The Sun.
London, England, 1859-08-23 00:00:00

THE SUN.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 23, 1859.

Whigs, Tories, Radicals—all of us welcome the
Hon. RALPH BERNAL OSBORNE back again
to the House of Commons, and all the more so, be-
cause he seems likely to re-eater it as a really
independent man. We have not too many speakers,
everybody knows, who can relieve the heavy tedium
of a debate with a little of what quickens our cir-
culation again, and enables us to wade through the
necessary columns of Sir G. C. LEWIS and Sir C.
WooD. We all want a little of Mr. DRUMMOND'S
clever unaccountablenesses, and Mr OSBORNE'S sharp
quips and retorts, to keep us from sinking under
the oratorical sandbags which form the staple of so
many a discussion, and Mr. DISRAELI will be quite
as pleased to see a worthy antagonist as Lord PAL-
MERSTON an unsworn ally. Cornwall is at least
doing well for the independent Liberal party ; she
has given them two members without a contest in
the course of a few days, and one of them in the
place of a Tory.
Mr. OSBORNE has at last acquired his liberty.
He now knows what it is to sit for a borough the
scales of which are held by voters under Admiralty
influence. He knows the pleasures of slipping in
easily by help of a Whig Board of Admiralty, and
of being dropped out as easily by the good offices
of a Tory Board. He will be a useful reformer
after having experienced what it is to be the foot-
ball of two parties, kicked in by one and kicked
out by the other. Let him be true to his expe-
rience, and his arguments for the Ballot, at
least, will not want pungency; only let him
not be ashamed to confess the cause of
his success as well as of his defeat. It was no
doubt the remembrance of the means which gave
him his seat for Dover which so fired his indigna-
tion in thd celebrated CARNEGIE episode in the
House of Commons, and which disposed Mr. DIS-
RAELI to express his sarcastic sympathy with the
honourable member's excitement.

Do we, however, guess rightly when we under-
stand Mr. OSBORNE'S satirical inuendo in respect
to Lord PALMERSTON'S Whig Premiership ? Did
the new memberlfor Liskeard really fancy he had
as good a title to be a Lord as Lords LLANOVER,
LYVEDEN, and TAUNTON ? What means this—
rather long—but we give it at length as it is in
Mr. OSBORNE'S best hustings style—this rather
long paragraph ?
"It has been objected on another occasion
by two or three gentlemen, I believe, that I
am a thick and thin supporter of my Lord Pal-
merston. (Hear, hear.) I have no hesitation in
saying that I entertain a great and sincere respect
for Lord Palmerston; but when it was imputed to
me that I was a thick and thin supporter of that
noble lord, I think that the imputer should have
called to mind that, had Ibeen such a supporter of his
I would scarcely have been in my present position.
because that noble lord is notorious for never for-
getting his thick and thin supporters. (Hear, hear.)
It is most probable that, had I been one of that
sort of supporters of Lord Palmerston, I would
not be on these hustings to-day, but should, in all
probability, have gone to another place from which
no commoner returns. (" Hear," and laughter.) I
might have been sent to the drawing-room when
not wanted in the Cabinet parlour. (Hear.) lam
not a nominee of Lord Palmerston here, and never
will be his thick and thin supporter in another
place. (Cheers.) lam here reminded of a passage
in an old play where a great philosopher is asked
what becomes of all the old moons. -"Gentlemen',"
the reply was, " they are cut up into little stars."
(Laughter.) And it seems to me that there are
certain members of the old Whig party who are
in somewhat the same position as the old moons
neve alluded to, and who .have been cut up into
verysee little stars. (Renewed laughter.) I have
certain peopl'z reduced to that condition, noble-
men now of whom I speak in their individual
capacity with -the highest respect. No man can
Smith,equal tnhoewci.conrcidlttng manner of Mr. Vernon
or of Sir Benjamin Hall,
now Baron LlanovYerven'
andde
uprightness, straightforwardness,o man could surpass in
nowLo and intelligence
Mr. Labouchere,
Taunton, and when
I speak of these noblemeura I do so with the utmost
respect;
but at the same time I dissent from the
principle- of sending to another
place certain men,
because I am one of those who have so
great a re-
spect for the House of Lords that I wish their num-
ber not to be increased by lavish creations. I think
he is no friend to the three estates of the realm, the
Queen, Lords, and Commons, who seeks to derogate
from one or the other, and therefore I object to
these creations, Ido not wish to see the House of
Lords made a waste pipe for the surplusage of the
House of Commons, and so far for the accusation of
my being a thick-and-thin supporter of Lord Pal-
merston s. If Lord Palmerston ,had been 20 years
younger he would not have made these creations.
do not think he would have wide them 10 years
ago; but even now his " failings lean to friendship's
side." (Hear.)

What, we say, means this ? Mr. OSBORNE lost his
election, but he might still have been made a
Minister, and a good post offered to some pocket
borough Whigling to make room for him. Others,
not easily accommodated, were sent into the Draw-
ing-room. But the clever sharpshooter of the
Whigs was neither brought into the Cabinet, nor
even into the Ministry, nor kicked upstairs ! Do
his jokes on the Upper House mean what they seem
to mean ? Does he really laugh at it, or are the grape s

sour ? As he could not be member for Dover, would
he like to be Lord DOTER, or Lord Somebody-or-
other ? The honourable member must excuse us
for even imagining such a thing ; but when one of
the most popular and amusing speakers in the
House, one whom, as we have intimated, all sides
liked to hear, became suddenly silent, and when
his silence is coincident with his acceptance of
office under a premier, notoriously not a Radical
such as the member for Middlesex was—when
we remember this we may fancy to ourselves the
same spicy orator even preferring the otium cum
dignitate of the Upper House to costly struggles
for a seat in the Lower one.
Be these speculations well or ill-founded, RALPH
BERNAL OSBORNE re-enters the House of Commons
to keep in the good graces of the honest electors of
Liskeard, not in those of any Premier—of any one
having power to ask him into the " Cabinet Par-
lour" or into the " Drawing-room of the Lords."
He can now speak for the Ballot again as well as
vote for it ; can praise Mr. COBDEN for declining
place even under Lord PALMERSTON ; can dilate on
the vast amount of our taxation ; can descant on
the amazing financial ability of Mr. GLADSTONE,
which no one will deny, and also on the necessity
of his readjusting the unrighteous income tax, if he
retain it; can picture Mr. DISRAELI as the really
great, and really liberal Tory statesman, unfortu-
nately compelled, like some animals, to move ac-
cording to the impetus given by his " tail ;" can
of course have a little by-play with his friend Sir
JOHN PAKINGTON ; but can openly declare that
" if he saw the present Government swerving from
the true principle, he would have no hesitation in
voting their condemnation; and that so far from being
a thick and thin supporter of the Goverment, he
would be a thick and thin supporter of principles."
Let Mr. OSBORNE but adhere to his Liskeard
programme and professions, let him but resume in
the house the style of things which he resumed
outside of it in Cornwall ; and then whether it be
the reviviscence of old Radicalism, or his not being
offered a seat in the " drawing-room" when there
' was no Cabinet place for him, or both, we shall all
be heartily glad to see RALPH OSBORNE himself
again.

A compendious history of the rise, progress, and
development of the Serpentine, together with a
preternaturally lengthy epistle from the pen of Mr.
EDWIN CHADWICK, will serve surely, if not to ex-
haust the argument, at any rate, let us hope, so far
help to convince Mr. FITZROY of the error of his own
judgment as to cause that right hon. gentleman to
hesitate before actually carrying out the extraor-
dinary scheme devised by Mr. HAWKSLEY, and
backed up by the approval of Sir S. M. PETo and
Mr. ROBERT STEPHENSON. Happily, it is not too
late even now for a modification of the plans of the
Chief Commissioner. A square inch of turf has
not yet been turned in Hyde Park with a view to
the laying out of the " blind" of the Cockney
shrubbery. The foundations of the lodge-like cot-
tage are not yet dug out. The wheels and
pistons of the two little stationary engines are
not, yet put together at the head of the Serpen-
tine. The particular three-fourths of an acre
have not yet been selected for the odoriferous pur-
pose of a nasty, messing process of perpetual, or
at any rate of periodical, filtration. It is unhappily
too true that, in a moment of weakness, the House
of Commons, while in committee of supply, voted
£17,000, or at least £16,500, for the carrying out
of Mr. HAWKSLEY'S absurd project for what the
Chief Commissioner of Public Works disingenuously
described at the time as a plan for the complete
rapid, and permanent purification of tho Serpen-
tine. What is worse, in regard to that unfortu-

nately precipitate vote, is the plain and obvious
fact that, Parliament having been recently dis-
persed, there is no chance before us for the
next five or six months of having that
voted rescinded. Mr. FITZROY has got leave
and licence from the House of Commons to do just
whatever he likes with that £17,000, in the way
of gravel-beds, and stucco vases, and ornamental
specimens of Cockney cottage architecture. The
Right Hon. the Commissioner may, if he pleases,
play at Ducks and Drakes with every penny of
that £17,000 upon the water of the Serpentine.
But—for doing so—he will certainly be held re-
sponsible upon the reassembling of Parliament.
Mr. HAWKSLEY, of course, sticks by his plan as
something as nearly as possible perfect. That he
does, we repeat, quite as a matter of course—
just as he decided, quite dispassionately, in the
preference of his own particular little
device to any and every of the other devices
sagaciously submitted to his scrutiny by her
MAJESTY'S Government. It is undoubtedly true
that Mr. HAWKSLEY, and, for that matter too, of
course Mr. FITZROY also—for the plan of filtration
is his also by adoption—has been fortunate enough
to obtain for that plan the earnest advocacy of Sir
MORTON PETO and Mr. ROBERT STEPHENSON.
Great names unquestionably, the greatest names
each in his own department—PETO among builders
—STEPHENSON 'among the world's most renowned
engineers. But the question before us is neither a
question simply of building, nor yet is it, for that
matter, a question of simple engineerfag. It is a
point-blank question as to stench or no stench, as
to drainage or no drainage, as to whether a dirty,
stagnant pool is to be played with or cleansed tho-
roughly. Pre•eminent though the reputations
(each in his own particular metier) of PETO
and STEPHENSON—we hesitate not to assert
with confidence that Sir JOSEPH PAXTON is yet
more qualified than either to decide upon the
fittest plan for the treatment of an ornamental
sheet of water like the Serpentine ! And as to
drainage questions, as to sanitary questions of that
particular description—though we don't, in the
estimate of his genius, quite go the length of Mr.
THOMAS CARLYLE—there is no name second to
that of Mr. EDWIN CHADWICK. Now, both Sir
JOSEPH PAXTON and Mr. EDWIN CHADWICK are
as absolutely and entirely against Mr. HAWKSLEY'S
plan, as Sir MORTON PETO and Mr. ROBERT STE-
PHENsoN (from simply following their own noses,
we suppose) are infatuated in favour of it. But
concurring with PETO and STEPHENSON in their
engineering opinion, well there is just exactly
—Nobody. Concurring with PAXTON and
CHADWICK—there is the whole of the lead-
ing portion of the Press, and the mass of
the population. It is tolerably proverbial
that there are few such stubborn things as facts.
And the whole weight of the facts go against Mr.
HAWKSLEY'S scheme of filtration. What facts, it
may be asked ? Those furnished, we reply by the
authenticated statistics of the Registrar-General—
together with others supplied by the statistics of
the Home Secretary, in connection with the Ser-
pentine. What says Mr. CHADWICK ? "As
far as I remember," he observes, " the mere
Money .score for
lives lost, and the- vari-
ous expenses attendant on the existingdefec-
tive conditions of the place, could not be Jess on
5
the average than between £l,OOO and £2,000 per
annum, which, capitalised at percent.,
w.to3uolc,looono
that score alone, justify an outlay
of
from
to £40,000 for works of permanent prevention ;
and it then appeared also that the works required
for the saving of life were the best for the purifica_
tion of the water—inasmuch as every cubic yard

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