The Sun.
London, England, 1866-05-02 00:00:00

THE SUJN, LUNDO.N, WEDNESDAY EVENING, MAY 2, 1866.

from further calls. He contended that a committee
should be appointed to investigate the affairs of the
company.

Other shareholders complained that law proceed-
ings had been taken by the executive against them
to enforce the payment of calls.

The CLUBMAN explained that the directors were
now in treaty with financial persons for placing the
remainder of the shares of the company, and when
that was concluded a general meeting would be held
to consider any question that might arise. He de-
clined to put the motion for the appointment of a
committee on the ground that the present was a
special meeting for another purpose, and the pro-
ceedings terminated.

accordance with their own opinions. In conclusion,
he moved that a copy of the resolutions come to by
the guardians censuring the doctor and midwife and
appointing a paid nurse, be sent to the Poor-law
Board in reply to their communication.
The report was adopted.

SPIRIT OP THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—The return of the Registrar-General to-
day contains the details of an apparently undoubted
case of Asiatic cholera. The disease in its epidemic
character may at any moment be among us. But
the truth is that its course since its appearance in
Europe last midsummer has been marked by none
of the usual characteristics, and we cannot venture
upon any of the conclusions which would have been
justified a few years since. Happily, the change
seems to be all in our favour. The cholera of 1865
was not like the cholera of 1849 or 1832. It was
less of an exotic pestilence and more of an ordinary
epidemic. It did not arrive from the same regions
or travel by the same track ; though, on the other
hand, it has lingered strangely and tenaciously in
many places throughout the winter season, and has
diffused itself irregularly over a wide tract of coun-
try. How the disease, after devastating the cities
of Egypt and Turkey, established itself in the basin
of the Mediterranean, how it threaded the Straits
of Gibraltar, ascended the Atlantic coasts of Spain
and France, and fell upon Paris and Madrid, we
need not repeat. All this will be in the recollection
of the public, as also that the plague actually ap-
peared for a few days on the southern shores of this
country. But, since that time, though little has
been said of the epidemic, it has still been occa-
sionally active. It advanced into the southern pro-
vinces of Russia from the Black Sea ; it broke out
with some violence on the slope of the Pyrenees ;
it hung about the north-western departments of
France ; it was fatal enough on the Italian border
to interrupt the railway works on Mont Cenis ; it
passed into the Duchy of Luxembourg, and thence
to Holland. At this moment it is in Rotterdam,
and a circular was issued from the Privy Council-
(Alice last week calling the attention of the autho-
rities of our seaports to the exigencies of the con-
juncture. The warning was given none too soon,
for a sailor has actually brought the disease with him
from Rotterdam, and died of true Asiatic cholera at
Bristol. Now, if this plague had been travelling in
its ancient course, if it had crossed the Continent
from the south-east of Europe, and had struck us
on our eastern coasts in its track from Rotterdam,
we might naturally take alarm, and conclude that
the pestilence had reached us indeed. But a glance
at the facts will show that no such argument is pos-
sible. The cholera has not been " approaching"
us at all. It is no nearer at Rotterdam than it has
been all through the winter at Brest. It has shown
no tendency to advance in our direction, or indeed
in any one direction more than another. It has
gone eastward, westward, or southward indiscrimi-
nately. Instead of moving steadily onwards in one
fixed course, it has been " going about" like scarlet
fever or smallpox in our country villages, not pro-
ducing anywhere any alarming mortality, but acting
rather like the epidemic of ordinary seasons. It was
only by brief occasional notices that we heard of its
presence, as we might have heard of any other
malady more prevalent than usual. Nowhere,
since its decline in Paris, have its ravages been
described as those of a genuine plague. Nor
are these the only conditions of the case deserving
notice. Three times, under similar but very re-
markable circumstances, has the cholera developed
itself at sea. The example reported only a few days
ago will be fresh in the reader's memory. A Liver-
pool steamer sailed for America with 1,300 persons
on board. There was no cholera at Liverpool
when she left, nor was any infection supposed
to exist among the passengers ; but the plague
broke out upon the voyage, and the vessel put
into Halifax with a report of 160 cases and 60
deaths, since increased to three times that number.
Exactly the same thing occurred in the autumn,
when the British steamer Atalanta arrived at New
York with the cholera raging on board, though she
had left this country with a clean bill of health ;
and again, a British troopship, with soldiers, car-
ried the plague in like manner to the Cape of Good
Hope. Now, these three examples coincide in sug-
gesting a particular inference and a particular ques-
tion. The inference is consolatory. In no case
was the disease communicated to the population of
the country into which it was thus imported. The
cholera patients were landed and treated both at the
Cape and in America without the least harm to the
inhabitants. The epidemic did not break out either
in our own colony or in New York, though far less
cause in former times would have been thought
sufficient to create it. It is plain, therefore, that
we may have not only a single case of the disorder,
as at Bristol, or a dozen cases, as at Southampton,
but an actual importation of a plague-stricken cargo
without any extension or establishment of the dis-
ease. The question arising from these examples is
very singular and of no small importance. How did
the cholera originate in these three vessels? Were
the seeds of the disorder taken on board by passen-
gers, or was it developed by the condition of living
within the ship itself ? The former conclusion is
perhaps the more probable. The Atalanta touched
at Brest, where cholera was known to be rife, and
from Brest the infection might certainly have been
imported. The troopship touched, we believe, at a
Spanish port, and the disease might have been there
contracted. In the recent case, however, of the
Liverpool steamer our calculations are more at fault,
for she does not seem to have touched at any port
whence the infection could have been taken. She
had, however, German passengers on board, and it
is obviously possible that these passengers, coming
from an infected part of the Continent, might
have brought with them the seeds of the
disorder. In default, however, of this evi-
dence, we should be led to the conclusion
that the specific poison of Cholera may be generated
as simply as that of fever itself. We are certainly
not surprised to hear that disease broke out in a
steamer carrying 1,300 people, but except for direct
infection, it would be surprising to find that this
disease was Asiatic cholera. In the meantime, the
International Conference is sitting in the East and
conducting its inquiries into the origin and character
of this hitherto mysterious disease. A better season
for the investigation could not have been chosen.
The experience of the last twelve months has shown
us the cholera in an entirely new aspect. Its symp-
toms are still the same, but its origin is different, its
course is changed, and its destructiveness up to this
time has been less. Upon the whole it seems to
have been at once both mitigated and naturalised,
while we ourselves have been happily exempt even
from its modified visitations. Twice last autumn it
effected a lodging in this country, but not a settle-
ment, and the injunctions of the Privy Council will
aid, we trust, in securing us the same immunity
still. Under the conditions of our intercourse with
the rest of the world we must inevitably be exposed
to infection as generally understood, but actual ex-
perience has now taught us that the liability may
be confined within very narrow limits. Humanity
no less than prudence demands that we should give
instant attention to any sufferers who may reach
our shores, and this succour, with all the incidental
precautions, we may now recognise without any of
the alarm which would have been natural a few
years ago.

POST.—It cannot be said that the course pursued
by the Government is a dignified or a consistent
one. Mr. Gladstone, in his glowing peroration,
transfixed the House by the grandeur of his expres-
sion when he announced the determination of him-
self and his colleagues to die at their posts. If the
banner might droop now, it would rise with him
again. He pictured
" The brave man struggling with the storms of fate,
" And greatly falling."
If all this meant anything, it meadt that, having
well matured their scheme of Reform, and per-
suaded that nothing less than this measure is cal-
culated to settle the question, they would stand
and fall with this bill—not another bill ; and the
Chancellor of the Exchequer even anticipated the
future struggles, which he was prepared gallantly
to encounter. The few remarks made by Mr. Bou-
verie on Monday night have given rather a different
colouring to the matter ; the very amiable sugges-
tion that it would be well for the Government
to consider the views and wishes of the Conser-
vative party in dealing with this question of
Reform is a very mild way of treating a question in
which a Government is prepared to stand or fall. It
is true that Mr. Bouverie is not a member of the
Government ; indeed, he looks down upon them
from the height of the back benches ; but Mr. Bou-
verie is always known as one of those useful mem-
bers who appreciate Rochefoucauld's definition of
gratitude, " that it is a quick sense of future
favours," and, like a buttress against a building,
support the Government from the outside. Casting
anxious glances at the Speaker's chair, be acts as a
pilot-engine to clear all obstructions from the way
of the Government; and when Mr. Gladstone leans
back in half-smiling satisfaction and nods approv-
ingly, we no longer contemplate the warrior on the
battlements prepared to stand or fall, but meanly
retreating before the foe which on Friday was defied
in such grand-sounding periods. If the Bouverie
view of the question be adopted, this bill becomes
rather a scheme to keep her Majesty's present Go-
vernment in office than a Liberal Reform Bill. It is
very easy to go on when you concede everything to
your opponents except the Treasury bench; but we
doubt the morality and expediency of this kind of pro-
ceeding. It is desirable that the position of public
men should be clearly ascertained, and, as Goethe
says, " v e must know how we stand, and where."
It is, we agree, most desirable to come to a settle-
ment of this question, and if the Government had
preferred the advice and the aid of the Conservative
party that of Mr. Bright, and had consulted with
the leaders of that party as to the course to be
adopted, some compromise might have been arrived
at; but it is a very different matter when the Go-
vernment have introduced a bill and agitated for it,

founded their arguments on the rights of man,
lamented that the franchise cannot be reduced be-
low £7 in the boroughs and £l4 in the counties, and
have bitterly accused their opponents of being want-
ing even in Christian feeling if they oppose this
scheme. Is it possible, then, to suppose that they
can suddenly turn round and say, " We will accept
anything you choose to give us. We will be grate-
ful for the smallest mercies; don't mind what we
said about our banner and the grand march of the
people. We will take what we can get, hoping to
keep our places, and after this we will rest and be
thankful ?" We must confess that on a great ques-
tion this is sad trifling, and the result may be most
serious. We cannot conceal from ourselves that even
the proposal of the Government in its entirety was
accepted by many speakers below the Ministerial
gangway merely as an instalment, as the thin edge
of the wedge which was ultimately to split the
oak of the Constitution. Is it possible to imagine
for one moment that the Radical section will
support any modified bill, except with the inten-
tion of using it as a stepping-stone to still greater
changes ? Listen to the great agitator at Roch-
dale :—" Unless we are to have a good bill, let us
have no bill at all. A bad bill is a revolutionary
bill ; and a little bill, though it may not be re-
volutionary, is of no good and is very perilous.
For, the moment these bills, or any of them, are
passed, you must begin again motions in Parlia-
ment, discussions in the country." Is it pos-
sible to suppose, therefore, that the question will be
allowed to slumber when an agitation can be so
much more easily aroused in a new Parliament,
when the question of a still further extension will
be moved from the vantage-ground obtained by
passing the present bill? Mr. Dutton, in a letter
which appeared in the Times of yesterday morning,
contradicted the assertion of Mr. Gladstone that
it was the intention of Lord Palmerston, had he
lived, to have introduced a Reform Bill. We be-
lieve that Mr. Dutton is under a wrong impression ;
that, on the contrary, Lord Palmerston was pre-
pared to introduce a Reform Bill, but with this dif-
ference—that he intended to have advised with the
Conservative party as to his course of action, in-
stead of taking counsel with Mr. Bright. Had this
great Minister survived to the present time, it is
quite possible that, discussed in this spirit, the
question might have been finally set at rest, for we
do not believe that the gentlemen of England on
either side of the house have any dread of the work-
ing classes. Certainly this mistrust had no place
in the mind of Lord Palmerston, for no man lived
more with them, or was more beloved by them. He
deprecated the language of Potter and Co., " that
life to a working man is a ceaseless process of de-
gradation, a daily martyrdom, a funeral procession
to the grave." On the contrary, he has frequently
remarked that a labouring man is the most inde-
pendent man in the world, but he approached all
reform with caution, because he felt that there was
a risk in unsettling the foundations of our constitu-
tional system ; that, if it possesses ills, it is far
better to bear these " than fly to others that we
know not of ;" and he knew, with that sagacity
which never deserted him, that so far, and yet no
farther, cannot be addressed to the people any more
than to the waves which failed to obey the old
Danish King. It is well to cling to our landmarks
I while we can, and to follow the advice of Lord
Palmerston in not anticipating those necessities
which are born on the ocean of Time.
THE "ANGLO-AMERICAN TI3IES " ON THE C ON-
STI T UTI ON, CONGRESS, AND THE PRESIDENT.—
In the balance of power between the several
branches of Government, the Constitution of the
United States far surpasses everything which has
ever preceded it. None of the vital parts of
the Government are ordinarily subordinate to
others. Yet the President is made the head of
the Government, and wields enormous power. In
case of opposition between him and the Legislature,
his policy is most likely to prevail. But in the almost
unprecedented case of two-thirds majorities against
him, Congress is, as it should be, practically supreme.
The House of Representatives generally reflects
the popular will. It holds the public purse, and
may be considered wholly legislative in its capacity.
The Senate is legislative and nearly co-ordinate
with the House of Representatives ; it is execu-
tive in confirming or disallowing treaties and the
appointments of the President ; and it is judi-
cial in a capacity it has never yet exercised—the
power of judging, and, if necessary, of removing
the Chief Ruler of the Land. The President
combines certain legislative powers with his high
executive functions. The Supreme Court ex-
pounds the Constitution, and by that test ac-
tually passes judgment on the ordinary law itself.
In his legislative capacity the President makes
recommendations to Congress, and approves or dis-
approves of the bills which may be passed. His
action on these bills carries the whole weight
of the highest official responsibility and
power, but it is not absolute and final.
It is measured in its legal force by a certain num-
ber of votes in each house. The re-consideration
of a bill after his veto and its passage by two-thirds
of the numbers present in each house, makes it
law equally binding upon him and the humblest
citizen—his objections and veto notwithstanding.
This provision is one of the greatest excellencies
of the Constitution. If the President had an ab-
solute veto on the Acts of Congress, if he were an
obstinate or factious man, he could legally resist the
desires of the people, and thwart the policy of a
unanimous Legislature for the full term of his four
years of office. If, on the other hand, a bare
majority of Congress could impose its will on the
Executive, slight accidental changes in the composi-
tion of the Legislature would sometimes work great
revolutions of public policy, and the President
would either become a puppet in the hands of Con-
gress, or else a corruptor of the public morals by
the improper use of his position and patronage.
Considering the natural conservatism of the
Senate, it is a question of moment whether the
Constitution does not err on the side of
executive power. For it must be rememberedand
dthe
that the veto powers of the President,
overruling power of a two-thirds majority in Con-
gress, are both intended for practical use as
.occa-
sion shall arise. On an average of probabilities
Congress will be in the right quite as often as the
President. But, if we recollect aright, Congress,
previous to the late memorable occasion,hasexer-
cised its supreme powers only in regard to one bill,
while the Presidents have often vetoed important
measures, and frequently nipped legislation in the
bud by an informal intimation that this
prerogative would be exercised. Among the
Presidents, Jackson carried out a policy of his
own in opposition to the Legislature, and battled
vigorously against public opinion till he turned it in
his favour. Tyler, who became President by the
death of Harrison, successfully resisted the
measures of the party which elected him to office.
Pierce carried out a policy strongly opposed to the
House of Representatives and the popular will.
His policy provoked the civil warfare of the Kansas
border, and did much to prepare the way for the
great rebellion. Buchanan followed in the steps
of his predecessor in opposition to the House of
Representatives, and either treasonably, or through
imbecility, kept a Cabinet, one half of which was
vigorously preparing to overthrow the Government
as soon as they should lose the high offices with
which they had been entrusted. There is no
reasonable doubt that if the Administrations of
Pierce and Buchanan had been less independent
of the Legislature and the popular will, there
would have been less excitement at the South in the
election of 1860, and the Presidential Incumbent
of the last term might have ruled the land in peace.
Of the late disagreement between the President
and Congress we shall say but little at present.
We have preferred to recall some of the constitu-
tional relations of the branches of the American
Government, and to calm public feeling by turning
to the suggestions of history. President Johnson is
an able and honest man. He will doubtless bow in
good faith to the just supremacy of the Legislature,
knowing well that Congress must in its turn submit
to the judgment of the people. Were he to attempt
such a use of his executive power as would render
the new law of Civil Rights a dead letter, he would
necessarily attack not only that law, but also a vital
part of the Constitution. He could not possibly be
permitted to succeed, for success would render him
practically absolute. Congress would have no
choice but to exercise the highest powers with which
it has been intrusted for the protection of the rights
of the whole people. We should then witness, for
the first time in the history of the world, the chief
ruler of a great nation tried by due form of law
expressly provided, found guilty, and removed from
his exalted station, for breach of the highest earthly
trust which a man can hold in the providence of
God.

MERCHANT TAYLOR'S Sc HOOL.—Mr. Thomas
Humphrey Ward, who appears first on the list of competi-
tors for the Indian Civil Service, was educated at Merchant
Taylor's School, from which ho'gained an open scholarship
at Brasenoso College, Oxford, in Easter Term, 18(11. Mr.
John Whitmore, who is 23d in the same list, was also
educated at Merchant Taylor's and obtained an open exhi-
bition at Merton College, Oxford, in the same Term.
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