The Sun.
London, England, 1859-10-15 00:00:00

Commence at 7 o'clock,

CANTERBURY HALL CONCERTS.-
EVERY EVENING.—The Music of Verdi's Opera of
MACBETH (now first made public in England at these Con-
certs), the extraor Ainary Violin Performances of the cele-
brated Infant DELEPIERRE FAMILY, and the usual
Vocal Concert.
Comic Vocalists —Messrs. George Hodson (the Irish Come-
dian and Mimic), W. T. Critchfield, and E. W. Mackney.
Several interesting Pictures are added to the Fine Arts
Gallery. The suite of Halls have been re-decorated and
beautified, and constitute one of the most unique and brilliant
sights of the metropolis.
Will shortly be produced, a Grand Selection from Meyer-
beer's new opera of DINORAH.

THE WEATHER.—Sini OFFICE, OCTOBER 15,
THERMOMETER, IN THE SHADE.
63—highest since noon yesterday.
51—loweat this morning and during the night.
60—this day at noon.

BAROMETER-29.58.
Wncn, Easterly; light, with dull hazy weather.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.

THIS DAY.—Morning, 3h. 29m.—Afternoon, 3h. 46m.
To-MOB.Row-Morning, 4h. 4m.—Afternoon, 4h. 23m.

This afternoon the majority of her MAJESTY'S
Ministers have assembled at the PREMIER'S official
residence in Downing-street, in obedience to the
official summons distributed among the Sixteen.
Certainly they have enough to talk about among
themselves there in solemn conclave—if they only
will for once be in earnest about their work—if
they only will but throw aside at last, for the
briefest interval, the customary air of dilletanteism
and pococuranteism characteristic of our English
Administrators.

There is one reflection that actually encourages us
to be sanguine for once upon this point, a reflection
that cannot possibly fail to force itself upon the
collective judgment of the Cabinet. And this, obvi-
ously—the strength and energy confronting them
in the organised phalanx of the Opposition.
Before the prorogation of Parliament at the close of
last session, that Opposition was formidable
enough. Shortly before that prorogation—upon
the grandest field-night recorded in HANSARD,
upon the occasion that is to say of the largest divi-
sion we believe ever counted out into the lobbies—
the clear majority obtained against the Derbyites
by a combination the most heterogenous well
imaginable, was no more than that ominous num-
ber of Thirteen thus fatally echoed back to Lord
DERBY and his colleagues as the numerical
symbol of their own Administration. Thirteen was
the sum total of the advantage gained over the
Conservative party by an union, for once, of all the
long scattered forces of their miscellaneous an-
tagonists—Radicals, Whigs, Peelitcs, and so-called
Independents. Thirteen, even, then, however, only
for the morrow, so to speak, of flat memorable
night's victory. For—under the glare of the
bull's eye of Election Committee after Election
Committee, the minute majority rapidly dwindled
down pretty nearly to no majority at all—almost
to a minority. Twelve of the thirteen faded out
altogether. And by the close of the session the
solitary survivor—actually but ONE—like the last
rose of summer, was left blooming alone ! Parlia-
ment dispersed in August with a perfect knowledge
of that fact. It will re-assemble in February still
with parties almost in a state of equilibrium there
in that lower branch of the Legislature. Ministers
will do well, therefore, if they prepare themselves
at once for the coming struggle—remembering
that, as they showed no mercy whatever to their
opponents, so the latter will assuredly
show no mercy to them whenever they discover a
fitting opportunity to retaliate. The Coalition,
moreover. has all the more reason to prepare be-
times against the chances of discomfiture, the recess
having multiplied around them all kinds of diffi-
culties, home and foreign, fiscal and financial,
diplomatic and administrative.

Simultaneously with the social disturbances re-
sulting near at home amongst ourselves in one
direction from the Strike, and in another, from the
Revivals—how many anxieties have sprung into
existence recently, north, south, east, west, in
either hemisphere? The question is easier asked
than answered. The difficulties in all directions
are so many and so various, that they are not very
readily in truth to be enumerated. The chief
among them were happily indicated a week or
so back by that wicked satirist the artist
whose pencil of caustic drew in Punch the cartoon
depicting " BLONDIN Outdone"—the Premier
trundling the Foreign Secretary along that rope
of sand, the Palmerstonian Policy, over an abyss
in its way as formidable (as the scene of such
perilous exploits) as the Falls of Niagara—an
b
abyss rendered appalling by the descent together,
en Wine, of the Chinese Difficulty, the Reform
Difficulty, the American Difficulty, the Indian
Difficulty, and so forth, in deafening, blinding,
bewildering perspective ! Yet all those difficulties
must be met somehow by Lord PALMERSTON and
Lord Sow; and their fourteen colleagues of the

Coalition—and met, too, in the face of that most
formidable, because numerically powerful and per-
fectly organised, Opposition.
The Italian question involves our relations im-
mediately with Sardinia and the Two Sicilies,
mediately with France and Austria, directly or
indirectly with all the States of the Germanic Con-
federation, with all the Powers, large or small,
Catholic or Protestant, of entire Christendom. Our
resolute adoption hitherto of the principle of Neu-
trality does not preclude us from accepting the
privileges, does not exonerate us from assuming
the responsibilities of Arbitration with a view to
the better securing of the political liberties, the
union, and the independence of the Roman Penin-
sula. There is that anxious source of disquietude,
moreover, upon the frontiers of Morocco, where,
again, as mediators, we might debar France and
Spain from the fancied necessity of lighting anew
the conflagration of war in Northern Africa.
The renewal of war has unhappily become a
necessity upon the coast of China, whither
the Western Powers are preparing to despatch with
all convenient haste armaments proportioned in
every way to the greatness of the outrage to be
expiated, to the grandeur of the prestige to be re-
stored, and to the vastness of the empire to be in-
vaded. There is that other outrage no less flagrant
of its kind, but happily as yet bloodless, the seizure
of San Juan by the United States' soldiery—neces-
sitating the settlement at last, summarily and defi-
nitively of the long-vexed question, there, as to the
validity of the rival (British and American) claims
of the rights of sovereignty. A perfectly new
phase has of late been evolved in what is popu-
larly known as the Eastern Question, the
relative position of the Eastern races, particularly
of the Turks and the Russians—by two startling
events, occurring almost simultaneously—the cap-
ture of the Caucasian Imaum, SCHAMYL, by the
Muscovite General, Prince BARIATINSKI, and the
opportune discovery, upon the very eve of its ex-
plosion, of a deadly conspiracy against the life of
the Sultan-Caliph, ABD-UL-MEDJID. This new
phase will have to be scanned all the more cauti-
ously now that Lord STRATFORD DE REDCLIFFE
has withdrawn from his twenty or thirty years'
tenure of the post of honour as the Britannic
SOVEREIGN'S Ambassador at Constantinople. For-
tunately, however, we have at this juncture accre-
dited there to the Sublime Porte as her MAJESTY'S
representative about the next best man in the
whole range of our diplomatic service—Sir HENRY
LYTTON BULIVER—one of the most astute and ex-
perienced among all...living masters of the higher
science and profounder arts of diplomacy. Alto-
gether—the more closely we scrutinise the Situa-
tion, whether it be at home or abroad, whether it
be in regard to Reform, or in regard to our Foreign
Policy, the Minister who unquestionably assumes
at this moment the prominent position in this
Coalition Cabinet of Sixteen—A 1, among all those
sixteen before England and before Europe is—
not the First Lord of the Treasury, but one of the
Five Secretaries of State, the virtual Premier—
Lord JOHN RUSSELL. To Lord JOHN the country
looks at this crisis—foreign nations look—far more
than to Lord PALMERSTON. The fact is unde-
niable. Here is Lord JOHN'S vengeance. In the
recognition by his overshadowed rival of the com-
pleteness of that unostentatious but supreme ven-
geance lies the germ of disruption to the Coalition
Government. How long the Sixteen can be held
together in spite of inevitable and rankling jealousies
remains still purely, of course, matter of conjecture.
Yet must that Happy Family meet at intervals
—it is the frightful necessity of their position—
all their mortal repugnances to the contrary, not-
withstanding ! And these are the sympathetic
judgments that have to harmonise upon all sorts of
delicate themes with an eye all the while to the
on-coming of that inevitable session when they will
find themselves again confronted b-, the solid
phalanx of an admirably disciplined Opposition,
led on by the wiliest and, upon occasions, the most
daring of all Parliamentary tacticians !

Lord BROUGHAM has told us, as the result of an
octogenarian's experience, that " if everything at
elections remains on its present footing—if election
contests can only be carried on at a cost ruinous to
all but the most wealthy—if no means are afforded
to securing condign punishment to the practisers of
corruption, and the only risk iucurred is the
loss of a seat—the existing evils must continue
to eat into the vitals of our constitution—to render
what is, in mockery, called free election, a mere
farce—to make the House of Commons, only by
accident, the choice of the people—to convert the
election of its members into the means of subvert-
ing the independence and destroying the morals of
their constituents—and to raise a grays doubt
whether the country would not be injured by an
extension of the franchise, if it did not beget a fur-
ther doubt about the benefit of the franchise as
already enjoyed."
Weighty words these. Yet, each sentence in
them is but incontrovertible truth. The investiga-
tions at Gloucester are but the illustration, by no-
torious facts, of both the conditions and the conse-
quences of Lord BROUGHAM'S long proposition.
There we have a city, a Cathedral City, an old city,
a city of a magnitude fairly to share in the repre-
sentation of the country, a city which no Reformer
would propose to disfranchise,—yet, even there,
every word of Lord BROUGHAM applies. It is just
" things at elections remaining as they are " that
would make it far better that Gloucester should be
disfranchised !—Batter for the morality of its inha-
bitants, rich and poor; better for the morality of
Sir W. HAYTER himself, and of the candidates
who sought the doubtful honour of representing
the length of their own purses and the venality of
the citizens ; better for the "free and independent"
electors, who would certainly be more free if they
did not possess the freedom of the old city so
steeped in corruption. Here we have a city whose
election in 1818, cost £4o,ooo—Sir M. BERKELEY
confessing to £16,000; and which, even since the
Reform Act, has been regaining its viciousness at a
rate which promises to ruin all political morality
whatever.

One solicitor gave it as his opinion that
there were not ten electors who were not more or
less corrupt ;—and that if they did not receive
money bribes, they obeyed some other unworthy
influence. The statement was indignantly contra-
dicted by Mr. PRICE, the late member ; but from
all that followed, it seems very like the truth.
Another most competent witness showed that the
direct bribery had gone on increasing at such a
rate that the first 150 who took bribes would soon
be swelled to 800, or about half the constituency ;
an assertion no one thought of disputing! When
we find Sir W. HAYTER helping to send £5OO in a
secret way from London (secrecy for anything but
voting), Sir W. CARDEN spending also in 1857 not
less than £4,lls—and this year, when all is put to-
gether probably not much less ; the Liberals also,
spending similar sums, yet all parties except the
" Captains" and one or two more who actually dis-
bursed the money, not knowing anything about
bribery, and almost assuring us that they had no
reason to suspect anything—when we find men of
education and position, men of shrewd business
habits too, paying and forwarding large sums of

money with such virgin innocence, to a notoriously
corrupt old city, we really cease to wonder at any-
thing. We imagine, however, that not one of
those gentlemen would have faced the de-
claration proposed by Lord BROUGHAM and
Sir JOHN PAKINGTON. Our virtuous House
of Commons resolved, ho wever, that its doors
should present no terrors to the briber. Against
Jews it long closed them, but our pious SPOONERS
and NEWDEGATES had no such horror of Christians
whose religion lay in demoralising their fellow-
men by hundreds.
The evidence taken at Gloucester contains
hardly the usual amount of ludicrous revelations,
though one can but regret to use the word ludi-
crous in reference to what ought to excite mere
disgust. The tricks and dodges by which corrup-
tion endeavours to keep on the safe side of law
will, however, cause even vice to provoke a smile.
There was the " medicine" for which THOMPSON,
known at Gloucester as THORNTON, telegraphed to
London ; the select family of COOPEYS, numbering
12 or 14, who always voted together, and to whom
some bribers would rather give £2OO than lose
them ; the " sweetening" offered to a man taking
his tea; money offered to the wife to become the
EVE to her ADAM ; playing a game at skittles with
the briber that the money might be received for a
bet, not for a vote ; political preference enough, re-
maining,
to vote for £B, for a Whig, though £lO
might be got for voting for a Tory ; and many
other funny scintillations from the dark mass of
the evidence. But looking at it as a whole, it is
not merely insufferably tedious, but intolerably dis-
gusting. " I gave so much," and " I took so much"
—is the sum of it : the chief variation being that
between wholesale and retail transactions. Glou-
cester, like Norwich, Berwick, Wakefield, &c., is
but an electoral brothel. There were the greater
delinquents—the impenitent Alagdalens—con fess-
ing to sending £lOO, £2OO, £5OO, £l,OOO, and so
forth, at a time, or to accepting those amounts. There
were the humbler offenders, owning that they had
bribed with a £2 or a £5, or a £lO ; or that they had
given to a whole family of COOPEYS an untold sum.
To a certain extent all parties were ignorant of
what each other did ; but it was the ignorance of
corruption. It was convenient, should anything
happen, that each should know as little as possible.
The impartiality of the actual workers and reci-
pients was remarkable. Very few would vote a
sovereign or two cheaper on one side than the other,
and after having received money from one side they
very freely took it and voted for the other ; pro-
bably having had the first sum more than doubled
by the other party. THOMPSON himself had been
ten years in the service of the Conservatives, and
seventeen in that of the Liberals—electioneering
politics being his profession.

No Nazareth, however, without some good thing
in it. There is a Conservative Club in Gloucester,
and the Liberals matched it with a Reform Club,
which certainly was needed. The latter adopted
the opinion, they say, of the late Mr. COPPOCK,
that the Ballot only could put down corruption,
and they made it a condition with every candidate
that he should vote for the Ballot. This, beyond
all doubt, speaks much in favour of the wishes of the
Liberals. It shows also that they were confident of a
majority without corruption. The world will justly
believe that the Tories must have always been the
beginners of corruption, when it sees them afraid
of secret voting—of voting which would net give
them a receipt for the wages of corruption—while
the Liberals wanted no such receipt. On the broad
facts of the case, therefore, the verdict must be,
that both parties bribed—bribed almost without
stint—but that the Tories are the party who are
afraid to lose the power of bribing, probably,
therefore, the party which began it, and which has
gained most by it.

_THORLEY'S FARMER'S ALMANACK

FOR 1860.

When one attains eminence in any department
of science imitators are sure to follow in his train.
We have doctors in medicine, philosophy, and other
subjects ; but it has been reserved for Mr. Thorley
to gain general commendation as a cattle doctor,
blending with his peculiar practice the art of agri-
culture in its most scientific application. Thus we
have very valuable hints as to the improvement in
the breeding, feeding, and management of stock,
with a variety of information highly essential to
the farmer.

Mr. Thorley has just published a very compact
handy little almanack, embracing a very great
variety of very useful matter connected with agri-
culture, and special reference to food for cattle. It
contains besides, farmers' memoranda for each month,
steam culture, steam cartage, cattle cookery and
veterinary science, chemistry of cattle food—in
short, everything requisite or useful so far as science
can be applicable to the farmer's wants. It contains,
also Agricultural Societies, Fairs, and Markets in
England, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of
Man. The principal Government and Public
Offices, Courts of Law, the Houses of Peers and
Common, with their town residences, also find a
place in this modest, interesting, and very cheap
handbook for the farmer as well as for the general
man of business.

As a specimen of the benefit derived by cattle
from using Mr. Thorley's food, we g►ive the follow-
ing testimony from William Miles, Esq., Dixfield,
Exeter, who says :

" I have tried it with great success on a little mare 14f
hands high, 27 years old, and a perfect "bag of bones."
It may be interesting to you if I detail the gradual increase
in her weight between February 20 and Juno 11, on which
day I last weighed her

Cwr.
On 20th February, she weighed st. q3s. 0
lbs
20th March, 7)
17th April, ;)
7th May,
~
11th June, ,/
This experiment has satisfied me of the value of your food
in getting horses into condition, because she is not only fat
and sleek in her coat, but she is hard, and in good health
and spirits."

The Prince of Wales, attendei by Colonel the
Hon. R. Bruco and Major Teesdale, loft Holyrood yester-
day morning for London, and arrived at Buckingham
Palace at 25 minutes past 10 o'clock last night.
His Excellency the Marquis d'Azeglio arrived at
the Sardinian Legation yesterday, from Paris, after a tem-
porary leave of absence.

The Duke and Duchess of Marlborough, the
Marquis and Marchioness of Drogheda, and a select party,
are visiting the Earl and Countess of Powis, at Powis
Castle, near Welshpool.

The Earl and Countess Fortescue and Miss Geale
have arrived at Somerville, the noble earl's seat in the
county Waterford, from Castle Hill, Devon.
_ _

The Earl of Westmoreland, we regret to learn,
has been labouring under severe indisposition. Owing to
the illness of his lordship he was unable to attend the late
Earl of Jersey's funeral.
Viscount and Viscountess Combermere have been
entertaining a succession of visitors at Combermere Abbey.
The field-marshal is prevented meeting her Majesty at
Chester, by a cold, which, confines him to the house.

Lord John Russell, accompanied by Lady John
Russell and family, arrived in town yesterday, from Aber-
g-eldie Castle, N.B.

Lord and Lady Kinnaird have returned to Rossie
Priory, Perthshire, from visiting Lord and Lady Aber-
et omby, at their seat near Stirling.

Mr. Campbell Wyndham has arrived at the St.
George's Hotel from Newmarket.

The mail brought by the Indus was a very heavy
one. It consisted of 240 bags and 17 boxes of letters and
newspapers. The number of letters was about 130,000.
Suit G. GREY.—A meeting was held yesterday of
merchants and other connected with the Cape of Good
Hope, to receive the address to Sir George Grey, as pre-
pared by the committee recently appointed, Mr. J. It.
Thomson in the chair. The address refers to the great
services rendered by Sir George Grey to the colony, and
expresses a hope that his recall from the governorship will
be rescinded. After some remarks by one or two speakers,
the address was adopted. It now lies for signature at the
offices of the Cape Town Railway and Dock Company.
The chairman intimated that, as they had no positive
information that Sir George is to resume his post, a deputa-
tfon will wait upon the Colonial Secretary, the Duke of
Newcastle, with the address.

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THE SUN.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1859.