The Sun.
London, England, 1861-06-29 00:00:00

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.

THIS DAY.—Morning, 6h. 29m.—Afternoon, 6h. 46m.
TO-Moßßow.-Morning.„', 7h. Bm.—Afternoon."' 7h. 30m.

THE WEATHER.—SUN OFFICE, JUNE 29, 1561.
THERMOMETER, IN THE SHADE.
74—highest since noon yesterday.
60—lowest this morning and during the night.
71—this day at noon.

BAROMETER-29.79.
WlND—North-Westerly; fresh, with fine sunshiny
weather. Some rain in the night.

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THE SUN.

LONDON, SATURDAY, JUNE 29, 1881.

An interesting letter, which we have reprinted
from a contemporary, gives a view of American
affairs very similar in many respects to that which
we have presented to our readers, and we, of course,
can but assent to his views. The South has
nothing to complain of. The North has done
everything it could ask in behalf of its hated
institution ; indeed, we should say, done far too
much. The South has been in fact petted, and has
seceded because it was once crossed. Nor can it
justify its course by any political reason; for Mr.
J. L. MOTLEY has proved, conclusively, that in the
constitution, the reverse of secession is its entire
basis. Its whole object was an indissoluble union,
to prevent the wretched consequences of a number
of separate sovereignties, by welding the whole
into one nation.
According to " Americus," also, the South had a
majority in Congress. In the Senate it certainly
had at the time of the break-up ; and in the Lower
House Mr. LINCOLN would have had but a waver-
ing majority. Indeed, we fear, had the South used
its Congressional power discreetly it might have
held Mr. LINCOLN in great embarrassment. It
would have left him, of course, a good deal of
administrative power ; but even in all his higher
appointments the Senate had a concurrent voice.
The South had in their hands an opposition just

like that which faces Lord PALMERSTON—amajority
...in the Upper House, and nearly balancing the
majority in the Lower House.
There is probably truth in his description of the
effect of Northern arms predominating in the
border States. All the facts favour the antecedent
probability, that States in which the slaves
were but few must have a majority in
favour of the Union, and as soon as
it felt itself freed from the domination of the half-
frantic slaveholders, it would be sure to accept the
Union. Maryland, Missouri, and a large part of
Virginia, have already shown that such is their
feeling. The notion of natural boundaries must
pass for what it is worth—some may think it is
kindred with that of" manifest destiny." The mili-
tary position is that which we have repeatedly de-
scribed to our readers. 'Whether our Man-
chester friends will put much faith in
the idea of humane vengeance
to the negroes, we cannot tell. We hope
it is true that they will not be provoked to rise on
their masters, little pity as they deserve at their
hands; but we also hope it is false that they will
have the folly to burn the cotton crop, as they
could gain nothing by it. The flax story is an old
one. We know here that flax cannot be made to
do duty for cotton. Whatever the issue be, we
chiefly are interested in the effects of the struggle
on Slavery. We have no fear that Manchester
will soon find cotton for itself by free labour when
it becomes hopeless to rely on Slavery.

Nothing could well be more reasonable, more
temperate, or, for that matter, more perfectly justi-
fiable than the manner in which Lord PALMERSTON
deprecated last evening the waste of time (quite un-
necessarily and quite uselessly) by private members,
to the great detriment of the national, and to the
really grievous retarding of public, business. The
noble lord prefaced his remarks upon this matter of
-trite' interest, both to the House of Commons itself
and to the entire community, by calling attention to
the fact that while we are now at the close of
Tune there are still actually somewhere about 200
votes of supply yet remaining to be disposed of
And—said Lord PALMERSTON, drily enough—" I
would remind the house that the last two votes
of stipp!y which were obtained from the house, each
of them I think occupied the greater part of one
even in g, and if it should be deemed necessary to
give the same discussion to those 200 votes, it is ob-
vious that a considerable time will be required.'
Whereat—of course there was " langhtei." But
then followed—close upon the heels of the laugh-
ter—the PREMIER'S very practical and veryratienal
suggestion. " The only conclusion," he says, «that
I should with to draw from that statement is, that
on the motion for your leaving the chair, sir, to go'

into committee of supply—except on Fridays, I
will not say anything about them, because Friday
is devoted avowedly to other purposes—on the
motion for going into committee of supply,
honourable gentlemen should refrain from inter-
posing motions unless on matters really of urgent
importance, or with regard to which there was a
reasonable expectation of coming to some practical
result." Adding, " Mere statements of opinion on
general questions I think should be avoided." Now,
really—than this—nothing, we repeat, could well
be more reasonable under the circumstances. We
would therefore most earnestly commend Lord
PALMERSTON'S suggestion for the Despatch of
Business to the unselfish and patriotic considera-
tion of independent members generally.

Apropos of the Turner Gallery, there was a little
glimmering of light thrown on Thursday evening,
down at the House of Lords, on the long-delayed,
long " vexed-question'' of the National Gallery.
This still problematic question of the National
Gallery, it is true, was rather implied than
even hinted at indirectly during the aiscussion
which took place in the Lords on Thursday
in reference to the Collection of Pictures by Mr.
TURNER, and of the magnificent bequest of them
to the Nation by that gifted and munificent Acade-
mician. We have to thank Lord ST. LEONARDS
for bringing the subject again under the considera-
tion of the Legislature, and for extracting some ad-
ditional words of explanation, no matter how vague
and unsatisfactory those words of explanation
were in themselves, from the chief representative
in the Upper House of the present Government. It
should be particularly borne in mind for a moment,
by the way, who those two noble lords are who
spoke of TURNER'S Bequest—on the one hand,
in behalf of the Nation, and on the other in the
name of the Government. Lord ST. LEONARDS then
was speaking upon this subject, on behalf of the
Nation, in too distinct capacities, namely, as a
lawyer and as a lover of art—as a lover of art
whose taste is recognised and appreciated—
as a lawyer great amongst the greatest. Lord
GRANVILLE, on the other hand, spoke upon the
side of the Government, and we cannot but feel
also of the Court, in his double capacities as first of
all President of the Council, and secondly, President
or Chairman of the Commissioners of the Great Inter-
national Exhibition. Now we all know perfectly
well—how, with the funds left in the hands of those
commissioners, after that world-famous display in
Hyde-park ten years ago, a certain tract of land was
purchased, land " eligible for building purposes,"
or for what not, land capable, it was sug-
gested, of being selected as the site for New
Museums and Picture Galleries, or as the very
place for the laying out of a grand Winter
Garden for the 3,000,000 of her MAJESTY'S
lieges peopling London and Westminster. It is
an old story—how that land was purchased. How,
in the direction of Kensington-Gore, there has
gradually grown up a sort of pale-green ghost of the
Crystal Palace, the future home, or favourite haunt
of all the Metropolitan lovers of floriculture and
horticulture. How, in the direction of Brompton
there has slowly risen one of the ugliest assemblages
of outhouses ever seen collected together, higgle-
piggedly, built, some of lath and plaster, soma of
bricks and mortar, some of iron, some of wood—all
of them partaking largely of that pecu-
liarly mixed Order (of no Merit), capitally ex-

pressed by JOB GAROERY, the Blacksmith,
in Mr. DICKENS'S new tale, as of a style decidedly
" architectoorallooral."

The consequences of all this being in themselves

so eminently ridiculous that the structure, or struc-
tures, have acquired several facetious designations
of anything but a respectful character, being vari-
ously spoken of by the profane vulgar as " The
Prince's Folly," or "The Brompton Boilers." There,
indeed, we have all seen collected together—
(these being facts, by the way, only too notorious)
—one national Collection of Pictures after

another. There, in truth, at this moment, are
stowed away in those absurd Brompton Boilers—
the Turner Gallery, the Vernon Gallery, the Sheep-

shanks Gallery ! The promoters of the " Prince's
Folly," quite clearly and plainly all the while
—nay, for that matter, at intervals avowedly—
hankering after the transference of the National
Gallery from Trafalgar-square to that same remote
site in the Far West, in what has, at length,
come to be called South Kensington. It is
true that the Question as to this transference
has been long ago argued in the House of Com-
mons, and definitively decided there decided,
that is, for Trafalgar-square, and against South
Kensington. Yet—persistently—the Brompton.
Boilers, like Friar BACON'S legendary Brazen
Head, crave loudly and ravenously for " More !"
Nothing will satisfy them but " More ! more !"
They must have the National Gallery as well as
the galleries of VERNON, of TURNER, and of
SHEEPSHANKS. That it clearly is thus, as we have
remarked—namely, that in spite of all that has been
said in and decided by the House of Commons to
the contrary, the champions of the " Folly" and
the "Boilers" still insatiably hunger for the
possession of the National Gallery— may
be now 'quite plainly seen, and quite
clearly understood after Lord ST. LEONARDS'
really remarkable statement—about the TURNER
Bequest and its conditions—on Thursday. The
noble and learned lord " In rising to ask the Pre-
sident of the Council whether any steps had been
taken to provide a separate gallery for TURNER'S
pictures in connection with the National Gallery,
according
to the conditions of his will under which ,
the nation
possessed his pictures, said that under
Mr.
TURNER'S will the Trustees of the National
Gallery took 324 pictures, besides a vast quantity
of water colour drawings, and the Royal Academy
£2,0 in money, and both the nation and the
Royal o
belived they held that property as
oo
Academy
their own, not subject to any conditions. But,"
added the noble and learned lord, he (Lord ST.
LEONARDS—surely an authority upon these mat-
ters!) believed the whole of these pictures were held
by the nation subject to certain conditions. A mem-
ber of a former Government had promised that the
intentions of Mr. TURNER should be carried into
effect. He had asked the question publicly of the
succeeding Government, whether it considered itself
bound by the declaration of its predecessor, and the
reply was in the affirmative. The noble and learned
lord then read the codicils to the will of Mr. TUB,

NER, to prove that the pictures were left, in trust,
to the National Gallery, on condition that a separate
room should be built for them, to be called the Tull-
NER Gallery. The Trustees of the National Gallery
were to have no power over the pictures unless
this condition were carried cut. A third codicil
made the bequest void unless the Trustees of the
National Gallery complied with the condition within
five years; but another codicil extended this period
to 10 years. He had no hesitation in saying that
the nation had received these pictures under a legal
obligation." Now, in the presence of authoritative
statements like these, the doggedly obstinate
retention of the Turner Gallery down in those
Brompton Boilers, can be alone regarded as in any
way explicable, upon the understanding that the
" powers that be" have made up their minds that
the National Gallery—in spite of the House of Com•

mons—shall go to South Kensington ! As matters '
are at present the TURNER Gallery—a gallery per-
fectly unique in itself, and the value of which is
beyond the reach of all computation—is perversely
subjected to two perils. Being lighted up at night
by gas it is continually liable to destruction by fire.
Being retained down at Brompton—apart from the
National Gallery, of which it was to have been an
integral portion according to the legal significance
of Mr. TURNER'S last will and testament—it is
liable, at the close of the stipulated period, to be for-
feited by the Nation. And all this for the sake of
that most preposterous Folly of the Boilers. Let
the House of Commons look to it.

Administration of charity, even when voluntary,
is always surrounded with difficulties, and those
difficulties are doubled when the charity is compul-
sory. The problem, which every day brings before
us, of giving only to the deserving, and of detecting
impostors, brings with it, in the case of legal
charity, the other problem, how to find the fair
contributories to the charitable fund, and how to
make them pay to it in the just proportions. The
first problem was the one attempted to be solved
by the great Whig reform of the poor laws. The
pauper poor had got the upper hand of the farmers,
the magistracy, and of every one, and a stringent
union and workhouse system was deemed necessary
to cure the evil; and, not however without a great
deal of unmerited suffering, it has done it to a large
extent. The latter problem is the one whose solu-
tion is now most important. It is acknowledged on
all hands that the distribution of the charge for
the relief of the poor is anything but fair and equal.
It is generally assumed that those who have had
the benefit of a man's labours, when is health and
vigour, ought to bear the cost of his necessary sup-
port in sickness and decrepitude. Mere co-residence
in a locality gives a neighbourly claim, but to have
had for long the benefit of a man's services gives a
claim, the equity of which no man dares deny. The
provision continually made for old servants in wills,
sufficiently indicates the common moral sentiments
on this point. Mr. VILLIERS' Bill is designed to
assimilate as closely as possible the legal
rating to the poor, and the place in which
they can claim relief, to this universal
sentiment. Such attempts have been made before.
Sir ROBERT PEEL'S Bill limited the power of
parishes to send away a, pauper to " his parish,"
by making five years' residence sufficient to give the
man a claim for relief where his health or his work
failed him. Previously there was no end of litiga-
tion between parishes respecting a poor pauper, and
cruel expedients were resorted to, to prevent the man
becoming chargeable to the parish. Manufacturing
towns when a time of pressure came, sent back to
the country parishes, by hundreds, the men who
had done their unskilled work in better times, and
even many of their skilled hands too. The five years'
limitation was therefore a great step towards equity;
and is, we believe, acknowledged, now, to be fair
even by those who at first opposed it. They
will in a short time equally accommodate
their opinions to three years, if, as we hope will be
the case, Mr. VILLIERS carries this clause of his bill.

But he has another clause which the country
gentlemen, or some of them, do not seem to like so
well. A clause which is substantially for Union
Rating. But these gentlemen must take care.
If they willingly accept clauses which enable them
to relieve their estates in three years instead of
five, from liability for a pauper's relief, but at the
same time oppose a clause which assesses them to
the poor rates in proportion to tho labour they
must employ, this will at least look very suspi-

cious. The present system favours a most un-
worthy class of landlords. It makes the liability
of a parish to the rate for relief of the
irremoveable poor, dependent on the average
relief which has been given -to the poor
in that parish during three years. Now, it is
notorious, indeed flagrant instances of it are within
our personal knowledge, that landlords have
diminished the rates in their parishes by allowing
cottages to go to decay, and even by pulling them
down ; they have thus driven the labourers to
reside in a neighbouring parish, a town, if one
were near, and to travel backward and forward
to their work further than they would allow their
farm horses to do, that they might get the parish

cultivated by labourers for whose support they
should not be responsible in sickness or old age.
The daily cruelty to the poor workmen, of adding
a walk of six or eight miles to their daily toil, and
the unfairness to other parishes, had no weight
with landlords, whose only care was to free their
own estates from Poor Rates.
The plan of Union rating would almost anni-
hilate this far too common practice. Mr. VILLIERS
proposes that the contribution of each parish shall
be in proportion to the rateable value of its pro-
perty. Now, it is certain that, with most insig-
nificant exceptions, the amount of toil and labour
of the workman in a parish is in proportion to its
rated property. Deviation from this must be the
exception ; and, happily, where it is the exception,
the value of the property is proof that no hardship
can be felt. It is certainly one of those exceptions
which prove the rule. The objections which
lie against county, and still more against

national rating, do no not hold against
Union Rating. In the former case it is but too
certain that the administrators of a national fund
would dip into it with too little care, perhaps might
eome in time to rival the dockyards themselves.
Those who expend the rates need, doubtless, the
check of liability to feel the consequences of their
own extravagance. Of course this is felt most in
proportion to the smallness of the area of manage-
ment. A parish feels the consequences of local
extravagance more than a Union would, and a
Union more than a county. The question is, will
a Union feel it sufficiently to insure care ? We
think it will. It seems to be just about the
limit -within which lavish poor-law expendi-
ture would be felt by the guardians, and
beyond which the reaction of their own acts would
tend to become a " vanishing quantity." As at
present advised, therefore, we lean strongly to both
the proposals of Mr. VILLIERS. We do not know
that we much object, with Sir G. C. LEWIS, to
abolish the law of settlement altogether, and expect
creates
etao that.
t esp e r
perfect
eI
tt is the
free-trade
rightl
labour. So
saot
lietaswt,ilfloreoitrae
again is national rating. The poor of the nation
are most fairly
the nation's charge, but the insu-
perable objection is that the charge would be such
as the nation could not bear. As the meanest
would be charitable enough at others' expense, so
men who would be otherwise careful administrators

would lose the inducement to be so if it nia,,,c.:10-
difference to them, and if spendthrift colleagues
would neutralise all the effects of their care.

Miss MARY PROVOST.—Mr. Harris, the spirited
lessee of the Princess's Theatre, ever on the alert to in-
troduce fresh talent to his patrons, has entered into an en
•
gagement with Miss Mary Provost, who will make her first
appearance on Tuesday, July 9th, as Rosalind, in " As
You Like It," Mr. Phelps playing Jaques on the occasion,
—Era.

The serious charge of fraud preferred against
Mr. Francis Atkin was tried at the Manchester city ses-
sions ycitaiday, and, after aninvestiption which occupied
about CA hours, the jury acquittetl the prisoner, _