The Sun.
London, England, 1867-05-20 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, iIiONDAY EVENING, MAY 20, 1867.

.I.IONDON AND NORTH-WESTERN and
LONDON, BRIGHTON, and SOUTH COAST
RAILWAYS.
EPSOM RACES.

On WEDNESDAY, 'Aar 22n, THE "DERBY DAY,"
A SPECIAL TRAIN will be run t.ltrougl► to EPSON(
DOWNS and BACK (New Station Close to t`►i, Downs),
without Change of Carriage., leaving EUSTON STATION
at 10.20 a.m., calling at Camden at 10.25 and Kilburn
10.29, returning from Epsom Downs Station (London,
Brighton, and South Coast Station) at 6.30 p.m.
Fare fur the Double Journey

. 7s. 61.

By any Class of Carriage._ NO p:trticular class guaranteed.
The tickets aro available for the clay of issue, and by
Special Train only.
Euston Station, May, 1867.

By Order.

UNITED UNIVERSITY CLUB.—The
ANNUAL GENERAL 3IEE ENG of the Members
of this t. lub will be hell on TE115,1 SDA Y, May 3:th.—The
Chair to be taken at Thee o'clo k prezt,ely.
By order o! the Committ e.
A. RUMSEY, Secretary.

DEPOSIT DEPARTMENT. —THE CON-
SERVATIVE LAND SOClETY.—Personv wish-

ing to invest large or small sums, receiving half-yearly
interest warrants at four per cent. per annum, with power
f4veithdravral at fixed periods, according to amount in-
vested, may deposit sums daily at the offices, No. 33, Nor-
folk-street, Strand, W.C., without becoming members of
the society.
CHARLES LEWIS GRUNEISEN, Secretary.
Prospectuses of the Share, Deposit, Land, and Building
Advance Departments will be sent free of charge.

CLERICAL, MEDICAL, AND GENERAL
LIFE ASSURANCE SOCIETY.

BONUS MEETING, 1867.

The Report presented at a Meeting held on the 3d
January last, for the declaration of the EIGIrTII BONUS,
showed,

1. As TO THE PROGRESS OF THE SOCIETY,
that, during the quinquennial period which terminated on
the 30th June, 1866,
NEW ASSURANCES for a total sum of £1,518,181,
and yielding £30,497 in Annual Premiums, had been
effected, of which sums the former exceeded by £31,811,
and the latter by £2,392, the corresponding items of any
previous period ; that
THE INGO HE had increased from £195,100 to £215,327
per annum; and that
111 E ASSUI4AN)E FUND, after plytnent of £85,303
on account of Bonus at the last Division, had risen from
£1,422,191 to £1,619,339.

ARTIFICIAL TEETH !—For price unequalled.
For use, comfort, and appearance unsurpassed•
rAINLESSLY supplied (in a few hours when required) by

Mr. DAY, DENTIST,
291, Regent-street (3 doors from the Polytechnic),
Late principal assistant to Mr. F.sKELL, of 8, Grosvenor-
street, W.

DR. SCOTT'S LIVER AND BILIOUS
PILLS.--A NEVER, FAILING RESIEDY.—Pre-
Jared without any mercurial ingredient, from the recipe of Dr.
ioott, of Bromley, Kent. will be found invaluable to all who
•uffer from bilious and liver complaints, indigestion, wind,
4pasme, giddiness, dizzineee of the eyes, ie. For habitual
vativeness, as a family aperient medicine, and as a purifier
of the blood. they are truly excellent; mild in their opera-
tion and grateful to the stomach, they ornate appe-ite, pro-
,n,lte digestion, and strengthen the whole nervous system.
Prepared only and s )Id by W. Lambert, Chemist, 4, King
William-street, Charing-cross. London, and by most drug-
gists, in boxes, is. lid., and three times the quantity in one,
2e. 9d. Be rare to ask for Dr. Scott's Bilious and Liver Pills.
The genuine arc a square green package. with " William
Lambert" .mirravad on the stamp.

PAINLESS SYSTEM OF DENTISTRY.
Just published, price 3d. Post free four stamps.
TOTAL ABOLITION OF PAIN
IN DENTISTRY.
By Messrs. GABRIEL, the old establisltzlon. DENTISTS,
' 6!, LUDGATE- HILL, CI rY,
bfi, It A tiL EY-ST Er. w..
134, DU E-STR E E RPOO L.

Every exertion is being used by the officials and
workmen at Chatham Dockyard to have the steel
boat, ordered to be constructed for the use of the ex-
ploring party about to be despatched to the interior
of Africa to obtain traces of 1)r. Livingstone, com-
pleted in about a fortnight from the present time,
as the expeditionary party will leave England early
in the ensuing month. The boat is to be built of
steel and charcoal-prepared iron plates, of a suffi-
cient size to permit of their being carried overland
by the negroes, the boat being put together by
means of bolts. The vessel, which is being built
from the designs of Mr. Reed, Chief Constructor of
the Navy, and of Mr. Young, B;oyal Navy, who will
have the charge of the explorin g party, will be com-
pleted with all despatch. She -will be fitted with a
mast and set of sails, while h( it draught of water
will be very trifling, so as to Diable her to ascend
the rivers and lakes in the lute tior of Africa.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBL IC JOIIANALS.

TIIE SPECTATOR.S " NEW LECTURE FOIL MR.
GLADSTONE.—If Mr. Gladstone would duly learn
that earnestness is a quality to be economized ! Ile
is always wasting it, tia 111C11 of the world, who
know by instinct rather than reason what is im-
rortant and what is not, scarcely know how to fol-
low him. That speech of Saturday to the deputa-
tion from the National lit forni Union was in every
rsspect but this an admirable one, full of truth and
argument, and illustrations often worded in the
speaker's happiest style. The single drawback was
a superfluity of eareestness. It is quite true that
the " rating principle" is a bad foundation for the
franchise, a very bad one, as tending at once to in-
crease corruption, and to widen the breaches among
classes, but it is not so bad that Englishmen will
abandon the habit of their lives, and abolish a law
before it has been put in operatiOn. Having once
passed it, they will try it, and then if it works
badly they will patch it till it works better, but
they will not sweep it away on a priori reasons, be-
fore it has been worked at all. They are not logical
enough, or sufficiently amenable to argument, to do
anything of the sort. When, therefore, Mr. Glad-
stone declares that he shall obey the Reform Act,
if it passes, under protest, and with the full inten-
tion of sweeping away its main provision, he goes
so far beyond his countrymen that he tempts them
to pull up, in sheer dislike of the pace he wishes to
establish. If the bill turns out badly, they will be
ready to help in altering it, but till then they do
not want to be sickened with agitation, wearied
with discussion, frightened with the suspension of
all other modes of effort. Mr. Gladstone is •too
earnest for them, too earnest even for us; who dis-
like this bill; on the face of it, as much as he does,
though we have more confidence in the unforeseen
palliatives which so often correct the effects of
English blundering. If Mr. Gladstone can throw
out the bill and bring in a better one, well and good ;
but the difference between Mr. Hibbert's amend-
ment and Mr. Disraeli's is not worth such an expen-
diture of energy and mental vigour. Mr. Hibbert
would enable the tenant to vote, if liable for his
rates, even if his landlord paid for him, and Mr.
Disraeli enables him to vote only if he actually pays
for himself. The difference to the tenant, as we
showed last week, is almost nil, as he will just keep
back two weeks' rent per quarter, but Mr. Glad-
stone evidently thinks that Mr. Disraeli's plan will
strengthen the landlord's hands. How will it ?
Under Mr. Hibbert's scheme, he could refuse to pay
rates, and so just produce the very position Mr.
Disraeli's scheme establishes. The real power of the
landlord is not affected by such small distinctions,
would be just as great if the wlification
were occupancy pure and simple. The
landlord can evict, can distrain, and can
" worrit"--sto use a most expressive provin-
cialism—when,he is landlord only, as easily as when
he is landlord and ratepayer, and an increase or
decrease of a few pence a week in his demand will
not greatly affect his power. The evil is the poverty
of the people, not the mode in which they are to
pay their rates. That the landlords will be terribly
strong, so strong that the purchase of house pro-
perty in second rate boroughs will soon become a
political pursuit, we sorrowfully acknowledge, but
that evil is inherent in household suffrage, not in
the mode of paying rates. The one inevitable cre-
ditor will always be formidable to a poor debtor,
but he will be formidable whether he pays rates or
not. The owner can sell the tenant's bed to get his
arrears of 3s. 6d. a week, as well as to levy arrears
of 4s. The only way to hit him hard is to abo-
lish the iniquitous preference which a landlord
enjoys over every other creditor, one of the very first
things a household suffrage Parliament is likely to
attempt, and one of the very few reforms which may
in the future bring Lords and Commons into direct
collision. Why should a landlord who finds shelter
be able to distrain, when h baker who finds bread can
only sue? Mr. Gladstone is quite right in disliking
the bill, but hemakes. too much fuss, to speak plainly,
about details, throws too much earnestness into
his denunciation of evils inherent in the principle of
the proposal, and not in its form. His magnificent
intellect has sometimes a touch of ecclesiasticism in
it, of that curious deficiency in perspective which
makes clergymen fight vestments and similar trash
with as much vehemence as the opinions concealed
under the detested dresses. Nothing worries men
more than the spectacle of grand energy expended
on trifles, and nothing worries average Englishmen
half so much. They would fret if Mr. Gladstone
promised to continue the agitation for some grand
constitutional object, but to continue it for the sake
of abolishing a trumpery restriction which will abo-
lish itself, irritates them exceedingly. The writing
table is very dusty, but if that confounded house-
maid would only let it alone It was, too, a grave
mistake in tactics, to say the least of it, to scold
the Liberal party so vigorously as Mr. Gladstone
did. Shooting mutineers is sometimes good policy,
or sentencing cowards to death, but for a General
to publish an order of the day asserting in the
midst of the conflict that his whole army is mutinous
or cowardly is silly, and nothing else. Mr. Glad-
stone thinks, we dare say, that he has been badly
treated by his party, and so he undoubtedly has
been. They think him too liberal, and therefore
support a bill which goes twice as far as lie did. If
he had punished the recreants, had formally called on
the constituencies to dismiss them, we might have
demurred to his severity, but we could not have
impugned his justice. But to punish the whole party
is neither fair nor wise. After all, 250 members
have followed him most loyally, many of them men
who, like Mr. Grant Duff, follow only because they
are loyal, not because they love their chief, and they
at least deserved specific exemption from censure.
Punishment on them is unfair, and on the remain-
der, though fair, is in this form at least unwise.
Ridicule is a more intellectual weapon than slap-
ping, but ridicule never makes children better,
and slapping may. A great army would not fight
the better because its chief declared most of his
soldiers ragged recruits, and a great party will not
be the more obedient because it is compared to a
squirrel, and warned not to run up a tree. The
story is not a bad one, though old, and Mr: Glad-
stone told it very happily, but then the effect of it
is to make the Liberal party in the House
ridiculous, and it is not the business of a leader
to make his own followers look small. Has Mr.
Gladstone perchance a stronger instrument locked
up anywhere in a cupboard, that he satirises
the " Liberal party in the House of Commons"
so mercilessly ? The writers of goody story books
always make children love their " parents "
very hard just after a whipping or a lecture,
but Mr. Gladstone's ignorance of the world can
scarcely be quite so deep as theirs. Mr. Gladstone
may say that he is appealing from the Commons to
the country, which on certain occasions is no doubt
very wise policy, but on this occasion he has
to make use of the Commons from whom he
is appealing, and they are not pleased, or
likely to be pleased, with the double process. It is
pleasant to quiz one's colleagues, pleasant also to
ask their aid, but it is advisable, as most people
think, to keep the pleasures distinct. After all, it is
the members, and not the constituencies, who are to
amend and pass this particular Reform Bill. The
d nickname fastened upon them
as a a
Liberals cannot well be the more competent or the
hmovreebhowillinguicrous to perform their task, because they
or because their chief tells them he ex-
pects them to fail, and looks beyond them to the
country. All that only makes them sore, and sore
men, more especially sore men smarting under de-
feat as well as ridicule, do not make good soldiers.
Mr. Gladstone may think it possible to sham them
into discipline, but if he does, that only shows how
little world. You
cannot he
Quarter Sessions into anything
t obstinate,
, and conduct,
just are just like the
riudincduelresta nds the English
except anger and red faces, and the seceders
—the Scotch borough members accepted, who
jhuasdtiacesr,e
justaso a
nfor theirobs
ready to be-
lieve that anybody who laughs in their hearing is
necessarily laughing at them, The county mem-
bers, and eldest sons, and brewing millionaires who
have deserted Mr. Gladstone are as sensitive on
s
the score of their dignity as so many county magis-
trates, and simply resent the description which
gives an occasion for laughter to every local enemy
on the hustings. They do not expect their leader
to call them squirrels, which is the way Mr. Glad-
stone's little parable will be used against them in
their own neighbourhoods, indeed has been used al-
ready in the Owl. Fancy Mr. Bass as a squirrel in
the printshops of Derby, and how he will love the
great orator who gave the local caricaturist that
hint ! Mr. Bass will not be unseated by the joke,
and if he were to be unseated, his aid is required
before his seat can be called in question. If Mr.
Gladstone wishes to see the effect of such mistimed
frankness and earnestness, let him think of the
scene of Tuesday night, when he, on such ques-
tions the leader of a clear majority of the
house, in fact the leader of the whole house,
for everybody believes in his financial genius,
could not introduce a slight improvement into the
programme of a Revenue Committee. Nobody
would support him, though there were probably not

three Liberals in the llouse who disapproved his
suggestion. Mr. Gladstone probably thinks it
very hard to be lectured so much as he is by his
own friends, but he must remember that his posi-
tion is absolutely exceptional. No other leader is
possible than himself. If he will not or cannot
lead properly, the party as an efficient political or-
ganisation ceases to exist, and power is thrown of
necessity into the hands of men who c mnot be
trusted in any one department except on some
questions of foreign politics, and on those only be-
causs they happen to have among them a man of
Liberal principles, Tory connections, and Whig
definiteness of thought and policy. As a rule, the
friends who tell us of our faults are enemies with
a mask on, but when the coachman is driving into
the ditch it maybe permitted even to the Box-seat
to hint that there is a safer road. Humility,
purity, earnestness, are all virtues, which never,
even when in excess, become vices, but they may be
exaggerated into foibles, and foibles are worse than
vices in a leader of 'nen.