The Sun.
London, England, 1866-04-11 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNAL.

TIMES.-It is an unspeakable relief to have to
deal with an opponent who has the wit to put the
question between us on a simple and intelligible
issue. It was open to reasonable suspicion that the
supporters of her Majesty's Government were
shutting their eyes, with more or less effort, to the
nature and consequences of its action in the matter
of Reform ; in fact, that the bill itself was not the
real question. This, however, which we have treated
as the best conclusion we could come to, is the first
postulate and starting point of our correspondent
" H.," and it is upon this basis that he rests the
eloquent appeal to our loyalty and patriotism which
we published yesterday. Never mind the bill—he
says—nay, he almost dismisses it with a summary
benediction. He had foreseen that the less said of
it the better, for even before it came into the world
he cried out with all-trusting faith for something or
other, some settlement of the question, some rid-
dance from a controversy which did not appear to
be quite congenial, The bill ROW sees the light of
day ; its provisions, as far as they go, are not
wanting in preciseness ; and a host of auxiliary
statistics give us information which appears to have
surprised even the authors of the measure on the
very eve of its publication. Friends and foes join
issue upon a thousand little differences, and every
day is now adding fresh pamphlets, the authors of
which all flatter themselves that they have made
important discoveries. We need not add that,
besides the usual fencing on the floor of the house,
there has been some street fighting of a less refined
sort. We were beginning to look with some mis-
giving to the sort of life we were likely to lead for the
septennial period inaugurated under such auspices.
Suddenly " H." appears to drag us out of these
deep ruts. Like Justice, he is blindfold ; but
he holds those well-known scales in which sub-
stances, virtues, verities, and achievements have
ever been found to preponderate over all that
is flimsy, specious, and transient. The Bill, no
matter what, a blank sheet of foolscap, a Field-
Marshal's baton, is in Lord Russell's hand, in
the downward scale, while a pile of useless inquiries,
vain misgivings, and superfluous reasonings kick the
beam. " Follow your leader" is the watchword.
" Occupet extremum stabies." Don't even look be-
fore you. Forwards. Thorough. Accordingly,
and evidently because the case required it, " H."
has carefully abstained from saying a word about
the contents of the bill or the nature of the bill.
Every word he says, and every argument be uses,
would have applied equally had the bill not dealt at
all with the franchise, and only transferred a score
or two seats. His letter might have gone to the
press without one single-correction had " H." dis-
covered subsequently to writing it that the bill was
one for a commission to draw up a comprehensive
scheme of reform. It might have gone to the press
without a verbal correction if " H." had learnt that
the bill comprised all six points of the Chatter. In
fact, the letter is not about the bill, or about reform,
but about a certain ghost, under that name, that
has been haunting the Legislature now for 15
years, perplexing statesmen, creating scandals,
affording opportunities of mischief, damaging cha-
racters. baffling exorcists, and, finally, the subject
of one more attempt by a well known-Mystery Mau
great in his line. The whole nation has been crying
out for' deliverance, and now, if ever, is the time.
But faith is necessary. Believe in him, " H." shrieks
t with raptured vision and frenzied energy. Doubt
not, mistrust not, know not, inquire not! Is not
Lordßussell your chief ? Has he not been your leader
to a hundred victories? Has he not at once led the
van of the people and protected the rear of the aris-
tocracy? Is not his name the highest in the roll of
honour, however it may stand in Battle Abbey? Will
you see him beaten ? Whom then will you have ?
Will you not then fall into a base servitude to Con-
servatives, themselves 20 years ago the victims of a
like defection, and now rising on the fall of their
rivals ? When the keynote is loyalty, the rest follows
of course, and through the usual variety of changes.
The variations upon the air are brilliant. There is
the country to be satisfied. " H." does not stop to
ask whether the bill is even meant to satisfy the
country. There is the reputation of the House of
Commons now put in peril, happily not now for the

first. time, for " H." had already declared public
credulity all but exhausted. There is the dread of
something still worse, still more terrible, still more
horrible than this very bill which we are to pass with
averted eyes, and no questions asked. Pass the bill,
or it will be worse for you, says " H." After de-
scribing all opponents as dirty conspirators and
crafty contrivers, he tells them the defeat of this bill
will produce a sweeping reform, which he takes for
granted they would utterly abominate. Why, how-
ever, take this for granted ? It is quite possible a
man may not like what he really believes to be.a bad
measure, and may oppose it accordingly, yet be pre-
pared for something very sweeping and comprehen-
sive. The opposition, he says, is fatal to a mode-
rate course ; but it is not so certain that all the
opponents do want a moderate course, instead of a
conclusive one ; and one thing is certain, the pre-
sent bill may be a single step, but it is no course
at all, whether moderate or the contrary. So the
question, after all, is not one of reform, but of
party. The chief of that party, in the exercise of
his discretion, has put out something, no matter
what, says "H.," and we are all bound to follow
him, into darkness and swamps, if he takes us
there. There is much to be said for such a line ;
but reasonable men require first an almost absolute
confidence in the chief, and then that he should let
them see their work, or, at all events, show that he
sees it himself. They want to have their work lying
well before them, and with the light of day upon it.
With regard to the chief, it is only necessary to say
that Lord Russell cannot possibly wish to sup-
press that instinct of free inquiry and independent
opinion which has been so characteristic of his
whole career, and which has contributed to place
him so high in " LL's " profound and reverential
regards. Lord Russell has always loved truth and
his country, as well as his party, and is aware that
even the Whigs, the salt of the earth, as " H."
calls them, will lose their savour if they once pre-
fer party to patriotism and truth. If, too, it is to
be a question of personal confidence, it is rather
hard on those who may expect a good many more
years to be bound by the fixed notions, the circum-
scribed views, and the closing landscape of a
statesman far advanced.in the eighth decade. But
even this is not so important in the eyes of reason-
able men, even upon " H.'s " hypothesis, as some
knowledge of the thing to be done ; in fact, an
actual course to be taken. Our chivalrous corre-
spondent tells us we have a Reform Bill, and that
is enough. We deny that first assumption. This
is not a Reform Bill. It is a Franchise Bill, fabri-
cated for the very purpose of evading the necessity
which " H." describes. With charming indiffer-
ence to the real contents of the Bill, " H." says
that the House, in Committee, may " moderate
and mould," " shape and amend," the bill as they
please. It would have been just as easy to
moderate and mould, shape and amend, turtle soup
and salmon into the endless succession of delicacies
constituting the material of the late Liverpool
banquet. The least attempt to perform these
operations on the Bill before the House would be
thwarted by the difficulty of knowing the scale to
be moderated to, or the mould to be fashioned to,
for there is neither shape nor substance yet. So,
whatever loyalty we may feel for the person, we
still desiderate the thing to be done. Loyalty
deals with known quantities, not with purely
algebraic indefinities. Nobody was in ever in love
with a symbol of no determinate value ; and that
is all we can see at present in the hands of our
leaders.

HERALD.—Between states, as between indivi-
duals, angry words are too commonly the forerun-
ners of violent deeds. Such, moreover, is the
proverbial etiquette of diplomacy that phrases
which would hardly be considered insulting between
man and man acquire the gravest meaning when
bandied to and fro by the Ministers of rival Courts.
One-tenth part of the mutual provocations ex-
changed between the Courts of Austria and Prussia
during the last week alone would have sufficed to
render war inevitable had any other states but thes9
two German Powers been in question. And yet it
is so much to the interest of both that they should
not go to war, they have had so much more experi-
ence of querulous despatches than of armed encoun-
ters of that fratricidal kind, that we would fain hope
there may yet be left a loophole of escape, and
Europe may be saved from the convulsion of that
dread arbitrament. Since the time of Frederick
the Great and Maria Theresa, during the Seven
Years' War, Austria and Prussia have never actu-
ally taken the field against each other. Ten years
consecutively have not elapsed during that more
than a century without some alarming dispute
caused by their rivalry in Germany. Since 1848
they have been at least three times on the brink of
war, the bone of contention being at one time the
hegemony of Germany ; at another the question of
the Duchies, which has not yet been solved ;
at another the dispute about Hesse. Each
time, after a period of recrimination, they
have shaken their fists in each other's faces,
marshalled their legions, and advanced them till
they almost met at the frontier. Each time have
other countries held their breath, as it were, in
expectation of the tremendous collision which
seemed momently inevitable —but that collision
never came. This furnishes us with a feeble
groundwork of hope that it may be avoided now ;
were it not for this we must confess it would be
quite impossible to give a pacific interpretation of
the facts which stare us in the face. As we write
the prospect seems darker than it has ever been
before. Letters exchanged weekly have been suc-
ceeded by letters exchanged daily. The last of
these is couched in a tone of the most deliberate de-
fiance. Strange to say, it comes from Austria, who
has addressed to Prussia a missive of the nature of
an ultimatum, demanding, it is said, the discontinu-
ance of the Prussian armaments. We could hardly
believe it, were it not that the same intelligence
reaches us from opposite sources, being forwarded
simultaneously be telegraph from Vienna and Ber-
lin. Austria, then, has gone forward too far to re-
cede. Either Prussia must yield, or there must be
war—at least, it seems difficult to find any escape
from the alternative. If we inquire into the mo-
tives which have induced the Austrian Government
to take this extreme step, we may perhaps find them
in the arguments which were considered to render
necessary the same step on her part in 1859. It
was well known to her then that two nations were
arming against her, the hostile legions of Italy
were gathering on her frontier. Austria would
have avoided so perilous a struggle if she had been
able, but there was no possibility of avoiding it
without dishonour. Austria was ready ; every
day's, delay served to exhaust her finances, and
added to the strength of the enemy which consti-
tuted her weakness. Austria, therefore, addressed
to Italy a summons to disarm of a very peremptory
nature. That her policy in 1859 did not bear fruit
in success is no argument against its repetition now,
though it may be a reason for avoiding at all cost
a war with a coalition almost as powerful as that
which worsted her on the plains of Lombardy.
The statesmen of Austria may be driven now by
the same promises to the same conclusion as
that which enabled their enemy, with such want
of candour, to lay to their charge the blame
of having taken the initiative in the Italian
war. When Karolyi replies to Von Werther,
and Von Werther to Karolyi, the Prussian Minister
at Vienna being instructed to lay the blame of the
first aggression in the shape of armed movements on
Austria, the Austrian Minister at Berlin retorting
that Prussia is arming but Austria is not ; if that is
the only issue, all we can say is that it is a very
pretty quarrel—a matter of opinion and definition
rather than of fact—in which as Sir Roger de
Coverley observed, " there is much to be said on
both sides." But when we hear of a letter in which
Prussia is requested at once to " demobilise" her
army, and threatened that if she does not Austria
will appeal to the Diet to put the Federal army on
the war footing, which means that armed pressure
is to be put upon Prussia, and of course implies
that Austria will take the field—then, of course, we
understand the business, and find ourselves on tan-
gible, if not on very safe, ground. Incedinius per
agues, and the ashes that cover them are very thin
indeed. When we are told, further, that it is
known at Vienna that Von Bismarck has publicly
declared war with Austria to be inevitable ; when
it is affirmed that he has been making his prepara-
tions for it ever since his interview with Napoleon
last year at Biarritz; when it is known that King
William places such confidence in this incendiary
politician that he is prepared to follow wherever he
may lead ' • when a grand plot for the conquest of
Venetia by Italy is on foot, emissaries are passing
to and fro between the Courts of Florence, Berlin,
and Paris, and an enormous Italian army is col-
lecting in front of the Quadrilateral ; when the dan-
gers that menace her are so plain that he who runs
may read them, so imminent that the utmost
promptitude is required to grapple with them,
we can hardly find fault with Austria for at
once choosing her position and adopting that
which she considers the lesser of the two evils.
The middle States, as represented in the German
Diet, resolved as they appear to be to make at
least an attempt at neutrality, would serve some
practical end if they could manage to interpose as
a sort of buffer between their gigantic neighbours.
As it is, both Austria and Prussia seem anxious to
employ them as a cat'spaw to make use of the one
against the other. Austria is for calling out the
Federal army ; Bismarck, wondrous to relate, be-
thinking himself of some sudden coup with which
to counteract this move, has astonished the world
by appealing to the German democracy. He has
proposed that a German assembly shall be elected
by universal suffrage, and empowered to consider
the reform of the Federal Constitution. Of course,

if this reform should not be in a Prussian sense
Von Bismarck will make some counter proposition,
or resort to some other expedient to gain time. He
would be glad to reform the smaller states by
" mediatising" or annexing them to Prussia, but it
is hardly likely that they will vote their own politi-
cal extinction. The proposal does not seem, how-
ever, to be made with any definite intention at pre-
sent, other than that of defeating the plans of
Austria.

BRITISH ORPHAN ASYLUM.

- -

The anniversary festival of this society was cele-
brated last evening at the London Tavern, Bishops-
gate-street, under the presidency of the Duke of
Argyll, who was supported by Viscount Kirkaldie,
Lord W. Lennox, Mr. T. Hughes, M.P., Mr. W.
Mellor, M.P., Mr. Alderman and Sheriff Gibbons,
Mr. Sheriff Figgins, Under-Sheriffs Duffett and
Rawlins, the Hon. T. Winn, Mr. 11. Sykes Thorn-
ton (the treasurer of the institution), Mr. Charles
Woolloton (the deputy chairman of the board), Mr.
John Gillespie, Mr. Augustus Mayhew, the Rev. T.
Rowsell, &c.

After the usual loyal toasts, the CHAIRMAN gave
" The House of Lords and the House of Commons,"
and Mr. W. MELLOR, M.P., returned thanks.

The CHAIRMAN, in giving the toast of the even-
ing—" Prosperity to the British Orphan Asylum"
—said there were at least two kinds of institutions
for charitable purposes about which there could be
no doubt, viz., hoipitals for the relief of sufferers
and asylums for the relief of orphanage. There was
one peculiarity belonging to this institution which
rendered it especially deserving of attention, viz.,
that it was designed for the assistance of those who
had formerly moved in a better station in life, and
who through misfortune had fallen into poverty and
distress. In his opinion there was no institution
that more fully deserved the sympathy and support
of the benevolent, and he had found, from a visit
which he had paid to the asylum a day or two ago,
that the building was magnificent, was , admirably
kept, and was in all respects so well officered as to
place it amongst the best organised charitable in-
stitutions in this country. It was gratifying to
find that at the last Oxford middle-class local
examination three of the boys from the asylum had
carried off three of the highest prizes. He now
invited attention to the fact that, although one
gentleman had manifestly paid all the expenses
connected with the purchase of the new building
at Slough, it should be remembered that the money
supplied by that benevolent person was an in-
vestment, and that the institution was just as de-
pendent as it ever was upon the charity of the
public. The asylum was in need of funded property
as shown by the fact that while the annual income
was £2,350, the average expenditure was £6,000.
The noble duke concluded an eloquent address by
stating that, however useful might be the pecuniary
result of these annual dinners, it did not furnish the
true source of the prosperity of such an institution.
The only regular and certain support to which they
could permanently look was in a large number of
annual subscriptions, however small the amount,
and he cordially appealed to the present company
and their friends to assist in providing the institu-
tion with the only satisfactory means of placing it
on a solid and permanent .basis. The speech was re-
ceived with enthusiastic marks of approval, and im-
mediately afterwards the children of the asylum
sang Muller's glee of " May Day," in a manner
which testified to the skilful teaching they receive.
The subscriptions announced amounted to about
£lOOO.

The musical arrangements were under the direc-
tion of Mr. R. Seymour, who was assisted by Miss
Rose Hersee, Miss P. Lisle, Mr. Lawler, and Mr.
M. Watson.

COUNTRY MARKETS.