The Sun.
London, England, 1859-09-20 00:00:00

THE VERDICT.

So—the grand inquisition before the 'Crowner's
'Quest at Weymouth, in regard to that dreadful ex-
plosion on board the Great Eastern steamship, really
closed at last yesterday! The Hampshire jury have, of
course, returned a verdict of " Accidental Death"—
but in words of such astounding circumlocution !
Observe—the decision runs verbatim as follows :

" We find the deceased came to their deaths from
injuries received from steam, hot air, and water,
in consequence of the bursting of the jacket
attached to the foremost funnel of the Great Eastern
steamer, and that the said bursting was caused by
the closing of a tap connected with the syphon
attached to the said jacket in conjunction with
the shutting off the feed from the watercasing to the
boilers, but there is no evidence before the jury to
show by what person or persons the said tap was
shut off, and the jury further express their opinion
that taps are highly dangerous when placed in
such positions, and that sufficient caution was not
used by the engineers." Saving for those
last words of distinct though generalised reprehen-
sion, the verdict is really and truly nothing better
than a piece of innane and valueless verbosity. It
only declares bit by bit with preposterous particu-
larity—what everybody knew perfectly well before
days and days ago. For example, that those un-
fortunate firemen died from steam, hot air and hot
water and so forth—by reason of the bursting of
the jacket of a funnel on the Great Eastern—
the said bursting having been caused by
the closing of a tap connected with a syphon in
the iron case of this jacket to the funnel, " in con-
junction with the shutting off the feed from the water
casing to the boilers." But we all knew this more
than a week ago—thanks to the press correspon-
dents. What the jury had to try and find
out was, whether there was any culpability,
and, in the event of there being such, whose
was that culpability ? Witness after witness
is examined and cross-examined day after
day is occupied in the tedious and laborious inves-
tigation—and the end of it all is this most lame
and impotent conc'.usion. Now that the inquest
has terminated, the public is still left painfully
convinced that some person was, or that some
persons were guilty, through negligence, or through
forgetfulness, or through ignorance, of causing the
deaths of those unfortunate men who perished so
frightfully from an explosion, causing the destruc-
tion at the same time of £5,000 worth of
property, besides imperilling (quite unnecessarily)
one of the grandest enterprises adventured upon in
the advance of modern civilisation. That guilt, the

public is yet more painfully convinced, is not ade-
quately met by these vague and, as we have said,
merely generalised words of reprehension. A
verdict like this is no solace to the bereaved
families of those poor firemen— it implies no
additional security (as it might easily have
done) to those disposed to become passengers—it
says nothing whatever (as it ought to have done)
in reference to the gallantry and presence of mind
displayed at the moment of the explosion by some
of the brave officers in charge of the vessel, but
more particularly by Captain HARRISON. The
Verdict, in fact, from first to last —=and it
is a particularly long
one, all in one sentence
_appears to us to be just Valueless. It is a sen-
tence written upon sand—worthy only of being
obliterated from remembrance.

or ordinary trouble
When any national calan_ity
is " afloat," there is no end of doctors to prescribe
cures or remedies after the event has Come
off ;
on the other hand, we have wise men out of all t
conscience who smell danger afar, and prognosticate
the certain fall of this country unless their
notions be taken into account and acted on
without any delay. They see the down-
fall of England in every rumour of inva-
sion, be it from our next neighbour or from our
northern great Bear. Indeed, one of our contem-
poraries—himself rather an alarmist. though very
well meaning—gives full scope to " all corners "
who deal in the sublime, and more frequently in
theridiculous, no doubt from a sympathy of patriotic
fervour, but too often in excess. They are full of