The Sun.
London, England, 1858-06-28 00:00:00

TIIE SUN, LO ND O.N, _ MON)) AY-

the position will be retained, as in the case of
Chundaree, which has just been recaptured by
SMrrn's brigade sent from Gooner.

Nor does the fact that Gwalior has been at-
tacked and plundered by the insurgents, in any
degree affect the accuracy of the statement.
While so many gangs of predatory miscreants are
roaming through the country, ripe for mischief,
but unable to accomplish anything that can ma-
terially affect the ultimate issue of the contest.
We also learn that after the relief of Shah-
jehanpore by Brigadier JONES, he was surrounded
by masses of the enemy. This was on the 15th
of May, on which day Sir COLIN CAMPBELL left
Bareilly with the whole of his disposable force,
reaching Shabjehanpore on the 18th. The 23d
he drove back the enemy, capturing Mohundee
(qy. Moulbie), and that on the 26th Sir COLIN
CAMPBELL occupied Jellahabad, on the Futtehghur
road.

It is said that Oude is still disturbed. The
rebels again approached Luck-now. It was not
thought, however, they would venture on an at-
tack, as the city is fully defended, and the garri-
son very strong. It can scarcely be anticipated
that those who failed to destroy the small garrison,
encumbered asit was with helpless women and inno-
cent children, while they were in occupation of the
entire city and had the native population at their
side, could now succeed in achieving any great suc-
cess. Where so large a portion of the landowners
have already made their submission or are anxious,
in legal phraseology, to "purge their contempt,"
a far smaller body held their own for a series of
months against far greater odds, and we care little
for the despairing demonstration made by those
whose fidelity to the rebel cause could no longer
be relied on, and all of whom would be anxious
to accept any amnesty that might be offered.

A new light has broken in on the Palmerstonian
journalists. They have made the brilliant dis-
covery that the India Bill will actually pass ; and
express their delight at the result, which they
more than insinuate is due to the forbearance of
themselves and the veteran Viscount. Indeed,
they claim credit for the entire measure which they
once so unsparingly denounced. They are also
discovering sundry mares' nests respecting the
causes that have compelled the mastication of the
unsavoury leek by their ancient PISTOL. Father
Thames comes in for his share of the blame.
light Hnnouralla and Honourable Gentlemen
have deserted their posts and abandoned their
constitutional functions rather than breathe
the pestiferous atmosphere engendered by the
abominable effluvia arising from the sweltering
mudbanks and contaminated waters of the modern
Cloaca maxima. They have, like truant school-
boys, made holidays for themselves, not con-
ceiving that anything of real importance remains
to be accomplished.
We should gladly give the parties the benefit
of these alleviations of their unutterable griefs, if
it would in any degree promote the cleansing of
the silent highway. The grievance in that case
is, however, too flagrant to require such adventi-
tious aids. The nuisance must be abated, although
Parliament might transfer its sittings to a more
salubrious distriO. The real causes, however, of
this modification of views—of this " singing small."
by the Palmerstonians—are the decisive defeats
which he, their Leader, received on Friday even-
ing. The minorities of 62 and 93 respectively
were heavy blows and great discouragements to
the party. They proved beyond the possibility
of doubt that the real Liberals would not march
through Coventry with their self-elected leaders.
The Noble Member for Tiverton perceived that
discretion was the better part of valour, and that
there was no longer any use standing up to be
made a " chopping-block" by his more youthful
and more vigorous opponents ; and therefore we
hear of the expediency of hurrying the remaining
clauses through the House, in order that ample
time may be afforded to the Lords for the calm
consideration and full discussion of the measure
in all its details. It was but very recently that
these organs of public opinion considered it im-
possible that the bill could receive the Legislative
sanction during the present session, trying to ex-
cite the wrath of the Peers at the alleged slight
—now, by a daring act of " grand and lofty
tumbling," by a piece of tergiversation scarcely
exceeded by any ever exhibited by these cele-
brated performances, all has been changed, and
the Hibernian fete of " turning one's back upon
oneself," celebrated by Sir BOYLE ROCIIE, has been
accomplished with unequalled celerity and coolness.

Mr. GLADSTONE will take the sense of the House
on Tuesday. The point which he is desirous of
carrying being that the first members of the
Council should be nominated in the bill, or, in
other words, that all should be elected by the
House of Commons. This was the original inten-
tion of the Government, so far as the nominated
portion of the body was concerned, and very
unexceptionable names were put forward—names
which will, in all probability, be still seen
amongst the members of the first Council.
It is, therefore, clear that there would be
no very serious objection to such a proceed-
ing. But some difficulties have arisen which
he will fairly state, and we have but little doubt
that a majority will acquiesce in the wisdom and
propriety of the decision finally arrived at. The
matter, after all, is of comparatively trivial im-
pottance, and, whatever may be the result, can-
not tarnish the laurels won by the Ministry, or
impair the debt of national gratitude fairly earned
for their statesmanlike, judicious, and constitu-
tional mode of dealing with a question deeply
affecting the interests of both England and
India,

The Thames will 'at length be cleansed. There
is not a doubt of it. According to the phrase of

our neighbours across the Channel—C'est un fait
accompli. Or, according to the homelier phrase
of our cousin across the Atlantic—we may hence-
forth speak of Dirty Old Father Thames in his
capacity as Dirty Old Father Thames, as—a gone
coon ! Again, in a few months--by the time this
planet of ours has made another circuit of the
zodiac—let us hope, really and trul) and confi-
dently hope, that, once more, the loveliest of all
the rivers of England will be, what the charming
English poet truly called it in tho days when he
lived upon its banks and loved the flow of its
pellucid current, " the silver winding Thames."
Latterly it has been—the yellow stinking Thames.
It has been a loathsome eyesore wel•ering to and
fro between the Towers of JULIUS and the ti 3 w

sonous atmosphere. A hale, stalwart fish-porter 1
has been seized with the fatal cramp upon the
margin of the filthy stream, and been carried off
We and livid,- a few hours afterwards, to the
parish dead-house. The judges of the laud have
been sickened by the pestilential vapours floating
into the halls of justice—until the chief judge
among them all, the Lord Chief-Justice of Eng-
land, has deliberately said, from his place in the
House of Peers, that unless some remedy were
speedily found, the Courts could not possibly con-
tinue to sit in London, but must adjourn, as they
had been known to do upon occasions of yore, to
Oxford or St. Albans. Traffic upon the River
Thames—rather, .we should call it the Sewer
Thames—has lltterly (and no wonder, truly) been
diminishing appreciably. The river steamers—
we beg pardon, the sewer steamers—have plied up
and down with only a ghostly sprinkling of adven-
turous passengers. Among these rash voyagers,
one unfortunate—as his Grace the Duke of Buc-
CLUTCH mentioned in the House of Lords on Fri-
day evening—had been so affected by nausea that
he had actually vomited over the side of the
vessel. "dais, que diable allait it faire dans cette
galere ! Others had been carried fainting on shore
from the decks of these same wretched sewer
steamers. Parliament itself has "nosed" the evil
at last—and literally with a vengeance. For,
again we say, the immediate and effectually clean-
sing of the river is a thing at length avowedly
foredoomed. Lord JOHN MANNERS, as Minister
of Public Works, has said it. Others of his
Ministerial Colleagues have corroborated his suffi-
ciently explicit, and most conciliatory and encou-
raging assurance. Mr. DISRAELI, Lord MALMES-
BURY, the Earl of HARDWICKE, the Marquis of
SALISBURY have declared, as plainly as words
could declare, everything that this matter of
really vital import has secured, and will retain,
as it has ling imperatively demanded, the most
serious attention of Her MAJESTY'S Government.

Besides, what were the concluding words ut-
tered on Friday, in the House of Commons, by
one of the very best Ministers of Public Works
England has had for many a long day, one of the
most energetic, and laborious, and conscienti-
ous of our administrators What said Sir
BENJAMIN HALL at the conclusion of his remarks
upon this important question ? He declared with
characteristic frankness that he would be happy to
afford any assistance in his power to the Noble
Lord, his immediate successor in office—with
a view to the speedy putting down of this mon-
strous and intolr.Ll:_, nuisance. Th't it remains
to be put down is no fault of Sir BENJAMIN'S.
Trammelled like the rest of those about him with
the trammels of red-tape, he was just snapping
assander the crimson bands of routine woven by
millions upon millions of yards, and afterwards
intertwined and interlaced in inextricable con-
fusion in the great manufacture of Circumlocu-
tion, when all his toils went for nothing, and Sir
BENJAMIN HALL—one of the only men of real
worth and efficiency then in office—suddenly found
the cards snatched from him and shuffled up over
for a fresh deal at the very moment when the
game was in his hands. Recollecting all Sir BEN-
JAMIN HALL had done during the comparatively
brief interval when he presided over the Public
Works department—remembering how he had
schooled himself into one of the most able and
accomplished chiefs of that hitherto neglected but
most important department—we could almost
find it in our hearts to regret that he, in regard
to Public Works, might be an exception in the
Executive ; that this particular administration
might no more than the Master of the Rolls, or
the Chief Baron of the Exchequer, depend is any
way upon the changes of Government. At any
rate, by such an arrangement, we might have
secured ourselves from the inevitably bad results
of getting everything into an active and admirable
state of preparation merely to the end that we
should scatter all those preliminary labours (just
upon the eve of their consummation) to the winds
of heaven—beginning again de novo ab War), at
the risk of finding a responsible office passed from
hands the most efficient to hands the most ineffi-
cient. Happily Lord JOHN MANNERS has resumed
his former position as Minister of Public Works
with an incitement to resolute exertion not pos-
sessed by him in 1852—that of a noble and
laudable emulation provoked by his patriotic pre-
decessor. In the Noble Lord's own patriotic de-
votion to the duties of his office we have every
reliance. Of his efficiency we are sanguine that
the Community may so have proofs clearly demon-
strative. May these hopes be speedily and sig-
nally realised!
The new Minister of Public Works must bear
particularly in recollection the inspiriting assur-
ance volunteered by his able predecessor in office,
the spontaneous promise of his cordial and mag-
nanimous co-operation. It will be well to remem-
ber, moreover, what was said on Friday in allu-
sion to the same pressing need for active mea-
sures of reform—the serio-comic but most truth-
ful remark made in reference to the necessity of
at once cleansing the Thames, by his grace the
Duke of NEWCASTLE. " Let the Government
be courageous in this matter," said his grace :
" It is a great opportunity for them to earn dis-
tinction, for Parliament is completely at their
feet, and if they choose to save it, Parlia-
ment will be only too happy to be saved."
What says the old proverb—" Many a true
word spoken in jest." It is a great oppor-
tunity and Parliament is, in this matter,
completely at the feet of her MAJESTY'S Govern-
ment. Nothing, we do seriously and solemnly
believe, will be regarded by the Lords, and Com-
mons as an adequate reason for not immediately
setting to work to clean the River Thames from
its present surcharge with odious abomina-
tions. As to the mere question of cost—suppos-
ing the change to necessitate an expenditure of
any amount, however apparently extravagant that
amount, the House of Commons, we are satisfied,
would pronounce to be in no respect unreasonable.
Whatever the amount required for the work to
be done, that amount will be forthcoming. London
—the wealthiest city in the world—can as-
suredly afford to get rid of its filth, no
matter how many millions may be needed as a
preliminary to that essential and beneficent under-
taking. According to the very highest estimate,
this first and foremost of all our public works for
the capital of England would involve an outlay
of from 3,000,0001. to 4,000,0001. Supposing
it to necessitate an outlay of 5,000,0001.—nay,
supposing it to require the expenditure of
10,000,0001.—the happy result of such a dis-
bursement would surely be worth it. It is not,
however, in any way a question of cost. It is
simply a question as to How the sewage of the
metropolis may be diverted from the Thames, and
conveyed along one or more grand sultterraneous
channels to the sea Most Effectually. THAT we
must have decided at once without any further
delay, without having any more plans and coun-
terplans drawn, and docketted, and tied up in
red tape, to be duly pigeon-holed and forgotten.
It is just one of those old Roman Republican
Emergencies, requiring a Temporary Dictator-
-ship for the good of the Commonwealth. A little
despotic power infused opportunely into this par-

ticular department of the public service, and
rightly applied—promptly, resolutely, energeti-
cally—would do a world of good to London and
very nearly 3,000,000 of Londoners. 0 for
the sweep of this Herculean Reform-0 for the
swift cleansing of this monstrous Augean abomi-
nation l It is an earnest application from three
millions of people, which will result, we confi-
dently believe, in one of the not least memorable
or least meritorious good works which will be
recorded as baying been happily and opper-
tunely effected by the Earl of DERBY'S Admi-
nistration.

" Not without a substitute,"—that is now the
grand cry of the High Church petitioners against
the Abolition of Church-rates. What an advance
from the days when we first enlisted in the Anti-
Church Rate Battle ! Then it was denied that it,
was any hardship for a Dissenter, or even an
infidel, to pay Church-rates. He got much good,
it was said, from the Church, and was taxed with
ingratitude because he could not appreciate the
good, he received, and with impudence for pre-
tending that he, quite out of the lure of epos-
tolical succession, was doing himself any good to
the community by his conventicle services and
his Sunday schools, his tracts and his bibles. It li
was all schism, and schism was the worst of social
poisons. We who ventured to think that one
Christian was as good as another, although he did
not use our prayer-book, or do homage to our
mitre, hardly escaped the imputation of Atheism ;
still we did think that men who contributed large
sums of money to support their own worship, and
whose chapels and schools were largely attended
by the poorer classes, and who obviously did
exercise a very beneficial influence over them,
were rather hardly dealt With by: their fellow
Christians in this matter of Church-rates. We
felt that we, in their place, should grudge a shil•
ling forced from us by Christians of another
variety of creed ; and we have, therefore, from
the beginning demanded the total exemption of
Dissenters from Church-rates. That is now
every one's creed Hardly a High and Dry
Churchman, or an old Tury of the right divine
school, now exists who is not willing to exempt
Dissenters. Gladly would all parties let of
Dissenters on their " signing themselves Dis-
senters."

That day, however, SUMS to be past. Statesmen
do not like creating stronger lines of demarcation ;
they would rather amalgamate than create sects.
Dissenters, too, do not exactly relish the proposal ;
'Tiers seems something patronising and paltry
about it ; and it wuua, du. SJpureand s'nip'e
abolition has been sent up to the Lords—it shows
indeed a measure of progress which is most re-
assuring to the advocates of civil and religious
liberty. Now all the plaints and supplications of
the pro-rata party are directed to getting, if they
can, a substitute. Well, let them name a sub-
stitute. The simplest one is to put their hands
into their own pockets—one which, we think,
would prove superabundantly sufficient. When
we look not only atewhat Dissenters are and have
long been doing, not only at what Roman Catho-
lics do, not only at the late splendid subscriptions
of the Free Church both for ministers at home
and missions abroad—but when we look at the
noble church extension efforts of last year, and
see splendid, or modest, or humble new churches
rising up everywhere, and provided with clergy-
men too—we say it is vain and trifling to tell
us that the Church of England cannot keep its
own churches in repair. It needs no legal help—
" the substitute" is the collection at the doors,
or the circular to the neighbourhood, or the call
on the wealthy. This will yield enough and more
than enough. Throw the maintenance of the
fabric of the churches, and the incidentals to wor-
ship, on theliberality of the people, and the former
will be put in better repair than they have been
in for years, and the latter will be improved too.
Better than all, the people will take, as people al-
ways do, an interest in what they have supported
by their money.
If churchwardens, however, do need enabling
powers, by all means let them have theme Any-
thing but any modified form of the tax itself, let
that and all the ill-will belonging to it go, and go
completely. We have little acquaintance, however,
with ecclesiastical law, and it well may be, that
churchwardens and vestries will have less power
to collect money and apply collections, or to
charge rent for pews and the like, than
Dissenters now have—by all means give them
any powers they have. 'Why should not each
parish meeting be empowered to raise money in
any way it pleases, and to disburse it as it will.,
We repeat our advice, however, to all parishes
which dare do it, to petition without a day's
delay. Every petition should be sent to the
Duke of SOMERSET, or .to some lord who will
present it by the Ist of July, at latest. The
Government, it is certain, are willing to do some-
thing; what we know not yet. It will be better
in proportion to the number of petitions.

MINISTERIAL AND POLITICAL MOVE-
MENTS.

Parliament, it is now supposed, will be prorogued by
the middle of next month. 'hi►e Queen, it is said, is
desirous to visit her daughter at Berlin, and scruples to
leave so long as the Legislature is in session, as the
royal assent is required to so many bills,
The attack of gout from which the Earl of Derby has
been suffering for some time has abated during the last
few days, and his lordship is now able to leave his room.
His lordship fully expects to be able to resume his at.
tendance in the House of Lords in the course of the
week. Owing to the illness of the noble Premier, his
dinner parties have been postponed.
The Earl of Malmesbury received a large circle to
dinner on Saturnay evening at his mansion, Wbiteball-
gardens.
The Archbishop of Armagh had a numerous party to
dinner on 'Saturday evening, _at" las- grace's house in
Cbandos-street, St. James's.

Their Royal fUghnesses the Duchess of Cambridge
the Hereditary Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg Strelit,z,
and the Princess Mary, honoured Lord Ravensworth
with their company at an afternoon fete on Saturday at
Percy's Cross, Fulham. • Thee royal visitors were at-
tended by Lady Geraldine Somerset and Lady Caroline
Oust. A brilliant circle of the aristocracy assembled at
the party, and moat of the foreign Ministers and their

The Duchess of Manchester, the Mistress of the Robes,
had an assembly on Saturday night at her mansion in
Stanhope-street, Park-lane. Nearly ail the leading
members of the beau monde were present.

The Drury Lane Italian opera will be varied nigbt'y
by the performance of the most favourite works of the
Italian and German composers. To-night we are to
have the never-tiring "Sonnambula," with Viardot
Garcia as the Arnina, and Naudin as the Elvino. On
Tuesday the " Puritani" will be repeated with Persian'
as Elvira; and "Norma" is to be played on Wednes-
day ; whilst "Don Giovanni" will be produced as early
as possible.
"The Merchant of Venice" is to be the piece de re-
sistance at the Princess's, preceded by a new farce,
entitled " Dyieg for Love," which is announced for pro-
duction this evening.
At the St. Janiee's, Madame Ristori appears this
evening iu Racine's tragedy of "Pt bire."
Mr. Buckstone's season of fire years' uninterruptei
performances at the Haymarket will be brought to a
close in another forteight. Dorieg the present week
"An Unequal Match" will be repeated every evening
(except Wedne daN), "BA and Cox," "A Striking
Wid iw," and "Tbe Dew' Shot," will be the after-
piece".
Mr. Webster and the Adelphi company perform six
bights longer at the Sadler's Wells Theatre. " Janet
Pride" and "The Middy Ashore" will be performed on
the first four nights of the week. There will be a change
of peibrmauces on Friday, for the benefit of Madame
Celeste, and on Saturday for the benefit of Mr.
Webster.
Mr. and Mre. Barney Williams conclude their
engagement at the Surrey on Saturday next. The pieces
announced for every evening until Friday arc " Rory
O'More," "Au Dour at Sniille," and "Latest froth New
York."