The Sun.
London, England, 1866-09-21 00:00:00

TuE s LONDO.N, FRIDAY EVEN !NG, SEPTEMBER 21, 1866.

steam early on Thursday morning, and at 10.30
a.m. the Lord Clyde was the first to weigh anchor,
followed in Indian file by the Achilles, the Pallas,
and the Research, which formed the first division.
The Caledonia then followed, leading the second
division, and in succession the Bellerophon, the
Hector, the Ocean, and the Wyvern weighed an-
chor. After rounding the breakwater and getting
to the southward of the Shambles lightship the fleet
formed in two divisions, and, under easy steam,
bore away for the westward with a fresh westerly
wind and overcast sky. If the fleet is, as is already
stated in the public journals, gone to seek bad wea-
ther, there seems every probability of their meeting
with it in the Chops of the Channel, whither they
are about to proceed. After a fortnight's cruise it
is anticipated the fleet will again return to Portland
harbour to await instructions from the Admiralty
as to their future movements.

THE CO-OPERATIVE SYSTEM.

On Tuesday evening a meeting was hold at Bristol to
celebrate the sixth anniversary of the local Industrial and
Provident Society. About 200 persons were present. The
chair was taken by Mr. Commissioner Hill.
The CHAIRMAN, in his introductory address, said he had
for many years of a long life been intimately acquainted
with the class to which his hearers belonged, and which ho
also claimed to belonged to—he meant the class of workers;
and he believed that during his life he had established some
little claim to be a member of that body. (Applause.) He
knew that among the workers of this country, male and
female, there were many, many sound hearts and excellent
heads. They had heard much of late in praise and in dis-
praise of the working men—some had been eloquent in
their praise, others had been bitter in their criticisms. For
his own part, he should neither praise nor criticise, for he
thought, from a very long acquaintance with that body,
that they were wonderfully like other people —(laughter)
—that there were many who were good, and that there
were some who were not quite so good as one could wish,
and that might be said, he thought, of every class, from
the highest to the lowest. (Hear.) He was delighted that
they should be assembled there that evening, because they
were assembled in the prosecution of a good, and, he would
add, of a great design—(applause)—a design to make the
working man's income go as far as it could for the true
comfort of his family. But that was only one part of it.
They were not each for himself, but each for all and all for
each. They were truly a brotherly society, for none of
thorn desired to gain at the expense of others—(hear)
but they desired that the general interest of the whole
should be promoted as far as possible. After their society
had been in action for nearly seven years, it would be a
waste of their time to go into any description of it; they all,
know what it was better, no doubt, than he did himself
because they had more experience. They knew that the
principle of co-operation was not only thoroughly esta-
blished in their society, and in the other society which
flourished in Bristol, but that it was making its way
throughout the whole of the country. Throughout the
United Kingdom they were awakening co the advantages
of co-operation, and not only in this country, but abroad.
Ho had conversed in France with members of co-operative
societies there, and had heard from the lips of members
the advantages which they derived from co-operation. He
knew also that it was rapidly extending in Germany, and
reports from the United States told them that working
men there were sending over to England, and Germany,
and France, and S witzerland to obtain information upon
the subject, in order to turn it to their own advantage in
the United States. (Hear, hear.) He found that within
the last few days a congress, as it was called—a large
meeting of deputies from co-operative societies through-
out Europe, so far as they were established—had assem-
bled at Geneva, in Switzerland, to discuss how they might
be best carried on, how any defects might be removed, how
improvements might be advanced. He should tell them
that the most respectable meeting at Geneva came to the
conclusion that strikes are not the best means, the true
means, of removing the evils of which the working classes
complained. (Hear.) He had not a word to say against
working men who combined in strikes, just as he had not
a word to say against masters who thought that they could
only meet strikes by lock-outs. (Hoar.) He only mourned
that there should be such differences, such want of har-
mony between the two classes, which, to his mind, were
equally necessary the one to the other for the good of
both. (Applause.) He did not presume to say that strikes
must always be unnecessary, neither did he presume to
say that lock-outs must always be unnecessary, but this
he did presume to say, that when he heard of a strike or
lock-out he felt the deepest regret, for he knew that a great
calamity had fallen upon a large portion of his fellow-men,
because, whether successful or unsuccessful, the expe-
rience he was sure of many in that room would corroborate
him when he said that they worked a great suffering to
those who were prosecuting them, often most conscien-
tiously on .their part, b3lieving th3y wore performing a
duty to themselves, and to the body to which they be-
longed. And so, again, the masters suffered, and were
sometimes brought to ruin; but whether they were brought
to ruin or not, the whole of the country suffered from the
enforced idleness which was the consequence of strikes or
lock-outs, and was tantamount to taking so much money
from the public and throwing it into the sea. (Hear.) He
found that the masons had spent half a million in strikes.
He supposed that meant that they had partly spent the
little property which they had, and partly that they had
lost the opportunity of earning their wages, till the two
losses together came to that great and appalling amount.
However, they were not engaged in co-operation of that
kind which sought to gain income; their society was one
of that class in which they sought to learn how so much of
their income as must necessarily be expended for the sus-
tenance and comfort of their families was best expended,
and they also learnt a most valuable lesson how to dispose
of the part which they were not necessarily obliged to
spend—they had the means of employing it so as to pro-
duce them a return for the money they invested: He had
pleasure in informing them that he had gone over the
statement of their accounts. He had compared each of the
three first quarters of the year 1865 with the three quit.-
tors of the present year, and he found that in each of the
quarters that had expired of the present year the amount
of sales was greater than in the corresponding quarter of
the last year. (Applause.) Having congratulated the so-
ciety upon the fact, and upon the manner in which the
executive performed the duties intrusted to it, the learned
commissioner observed that the society had had prosperity
and it being nearly seven years old, they had a right to
feel that their position was a permanent position ; they
had a right to feel that if 'there were ups and downs, ye
if there were downs there would be ups again, and tha
they might go on for their whole lives with the full confi

dente and proof that the co-operative principle was not a
vague speculation but a great reality. (Applause.) Ad-
verting to some of the advantages of being connected with
such a society, the speaker remarked that such a course of

life was just the course of life—he did not mean to say
filled up the measure of all human duties, but so far as

went it was just the course of life—which was most likely
to cDnduce• to their happiness in this world and the next

He also dilated upon the advantages held out by such so-
cieties of forming acquaintances and friendships which
were likely, he would not say certain, to preserve them
from temptation instead of leading them into temptation.
The learned commissioner concluded by alluding at some
length to the advantages 'of the co-operative system in
manufactories, where the men shared to a certain extent
the profits of the business with their employers, and were
thus induced to energy and economy, to the advantage of
all connected with the concern.

A sanguinary encounter took place a few days
back at St. Trand (Belgium) between some citizens
and soldiers. One of the former had his head laid
open with a sabre cut.

A woman made an ineffectual attempt to com-
mit suicide at about two o'clock the morning before
yesterday, by jumping from the Pont des Invalides.
She was rescued by a boatman, and sent home on
promising not to repeat the offence.
A fire broke out yesterday in a range of stables
and granaries in the rue Bercy St. Antoine; the
premises were consumed. The damage is estimated
at 10,000 fr.

[ADVERTISEMENT.]—Dyspepsia (indigestion), constipa-
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Fifty years' indescribable agony from dyspepsia., nervousness,
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vomiting—Maria Joly.—Cure No. 54,816. The Rlv, James
T. Campbell, Fakenham, Norfolk, of indigestion and torpid-
ity of the liver, which had resisted all medical treatment.—
In tins, lib, 2s 9d; 21b, 4s 6d; 61b, 11s; 121 b, 225; 241 b,
408.—Barry Du Barry and Co., No. 77, Regent-street, London;
also Phillips, tea dialers, 8, King William-street ; likewise
at 61, Gracetchurch-street ; 4, Cheapside ; 49, Bishopsgate-
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51, Upper Baker-street; 133, Tottenham-court-road; 96,
Upper-street, Islington, N.; Harvey, Notting-hill; Close
Brothers, 65, High-street ; and Stubbs, Queen's-terrace, St.
John's-wood, London; and all respectable grocers and die.
mists•—Beware of spurious imitations.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—In one of the first days of this last
stormy month of September there happened one of
the most critical and heart-stirring events in the
history of this world. It was something that the
wise and the good of all ages had imagined, and de-
sired, and that many had thought for and written
for. Yet it was not on any one of the usual theatres
of this mighty drama. It was not on a field where
half a million of men decide empire ; it was not in a
senate or at a national fete, or in a congress ; there
was not even so much visible solemnity, or such a
concurrence of appearances, as when a man of
science promulgates a new law of nature. It was in
a dark cabin constructed on the deck of a ship roll-
ing heavily in the midst of the Atlantic, carried far
out of its course by'unknown currents, without a
ship in sight, or aught but sea and sky, both tem-
pestuous. All who have done that crossing know
the sense of utter separation from the world of land
that must come on them sometimes. But all at
once the occupants of that gloomy cabin found
themselves freely conversing with both the conti-
nents that lay many days' sail beyond the far east
and the far west of their horizon. They got the
exact time to the fraction of a second from Green-
wich ; they got the current news from home ; they
learnt that the Terrible had arrived at St. John's
only about an hour after the occurrence ; and they
were informed of the ships that were to meet at
Trinity Bay. Exact orders for stores were sent and
acknowledged, and appointments made as to time
and place of delivery and meeting. Inquiries were
made, answered, and exchanged as to the weather in
different parts of the Atlantic. The company are
entertained with the forebodings of a sceptic re-
ported to them, and they send back as an answer
the fact of their honest, well-earned triumph.
They receive a congratulatory message from the
New York Chamber of Commerce, and send it
a long-winded sentence in the best telegraphic
style, containing a crowd of long words and
good wishes. No doubt they also sent a little
" chaff" to their private friends, and got some in
return. No doubt they had the substance of the
London papers a good deal earlier than most Lon-
doners. That a "voice" or a "message" should come
from the deep at all is wonderful, and we all know
the melancholy form in which it comes. A bottle is
thrown on the beach, or pickedup floating. A hasty
scrawl in it tells friends that some weeks before a
ship was fast settling down into the sea, or, perhaps,
that its crew were dying of hunger or beaten by fa-
tigue. By this time the voice is from the grave, and
a mere record of human helplessness. But the com-
pany on board the Great Eastern were talking
cheerily and pleasantly about the success of a great
enterprise, and the few arrangements that still re-
mained, about public affairs, and no doubt private,
with the inhabitants of two worlds. The message
went toValentia,o,nd thence to London, to St. John's
or to New York, 5,000 miles by this route. It cer-
tainly had been possible before to converse with two
worlds, and it had already been possible to converse
with one world from the mid-Atlantic. But now, for
the first time, it was possible, and it did actuallytake
place, that men, tossed about on a stormy sea, in utter
darkness, could hold a conversation at the same time
with Europe and America.
.There has in all ages
been the idea of such communication either by men-
tal sympathy, or by the sympathy supposed to exist
between fluids of substances and phases of mind, or
by spirits, which were generally only another name
for laws of nature hitherto baffling investigatioh, if,
indeed, they were ever scientifically observed. It
was to the mind that the ancients and our fore-
fathers looked most for the higher effects upon mat-
ter or brute natures ; and Bacon evidently thought
it worth a serious trial whether, by the use of strong
efforts of the imagination and the will, it would be
possible to make crops grow faster, hounds run
quicker, and hawks pursue the quarry more keenly.
It is only at the tail of a multitude of similar sug-
gestions, and expedients far more ridiculous, that
he drops a hint or two really founded on observa-
tion and capable of being followed up. But he leaves
the true scent as heedlessly as he finds it. "It is
an ancient tradition," he says, " everywhere
alleged, for example of secret properties and influxes,
that the torpedo marina, if it be touched with a long
stick, doth stupefy the hand of him that toucheth it.
It is one degree of workingat distance, to work by
the continuance of a fit medium." He here suggests
that the stick had only to be sufficiently continued,
and 'any distance of communication could be ob-
tajned ; and this in a context of instances, from his-
tory and his own experience, where the illnesses of
distant friends, great victories, and sudden deaths
had become known by a secret sympathy. So apt
are even the most hopeful and inquiring minds to
halt on the very threshold of a discovery, and dis-
credit the practical consequences which it obtrudes
upon them. Now that these amazing results have
been obtained, the Atlantic is found to be so little
impediment to conversation that the dropped mes-
sage may be picked up from its deepest abyss, and
wanderers on its faithless surface, though unable to
hold their course, in strongcurrents and tempestuous
gales, can yet converse with two worlds. It is im-
possibit not to cast a glance at the future effects of
an achievement which destroys at once more than
half the time necessary to all undertakings that em-
brace a wide sphere and require the least degree of
international separation. The old proverb says that
the beginning is half the work; but that may be
more truly said of the requisite information, intelli-
gence, and arrangement, orthe common understand-
ing and concert. This must always be a waste of time;
and when a communication has been made at much
cost of time, it has frequently had to be unmade and
the work begun again. It is this time which is saved
by a discovery enabling all the civilised world to com-
municate instantaneously, one may say. It is true
there appear to be obstacles of a practical and very
serious character, somewhat damaging to the disco-
very thus far ; and it is also true that the telegraph
is only open as Dr. Johnson said of Courts of
Justice and the Clarendon Hotel were open—that
is, to those who can pay. But what we have to con-
sider are the great common interests of mankind,
and no doubt they will be furthered by a discovery
that brings all men nearer to one another. We can-
not suppose that the news vhich concerns all will
suffer needless delays, careless miscarriage, or ob-
structive devices of a purely mercantile significance.
The various Governments of the world, too, will
see the wisdom of allowing intelligence of universal
interest to pass across their frontiers without idle
and mischievous scrutiny for the mere benefit or
amusement of officials. The nations that have to
thank England and France for this vast accession
to their comfort and convenience may well be asked
to give the electric fluid the freest possible course
through their countries, and do us a service which
even the stormy Atlantic does not deny. The land
ought to be at least as hospitable as the sea, as
generous, and as sociable ; for it would, indeed, be a
stigma on humanity if it should avow itself less
kind even than the rude elements of nature in their
wildest and stormiest mood.
POST.—If, as there is every reason to suppose,
the peace now established in Europe continues for
some years, we may expect to find the commercial
relations subsisting between the several European
Powers placed on a still more satisfactory footing
than that which they now occupy. Much has been
done of late years to effect the substitution of a free
trade policy for one of protection, and the long list
of commercial treaties which have been concluded
bear witness at the same time to the zeal with which
the expounders of the new doctrine have pursued
their labours, and to the sagacity which their con-
verts have displayed in turning the lessons they
have recivedto practical account. But although,
with one notable exception, to which we will pre-
sently direct attention, the majority of the COnti-
nental States have entered into conventions for
removing those restrictions upon trade which
formerly were supposed to constitute its only safe-
guards, we conceive that the application of the,
principles on which these conventions rest is still
only in its infancy. This country and France
have outstripped many others in the race, but
there remains still some distance to be traversed
beforebeven these Powers reach that goal which the
late Richard Cobden would have prescribed for
them. If, however, not only they, but those other
States which as yet have scarcely banished the ap-
prehensions with which they viewed the extinction
of that protective policy in which they have here-
tofore trusted, are to make further progress it can
only be under conditions which will favour the pro-
secution of trade in all its various branches, and
which will insure commerce against those disturbing
influences which so speedily paralyse it. The expo-
sition of the policy of the French Government which
has just been made will tranquillise the fears of those
who were inclined to think that serious offence had
been given to France by the brilliant successes which
Prussia has achieved. From France, the traditional
disturber of the peace of Europe, no danger need be
apprehended, and, without being prepared to endorse
the sentiment that when France is satisfied Europe
is tranquil, it will probably be admitted that her
contentment contributes in no small degree to createa sense of security which would otherwise be
want-
ing. As one of the principal results of the restora-
tion of peace, and of the removal of those causes
which have hitherto kept the peace of Europe in
continual jeopardy, we may therefore expect to find
an additional impulse given to that spirit of com-
mercial enterprise which has already swept down so
many of the barriers with which States loved to en-
circle themselves. By no State ought greater benefits
in this respect to be reaped by Austria. She alone
of all the European Powers has refused to believe
that free trade means wealth, and protection
poverty. The experience of the past has, until now,
been lost upon her, and it remains to be seen whether'