The Sun.
London, England, 1867-10-11 00:00:00

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matter, the hon. gentleman eoneladed with f301110.7‘,
expression of good feeling to his constituents.
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Dlr. IV. Brownfield moved, and _Mr. S. Taylor:II
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seconded a vote of thanks to Afr. Grenfell for his-,,7
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address, which was cordially Carried. - A vote of
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thanks to the chairman concluded tile- mojting. t.-Jv
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7IIE COMMERCIAL CRISIS I,V FRANCE.

PliICN' 4d.
STAMPED sd.

A communication has been received by the
Liverpool Chamber of Commerce from the Chamber
at Rouen, referring ti the crisis which presses at
this time on the industry of a great part of France.
To this letter the Liverpool Chamber has sent a
reply, from which we make the following extracts :
—" Without a doubt the commerce and industry
of England are suffering like those of France, the
suffering of the one reacting upon the other, and,
to a certain extent, the same causes being com-
mon to both. These causes may be found
1. In the American war, which for four years
painfully straitened the supply of cotton,
one of the most valuable of European imports,
and considerably enhanced its price, thus reducing
large populations dependent on its manufacture to
the greatest distress. 2. In the high duties which,
under the delusive ideas of protection and of inde-
pendence of other nations, have been imposed by
the United States tariff on manufactured articles,
the greater portion of which had been imported
from Europe. On this point it may be observed
that there is but little consolation in the fact that,
while the tariff of the United States is highly inju-
rious to other countries, a far deeper injury falls
upon herself. 3. In the continued disorganisation
of industry in the Southern States of the American
Union. 4. In the unsettled state of Europe, and
the apprehension so widely entertained of the immi-
nence of war, an apprehension materially strength-
ened by the enormous military preparations
everywhere made, notwithstanding the pacific as-
surances of governments. The apprehension of war
is fraught with evil only second to that of its actual
existence. Much of the capital which should be
employed in ordinary and re-productive industry is
diverted into unusual and exhaustive channels. The
labour which not only supported itself, but has
added to accumulated wealth, is withdrawn from
its normal occupation to be supported by the com-
munity at large. Europe is at this moment main-
taining unproductive nearly 3,000,000 soldiers, at
an annual cost of about £80,000,000 sterling (two
thousand million francs). Their re-productive em-
ployment would not only save this expenditure, but
would largely add to accumulated wealth. There aro
also causes more or less peculiar to each country
which have contributed to the commercial depres-
sion, and which, perhaps, can only be thoroughly
understood at borne. A few which have operated
in the United Kingdom may be briefly enumerated :
1. Premature investments from 1862 to 1866 in rail-
way enterprises which do not now, and probably for
many years will not, bring in any adequate revenue
to the shareholders. 2. The spirit of excessive spe-
culation and over-trading which has prevailed in
this country, especially of late years. Traders who
conduct their business to a disproportionate extent
on borrowed capital are, in the event of a small de-
pr,Tiation in prices or pressure in the money market,
compelled to suspend payment ; when such suspen-
sions are numerous they create a feeling of distrust,
which culminates in panic and disorganisation of
credit. 3. A reckless investment of capital in joint
stock companies of every description, many of which
have proved to be utterly worthless. The Council
trusts, however, that the painful experience of the
past, combined with an amendment, passed during
the late session of Parliament, of our Limited
Liability Act, will, to a large extent, prevent the
recurrence of this evil. 4. The collapse of several
banks causing very widely-spread suffering and un-
easiness. This uneasiness was to some extent jus-
tified by the habit which prevailed among joint-
stock banks of holding insufficient reserves, and the
extent to which the Bank of E,,glan•l employed the
deposits of such banks, without taking due note of
their special character. These deposits constitute
the reserve of the bankers to whom they belong, and
in times of monetary pressure cannot with safety
be employed by the Bank of England. 5. The

I were sick of seeing the question) trifled with. Almost
every elector, almost every reforming member of
Parliament, almost every member of the Liberal
party, felt that it was a crying shame that this
question should be played with so long. Deeply as
he regretted that there should be any difference be-
tween the Liberal party and its illustrious leader,
so far from its being a dishonest part that they
played in the last session—as had been charged
against them—it was the honest expression of their
determination that this question should be trifled
with no longer. For the first six weeks of the
session nothing could exceed the coolness and calm-.
ness and patience with which Mr. Gladstone carried
out the views of his party, but he had to deal
with a wary antagonist, who won a victory not so
much over his opponents as over his own party,
which was utterly unexpected. When Mr. Disraeli
brought in his bill, and three members of the Ca-
binet seceded, everybody thought he would be left
in the-lurch, but he filled up their places, and to
the astonishment of all ho seemed to have the sup-
port of nearly all his party. That was a surprise to
the Liberal party. He was not going so far as to
say that that was the reason of the change in Mr.
Gladstone's tactics, but the coolness and este:mess
which, up to that time, he had shown seemed to
leave him, and from that moment he seemed deter-
mined to depart from the line of policy which he
had marked out, and in which he had obtained the
unanimous support of the Liberal party. That party
were determined to lick the bill into shape, and Mr.
Gladstone said it could not be licked into shape.
Mr. Grenfell did not believe the divergence between
Mr. Gladstone and the Liberal party was more than
temporary, and remarked that there were other
leaders in the Liberal party who took a far more im-
portant part in committee than Mr. Gladstone—
such as Mr. W. E. Forster, Mr. Hatton, who was
always ready to lure the Conservatives on to their
destruction ; Mr. John Bright—(cheers)—who was
better known for his passionate outpourings of elo-
quence, but who, on this occasion, condescended to
the humbler use of his debating powers, and dis-
played the most extraordinary gifts, alternating the
bitterest irony with the liveliest wit ; and there was
the pitiless logic of John Stuart Mill. (Applause.)
AU these men came, well to the front, and did their
part, as he hoped they would always do, in making
the measure as acceptable as possible to the Liberal
party at large. It must not be thought that the
question of reform was entirely closed. They hoped
that in the ensuing, or at all events in an early
session, it would be again before the house, when,
no longer having to contend with the extreme pre-
judices of the Conservative party, they would, if
the question was properly handled, find that party
as ready as in the past session to make large
concessions. In this they would look for the assist-
ance of Mr. Gladstone, as well as in the exten-
sion of the platform of the Liberal party.
Their platform had been a singularly narrow
one ; and there were many questions of ad-
ministrative reform to be dealt with which were of
the most vital importance, and foremost among
which was that of education. (Hear.) If the pre-
sent denominational system of education could not
be made sufficiently effective, the sooner they adopted
a wide system of undeumninational education, pro-
vided for out of the rates, the better it would be for
the country. (Applause.) The people who had
shown the greatest amount of force in the past few
years bad been those who had made the greatest pro-
gress in education. He referred to Prussia and the
United States. If that be so, was it possible that a
country so rich, so enlightened, so go-ahead as ours,
should pause in the path of education ? Ile was not
speaking of the education only of the working classes.
Education was of still greater importance to the
other classes, in whose education reform was needed
quite as much as in that of the working classes.
They had in this country magnificent institutions
for the higher classes in the Universities of Oxford
and uatunriage, but they were ow, uetveibitiv. 9s
places where persons who might show intellectual
superiority, coming from whatever class they might,
could find the means of developing that superiority.
They did not find the greatest engineers, the greatest
doctors, came from the Universities of Oxford and
Cambridge. The duty they performed was simply
that of sending out, perhaps, two or three men in
the course of the year who became statesmen, and
there might be some successful lawyers amongst
those sent out trained in the universities, which
further educated 15,000 persons; but that was not
what a university was meant for, and he hoped that
the time would come when the universities would be
nurseries of science, and leave off being the nurseries
of one profession, and that profession the Church.
(Hear.) Referring to the war administration, Mr.
Grenfell said he had had information, the accuracy
of which he had no reason to doubt, that the con-
fusion existing in that department was such that,
in any large expedition, the same difficulty
would occur as occurred at the commencement
of the Crimean war ; and he believed this was
the opinion of those who were actually em-
ployed in that department. He believed now, when
they were only sending out a small expedition to
Abyssinia—the use of which he could not under-
stand—that the greatest confusion existed. There
were many other subjects requiring attention, among
them that of church and law reform, after some
remarks upon which Mr. Grenfell referred to some
of the work of the past session not previously noticed.
Among these was the confederation of the North
American colonies, the bill for which had been suc-
cessfully carried by Mr. Adderley, who, however,
had been unable to carry those reforms he so much
advocated when out of office, and to compel the
colonies to provide their own military expenditure,
but he had been obliged to take the bill of his pre-
decessor. The seals of India had passed into the
hands of two secretaries under the present Govern-
ment, and the only change they made in the policy
of their predecessors was to grant to some of the
most extensive princes of India a sort of promise of
a reversion of their sovereignties, which had been
resisted by successive distinguished statesmen, and
which, he feared, would one day place this country
in a serious dilemma. Mr. Grenfell referred to the
growth of the non-intervention principles of Messrs.
Cobden and Bright, and the enunciation of his
approval of them by Lord Stanley before he took
office, and to the reversal of that adoption by his
lordship since he had been Foreign Secretary, as
evidenced by his course in the Spanish affair and in
the Abyssinian expedition. In reference to the
latter, he said he didnot believe that any expedition
had ever been undertaken with greater carelessness,
o
with greater recklessness of consequences than this
expedition. If there ever was a case in which the
Opposition ought to league together to express what
they thought of a most reckless disregard of human
life, and of English lives, this Abyssinian expedition
was that case. (Applause.) Mr. Grenfell went
on to speak of trades' unionism, which he said
was a subject upon which no public man had
a right to be silent. He believed the working
classes had exactly the same right to combine
that the masters had—(applause)—and he was
about to speak on the subject more particularly as
a political economist. There was no harm in
trades' unions as long as they were confined to the
transaction of business with employers ; but if they
went beyond that, and became organisations to
force up wages, they violated the soundest laws of
political economy; and if they raised wages they
would not raise the moral welfare of the working
classes, but they would drive the trade out of the
country. They must leave wages to be settled by
the laws of supply and demand, and they would
gain nothing by breaking those laws. The hon.
gentleman dwelt on this subject, and referred to the
late disclosures at the Sheffield and Manchester
Trades' Union inquiries, and said if he were a
working man he would feel it his duty to protest
against such a state of things existing anywhere.
(Applause.) After some further remarks on this

causes now enumerated aggravated by two defi-
cient harvests, which have enhanced the price of
wheat by fully 50 per cent more than the average of
three previous years. The remedy for Sur own
peculiar evils must be found in an enforced retrench-
ment of expenditure, which even now is fast restor-
ing our lost capital. Signs of improvement aro
already evident. Our home trade is better supported.
With the return of confidence will come healthy enter-
prise, so needful to the vigorous life of commercial
and manufacturing nations. Our recuperative power
is great, not only in our own resources, but because
no delusive promise of protection tempts capital into
unnatural employment. Hence capital and industry
are self-reliant, and waste no time in seeking for
that relief in legislation which they know must
spring from themselves. From the causes of com-
mercial depression common to Europe at large, those
exclusively of a political character have, for avious
reasons, been omitted. As to the remedies for those
enumerated, some may be safely left to time and the
elastic energies of modern civilisation. Others will
be found in a general reduction of armaments suf-
ficient to dispel all apprehension of aggressive war.
Finally, a remedy, as this Chamber believes, is to be
found in the universal adoption of the principle of
free trade, and this remedy will aid the operation of
all others. When commerce between different
countries is as free as it now is between the counties
and provinces of the same country, accidental causes
of depression in one will be modified by continued
prosperity in others. Mutual dependence will re-
sult in mutual respect, and, if need be, in mutual
forbearance; and thus, nations now ambitious of
the glories of war will find ample compensation in
those of peace. England has set an example of
entire free trade so far as her own ports are con-
cerned, but she can never reap the full benefit of
her policy till her example is followed by other na-
tions. France has taken the first step in its adop-
tion with significant success. How soon will she
advance to its complete realisation ?"

Sir Colin Campbell's Masterly Retreat from
Lucknow.

The cares of Sir Colin Campbell, however, were
not ended when he stood as a conqueror within the
walls of the Residency. Lucknow was still in the
hands of the rebels, who might at any time return
to the attack, and the relief of the garrison could
only be temporary, so long as the helpless crowd that
composed so large a portion of it were still immured
in the building. The place must not only be eva-
cuated, but the women, the children, the sick, and the
wounded removed, and protected upon a perilous
retreat. They must be conveyed away by easy
stages, and sheltered from the fire of the maddened
enemy. A retreat of this kind might be more diffi-
cult and dangerous than the advance itself had
proved. To accomplish such a delicate movement
Sir Colin Campbell opened a vigorous cannonade
upon the Kaiserbagh, or King's Palace, in Luck-
now, so that the rebels in the city might think
they were about to be attacked in earnest ; and
while their attention was thus withdrawn he formed
a line of posts on the left rear of his position suf-
ficiently strong to resist the enemy's attacks.
While the rebels were thus occupied with the can-
nonade upon Lucknow and preparing to resist an
attempt to storm the city, the ladies, their.families,
and the invalids were silently conveyed along the line
of posts on the night of Nov. 22, and after them
the garrison, the retreat being protected by judici-
ous arrangements of the army ; and, to close the
whole, Sir Colin himself went out-with the last lime
of infantry and guns as the body most likely to be
attacked, and with which he intended to crush the
enemy if they dared to follow up his piquets. These
precautions were indeed necessary, as the only line
of retreat lay through a long and crooked lane ; but,
strange to tell, no interruption was offered ; still
expecting an attack on Lucknow, the rebels opened
a fire upon the Residency, and continued it for hours
after the place was evacuated. Like a well-organised
machine, every part of this retreating army moved
according to appointment, and on the 23d the whole
of the troops and their helpless convoy, comprising
about 2,000 souls, reached Dilkoosha iu safety.—
Scottish Biographical Dictionary.