The Sun.
London, England, 1861-01-15 00:00:00

deserved well of Italians, and earned a title to their
gratitude. Her ruler professed that a grateful
Italy would be the best support of France on that
side ; and yet, with the perversity of despotism, he
is doing all he can to cancel all the obligations of
Italy to France. The mischief of the purely
wanton intervention at Gaeta is as great indirectly
as directly. We all see the cruelty of prolonging
quite uselessly the defence of a fort, to the certain
sacrifice of many human lives ; but even worse than
that is the mischief done to the South of Italy
generally. While the KING is at Gaeta, brigands,
whose only real object is plunder, dignify their
petty turbulence with the name of Royalist insur-
rections, and the greater part of these scamps con-
sist of disbanded soldiers of the King's army, a
great part of whom consisted naturally of the very
scum of the population. At the same time the army
w)iich ought to be putting down all this is detained
by the French EMPEROR in the trenches before
Gaeta. There is indeed a general belief, which is
due to his on n heartless and despotic intermeddling,
that the petty unsettlem ents which trouble and
perplex Southern Italy are due to Imperial agents
and to Imperial gold. At all events—LOUlS
NAPOLEON is guilty of thwarting the desire of
Italians for unity, so far as mortals can understand,
for no earthly object but to gratify his spite
against them for refusing his confederation with a
Papal Head, and to retain unrighteously the
suzerainty of the country.

What he will do in the spring no mortal can
conjecture. A letter we publish to-day from Turin
strongly affirms that the Garibaldians are deter-
mined on action in the spring and ready for it. It
tells us, that they do not mean to waste their
attempts on the forts of the Quadrilateral, but to
take Austria on her vulnerable side. This may be
true, it is certainly not improbable, and equally
certain that Austria keeps a sharp look out in that
direction. Her consuls prevented the conveyance
of arms up the Danube into Hungary by Genoese
vessels; but the attempt shows which way the
Italian patriots are looking. What a complication
I there might be if Hungary were to change
her present admirable legal course, for an
appeal to the Sword. We cannot, for
Hungary's sake, wish it at present, since she
seems to be winning back her old rights one after
another by passive resistance, and what we might
almost term passive action—merely doing what is
legal by old laws, which she simply refuses to
allow can be repealed by arbitrary Imperial edicts.

But, returning to England, no country has so
much right to complain of the EMPEROR'S general
conduct as we have. It seems as if he were intent
upon keeping us just in the position, that we should
never be able to lessen our military expenditure.
The members who are, so properly, calling the Pre-
mier's attention to the subject, will find in the
French EMPEROR their real difficulty. He will not
give us the practical assurance that we may
lie on our oars a little. Not only does he keep up
and increase hls warlike preparations, but he is
pertinacious in intermeddling everywhere and in
everything till we never can guess what he will
not do. Savoy, and the Lake of Geneva, Rome,
Gaeta, Syria, even Egypt—everywhere the restless
man has some iron in the fire, as if to multiply the
possible causes of war ; and what course his caprices
may take with Hungary, Austria, and the Govern-
ments of Germany, no one can guess. He may
almost any day'place us in the position that we must
speak out, and back our speaking, if necessary, with
something more than words— in other words, we
owe the ten penny Income-tax of last year to
LOUIS NAPOLEON solely—and if we cannot get rid
of it all this year it is LOUIS NAPOLEON who picks
all our pockets. We are much obliged to him for
saving us a sixpenny passport, but we should be
much more obliged to him if he did not saddle us
with the hateful Income-tax. Every Englishman
with a hundred a-year and upwards is fined a
heavy per tentage on his income, for nothing else
in the world than to insure himself against some
possible escapade of Imperial vanity.

It is a terrible time just now for the humbler

classes. The thermometer several degrees below

freezing point. The wind blowing just now
keenly, blightingly, due east. Work of any
kind inaccessible to the vast majority of our
stalwart day-labourers. Food and fuel—for a
long time past high-priced—rising and rising
deplorably. Everything almost that Poverty
could (during these many weeks of hard frost)
put its grasp upon and carry off to the pawn-
broker's, long since exchanged there for little
scraps of pasteboard, never afterwards, in the
greater number of instances, to be thought of
for the redeeming of those pledged articles of
clothing and furniture—exchanged there, at the
pawnbroker's, for those miserable little packs of
cards (that gamble away so very lamentably the
poor man's goods and chattels), and for a few
wretched handfuls of pence wherewith to buy the
bare necessaries of existence !

This is strictly and literally the actual picture pre-
sented to any one's view who cares to penetrate, at
this time, into the humbler class of dwellings, whe-
ther in this vast metropolis or throughout the whole
wide country side. We have ourselves carefully
examined into the state of things for a long while
past in some of the most squalid of the back slums
of London and Westminster. And there, during
weeks and weeks past, we have found almost in-
variably the same miserable spectacle of wretched-
ness. The one house-room—sitting-room and sleep-
ing-room, alike for parents and children, and
these children often enough, oftener than enough
grown to an age rendering this general " litter
down" of the whole family in the same narrow
apartment a violation of all the com-
monest notions of decency—this one depla
rable room stripped of nearly everything
portable, poorest rags of clothes, poorest sticks of
furniture, represented now by a bundle of dirty
littla scraps of cards stowed away in an old cracked
teapot—the pawnbroker's tickets ! The labourers

—fathers of those neglected homes—long out of
work—labourers now no longer. The wives and
children, ailing for the most part from cold and
hunger, from insufficient clothing, but more parti-
cularly from inadequate nourishment. Frequently
the wretched mother's boots off her feet—half-
worn boots pawned, too, at the last gasp, for a few
shillings to buy bread with. To' obtain, upon the
instant,
something more than aniinnkglidnogwonfoanlel
this—it is only necessary, without go
of those lowly byways of our great capital, without
climbing up into one of its stark garrets or down
into one of its pestilential cellars—it is only re-
quisite to glance for a moment at the records
pouring in just now from all the numerous police-
offices and union workhouses. The latter are long
since choke-full,even to overcrowding. The gateways
are besieged by the swarming applicants for outdoor
relief. The stone-yards littered with the labourers

—respectabl© workmen, for the most part under
ordinary circumstances, brought down now for an
interval to the lowest pauper toil of all—men
wielding the stonebreaker's hammer there, from
earliest dawn to latest sundown, for a daily pittance
of twelve or fourteenpence at the outside ! Some
of which must go for their own support, and for the
Srehase of a mug of beer or so, er a screw of

tobacco, to enable them to get through the
eight or ten hours' hammering in the open air.
The residue—we may fancy how little that must
be when the day's toil is over !—being taken home
at nightfall to the wife and children. For the
alleviation of all this scarcely calculable or conceiv-
able mass of wretchedness we are conscious that
the noblest efforts are being made, and that, more-
over, systematically, in a variety of different direc-
tions. There are the hard - hearted poor law
establishments themselves—for such as they are--
in full operation. There are great diversities of other
eleemosynary associations, endeavouring earnestly
(alas ! however, how vainly !) to keep pace with
the widening and expanding circle of squalid des-
titution. There are the Night Refuges at Field-
lane and elsewhere crammed full during half of the
twenty-four hours—giving rations for one meal and
shelter for one night to the wretchedest of all
wayfarers ! There are isolated efforts being made
here and there by individual benevolence. There
is last of all, but in very deed not by any means
least of all—the youngest of our charitable insti-
tutions in this vast metropolis—The Society for
the _Relief of Distress a noble organisation
due to the benign suggestions of W. D. 8., in our
chief morning contemporary—to the admirably
well - timed suggestions (we have long been
enabled to tear aside from him the veil of the
anonymous) of Mr. W. DAVENPORT BROMLEY—
suggestions which that gentleman has been enabled
to carry into effect by the energetic co-operation
of a throng of sympathisers, as our readers had an
opportunity of recognising yesterday as "an
accomplished fact," through the medium of a
most encouraging advertisement. If the plague
of poverty now desolating so many obscure homes
cannot be altogether dissipated—its ravages may
happily by the continuance of these and other
beneficent efforts in behalf of the countless sufferers
around us be very considerably and appreciably
mitigated.
It is while we are yet in the midst of this season-
able solicitude for the suffering poor of the metro-
polis that the Prime Minister comes in
person before his auditors down at Romsey, and
speaks to-day to the whole mass of our English
multitude through the medium of the Whispering
Gallery of the London Press apropos to the kindred
wretchedness now being endured to a frightful
extent by the rural population. Elsewhere in
our impression of this evening will be
found those most impressive remarks, uttered
only yesterday down at Romsey by the noble
Viscount our veteran First Lord of the Treasury.
His lordship, it will be observed, was followed in
these remarks most effective by the more lengthened
comments made upon this general wretchedness by
his step-son the Right Hon. W. COWPER, now Her
MAJESTY'S Chief Commissioner of Public Works,
and consequently empowered to speak upon a sub-
ject of this nature with some authority, as
as administrator peculiarly entrusted with the
responsibilities of that most responsible depart-
ment. Mentioning a case in point in reference to
this theme of vital importance, a case in point that
had come (as will be observed immediately) under
his own personal observation, the noble Premier in
his brief but pithy remarks, said—" Some years
ago when the cholera prevailed generally, a
very distinguished medical gentleman hap-
pened to be staying at Broadlands. At
my request he made a medical inspection
of this town, and drew up a report, of
which a copy, I think, was given to the Mayor for
the time being, and which is now in the possession
of the authorities of the town. He stated that there
was a great number of habitations which were not
fit for the occupation of human beings, that they
were destitute of all those accommodations and con-
veniences requisite for a decent dwelling-house, and
that they were positively unhealthy owing to the
want of ventilation and the absence of a sufficient
number of cubical feet of space for each parson
who lived in them. I believe that that report was
acted upon, and that a great deal of good resulted."
What has thus been done partially at Romsey—
has not even been begun, has not even been thought
of, in a vast number of other localities, north, south,
east, west, in every shire in England and Wales, to
say nothing of Scotland and Ireland. Yet the
necessity for some effort at improvement in the
dwelling-houses of our poor labourers,'whether town
labourers or agricultural labourers, is matter of abso-
lute notoriety. Look at those last sad pictures—we
can't call them comic cartoons—appearing in this
weeks number of our London Charivari, that great
humorous publication of Punch, which has now
for twenty years illustrated so effectively and
beneficently, in the midst of the general laughter,
the truth of the good old adage, which says that there
is many a true word spoken in jest. Look at
those two last contrasting cartoons in this latest
number of our ever-welcome Punch—that peep
into the Squire's Stable, and that other peep into
his Labourers' Cottages. In Heaven's name let us
set about this grand reform at length in real earnest
—about this grand reform at least, if about no other.
It will be a Reform, in every imaginable way,
beneficial to the r oor labourers, whether of town
or country, and to ourselves. It will be a great
sanitary improvement. It will advance the grand
cause of morality amongst the humbler classes of
the community. It will economise money and time
and labour—all of them eventually, some of them
immediately. And while doing all this for the poor,
both metropolitan and provincial, it will remove a
great scandal and, at the eame time, a fearful
responsibility from our own shoulders.

Our readers will all be gratified to see that
ANDERSON, the fugitive slave, who killed DIGOES
in attempting to escape from slavery, and whom
two of the judges in Canada were prepared to deliver
up under the Ashburton treaty, will now be brought
before her MAJESTY'S Courts at Westminster on a
writ of _Habeas Corpus, The Lord Chief Justice
and the other judges were unanimous that the
writ should issue. The law under which it
ought to issue bad never been expressly
repealed by any of the statutes which
have conferred increased independence on the
colonies ; and nothing but explicit legislation
could deprive the Queen's Courts of this right.
We apprehend the Lord Chief Justice need not fear
that the colonists will regard such a power
of our courts as any intrusion on their
liberties, but rather as a safeguard of
them. They all look to the English Bench as a
palladium of liberty, and will only be too thankful,
we believe, to see, that, in the last resort, local
oppression or errors can be redressed by an appeal
to the imperial judges. We heartily congratulate
Mr. EDWIN JAMES on the success of his appeal.

We have been informed that the Letter on the
National Expenditure, addressed to the Premier,
which we published and commented upon a few
days ago, and which had then been signed by only
a few members, was intended to be a private docu-
ment. Between fifty and sixty members have now
affixed their names to it, and more, it is fully
expected, will do so. It is obvious, therefore, that
a document in the hands of so many public persons
could not be expected to remain a secret. It came
to us, indeed, without any intimation of the kind.
We may add that, as it is in every way creditable
to the promoters, and as it is very desirable that
the supporters of members in the country should
be aware of it and request the signatures of
their representatives, the publication cannot be
regretted.