The Sun.
London, England, 1867-07-17 00:00:00

SUBMARINE TELEGRAPH.

A special general meeting of this company was
held yesterday at the London Tavern ; Sir .T. Car-
michael in the chair.
Mr. S. M. Clare, the secretary, having read the
notice convening the meeting,
The CHAIRMAN said the object of the meeting
was to authorise the directors to lay down a new
line of telegraphic communication between England
and Belgium, in accordance with the convention
entered into with the Belgian Government on the
6th of November, 1861 ; and for this purpose they
proposed to raise a further sum of £35,000 in
addition to the present capital of £265,000, making
together £300,000. The £35,000 was to be issued
as a 7 per cent. preference stock ; and if in any year
the profits applicable for dividend should be in-
sufficient to pay the full dividend of 7 per cent., the
deficiency would be paid out of the profits of any
subsequent year. The stock would be offered pro
rata to the shareholders at the rate of £lOO for £9O
in cash, payable in three instalments on allot-
ment, and in September and November. A sum
not exceeding £1,250 half-yearly was to be set
aside out of the reserve fund to pay off the £35,000

stock at par, by half-yearly drawings. He explained
that the new communication would be a great ad-
vantage to the company, for whenever the Ostend
cable was broken the company's direct c)mmunica-
tion with Germany and the northern part of Europe

was suspended ; the traffic lost to the company
thereby was estimated at not less than from £3,000
to £4,000 a year. In consideration of the liberal
terms granted by the Belgian Government, in con-
cert with the Prussian Government, the directors
had agreed to lay down the intended cable as soon
as practicable. The Prussian Government had un-
dertaken to give a direct wire to the Belgian fron-
tier, from Hamburg, Berlin, and Frankfort, with

the best known insulation, and to devote' those
wires to the use of the company, so that a direct and
instantaneous communication between London and
each of those cities might be established. The cost
of a cable having four conducting wires would not
exceed £30,000, and if the receipts were increased
by no more than the £3,000 or £4,000 a year now
annually lost, it would afford a good dividend upon
the new capital. A further increase of traffic might
reasonably be expected from the direct wires with
Berlin and the other places. In Belgium there was
a uniform rate of about sd. per message, and he
believed it was the most advanced State i❑ Europe
in that respect. He concluded by moving a formal
resolution authorising the issue of the preference
stock on the terms and for the purpose stated.
Mr. MAXWELL seconded the motion, which, after
a short discussion, was unanimously adopted ; and
a vote of thanks to the chairman and directors
concluded the proceedings.

A NETT' SYSTEM OF WEIGHTS AND

MEASURES.

Mr. MOSES B. Buss, of Pittston, Maine, has in
vented a decimal scale of weights, measures, and
currency, which has been favourably considered by
the Legislature of his State. He chums for his
proposed plan a general superiority over that of
France, insomuch that it secures the advantages
of the mAi ic system, with the additional re-
commendation of a decimal calculation, involv-
ing no very violent change in existing usage,
being grounded on the measure used by the people
from time immemorial. In discussing this system,
the Springfield Republican very clearly shows that
it has not the advantages claimed for it by its
author, while it disputes the utility of adhering to
the ancient custom. If a nation attempts a change
so material as the alteration of its weights and
measures it should substitute not only the best, but
the best without regard to the magnitude of the
revolution forced on the domestic calculation of
every household of the country. No nation should
attempt this, except in consultation with others,
the object being not merely to simplify the
system, but to make it universal. Adopt no
half measures, no patching expedient ; but if you
throw the people out of joint by an alteration,
which all will feel at once —do so radically,
and secure a result worth having. What the British
weights and measures sprang from is, as we lately
observed, sufficiently indicated by the nomencla-
ture. They arose from the rudest expedients—the
standards each man carried with him, in his own
person. The commercial and scientific progress of
England necessitated its linear unit to be exactly
defined, and savans accomplished this. Given a
pendulum vibrating seconds in the latitude of
Greenwich, moving in vacuo at the level of the sea,
at the temperature of 62 deg. Fah. ; and the yard
is to that as 36 is to 39.1393. That is the English

idea of the linear unit which requires the tested
measure to be brought to London—a given tem-
perature, a given level, a space in vacuum, and an
exact measure of time. This is what comes of ad-
hering to the expedients handed down to us from
barbarians. The French linear measure has an in-
variable natural unit in the metre, which is one
forty-millionth part of the circumference of the
earth, determined by measurement and computation.
It is but natural that mankind should adopt the unit
f the grandest line on earth, and bring it into uni-
versal application as the test of all measure of length.
In maintaining the English yard in preference to the
French metre Mr. BLISS is in error, and the advantage
it undoubtedly has, having been used from time im-
memorial by the people, is outweighed by the dis-
advantage inherent in the unit itself, being a section
of nothing, for which even science failed in esta-
blishing a clear and easily obtained definition. Al-
though he rejects the French measure in favour of
that in universal use by the Anglo-Saxon race, he
adopts the metric nomenclature in forming his deci-
mal table, substituting yards for metres, as fol-

weights and measures. The French plan has been I
in operation for 70 years, and is obtaining general
adoption, which it is desirable, unless something
better be soon discovered, may become universal,
though it has the disadvantage of not being deci-
mal. We may now look for a full report from
the Commission lately sitting in Paris. That the
United States will throw the whole force of its
influence into the scale with France we believe
to be nearly certain ; but whether the preponderat-
ing numbers, whether the dictates of common
sense, whether the expediency of the change, will
not be outweighed in England by the leaden
weight of British prejudice and detestation of change,
are questions time wily can solve. Eventually
England must give way if France and the United
States cordially act together, but the struggle will
be long, and the necessity paramount, ere JOIIN
BULL abandons the time-honoured customs of his
painted progenitors. We know that he does not
run about now in ochre, with a wild beast's skin
around his loins, and a club in his hand. We know
that he is never seen in the typical dress in which
he is always arrayed on the French stage, though
we suppose he must once have been dressed in that
fashion ; and from these changes we argue, that it is
possible to introduce a measure of utility which may
sweep away even time-honoured custom. It is not
from the commercial community, that the opposition
may be expected, but from the lower classes. The
man who has mastered the English system by a
great strain on his intellectual capacity will feel
himself defrauded of a hardly-gained knowledge if that
system be abolished, and hewill see in the change but
a renewed call on the already exhausted intellectual
capacity. If the good man resists this—what will be
the action of the housewife? Is she who has calculated
to a fraction the value per yard of everything she
requires to be thrown back to a worse position than
that of a school girl who has, at least, not a great
deal to unlearn before she recommences her tables
of weights and measures? No ; let the people begin
to comprehend eren that such an idea is entertained,
and an indignant howl will be heard all over the
land. Among the measures of bulk we are sur-
prised that there was no entry of a " mouth."
Probably our ancestors found it impossible to strike
an average in " capacity," and substituted some-
thing else. But JOIIN BULL is still content to open
his mouth and shut his eyes, and to take what his
mother gives him. Ile does not care to inquire
what it is, or whether something more palatable, more
nutritious, and easy of digestion might be substi-
tuted. It is thus that the BULLS have been fed from
a time beyond memory and record, and it is pro-
bable that the BULLS will continue so to be fed until
they open their eyes on a changed world, in which
they will stand isolated in their cumbrous, un-
equal,atlhl e otherev j.
anie s nhda
vien e
ate
hd
di eenht e
dc
,u sat os
musnsuwithedichto
isation of the age.—Anylo-American Times.

LOUIS VEUILLOT'S FOURTH LETTER

FROM ROME.

Three or four times a day I have desired to de

scribe Rome to you—or, rather, it is a constant
desire. At this moment it attracts me more than
ever, and yet I give it up. Where am Ito com-
mence?—with the sun, the place, or people ?
_ _

Everything is different, everything is beautiful,
everything entrances. The shortest journey in this
city is a voyage across history in the fourquarters
of the globe. Here we see living and comming-
ling the past, the present, and the future ; nay,
the future still more than all the rest. This is
the grand reservoir whence the future flows and
spreads itself over the human race. We are con-
vinced of it, however little we may be able to see
and understand it. The destinies of the world are
centred here, now and for ever. I will explain it
in two words to DI. Taine, who alleges that Rome
" feels death." In Rome there are things for
which men die; I believe that M. rlaine can
understand that. If he does not understand it, he
is more untrue to his intelligence even than I had
thought.

Listen to this little history of an early morning:
—I went out about seven o'clock, and I entered a
church near my lodging. A hundred Masses had
already been said in that church. In Rome, at
this moment, about ten thousand Masses are cele-
brated every morning; and where is the corner of
the earth which does not furnish its contribution

to this focus, to this vulcano of incense, for there
is scarcely a diocese or mission which has not sent

here its bishop or some one of its priests, to him
who is the universal bishop and priest ; or, as the
Bishop of Tulle has said, " the veritable prince

of the public soul"—an expression which Cicero
used, with far less reason, to describe the Roman
Senate.

After Mass I went to visit some bishops. Al
the end of two or three hours I had seen French,
German, Hungarian, English, and Swiss bishops,
missionaries from America and Asia, writers, doe-
tors, orators, above all apostles. I know things
about Japan which the Tycoon and his ambassa-
dor do not know. In making these journeys I
have passed over different quarters of Rome, and
met in my passage the accumulated memories of
more than two thousand years of history ; I
passed before the Chamber of the Conclave where
Pius IX. was elected; before the Palace of the
Quirinal where ho was prisoner; before the
Column of Trajan surmounted by the statue of
St. Peter ; before the Pantheon of Agrippa ; at
the foot of the Column of Antonine ; I entered
the fine Convent of the Minerva, transformed into
soldier's quarters during the French protectorate
now rehabilitated, restored to its peace and to its
dignity, purged of the odour of the barrack, and
preserving nothing of this unhappy epoch save
some traces of the military spirit on the frescoes of
the cloister—painful evidences which the charity
of the monks would without doubt gladly efface.
My visits over, I made the round of the Ca-
pitol. One of its galleries is filled with busts of
the Emperors from Julius Caesar to Julian the
Apostate, the historic interest of which is in-
comparable. There we read, there we under-
stand, there we feel, 'Roman history, and there
it is that we read what vice and pride can write
on the human countenance. The most revolting
face of this Museum is that of Julian the Apos-
tate ; it is more impudent than Caligula, who
says —" I have one quality—my impudence ;"
more cruel even than Nero turned into a beast ;
more vacant in its calculated carelessness than the
insufferable Lucius Verus. To what strange illu-
sions have not some of our yielded who have
a weakness for this abominitble Triasotin. in
whom they have chosen it see a first instalment
of the reconcilers of the Church with modern so-
ciety. Julian is not the type of the erring man who
goes astray, and, with a remnant of good faith, seeks
after truth. He is the learned imposter of our
epoch, who studies in order not to know, who does
not wish to know in order not to believe—who
does not wish to believe in order not to obey. The
fool took it into his head to destroy Christianity,
knowing of no other means within his reach of
achieving something great. This is clearly
written on his vulgar countenance, full of stupid
self-satisfaction. The Julian of our day is a poli-
tical economist, a philosopher, a writer in the
Revue des deux-Mondes, and, not to name anybody,
the writers, he
etis paobioituivt toies .e7Htcor
h
Isasrscous
h Aurelius,
now
eli desysof
the its w
th
Sciences,e suffrage
rulerr Morales,
of of al
thatl\'' assembly.
wtiem Adr
libe electedase
In the Capitol is the magnificent statue of the
a
dying Gladiator. Hremiosnwwohuinodhehdo;
shupephoartss
him-
self upon the earth ; the .
self is still bent; he is about to stretch himself in
the dust ; iron crooks will soon bite his palpitating
body, and drag him out of the arennao,rdneirie
to train
tirfahine
is not quite dead, some novice, i
his hand, will put an end to him. In this face there
is an expression of dying pain, which makes the
heart bleed. We see the scene, we hear the cries
of the people applauding this graceful death, and
cheering the skilful stroke of the conqueror. This
was the civilization which Julian wished to resus-
citate, the games which Marcus Aurelius, although
disapproving of them tolerated for the amusement
of Commodus. This civilization was eminently
favourable to the sculptor ; we have lovers of the
beautiful who regret it and speak of restoring it.
You cannot imagine how one despises these

foolish dreamers when one considers them from the
height of the Capitol. The first of their kind in
modern times was Gibbon, the coarse, ill-condi-
tioned Englishman, who professed also, like Julian,
to put away the Christ. And Gibbon had con-
ceived this idea in the Capitol—a place fearful to
many weak brains whom the touch of holy water
heals no more. Perhaps he learned out of that
same window, in the sala of the Gladiator, whence
we see, at one coup (rail, the arch of Septimus
Sevens, of Titus, the Palatine, the Campanile of
St. Frances of Rome, the Colosseum, fUrther on
the Baths of Titus, and on the left Santa Maria
Maggiore, and other monuments 'and other ruins.
What a picture, what history, and what beauties !
Gibbon was indignant at seeing monks on the
Triumphal
.Way. The revolution is come—has
pushed at different times even to the gates of the
Eternal City the wave of its purifying armies ;
Gibbon is dead in fear thereof ; the monks arc still
ever here.

The Forum is their favourite walk. I met just
now two of the Frati of the Ara Cceli : their con-
vent is on the summit of the Capitol. They are
scarcely distinguisable in appearance from other
monks. The same habit of coarse cloth—the same
sandals on their feet. One of them is profoundly
versed in ecclesiastical sciences, and this com-
prises philosophy and history and more too ; the
other is a learned annalist of his order, an exact
historian, and an excellent writer. If they found
themselves face to face with our eagles of high
or low flight, how they would look down on these
monks, yet how embarrassed they would be to
keep up conversation with them. Though walking
along the Sacred Way, in the fashion of people
who feel themselves at home, the monks are not
taken up with worldly matters. They are not as
alarmed as is imagined. They say they have
always something to do, and that after all, the
worst times in which Christians have to live are
not those in which they have to combat, to suffer,
or to die for the truth. They have faith in the
stability of the Vatican. They are of those who
believe that if the Vatican fall, its ruins will roll over
the whole world, overthrowing thrones, institutions,
peoples—everywhere stoning the human race.
But in their opinion the :world is not yet ripe for
this; forjthat which flows from the Vatican—from
the Rock set up by Jesus Christ—is the fountain
of living and fertilizing waters of Truth, and the
axe intended to destroy this Rock even causes the
waters of life to issue forth.

FRIDAY.
I left you yesterday to make my rounds. It is
a fine thing for me to boast that I am no stranger
in Rome—that I have seen everything: For do
I not let myself be tempted and sally forth again ?
Our priests set me the example of not fearing the
midday heats. They are to be met everywhere—
in cabs, in omnibuses ; the greater number how-
ever on foot, saying their breviary in the heat of
the sun, in order not to lose an instant. They
are robust pioneers—a race of iron, accustomed
to bear the heat of the day. From morning till
night all the churches are filled by these vigorous
pilgrims. They serve one another at Mass. You
see old priests, with -white heads and bent shoulders,
serving as acolytes to some young confrere, and
few sights are more touching.

I was much touched this morning, and passed
one of the happy moments of my life. I was in St.
Peter's, hearing Mass in the chapel of the Souls
of Purgatory, which contains the beautiful Pietd
of Michael Angelo, when all of a sudden the chant
of the Te Delon resounded, coming, as it seemed to
me, from the very roof of the Basilica. When Mass
was over, I went there and found the chapel of
the Blessed Virgin decorated in an unusual manner
and enclosed. I learned that the chair of St. Peter

had just been placed in the chapel. It had been
removed from the reliquary above the altar in the
apse, where it is commonly preserved. The re-
moval took place under the superintendence of
the dean of the Sacred College. The chair, placed
on a tressel, had been borne processionally by four
deacons and four priests ; four archbishops held
the cords.

as soon as the chapel was open to the public, and,
I had the good fortune to be the first to enter,
as usual, our dear abbes were not wanting. I will
not try to tell you what I felt. If it were neces-
sary to explain myself I should never succeed in
making you understand. Dispense, then, with
my description. You will soon have what you
want, for the photographers and engravers are
already at work. The chair is a great arm-chair,
of wood, inlaid with several planks of ivory. From
this dead wood has germinated, among other
things the vastest and the richest basilica of the
world. This wood is the material substance of the
greatest thing in the world. This is the throne_
this the Chair of Truth —this the Holy See—
inlaid wood, no doubt, but on this inlaid seat is
seated the man to whom it was said : Tu es Petrus.
Seated there, Peter has repeated the sublime
commissions which the commission of Christ be-
stowed upon him.
In ordering that the chair of St. Peter should
be exposed to the veneration of the faithful, the
Holy Father desired that it should be guarded by
who number in their ranks sons of
It is from Pius IX. himself that
vivid and charming, come, and
ample scope. Of Rome an
ttahillleetsleZl
eoiundaaevtaiesos,
n,
ss.o
haisiemsaid, " 'here beauty rises into
grandeur,
oea here grandeur mingles t
poet has
tom
Italiane affordsp
with beauty."
Among the Zouaves on guard, I remarked that
several wore the medal of the wounded of Castel-
fidardo. They were there, arms in their hands,
victorious in that place of honour—a fine image of
those who wished to fight and fall for invincible
justice.

SATURDAY.

The festival commenced yesterday at mid-day at
the sound of the bells, and was carried on without
hsuornpeasisseadc,euatomed
interruption till the end of the Mass, which is not
yet finished. Yesterday evening the entire city was
illuminated with a profusion and a joyous brilliancy
of which our political atmospheres furnish scarcely
aa nm
to example,told,
moreover, as I
here. To this religious demonstration politics
bring their contingent; in honouring St:l:Peter
to see
the Romans honour their Kin- .
4: when they recite
the Credo they proclaim their constitution ; and
ev e n and
tha that whichhwhich
when they make an act of faith they intend as
well-to make an act of national life. It was enough
to walk in the streets of Rome yesterday, what-
ever the Roman Committee may say, to understand
at once that the Romalls have no desire to see their
majestic city abdicate its rank as capital of the
world to become capital of Italy.
This morning I saw the Pope enter the Basilica,
preceded by nearly five hundred bishops. If you
reflect on what has been done, and what has been
said in the world every day, andceasing for
without
a century, to prevent this, you will have an idea
of the power, which an array of four thousand
men, or of four millions of men will not give you,
even were these four millions of' men furnished
with the most perfect artillery. But the array we
are speaking of are armed with a crozier; they say
"Pax," and their sword is a light, for they know
they can have no other enemies than the darkness.
Nevertheless, when Napoleon said to one of his
diplomatists, "Treat the Pope as if he had two hun-
dred men," he was not so deep and so profound a
calculator as he believed. It is clear the Pope is
something more. We do not speak of God and his
Providence, for we shall make the men of intellect
shudder who do not admit those hypotheses, and
who desire positive arguments. But the Pope
has, at least, on his side, time and the human con-
science. Of this, I believe he gives to-day ample
proof. When I shall have returned I will endea-
vour to learn at what sum of physical force these
abiding advantages may be estimated. I make no
doubt that Monsieur de Girardin will be able to
tell me.

The exterior illumination of the Basilica sur-
passes all that can be imagined. It seems as if
a .firmament of stars had been brought beneath
this roof, elevated, as it were , to contain a
mystery more grand--a work more beautiful. In
the midst of the great nave was suspended an im-
mense lustre, having the form of a reversed cross,
crowned with the tiara and the keys. It was the
chief star of that heaven, made by
the hand of

man. It illumined and commented on a descrip-
tion which deserved to remain. On the upper
ledge, at the spring of the arch, was written the
Gospel of St. Peter's day :—" Respondens Simon
Petrus, dixit. Tu es Christus Filius !)ei vivis.
Respondens autem Jesus, dixit ei. Beatus es
Simon.."

Farewell, dear friends. Let us take comfort
of all things. Jesus and Peter are living. They
watch, and they will not permit the destruction
of the eternal Bethlehem—•the house of that bread
which nourishes the world.— Univers.

CLASSES IN POLITICS.

It is because society reproduces itself that his-
tory reproinces itself. Immediately after the plague
in the year 1348 when half the inhabitants of Eng-
land had been swept away, a revolution occurred in
the relations of employers and employed. The
people were then Mainly engaged in agriculture,
and, as there was a great breadth of land, and few
hands to cultivate it, the soil fell into the possession
of the working men. What happened in England
then was in a small degree what happened to the
section of English society, which the Canterbury
Association undertook to remove from Great Bri-
tain to New Zealand, and maintain there in their
relative positions as a settlement. No matter how
enlightened and highly civilised the community may
be, the simple laws of nature prevail, for no theo-
ries of political economy, no efforts of force can
prevent all from finding their true level in the new
order of things. But though the change of circum-
stances, undoes at once the long process of building
up that society into its artificial position, yet from the
moment it is located on the new soil, the process re-
commences. In due course the grand or great grand-
children of the emigrants will begin to find them-
selves forced into the same classes and struc-
ture of society as that their forefathers carried
to the colony, and which there fell to pieces.
In the most Eastern States of America it is be-
coming forcibly apparent that society is assum-
ing the structure of the most civilised of the
oldest European nations. Wealth, and a popula-
tion daily growing denser, are working out the
problem which many true Republicans see with
dismay and disgust. The genuine Americans of
these Eastern States, whom poverty prevents from
assuming a station above the of polloi, scorning to
occupy a position of inferiority and dependence,
abandon their own old homes to seek a new and
more congenial field in the West. The vacancies
are supplied by immigrants, who readily take the
place the Yankees scorned, and thus the new order
of things moves more rapidly to its completion,
and the change that is coming over the society in
these States is all the more speedily accomplished.
It would be absurd to suppose that the owners of
wealth are likely to forego one of the greatest
pleasures that wealth confers. However Republi-
can the individual may be in sentiment, the class
will assert all the superiority conceded, will exercise
all the power the command of money gives, and ass
sumo as high a social position as the community will
allow. if the poorer of the native Americans, im-
bued with the spirit of equality they have inherited,
abandon the field, the main check will be removed
which keeps their more fortunate countrymen in
their proper places as citizens of a Republic. But
the pressure of the incoming flow from Europe
being felt beneath, its sure effect will be to push
the wealthy up. The measure of equality conceded
to the new corners is something considerably in ex-
cess of what they have been accustomed to in their
native countries, and they, feeling the gain, are
little inclined to dispute the assertion of their
wealthy neighbours. The consequence is that so-
ciety is daily getting more and more marked in its
different grades, and old Massachusetts families are
assuming almost the pride and arrogance of English
territorial magnates. A few years hence we will
have every shade of society represented under
the " Stars and Stripes." From Massachusetts
to Oregon the traveller will before long pass from a
community differing scarcely at all from the most
densely peopled districts of England to the wildest
settlements, where a man's main reliance is in a
quick eye and a good rifle. Each stage from East to
West will be a stage if not from a higher to a lower
civilisation, at any rate from an older to a newer
one. It will be a descent from wealth and refinement
to rough and primitive habits—from art and learn-
ing to scalps and bowie knives--from the vices in-
separable from dense masses to the more pure atmo-
sphere of the forest and prairie. There cannot be
a community of feeling among
men placed in such
widely dissimilar circumstances, and already there
are symptoms of the boly politic splitting into
classes. This is noticed in the Nation in an article
in which it speaks of three
of its issue June 27th,
such claases—workmen, versus capital; the Irish,
an imperium in imperio ; and that just forming
negroes. Each of these has an object distinct frothem
and wholly independent of any national ques-
tions. The first has made► itself felt in the
eight-hour agitation. This was owing to the
action of a powerful body, who supportedaw thethe
party promising most, in regulating by l
relations between employer and employed. These
voters, were in no degree whatever influenced by the
great national issues, such as Reconstruction, the
Suffrage, the Tariff and Currency, or the Foreign po-
licy of the country. That they have been defrauded by the measure carried out under their pressure
proves nothing except their
gullibility, which in
itself shows the danger of such tools in the hands
of scheming and unprinciple 1 politicians. The
panacea for this is education and that only, which
will prevent such a delusion being again entertained,
that working men could profit as much by 8 as by
1 10 hours' labour, or that the law can by any means
regulate market value.
Of the second party the Nation takes the same
view as that already expressed by us. The forma-
tion of such a party as the Fenians is termed the
worst and the most dangerous of all. Their object
is defined as to "keep alive among Irish settlers the
feeling that they belong to a separate nationality,
and have, and ought to have, hopes, aims, and in-
terests apart from the rest of the community, the
main value of American citizenship being that
it affords aid or impunity for the organisation
on. American soil, of hostile expeditions against
a foreign Power. To mark the character of the
organisation, too, still more distinctly, the form of
a political party has been thrown aside, and that of a
separate political society assumed, with an executive
head, a legislature, administrative bureau, an army,
a treasury, and machinery for raising revenue."
The Nation goes on to state that such an organisa-
tion would soon perishof its own folly and absurdity,
if met with calm good sense, which it has not been,
and is not likely to be. The Nation sees the danger
of such an organisation not to the country against
whom it is directed, but to that by which it is har-
boured and sustained. " They already, in all parts
of the country in which they are to be found in
large numbers, are able to secure practical impunity
for almost any crime."
The scheme adopted by a considerable body of
Radicals of forming a distinct negro party in the
South is heartily condemned by this leading organ
of the party whose views are always national in
their breadth, and never hampered by any partisan
sentiments when national measures are discussed.
The advocates of confiscating the white man's lands
for the benefit of the negro, have a determined
opponent in this able journal. The results of such
measures are exposed, and they are too plainly told
in history, not to be readily open to the strongest
condemnation for folly and inexpediency. If the
teaching should not be defeated by the good sense
of the negroes " the black party would be formed,
andall three bent on the promotion of their own inte-
rests at whatever cost, putting their votes up to sale
at every great election, and leading ambitious poli-
ticians into follies of which the worst exploits of the
great political deceivers of the present day afford
but a very imperfect idea." But we may fairly hope
that the good sense of the American people will not
permit the nation to be made the mere tool of such'
organisations. When the necessity is generally
recognised, the Americans have a habit of accom-
plishing their ends by very determined measures.
When they say a thing has to be put through, they
mean to do it, and it is then almost as good as done ;
and although national decisions may be weakened
by the growing separation of classes, there is, and

always will be, so long as the nation remains a Re-
public, a vast energy in its national action. The
.Nation is right in exposing and setting its face
against classes in politics.- Anglo-American Times.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOITRNALS.

TlMES.—History does not record whether Cas-
sandra upon the capture of Troy recapitulated all
her former vaticinations in one final prediction of
common ruin to Greeks and Trojans alike. If she
did, however, she could scarcely have employed lan-
guage more eloquent with indignation and despair
than is embodied in Mr. Lowe's speech on the third
reading of the Reform Bill. No one, it must be
admitted, has so well earned the right to acquit his
own soul of the evil that he apprehends. Whether
any good object is served by. denouncing that which
has become inevitable, and whether it wts well to
mar by reproaches, however just, the effect of so
great a measure, passing without a division, are
questions into which it is needless to enter. At all
events, Mr. Lowe is the only eminent member of
Parliament who could have done so with any ap-
proach to consistency. His fears are certainly not
the fears of passing vexation and resentment, but
the result of a deliberate conviction avowed on many
occasions during the past two years. When he tells
us that " we are now closing an era of permanent
stability and mutual confidence," that we shall soon
" be surrounded by a perpetual whirl of change and
revolution," and that we have embraced a principle
which " contains the germs of endless agitation,"
he does but reiterate in other phrases the warning.
of last Session that, by abandoning the £lO line, we
launch ourselves on that fatal slope which leads to
the abyss of democracy. Now, if all this should
come to pass, the counsels of Mr. Lowe will
assuredly be quoted hereafter, as the protests of
Burke and others against the taxation of America
are now quoted, in condemnation of the Parliament
and people by whom they were unheeded. We are
bound, therefore, to ask ourselves why these coun-
sels have been rejected by statesmen of all parties,
and whether, upon a calm review of the struggle,
we are prepared to abide by the issue. The
first and strongest reasons for rejecting Mr.
Lowe's counsels is, that, if closely examined, they
arc found to repose on more than one fallacy. lb
is a fallacy to say that such a bill as has now
passed the House of Commons " regards all citizens,
however different they may be in other respects, as
in the main alike." It would be more accurate to
say that it is grounded on, and justified by, the
very contrary presumption—the presumption that
equality of voting power does not constitute, and
cannot produce, equality of political influence. All
representative systems, and not only all representa-
tive sy stems, but all Governments, are dependent
for their very existence on the natural advantages of
property and education over poverty and ignorance.
Those advantages are vastly enhanced in this
country by historical tradition, by natural charac-
ter, and by the political capacity as well as by the
unbounded leisure of our highest classes. No con-
trivance whatever could place an educated and an
uneducated man on the same level for the purpose
of swaying opinion, or throw our schools and our
press into the hands of persons like Jack Cade ; still
less could it choke the legitimate power of our natural
aristocracy. The enfranchisement of some hundred
thousand artisans and labourers does not, then, affirm
or establish their equality in respect of " weight in
the State " with great landowners and merchants ; it
only gives them equality at the polling booth, where
experience shows the ascendancy of wealth to be
only too potent. Such an extension of the suffrage
may be supported either by considerations of justice
or by considerations of expediency. It has actually
been supported upon both these grounds, and Mr.
Lowe is not entitled to contend that it repre-
sents " the principle of a right existing in the in-
dividual as opposed to general expediency." No
one on either side of the house has advocated this
Reform Bill on principles of abstract right. On
the other hand, all have recognised, what no one
but Mr. Lowe denies, the moral claim of some
classes heretofore excluded to a share in representa-
tion, and have at least professed to believe that a
satisfaction of this claim would conduce to "general
expediency." Mr. Lowe may fairly challenge
the opinion of his opponents on this last point, but
he cannot fairly charge them with ignoring it.
There are few Reformers, however earnest and
about to
without oaupot
powerful
change
sanguine, who affect to regard so great a
eer
aree
we
ermfteilasfuerreee of
know that misdirected force, whether physical or
into a enxxi teync e , laVned
moral, is a destructive agency. Those who aspire
to lead the thought and guide the action of this
nation most, and doubtless will, realise a new sense
of responsibility; nor will questions hitherto
neglected fail to force themselves upon public atten-
tion. We cannot read the future, but we have
faith enough in the patriotism and wisdom of our
countrymen to smile at the dismal horoscope of
national destiny which Mr. Lowe has cast for us.
Mr. Disraeli's comment upon it was not wholly
undeserved, for Mr. Lowe hints, not very obscurely,
that, when the revolution is once accomplished, it
may be the duty of those who have most strenuously
resisted it to become " revolution isles du lendentain,"
and hurry on a revolutionary policy. " You com-
pel us," he says, " from the necessity we must feel
to do the best for our country, in the great peril to
which you have brought us, to adopt principles
which, while our Constitution remained as it was,
we should have shrunk from." The substitution of
a "second elected Chamber" for the House of
Lords, the abridgment of the period for which Par-
liament is elected, the appointment of an elective
Prime Minister not responsible to the House of
Commons, the subdivision of legislative power by
the creation of " local bodies," the introduction of
the elective principle into the army—are described
by him as compensatory innovations which, though
in themselves mischievous, will then become rela-
tively expedient. " The example of America will
become of necessity our model." Yet no one has
exposed more eloquently or forcibly than Mr. Lowe
himself the absurdity of
any mysterious necessity
decreed "by the fates and the destinies iu some
dark tribunal in which they sit together to regulate
the future of nations." Ile cannot mean that such
consequences as he forebodes will be developed from
Household Suffrage.by the operation of any im-
mutable law, and he does not attempt to show in
what manner the good of the Commonwealth
would be promoted by them. Then, why should
he apparently sanction them beforehand as the just
Nemesis of Reform?
THE " WESTMINSTER. GAZETTE" ON MEXICO AND
SHEFFlELD.—Barbarism and Civilization, as repre-
sented respectively in Mexico and Sheffield, are at
this moment arraigned before God and man. On
both alike blood-guiltiness lies. The murder of
Maximilian and assassination on system as pursued
at Sheffield are types of the crimes committed by
barbarous nations living under no law, human or
divine, and by nations where material civilization
is practically divorced from religion. We do not
mean to say that Mexico, though guilty of a na-
tional crime which has attached an indelible dis
grace to the country, has thrown off every law,
human and divine, or that civilization in England,
on account of the Sheffield outrages, is a civilization
without God. But we do believe that vindictive-
ness, blood-thirstiness, disregard of the sanctity of
human life, are types of: barbaric nature, not dimly
shadowed, but too visibly traced in the course of
recent events in Mexico. And we believe, not in
Sheffield only, nor in England, but in the whole of
Christendom, modern civilization is tending towards
that state of things in which the world was before
the introduction of Christianity—civilization with-
out God. Broadhead is the result of that modern
civilization which, in the interests of society itself,
Pius IX. has so often and so emphatically con-
demned, as Juarez is the product of a society in
which first Divine, and then human laws have long
been trampled under foot. Juarez, let Victor Em-
manuel remember, began a career which has already
resulted in a crime that has outraged the moral
sense of the world by persecuting the Church, plun-
dering its property, and defying the Pope. If
Mexico, which must henceforth be accounted, as
far as it is represented by the revolutionary party,
as a semi-barbarous nation, has sinned in Juarez,
modern civilization has sinned in Broadhead.
Broadhead is more than a type of a class—he is
the embodiment of the idea which lies at the bot-
tom of modern civilization. Material interests,
progress in arts and knowledge which advance the
temporal welfare of man—the purely human side
or aspect of life—this world, in a word, and not the
next are the objects which men live for, labour for,
and which, under one form or another, they worship.
The object of such a worship is to them a reality,
which God is not. The end of such a life is tan-
gible ; it stirs the blood, it lights the imagination,
it nerves the will to endure labour, disappointment
and self-denial with a patience bordering on the
heroic—often an earthly martyrdom for an earthly
object. The deliberate and wholesale murders which
have just been committed in Sheffield, in the in-
terest of the trade unions, are an illustration, in its
most exaggerated form, it is true, of this spirit of
the age this absorption of all interests in one
paramount pursuit. It is not so much the merging
of higher interests and ideas in lower; the sacrifice,
under stress of temptation, of principle to passion,
which is common to every age, as the utter oblite-
ration of higher principles of action, and the com-
plete, not subordination even, but substitution of
one end of life for another. The Sheffield outrages
reveal a most complete unconsciousness in their
perpetrators of moral guilt. In their minds another
sense has taken the place of the moral sense, and
not in the minds of the perpetrators only, for the
manner in which the details of these awful crimes

were listened to in the Sheffield courts betrays a
state of mind which constitutes in reality a com-
mon guilt. It is not the actual murderers only who
are guilty of murder. Broadhead is not an excep-
tional monster of cold-blooded cruelty and hypo-
crisy. He is, in a sense, the product of the place
and of the system. He represents ideas and prin-
ciples. He was not moved to blood-guiltiness so
much by individual passion as by a common prin-
ciple, recognised and accepted in the system under
which he acted. He is looked upon, in some sort,
as a martyr to the cause for the furtherance of
which he had no scruple to organize a system which
necessarily culminated in wholesale murder.
Whence comes this state of mind—this way of
looking at murder, when, for the good of the trade
union, it was thought necessary to order secret as-
sassination ? It is clear that, consciously or un-
consciously, Broadhead has taken counsel of modern
civilisation, and carried out its remotest sugges-
tions with relentless logic. To his mind the supreme
object of life was to further the interest of his trade
union. To attain this end nothing was criminal ;
everything that conflicted with this end in himself
or others was to be given up ; every obstacle that
stood in the way removed, no matter at what cost ;
and murder, at best, was a painful necessity—but
still a necessity. Thus he put in a concrete form
the principles of modern civilization, as he under-
stood them. His interpretation of these principles
may have been extreme, but, at any rate, his system
of morality has not shocked his fellow trade-
unionists in the degree that it must have done had
not they, also, put a like interpretation on public
principles of morality. How are such ideas en-
gendered in the minds of men like Broadhead and
the rest of the Sheffield murderers? Have they not
some foundation in the teaching of modern civilisa-
tion ? Is it notithe tendency of modern civilization
to teach, although perhaps not consciously, that the
chief object of man's life is to promote the material
welfare of mankind ; to spread knowledge so as to
remove as much as possible the obstacles which
stand in the way of more universal enjoyment; and
to look, on the one hand, for a reward for such
labours in the consciousness cf such motives, and
to the self-satisfaction which they ought to inspire ;
and, on the other, to an increase in the comforts
and luxuries of life? But thislis to make humanity,
and not God, the object of life, and self-satisfaction
the motive of man's acts, and material enjoyment
his reward. But to put aside the supernatural
sanctions of morality and supernatural motives and
rewards, is at once to decline on a lower level of
morality, to substitute private judgment—the opi-
nion of the individual as to what constitutes crime
—in the place of the Divine Will—the Eteinal
Goodness. The too possible result of such a civili-
zation would be the multiplication of men like
Broadhead and the Sheffield murderers—the rising
up of cities, fall over Christendom, like Sheffield.
Were the code of morality of the trade unionists to
spread, in the course of the next century, all over
Europe, the anarchy and barbarism of irreligious
and revolutionary Mexico would be the too certain
result. How often has not Pius IX. warned Chris-
tendom of a civilization which, by severing itself
from Christian principles in all public acts of We/
has practically made religion a stranger and an out,
cast where it ought to have reigned a king
priest? In witnessing the ill effects of such a code
of morality as obtains in Sheffield, and in listening
in horror to the details of the blood-thirsty vin-
dictiveness which revolutionary and barbaric Moja°,
has exhibited, England, in spite of the fearful
strides which of late years it has been making to"
wards rationalism, would do well to [ponder oil 5
system, which, not in Mexico or in Sheffield on;IYI
but in Italy, in France and in Austria makes 113'
theory humanity and not God its object of worshiPj
reason not revelation, its sole guide ; and not virtu'
but material enjoyment its supreme aim.