The Sun.
London, England, 1867-01-11 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

A writer in the Times says—The fact of the pub-
lic mind being directed by the recent fires at the
Crystal Palace and at Croydon Church to the ter-
rible consequences which result from unreadiness in
the water supply leads me to ask a portion of your
valuable space for the following brief narrative,
which shows to what an extent our lives and our
properties are liable to suffer from the like cause.
On Sunday night last at 1 o'clock the butler of a
family residing in this street was awoke from sleep
by a senseof suffocation from smoke. Seeing that
the kitchen was on fire, he immediately aroused the
family, who fortunately escaped from the house. A
policeman, who was by this time on the doorstep,
by vigorously springing his rattle and thundering at
the knockers of adjoining houses, bad in a quarter
of an ,hour succeeded in getting two of bis col-
leagues to join him in thoroughly alarming the
neighbourhood. During the next 10 or 15 minutes
he still vigorously sprung his rattle, and was soon
surrounded by an excited► and alarmed, though
limited, crowd, " wondering why policemen didn't
come to help," and " when the engines would ar-
rive." It was known that the house was a large
one, and that it contained much valuable pro-
perty ; hence many anxious looks were cast towards
the basement, watching for the flame that was mo-
mentarily expected to follow the smoke already
arising from it. At length an engine approached
with all the eclat which accompanies these machines,
and a suppressed murmur of satisfaction arose from
the crowd which had collected. It had now been
ascertained from the adjoining houses that the fire
was limited to the kitchen at the back of the house,
and the firemen were directed to the stable in the
mews, which, however, being empty, was locked.
" Break open the door," said a bystander. "What's
the use," was the somewhat surly answer of a fire-
man, " when we hau'n't got no water ?" There was
no turncock ! After a delay of 10 or 15 minutes
this official arrived, the door was then broken open,
and the fire was seen blazing in full fury. Turning
a moment from this imposing sight I witnessed a
picture which I shall never forget. The turncock
had either forgotten or had never known where to
find the object front which he derives his title.
There he was, moving backwards and forwards
with a lantern in search of it, a very Diogenes.
There stood the firemen, with their polished helmets
of brass, by the side of their panting horses,
Diomeds, each and all of them eager for the
fray, but waiting for the water. There stood the
engine in all its latent power, useless and idle,
until at length a gentleman discovered a label
on the wall indicating the situation of the water
plug, some 30 yards from where its ruler was
looking for it. Then--that is within one hour and
ten minutesfrom the time the fire was discovered—
there arose a hope of seeing means put in operation
for its extinction. But, alas, no. The plughole
was filled with ice, the plug was frozen in, and hot
water to thaw it must be had. Hot water was ob-
tained after some delay, and at last the engines (of
which by this time five or six were present) were put
in use, and the fire was extinguished just as it had
reached the body of the house from its original site,
which was happily detached —a fact which alone
saved the residence and all it contained from de-
struction.
From this narrative we ought to learn-1, That
firemen when they arrive with their engines should
be provided with means of access to the water•maiu
without waiting for the turncock ; and 2d, that
turncocks should daily see that every plug in their
respective districts is ready for immediate use. I
do not doubt that Captain Shaw, who has evinced
such zeal and such ability in the management of his
force, would rejoice if he could replace the old turn-
cocks by men under his own command, for the one
bears the same relation to the other that the police-
men of Division A bear to the Old Charlies.
May the insertion of this letter lead to some such
happy result, and thus to the safety of many lives
and much property !
,o

ICE IN A MAN'S BRAIN.---Ou Tuesday night, at
an inquest held upon the body of a man who had died sud-
denly, and whose body was removed to the dead house of
St. Margaret's parish, Mr. Hunt, the medical man in the
case, stated that in making the post mortem examination
he found two pieces of ice inside the skull upon the sub-
stance of the brain.

LADVERTISEMENT. —Holloway's P:112.
wish is most certainly to be well. How to attain that de-
sirable state during winter fogs and chills was a disputed
question prior to the discovery of these purifying Pills.
No one need hesitate to take Holloway's medicines occa-
sionally during the dismal months. His Pills will cast out
any noxious matter which may have entered the lungs,
and likewise prevent disease arising from checked perspi-
ration, sedentary habits, or ill ventilated rooms, by rousing
the limbs to unwonted, activity, and stimulating the kid-
neys to abundant secretion. Holloway's Pills act as gentle
aperients, agreeable, alterative, and powerful tonics, pro-
perties which preclude this medicine from being unsuit-
able for any constitution or complaint, or preying harmful
under any known circumstances.

TIMES.—The Delegates from the British North
American Provinces are here to exchange counsels and
good wishes, and we give them all that is in our power
to bestow. The fraternal sentiments, expressed by
our statesmen and legislators at the reception given
to the Canada Club were shared by every loyal man
in these islands. We are all proud of our Empire, and
we all regard our colonies and dependencies as the
various members of such a family as earth never yet
saw. That pride and that affection have undergone
changes corresponding to the changed character
and circumstances of the communities themselves
noticed by one of the speakers on this occa-
sion.. But, through the hard teaching of events
and the progress of inevitable change, we have
come to have a very different sort of feeling, though
equally genuine and equally deep. from that we
had for our dependencies a c natury, or even a
third of that period, ago. We have long ceased to
regard them as sources of profit, strength, and in-
fluence ; we no longer seek through them to ex-
tend our institutions over the world and impress a
British type on the future of mankind. Illusion
after illusion has vanished only to render our feel-
ing for our distant fellow-subjects more rational, as
wel as more really respectful and kind. Ours has
been the egotism of the fond parent gradually re-
placed by the recognition of equal rights in the ob-
ject of love. We have accommodated ourselves to
developments we were slow to foresee, and it is no
slight proof of the truth and solidity of our former
feelings that they have survived the hopes they
suggested and the shapes they fashioned. We
love and admire and respect our colonies as
much as ever, and at this moment there is no
knowing to what excess of passion or extreme
of impolicy we might not be driven at the sight of
any insult or wrong done to a people of our race
owning a common fealty. Such feelings, so en-
during, so strong, so elastic, and capable of such
variety of expression, may be reckoned on to sur-
vive further changes. It cannot, indeed, be for
nothing that a strong instinct of loyalty, com-
bined with traditions of the Old World, holds to-
gether five millions of people occupying a great, if
not a strong, position across the North American
continent. What is the cause of it, warned as we
are by the past, we must not venture to guess. Six
years ago no human being could have imagined the
present condition of the United States. But if no
one would now venture to forecast the future des-
tiny of the States, as little can we assign one for
that long fringe of the Old Dominion which Provi-
dence has mysteriously left athwart the New World.
If all things have their purposes, what is the pur-
pose of this remnant? We can answer nothing;
but, with no future we can shape before us, we
reply that our regard for our fellow-subjects is
proved by its endurance when all selfish schemes of
Colonial power and Imperial vanity have passed
away. But if human forecast fails, and if professions
and protestations are only to be regarded for what
they are worth, it is because we are forced to con-
sider that which is natural and spontaneous, and
therefore inevitable. The world has now learnt, by
a long and wide and varied experience, that civilised
communities grow and develope themselves after
laws of their own, and acquire wills and passions of
their own, and a complete individuality of their
own, whether they bear the title of colony or
not. They break the mould and cast aside the
leading-strings. A public opinion soon shows itself,
which is only exasperated by the least semblance of
dictation or vestige of thraldom. They may soon
show that, much as they love that from which they
came, they love and honour themselves more, at
least with a more substantial devotion and more
practical worship. It cannot be helped, for it is a
law of our being. By a growth and enlargement as
simple and natural as that of their own forest trees,
the British North American colonies have burst
bond after bond, till their position is rather that of
friendly allies than of the partakers of even a federal
tie. For this result, indeed, some preparation was
made, from the very beginning, in the jealousy
which refused to the colonies the least share in the
government or the legislation of the Mother Coun-
try. But one by one the colonies cast off the
domination of a favoured Church, the tyranny of a
clique of " loyal" jobbers, the preponderance
of Imperial influence in the struggles of colonial
party, and everything that interfered with the abso-
lute right of self-government and free action. For
all those practical purposes which weigh more and
more in the rnutal relations of independent States,
these colonies are now their own masters, and are
found fully capable of protecting their own inte-
rests. They meet us with hostile tariffs, as they
have a perfect right to do, and, on the other hand,
they derive no small profit from the financial dill-
culies of their highly-taxed neighbour. Then, it so
happens, for good or for ill, we see and know singu-
larly little of our own colonies, having to see them,
as it were, through the veil of the interposing States.
Our social link is rather with the States, our poli-
tical rather with the colonies. The spontaneous
development of that community which we see and
know we cannot doubt. As little ought we to
doubt that of the colonies, made of much the same
materials, diverging, indeed, somewhat at the same
passage of their history, but following the same
laws of social change as their neighbour. It is, then,
utterly useless, a wild assumption of forethought,
and an impious assumption of power, to say what
line this country will take in the emergencies into
which this practically independent Power— now
bound by a common personal allegiance—may same
day precipitate itself. Tell us what it will be and
what it will do, and perhaps we might attempt to
guess ; but uo one can tell us this, and we therefore
are not possessed with the conditions upon which
any intention is to be framed or any promise made.
But if the practical independence of these colo-
nies be now established and inviolable, if their
spontaneous growth cannot be arrested, if their
self-action cannot be controlled or their public
opinion so much as influenced by this country, it
certainly behoves them to consider well, and in
good time, the very great difficulties and
onerous conditions under which the Imperial con-
nexion is maintained. That connexion now
costs us the abstraction of 14,000 soldiers from
a military force which we are told on all sides
is inadequate to the pretensions to be main-
tained and the work to be done. It costs them
separation by the breadth of an ocean, and thein-
sulation of the greater part of them in the heart of
a continent. It costs us the perpetual observation
of a frontier which stretches from one ocean to an-
other. It costs us that large proportion of our navy
which, on any emergency, would have to be detached
for this work. It costs us the perpetual weakness
we suffer in comparison with our neighbours or
rivals far or near by the notoriety of this necessary
deduction from our disposable power. This is what
it costs us, and to the Colonies themselves it costs
even more. Though they would have us to bear
the brunt, the quarrel, if any, would be with us,
and our connection would be the political weakness
through which they could be invaded. Any question,
in which they may happen to have absolutely no con-
cern, may become the occasion of an attack which,
if not fatal to their independence, will have to be
resisted at fearful odds or bought off by intolerable
penalties. In any possible conflict with their neigh-
bour they will be the dwall and England the giant
of the fable, and no victory whatever will compen-
sate for the actual injuries that the weaker may
have to pay for it. These are considerations that
would hardly have been applicable in the good old
days of Imperial unity and Colonial dependence.
But they are everything now. It is now for the
Colonies themselves to answer the questions their
forefathers might have fairly put as to the designs
of the mother country. Responsibility goes with
power, and the Colonies, being now powerful, are
also responsible. What will they do? There is, we
trust, no immediate necessity for a definite answer,
but the time may come, and it is far nearer than it
has been.
HERALD.—The decrees just issued by the Em-
peror of Russia, which assimilate the government
of Poland to that of the other provinces of the
empire, are avowedly intended to complete the work
which Russia has held steadily in view during the
last fifty years—the utter extinction and wiping out
of the Polish nationality. Time was, when Russia
was in its infancy, when Prussia was but a duchy,
when the Austria of to-day was prefigured by a
loose fabric of German empire, when Poland was
most prominent and apparently the best cemented
nation of Central Europe. When, in the fifteenth
century, Hungary was united to Poland, when, in
the sixteenth, it gained possession of the Ukraine,
Lithuania and Livonia, it constituted, to all appear-
ance, a stronger Power than the Russia which is
now blotting it from the world. Its weakness lay
in the fact that its whole dominion was situated iu
the centre of Europe—that it had no seaboard but
a narrow strip of the Baltic. The Powers which
surrounded it—Sweden, Russia, Austria, and the
nascent kingdom of North Germany,. the Electorate
of Brandenburg—were inimical to the independence
of Poland even thus early, and coveted the enlarge-
ment of their frontiers at the expense of this war-
like people which lay
in their mi,ist. The Tarks,
wller wci-o then iu their prime, made another —and
perhaps the most formidable—of the enemies of a
nation which at this time represented Christendom
in arms. In the 17th century there was an invasion
of Poland by the Russians, another by the Swedes,
a revolt of the Cossacks of the Ukraine, and coin-
cident with all these troubles there were many se-
rious internal dissensions, which compromised the
stability of the sorely-threatened kingdom. In spite
of all this, the great victory of John Sobieski at
Kotzim, and the final defeat of the Turkish army
before Vienna, on Sept. 12, 1683, vindicated the
credit of Poland in the eyes of the world. It did