The Sun.
London, England, 1859-11-12 00:00:00

ROYAL EN GLISH OPERA,
COVENT-GA RD EN.
Under the manazement of Miss L. Fyne and Mr.W. Harrison
THIS EVENING will be performed TIIE TROVATORE.
Messrs. Henry Haigh, Santley, Walworth ; Miss Parepa and
Miss Filling.

Conductor, Alfred Mellon.
Ballet, LA FIANCE. Messrs. W. H. Payne, H. Payne,
F. Payne, Mdlle. Lequine, Pasquale, Pierron, Mons. Vandris.
Doors open at half-past 7—Commence at 8 o'clock.

THEATRE-ROYAL, HAYMARKET.
Lessee, Mr. J. B. Buckstone.
THIS F.TE!cING the performances will commence with
THE CONTESTED ELECTION. Mr. and Mrs. Charles
Mathews, Mr. Buckstone, &c.
After which (by desire), PAUL PRY.
Commence at 7.

ROYAL PRINCESS'S THEATRE.-
Lessee, Mr. A. Harris.
THIS EVENING, the performances will commence with
a new drama, entitled THE MASTER PASSION. Messrs.
Ryder, G. Melville, Graham, It. Cathcart, Garden ; Miss C.
Lec ercq and Mrs. Charles Young.
After which, a new farce, in one act, entitled NURSERY
CHICKWEED. Messrs. Widdicomb, Meadows, H. Saker ;
Miss L. Keeley and Mrs. Weston.
- - -

To be followed by a dramatic tableau In Watteau colours,
by .1. K. Planche, Esq., entitled LOVE AND FORTUNE.

EW THEATRE - ROYAL, AD ELP I [l.
.1.1 Sole proprietor and Manag•er, Mr. Benj. Webster.

TILTS EVENING (2nd time) THE DEAD HEART. "Air.
B. Webster. .1. L. Toole, David Fisher, Paul Bedford, Stuart,
Billinzton, C. .1. Smith, Eburne, Moreland; Miss Woolzar,
And Miss K. Kelly,

Followed by (fifth time) a piece of extravagance, rcalled
DINORAII UNDER DIFFICULTIES. Messrs. J. L. Toole,
P. Bedford, C. J. Smith, Eburne, and Miss K. Kelly.

Doors open at half-past six—Commence at seven. Box-
°,Ace open from 10 to 5. No charge for securing seats,
nor fcmr hills of performance. All fees to servants of this
establishment are strictly prohibited.
Acting Manager—Mr. Wm. Smith.

ROYAL ST. JAMES'S THEATRE,
King-street, St. James's. Lessee, Mr. T. B. Chatter-
ton. The nearest Theatre to Chelsea, Pimlico, and West-
minster, the Park being open to carriages and foot passen-
gers all hours of the night.
THIS EVENING, a new Comedy, LONDON PRIDE ; or,
Living for Appearances. Messrs. Leigh Murray, Barrett,
Charles Young; MesdaTes Frank Matthews, Murray, and
Nelly More.

Followed by MAGIC TOYS, support by Miss Lydia
Thompson, Miss Clara St. Casse, and a numerous Corps de
Ballet.

To conclude with the New and Original Burlesque, by L.
Buckingham, Esq., of VIRGINILTS ; or the Trials of a Fond
Papa.

Reduced Prices—Gallery, 6d ; Pit, is. The Box-office open
from 11 to 5 daily. Doors open at half-past six; perform
ante commences at 7.

ASTLEY'S ROYAL AMPHITHEATRE,
Westminster-road.

Sole Lessee Mr. William Cooke.
Every Night the successful Drama, by Tom Taylor, Esq.,
entitled GARIBALDI, supported by Mr R. Phillips, Bel-
more, Raymond, ]Tics Kate Carson Powerful Company—
Full stud of trained Steeds—Great Military Tableaux--
Scenes in the Circle by Madlle. Marguerite, Signer Isacilii,
the wonderful Italian Equestrian, Miss Rosina and .John
Henry Cooke—Clowns, Messrs. Croueste, Rowella, and the
Parisian Grotesques—terminating with an exceedingly droll
Ballet entitled LOVE'S VAGARIES.

Stage Manager, Mr. R. Phillips

CAN TERBUR Y HALL CONCERTS.—
EVERY EVENING.—The 4usle of Verdi's Opera of
MACBETH (now first made public in England at these Con-
certs).

And a Grand Selection from Meyerbeer's new opera of
DINORAH.

Comic Vocalists—Messrs. George Holson (the Irish Come-
dian, and Mimic), W. T. Critchtleld, and E. W. Mackney.

Several interesting: Pictures are added to the Fine Arts
Gallery. The suite of Halls have been re-decorated and
beautified, and constitute one of the most unique and brilliant
sights of the metropolis.
RoSA BONFlEuit's celebrated PICTURE of the HORSE
FAIR is now added to the already magnificent Collection of
Paintings in the Canterbury Hall Fine Arts Gallery. The
gallery is open from 9 a.m. till 12 p.m. Admission, Six-
pence.

THE WEATHER.-SUN OFFICE, NOVEMBER 12.

THERMOMETER, IN THE SHADE.
51—highest since noon yesterday.
41—lowest this morning and during the night.
48—thin day at noon.

BAROMETEIt-30.45.
WIND, South-Easterly; light, with fine weather.
Frost in the night.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.

This DAY. —Morning, 2h. 34m.—Afternoon, 2h. 52m.
To-Molt/tow-Morning, 3h. 11m.—Afternoon, 3h. 31m.

THE SUN.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1859.

British Columbia, according to our latest advices,
appears to be rapidly and resolutely advancing in
its grand onward and upward course of developo-
ment. This—in spite of the lawless seizure of San
Juan by the American soldiers under the orders of
General HARNEY, with the connivance, if not at the
actual instigation, of the Central Government at
Washington. According to these latest advices
from Vancouver, advices dating to the 27th of Sep-
tember inclusively—San Juan was being more and
more strongly fortified by the Yankee filibusters;
for their own defence, and for the protection of the
intruding squatter population. Meanwhile, waiting
authorisation from home as to his precise line of
policy, with a view to their expulsion either by the
moral force of diplomacy or by the physical force
of war, his Excellency Governor DOUGLAS, we
learn, still continues to p:•eside with all his wonted
vigilance and sagacity over the simultaneous
organisation of the whole of the new system of
Government placed there under his supremo and
responsible authority as her Britannic MAJESTY'S

representative. Colonel MOODY, Chief Commis-
sioner of Public Works and of Public Lands, is
still, of course, but at the merest opening of his

gigantic engineering labours. He is there, how-
ever, at the head of an efficient and gradually
increasing body of collaborateurs—men of practical
skill and scientific acquirements—men entering
upon the occupation of a fruitful and virginal
wilderness, armed with all the rare and potent
appliances of modern civilisation. Never has the
organisation of a new colony, especially of a colony
of such magnitude and geographical importance,
been commenced so auspiciously. The pioneers there
of European progress enter upon their great labour
armed not simply with the axe and the theodolite,
but carrying with them the steam engine, both
stationary and locomotive—the chairs and sleepers
for the formation of a railway—the wires and bat-
teries for the laying down of the electric tele-
graph—photographic apparatus and all the va-
rious arms and implements familiar to the hands
of Englishmen in the prosecution of their labours in
art, science, and literature ! The printing-press----
the diving-bell and the balloon—the telescope and
the miscroscope—the laboratory of the chemist,
and the hammer and mallet of that latest of the
peripatetic philosophers, the geologist. The natu-
ralists connected with the new expeditionary force
sent forth into those primeval regions having all
their faculties on the alert for the recognition and
the classification of the flora and the fauna of those
remote and for the most part unpenetrated regions
of the great North American Continent ; the
botanists especially prepared for the arrangement
of a novel hortus .siccus. Already, however, Bri-
tish Columbia is assuming to itself, if we may so
express it, a titular importance worthy of its
scope, its position, and its general character. His
Excellency, the Governor of the new colony, in his
position as her Britannic MAJESTY'S representative,
s rapidly becoming surrounded by all the appro
-
i
priate functionaries and officers of the Government.
Besides his prominent coadjutor, the Chief Corn.:
missioner of Public Lands and Public Works, already
particularised, Colonel MOODY, with his attendant
engineers—there are already clustering around
Governor DouGLAs, in his now Proconsulate or
Tetrarchy, the other officers of the Crown duly ap-
pointed to assist him in carrying on the affairs of
administration. There is the Chief Justice of the
Colony (BEGBIli). There is the Attorney-General.
There are the subordinate law officers to aid them
in the conduct of the judicial or juridical depart-
ment. The Bishop of British Columbia is but just
now upon the eve of taking his departure from the
shores of the old mother-country to enter upon the
labours of his distant diocese with his little band of
assistant clergymen. And in the meanwhile the

capital of the new colony has been planned out
under the name of New Westminster. The sites of
other cities have been selected—streets and terraces,
squares and crescents are in some of these rising, if
not to the sound of dulcet harmonies, like the
Palace of Pandemonium, almost as magically to
the harsher music of the saw and the mallet, to the
click of the trowel and the hammer, and other kin-
dred industrial notes of preparation. Roads are
being made through the forest wastes and grassy
wildernesses—trailing sinuously among the
haunts of the wild beast and the Red Indian
aborigines the name and fame of honest MACADAM.
Wherever wander the new colonists themselves,
there, too, following in their footsteps, come the
beneficent tatars from St. Martin's-le-Grand, the pos-
tal agents of penny-wise but not pound-foolish Row -
LAND HILL. British Columbia, in effect, is rising
even now into premature importance among our
larger colonies like a young giant fully armed. It
has its magnificent gold fields along the banks and
borders of Fraser River to begin. That, in truth, is
its raw material for a future Mint and for the in-
creasing replenishment of its embryo Exchequer.
Its metropolis has but very recently spread open to
the winds that blow one of the recognised banners
of civilisation, the broadsheet of an independent
newspaper. That organ of public opinion, if but
wisely conducted from the outset, may become an
enthralling record for after consultation, the record
from the very date of the birth of this new colony,
of the rise and development of the noblest of all the
realised daydreams of its founder, Sir BULWER
LITTON, a Reality of his creation surpassing all his
Romances, eclipsing even his brilliant reputation in
letters by the solid evidence, thus attesting his rare
capacity and genius as a colonial administrator.

There is a very impressive and masterly paper in
the current number of the Edinburgh Review upon
the subject of the " Secret Organisation of Trades,'
with especial reference, of course, to the recent
—would that we could say of it literally the late—
strike in the building trades of the metropolis. It
would be a good thing and a wise thing to have
this article reprinted from the Edinburgh in a
separate and cheap form as a penny or twopenny
pamphlet and widely circulated—circulated far and
wide—among the industrial population. The
Reviewer sets out with a reminder of the paper
which appeared just twenty-one years ago upon
the subject of Trades Unions and Strikes in the
pages of the Edinburgh, a paper that startled the
public at large with a series of frightful revelations.
Happily there is not now in the strikes of to-day
any repetition of what was woefully rife then—
namely, crime of the most fiendish brutality and
variety ; inhuman murders, lawless conspiracies,
shooting, burning, and bludgeoning! But of
secret tyranny over thousands and thousands
there is yet, alas ! but too much. Of the
extent of this tyranny the Reviewer writes :
" According to the best authorities accessible in so
obscure a case, the trades' unions in the kingdom
are not fewer than two thousand, containing about
600,000 members, and commanding a fund of
£300,000, destined chiefly for the support of
strikes. Now, if we suppose each member to have
three persons dependent on him (which is a low
average), it would appear that nearly two millions
and a half of the working class of our population
are governed in their most important affairs—their
industry and its recompense, their social relations
and personal fortunes,—by laws and authorities
not recognised by the rest of society, and not sub-
ject to public discussion or legal control. It must
be considered, also, that the two millions and k half
constitute only a portion of the multitude whose
fortunes are determined by the trades' union
organisation." Considerably later in the argu-
ment the statistics of the present strike are thus
succinctly epitomised : " The building-trades
involved in the movement are seven : joiners,
carpenters, masons, bricklayers, painters, plasterers,
and labourers. It is impossible to ascertain with
any certainty the number under the order of the
leaders, or actually out of work in August. The
number receiving relief on the sth September was
7,856, of whom 4,899 were skilled artisans, and 2,957
were labourers ; but these combined were declared
to be no evidence of the number on strike, who
were conjectured to be anywhere from ten
to forty thousand men and boys, out of the
sixty thousand skilled workmen and innumerable
labourers included in the London building trades."
As for the plea upon which the strike was com-
menced, the Reviewer observes :—" The demand
of ten hours' wages for nine hours' work had been

agitated at intervals for some years, and met by a
set of resolutions passed by the masters at a meet-
ing at Freemasons' Tavern, some time ago. The

. I reason alleged by Mr. Potter for the pressure being
enforced at this particular time was, that the trades
were overstocked; that thousands of unemployed
workmen were hanging about in idleness, while
some others were working even more than the
habitual ten hours. We need not stop to point
out that men who were employed overtime, and
paid accordingly, were, as shown by the mere fact,
superior workmen, while the unemployed were the
inferior members of the craft. Mr. Potter's notion
was of forcing the inferior men upon the masters by
depriving the employers of their best men for
several hours per day, and of their next best men
for one hour per day, without reduction of wages.
The most odious part of this double tyranny was
that directed against the superior workmen ; it is
the old story of a coalition between a few crafty
leaders and the crowd of inferior workmen, to
depress and subdue the best men in their body.'
Immediately after which the sequel is thus de-
scribed, with comments as generously expressive
of indignation at the tyranny exercised as in their
logical clearness of reasoning they are perfectly
unanswerable. The sequel and.the comments on the
sequel run on in the manner following :—" The
master builders," writes the Edinburgh Reviewer,
" assembled on the 27th of July, when they met the
movement of the strike leaders by resolving to close
their works till the persecuted firm could resume
business. At a subsequent meeting they agreed to
the report of their committee, which recommended
its being made a condition of employment hence-
forth, that the men should declare themselves free
to make their own labour-bargains, and resolved to
remain so. In the plainest possible terms, the em-
ployers avowed their approbation of combinations
for mutual aid in sickness or other misfortune, and
in old age, while objecting to such as encroach on
the liberties of the buyers and sellers of labour.
As our readers are aware, the aspect of the move-
ment changed from this point. We haveheard little
_since of the nine hours, except when the strike
leaders were pushed hard on their other ground, and
had to take refuge in this. The agitation has been
about this declaration since the first week in August.
'Faking advantage of the ordinary repugnance of
the ill-educated classes to sign any ' document' (as
they called this agreement), the leaders alarmed
them with extraordinary accounts of what this
document ' would bind them to. It would bind
them to work for one master henceforth, under the
penalty of going to prison for taking work from
anybody else: it would cause them to be num-
bered and marked like convicts : it would reduce
them below the serfs of Russia and even the negro-

slaves of America. The fears of the timid, the hero-
ism of the brave, the conscience of the scrupulous, the
self-love of the vain, were appealed to on the theme
of the declaration.; so that no explanation seemed to
reach the multitude of the deluded. The senti-
ment ran like wildfire through the country, like
the accusation of poisoning in seasons of plague,
or of hoarding in times of famine, Did it never
occur to those misguided men that the en-
gagement they were invited freely to sign, and
which they have denounced so fiercely, is a
thousand times less injurious to their absolute
freedom and independence than the articles of the
trades' unions by which they are voluntarily bound ?"
The whole force of the argument comprised in this
masterly paper is summed up, however, in its
closing sentence: " The great question is,
whether our care and zeal in legislation, and in
promoting the intelligence of our countrymen,
can restore to the industrial classes the true Bri-
tish liberties which are placed in abeyance by
such a secret organisation of trades as has under-
mined the groundwork of society in England."
It is a momentous question that thrusts itself just
now very impressively upon the attention more or
less of the whole mass of the community, and
demands at the earliest date possible the resolute
response of the Legislature.

THE NEW SCREW LINE-OF-BATTLE

,SIHP VICTORIA.

This magnificent ship, which will be launched on
Saturday (this day) from Portsmouth Yard, in the
presence of her Majesty and the Royal family, de-
serves particular notice as being larger than any
line-of-battle ship now afloat, and also as being the
first thrce-decker that has been designed expressly
as a screw-steamer. Her actual displacement when
at her load-line will amount to very nearly 7,000
tons, which is greater than that of every other ship
of war by nearly 1,000 tons !

We have at present afloat five screw three-deckers
—tho Marlborough, Royal Sovereign, Duke of
Wellington, Royal Albert, and Royal George.
These were originally designed for sailing ships ;
the first three by the late Surveyor of the Navy,
Sir William Symonds ; the Royal Albert by the
late Mr. Oliver Lang. The Royal George was built
on the lines of the old Caledonia, and was launched
at Chatham in 1827.

To adapt these vessels for the reception of the
screw, they were altered as follows :—the Marl-
borough was lengthened in midships and at each
end, and was also increased slightly in breadth ;
the Duke of Wellington and Royal Sovereign
were lengthened in midships and by the stern ; the
Royal Albert was lengthened by the stern ; and
the Royal George had only the screw aperture cut
in her deadwood, and was not lengthened at all.

The following table, showing the comparative prin-
cipal dimensions of these ships and of the Victoria,
will be found interesting to those of our readers
who regard with satisfaction and pride any addi-
tion to the naval resources of the country :

. ,d. 45, Cr)
- fc-1.E d •
NAME t CO g •-51-6, A R
A, „ E
C.l PP A'" 4
ft. in. ft. in. ft. in.
Royal George lO2 400 205 754 61 23 2 2616
Royal Albert
Duke of Wellington 131 7001240 660 1 24 8 3771
Royal Sovereign
Marlborough
Victoria

It will be observed that the Victoria, though
larger than the Marlborough, does not carry so
many guns. The armament of the Victoria is, how-
ever, the heavier of the two, as she carries on the
middle and lower decks nothing but 68-pounders,
as will be seen by the following table :
Cwt. Feet No.
Lower Deck.... 8. 65.... 9 0.-32
Middle Deck.... E. 65.... 9 0....30
Main Deck. 32 prs 56.... 9 6....32
Upper Deck prs 42.... 8 0....26
Do. do. ....68 pr. phot 95....10 0.... 1

Total

The engines of the Victoria are by Messrs. Maud-
slay, Sons, and Field, and are of the nominal
power of 1,000 horses.

The Duncan, 91, Prince of Wales, 131, and Royal
Frederick, 91, all screw ships, and building under
roofs contiguous to that of the Victoria, are to be
launched by the end of the present financial year.
The Royal Alfred, a 91-gun screw ship, is to be
laid down immediately on the slip vacated by the
Victoria.

The Victoria's keel was laid in the early part of
February, 1856. She has been, therefore, but
three years and 10 months blinding. We recently
had the satisfaction of inspecting her, and in justice
to Mr. Abethell, the Master-Shipwright of Ports-
mouth Dockyard, under whose superintendence she
has been built, we must state that as a specimen of
sound and careful shipbuilding, the Victoria cannot
be surpassed. As her Majesty the Queen will at-
tend the launch in person, it is generally expected
that her appreciation of Mr. Abethell's services in
this respect, and of his eminence as one of the fore-
most naval architects of the country, will be marked
by her Majesty conferring the honour of knightood
upon him on the occasion.—Mechanics' Magazine.

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