The Sun.
London, England, 1858-08-06 00:00:00

'TIE SUN.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 6, 1858.

The Old and the New World are now united. The
magical link which permits the instantaneous com-
munication of intelligence has been completed within
a few days. We shall receive intelligence from New
York, and, indeed, from distant parts of the Union,
more speedily than from villages in Surrey or Mid-
dlesex. The directors of the company have achieved
a great triumph, and they may feel natural exulta-
tion at the extraordinary work just accomplished.
There is no " royal road" to success in such mat-
ters. It was a great experiment, in which they had
to pay very dearly for each of the painful lessons
which they received. They were trespassing on un-
known ground. There were irregularities that might
prove destructive to their undertaking—casualties
against which no vigilance could guard were not
only probable, but were freely predicted by those
prophets of evil who, CASSANDRA-like, always foresee
complete failure to every new project. They were
not, however, deterred by gloomy vaticinations, or
even the double failure. They knew that they had
done everything that could reasonably be anticipated,
that although they could not command success, they
unquestionably deserved it, and notwithstanding the
delays and losses sustained, the victory of science has
been decisive.

In our impression of yesterday we stated that the
Agamemnon had arrived at Valentia, and was about
to land the end of the cable. The Niag ira had at
the same time reached Trinity Bay, Newfoundland.
The miraculous undertaking was thus virtually ac-
complished. There were " good signals" between
the ships, as there soon will be between Europe and
America. The weather was, it appears, unfavourable,
but still the ship 3 engaged in the mighty work pur-
sued the even tenor of their way, and kept up corn-
municatians with their consorts, with a brief excep-
tion, which occurred on the first evening.
It was on the 18th July that the Agamemnon left
Queenstown, on what was by many considered the
forlorn hope of paying out the cable. It was said that
she was overweighted—that the cable was not pro-
perly adapted to the purpose, and that failure waa
inevitable. The directors, however, remained firm.
They knew that they had dome all that man could do,
and they left the result in the hands of Providence.

The croakers have, however, been for once com-
pletely foiled. Their favourite, " I told you so," is
no longer applicable. They cannot take credit for
what they pretend to be emanations of wisdom, but
which are really but ebullitions of spleen and male-
volence. They succeeded for a time in reducing the
quotations of the shares to about onc-fourth of their
actual value. But the ursine fraternity, who tres-
passed on that dangerous ground, have already hrd
ample cause to repent their temerity. It was a
" hornet's nest" that they upset, and they must take
the consequences of their own folly and recklessness.
It in not, however, as a mere matter of s. D.
that the question is to be considered. We must re-
gard it through a brighter medium. The two great
nations of the Anglo-Saxon race can now communicate
with each other at a moment's notice. Any tempo-
rary irritation may be soothed by a fair and cand id
explanation, and that which is for the benefit of both
countries may be promoted. Orden to purchase, or to
countermand, may be given at a moment's notice, and
gentlemen engaged in mercawile affairs can make
their calculations with safety when the element of
uncertainty is removed.

But it is even of greater importance in po-
litical matters. We shall not enter at any length
into that subject, but we may indicate the
nature of the case by a simple interrogatory " What
would it have been worth to Great Britain if the
tidings of the Indian mutiny could have been received
a month sooner, and the auxiliary force despatched
at a proportionably early period ?" It might not
have been possible to have averted the massacre at
Ca wnpore, or to have preserved the lives so dear to
all, from the brutal rage of NANA. SAME, but the
ordeal of the inmates of the Residency at Lucknow,
of the fugitives at Agra would have been shortened,
and many of the vacillating chiefs would have
been saved, by the speedy triumph of the British
1111119.

It may be said that there could be nothing of the
kind with America. That they are not in any degree
dependent on us, nor could our countrymen be endan-
gered by acts of barbarism such as those above referred
to. But there are many other modes in which dan-
gers may be averted, and these will be valuable be-
tween the Cabinets of St. James's and Washington.
If the glorious undertaking had cost ten times the
amount, and if there were not the expectation of a
single dividend, it would be worth the entire outlay.
Happily, however, the shareholders will receive at
least 6 per cent. on their investments, which, we
must confess, they have well merited by their judici-
ous and patriotic enterprise.

It is sufficiently significant, we take it, that the
latest Ministerial candidate who has made his ap-
pearance before his would-be constituents has ex-
pressed himself in the most unmistakeatile manner in
favour of reform generally. This, of course, is no
other than Mr. REKEwlefr, the proposed Derhyite
successor of the newly-created peer, the Right Hon
JOHN Lord CHURSTON, as representative of South
Devonshire. Mr. Kmorwieli has addressed the
electors of South Devon in language the most clear
and uncompromising. lie proclaims himself to be
at once a supporter of the Reform interest and a
supporter of Lord DERBY'S Administration. The two
things are rapidly becoming synonymous. The ,
changes actually effected already during the late

stormy session of the Imperial Legislature, under
the auspices of Lord DERBY'S Government, justify in
a remarkable manner the expectations indulged in
from the outset by the more advanced Liberals, to
the effect that the successors of Lord PALMERSTON
and his colleagues would prove thems& es to be
sooner or later the real, in place of the merely nomi-
nal, Reformers. Have they not done so distinctly
and that betimes ? Have they not positively ac-
ceded to the prevailing wish of the more rational
observers of the representative system by yielding
up frankly and without a murmur one of the once
dreaded points of the Charter ? The property quali-
fication of members hasgone to the winds, thanks to the
broad-minded and generous spirit of toleration in-
spiring the present Government. The Ballot may
follow. The Extension of the Franchise in all
human probability will be vouchsafed before much
longer. There yet possibly may come the long-
denied and much wished-for redistribution of the
Electoral Districts. " There be pippins and cheese
to come yet." The fruits of the session last past
were but a foretaste, let us hope and believe, of what
is destined to follow rapidly afterwards. The admis-
sion of the Jews to a seat in Parliament—the waiving
of the old need of £3OO a-year as the requisite
amount of property appertaining to every borough
member—the subversion of the double government
of the Indian Empire—the commencement of those
great labours of reorganisation which must nuw in-
evitably end in the overthrow of the Hudson's Bay
Company's monopoly, after an uninterrupted exist-
ence of two hundred years, counting from the date
of its inauguration in the reign of King CHARLES
IL—these, and a variety of minor, and many of them
most admirable, innovations inscribed upon the
statute book as acts twentieth and twenty-first
VICTORIA, chapters so and so, authorise the most
sanguine to look forward hopefully to the future
era, as reformers, of the thirteen Ministers of the
Crown, now presiding over the destinies of our vast
and complex empire.

As to the Reform Bill itself—not reform vaguely
and indefiinitely here and there, bit by bit reform at
this point and at that—as to the Reform of all re-
forms, the general reform of our Parliamentary
system, promised now for a long while past from year
to year : it is rational to expect, upon that point par-
ticularly, that the DERBY Ministry, for the very
reason that they among all our rulers have Not
promised it, will be the very men to bestow it,
unasked, upon the community. It will be remembered
distinctly how the Prime Minister, on acceding to
power, deprecated in the strongest terms the folly and
the indecorum of keeping the question of reform in the
abstract perpetually dangling before the eyes of the
population. It is certainly transforming JOIIN
BULL into a political TANTALUS. It is goading him
on continually to the idle task of yearly toiling up-
wards like another SISYPHUS, only to enjoy the me-
lancholy spectacle, at the close of each session, of
beholding his aspiring hopes borne down again to
the very depths of disappointment. Remembering
wide] protracted, undeniably painful, and even, be it
said, ignominious experience on the part of the nation
in regard to the question of Parliamentary Reform,
and remembering, too, how pityingly it was referred
to by the present Leader of her MAJESTY'S Govern-
ment, upon the occasion just particularised, we can-
not but feel that it is a misfortune not likely to be
repeated under the regime of the Earl of DERBY and
his colleagues. To them we look confidently for the
realisation, and not for thegratuitous and perverse dis-
appointment of the cherished hopes of the population.
Recollect how it was formerly in regard to other great
questions—to the question of the Repeal of the Corn
Laws, for exatnple, and to the question of Catholic
Emancipation. In each instance the work was accom-
plished, not by a Whig, but by a Tory Government.
The imposts upon foreign corn and other cereal im-
portations were removed under the Premiership
of Sir ROBERT PEEL, as the Roman Catholics had
been previously emancipated from all their grinding
political disabilities under the Premiership of the
Duke of WELLINGTON. Besides which, it is but just
and grateful to remember that the now Prime Minis-
ter of England, when occupying a seat in the House of
Commons, first of all as Mr. STANLEY and afterwards as
Lord STANLEY, personally and most materially aided
1 in carrying the majority of the great ameliorative
measures of those times, the Reform Bill itself, the
Test and:Corporation Acts, the enactment bestowing
the glorious boon of Negro Emancipation—assuredly
the very Statesman whose genius should thus ulti-
mately ripen into that of a Reforming First Lord of
the Treasury.

Ministers hold at this moment within their grasp
their own destinies as a long-lived or a short-lived
Administration. Will they falsify the hopes they
themselves have so clearly and generously encou-
raged ? It cannot be supposed for an instant that
administrators who have proved themselves already
in so many ways to be men endowed with more than
a merely ordinary share of sagacity should entertain
for one moment the notion of acting in a manner so
purblind and so insensate. They have given us
golden auguries—it yet remains that those auguries
should be fulfilled.

A deputation on the subject of the powers at pre-
sent exercised by the police had /In interview Milt Mr.
S cretary Walpole, at the Honie-ollice, yesterday. The
deputation consisted of the Hon. Henry 11,tkeley, M.P.,
Mr. P. O'Brien, M.P., Mr. F. M. Galena, M.P., Sir Henry
E. Austen, and Mr. W. Adam Smith.
Despatches were received yesterday, at the Colo-
nial-office, from the Governor of the Falkland Islands.
Despivehes were sent from the Colonial-al-ice, yesterday, to
the Governors of the Cape of Good Hope, Natal, and 6t.
Hel2na.

A Sheffield constituent of Mr. Roebuck has
taken him to task about the sudden illness which was
alleged as the reason for his non-attendance at the
meeting to be held at Manchester last Wednesday on
the subject of the Principalities, pointing out that Mr.
Reel uck spoke in the house on tie night before. Mr.
14oebuck thus explains the affair :—" A Wallachian
gentleman asked me if I would go to a meeting at
Manchester on the subject of the Danubian Princi-
palities. I said Yes,' if a midday meeting was tell
on Wednesday, but as I was bound to be in the
house on Tuesday evening, and to attend a meeting of
ha- k propritters on Thursday at midday, the meeting:
must be he held at midday, nednesday, if I were to attend
it. The gentlemen of Manchester, however, fixed the
meeting for Wednesday evening, which would bare
forced me to travel all night and work all day on
Thursday. This try strength would not enable me to
do, and I said so. In the meantime 4,000 tickets had
been sold at Manchester, and as I was resolved not
'to be present at the meeting on Wednesday evening
some excuse had to be framed by the premoters. They
it
seized upon the pretence of illness, and so gave out."
The Sheffield gentleman is " pained and perplexed" by
this account of the affair.
THE ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF
LONDON.-At the
monthly general meeting held yesterday at the society's
house in Hanover-square, Mr. John Gould, F.R.S., Vice-
Piesident in the chair, his Excellency Admiral Count
Platen, Miss Atkinson, Rev. G. W. Brackenridge, and
Messrs. S. Ware and W. D. Speer were elected Fellows of
the society ; ant.) the Earl of Hopetoun, the Lord Methuen,
lion, and Rev. F. Curzon, and Messrs. C. Ratcliff, C. D.
Riddell, Titus Salt, A Sahli). jun. ; W. El. Biss, W. Staites,
C. Chapman, 11. Carnsew, C. J. Kennard, W. K. Bayley, J.
Bowman, E. M. Abbott, .J. Savory, W. F. Moore, and H.
Guedella, and Mrs. Vivian were proposed as candidates fer
the Fellowship ; and Profess,r Van der Hoeven and Dr.
Schtegel, both of Leyden, as foreign members. Among the
additions to the menagerie the most interesting novelties are
the young Indian p'leasants, of which a very. considerable
number have been hatched. These birds are of five species
—viz., the mortal, the cheer, the purple kaleege the white-
crested kaleege, and the black backed kaleege. 'All of them
are perfectly hardy, end the surplus stock will be disposed of
to fellows of the society in September, with a view to their
being acclimated in this country.

.
MIDDLESEX HOSPITAL.—The quarterly court of
the governors of this charity was held yesterdayiin
in the
board room if the ins'itution, Charles-street,
rreet—Lieut.-Col. Penning in the char. The reporetreFsh
rle-
committee of management spoke in favourable terms,
ofthe general and of the sanitary condition of the hUspiotatl
.
cases
snogf
etletyesilpaesitastohereue
.months there had been only four
proved fatal. On thee2triring. in the wards, but wane of them
complete state of exh boy
th of June, when the summer heat
was brought to the hospital in a
was at its highest, a
armth of Irs'ion, apparently killed by the ex-
e weather. The proper restora-
cue:essiNewenr,e,
however, resorted to, and in a few days
of thecom miee.ctical staff were such
the lad wasdischarged in
satisfaction to the
care and attention perfect health. The
srtiot.Ltinotn.—owing,
as to afford the most
patients, and to all connected withl the
to be
however, to the great increase in the aural')
it was now desirable to appoint a fourthe
resident in the establishment. The number of 9
present in the hospital was stated to be 2-15,;a,t \‘"'eh was
"" atabout the daily average at the i.r!„ m,„u. nt se The collec-
tor reported the accession of 18 new subscribers to the roll
of the governors, representing £49 2s. per annum, and
that three others had raised their annual contributions by
£5 55.; two, however, had withdrawn their subscriptions,
and two more hai reduced theirs, in all £4 45., so that the
gain to the hospital was, on the year, £5O 3s. In the poor-
boxes there was (some of ii farthings, the contributions of
poor patients) found £2 13s. 4d. These reports were
adopted, and the committee: empowered to appoint a fourth
surgeon, when the vroceedings terminated io the usual
manner.

VISIT ON HER MAJESTY TO PRUSSIA.

WOOLVVJCH, AL-c. 5.

The royal yacht Victoria and Albert, Crypt. the Hon. J.
Denman, will take up ber moorings off Gravesend imme-
diate'y en her return from Cherbourg; and it is expected
that her Majesty and his Royal Highness the Pr;Lee Con-
sort will embark at Gravesend .n Tuesday next, on a visit
to the Pritce and Princess of Prussic.. On the order being
received at Woolwich dockyard to lay down moorings at
Gravesend for the royal yacht during the present week, it
was considered that ber Majesty would disembark at
Gravesend on returning from Cherbourg; but this state-
ment is founded on error. A numerous party of shipwrights,
riggers, &c., have left Woolwich for Gravesend, to make
the necessary arrangutents for mooring the vessel and con-
structing the brow, &c., for the embarkation.