The Sun.
London, England, 1866-10-27 00:00:00

SPIRIT OP THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.--Mr.. Snider will trouble the War-office
no more. The poor man is dead. At the moment
when the arsenals of the kingdom are ringing with
the labours concentrated upon his invention the in-
ventor has expired in penury and affliction, without
ever having touched a single sixpence of remunera-
tion or profit. As he lay dying a lump sum of
£l,OOO was thrown to his creditors, and the debts
which be had contracted in the pursuit of his secret
are lessened to that amount, but there, as far as he
himself was concerned, ends all that was done by a
grateful country. His solicitor now writes to apprise
us that the Department was really preparing to do
something at the very minute that it became too
late, and that if Mr. Snider could but have lived till
this morning he might have heard of what was
coming to him. Unfortunately, he died on Thurs-
day. The feeling created by this melancholy story
is very strong, and it will not be much allayed by
the defence and explanation offered on behalf of the
Government. It is, indeed, not.the least impressive
feature of the tale that, whereas a great public bene-
factor has died in helplessness and misery without
having received any recompense for his service, the
authorities who thus dealt with him should be able
to represent their dealings as not only just and re-
gular, but even most liberal and generous. In reality,
we do not doubt that the War-office has for the last
few weeks been taking up the case with, unwonted
will, and General Peel's promise to bring it to an
end before the close of the month represents, we can
well believe, an amount of consideration and de-
spatch not customary with the Department. But
this, we repeat, does but make the case the harder,
for if such has been the fate of Mr. Snider when the
officials were doing what they regard as their very
best for him, what under ordinary conditions must
be the lot of starving though successful inventors?
The public went straight, as it always does, to the
broad facts of the case. Mr. Snider's invention
bad been recognised as so valuable and precious
that it was engaging the whole strength of our
Government establishments without stint or re-
spite. Mr. Snider himself .at that very time lay
upon a bed of sickness, paralysed and prostrate,
harassed by creditors, and pining in poverty and
want. Could such a contrast between merit and
reward be justifiable in a country like this? The
question to which the Press gave utterance was first
answered in true professional style by the Solicitor
to the War-office, who almost proved that Mr.
Snider was in debt to the nation instead of the na-
tion being in debt to him. Yet, as that notable
letter probably contained the true law as well as
the hard facts of the case, it is worth while to look
again at its purport. When Mr. Snider asked the
Government to give him some remuneration for an
invention which the Government was actually turn-
ing to such good 'advantage, he was told to separate
his claim on account of the patent from his claim
on account of personal services and expenditure.
lie lid so, and, havin,e estimated the latter demand
at £2,700, he was told that he had asked three
times as much as he ought to ask, and that £l,OOO
was a handsome payment. On that proceeding we
offered some remarks a few days ago, and so we say
no more at present ; bat the story of the patent is,
if possible, more striking still. It was, in fact, at
this point that Mr. Clode might have found his loop-
hole for escape. It really was competent to him to
argue that the actual or substantial value of Mr.
Snider's invention must be represented in the esti-
mate put upon the patent. A patent, as our readers
are aware, has no legal force against the Govern-
ment, and the question of compensation, therefore,
is entertained not in the shape of contract, but by
way of " bounty," just as in old days certain
classes who could not be taxed were expected to
enrich the Exchequer by free gifts of money.
Nor did the War-office repudiate this obliga-
tion. It estimated very closely indeed the claims
of the patentees in this case, and arrived in
August last at the conclusions following :—As
soon as a good title to the patents could be shown
to the satisfaction of the law officers of the Crown,
the Department was to pay down to the possessors
the sum of £5,000. After this they were to receive
one shilling per rifle for all the rifles converted
under their system above £lOO,OOO, until a second
sum of £5,000 had been reached ; and then, for
every rifle converted.over 200,000, a sum of 6d. per
rifle, until a third sum of £5,000 had been reached,
with which payment all remuneration for the patent
was to cease and determine. Mr. Clode, the War-
office Solicitor, was at the pains of explaining as
well as justifying this calculation in the letter which
he addressed to us. The patents covering the in-
vention were two in number, and, as is only too
usual in such cases, had been more than once sold
and resold before the Department came into the
tield on behalf of the State. Mr. Clock, therefore,
was enabled to approximate to the commercial value
of the articles by observing that the best of the pa-
tents had been three times in the market, and that a
moiety of it had been parted with first for a nominal
consideration, then for £3OO, and then for £2,000.
The last bargain was made in February, 1865, but
it did not escape Mr. Clode's acknowledgment that
the marketable value of the property had been
greatly enhanced by the adOption of the invention
for the public service. We cannot consider, then,
that a prospective payment of £15,000 by three in-
stalments, at uncertain and perhaps remote periods,
was any very handsome price for a property which
had been worth £4,000 as a mere speculation some
time before. Mr. Clode observed that if the new
arm, when tried in actual campaigning, should prove
a failure, the Government would be a loser of the
first instalment of £5,000. No doubt; but Go-
vernment had taken time enough already in all
conscience for testing the invention, and, if it felt
sufficient confidence in its conclusions to set all
Woolwich and Enfield at work upon the article, it
might have carried this assurance into the question
of compensation also.. But the moral which we de-
' sire especially to point in all this concerns the treat-
ment of the actual inventor himself. Poor Mr.
Snider only appeared at first as half-proprietor in
the patent, and it was this, his half-share, which was
disposed of for " a nominal consideration." However,
he and another person together did contrive after-
wards to purchase the other half-share, which had
come into the market, and so one fourth part of the
property still vested in the person who had
originally created it. Consequently, at some distant
and not discernible date after the value of the inven-
tion had been tested and established by successful
war and national triumphs, the inventor might re-
ceive the sum of £3,750. Now, would that have
been a just or worthy recompense for his services?
We are sure that nobody would say so, and the in-
sufficiency, therefore, of the former payment to Mr.
Snider becomes all the more conspicuous. It was
precisely because Mr. Snider could not to remu-
nerated by the patent that he should have been
remunerated at a point where there was more scope
for generosity. It does not seem to have occurred
to the Department that even the aggregate sum of
£16,000-115,000 for the invention, £lOOO for the
outlay, toil, and personal service of the inventor—
was no great amount for the discovery on which the
relative position of the British army depended for a
time. Still less was it remembered that beyond all
question Mr. Snider deserved to be recompensed,
and speedily, and that if he was not likely to get
much from the patent there was a good opportunity
of remunerating him on the score of personal exer-
tions. Instead of embracing this opportunity, the
Department cut down by two-thirds even the poor
man's modest charge of £.2,700 ; and the end is that,
by a series of transactions which are presented to
us as models of liberality and consideration, the
author of this invention gets £l,OOO himself, and
leaves a dim prospect of some £3,000 more to his
heirs. We are not so well satisfied as the War
Office with the character of the proceeding, the less
so as it now appears, in spite of Mr. (Node's denial,
that Mr. Snider was sued by the War Department
for the paltry sum of one pound one shilling and
twopence._

POST. —The final liberation of Venice is one of those
events in contemporary history which cast a poetic
halo around the dull occurrences of ordinary poli-
tical existence, which strengthen our faith in a
higher and purer ideal of statesmanship, which com-
pensate for many past disappointments, and nerve
the intellect and heart to further and fresher and
more untiring struggles and sacrifices in the cause
of progress and civilisation. The plebiscite by which
the sons of the oldest Republic in Europe—many of
them born before that Republic had been overthrown
—have proclai.ned their desire to be united to the
monarchical government of King Victor Emmanuel
has a value infinitely greater than the mere legality
with which it invests the last addition to the Italian
State, and the numerical adherence which it fur-
nishes of the Venetian population to the cause of
constitutional rule. It serves at once to cancel the
errors of Palermo. In that magnificent passage of
the history of the Middle Ages in which Hallam has
dwelt on the germs of desolation in the Italian Re-
publics, he has told us how the serpents of discord
were ever hissing behind the shrine in the temple
then erected to civil liberty. If there be one circum-
stance more encouraging and cheering than another
in the present spectacle of Venetian liberation, it is
the civil prudence which, during so many years, the
Venetian people have displayed, the patience and
fortitude with which they have been content to abide
their time, the self-respect which theyhave preserved
in their unanimous social protest against the presence
of their foreign masters, and the deaf car which they
have turned to the Mazzinian charmers, who were
constantly urging them to the commission of revolu-
tionary excesses, worse than useless to themselves,
and likely to have damaged the common Italian
cause. When Manin was finally, after the long and
heroic, but fruitless, defence of his native city, com-

KIM
pelled to leave Venice in 1849, it almost seem as' •
he had left behind him his grand civil wisdom as 3
joint possession to all his fellow-citizens, and that,
armed with this talisman, they were enabled to tread
safely their dark, and doubtful, and most dangerous
path. They resisted all personal fascinations, they
repelled the warm, sincere, well-meant politicafad-
vances of the Archduke Maximilian ; they would
make no peace, not even a truce, with the Austrian.
The baleful astral influences which presided over
the birth of the most accomplished and intelli-
gent member of the House of Hapsburg had'
it would appear, foredoomed him to the hope
less task of still attempting to reconcile irrenon"
cilable elements, and made him as unsuccessful a
dozen years ago in the Lombardo-Venetian king-
dom as he now is in the ancient empire of
Monte-
zuma. The national instinct which made Venice
repel the advances of the liberal Austrian Archduke
was not more remarkable than the political sagacihtY,
which made her contemn the temptations of
t
Republican conspirators. The national interests
'
which she refused to surrender to Austrian blandist,l-
ments she just as emphatically and unmistakahl
refused to divide and weaken at the bidding 0!
mere factious animosity. When, therefore, NI
Victor Emmanuel, in his telegram to General Wye
after expressing his satisfaction at the completion
of the Venetian destinies, adds that it must now be
the care of the Italian people themselves to maintain
the unity which they have achieved, the exhortation
is clearly directed not to the north-east but to the
south-west of the Peninsula. It is a warning note
addressed to the inhabitants of Palermo. it 1_,3131,
implied censure on the Sicilian constituencies wnic,.o
persist in re-electing Mazzini as a deputy to Ol
Italian Parliament, after Mazzini has proclaimed
anew his hostility to constitutional governnien",',
and announced that he will neither take the oath
of allegiance to the King nor sit in the Italian
Legislature. Italy is now, the King says, exclii;
sively dependent on the exercise of Italian courag
and discretion. When, within a few weeks, the last
French soldier shall have quitted the Roman terri-
tory, the sixth great European Power will be at
once left to its own resources. The era of foreign
sympathies and sympathisers—English or Frown'
Russian or Prussian—will have closed with the ern
of foreign occupations. To every Italian possessing
the most common feelings of self-respect, such sYta;
pathies and sympathisers must henceforth apPeat.
utterly uncalled for, if not supremely impertinen
Militarily, Italy, with the transfer of Venice, has be;
come a commanding Power. It would be altogether
understating her gain to say that she has only Oyu
tained all that Austria has lost. She has got as
that, and a hundred times more. The fortresses of
the Quadrilateral in Italian hands, plus the Patrc;
tism and loyalty of the entire Lombardo-Venet i
,1,
kingdom, form a vastly different element of strength
compared with the same Quadrilateral in Austrlahe
hands, minor those national forces. Freed from t,
oppressive presence of any foreign dictator, ita!til
if she rightly understands her real interests,
e..
lose no time in availing herself of her free and in
pendent position to develope her internal resource;
reform her administrative abuses, instruct her Lc°
rant poor, educate her half-educated middle classes'
and enter on that race of pacific commercial coati:
petition with the other nations of the world to wbie,jd
in truth, during the middle ages, she already cw',.-c
her chief power and glory. Her sons possess
now than they could boast of even then, for to nitrel
independence of the Republic they now unite a ci,1,11
0
freedom never enjoyed under, or tolerated by
old Venetian oligarchy; and it will be their o`,o
faults if all these increased benefits and opportunitlt"
be not turned sucessfully to account.

COUNTRY MARKETS.

WAKEFIELD.—FRIDAT. r re '
Wheat, with a fair consumptive demand, was 2s der'
Fine barley is dearer. Other articles unaltered.

LINCOLN.—FRIDAY. icb
Our market to-day was fairly supplied with wheat,
changed hands at 2s per qr. advance. With a firm detst
for barley, of which the supply was fair, prices f°l "Da
sorts were fully as high as thOse of last week. Oats foli,d
buyers steadily at still better rates. Beans limited,
dear. 36
New. white wheat, 53S to 60s ; new red, 50s to 55s
stone. Barley for malting, 42s to 49s per qr ; griir,27io
34s to 38s per 30 stone. °Oats, 22s to 325, Beans, "'"
50s per 38 stone.

LIVERPOOL.—FRIDAY.
• We had the usual . attendance at our market to-(11,1
and wheat was not in active demand,_ ld to 2d on114;t
and 24 to 3d per cental on white. Flour steady, at;ro
Tuesday's rates. Oats ld per bushel dearer. Indian L.,1,0
in good request, and has advanced fully 2s per qr. °Vol
late quotations. Oatmeal in fair request.

DERBY—FRIDAY.
qfla
The supply of wheat on offer to-day was tolerable, `?,5
the trade healthy, business being done in fine samples "sed
to us per qr. more money. A steady inquiry for barley, re.
choice lots realised a trifling advance. Oats in steady
quest at late terms. Jinn,
New white wheat, 62s to 66s ; old red, 56s to 618,rd;i3,5,
stone. Barley for malting, 44s to 48s per qr. ; bn2co, to
37s to 38s per 30 stone. Oats, new, 27s to 295; 01,17 503
34s per 24 stone. Beaus, old, 50s to 525; new, 466 to
per 38 stone.

S TAMF ORD—FRIDAY.
Well
Wheat was a tolerable show to-day, and sales
effected at 2s to 3s per qr. advance. Barley a fair suProo
and prices were rather in sellers' favour. For beans
demand was firm.
N ;Gs TO 86

,ew white wheat, 5Gs to GOs ; red do., 52s to 5, - 384
stone. Barley, malting, 42s to 48s; grinding, 34s t°ooo
per qr. Oats, new, 24s to 28s; old, 28s to 32s per 24 51
Beans, 52s to 54s per 38 stone. Peas as of late.

RIPON—FRIDAY, #o
White wheat, 8s Od to 8s 3d per bushel ; red, 6s 3cl
9d; beans, 6s 9d to 7s 3d; oats, 27s to 32s per qr ;
35a to 41s Od.