The Sun.
London, England, 1861-09-11 00:00:00

THE WEATHER.-SuN Orrin, SEPTEMBER 11, IS6I.

THERMOMETER, IN THE SHADS.
64—highest since noon yesterday.
47—Lowest this morning and during the night.
62—this day at noon.

BAROMETER-30.0.
WlND—South-East—light; with fine weather. The
wind was North and East this morning.

4;7
it, 4
iT.; 17s) 7.'4 •"" , • —I: .3km
Na'

THE SUN.

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 11, 1861.

The Emperor of AUSTRIA may have his affair of
" the Seven Bishops." In his case, indeed, it is but
one, but then he is an Archbishop, a Prince
Primate, a Lord-Lientenant of the county,President
in that capacity of the county committee—a kind of
local parliament which manages the local business
of each county in Hungary ; and, to add to all, a
Catholic and a Prelate looked up to by the Catholics
of Hungary with a reverence not inferior to that
felt for the Pope himself. He is also in very ad-
vanced age—in fact, tottering on the brink of the
grave. He was always regarded as friendly to the
Court of Vienna hitherto, and at least as a man of
mild and yielding temperament. And this is the
man whom the SCHMERLINGS and the RECHBERGS
have driven to Hungarian Radicalism—or rather
we should say to join them, at the side of M.
DEAK, in the interests of Hungarian Conservatism
both civil and ecclesiastical.
What will Mr. ROEBUCK say to this? What
would he say at home if Queen VICTORIA could, by
the advice, of whom shall we say—of Mr. ROEBUCK
himself—so boldly assail all the old institutions of
the country, as not merely to arouse the
resistance of JOHN BRIGHT, Mr. GLADSTONE,
and the House of Lords, but to induce
the quiet and aged Archbishop of CANTERBURY—
who is not very unlike in temper and years to
his brother of Gran—to deliver a public protest
against the illegal doings of his Sovereign. It is
really nothing less than this which the Emperor of
AUSTRIA has done. The Prince-Primate of Hungary,
" with one foot in the grave," with nothing to hope
or fear from man, has, after five months' absence
by attendance at the Pesth Diet—thoroughly in-
formed therefore in all the details of the controversy
—returned home to the County Committee of which
he is the President, and in opening the Committee
of his County of Gran has made a completely
national speech, endorsing with his venerable name
the acts and policy of his country's Diet.

He firmly took its ground of historical rights,
declared that the Hungarians honoured their consti-
tution of a thousand years like a "holy relic"—and
that, though the Diet had failed to attain the end
it had in view, its labours would remain indelibly
engraved in the records of their fatherland_ Hun-
gary, he said, could not renounce her independence ;
powerful voices had been uplifted for it in the
Reichsrath itself, to which they could not send
representatives; but, though none were to step for-
ward to their aid, " the holiness of the right and
of the truth sufficed for a confident anticipation,
that sooner or later a happy solution of the question
would, be arrived at." lie declared his belief that
Hnngary's old hereditary constitution could not
succumb so long as the nation itself did not with
sinful hand destroy it ; and he believed that on
that basis a reconciliation with the throne must be
at last obtained.

If England needed anything to assure her that
Hungary was right and the EMPEROR and his
ambitions Germans were wholly wrong, we know
no fact which could do it more certainly than what
we, have now mentioned. The movement must be
a national one which unites every Magyar peasant
with the highest nobles and ecclesiastics in the
land. Tae Emperor has taken the course not
only of entire illegality, but of extreme unpopu-
larity. No classes in. Hungary stand by him.
hays alit Inated all that is best in the country. The
report now is that he is intending to try the elec.
3rding to the nnrevised laws
prior to those of 1848. These laws are, however,

tion of Et Diet acc

" longer laws, and it the elections aro, ordered
the li.on,Tarians can., if they cholse, refuse to
,
hority of
elect, °' refaso to acknowledge, the aut
tose whom a few creatures of the Emperor,
Bach as can everywhere be found, may
choose. The paiallel
,would he for our Queen
to summon a Parlismernt aud, issue her writs as
they, were issued
bel°P3 the Reform Bill, in which
AI:IST-MA: Wouldfind no diffi-.
case the Emperor of
ulty in purchasing- a seat for his advocate.

The Hungarians do not, however, believe that
even by the laws of 184'7, which would throw
the elections more into the hands of the nobles, the
Diet could be Austrianized. It is a significant
fact that the Archbishop's speech was ordered to
be entered on the archives, and to be printed and
circulated throughout the country; and that a vote
of thanks was accorded to M. SMOLKA, the Polish
representative, who made such an effective speech
for the Hungarians in the Reichsrath. That speech
was also ordered to be printed for general circula-
tion. With the addresses of the Diet, and the
Archbishop and M. SMOLEA'S speeches circu-
lating through all the country, enough has been
done to fix in the Hungarian mind the national
principles they naturally cherish so warmly; and
we cannot doubt that Austria, though backed by our
own Germanized Court, will fight in vain against a
whole nation conscious of a noble and a holy cause.
It serves to show bow completely the EMPEROR
is resolved to set aside all law by his arbitrary
will, that he has actually to a large extent sub-
stituted perfectly illegal Imperial Commissioners
for the lawful authorities of the country, investing
them with the most absolute powers, and yet put-
ting the most hypocritical cant into their mouths
respecting old constitutional institutions, Let our
readers ponder carefully the following outline of
the work assigned to these agents of pure despotism
—it is contained in a letter from Pesth not spe-
cially hostile to Austria, and needs no comment :
" Each commissioner is furnished with authority to
exact obedience under pain of legal punishment.
This order will be addressed to the jurisdictions,
where these have not been suppressed ; elsewhere
to the principal functionaries, who, on their
responsibility, will be held bound to make
known the contents of the requisition to the
employes. The commissioners are enjoined
to act energetically and without regard to per-
sonal considerations, but in such a way as
to give no offence to the sentiment of equity in the
public mind, and to gain over reasonable men who
desire the re-establishment of legal order. They
are to avoid all superfluous rigour. On the other
hand, the commissioners are strictly bound to main-
tain the respect due to their king and the full
authority of his majesty. When it becomes the
duty of the commissioner to institute criminal pro-
ceedings in any case, he is to cite before him
the persons accused and the witnesses. He dis-
charges disobedient functionaries, includes them
in the indictment, and if necessary replaces them
by other appointments. In case of need he may
assume the administrative direction of the Comitat.
If the persons accused or the witnesses refuse to
appear he may employ force, but only in case of
necessity. The eighth article of these instructions
justifies the measures laid down in those that/ pre-
cede. In it we read :—‘ The commissioner of the
King will declare on each occasion that his Apos-
tolic MAJESTY has no intention of abolishing the
constitutional institution or of aiming a blow at
the autonomy of Hungary in the administration
and the government.' "

That the juries and coroners have done their duty
impartially, patiently, and carefully, no one will
deny. Nor, on the evidence 'furnished, can it be
doubted that acting, be it observed, only as a grand
jury, they were right in sending to trial in a
superior court the persons whom they found guilty
of manslaughter. There was legal presumptive
evidence against LEGG, the station-master at
Brighton, that he had contributed materially to the
fatal accident by starting the trains within such a
very short time of each otter. The vacillating
evidence of the lad RAYNER, in the Hampstead
case, compared with the uniform and consistent
evidence of other witnesses, furnished also a
reasonable presumption that he had failed
in his duty in regard to the danger signal.
The company is much blamed for employing so
young a person at the post ; but the public, who
have not personal knowledge of him, must suspend
their judgment on that point, many a lad at nine-
teen being more intelligent and trustworthy than
many men of double age.
With the finding of the Coroners' juries justice
pauses a little i❑ its, demands, and takes time to
consider. At the two trials more will come out in
the defence of the witnesses, showing how far the
regulations of the companies may or may not be
faulty. Counsel for the accused will even go further,
and inquire whether, if the rules were violated, the
violation was not known, and endorsed by habitual
'sufferance on the part of the superior authorities.
Tne actual blame attributable to the servants of the
company, perhaps the legal culpability too, will be
decided not only by the rules and the departure
from them, but by the extent to which departure
had been so far sanctioned, as to seem to place much
discretion in the hands of the servants. Servants
cannot of course be allowed to act at their discre-
tion at one time, and rebuked for so doing at
another. To us outsiders considerations of safety
would certainly appear to forbid any discretion as
to the minimum interval of time between successive
trains. If five minutes be the least time sufficient,
nothing should interfere with retaining that time
on every occasion.
_

Pending the final trials, it is as well to refrain
from any minute examination of evidence which
must all be gone over again and sifted with every
advantage. But, meantime, will it not be well for
the railway managers to consider the whole ques-
tion of excursion trains. On the present scales of
railway charges they are a social necessity. The
poor ought to have them. That is, they ought to
have the advantage of being carried about the
country as cheaply as they can be carried, and that
is very cheap indeed. We remember in earlier
railway? days the decided opinion of Mr. BAXEN-
DALE that passengers ought to be carried as
cheaply as any goods according to the speed
and cost of the vehicles they used. Third-
class passengers, he used to observe, make less
demand on us than any other articles we carry,
because they load and unload themselves. Luggage
not retained in their own care must be dealt with
accordingly; but the passenger who with his bag
only takes a ticket, walks into the carriage and
walks out again, is certainly the smallest conceiv
able trouble to the company, and entails the least
possible expense upon them. It was Mr. BAXEN
DALE also who strenuously objected to making
every effort to drive all respectably-dressed persons
into the higher-priced carriages. He truly enough
observed that in these days it was utterly impos-
sible to tell a man's means from his coat. And
who of us has not knowledge of many persons,
perhaps painful knowledge of their circumstances,
which corroborates the truth of Mr. BAXENDALL'S
observation ?

The question suggested by the repeated accidents
to excursion trains is—are excursion trains neces
sary ? Sitting aside the express trains, might not
every train be an excursion train ? Are not the
numbers of the working classes who would like to
travel ten times where-they now travel once, and of
those just above them, equally poor in regard to
what they can spare for travelling—are rilt their
numbers so great, that cheap carriages to any ordi-
nary train might profitably supplant the excursion
train. If Mr. BAXENDALE be right, and we do
not remember his evidence was ever dis-