The Sun.
London, England, 1859-08-17 00:00:00

BERWICR.

Both Mr. Richard Hodgson, the Conservative
candidate, and Mr. Marjoribanks, the Whig, are
pursuing an active canvass. The contest promises
to be close, but a sort of " vigilance committee" has
been formed among the non-electors to take note,
should any corrupt practices prevail.

"A LIFE FOR A LIFE." By the Author of "John Halifax,
Gentleman," &c. 3 vols. " The popularity of 'John Hali-
fax,' unlike that of most works of fiction, has singularly in-
creased from its first production, and given a character for
power and intelligence to its author which is for the most
part unprecedented at the present time. 'A Life, for a Life,'
though in plot and construction it is entirely different from
'John Halifax,' is in every particular equal to that work, and
by many degrees, in some of its scenes, in advance of it."
—Messenger.

During the half-year ended June 30, 1859, 9
persons were' killed and 11 injured on all the rail-
roads of the United Kingdom open for traffic by
accidents the causes of which were beyond their
own control, while 51 were killed and 22 injured
from want of caution or misconduct. There were
killed 4 engine-drivers, 8 firemen, 16 guards, &c.,
7 porters, no policemen, 4 gate and signal men, 2
switchers, 7 platelayers,. and 7 labourers. These
figures refer exclusively to servants of companies
or contractors, the grand total'being 60 killed and
33 injured. The total number of collisions and
other accidents to trains in- England, Wales, Scot-
land, and Ireland in the half-year ended 30th of
June, amounted to 27 (25 to passenger and two to
goods trains), and by these accidents nine persoas
were killed and 159 injured. No passengers appear
to have been killed, but 149 were injured. Twelve
of the accidents were due to collisions, seven to
trains getting off the rails, four to fracture of axles,
wheels, or machinery, one to running too fast into
a station, and two to trains catching fire. Against
this last most frightful contingency there appears
to be but little secßrity. Together with this return
there have been presented. to the Board of Trade
reports of engineers on certain accidents which oc-
curred in the months of February, April, and May,
1859 (Part III.) A collision on the Great Northern
Railway at Sleaford, on the 13th of April, was due
to the improper or irregular removal of some
waggons by a man not in the employ, of the
company. A fireman was killed in the Brighton
and South Coast line on the 11th of May by coming
into contact with tlor tramt.f ~gate at:a level-cross-
ing near the city of Chichester. The posts were to
be shifted in consequence. An-accident on the
North-Western line, on the' 26th of February, when
the engine went off the rails on the outside of an S
curve about 3-4ths of a mile radius, and about one-
foulth of a mile beyond the foot of the incline about
a mile from Leamington, was due to deterioration
of the strength of the machinery.
"This lamentable accident," says Captain Ross,
R.E., "affords another instance of the small de-
pendence that can be placed on the resistance of
trenails outside a curve to a bursting pressure,
when any casualty interferes with the regular ac-
tion of an engine, and I would urge that no time
should be lost in remedying this defect on all the ;
curves of the line. In other respects the line seems
to me in good order."
The engine, No. 8, was one of sharp's 22-ton
engines. It was received in 1847, and its mileage
is returned as' having been 238,000 miles to the date
of the accident.
Two accidents from fire also occurred on the same
(North-Western) line on the 11th and 21st of April.
Both were doubtless caused by sparks from the
engine, and the proper precantion is to abandon
the practice of carrying luggage on the roofs of
carriages, instead of in covered vans. The burn-.
ing of coal in engines, moreover, has increased
the liability of the luggage to be ignited, and
endanger wooden viadacts and bridges not ade-
quately protected. The North-Western Rail-
way Company have had too much experi-
ence of these facts already to need any fresh
warning from the Board of Trade, a large number
of accidents having occurred which were never re-
ported. A boy was killed at a level crossing of
the Midland (Nottingham and Mansfield) Railway
on the sth of May, and the erection of a bridge has
been recommended by the board. The Monkland
Railways were found to be in a very unfit condi-
tion for the conveyance of passengers over the
Ballochney inclines in June last. The traffic on
those lines has been discontinued. A collision on
the Waterford and Limerick line, near Bansha,
on the 6th of April, was due to "a reckless system
of working." The misconduct of the directors is
thus severely, stigmatised by the Board of Trade :
" My Lords," writes Captain Galton, " direct me
to state that it appears from this report that the
directors, apparently with the object of effecting
the petty economy of not having a separate wire
and proper instruments, servants, and regulations '
for the telegraphic train service, have adopted a
mode of working the single line which appears to
place responsibility upon no one, and to be so
fraught with danger that it is providential that
some serious accident has not happened long ago
upon the line. My Lords trust that the warning
which the directors have received will induce them
to alter at once so reckless a system of working,
for should any other accident occur under it the
responsibility of having occasioned it will rest upon
the directors."

THE ENTRY OF THE ARMY INTO

PARIS.

(From the Times.)
One of the noteworthy peculiarities of the
triumphal entry of the army of Italy into Paris is
the great economy of fine phrases throughout the
whole affair. If it were possible that the same
ceremonial had happened in London, we should
have had an amount of speechifying that would
have fallen heavier and damper than the showers
of Sunday last upon the spirits both of actors and
spectators. At each possible point—at the railway
terminus, at the first flowery arch, at the line of
frontier of every parish, and at the great centre
where the army was to pass in procession and yield
up its trophies to its Imperial leader, we should
have had little knots of prosy personages. Mayors
and select vestrymen, andsupervisors of pavements,
bursting with loyal and congratulatory addresses ;
and we should have had appropriate replies a dozen
times repeated in an assiduously varied phraseo-
logy. In France they have come to manage these
things better. So far as the accounts have yet
reached us, the great pageant passed in grand dumb
show except for the general shouting. It was a
purely military spectacle, and the action was all
pantomimic. When the Emperor wished to express
his approbation of a particular Division he took off
his cocked hat, and the desired expression was
made ; when the wounded vivandiere was carried
past he nodded a kindly nod, and the spectators
understood that her pension was granted; when he
desired to attract the sympathies of the crowd to
the Imperial family he took his little son upon his
saddle and kissed him, and the gaily-apparelled oc-
cupants of the amphitheatre understood, and were,
for the moment, at least propitiated. We have not
seen even an Order of the Day telling us how
many centuries looked down upon that column
which was destined for Charlemagne, and, after,
a long interval, is surmounted again by the First
Napoleon. This was all right and appropriate, even
although perhaps not in accordance with historic
precedent. Eloquence is the art of persuasion,—
but what need had the master of that potent army
to persuade ? We seek to persuade our equals or
our superiors ; but what superior or what equal has
Napoleon 111. in France ? They who surround an
absolute monarch seek only to know his commands
that they may obey them ; his sympathy, that they
may rejoice ; his approbation, that they may count
the coming reward ; his displeasure, that they may
bow or fly. A gesture is sufficient for this purpose,
and a diffuse piece of rhetoric can only weaken the
prestige of power. Moreover, if he should desire
to explain, or should wish to create an impression
more expanded than can be fixed by the mere noti-
fication of the Imperial will, is not M. Granier de
Cassagnac at hand to perorate through all the press
of Paris, and to write Imperial speeches by which
no one is committed, although every one may be
puzzled ?
The single exception to the restraint put upon
the eloquence of all France is of the most moderate
and brief character. In the evening, when the
triumph had gope off so well—nothing happening
to mar the glories of the day except a little cold
water from the contumacious heavens—the Empe-
ror entertained the Chiefs of his Army at an Imne-
rial banquet. Hospitality here required a short
address, and it was delivered in phrases which oc-
cupy scarce twenty lines in the faithful Moniteur.
It is the model of an Imperial speech. It is not an
harangue or an oration, but naked thought sculp-
tured in language. There is just enough of senti-
ment, just enough of modesty, just enough of ap-
proval. He expresses a natural reluctance to dis-
solve the elements of that strength which has made
itself so notably felt, but he frankly accepts the
necessity, and that he may promptly reassure Europe
he dismisses the chiefs that surround him to the
peaceful occupations of civil life. He reminds them
of what they have accomplished together, and mo-
destly attributes the success which he, an untried
General, has achieved, to the confidence and obedi-
ence rendered to him by his elders in arms. He
hopes that the words written upon the medal which
commemorates the campaign of Italy will often re-
call the memory of their comrade and commander—
and this is all. This was all that preceded the toast
of " The Army of Italy." Whether any means were
used to mollify the disappointment which some of
' the Colonels may have felt at such sensible and ju-
dicious phrases we do not know, and ought not,
perhaps, to care. The fact remains, that this little
speech is a model of good taste, and so far as it re-
fers to things past, of truth, modestly told. Un-
doubtedly the Emperor, a civilian—for by civil arts

he first rose to power—has led a large army, and
manoeuvred' that army on the plains' of Solferino
will the skill of &consummate general ; and, as lie
has a right, to be proud of his success, so he de-
serves the credit of curbing the ostentatious expres-
Sion 'of that. pride. When,he,reminels his generals
of the- disadvantages with which he had to contend
in the want of early training upon the field, he;
obliquely compliments himself; but the inference i 4
so neatly concealed that it dees.not obtrude, and
arises only when the first impression of the speech
is past. We must confesS, howe'ver, that we can-
not see in the Emperor's inexperience of actual ser-:
vice any grave disadvan. age in leading an army.
History, if her teaching is worth anything, teaches
that a civilian of Intelligence and the requisite
moral courage, after some study of strategy, is quite
as likely to make a good general as one who has
passed his life upon the manual and platoon—that
mere alphabet of the art of war, upon which the
British officer generally spends his whole life:
Great commanders have in all time been persons
who were able to break away from the meshes of
professional pedantries and to invehtfor themselves
some new art of strategy. It has always been by
a bold divergence from old rules that great vic-
tories have been won, and a man who has read, and
laboured, and meditated outside the, professional
circle is better, educated for a general than a man
who has to unswathe himself froM the bands that
have sustained him during the past-portion of his
life, and to. accustom to independent, exercise, a
mind which haS hitherto known no virtue but
obedience, We could wish that if the time of need
should ever come we may nave many men who
have educated themselves for command as well as
Louis Napoleon has.
But it is our ungracious duty, default of some
other monitor near and as free, to perform the part
of Chorus in this great Drama, and to inform and
warn while the actors are playing out their des-
tinies. It is our duty once again to remind the
Emperor Napoleon that even now men are asking
each other with what purpose and for what advan-
tage these victories have. been won, and the blood
at which they were bought has been spilt. That
question will be repeated by the present and by
future generations. How will it be answered P
Has he indeed chosen to throw away the fair prize
of so much valour and skill, and is Italy, scarcely
vet able to feel her 'freedom, to' be loaded with
heavier fetters ? Are these 50,000 men " monzen-
tenement" left in Lombardy intended to quicken
the good faith of Austria, whose dip'omacy is quick
to retrieve military, reverses, but moves slothfully
to consummate disagreeable concessions ? Or is that
French army in Italy only to wait the command to
restore the sovereignty of the Grand Dukes in the
Duchies, and the tyranny of the Pope in the Lega-
tions ? There is a third and still more darenatory
suggestion as to the presence of the French force at
what is now no longer the seat of war. Those tat-
tered flags which told so suggestively the fate of
thousands of brave men who stood by them when
that iron storm was flying the marks of which they
bear, were greeted with loud plaudits as they came
in sight, because the French people still believe
that it was for the liberation of Italy those losses
were incurred. The medal which the Emperor
promises will be worn with pride, because Magenta.
and Malegnano and Solferino are even now held to
be victories in the cause of Italian freedom. But
what a cloud would come over this scene, what a
taint of infamy would infect these victories, how
suddenly would a glorious war in a glorious cause
change into a piratical inroad for merely selfish
objects, if it should tarn out that the sole motive
and effect of all this has been nothing greater than
to carve out a little kingdom in Central Italy, and
to put Prince Jerome upon its throne !