The Sun.
London, England, 1861-04-19 00:00:00

LORD ELGIN AT DUNFERMLINE.

The Earl of Elgin returned to his estate of
Broomhall, Fifeshire, on Wednesday, and was re-
ceived with demonstrations of rejoicing through-
out the whole district. The noble lord, accompa-
nied by Lady Elgin, left London on Tuesday night
by the limited mail and reached Stirling about 8
a.m., and after resting two hours took the train to
Dunfermline. In this ancient and populous burgh
the inhabitants turned out en masse to welcome the
noble lord. The church bells were rung, the houses
were gaily decorated with flags, and the factories,
workshops, and schools liberated their whole in-
mates to swell the throng. At the railway station
the Dunfermline troop of the Fifeshire Mounted
Rifle Volunteers, under Captain Sir Arthur Hal-
kett, and the two Dunfermline companies of the
Ist Fifeshire Rifles, under Captain Matheson,
mounted guard. The provost, magistrates, and
council, along with the sheriff and other officials,
were on the platform to meet his lordship, and on
his arrival he was conducted by the civic body to
the Town-hall to receive an address of congratula-
tion on his return. After some remarks from Provost
Whitelaw, Mr. Kilgour (town-clerk) read the fol-
lowing address :
" To THE RIGHT HON. THE EARL OF ELGIN AND
KINCARDINE.

" May it please your Lordship—We, the Provost, ma-
gistrates, and Town-council of Dunfermline, in council as-
sembled, would, for ourselves and the community we repre-
sent, desire to express our great regard for your lordship,
and our high estimation of the exalted principles and noble
bearing which have ever •characterised your public life.
And now, on your return as her Majesty's Plenipotentiary
from another arduous struggle in your country's service,
we would bid you a sincere awl heartfelt welcome home,
and congratulate you, not only on the eminent success of
your late mission, but on your preservation, by a watchful
Providence, from the numerous personal dangers to which
your lordship has thereby been exposed. The mission
to China with which your lordship was intrusted was
one of no common kind, and of no ordinary diffi-
culty. And whether we regard the treaties which
your lordship has been enabled to effect as the averting
of an expensive and protracted war in a very distant land,
or as the opening up of a new and extensive field for the
commercial enterprise of this country, or whether we con-
template the effect that Chinese intercourse with Great
Britain must have in improving the moral and social con-
dition of a large and isolated portion of the human family,
we consider your lordship's achievement as a step in
human progress that must take a prominent place in the
world's history. And, while we would not be unmindful of
the noble support given to your lordship by the army and
navy both of England and her gallant allies, we cannot
but express our admiration of the manly courage and con-
summate ability, as well as of the dignified courtesy and
firmness of purpose which your lordship manifested in the
many difficult and trying circumstances in which you were
placed. Nor would we conceal our pride and satisfaction
that interests so important to the country as those to which
we have referred and diplomaey of such a difficult and deli-
cate kind should have been confided to and cared for and
conducted so ably and successfully by a nobleman born and
brought up in our immediate neighbourhood, who, by his
public spirit and exalted patriotism, promises to add in-
creased lustre to a name so famous in Scottish history, and
who, by his many private virtues, has already endeared
himself to our whole community. That your lordship may
be long spared in health and prosperity to enjoy the favour
of your Sovereign and of a grateful country, and that yOu
may soon witness the happy and widespread fruits of your
late mission, is our earnest and heartfelt prayer. Given
under our common seal, at Dunfermline, this 17th of April,
1861."

Lord ELGIN, who was received with loud cheer-
ing, said,—l am deeply gratified by the flattering
terms in which in this address my public services
have been referred to, but I am still more grateful
for that welcome which you have tendered to me
to-day, and for the high honour which has been
conferred on me by the presence of the Provost and
the members of the corporation at my landing,
surrounded by the gallant Volunteers and by
the citizens of Dunfermline. (Ajplause.) Gen-
tlemen, I have for many years been perhaps too
much a wanderer. It has been my fortune to
receive on various occasions from our countrymen
established in distant parts of the world tokens of
their regard and consideration. The very last ad-
dress of felicitation which I received before I landed
at Dover was from a body of my countrymen esta-
blished in the Philippines, but you must allow me
to say that among all these tokens, those which are
most gratifying to me are those which I receive
from my friends and neighbours at home. (Ap-
plause.) And perhaps I appreciate these tokens
the more highly because I am conscious that the
very fact of my having been so much a wanderer
has prevented me from acquiring some of those
titles to their personal regard which I might have
hoped to estahlish if I had been more constantly
resident among them. (Applause.) Gentlemen, I
have been an absentee from this country from choice.
I have experienced—as I suppose most of you who
have attained the same period of life have done—l
have experienced in my own case the truth of the
saying of the poet that has become proverbial—
" There is Providence that shapes our ends,

Rough-hew them how we will." ,
When first I entered 4lublic life in 1841 I little
expected that duty would call me from this coun-
try. I was received in the House of Commons with
that indulgence which is uniformly in that great
Assembly extended to a new member who shows a
disposition to take an earnest and patriotic part in
their deliberations ; but before I had been many
weeks a member of that great and august Assem.
bly I sustained a calamity which deprived me of an
affectionate parent, of whose virtues I need not
speak in an assemby like this, where there are so
many who remember him. And I not only sus-
tained that great loss, but, in point of fact, my
public career seemed for the moment to be entirely
interrupted ; for by succeeding to a Scotch peer-
age I was expelled from the House of Commons
without being admitted to the House of Lords.
At that time the present Lord Derby, then Lord
Stanley, did ma,the high honour to :ask me to
undertake the government of Jamaica. I
thought that in the position in which I found
myself it was my duty to obey that sum-
mons, and to Jamaica I went. I remained five
years in that country, and at the end of that time
I came back. I was still in the same position as a
Scotch peer, and I was then invited in the most
gratifying manner by the then Colonial Secre-
tary, with whom at that time I was not even per-
sonally acquainted, to undertake the government of
Canada. I proceeded to Canada, and there remained
eight years. After my return I was asked to .go
to China. I don't conceal from you that there were
some of my friends who rather dissuaded me from
undertaking that task. It was felt in regard to the
China question, owing to circumstances which must
still be fresh in your recollection, that a very
divided feeling existed on the subject in the coun-
try, and that it was altogether a ticklish subject to
meddle with. I was told it was a cause in which,
if I succeeded, success might shock the conscience;
and that if I failed failure would hurt the pride of
England. But I felt that the simplest, rule for a
public man in all such cases—the rule I have
always followed, and which I shall always follow
to the end—was to undertake any public duty in
which his services might be useful to the country.
(Loud applause.) Gentlemen, I undertook that
task, and I need not -ask you to-day whether I have
any reason to repent of it. (Applause.) And here
lam after all. I have new been gone for a great
many years, and I have come hack among you not
quite used up, as our friends the Yankees would say

lam_ ~.
~~

—(laughter and applause)—but still not so young,
as when some of us became acquainted. This is
not the occasion for my going at length into any of
these matters, but there is one point on which I
really wish to say something to the people of Dun-
fermline, because I think they are entitled to an
explanation from me, and I think I can givelan
explanation which will be satisfactory. When I
went to Japan in 1858 to negotiate a treaty I
found myself there, in a very difficult position. In
the first place I had only a fortnight—owing to an
obligation I was under to return to China to
arrange a tariff with the Chinese Commissioners
at a particular date—l had only a fortnight from
the day I left Jeddo in which to perform the
whola business ; and it is a curious thing that
I have never been slim% ed more than a fortnight in
such cases, for whom I went to the United States in
1851 I was only allowed a single fortnight to nego-
tiate a treaty which has admitted the whole of the
products of British North America to free competi-
tion with the products of the United States iu their
own markets, and which pr, ^nd to the risk of
collision on the subject of t s between this
country and America—the ' 'eh has
presented itself, at any r .11 that
I have been a public mar the same

position at Japan.

.Le American

Minister, who had been _or some years in
the country, had sum, in obtaining a treaty
which involved very great concessions on the part
of the Japanese, and which was a great advance on
the former state of their relations with foreign
countries. I found that the Japanese were willing
enough to give me the same treaty that they had
negotiated with the United States' Minister ; but
they were decidedly unwilling to go beyond the
provisions of that treaty. And you will agree that,
after all, their disinclination was not very unreason-
able, when you recollect that by these treaties we
deprive these people of their power of controlling
their own fiscal affairs. For instance, if we want
revenue, our Chancellor of the Exchequer and our
Parliament deal with all questions of Customs as
they think the interests of the country require ;
but we bind these Oriental nations by treaties which
deprive them of all discretion in the matter, and,
whatever the exigencies of their public service may
be, they are bound by treaties not to impose duties
on articles respecting which they have agreed with
other nations. Therefore, naturally, it is only fair
that all these treaties should be in the same terms,
for if they are not, then the merchants pick and
choose out of the different treaties, and then the
thing then becomes a mass of confusion, and
neither the Japanese nor those who have deal-
ings with them know what are the obligations
they have contracted. Therefore I adhered as
much as I possibly could even to the phraseology
of the American treaty, though, I think, that
if you compare my treaty with Japan with my
treaty in China, which was my own making-
-1 think, on the whole, the ChineSe treaty stands
best of the two.. I, of course, confined myself, in
asking the Japanese to make alterations as much as
possible to the things that were of great importance
Now, the thing that I considered of the greatest im-
portance was to establish the principle of a low rate
.of import duties. In the American treaty with
Japan I think 20 or 25 per cent. ad valorem was the
duty imposed on all foreign imports; and I was
quite confident that if we could induce the Japanese
to relax that duty with respect to the few articles
that entered largely into consumption, and that were
of the greatest importanee, in a very short time, the
thin edge of the wedge having been inserted in that
way, we should obtain as a general rule, or in all
cases in which we desired to establish the rule, the
principle of a 5 instead of a 25 per cent. ad valorem
duty. Well, I had a great deal of difficulty in my
task, and I must say that I found the Japanese ex-
ceedingly intelligent negotiators, very good-
humoured, but very tenacious, and very properly
tenacious, of their own rights. I, however, suc-
ceeded in inducing them to adopt the 5 per cent. ad
valorem principle with regard to cotton and woollen
manufactures. I regretted very much at the time
that I could not obtain the insertion of linen manu-
factures, but I am bound to say that it was not of
very much importance, because at that time I did
not believe that linen goods were known at all in
that country. But I wished to explain the prin
ciple on which I went, and which I think has been
entirely justified by the result, because wit:_in one
year after my tariff was ratified, another knock was
given to the wedge, and we got the linen manufac-
tures in also. (Hear, and applause.) The noble
lord conclu:led by again expressing his obligations
for the manner in which he had been received.

. On leaving the Council Chamber, Lord Elgin was
conducted through the town by his Volunteer escort,
and was greeted with loud cheers by the multitudes
that lined both sides of the way. At Ladiesmill
toll-bar the foot Volunteers returned, and before
parting, Lord Elgin, standing on the step of his
carriage, addressed a few words of congratulation
and thanks to them, remarking that while on his
march from Tien-tsin to Pekin he had read the
splendid accounts given of the Fifeshire Volunteers
and others at the great review in the Queen's Park.
He added that he had seen enough of the difficulty
of landing in an enemy's country during his late
absence from home to make him feel that they in
Fife, with their rifles, artillery, and mounted corps,
were in a very good position to defend themselves
against any enemy that dare make the experiment
of landing among them. Still escorted by the
Mounted Rifles, his lordship proceeded to Broom-
hall, where he was received by a large assemblage
of the inhabitants of Limekilns and Charleston,
and by a procession of school children displaying
banners and flags. The noble lord briefly responded
to the shouts of welcome given him, expressing his
cordial concurrence in the motto on one of the flags,
that there was " No place like home."

SINGULAR PRIX lERS' ERRORS.

The Times of Tuesday had the following respect-
ing a misprint, which, but for its being so, would
have been little short of a libel :

"An annoying typographical omission occurred
in the paragraph yesterday on the Great Wedern
of Canada Railway. With regard to the Committee
of Investigation it was said, " There is room to
believe they were actuated by a worse motive than
that of inconsiderate anger." The phrase should
have run, "There is no room to believe." What-
ever may have been the opinion as to the temper or
discretion of the Committee, there has never been
any disposition to question the honesty of their in-
tentions."

The Freeman of last Wednesday had the follow-
ing, the uncorrected reading of which must have
made the Oxford University Council wonder at
their own statement :

" ERRORS OF THE PRESS.—Some of these are to
be reckoned among the Curiosities of Literature;
as, for example, in last week's Freeman the state-
ment of the Oxford University Council—' That the
clergy rarely abused the confidence reposed
in them by the Church,' was remarked upon. The
printer, by a very natural error, reversed the sense;
and not only so, but at the same time made the
statement true to fact, by altering two letters only
he read rarely as basely !"
And there are even spots in The Sun. We have
bt
of l e
certainly no love for Austria, still we were not
malicious enough to make our Tories blush for her,
when she should make them blush for themselves.
In our third leader yesterday occurred the follow.
ing passage :
" Church supremacy now the
at
they must
int reYoonof.
Tories. They rally to it with zeal for political
mlliss ne ashamed
t b
iEvirein)osAesu.strßiauttl'c
will them blush, for she has
just denied tile,onit:eieds tmheuspterbfercuh u
perfect civil equality of all sects.
ti---they will SO on be
behind their pet German Power."

We, of course, wrote, not " denied," but
decreed."

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