The Sun.
London, England, 1866-03-20 00:00:00

ATHLETIC SPORTS.

THE THAMES ROWING CLUB ATHLETIC
SPORTS.
The above club held their annual athlotic meeting at
the Prince of Wales Ground, Bow, on Saturday last, and
although not quite so successful as some other societies of
late, still it was another instance of the growing popula-
rity of these sports. The following is a brief return :
THE RACE Or 100 YARDS.— The competitors were divided
into two heats, and resulted as under :
First Heat. - J. Foster came in first by a yard and a half ;
11. Harvey was second, G. Wright was third.
._ Second Heat.—Although there were only three starters,
it was a clipping race from end to end, the result being
that W. Smale and E. A. King ran shoulder to shoulder
all the way, and the referee being unable to separate them
decided that it was a dead heat, so it was arranged the two
should both run in the final heat. J. Harvey was placed
as third.

Final Heat.—Another exciting contest ended in J. Fos-
ter coming in first by a short yard befor E. A. King, who
was second, and Smale was third.

THE RACE OF A QUARTER OF A MILE —J. K. Pauline
won very easily all the way: W. Page was second, and R.
Harvey was beaten off a long way.
THE HALF-MILE HANDICAP.—J. K. Pauline, who wont
from scratch, came in first ; W. Page, 10 yards start, was
second ; and J. Hopkins, 25 yards, was third. Hopkins
kept his lead until 160 yards of home, when Pauline, who
bad previously passed Page, came with a fine spurt, and
won a good race by about yards.
A SCRATCH RACE OF 150 YARDS.—The entries, made
upon the ground, were open to all comers, with the excep-
tion of members of the club. The prize was a cup. They
were divided into two heats, the first and second in each
to run in the final.

First Heat.—W. A. Simpson (W.L.R.C.) won by
throe yards, and A. King (LEX.) was second. Four
others started.

Second Beat.--C. Popo (Civil Service) won a fine race
by a yard, and W. 11. Luther was second, before four
others who also went. Throe of the above four named
next came to run for the

Final Heat.—Pope did not put in an appearance ; W.
A. Simpson won by a couple .f yards, A. King was se-
cond, and W. 11. Luther was third. It was a good race
between the last two for the barren honours of second
place, a short yard only separating them. Mr. Talbot was
the starter.

AD

effect of which soon faded away, as the effect of all
perorations must do. It was evident that he did
not believe in his own measure. He himself said
openly that he thought a different measure would
have been a better one.. He was but the voice of
the Cabinet, and a man who is only the voice of an
absent host of wavering discordant politicians can
never speak as great speakers speak when they utter
their own thoughts, and strive to impress on others
what they honestly believe. Mr. Gladstone does
not believe in a one-barrelled £7 franchise bill as
he has in his time believed in the repeal of the paper
duty and in the French treaty. He knows that he
is only conforming to the needs of a supposed party
crisis, and not acting with freedom and deliberation
for the benefit of the nation. He therefore spoke as
a clever advocate speaks, honest to his employers, but
still looking on a brief as nothing more than a brief.
It was very wise in him to take the unusual course
of closing such a debate without a reply, for there
was nothing more to say. He had done his duty ;
he had undertaken to lay before the house the pro-
posal of the Government, and he had laid it. There
was nbthing left except for the country to be invited
to take a month to consider it, and to say how it
liked it. But if Mr. Gladstone had been the spokes-
man of a measure that satisfied himself, that seemed,
to him worthy of himself and of his political posi-
tion, that inspired him with the consciousness of
serving a great cause, and that rested on arguments
which he thought intellectually incontestable, we
may be sure he would have a tenderer care for the
offspring that he loved, and would have finally com-
mended it to the public with zeal and earnestness, as
he would also, in the introduction of it, have dis-
played those higher qualities of oratory which were
wanting in his speech of Monday. The speech of
Mr. Lowe was, as a piece of argument, far the best
that was heard on either side of the house. But
then he had selected much the easiest ground for
argument when he discussed the question whether
there should be any Reform Bill at all. That the
present House of Commons is not bound by the
opinions of its predecessors is exactly one. of
those plain truths which it is very easy to see
when they are well pointed out. As Mr.
Laing justly observed, in a calm and thought-
ful speech which made a great impresion on the
house, the statistics show an overwhehning case for
redistribution, but only a slight case for reduction
of the franchise. And it must be owned that the
general arguments against the reduction of the
franchise are easier to put, are more definite and
telling, than the arguments for it. That there are
arguments by which Mr. Lowe's arguments can be
met we need scarcely say, for the criticisms made on
his speech of last year will in the main apply to his
speech of this session. But we confess that we find
much that is weighty and solid in Mr. Lowe's argu-
ments, and are satisfied that there is no more than
a balance of reasoning against them. Lord Cran-
borne justly remarked that far too much is habitu-
ally made of the argument from a possible revolu-
tion with which Mr. Bright once threatened us all
if the bill were not passed. It is right and wise to
admit a large number of the working-men to the
franchise, and if we think there are reasonable
grounds for supposing that, as a body, they will
make a fairly good use of the privilege, let us admit
them ; but to admit them when we think they will
do harm, because if we do not, they may one day
break our heads, is contemptible. But although
the argumentative part of the debate was good, the
personal, abusive, and epigrammatic part was much
better. The speeches of Mr. Lowe and Mr. Hors-
man, and especially of the former, abounded with
clever things. Mr. Lowe's use of his Virgil was
neat and happy in the extreme, while we must own
that we envy the quickness and scholarship of the
vast audience which is supposed to have seen on the
spot all the neatness and all the happiness of the use
of the word " quater," as bearing upon the abortive
efforts of Lord Russell's latter career. It really was
quite kind of Virgil to have written so aptly, and to
have provided Mr. Lowe with two lines so appro-
priate as those beginning—" Instamus tamen im-
mernores."

[Mr. Gladstone, remarks the Spectator, had said—
" We cannot look upon it as the Trojan horse ap-
proaching the walls of the sacred city, and filled
with armed men bent on ruin, plunder, and con-
fiscation. We cannot join in comparing it with
that monstrum infelix, we cannot say :
" &audit fatalis machina muros
Fceta armis, modionuo minans illabitur urbi.'
I believe that those persons whom we ask you to
enfranchise ought rather to be welcomed as you
would welcome recruits to your army." And the
Spectator adds, Mr. Lowe caught up the image, and
ingeniously pressed it into the service of the Con-
servative cause. " The right honourable gentleman,"
he said, " who had not time to give us a reason for
introducing the bill, found time to give us a quo-
tation, and it was a quotation of a very curious
kind, because not finding in his classical repertoire
any quotation that would exactly describe the state
of perfect bliss to which his bill would introduce us,
he was induced to take the exact contrary, and
make a quotation to show us what the bill was not—

" &audit fatalis machina muros
Fceta armis,'
At length the fatal fabric mounts the walls
Big with destruction . . . .

• • • . then descending down,
It enters o'er our heads and threats the town.

(Drylen': Virgil.)
he exclaimed—' that,' he added, is not my
Well, that was a very apt quotation, but there was
a curious felicity about it he little dreamed of. The
House remembers that among other proofs of the
degree in which public opinion is enlisted in the
cause of Reform was this—that this is now the fifth
Reform Bill that has been brought since 1851.
Now just attend to the sequel of the passage quoted
by the right honourable gentleman. lam no be-
liever in sortes Virgiliante, and the House will see
why in a moment.

0 patria, 0 divum domus Ilium et inclyta bello
Dioeaia Dardanidum ! quater ipso in limine porta)
Substitit, atque utero sonitum quater arma dedere.'
" But this is not all :

" Instamus tamen immemores coecique furoro
Et monstrum infeliz sacrata sistiinus arce.'
0 sacred city built by bands divine,
O valiant heroes of the Trojan line !
Four times it stuck ; as oft the clashing sound
Of arms was heard and inward groans abound.
Yet mad with zeal and blinded with our fate
We haul along the horse in solemn state,
Then place the dire portent within the tower.'

(Dryden's Virgil.)
" Well, I abominate the pasage contained in the
last two lines, but I mix my confidence with fear."
Mr. Lowe was of course rewarded with even more
acclamations for his classical ingenuity than Mr.
Gladstone for his eloquence, and the house, as we
said, appeared to take a good deal more interest in
the Trojan-horse question than in the £7 franchise.]
But far the best speech in this line was that of Mr.
Bright, which may be counted among the most suc-
cessful specimens of playful abuse of opponents that
have ever been addressed to Parliament. Mr. Lowe
and Mr. Horsman had challenged him, and had
tried to get the laugh of the house against him.
That he should in reply justify himself, and make a
serious and vehement appeal in favour of the bill,
might have been expected. But it could scarcely
have been expected that even so consummate and
masterly a speaker could, with ease and perfect con-
fidence of success, abandon this higher ground of
oratory, and descend into the arena of personalities,
in order to cover two intellectual gladiators with a
playful ridicule. Every hit was admirable, not be-
cause it was forcible or convincing, but because it
was so extremely witty, novel, and captivating.
The suggestion that Mr. Horsman had entered
into a political Cave of Adullam, whither he in-
vited very one that was distressed and every one
that was discontented ; the discovery that Mr. Lowe
and Mr. Horsman had resolved to make a party of
two ; the comparison of them to a hairy terrier as
to which no one can say which is the head and
which is the tail ; the disposal of Mr. Lowe's and
Mr. Marsh's Australian parallels by the remark that
they seemed to take a Botany Bay view of their
countrymen ; and the picture of Mr. Lowe taking,
like a polypus on a rock, his coulour from the hun-
dred and seventy villagers and seven working-men
of Calne, were eights of Parliamentary humour that
have seldom been surpassed. The accusation against
Mr. Lowe, that he had changed his opinions, that
he forgot out of office what in office he had advo-
j cated, and that Mr. Lowe was still casting a longing,
lingering look at the office the warm precincts of
which he had been obliged to quit, would have been
as unjust as it was in part notoriously untrue had
it not been a retort to a similar charge against Mr.
Bright himself, in which Mr. Horsman tried to affix
the worst possible sense to expressions which Mr.
Bright bad used long before in addressing one of
the gatherings of his admirers. Even, however, in
this contest of personalities, Mr. Lowe and Mr.
Bright found occasion to be civil to each other.
Mr. Lowe declared that he should be happy at any
time to walk ten miles to hear Mr. Bright, and Mr.
Bright thanked the Marquis of Lansdowne for send-
ing to Parliament an intellectual gladiator. There
was really no more bitterness in the debate on the
bill than there seems likely to be in its reception by ,
the country; and just as we may guess that a man
who thinks a £7 franchise the so/ution of all diffi-
culties may still feel a kindly indulgence for a friend
who thinks it would do more harm than good, so
we may hope that Mr. Bright and Mr. Lowe, in the
midst of their interchange of abuse, have a respect
and esteem for each other.

ANGEROUS PASSENGER.—An unfortunate ac-
cident has just occurred at Hongkong. A lady corning
ashore in a sampan, while trifling with a revolver, acciden-
tally shot ono of the boatmen, who was engaged hnisting
the sail, and he died almost immediately. The jury re-
turned a verdict of accidental death.—China Nail.

COUNTRY MARKETS, ----

NORTHAMPTON—MARcu 17.

Not much passing in wheat. Barley sold at recent cur-
rencies. Oats were steadily disposed of at former quota-
tions. A healthy trade in beans at quite last week's pricee'
Peas a heavy sale.
New white wheat, 43s to 47s ; new red, 40s to 46s • old
white, 48s to 535; old red, 438 to 48s per 36 stone. 13:1111,
for malting, 39s to 41s per qr. ; grinding, 28s to 40s per
stone. Oats, old, 30s to 34s ' • new, 20s to 28s per 24 stone.
Beans, old, 46s to 49s ; new, 39s to 44s per 38 stone. peas,
34s to 39s per 36 stone.