The Sun.
London, England, 1859-09-01 00:00:00

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THE SUN.
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 1859.

The number of Blackwood for the present month
contains, among other excellent articles, one in
continuation, entitled " The Fleets and Navies—
England"—penned in a true spirit of nationality,
and quite in keeping with our own ideas on the
subject, dearest and nearest to the independence of
this country. But for our naval supremacy where
would be the fortunes of England ? They would
be neither here nor there. Insteadof being a first-
rate power, commanding with an eagle's sweep
a universal glance around the earth, we would be
prostrate as doves in the talons of that emblem of
JOVE'S omnipotence. We should descend from our
present proud eyrie not to be what is termed a
second, third, or fourth-rate power, but to be
no power at all. If an individual at-
tain to eminence by genius or by labour,
and even genius avails little without labour,
he awakens far more envy than esteem in his
career. So it is with nations. There is not a
Principality on the broad continent of Europe but
envies, and even hates, England for her prosperity
as much as for her power. There may, indeed, be
some sympathy manifested among the more con-
stitutional States for our free institutions, but the
measure is small. The people are kept down by
the eloquence of the bayonet, and it is only where
commerce pushes its beneficial and civilising in-
fluence that the expression of free sentiment is

encouraged. Liberty is a tree of slow growth, and
yields feeble fruit where its cultivation is stunted
in the land of the sword. Hence the undisguised
dislike to a country whose proudest boast is that
being free itself, it wishes to extend that freedom
to others, in the belief that the wider the com-
munity of feeling is extended, the more will peo-
ples and countries amalgamate for mutual benefit.

The position is singular as it is happy for the
promotion and protection of liberal institutions.
And this is mainly owing to our hitherto naval su-
premacy. But there is a culminating point in the
power of nations as of individual existence. The
superiority of our wooden walls may now be called
more in question from the application of steam
power to ships. True, our many resources of coal,
iron, and money give us great advantages even in
that matter ; but other nations have acquired more
advantages comparatively by the use of steam
power than they formerly possessed, inasmuch as
steam' supersedes seamanship. Not that able sea-
manship is quite indispensable in stormy weather,
but on a smooth sea every man on board may go
to sleep save the helmsman, the officer of the
watch, and the man on the look out.

If we apply this smooth idea of facility in a case
of invasion for a given time it increases our danger
immeasurably to what it was before the introduction
of steam. It was this feeling of comparative inse-
curity that so quickened the people of all classes
in urging the Government to be more prepared for
every possible exigency, and hence the extensive
measures of precaution rather abruptly pressed
on the present and late Government.

The writer in Blackwood enters fully into the
absolute necessity of maintaining our Naval Supre-
macy, not only now but for all time. It is Hie to
make a grand effort to meet danger, and when the
apparent danger is supposed to be over, then to re-
lapse into false security. To be as we ought to be
in naval supremacy, every exertion must be made,
not only to build ships of sufficient power, but also
to prepare or modify vessels now lying idle to rot
in our crowded harbours. Why not bring forward
some thirty or forty of these ships to be in a state
for coast defence. They may cost more than
they are worth for sea-going ships, but
surely they might be made available for defence at
the mouths of our harbours, and be even turned to
good account for manoeuvring by the aid of gun-
boats, of which we have abundance since the Rus-
sian war was over. But our men of power in
Government are not men of experience in business,
nor men of aptitude in danger. Indeed, a suspicion
seems to gain ground that the struggle for party
predominance supersedes the patriotic virtue for
national safety. The cuckoo Cry of " There's no
danger !—all foreign powers are not only friendly,
but express the most friendly feelings to this
country"—is mere bosh. Strength is our only
security. While we can uphold our own power
we are safe against the world, but no longer.
We commend the present Board of Admiralty to
peruse the erticle in Blackwood for its honesty of
?purpose as for its fearlessness in boldly stating the
truth. We }me ourselves, in common with our
contemporaries, repeatedly enforced the necessity of
looking to our position as a Naval Power, but, we
regret to add, with little effect, for obstinacy in
:resisting any suggestions for improvement is only
equalled by the ignorance and presumption of men
in power.

The first of September summons away the few
lingerers in London strerts to the more tempting
akeighbourhood cf guns and partridges. The long
yaeation relieves the functionaries of the lass

—judge and barrister, clerk and attorney—from
their wearisome attendance in the courts, and
brings a no less welcome respite to those more
actively concerned in the suits and non-suits, the
verdicts and costs. The busy metropolis shows
a sensible diminution of its throngs, although the
common phrase that " London is empty" is never
visibly realised. Cabinet Ministers and Parlia-
mentary generals bid a brief adieu to red boxes and
blue-books, and seek to recruit themselves for the
forthcoming campaign. Even sovereigns lay down
the cares of State awhile, and strive to forget
the uneasiness too often associated with their en-
cumbering dignity. Our gracious QUEEN has
taken her accustomed departure to the north of
her dominions, and is now gazing on her favourite
banks and braes, and hills and heather. Her
journey, thanks to modern enterprise and efficient
management, has been accomplished with an ease
and a rapidity that would have somewhat asto-
nished the last Queen-Regnant of these islands.
Secure of a genuine welcome, as well as
the observance of outward ceremonial, our QUEEN
moves freely among her loyal people. Another
potentate has also abandoned for a time the
crown and purple which, to him, are some-
what more thorny and troublesome possessions.
The Emperor of the FRENCH and his charming
EMPRESS, of whose kindness of heart and liberality
we hear such frequent mention, have quitted Paris
for a season to taste the pleasures of a less cere-
monious existence at, Biarritz. The EMPEROR, let
us hope, will enjoy his holiday the more from the
consciousness of having made his first step towards
the position of a constitutional Sovereign—that
step being, as our friend Punch facetiously ob-
serves, " very well for a beginner." We all admit
the difficulty of the task to be acquired by this
same beginner, but if he prove an apt scholar, and
convince us that he is really bent upon achieving his
undertaking, we shall not be hard taskmasters. In
the repose of Biarritz 1w may have full leisure to
mature his plans, whether of a fresh campaign or
a more glorious victory—the subjugation of discon-
tent and disaffection by liberality and leniency.
Harsh and repressive measures have been tried long
enough by successive rulers of the French without
any very encouraging results to the authorities.
Suppose, for a change, they were to adopt a more
constitutional course, by way of experiment. In
following the example of the British Sovereign in
State craft, as well as in leisure, he might secure,
like her, the gratifying assurance that, whoever
may be her foes abroad, she is secure of friends at
home.

War again in Ireland ! CULLEN and his hosts,
against unsectarian education ; joined, alas ! by the
little band of WHITESIDE and his ultra-Protestants,
to the cry of the " unmutilated Bible !" If Lord
DERBY ever did, what all fair-minded men will deem,
a good deed in his life, it was when, as Lord STAN-
LEY, nearly 30 years ago, he inaugurated the Irish
National School system. It was a system expressly
designed to make education a healer of the wounds
of that distracted country. Not only was much
looked for from the naturally soothing influences of
mental cultivation and knowledge, but the attempt
was made to associate in common schools the chil-
-1 dren of parents who had been too much taught to
consider each other as born enemies, and between
whom the watchwords were—Protestant and Pa-
pist, orthodox and heretic, Saxon and Celt, op-
pressor and oppressed. Education was felt to be a
great want in Ireland, and it was resolved so to
give it that it should be the minister of peace, and
not merely the means of sharpening weapons al-
ready too keen and too fiercely used. It was rea-
sonably hoped that children of the same neighbour-
hood, studying in the same school, and engaged in
the same pursuits, would acquire that feeling of
natural regard and i espect which often survives
from our school-days to the close of life—would
learn that the professors of opposed creeds have
more in common than in contrast—and might co-
operate through life as neighbours and fellow-
citizens.

To these general objects the late excellent Catho-
lic Archbishop, Dr. MURRAY, cordially contributed.
He was a patriot. A sincere Catholic, but not a
slave to Rome ; and by his aid all worked at first
as smoothly as could be hoped. Selections, inclu-
ding in one case a whole gospel, were made from
the Scriptures, that the children of Catholics and

Protestants might study even the Bible in com

mon ; and an adequate supply of excellent school-
books were provided, under the sanction of a board
composed of members of all the leading sects, who
also administered the whole system with scrupulous
impartiality. The first opposition, we are ashamed
to say, came from Protestants ; from a small and

factious, or fanatical section of them, however, only,
Orangeism, and a kind of fanatical Evangelical
school having united to raise the cry for an " un -
mutilated Bible." It was pure sectarian and party
zeal. Not the slightest practical good was at
stake ; but this party has become clamorous for the
abolition of unsectarian education, and the trans-
ference to Ireland of the sectarian grant-in-aid
system, of which this very sectarianism is the great
subject of regret with all truly liberal-minded per-
sons in England. We cannot help the sectarianism
of the people here, so we educate through it. Most
certainly we wish the system had never begun, but

,hat schools adapted to all had been open to all, as

in Ireland. These Irish partizans ask for our
blemish as an ornament, for our defect as a pri-

vilege !
Of late the vastly more numerous Catholics have
taken the field in the same cause. They, too, want
the education of their own sect entirely in their
own hands. Very plausibly they say that " schools
for Catholic ycuth should be such as to insure for
them the benefit of a safe secular education, and
adequate religious instruction in the faith and prac-
tices of the Catholic Church." It is thus that a
Synod of Bishops, lately held in Dublin, introduces
a series of resolutions, which demand the abroga-

tion of the system of mixed instruction, and the
allotment from the national treasury of a satisfac-
tory amount for purely Catholic schools. They
have obtained the sanction of the POPE to this
move against a liberal system of education, and the
Catholic members of the Government board have
therefore felt it their duty to resign. Most of the
Catholic newspapers side with the prelates ; one or
two, however, have the manliness and courage to
denounce this ecclesiastical interference with the
province of the laity. They honourably contend
that while ready to bow to the authorities of their
Church on a purely religious question, they are not
prepared to make them masters of the education of

their children. It is admitting the old Jesuit prin.
ciple of rendering education the instrument of
Church supremacy in the things of CESAR as won
as of GOD. We need not say that we wish success
40 the reasonings of our more sensible and liberal
Irish contemporaries ; but we fear reasoning and
reasonableness will be thrown away on Irish pre-
lates and most Irish Catholics too.

Next session these high Ronaanistsand high Pro-
testants are to unite their forces, we are told, in
the House of Commons. Of course, the narrowinc,
the system of education will be a far more interest-
ing subject than that of enlarging the franchise and
extending popular liberties. We trust, however,
that they will have but little success in Parliament.

The better part of Lord DERBY'S followers, with
their leader, can have no sympathy with such mis-
chievous bigotry. A question of conscience it can-
not be, unless the infallible Church has had a bad
conscience during the 28 years through which it
has sanctioned the mixed system. It is a purely
sectarian and party attempt to get education and
such power as it gives, into the hands of Catholic
prelates and Orange Protestants. We hope the
attempt will be signally defeated. We would treat
both parties alike. Our reply to them would be—
" A truly national system was begun in Ireland ; it
has worked admirably for nearly 30 years ; its real
fault in your eyes is, that it has to a great extent
leavened the sectarian animosities which prevailed
in the island ; and we do not intend to go backward
to the worse system, which we accepted here only
as a necessary evil, which we would certainly abo-
lish if we could."

MR. AND MRS. T. GERMAN REEL'S
ENTERTAINMENT.

We advise all those who are left lingering in the
metropolis at this dreary season to avail themselves
of the few opportunities left of witnessing Mr. and
Mrs. Reed's amusing entertainment. We can pro-
mise them that the entertainment will not be only
in name, but in fact. The vivacity, the variety
and the rapid changes of costume, prevent the
slightest tedium or weariness. Mrs. Reed's fine
voice is in frequent requisition, and in one song she
created a perfect enthusiasm among the audience,
who insisted on an encore. The talkative lady
having fairly driven her husband off the field by
her pertinacious assertions of being right, which-
ever side wins, sits down to the piano and sings
triumphantly and ferociously, a song whose re-
train is—

"I must speak my mind, if I die for it."

The shouts of laughter as well as the hearty applause
which greeted this performance were not very com-
plimentary to the conversational powers of the fair
sex. The first part of the entertainment shows us
Mr. Reed at an assize town, where he meets law-
yers, sailors, plaintiffs and defendants, German
suitors and English heiresses, and several other
characters—all supported by himself and Mrs.
Reed. In the second part we find him at the sea-
side, where he has come to finish composing an
opera, secure, as he fondly hopes, of a quiet day,
Mrs. Reed having gone out. In vain. Incessant
interruptions in the shape of a lady, who is fright-
ened successively by a bull, a spider, a dog, and a
worm ; a talkative idler ; a hoyden who pursues a
" cat ;" besides itinerant musicians and criers in-
numerable; and finally his sleep-walking landlady
who accosts him as her rival, " Mrs. Jones," put to
flight all harmonic inspirations. Mrs. Reed arrives
in time to comfort him by rehearsing a completed
scene, with a very apt imitation of the extrava-
gancies of operatic singers. The room was crowded ;
and the continued laughter and ready applause of
the audience testified their satisfaction and amuse-
ment.

THE QUEEN'S JOURNEY TO

BALMORAL.

EDINBURGH, WEDNESDAY MORNING.

After arriving in Holyrood, shortly after eight
o'clock yesterday morning, the Queen did not again
leave the precincts of the Palace till the afternoon.
At four o'clock her Majesty, the Prince of Wales,
the Princesses, and Prince Arthur, and several
members of the Royal suite, drove out in three open
carriages and four as far as Dalkeith-house, the seat
of the Dike of Buccleuch, about seven miles dis•
tant, and, returning to town about seven, drove
through some of the principal streets. The Prince
Consort, in her Majesty's absence, took a short
walk in the neighbourhood of the Palace. Some
preparations had been made at the National Gal-
lery in anticipation of a Royal visit, but no public
place was visited by any of the Royal party.
The Royal dinner party in the evening included
the Duke of Buccleuch, Sir George Grey, the Hon.
Henry Fitzroy, First Commissioner of Public
Works, and the various members of the Queen's
and Prince of Wales' household.

This morning, at a quarter to nine o'clock, the
Royal family and suite left Holyrood Palace in
open carriages for St. Margaret's Station. The
morning was sunny and warm, and the Royal
equipage had a most brilliant and attractive ap-
pearance. The square in front of Holy-rood was
lined by the 16th Lancers, and the West York
Rifles furnished the guard of honour. The gateway
of the Palace was kept by the Abbey constables,
and the Edinburgh constables were ranged on the
left of the entrance. The Duke of Buccleuch and
Viscount Melville were in waiting on her Majesty,
and rode on either side of the Queen's carriage on
the way to the station. The first carriage of the
Royal cortege contained the Queen and Prince Con-
sort, the Prince of Wales and the Princess Alice,
the second the younger Princesses and Prince
Arthur, the third the ladies of the Royal suite and
Sir George Grey, and the fourth and fifth the gen-
tlemen of her Majesty's and the Prince of Wales'
suite. As her Majesty left Holyrood a Royal
salute was as usual fired from the Castle.

On each side of the military line through the
park were deep files of spectators, who loudly
cheered the Royal cortege as it went rapidly past.
The station was reached .a few minutes before
nine, and the Prince of Wales (who is to prolong
his stay at Holyrood till the 10th inst.) here took
farewell of his august parents. The train was then
set in motion, and its progress through the city
westward was viewed by large crowds of spectators
at every available point.

ABERDEEN, AUG. 31.
Her Majesty the Queen arrived at the Ferryhill
Junction, Aberdeen, at 1.55 p.m.

She immediately started for Banchory, which she
reached at 2.30 p.m.
Her Majesty alighted and lunched, and drove off
in a travelling carriage at three o'clock for Balmoral,
which would be reached at 6 p.m.
Rain fell heavily.

We learn that a marriage is arranged between
Mr. Wm. George Granville Vernon Harcourt, son of the
Rev. W. V. Harcourt, canon of York, and grandson of
the late Archbishop of York, and Miss Lister, daughter of
Lady Theresa Lewis, step-daughter of Sir George C.
Lewis, and niece of the Earl of Clarendon and Lord John
Russell.

GUARD OF HONOUR TO THE QUEEN AT BALMORAL,

—On Monday fifty men of the 93d Regiment, under the
command of Captain Brown, left Aberdeen for Ballater,
where they will form a guard of honeur during the stay of
her Majesty and the Court at Balmoral. The royal car-
riages, &c., have also arrived at Aberdeen per steamer, and
been sent on to the Highland palace.—Dudee Advertiser.
A LIBERAL BISIIOP.—The first stone of a new
district church for the thickly-peopled suburb of Heigham,
Norwich, was laid yesterday, In aid of the building fund
the bishop of the diocese has made the handsome donation
of £5OO, in two yearly payments of £250.

The report of the Ottoman Bank, preparatory to
their meeting on the 14th of September, states the profits
for the half-year ending the 30th of June at £22,794, which
with £3,236 brought from the last accounts shows an avail-
able balance of £26,030. A dividend is recommended at
the rate of 8 per cent. per annum. £5,000 is to be appro-
priated to the reserve, which will then amount to £40,000,
and £1,030 will remain to be carried forward.

LIVERPOOL, Wednesday.—Owing to the bois-
terous state of the weather the Canadian mail steamer
Anglo-Saxon and the Kangaroo, for New York, have not
sailed at their appointed time. The former vessel takes out
112 cabin passengers, including Lord Aylmer, Mr. W.
Gregory, M.P., Col• Rylands, the Hon. John Ferrier, and
Mr. Head, son of the late Governor:General of Canada.
The Kangaroo has 95 cabin and 230 steerage passengers.
On Saturday next the Cunard steamer Persia will sail for
New York with the American mails. The box at the post-
office closes on that day at 11.15 a.m., and on the landing-
stage at 12.30 p.m.

ROYAL SURREY GARDENS.—The performances
of this evening at this now popular place of amusement
will be for the benefit of Mr. Corbyn, the manager, and, if
variety of entertainment and the excellence of the artists
enggged can as: a bumper, Mr. Corbyn will Le sure to
have it.

A CANDID lINISTEIL—A minister in the north,
returning thanks in his prayers one Sabbath for the excel-
lent harvest, began as usual, "0 Lord we thank thee," &c.,
and went on to mention its abundance and its safe in-
gathering; but feeling anxious to be quite candid at.d scru-
pulously truthful, added, " all except a few fields between
this and Stonehaven, not worth mentioning."—Glasgow
Commonwealth.

FIRE AT DARTFORD.—Yesterday. afternoon
fire broke out in some workshops belonging to Mr.
SneQzum, a carpenter and joiner, situate at the Waterside
in this town. Several engines were quickly on the spot,
but the fire was not distinguished until the workshops and
four adjoining dwelling-houses were destroyed.