The Sun.
London, England, 1866-03-28 00:00:00

BROMPTON.

W. JOBBINS, OF FULHAM, AND H. REDFERN, OF REGENT'S
PARK.--In accordance with the articles they had to walk
two miles for £5 a side. Redfern is 17 years of age, hss
won two handicaps, stands sft sin high, and weighs 7st
121 b. Jobbins is 18, sft 4in in height, and weighs 7st 41b.
The latter had for his attendant Target, whilst G. Topley
did the polite for Redfern. Jobbing won the toss for
choice of side. Up to the third lap Redfern was leading
by one yard ; in the fourth lap Jobbins came to the front,
but did not hold the lead for long. Time of the first mile
7 min. 11 sec. ; between the sixth and seventh laps Job-
bins trod his antagonist's shoes off, so that he had to pull
up, Jobbins, of coarse, winning easily. Time of second
mile, 14 min. 8 sec.
G. ROBERTS AND G. PLUMB, BOTH OF BROMPTON.—This
was a spin of 100 yards for £5 a side, Plumb to receive six
yards' start. They had to go by report of pistol, and an
even start was effected by Mr. Westhall. Plumb won a
good race by two yards. Mr. E. Jones referee.

THE ATHLETIC SOCIETY OF GREAT BRITAIN.
This society will celebrate their fifth annual Olympic
festival at Llandudno, on Monday and Tuesday,-June 25
and 26, under the management of Colonel Hugh M. Walm-
sley and Mr. John Hulley, Gymnasiarcb, of Liverr 001,
Vice-president of the Athletic Society. The following pro-
gramme will be observed:-100 yards race, 200 yards race,
two mile flat race, 220 yards hurdle race, half-mile race for
youths under 17, one mile flat race, one mile steeplechase,
quarter mile flat race, four mile walking b
matxerhc,
isehalf-milebox-
Indi clu ecs,
flat race, broadsword, fencing,
ing (heavy, middle, and light weights), sabre versus bayo-
net, vaulting, gymffastics, pole leaping, high running jump,
wide jump, putting 321 b. shot, dumb bell exercise, and
wrestling (heavy, middle, and light weights).
On Wednesday, Juno 27, the following swimming races
will take
place in Llandudno Bay:—One mile race, half-
mile race, quarter mile race, 100 yards race, diving, and
fancy swimming.
The champion's gold modal, presented by W. Bulkeley
Hughes, Esq., M.P., will be awarded to the competitor
showing the greatest general proficiency in athletic exer-
cises. Prizes, consisting of gold, silver, and bronze medals,
.will be awarded to the successful competitors, and all the
necessary particulars may be obtained on application to the
hon. sec., Gymnasium, Liverpool.

Bedlamite has been put out of training.
Mr. Gilkes purchased Fairplay at Aylsbury on Thurs-
day.
Bessy (late Lady Emma) has recently changed hands,
and gone into Jewitt's stable.
Colonel Sir Thomas Biddulph, joint keeper of the Privy
Purse with the Hon. General Grey, will have the charge
of the Royal Stud at Hampton Court, in place of the late
Sir Charles Phipps.

The Prince of Denmark, a reputed " horseman," paid a
visit last week to the French Imperial stables, with the
irreproachable tenue of, which he expressed himself
" astounded."

The steeplechase horse Frank, who ran fifth for the
Liverpool Grand National, and on the following day ran a
severe race withßeporter, was foolishly shipped that night
for Ireland. Catching cold on the voyage he died three
days after his arrival at James Mhrphy's, of inflamation
of the lungs, which no veterinary skill could stop.
The Grimshaw case, says " Argus" of the Post, con-
tinues one of the topics of the day, and public opinion una-
nimously endorses my views upon it; and, if the boy
complains of the strong tone of my remarks, he should
console himself with the idea that they procured for him
a niche in the Pall Mall Gazette. It is said he is to be
brought up before the stewards in the Craven Meeting at
Newmarket to show cause why he should not be sus-
pended for three calendar months ; but I trust the loss of
so good a situation will be deemed a sufficient punishment
for him, as it is highly desirable he should not be made a
martyr, and have undue sympathy created for him. How-
ever, as Mr. Chaplin gave him, it is said, a couple of hun-
dreds for riding Vespasian, which he did, by the by, very
well, he will be able to get bread and cheese during the
time of his suspension. It seems Mr. Saxon, who is his
old master, gave him the best advice on the subject, in
telling him to write to the Marquis of Hastings, and ask
his pardon, and promise not to repeat the offence. But
some young fool told him, I am assured, that it would be
lowering his dignity to do so, and, throwing the chance
away, he brought on the crisis which overtook him. Some
persons may, perhaps, think I am trying to prejudge the
case against him ; therefore I will say the excuse he puts
1 forth is that he was not well—and two ulcers in his throat
confirm the statement—and that he was afraid-of the horse,
which at home is ridden at exercise by a boy just out of
Andover Workhouse. If this were the case, and he did
not feel up to the mark, his course was a very simple one,
viz., to ask the marquis to let him off the mount, which, no
doubt, he would have done in a moment but no employer,
Imuch loss so liberal a one as the owner of Prodigal, likes
to be made a laughing-stock on a public racecourse before
a concourse of people without some reason being assigned
for it. However, I have no doubt " The Prodigal's Re-
turn" will, as before, both point a moral and adorn a tabu.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOITRITALE.

TDIES.—With the view of clearing the ground
for the approaching debate, and of ano question to
follow, Mr. Bright, in the form of a letter to his
constituents, which we published yesterday, has
presented to the world a description of the House
of Commons and an estimate of public feeling. Mr.
Bright's capacity for a sound opinion on these
points will be variously appreciated, but we should
ourselves certainly expect him to know pretty accu-
rately the state of feeling out of doors, though we
are not so sure he would succeed in analyzing par-
ties and discriminating between motives. We are
bound to say, however, and we feel sure a large
portion of the public will agree with us, that while
Mr. Bright's picture of the House of Commons is
only a gross exaggeration on a very slight basis
of truth, his estimate of public opinion out of
doors is equally fallacious. We will take the latter
first. The people of Birmingham Mr. Bright sup-
poses to be ready to march to London at a day's
notice, and to fill the space from Charing-
cross to Westminster Abbey. With a rather
gratuitous sneer at the Day of Humiliation, and
forgetting, perhaps, how often such days have been
observed lately at New York and Philadelphia, Mr.
Bright suggests, as a convenient vent for indigna-
tion, a day to be observed in the whole district about
Birmingham in a manner that no Parliament could
possibly withstand. By a " firm assertion of their
rights in great meetings, or in one vast gathering,
they would beat down, as if by one blow, the
power that threatens to bolt the door of Parliament
against the people." For our part, we can only see
in this a frantic attempt to raise the ghost of 1831,
when the Chairman of the Birmingham Political
Union undertook to raise two armies, as numerous
and as brave as that which conquered at Waterloo,
for the approaching contest with the boroughmon-
gers, and when a day was actually fixed for the
purpose. It is unnecessary to discuss whether this
boast was feasible or not ; it is enough that we only,
look on this picture and on that to see that every-
thing is different. The entire kingdom was then in
a state not merely of agitation, not merely of dis-
content, disaffection, and utter want of confidence
in all our institutions, but of that actual and irreme-
diable distress which was the continual predisposing
cause of any amount of mischief. Since Mr. Bright
refers to the " Birmingham district," which he sup-
poses to be capable of rising, we will just transcribe
from Mr. Molesworth's useful "History of the Re-
form Bill the substance of three petitions to the
House of Commons in 1830 :—" The inhabitants of
the liberties of Longton and Lane-end, in the Pot-
teries, ' call the attention of the House to the un-
precedented state of distress which oppresses the
manufacturing, agricultural, commercial, and work-
ing classes of society ; they do not pretend to know
the cause of this national calamity, but they feel it
to be a duty incumbent upon them to state to the
House that, unless immediate relief be afforded, the
impending consequences to all classes of the commu-
nity will be dreadful.' The inhabitants of Birming-
ham refer to the ' want of employment for labourers,
the general reduction of the wages of labour, the
general deficiency of profit in every branch of
productive industry throughout the country, and
the positivq losses which attend the employment of
capital and industry in the most important branches
of trade, together with all the distresses which now
afflict the country !' Gentry, clergy, yeomanry,
and tradesmen of the borough of Warwick state
that the general distress which prevails among
all the agriculturists of this kingdom has brought
many of the labouring poor into a state of deplor-
able suffering, from the total inability of the far-
mers to employ them.' Manufacturers, shopkeepers,
tradespeople, and inhabitants of the city of Coven-
try 4 have for some time past beheld with feelings
of the most painful interest the silent work of de-
struction which is proceeding with such amazing
rapidity among all classes of the agricultural,
manufacturing, trading, and labouring population
of this once flourishing and happy kingdom."' That
was England thirty-six years ago, on the eve of the
Reform Bill ' • and everybody who can remember as
far back will be able to add from his own recollec-
tion a crowd of images, facts, phrases, and figures,
all contributing to the same dismal picture. There
was reason to fear in those days. What fear is
there now ? Who dreams of marches upon Lon-
don, monster meetings, new constitutions, and
anarchy ? Nobody. One fear, and one only, oc-
curs to us as likely to haunt the minds of the
classes which in the last generation joined the
working men in their simultaneous cry of suffering
and remonstrance. One fear, one alone, that we
know of, possesses any class of employers likely to
be found in the Birmingham district. It is the fear
of all their working men suddenly presenting them-
selves to demand higher wages for less work, or con-
ditions still more likely to embarrass production and
enterprise. We do not grudge the working man his
higher vantage and his better chance ; but we do say
that he has no occasion, and certainly he shows no in-
clination, to march upon the metropolis and occupy
Palace-yard. And now for the portrait of Parliament,
or, rather, of the House of Commons, by the pencil
of Mr. Bright. He say it "is never hearty for re-
form, or for:any good measure. It hated the Reform
Bill of 1831 and 1832. It hated the bill which re-
pealed the Corn Law in 1846. It does not like the
Franchise Bill now upon its table. It is to a large
extent the offspring of landlord power in the coun-
ties, and of tumult and corruption in the boroughs,
and it would be strange if such a parliament were
in favour of freedom, and of an honest representa-
tion of the people. But, notwithstanding such a
Parliament, this bill will pass if Birmingham and
other towns will do their duty." Mr. Bright then
proceeds to describe the Tories ; of course, in no
flattering terms, though he has never hesitated to
act with them when it answered a purpose. The
Tories, however, are not the whole of the danger,
nor is it to shut them up, or out, as may be, that
the Midland population is to march to Palace-yard.
The special objects of this attack are " a small sec-
tion of men who do not accept the name of Tory,
but zealously do its work." These combine to form
what Mr. Bright calls several times over " a dirty
conspiracy," and he does not think a " more dirty
conspiracy" has been seen in the House of Com-
mons for many generations, against the bill and
Lord Russell and the popular policy. Mr. Bright, as
if twinged with a recollection or two, finds it neces-
sary to use the comparative. There have been con-
spiracies—aye, " dirty conspiracies," but this he
will have to be more " dirty" than any he ever
knew of. This, then, is the House of Commons.
A dangerous moietyismade up of elements thoroughly
and intrinsically bad, bad in name and in nature,
and of some other element united, Mr. Bright says,
"in a dirty conspiracy." But that does not save the
rest, and it is hard to say whether Mr. Bright deals
more hardly with the conspirators than with the
non-conspirators. The collective house, he argues,
hates the bill, and will not pass it, but for fear of the
men from Birmingham and other large towns. It
can be bullied and frightened into its duty, and in
no other way. Selfish and corrupt, it will not give
up an iota of its privilege and position, except as
beasts of burden are made to do their duty by the
fear of the whip or the cudgel. The House, like
all despots, is suspicious and cowardly. There is
nothing heroic about it. It will not run needless
risks, for it is not animated by a high sense of duty
or devoted to any principle. It has a good worldly
position and plenty of good things, and these it
wishes to keep, but it won't die nor be beaten for
their sake. Mr. Bright says in effect—Parliament
has a deep detestation of the Reform Bill ; but you
have only to shout loud enough and collect in suffi-
cient numbers, and it will pocket the affront, and
pass the bill. Now, we submit that this is not a
correct portrait of the House of Commons. It is
plain, however, that Mr. Bright has let out the true
secret of the course taken by him and his Ministerial
coadjutors. The bill, he admits—he boasts—is not
an appeal to the good sense, the intelligence, and
the patriotism of the House of Commons, to their
confidence in the people, or any such sentiment, for
they possess no such sentiment. But they fear the
people, and it is to this brutish fear Mr. Bright ad-
vises his constituents to appeal. Pass this bill, he
says, virtually to the House of Commons ; pass it,
however incomplete, however irrational, however
preposterous in the order of proceeding ; pass it,
even though it is a leap in the dark, and takes you
instantly out of your depth ; pass it, even though it
hand over the further necessary reforms to a new
Parliament and a worthier constituency ; pass it,
thoiigh you gain only a respite from your fears, and
shall have no thanks for your pains, because, if you
don't pass it, the masses will assemble, and it will
be worse with you. We have taken the measure of
your aristocratic quality, and it will flinch in the
crisis. Pass the bill, because you must and will pass
the bill, and we will make you. It is for this bill,
for this policy, on this understanding and this esti-
mate of the powers to be overcome and the method
certain to be victorious, that Mr. Bright has en-
tered into an alliance with Lord Russell. But this,
of course, is not a " dirty conspiracy." It is a " dirty
conspiracy," we are told on this high authority, to
decline absolute confidence in people who refuse to
show that confidence, who appeal to terror, and who
do not conceal for an instant that fear must be your
only counsellor. The Ministerial,- or rather the
super-Ministerial, spokesman admits that the work
itself is dirty, for what can be dirtier than an abso-
mte abandonment of reason and forethought at the
blind suggestion of a merely personal danger ? He
tells the house it has dirty work to do. It has to do
what, by its own light, it believes to be wrong, and
what, by the light of common sense, is, indeed,
irrational. But it must do the work, for it is bid,
and has no help. So, as there is dirt on both sides
of the alternative, in Mr. Bright's estimate, and
they who support a Franchise Bill Shutting their

3,,, ........

eyes to everything are dirty slaves, while they who
demand a complete and final measure are only
" dirty" conspirators, we will make our choice, and
be abused for doing our duty, rather than for aban-
doning it under insolent threats and vile terrors.
POST.—The suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act
in Ireland has so completely paralysed the promoters
of the Fenian movement in America that no other
course was open to them but to proclaim their enter-
prise a failure or to seek elsewhere than in the United
Kingdom to strike the blow by which the indepen-
dence of Ireland is to be vindicated. It will be in
the recollection of our readers that a schism arose
in the Fenian councils a few months since, the ma-
jority of the Senate charging G'Maheney and his
Ministers with malversation of the funds which
were raised for the liberation of Ireland. The re-
sult of this division in the camp was that the Senate
elected a rival head centre of the name of Roberts,
who, in his turn, appointed Ministers and issued
appeals to the brotherhood to pay in their subscrip-
tions to the treasury of which he and his friends were
the guardians. We now learn, on the very ques-
tionable authority of a New York journal, that ere
a month elapses this section of the brotherhood will
have some £3,000,000 at their command. But our
contemporary goes further, for it tells us how the
money is to be spent. President Roberts has secured
the services of a former brigadier-general of volun-
teers, named Sweeney, as his Secretary of War, and
this eminent strategist has not only resolved on the
plan of operations to be adopted in invading Canada
in the spring, but has also shown a becoming con-
tempt for his foes by publishing it in the columns of
a newspaper. An army of 30,000 men will be ready
m a month's time to cross the frontier, whilst simul-
taneously a navy composed of ships which will leave
various ports on the Lakes of Erie and Michigan
will co-operate with the land forces. With a division
of 8,000 men the Grand Trunk Railway will be
seized, whilst two other divisions will march respec-
tively on Kingston and Montreal. These places
being taken, and the invading troops being placed in
security behind their own intrenchments, the re-
mainder of the task will be comparatively easy. In-
spirited by the success of their militant brethren, the
lukewarm will hasten to range themselves under a
victorious standard, and the Fenian army and the
Fenian treasury will alike be filled to overflowing.
Canada being thus conquered, will receive the name
of New Ireland, and be duly recognised as an inde-
pendent republic ; whilst the invaders, elated with
their success, will, with the ships they will have
captured at Montreal, and a few of the Canard
steamers, proceed to Old Ireland, and having
secured her deliverance from Saxon thraldom,
obtain for her the same recognition of indepen-
dence which will have been accorded to Canada.
Such is the Fenian programme, which, to be
successfully carried out, needs, as Mr. Roberts
truthfully obs€rves a liberal contribution of
money. As a scheme for the subjugation of
Canada we might well afford to laugh at it, but as
the foreshadowing of an attempt to test the military
resources of the colony it can only be regarded in a
serious light. 'Whether such an attempt will ever
be ma de must almost exclusively depend on the
American Government. In the United States men
are divided in opinion whether the sympathy of the
Government is with the Fenians or not ; whilst in
this country, we are happy to say, no doubts exist
as to the loyal intentions of the Cabinet at Wash-
ington. Still, when we find members of the Senate
addressing public meetings in favour of the invasion
of Canada by an army of filibusters, it must be ad-
mitted that the project is not so objectionable or
chimerical in the eyes of members of the American
Legislature as we might have had reason to expect.
The Executive at Washington have hitherto done
nothing to check the Fenian movement ; but then
it must be borne in mind that up to the present no
breach of the laws appear to have been committed.
Until the law is broken the Government will be
powerless to act, and we shall be without just
grounds of complaint. With the evidence before
our eyes of the mischief which has been done in
Ireland, we cannot look without uneasiness towards
Canada. There, Fenian emissaries will have but
few opportunities for the display of their peculiar
abilities, but the possibility of evil will, as we have
reason to believe, be prevented by the prompt sus-
pension of the Habeas Corpns Act. Of the loyalty
of the colonists the most abundant proof has been
shown. The call for ten thousand volunteers was
responded to on the following day by thirty thou-
sand anxious to bear arms in defence of their terri-
tory. The militia have been called out, and all the
chief towns strongly garrisoned. These precautions
may, and it is to be hoped will, prove unnecessary ;
but the fact that they have been taken indicates
how great is the sense of insecurity which these con-
spirators against the public peace, who have endea-
voured in vain to excite an insurrection in Ireland,
have been enabled to create in Canada and the ad-
joining colonies.