The Sun.
London, England, 1867-08-14 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, WEDNESO,AN EVENING, AUGUST 14, 1867.

laying down the law, ably, as it would appear to any
one who had not seen the Times. It is said we all

get our opinions from what we read, and it is very
natural that the average Englishman should take
his opinion frcm the Times, but the objection is
that society is barred from discussing great public
topics unless a few be present who get their
opinions from some other source. The Horse
Guards knew that before Thursday closed the judg-

_
meat of England was that Captain JERVIS should

be re-instated, and Sir WILLIAM MANSFIELD re-
moved from his command. Whether it be of advan-
tage or not to the average Englishman that his
ideas on public affairs should be borrowed from the
7 imes, it is of great advantage to a Government or
any department, for they know exactly from the
tone of the newspaper how they ought to act on
difficult points, or what they must expett if they do
not thus act. Many say that the 7 imes derives

is opinions from the general tone of sentiment,
nerely expressing what the majority had before
pelt. But although this is partly true, it is in a

still greater degree false. The Times cannot resist
the general tendency of society. For instance, we
are rushing along to Democracy—a career that
would be quickly checked if the limes could check
it.

The ;lime; is the sovereign of the present

ruling class of England ; but the Times is not the
sovereign of the ruling class that is to be.
Whether it may become so or not we cannot
predict. We .think it would if it reduced
its price to a penny. It is the three-penny
class that now rule—it will be the penny class a
short time hence. The movement that has given
so great an impetus to Democracy is the work of a
class not reached by the Times, but though the
great journal may have feelers which render it
peculiarly sensitive to the tone of the body politic,
beyond this—we are convinced it makes opinion in
England. And we are bound to say that it makes
this opinion because its arguments aro most forcible ;
and its decisions most just. Look at the case of
the Fenian convicts. Scarcelyhad the Government
committed itself to the decisive statement that they
must be hanged, when the whole fabric on which
they stood was degnolished, and they were flashing
messages to Dublin of reprieve to the condemned.
The Lord Lieutenant had just been informed of the
firm determination of the Government, who re-
mained unmoved in the presence of powerful depu-
tations, and must have been amazed atLordDERBY's
sudden conversion. Last night the judgment had
gone forth that the culprits must die—this morning
messengers were hurrying to reverse the decree ; but
it was not till the next morning, when the Viceroy
arose, and his Times was unfolded before him that
the reason was given. if he was a shrewd governor
be might have guessed. Printing-House-square is
a poor place, in a back alley, somewhere off Lud-
gate-hill, but what is printed there, is often the fiat
of the present ruling class of England, and
it is marvellous in our eyes that it should be
so. An unknown writer through the columns
of a common newspaper issues a decree to
which nations bow. He may be some literary
I scamp--for a great many scamps are literary
(possessing no vote himself that could procure for
him a pot of beer)—who directs that mass of wealth
and respectability in the House of Commons how
they are to act on certain questions, and the rea-
sons why they are thus to act. Self-constituted,
unknown, and irresponsible, and yet the judgment
has an awful weight. It shows haw strong is ab-
stract truth when clearly put. For the Times, after
all, has nothing more than the prestige of truth for
giving weight to its decisions. That prestige, how-
ever, is a great strength. Its force is derived from
measures, not men ; from argument, not names;
from a strong belief in the incorruptibility of a
journal whose revenue exceeds that of many prin-
cipalities. Its influence is akin to that of a judge
charging a jury, who being supposed to have
weighed patiently all the facts disclosed in a case,
lays down the law for the guidance of his country-
men from a mind stored with learning. If the limes
were not national in its weight, and was supposed
to be influenced by the Government, any party or
clique, its influence would be immeasurably de-
creased; but the general body, either right or wrong,
hold that it decides questions absolutely on their
merit, and that it is the most impartial tribunal in
the country. As a general rule we believe it to be
true, and to this the Times owes its influence, and
not, as the Broadway states, on the reliability of its
general news, a mere adjunct which it shares in
common with a dozen other papers.—Anglo-Ameri-
can Times.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—An able report has jast been printed
'or the House of Commons upon the supply of gaS

the metropolis. The Session ends as it liegan so
iar as concerns legislation on the subject ; but the

long and careful inquiry of the select committee on
the Metropolis Gas Bill will not have been in vain.
The difference between the gas companies and the
consumer has been narrowed ; the rights of the
companies are more fully recognised, while ample
justice is done to the consumer's wrongs ; the good
faith of Parliament is upheld ; and the basis of a
future compiomise is, we hope, established. The
select committee, of which Mr. Cardwell was the
chairman, explain at length in their special report
the provisions of the Metropolitan Gas Act of 1860,
which was passed after long inquiry and protracted
discussion, and now regulates, as far as it extends,
the action of the 13 gas companies which, in the
words of the act, have " districted" the metropolis
between them. The act sanctions the " districting"
but does not in any manner guarantee to the several
companies the monopoly of their districts. It fixes,
as is well known, a maximum price to be charged
for gas, a minimum intensity of illuminating power,
and a maximum profit to be divided among the
shareholders, but contains no provision for regulat-
ing the working expenses of the companies, or for
a periodical revision of the standards of price and
illuminating power at the instance either of the
producer or the consumer. The profits, after
dividing not more than £lO per cent. among the
shareholders, are, by the Act, to be applied first
in providing a reserve fund equal to one-tenth
of the nominal capital of the companies, and
then to the general purposes of the undertaking.
Parliament may have been in a generous and con-
fiding mood, and have trusted the companies too
much ; but it is undeniable that on the strength of
these provisions a large portion of the capital of
the companies has been subscribed, and it would be
a gross breach of faith for Parliament now to in-
terfere and say to the companies, as the Board of
Trade this year proposed, " We gave you too much
in 1860 ; we will reduce your dividend now from
£lO to £7 per cent." The grievance of the con-
sumer is that the arrangements intended for his
benefit by the act of 1860 are slow in bearing fruit.
lie finds that while the companies generally, under
the system of competition which prevailed for some
years before 1860, paid moderate dividends, every
Company under the new arrangements has paid,
with rare exceptions, the maximum allowed, and in
many cases large sums have been paid besides, in
the name of back dividends, to make up for divi-
dends which, under the former system, had fallen
short of the maximum. lie finds that the sale of
gas has increased very largely from year to year,
and with that increase there ought to have been a
comparative diminution in the charge for working
expenses; but he still pays nearly the maximum
price allowed by the Act, and a comparison with
the price of gas in other towns shows him that
he pays too much. The total capital of the Com-
panies is at present £6,853,539, and the annual
amount required to pay interest on loans and the
maximum dividend on shares is £605,156, while
the grnss receipts for gas sold cannot fall far
shot tof £1,730,705. Surely, the consumer argues,
this annual surplus of £1,125,000 ought before this,
after paying all the yearly outgoings, to have pro-
vided the full reserve fund, and to be now appli-
cable idreducti.in of the cost of gas? Ile is con-
firmed, too, in his repugnance to the settlement of
1860 when he finds that the Corporation of the
City of London are anxious to compete with the
existing companies, and supply him with gas at
nearly half the peke he is now paying. The
committee point out very clearly that the removal
from the companies of the motives of self-interest,
without the substitution of external control, has had
an ill effect upon the general expenditure. One
cpmpany pays 50 per cent. more for fuel than
another ; one company pays its directors four
times as much as another—wages and salaries vary
in like proportion ; and in an elaborate table it is
shown that the expenditure on general charges, ex-
clusive of fuel, for every 1,000 feet of gas sold
varies in the different companies from 17 pence to
27 pence out of the four shillings which the con-
sumer is compelled to pay. Under these circum-
stances, we agree with the committee that " it cer-
tainly cannot be expected that the consumer will be
satisfied with a system under which no ono appears
to have an overruling interest iu reducing the ag-

gregate expenditure to a minimum, except himself ;
and under which no one who represents his interest
has any share in, or control over, the direction of
that expenditure." There are only two ways in
which Parliament, consistently with the under-
standing arrived at in 1860, can interpose its para-
mount authority in favour of the consumer. It may
concede to the City of London and the Metropolitan
Board of Works competing powers within the dis-
tricts of the 13 companies, or it may, with the con-
sent of the companies, regulate the monopoly they
now practically enjoy. The bill which the Board
of Trade introduced in the present session proposed,
in breach of all good faith, to force unconditionally
a new arrangement upon the companies. It was
impossible that the sanction of Parliament could be
obtained to such an invasion of constituted rights.
The evils accruing to public traffic from the intro-
duction of new companies were one of the chief
causes of the failure of the City of London's Bill in
1866. It was felt that every effort ought first to
be made to come to terms with the existing com-
panies, and that necessity alone would justify the
measure then proposed. Accordingly, the select
committee of this year have endeavoured to arrive
at an arrangement by which the claims of the com-
panies might be reconciled with the just expecta-
tions-of the consumer, and had nearly, as it seemed,
attained their end, when the treaty was broken off
upon the question of price. The companies offered
to supply gas at 45., with an illuminating power
of 14 candles ; the committee stipulated for
3s. 9d., with a power of 16 candles, coupled with
statutory provisions for a periodical revision of
price through the agency of arbitrators appointed
by the Board of Trade, and for insuring the purity
of the gas by a system of administration under the
superintendence of the same board. Neither party
would yield, and the negotiation has come to au
end. Had the companies been more reasonable,
the Metropolis Gas Bill of this year, as amended by
the select committee, would have secured an im-
proved amalgamation and reduced expenditure by
the amalgamation of the companies, and an efficient
audit of the accounts ; the consumer would have
obtained an immediate reduction of 28 per cent.,
with a prospect of further reduction from time to
time; and the companies would have been benefited
by their present monopoly, as regulated by the new
agreement, being practically secured to them in
future. We trust the companies will during the
coming process review their position calmly. If
they will revise their present system of manage-
ment, and reduce the wasteful expenditure now in-
curred on fuel and general charges, they may lower
their prices to the standard the select committee re-
commend, and so avoid all Parliamentary inter-
ference. If they refuse to make the concession, or
incur the necessary labour and odium which a re-
duction of establishment requires, they cannot hope
for the quiescence of the consumer; they will ob-
tain no fresh powers from Parliament for the exten-
sion of their works ; and they will not long avoid
the rivalry of competing interests. We trust they
will be wise in time, and seek at once their own in-
terest in consulting the interest of the public.
THE " WESTMINSTER GAZETTE" ON WOMAN'S PLACE
IN CHRISTIAN SOCIETY.---The history of civilization
presents no greater contrast than between the
position which woman occupied in heathen times
and the place she fills under the Christian dispensa-
tion. Throughout the antique world the tradition
ran that she who was destined to be the helpmate
of man had become his destroyer, and that through
her evil had come into the world. This idea is
to be found in the sacred books of India and of
Greece, as well as in the traditions handed down
by the Jews from the primeval revelation. Woman
was looked upon as the enemy of man, and as ifa
heavy curse lay upon her head. In the heathen
world she was under a miserable bondage, alter-
nately the slave and the plaything of cruel
and unrelenting master. Cut off from all civil
rights, banished from social intercourse, she occu-
pied the lowest position in the family. Dishon-
oured by polygamy and divorce she was man's
drudge and bond-slave, bound by the necessity
of her condition to surrender herself to his man-
dates or to pander to his passions. Woman under
the heathen law was a mere chattel to be bought
and sold. But when she rebelled against her
heavy lot—when her blood rose against her de-
graded condition—what means had she to work
out her emancipation •, what weapons to forge for
her deliverance but the charms of her beauty ?
Armed with irresistible fascination, she went forth
from her house of bondage to conquer the world.
Warriors, poets, philosophers fell under her yoke:;
beauty became their queen ; they worshipped the
ground on which she trod ; they set her up as the
idol of their hearts. But this triumph of the power
of beauty was to woman but a new disgrace and
a deeper fall. She escaped from a degrading bon-
dage only to reign as a Phryne or an Aspasia in
shame. Sare under the veil of the vestal:virgins
—a dim recollection of the primeval revelation
that the world was to be redeemed by a virgin—
there was no alternative open to woman in the
heathen world, more especially at the period just
anterior to Christianity, but domestic slavery or
personal dishonour. Unchastity was the condition
of all public and private life in Pagan times ;
philosophy was utterly powerless against the on-
sweep of overwhelming sensuality. Sensuality
handed over Greece, corrupted to the core, an
easy prey to the stranger; it sapped the founda-
tions of mighty Rome. But in the depths of its
social degradation the heathen world never utterly
lost the idea that virginity was pleasing to the
gods—casta placent Superis ' • with the Romans the
vestal virgin was ever held in honour. But
Christianity alone was capable of restoring woman
to her rightful position. When a Virgin brought
forth the Saviour of the world, woman was de-
livered from the shame which had been laid upon
her by the tyranny or the passion of man. In-
spired by Divine grace, woman rose from her
degradation. The patrician daughter of a Scipio,
or of a Marcellus, or of a Paulus 2Emilius, put
off her purple garments, and her precious stones,
and as St. Jerome tells us, associating with the
slave who the day before had stood trembling in
her presence, said to her :--"4Come, sister, let
us live for the heavenly bridegroom ; ' and she
who had been borne about by slaves seeks for
the sick in the streets, and carries them on
her shoulder to her home to tend to their wounds.'
Christianity, although it redeemed the whole race,
brought a special deliverance to woman ; if under
the Christian dispensation woman took no part in
public life, yet she enjoyed all civil liberties. Her
rights of property and of inheritance were recog-
nized ; her freedom of choice as to marriage, and
her proper position in the family were secured to
her. Her special office was to train up Christian
children, to relieve poverty, to watch over the
sick and assuage pain. A wife of free choice,
she was a queen in the family circle, and as Ter
tullian tells her, an apostle to her husband. Since
her regeneration under Christianity, in everything
great and good the influence of woman is every-
where visible. In the beginning she was seen
among the martyrs in the amphitheatre, among
the anchorites in the wilderness. If Constantine
planted the Cross on the Capitol, St. Helen raised
the sacred symbol over the ruins of Jerusalem.
Clovis was converted by Clotilda, and the conver-
sion of St. Augustine was due o the tears of St.
Monica. Women founded orders, drew up rules,
and regulated conventual life. As time went on
their influence did not decay; the Margravine
Matilda strengthened the temporal throne of Gre-
gory VII. ; the wisdom of the Queen Bianca was
visible in the rule of St. Louis ; the Maid of
Orleans saved France ; Catherine of Sienna boldly
went to the throne of the Pope at Avignon and
summoned him to return to Rome • Isabella of
Castile aided in the discovery of the new world,
and later times witnessed St. Teresa working with
bishops, and learned orators, and founders of
orders at the interior regeneration of the Church.
As long as woman fills the office which Christianity
has assigned to her, as long as she is true to her
secured,
for
th
e
mission, not only her own
happinessguarantee is
but it is the best pledge and
well-being of society. As her influence is great,
so is her responsibility. She may mar man whom
she was sent to help, and degrade Christian
society which she ought to be the last to assail
or weaken. To assert the rights of women,
meaning thereby the right of woman to compete
with man in all the active and public businesses
of life ; to assume, at the expense of womanliness,
masculine qualities of labour and endurance ; to
exchange her home for the public mart, and her
retiring womanly modesty for the bold and out-
spoken haviour of man ; to be the bread winner
and the master, if chance or skill put it in her
power, would, if ever successfully attempted, lead
to a conflict between the sexes, in whichtlic weaker
would have to go to the wall. If women forget
their true dignity and forsake their high place in the
Christian scheme, they will fall again under the
bondage of lust and cruelty. It was only in the
most degraded period of Greek and Roman his-
tory that women of position, emancipated from
all restraint and modesty, repudiated the peculiar
distinctions and customs of their own sex and
assumed the habits of men. Women, mascu-
line after such a fashion, are even more revolt-
ing than effeminate men. How truly Schiller
says :—" Des Weibes schonste Zierde ist die
Weiblichkeit." But in their desire for distinction
and fame, women ran another danger, as was
exemplified in that period of the middle ages when
chivalry had degenerated into an unmeaning or
corrupt institution, and when tournaments and
gallantry and courts of love made the possession
of beauty or fascination of manner, and the
homage of multitudinous lovers, woman's highest
aim and ambition. From the frippery and adula-

Love is a
weapon it

tion, as tawdry as unreal, of which woman was
then the object, and on which she set her heart,
the revulsion was not unnatural which led to the
cynicism that declares—

The loves and the graces
In sweet women's faces
Are but a poet's idle dream ;
Love's truest nurses
Are long, heavy purses,
Pearls from the ocean, gold from the stream.
dangerous plaything ; like a two-edged
may chance to wound the wielder as well
,;ainst whom, in cruel pastime, it is haply
rected ; but *hen it is allowed to become an all-
ibsorbing passion, what does it bring at best but
disappointment and sorrow? A modern poet truly
says:

And was there over tab of human love
That was not also tale of human tears ?
Why is it that the sweetest draught in life
Must ever taste so bitter at tho dregs ?
Died not sweet Desdemona, sorrowed not
Fair patient Imogen ; and did not she,
Of golden lyre, Sapho silver-voiced,
End all her sorrows in the multitudinous seas ?
Neither the Pagan nor the utilitarian, nor the
44 romantic " idea befits the dignity or suits the
character of the Christian woman. Whilst her
highest ideal is the consecrated virginity of the
cloister, her ordinary place is in the family circle.
Thoughtful for others' weal, self-forgetful in her
nature, man's constant friend and best companion,
the inspirer of noble deeds, his fellow-worker, or
his stay and solace in the battle of life, woman
completes the man, and in filling the place assigned
to her by Providence best consults her own happi-
ness. Modern society, if it value its own safety,
must look to it that no lolver ideal of woman's
calling than the Christian be introluced or per-
mitted. Virginity is the salt of the earth—God's
best gift to Christian civilization. The cloister,
visibly reminding the world of a virtue which
Pagans knew not, is the need of our day. If the
tone of public morality is relaxing—if in Paris, or
Florence, or Vienna, or London, mothers of Chris-
tian children, daughters of Christian parents, are
to be found, even though few in number, to ape in
heedless obedience to the dictates of frivolous
fashion, the manners or costume of a Phryne or
Aspasia—it cannot be too strongly put that such a
dereliction is the first step to the forfeiture of the
high place and of the holy influence assigned to
woman in Christian society.

COUNTRY MARKETS.

BRISTOL-TUESDAY.

Tho corn market to-day had a thin attendance, and under
the influence of not, forcing weather there was little or no
demand for wheat, at the prices of last week. Maize is is
dearer. Barley very scarce, and 3d to Gd dearer.