The Sun.
London, England, 1858-03-12 00:00:00

RITAL HA.

REFUGE,

We invite attention to an elaborate and
argumentative article, which we have tram-
ferred to our columns, from those of the
Northern Ensign, in favour of the claims of Wick
harbour, to be made a harbour of refuge in
preference to that of Peterhead. The question is
not one of purely local importance ; it is ose of
great national moment, and one, therefore, to
which public journalists in all parts of the country
ought to devote their attention and their space.
The necessity for this attention is the greater, as
there is always much danger that local influence
may be allowed to decide a question that ought to
be resolved solely by other influences, and with a
due regard to interests of a national kind. It should
always be remembered that this subject, apart from
its bearing on the welfare of our coast navigation
and the prosperity of our fisheries, presents a very
strong temptation to the landlords and the general
inhabitants of particular localities; and, perhaps,
looking at their natural desire to do the best for
their property, we ought not to blame them for
making the best fight they can for the spots in
which they are interested. But the Legislature,
having witnessed the efforts of the rivals on each
side, would be destitute of any apology if by indif-
ference or undue regard to the political weight of
any honourable member, it allowed an unjust and
unwise measure to be carried.
The claims in this case, of the two places con-
tending for the same advantage, may soon have to
be decided, and there is some danger of a piece of
jobbery which may result from the very great exer
Lions made in favour of one of them, and that in
many respects decidedly the most unsuitable. It
is better that the subject should just now be venti-
lated and discus Fed as fully as is requisite in order
to arrive at a wise and just decision. We feel as-
sured that when the subject is regarded from an
independent stand-point there can be no doubt that
Wick is the spot that ought to be selected, what-
ever may be the local influence employed to earwig
the Government in favour of Peterhead.
The natural features of the coast in which these
rival ports are situated ought to be considered in
the very first view taken of the contest. Admitting
that in other respects the places were equal in their
claims, it should be ascertained where the greatest
amount of danger exists ; in other words, the
greeteet need for a harbour of refuge exists. Now
it should be observed that from Helmsdale to Noss
Head, a d stance of 40 miles, there is not the breadth
of a f;ot of sand, except at the river Wick, or any-
thing like a roadstead, but, as it has been correctly
stated, one long, dismal, precipitous cliff, towering
in threatti ng grandeur, relieved only by an occa-
sional nook, where hundreds of boats press on each
other in dangerous masses. Take then the Peter-

head coast, and there we rind, with the exception
of a few miles from Aberdeen to Kinrrtird Head, a
distance of 40 miles, one unbroken sheet of sand
and three excellent roadsteads, where thousands of
vessels can lie in safety, without a single precipitous
cliff against which they may dash. If the Govern-
ment, therefore, were to yield to local influence in
favour of Peterhead, and incur the expense of
forming it into a harbour of refuge, it would, if
the dangerous coast further north is not to be
abandoned to wrecks, be found necessary to form
another harbour at Wick.
We believe that the melancholy wrecks among
the fishermen at Wick are sufficiently known by
every one to prove that Wick imperatively demands
a harbour of refuge, not for a few fishermen con-
stantly residing there, but for the thousands who
assemble annually at its bhy from all parts of the
coast of Scotland. The great importance of Wick
in this respect has been very clearly shown in
the excellent letter of Mr. John Mackie to Mr.
James Wilson, the Chairman of the House of Com-
mons Harbours and Refu,oe Committee. The writer
shows that 9,000 men, most of them unconnected
with Caithness, fur ten months in the year assemble
at Wick. They follow a calling which yields a valu-
able article of national diet, and which gives em-
ployment to many thousands throughout the king-
dom in producing the material required for its pro-
secution, and which circulates a large sum of money
over the whole industrial districts of the country.
The men are nightly exposed to the perils of the
northern coast, and liable to destruction from the
northern storms. These 9,000 men man boats and
cast nets into the sea of an aggregate value of nearly
a quarter of a million sterling, and proceed night'
after night a distanee of from two to thirty miles,
and even farther, in pursuit of their perilous enter-
prise, and that without a harbour that is safe to
enter at any time during the storms to which the
coast is liable. Now, we think these 9,000 lives
are worth some consideration on the part of the
House of Commons. If it should again be said that
these are all persons intrested in the locality, and
that their lives are not specially worthy of consi-
deration in determining on a harbour of refuge,
we think it enough to refer to the fact that a very
small proportion belong to Wick. These men are
attracted to these valuable fiabing-grounds from all
parts of Scotland, while the calling they follow off
Wick gives employment to fish-curers residing in
Liverpool, Cork, Belfast, and other distant places.
No local influence ought to be allowed to operate to
the disparagement and neglect of this large clans,
whether we speak on the score of commercial in-
dustry or humanity. It is heart-rending to hear
of the calamities of which Wick is the constant
acene, and against which a valuable provision would
be made if a harbour of refuge were provided.
There are other important considerations connected
with this question to which it will be necessary for
us to advert on an early day. —Morning Ad-
vertiser.

PRIVATE LETTER FROM LYDIA.

-
The following letter from a private soldier at the
seat of war in Oude, will be read with interest, as
furnishing some particulars respecting the state of
affairs in India which have not before appeared. It
is addressed to the brother of the writer :
" PooNA, Jan. 27, 1858.
" There is an extra mail leaving to-day, of which
I must take advantage. We, or rather people with
whom I am acquainted, are now daily receiving
letters from the 78th Highlanders (the depot is still
in Poona), and they and the 64th well deserve
every eulogiurn that has been passed upon them.
When history records their advance from Cawnpore
to Lucknow, their almost superhuman efforts un-
der the most trying circumstances, surrounded by
demons who outnumbered them by twenty to one,
and who, like the wild beasts when their fangs
have once been imbued in blood, were mad with
the orgies which they had witnessed and partici-
pated in in the diabolical outrages at Cawnpore,
Delhi, and other places, the 25th of September is a
day which will never be forgotten, either by those
who were relieved, or that noble band of heroes
who fought their way through countless numbers
to the relief of their besieged brethren whose hours
were numbered, but for theiropportune arrival. A
few hours later and every Christian soul in Luck-
now would have been at the mercy of the fiends who
had previously plied their devilish work at Cawn-
pore and Delhi. What a mercy that they had a
manlike Havelock to rescue them • and he under
his command MOD, every one of whom deserve to
have their names engraved in letters of gold. The
time is now arriving when such deeds as these must
• not be passed over as heretofore with six months'
batta. What must be a man's feelings, as glow-
ingly described in one letter I heard read from a
soldier of the 78th to his sister in Poona—a bridge
had to be crossed before entering Lucknow, of
Which the rebels had possession, and the only ap-
proach to which was a narrow road, down which
the enemy kept up a continual shower ofgrape and
canister." We got a gun in position to return the
fire, but another fatal discharge from the enemy
laid every gunner low. Again the gun was manned
volunteers ; but the same fate awaited them,
',ten brave young Havelock rode to the front, and
rim). amid a shower of iron, smilingly told the
rives 78th those guns must be yours. With a
cheer Both an
ilearts,
tut
_must have struckterrorin the cravens'
bad dail
y Lionounded forward, and proved, as they
bat the
weeks before, that they were
heroes still • thute farther they advanced the
more terrible thole
malign% They (the 78th) had the
post of honour
, letative'm the whole of the
other troops advanced
; them to bring up
the baggage and suPPlies forineh beleaguered gar-
rison. They had to wend their weays.thr.ough streets
...;...the houses are three and four
;les across
loopholed from top to bottom_, atones high, and
every street—the tops of the houses
lined with devils, and every poor fellonwowvl, dr:a.;
compelled
wounded and not able to walk was
to- be left behind, and sad was their fate ; for
o:_tbo before their comrades' eyes these incarnate
'`enbatry.tutnlm into hundred pieces. The only
%%trail:one who are spared is their being so.
Theft to ten to It to a merciful Providence that one
lehirrict oaf: acitie kte
and z
,0*
tlll%itrrz :att
agneenuous
ulocla zo- anher country
cient histPled
and no such glorious
Her Majrsty's 78th Eighistle:rm,.. 11_,ate to he found'.
64th, have CZ
saved (as they
u
lAt the ,gitte.t
jewel in England's crown. people of
land demand, and insist upon sterling recontpeuie
for such unexampled bravery, and be not chary in
1 .
doing' "Render unto Caesar the things that
are Caesar's," ; and let the distinction be made let
those reap who sow ; let the Crimean system of
rewarding be bygones • let every officer and man's
name, who was actually there, be recorded, and to
them be the glory given;
let those of a craven
heart, who belong
to those two noble regiments,ents,
none
64th and 780, be politely told we will have

but' heroes here, To think that three and four offi.-
eers should be allowed to remain with the depot at
Poona, when, in one day, six officers, serving with
the regiment, were either killed or wounded ; let
them hide their craven heads in some other regi-
ment, and not share the laurels in store for those
who have passed the fiery and bloody ordeal. ihe
last words of that brave, that good old man, Sir
Henry Havelock, was—" Remember me to the
Bth." Now, let a generous Government comply
with his dying request. What recompense for such
unequal heroism is a thousand pounds a year, even
had he lived ? Fifty thousand pounds would have
been a poor recompense had he lived. Again I say
he would have been amply recompensed by naming
his brave comrades, the 78th, as suoh—" Her
Majesty's 78th Highlanders," or "Sir Henry
Havelock's Lucknow Regiment." It will be pay-
ing a noble and lasting tribute to his memory, and
a title of which every man left in the regiment will
be proud . Not one but would feel proud of the
association ; and some meed of recompense is due
to men who have perilled their all and done the
State so very great a service.

LORD GREY ON REFORM.

(Prom the Times.)
Lord Grey's volume is a work not on Parliamen-
tary government, but on Ministerial patronage,
and its title ought to be " A Defence of Nepotism ;
the result of more than 30 years' experience." Per-
haps we ought not to be altogether surprised to find
the Eon of the Minister who carried the Reform
Bill expressing unworthy fear of the democratic
movement of these times, and a desire to perpetuate
all the worst abuses of oligarchical government. If
his father effected a great reform in our Parliamen-
tary representation, it was less from popular sym-
pathy than from the necessities of political tactics.
Earl Grey had a self-absorbed nature, and was
essentially an aristocrat ; it is curious to watch in
his history how exclusive he was in his tastes and
how strong in self-assertion, so that purely on the
ground of postponing Catholic Emancipation, the
ground on which, in conjunction with Lord Gran-
ville, he stranded the Cabinet of All the Talents,
the ground therefore to which his pride was pecu-
liarly sensitive, he continually refused to join that
Liverpool Administration with which at heart he
had far more sympathy than with the opposition of
Radical Reformers ; so that again, in 1827, he was
the only member of his party who obstinately re-
fused to co desce with Canning, holding himself
aloof in seliiery dignity ;so that—to give one more
example—when he passed the Reform Bill, and was
reproached by Lord Sidmouth for introducing into
the State the virus of democracy and the elements
of revolution, his reply was not a defence of
popular government, but an emphatic statement
that in afew years this Reform Bill would be re-
garded as one of the most aristocratic measures
which had ever been enacted. It was, indeed, by
the strangest caprice of fortune that he, who was
in feeling the most pure aristocrat of his order,
should have been the author of a measure so
democratic ' • and there is much truth in what the
Tories are fond of declaring, as if they were let-
ting out for the benefit of the profane multitude
a great secret which none but those who are
behind the scenes of Ministerial display caa know,
that the essence of the Reform Bill—that which
recommended it to the Whigs and secure.] for it a
triumph, was not the extension of the franchise and
the purity of election, but simply the transfer of
power by &shuffling of the schedules from the hands
of one set of neblemen to those of another. As if
to give the fullest sanction to that view of the case,
Earl Grey, the son, now comes forward, and having
singularly reproduced his father's history in giving
full play to his individuality by habitually separat
ing himself from his party, at length ventures to
furbish up the Tory argum,nts against the Ref.,rm
Bill, to repudiate thatmeasure in so far as it tended
to popularize the Government, and to approve it
only so far as it recognized the principle that the
aristocracy are our sole legislators. The Earl Grey
nature is such a self-satisfied one that', even if the
arguments were stronger than they are, it would
not be difficult to perceive that in his heart of hearts
the strongest argument of all for an aristocracy is,
that he himself belongs to it. There are men ab-
solutely incapable of taking the measure of them-
selves; who believe whatever belongs to themselves
to be superlative of its kind ; who, if they were
lamplighters, would carry their ladders from post
to post as if they were the horses of the swn, and
were doing for the night what that luminary does
for the day ; who, if they were the bootmakers of
a Pi ime Minister, would not only rejoice in any of
his victories, but would actually regard the victory
as their own, the Premier having merely contri-
buted to it. If Lord Grey were born in a rank of
life in which the right of franchise was denied him,
he would be a fierce Chartist ; if he belonged to the
middle classes he would be a thorough-going Li-
beral, not fond of revolution, yet admiring oligarchy
still less ; but being a Peer of England, the Peerage
is everything, he has no sympathy beyond the
charmed circle of his Order, and especially he fears
that power which would limit its pretensions and
curtail its privileges. He has an unconquerable
terror of democracy ; he trembles at the tyranny of
the House of Commons, a tyranny which he thinks
is increasing so fast that it must soon become dis-
astrous as well as intolerable.
The keynote of Lord Grey's book is a demand for
strong government, such government as is impos-
sible in the United States, but is in full vigour at
St. Petersburg and Paris. What is the peculiar
meaning to be attached to the noble author's de-
mand we shall immediately examine. In the mean-
time we must observe that seldom is more political
ignorance displayed than in the common talk as to
the necessity for strong government. A Ministry
on sufferance is, indeed, a political scandal as well
as a public calamity, and, when we speak of the
fallacies which are current as to the importance of
so-called strength in government, we must not be
suppossd to rush into the other extreme of main-
taining that the interests of the nation can be pro-
tected by a Ministry so unsupported as to have no
strength at all. But all experience, and especially
that of the last half century, teaches us that what
are called strong Governments mean bad Govern-
ments ; that strong government is not for a free
people ; that where laws are vile and habits corrupt
and subjcots ignorant there the high hand and the
strong arm may be.needed ; but that where abuses
are not tolerated, where laws are merciful and few,
where the inhabitants are intelligent and free, there
the Government which is wanted is one that—.
whether we call it strong or weak—will abstain
from meddling as much as possible. There is a
remarkable statement ou this head in one of the
works of the elder Mirabeau --"Le difOcile est de
ne promulguer que des lois necessairee, de rester it
jamais liHele it ca principe vraiment constitutionuel
de la societe, de se mettre en garde contre la fureur
de gouverner, la plus funeste maladie des Gouver-
nernens modernes "—a quotation which William von
Humboldt has adopted as the motto to his little
work on the Sphere and Duties of Government.
If we take a large survey of the various measures
that have been passed, it will be found that nearly
all the more important ones, nearly all that we
can look back upon with uumingled satisfac-
tion, have been not positive but negative
in their character. They have not been the
enactment of new laws so much as the
abolition of old. We have exploded innumer-
able oaths and tests and shibboleths ; we have
broken down barriers without mercy. In criminal
law we have been diminishing punishments; in
civil law we have been simplifying procedure. We
have increased our revenue by reducing taxes ; we
hare multiplied our wealth by throwing all protec-
tion of our industry to the winds ; we have emanci-
pated our slaves, and we have not only sought to
insure in our domestic affairs the last amount of
interference with the perfect liberty of the subject,
but also in foreign affairs we have in the fullest
sense recognized the principle of non-inter vention.
These are political maxims embodied in all our
recent legislation and admitted in allour discussions.
What do they mean in relation to the Government ?
If they mean anything, they mean that a wise
abstinence ought to be the first aim of legislation ;
that a Government ought to watch everything, but
if possible to touch nothing ; that what it ought
chiefly to touch are the old laws which ought to be
removed ; that restrictions are bad for the most
part and regulations useless ; and that the best

governed nation is that which is left most to itself.
What is this but saying that a free people has dis-
covered that "strong Governments," so far from
being necessary, are a plague and a scourge to a
nation ? We want to have our public departments
well administered, but as forlegialation and govern-
ment, we want to be left to ourselves. The "strong
Government," which Lord Grey insists upon, there-
fore, we would rather not have, and, differing from
him with regard to-the fundamental axiom of his
volume, the whole superstructu.e which he his
raised upon it naturally dissolves itself into thin air.
One can scarcely believe that Lord Grey is serious
in talking as he does of "strong Governments."
ik.issan idea that is almost exploded in England.
leave it to continental despots and continental
theorists,
0. _ The former find it convenient for the
ceulaig_tinfe. their
oos:Lanuttheopriistsy, ;thteherleastuteltr
odfeleignhdt.
Tarit___n_:.lil4otl,:t7r:rito;letirivavtiieowns—ti:a.e so,rlttottniolfinngDtotthittehciher
„ttlibt duFed into politics, and even when
13 at
11 etapi Tee
rise croni4r; ega- lietYiMhaintegbY -ma tas
a T
la they
play't
e"uten
on. ,
) A GEM OP i LADT......Afv 'lna '
1
married a little beauty, asps emu,eem.nn,iwho has just
taller, but she is made of such preoie —A.-12"e ilueu
Nature couldn't afford it." US tiukto4ials

LAW' INTELLIGENCE.— 11farch 11,

COURT OF CHANCERY.
(Before the Lord Chancellor and the Lorde Justices.)

APPEAL.—TANSITTART V. VAIISITTART.
The further hearing of this part-heard appeal cause
was resumed this morning. The contest between the
parties in this suit was the validity of enforcing in a
court of equity the specific performance of an agreement
for separation, entered into by the husband and wife,
whereby for a valuable consideration to be paid by the
husband to the wife, it was agreed to abandon an action
of divorce in the ecclesiastical court—to live in a state
of separation, a separate maintenance to be paid to the
wife and children, and provision made for the custody
and education of the children--and a reference to arbi-
tration of all matters in oiff,rence between thorn.
The plaintiff, by her bill, claimed specific performance
of the agreement, and the eustotly, maintenance, and
education of her ehillren.

The defendant demurred to the equity of the plain
tiff's bill

lice• Chancellor Sir Win. Page Wood allowed the
demurrer and dismissed the plaintiff's bill.
The plaintiff appealed against this decision.
The hearing of counsel having been concluded, their
Lordships now delivered judgment. Their Lordships
were unanimously of opinion that they could not enforce
specific performance of this agreement, on the ground
that it was against the parental authority of the husband
in the education and custody of his children. Their
Lordships allowed the demurrer and dismissed the
appeal with costs.