The Sun.
London, England, 1866-05-22 00:00:00

Devonport Election.

The nomination of candidates to fill the vacancy
in the representation of the borough caused by the
unseating of Mr. W. Ferrand and Mr. John Flem-
ing on petition took place yesterday at the hustings
erected in front of the Town-hall. Mr. R. C. SMITH,
the mayor, as returning officer, presided. The four
candidates were accompanied on the hustings by a
very large number of their friends. The crowd in
front of the hustings was very great. There was
much excitement, but order was maintained. Mr.
Ferrand, lately unseated for the borough, was pre-
sent.

Mr. J. BEER, the chairman of the Conservative
party, nominated the Hon. C. R. Abbott as a fit
and proper person to represent the borough in
Parliament.

This was seconded by Dr. Row.
Mr. J. C. THIERENS nominated Mr. Raikes, and
was seconded by Mr. JOLL.
Mr. J. W. W. RIDER, the chairman of the Libe-
ral party, nominated Lord Eliot as a fit and proper
person to represent the borough of D evonport in
Parliament. This was seconded by Mr. SNELL.
Mr. R. J. LAITY nominated Mr. Montague Cham-
bers, Q.C. ; and was seconded by Mr. JOSEPH MAY.

The Hon. Mr. REGINALD ABBOTT first addressed
the assembly. He first referred to the unseat-
ing of Messrs. Ferrand and Fleming for bribery,
after which he made some observations re-
specting the Reform Bill. He said the Govern-
ment had brought forward a Reform Bill founded
on statistics applying to constituencies at present
existing, and they had brought in a bill applied to
constituencies about to be created, and when it was
proposed that they should know what the new con-
stituencies were to be, and that they should know
what the Redistribution Bill was to be this was re-
fused, and the Government endeavoured to stand
out against the demands of the House of Commons.
The Government now felt that they had been de-
feated, censured, and condemned, and they had
been pleased to bring forward a Reform Bill
which they endeavoured to force upon the House of
Commons in the same way as it was endeavoured
to force a verdict out of a starved jury. He was
opposed to the Reform Bill of the Government, but
was in favour of an educational franchise. He
thought the uniform £7 franchise was objectionable,
because in some places it would admit too many
people to it, while in other places it would not admit
enough. The present bill seemed to him to be a re-
fusal on the part of the Government to recognise
intelligence, and therefore he was opposed to it.
He was also opposed to the Permissive Bill and to
the ballot, as he believed that the ballot would lead
to greater evils than at present existed, and he could
not support the Permissive Bill, for although he had
the greatest respect for men working in the tempe-
rance cause by moral influence, he thought that the
coercive system, such as the Permissive Bill was,
was violent, arbitrary, and contrary to our English
liberty. The Conservative party had always sup-
ported the public service, and had seen that the
navy and army were both properly treated, but that
could not be said of the Liberals, and he, therefore,
hoped that the electors would return him and his
honourable colleague to represent their interests in
Parliament by a triumphant majority.

Mr. CECIL RUBES asked what was the liberal
idea of reform? It was to disfranchise dockyard
labourers. What was the liberal idea of the public
services ? It was to deny the sailor's widow her
mite, and to haggle with the veteran for his small pen-
sion. What was their idea with regard to liberty of
conscience ? It was to use their pressure and their
influence contrary to the voice of the electors of any
borough. What was their idea of purity of election?
It was to introduce illegal practices into the borough,
and then to brand them as being corrupt. And in
the face of these facts he would ask them how could
they vote for the Liberals ? With regard to the Re-
form Bill introduced by Government, it was unjust,
and he should vote against it, and especially thelfith
clause. In answer to the Liberals, he said the Earl
of Derby passed the Catholic Emancipation Bill,
and the Tory Sir Robert Peel repealed the corn laws;
the Tories also repealed the property qualification
for members of Parliament. He should give a ge-
neral support to the Government of Earl Derby and
Mr. Disraeli.

Lord ELIOT'S address was brief, and consisted only
of a denial of the charge brought against him that
his father was a Conservative, and had neglected
his tenantry. He was prepared to give his support
to the Liberal Government, and although he was in
favour of the Reform Bill he should strenuously op-
pose the 16th clause of the Bill. •
Mr. MONTAGU CHAMBERS denied that the Tories
had carried the Catholic Emancipation Bill. The
Liberals had carried it, and it was the Liberals who
introduced free-trade, the blessings of which they
now enjoyed. The Tories did not abolish the corn
laws, but they did in their Reform Bill of 1859 in-
troduce a clause disfranchising dockyards men.
Whilst M.P. for Greenwich he had opposed such a

proposition, and would oppose it in the present
Bill. He was a ballot man, and had been so for a
great number of years, and if elected to Parliament
would support the ballot.

The show of hands was in favour of the Conser-
vative candidates.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—We have expressed an opinion that the
first breach of the peace of Europe is not likely to
come from the side of Prussia. The menacing atti-
tude of Austria, the promptitude with which she
has prepared for war, the enormous army she is
capable of bringing into the field, might well cause
Prussia to pause beforedriving matters to extremity.
Prussia has, moreover, shown unmistakable symp-
toms that all is not well in her internal affairs. The
people, whom the Government has done everything
in its power to disgust, appear at last to be really
and effectively disgusted. A brave nation, never
slow to draw the sword at any reasonable provoca-
tion, is ready to do everything in its power to pre-
vent the outbreak of war. The people, who have
somehow contrived amid the wreck of their other
liberties to preserve the right of public meeting, are
exercising that privilege in a manner which must be
exceedingly embarrassing to Count Bismark and
his master. The King evidently despairs of obtain-
ing from his Legislature the support upon which he
at one time counted. He has been coquetting with
universal suffrage—the last and most desperate re-
source in the present day of those who want to do
a great wrong and veil it under the pretence of po-
pular assent. All sorts of Liberal schemes aro in
agitation, assemblings of Diets, of Parliaments, of
Congresses, everything, in fact, except the down-
right measure of commencing the war which Prus-
sia but a little while ago was so ready and anxious
to provoke. It seemed strange that a Government
which has so openly and ostentatiously relied on
the army alone for its support should suddenly be
seized with a desire to refer matters to that very
civilian element upon which it has -so long been
trampling. But it now appears that there is
something more at stake than had hitherto been
supposed. In estimating the chances of peace _or
war, we seem to have attached too little weight
to the fact that the army of Prussia is rather
what we in England should call a militia
than a regular force. It serves only for a
short period, and when it has to be called out a great
number of its soldiers must leave the pursuits of
civil life. This does not perhaps interfere much with
the efficiency of the army in a cause with which their
?pinion coincides, but it is a very important matter
indeed when the army is called upon to fight for an
object which is unpopular. The Prussian army has
so unhesitatingly supported the Government in its
conflict with the Assembly that we are surprised to
find it showing the least indisposition to follow
wherever Count Bismark chooses to lead it. So it
seems to be, however. The promises made in order
to render popular the military reforms introduced
by the Government against the will of the Parlia-
ment and the people have not been fulfilled. Every-
body knew that the standing army was to be enor-
mously increased, but the infliction was borne with
on the ground that the necessity for calling out the
militia, properly so called, would in the same degree
be diminished. The Government, by an act of pre-
rogative and in defiance of the Legislature, has
raised the Prussian army in time of peace to 210,000,
instead of 130,000. The only excuse for such a mea-
sure could be found in its entire success ; but the
army is so little adequate for the emergency the Go-
vernment has provoked that the whole of the militia
is called out on the very first alarm of war. The
Assembly will be able to point to this fact in tthe
coming session as decisive of the controversy between
the Government and itself. We are informed by the
same authority from which we extract these state-
ments—the Cologne Gazette—that disturbances have
occurred in all parts of the country, and that in
some cases the military are required in order to
check the tumult. This is an evil prospect at the
commencement of a struggle which promises to tax
the resources of the country to their very utmost,
even if it be carried on with the full assent of the
people and with all the support which popular en-
thusiasm can place at the disposal of the Govern-
ment.' We. are somewhat surprised that the
Prussian Government themselves should have over-
looked this formidable difficulty in their way. They
at least should have knoWn the reed on which they
leant when' they supposed that an army so ready to
support them in their quarrel with the Assembly
was to be relied on for the purposes of foreign war.
But it is not wonderful that under such circum-
stances Prussia should declare her willingness to
enter into the Congress, though we confess that this
appears to us a very unpromising proceeding. No
' general war ever breaks out in Europe without be-
ing preceded by a proposal emanating froln some
quarter or other-to refer all matters in dispute to a
Congress. Everybody always professes his readi-
ness to embark in it, but nobody will undertake to
abide by its decisions. It is an adMirable means
for gaining time, and for investing extrava-
gant and overbearing proposals with a spurious and
delusive semblance of moderation ; but it is the most
unlikely way in the world to solve any serious and
envenomed difficulty. If, indeed, the Congress were
prepared, as is said to have been suggested by the
Emperor of Russia, to enforce by arms its decisions
against dissenting members, a machine would be
provided ready to the hands of an ambitious Power
which might work results so disastrous to the liber-
ties of Europe as the Amphictyonic Council under
the presidency of Philip of Macedon did to the liber-
ties of ancient Greece. But though the decisions of
a Congress might possibly be suggested by justice,
its execution of them would infallibly be dictated
by policy, and we should probably not have long
to wait before we witnessed as gross an abuse of
the power of carrying out the general decree as
that which Austria and Prussia had exhibited when
they undertook to act as the agents of the Ger-
manic Confederation in the case of Denmark. A
Congress is often an excellent means of giving effect
to rights which have been previously established by
an appeal to arms. It can reduce into form and
give permanence to the well-ascertained results of
victory and defeat. But when countries carry their
preparations for war to such lengths as Prussia,
Austria, and Italy have now done, they must look
for the adjustment of their rights and the settlement
of their quarrel to an agency more efficient than that
of an European Congress. They can, if they please,
draw back from the extreme pretensions they have
put forward, and assume again the tone of modera-
tion they have discarded ; but we shall require much
stronger evidence than anything which has yet come
to our hands before we believe that Austria, for in-
stance, will submit her right to Venetia to an Euro-
pean Congress, or that Italy, after having given
Garibaldi a command and called on the Revolu-
tionary party to aid her, can undo all these things
and wait patiently for the tardy decision of a con-
clave of diplomatists. We sincerely hope we are
mistaken, but it would seem as if all parties had been
careful to close against themselves this loophole of
escape. An intimation from the Emperor of the
French that he is in earnest opposed to war, and
will take a definite and intelligible course imme-
diately against the first aggressor on its breaking
out, would have more effect than the deliberations
of any Europeon Congress. We have no doubt that
he possessed the power, had he chosen to use it, to
prevent the storm. It may be a question whether
it has not now, acquired dimensions which even his
skill is unable to subdue.
THE " EXAMINER" ON COAL AND DEBT.—We are
asked by Mr. Gladstone to profess a new article of
faith and a new moral obligation. The national debt
was due and owing any day the last two years as
much as now; indeed it was much more so, for
since then, out of surplus, we have paid off a good
many millions. If there was any obligation on the
national conscience to pay off only on taxes for the
necessaries of life, we should, of course, have heard
of it before now. Moral duties are not matters of
caprice or accident, and it would be a libel upon
the Ministers and the Legislature of the country to
affect to believe that all this time they have been
accomplices in a roguish evasion of a plain duty.
But the Chancellor of the Exchequer does not say
anything of the kind. The obligation to borrow the
savings of the working classes to pay off £24,000,000
due to the freeholders arises from the supposed dis-
covery of a new article of geological faith, namely,
that our coal mines are burning out, and that
we are, therefore, come within sight of the end of
our commercial pre-eminence. A new revelation
has come upon us, and the book of Lamentations,
by the Prophet Jevons, is added to our canon of
political scripture. We have read that book with
care; not only from a sense of the importance of
the subject to which it relates, but from the surpris-
ing and, as we think, perilous inferences judicially
drawn from it ; and we do not hesitate to say that
we think its spirit unhealthy, its logic unsound, and
its deductions at variance with allthe teachings of
industrial history, and with all that is ennobling
and elevating in the social history of man. We do
not question the honesty of the Professor or the
pains he has taken to collect and to group facts in
illustration of his theory, but we deny that the facts
sustain the theory, and we think the theory is
founded in essential misconception of the facts. He
would have us believe that the industrial features
of a country like this are dependent mainly
on mineral matter,—we believe that the annals
of our commerce and civilisation prove it to be
much more dependent on the national mind.
The greatness of England, he tells us, is
bound up in the cheapness of iron and coal, and
dependent on their proximity, when they are found,
to each other. That large fortunes have been made
by this proximity, we of course do not deny, and

that large numbers of persons have been for genera-
tions employed in iron smelting every one knows ;
but true it is that the manufacturing or the com-
mercial grandeur of England began with these, or
rests on these alone? Let us narrow the question
a little and try to get out of this loose, vague, in-
determinate language of the alarmists. In reply to
Mr. Horsman and other opponents of the Treaty of
Commerce with France, who would have put a tax
on the export of coal as one device for limiting its too
rapid consumption, Mr. Vivian said that the mines of
South Wales alone would keep our national fires
going, at their present rate, for at least 500 years.
Mr. Hull, who may be regarded as the High Priest of
our fire worshippers, scoffs at this version of the mat-
ters, and propounds, instead, his dictum that below
4,000 feet we can never go for coal; that the present
rate of consumption must continue to increase in a
geometric ratio, and that therefore in 1961 we shall
want 2,670 millions of tons instead of 86,000,000,
which is all we require now; and inasmuch as the total
amount of coal within 4,000 feet of the surface is
86,000 millions of tons, before the end of the com-
ing century we shall be fairly burnt out. Now, in
the first place, there is not a particle of evidence
produced, or produceable, as to the maximum depth
at which all mines can be worked. Some geolo-
gists think we could,go deeper, and some think not
so deep ; and our own opinion is like Byron's guess
at the author of Junius, that it can be fixed to no
one particular at all. Averages areproverbially unre-
liable in estimating speculative and inventive facts,
where half the data are never known to us, and
never can be ; and mining incidents and accidents
are certainly no exceptions to the rule. Professor
Jevons shrinks from endorsing the 4,000 feet
theory, and stops short at 2,500 ; but why there
precisely, rather than anywhere else, he does not
tell us. All we can gather from him on the
subject is that when we get to that depth
a complete supply of foreign coals will
come in from Pennsylvania and elsewhere.
The possibility and probability of such foreign sup-
ply is one of the most sensible things in the Profes-
sor's book. We send coal to Australia, to India,
even to Hong Kong ; yet we are startled at the sup-
position that it may one day suit tur to import it,
like timber or rice, from the comparatively adjacent
States of America. Who will undertake to say what
the price of coal on the banks of the Potomac will
be five years after American coal-fields begin to be
thoroughly opened? Or what underwriter of stand-
ing at Lloyd's would guarantee the figure at which
freight will be charged from Philadelphia to Liver-
pool or London ? The available supplies in
America, as is well known, are enormously
greater than those in any other country in the
world except, perhaps, China, whose resources in
this respect are still unexplored : and yet we hear
inquirers and learned men discuss the question as if
this alone of all articles of export could never be-
come for us one of import. And now with re-
gard to the monstrous chimera of the geome-
tric ratio of consumption. A contributor to the
Times has, in a few wise and weighty sentences, dis-
pelled summarily this strange hallucination. He
says :

The consumption for household purposes is assumed to
be a ton for each unit of the population—say 29,000,000 of
tons a year; and the theory we are considering involves
that the consumption of coal for household purposes shall
be, in 1961, 576,000,000 of tons, and that as the country
will be neither hotter nor colder, and coals will afford the
same warmth to each person, the corresponding population
of the British isles will be also 576,000,000!
It seems ludicrous to argue gravely against absurdity
like this, and yet this is the corner stone of the
whole argument, for considerably more than one-
third of our entire consumption is confessedly for
domestic me. Of course, when pushed to the literal
rendering of their own vaticinations, these seers of evil
flinch from their own dogma, and tell us gravely that
they did not mean quite that, but something else, al-
though what the something else may be they do not
tell ' • and for the best of allpossible reasons, namely,
that they do not and cannot know. A like illustra-
tion may be drawn from the consumption for loco-
motive engines. Railways have come into existence
within the last few years throughout the United
Kingdom, and the quantity of fuel consumed in their
working has increased at the general rate assigned,
but it would manifestly be absurd to say that the
mileage of railways could go on increasing for the
next 100 years at the same rate, or anything like it ;
and without this, what becomes of the geometric
rate of progression ? The great case, however, is no
doubt the augmented absorption of coal in the iron
trade. Eighteen millions of tons are now annually
used in making four and a half millions of tons of
pig-iron. If the increase continues, at anything
like the recent rate of expansion, the alarmists
foretell that, in 1961, the quantity of coal con-
sumed for this purpose will be 472,000,000 tons,
which would produce twenty-four times the
present make ' of pig-iron. Now, if there
be any one the gullet of whose credulity is
wide enough to swallow this piece •of apoca-
lyptic arithmetic, he must gulp with it a propor-
tionate expansion of other manufactures beyond the
limits of any prosaic estimate ; because pig-iron,
inevitable though it may be in these gigantic dimen-
sions, must after all be made use of somehow, in
order to pay the makers and keep the furnaces
alight. Not wishing to be considered lunatics, we
simply take leave to note that we don't believe one
word of the story. But if it be true, or half true,
then in the name of common sense and fair dealing
let us'adjourn the paying off of the National Debt
until we shall have got into this promised land of
unbounded production and unlimited profit, where
the nursery fable will at length be realised of the
pigs lying about in all directions, seeming to say—
who'll have us ? A trifle of 800 million pounds
sterling will be nothing to our lucky grandchildren,
whose garden of gold will be entered by such iron
gates. What will signify to them the weight of coals
from Pennsylvania or Hongkong, or the satellities
of Jupiter if that should become necessary ? Seri-
ously speaking, we must, with all respect for the
Chancellor of the Exchequer and the hon. member
for Westminster, recur to the economic principles in
which we were brought up. One of these was that
to tax the industry of the country to pay off debt was
pro tanto to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs.