The Sun.
London, England, 1867-12-26 00:00:00

CONSISTENCY.—A political scene, which in any
other country and with any other actor would he thought
extraordinary, was witnessed in Ballymoney, County
Antrim. An Orange soirée was held at which Mr. John
Rea, of Belfast, who had been specially invited to attend,
made a speech, in which h e avowed the utmost sympathy
with the Orangemen, eulogised them as the stalwart sup.
porters of liberty, complained that he had been misrepre-
sented to them, and declared his intention to devote him-
self to their interest for the future. Only a month has
elapsed since Mr. Rea delivered a vehement speech in
Belfast, denouncing the Fenian executions, and declaring
that had he been in Manchester he might have been one
of the prisoners. He has all hti life been ranged with the
Liberal party fighting fiercely to overthrow Orange in-
fluence. The apparently irreconcilable inconsistency may,
perhaps, be accounted for by the supposition that he
is endeavouring to promote the formation of a great
Democratic league in the North—an object which other
polit'cians have in view in contemplation of an Irish Re-
form Bill.

FORTUNE OF THE LOTTERY.—Not a little amuse-
ment has been afforded to the Viennese lately by an
eccentric illustration of the humours of the lottery. The
day after the drawing of the quarter-million prize, a
trimestral sensation in Vienna, the intelligence spread far
and wide over city and suburbs that a female under-cook
in the light pastry department of that good and great
institution, the Archduke Charles Hotel was the owner
of the 225,000 number, and soon a host of congratulators
assailed Mr. Schneider's domain, and insisted upon visit-
ing the culinary department, in order to offer their heart-
felt and disinterested felicitations to the Lady of the
Rolling Pin. In vain she denied the good fortune ascribed
to her—her denegations were received with respectful,
incredulity, and attributed to great astuteness of charac-.
ter ; assurances of friendship, protestations of affection,
were showered upon her ; and she was overwhelmed by
half a dozen marriage proposals in the course of an after-
noon. How many beautiful and accomplished girls have
waited a life-long without one such request being addressed
to them ! The cream of the joke is, of course, that she
really had not even possessed a share of a lottery ticket,
far less drawn the first prize, and that the whole mystifi,
cation was got up by some cynical young lions of finance
as a test of Viennese character. As the supposed favourite
of fortune is neither young nor fair, let us hope that she
closed with one of the numerous offers made her by her
enraptured suitors.

MR. MASON AGAIN.—A letter from Mr. Mason,
ex-envoy of the Confederacy in Europe, in reply to the
invitation of a certain Colonel Graham, formerly of Texas,
to settle in Jamaica, has appeared in the Virginia papers.
Mr. Mason refuses to settle in Jamaica himself or to ad•
vise others to do so, inasmuch as "it is his hope and be-
lief that a time must come when the reckless and unscru-
pulous party in power at Washington will be overthrown,
and the Southern States again remitted to full and exclu-
sive control over their respective populations, without;
foreign intervention." What he means by this " full and
exclusive control over their populations," he explains fur-
ther on by expressing his confidence " that the intelli-
gence, wisdom, and, more than all, the experience of our
people in regard to negroes would make them devise some
system of legislation by which, without again reducing
them to slavery, they would be made to discharge the
incumbent duties of a labouring class." All this, being
turned into plain English, means that he looks forward to
the time when the South will be enabled to put in force
the black code which most of the States drew up at the
close of the war ; and that this expectation is shared by
the great body of the white population there can be very
little doubt. If the Democratic party should get into
power before the traditions of slavery have died out, an 1
before the negroes have acquired enough education and
intelligence to be able to protect their own rights, there
can be little question that this expectation would be
realised, which is as strong a reason as can be given why
the Republican party should carefully avoid whatever
seems likely to take from it the confidence of the masses.
—New York Nation.

" Christmas Day in the Workhouses" is, of course,
always good for rather over two columns. Then there are
descriptions of the Christmas dinners which have been
given, through the kindness of the benevolent, to the poor
who have not yet taken up their lot within the workhouse
walls. The attractions of the Christmas amusements are
described at a length which contrasts in a remarkable de-
gree with the unfeeling manner in which this class of
matter is treated at any other period of the year. The fine
arts, so terribly neglected in the parliamentary session, are
now dealt with in such a way as to make ample amends
for the sins of omission which have characterised the past.
Two or three columns of " Ear,t London Distress " seem
to cast a heavy gloom over the recorded incidents of this
festive season. The resolutions of the Pan-Anglican
Synod were fortunately issued only a day or two ago, and
they occupy nearly five columns in some of the papers. A
writer on " Railway Engines Abroad " has deemed the
topic of sufficient importance to devote three columns to
it. Close alongside it is a letter on the wheat crop of 1867
—not a satisfactory one, It 3 we are now finding out. The
evidence before the Trades Union Commission holds out
canitally. An elongated description of British Honduras
will be thoroughly appreciated after the lovers of the legi-
timate drama have witnessed the pantomime. Those who
wish to know how religious denominations flourish in the
United States are presented with some light and pleasant
reading inthe shape of a pile of statistics. To counterbalance
the possible effect of figures on the nervous system, the scis-
sors have been ruthlessly employed o-1 the pages of " No
Thoroughfare," "London Society," " Cassell's Christmas
Annual," and works of a kindred nature, for these have
contributed column after column to the morning's matter.
One paper, which usually publishes a "summary," finds
nothing whatever in the world's intelligence to include
under that heading ; another condenses the news from the
uttermost parts of the earth into three paragraphs averag-
ing si4 lines each. So much for the " topics of the day "
in London : now for awn, a the PrOYinceil.