great absence of orders on their books.
The weather, which is just now extremely change-
able, no doubt tends to restrict business; but it is
really difficult to understand why the summer trade
should be so uncommonly inactive. There seems a
fair demand for curtains, but trimmings, on the
other hand, are very heavy, and the same remark
►nay be applied to the shawl departments. A decent
number of orders are being received for hair nets,
but it is a question whether manufacturers obtain
anything like a proportionate profit from the goods.
Yarns continue about the same, and their firmness
in some degree tends to keep the trade dull. In the
hosiery branches very little alteration has occurred
during the week ; orders for the home and foreign
markets are coming in rather actively, and there is
a fair demand for all light description of goods.

PI?OFESSOR GOLDTVIN 25311TH ON "TIM

DERBY."

Mr. Goldwin Smith has addressed the following
letter to the Manchester Examiner :—" Sir , —The
correspondent of one of the journals, describing the
Derby, says that among the cheering which hailed
the victor 1 was to be heard here and there a sound,
half scream, half sob, telling a tale of heavy loss, if
not of absolute ruin.' Subsequent report seems to
confirm the tale. This is the spectacle which Lord
Palmerston compared to the Isthmian games. It is
about as like the Isthmian games as the character of
Lord Palmerston was like the character, cast in a
narrow but genuine and noble mould, of the Greek
hero. The reward of the victor at the Isthmian
games was a crown of leaves ;- this, with an inscrip-
tion on enduring marble in his city, and the morn
enduring monument of Pindar's verse. Of betting,
believe we have no record. If any sobs and
screams mingled with the exultation of victory, they
told only of the honourable agony of defeat. If a
parallel is to be sought in antiquity for theSe sports
of ours, it should be sought rather in the delirious
and degraded passions of the Reartn circus in
"6, ul ru.hno. it. la JIL, 1-
less to say that this is horse-racing no longer.
It is a gigantic system, or rather frenzy, of
national gambling. The horses are no more
than the two straws pulled from a haystack, or
the two drops of rain running together, down
the window-pane, on which, for want of anything
better, gamblers have been known to stake their
money. The whole kingdom at the approach of the
Derby becomes a gambling table, at which men who
never saw a horserace, who could not tell the points
of a horse, who would not know Hermit from a
hack, and even women and boys, hasten to taste the
vile delight of gambling, often to their demoralisa-
tion, sometimes to their ruin. As to the pretence
of keeping up the breed of horses, it is needless to
say that it is about as valid and about as sincere as
the defence of fox-hunting on the ground that it
clears the country of vermin. Gambling—gambling,
every year more extensive, every year for higher
stakes, as the need of excitement increases—this is
now the grand national amusement, and its crisis is
the great national event. The men of the Common-
wealth put a stop to bear-baiting and the other
sports' of that time. This is set down as a proof
of their moroseness, and Macaulay says, in his epi-
grammatic way, that the bear-baiting was put down
not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it
gave pleasure to the spectators. Vane or Cromwell
would probably have answered that it was not be-
cause it gave pleasUre, but because the pleasure
which it gave was an ignoble, unmanly, and degrad-
ing pleasure, unworthy alike of a Christian and of
An English citizen. Those days, however, are gone
by. Nobody would now propose to interfere legally
with any amusement not contrary to public order
or decency. We have learnt that a censorship of
manners in attempting to cure throws in the disease.
If, indeed, as the Tinges tells us, the aristocracy, our
here litary legislators, are gambling away their
estates and impoverishing their titles, it may become
necessary that the State should step in for the pro-
tection of hereditary wisdom. But otherwise, as
offences against Heaven must be left to the jurisdic-
tion of Heaven, so moral diseases must be left to
moral cures. It is hard to meet in any moral
philosopher with a good diagnosis of the
moral malady of gambling, or a good pre-
scription for its cure. Moral philosophers oc-
cupy themselves too much with general senti-
ments and theories, too little with the practical exa-
mination and treatment of the infirmities to which
humanity is heir ; they are too much of the preacher
and essayist, too little of the physician. There
seems to be no principle or propensity in human
nature in itself evil ; our vices are the depravations
or over-excitements of natural tendencies and de-
sires. The feeling of hope, or whatever it is that
leads its to venture and aspire, is capable, I pre-
sume, like other feelings, of being over-excited by
artificial stimulants, such as the gambling table or
the betting ring affords. Or perhaps a lower but
more natural explanation may be found in• the
love of gain, combined with the dislike of
labour. But one thing seems certain, that
the passion for gambling prevails only in the
absence of any worthy object of interest or
desire. A man whose mind was full of manly
aspirations, or whose heart was occupied by strong
and pure affections, would not be seen waiting at
the telegraph office, with agony in his face, for the
news of a horse race, or heard screaming and sob-
bing at Epsom because one animal had got its head
before another. The clergymen and moralists who
are Lamenting and denouncing this base mania will
lied that in the case of the individual they will do
little by attacking it directly. The only way of ex-
pelling the unhealthy and immoral interest is by im-
planting an interest .which is healthy and moral.
And as with the individual, so it is with the nation.
Give us a Parliament capable of being the organ of
national aspiration and effort, let great questions be
once more handled in earnest by great men, let our
political chiefs once more display the qualities which
touch a nation's heart, and the soul of England
will soon cease to be absorbed by a horse race. That
it should be so absorbed at present is not wonder-
ful. I see in the shop windows a caricature the form
of which is itself taken from the race-course, A

jockey, whose looks bespeak him the most knavish
of his tribe, is distancing his less cunning rivals in a
race. This is a caricature of the Reform struggle
in the House of Commons, a caricature, no ; but a
simple picture of the humiliating reality. On the
greatest of all national questions this Parliament,
which Mr. Lowe calls heroic, not only allows itself,
but is apparently pleased to be ridden by cajolery
and fraud ; and the victory in legislation belongs to
him who is most familiar with the tricks of the turf
and most unscrupulous in practising them. Who
can blame the nation for turning its mini to a more
genuine and purer object of interest in a rac::-
horse?—l ant, &c. a G-OLDWIN SMITH."