The Sun.
London, England, 1861-02-15 00:00:00

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THE SUN.
LONDON, FRIDAY, FEB. 15, 1881.

Our gallant fellows, both of the land and sea
forces out in China, have now duly received their
/need of approbation from Imperial Parliament.
Last evening the thanks of both houses were
accorded to the victors under Lieut.-General Sir
HOPE GRANT and Vice-Admiral Sir JAMES
HOPE, cordially, earnestly, and unanimously.
Together with the names of these conspicuous
" brothers-in-arms and rivals in renown," the
military and maritime commanders-in-chief of the
British Expedition, were associated the names
of their distinguished lieutenants, Rear-Admiral
LEWIS JONES and Major-Generals Sir ROBERT
NAPIER and Sir J.HN MICHELL, who, by
their combination of skill, zeal, and intre-
pidity, had enabled her MAJESTY'S Ambas-
sador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipoten-
tiary, the Earl of ELGIN, in conjunction with the
diplomatic representative of our ally, the Emperor
of the FRENCH, to bring the late remote and
formidable war with the Tartar Government of the
Chinese to so very brilliant and satisfactory
a termination. The tale that had to be told
anew last night in the Lords and Commons was
one certainly which, however familiar at this
moment in all its details, could not be listened
to by any body of patriotic Englishmen without
its inspiring emotions of unaffected and
enthusiastic admiration. For it can be asserted
without a particle of exaggeration that, from
first to last, in every one of its successive stages,
and this, too, in reference to each and all of the
various departments of the public service, the
recent war with China was conducted with a dis-
play of prudence, of forethought, of promptitude,
and valour, reflecting the highest credit upon Army
and Navy, upon the marines, the medical staff,
and the Commissariat. Never has any
warlike expedition left these shores so fully and
admirably equipped. Never has any expeditionary
force despatched from England so rapidly and
triumphantly overcome all the varied difficulties it
had to encounter, and this at the opposite ex-
tremity of the globe, advancing from success to
success at the pas de charge, from the point of de-
barkation up to the very walls, into the very centre
of the mysterious, the almost fabulous, and un-
questionably to European troops the hitherto im-
penetrable city of Pekin. It is the absolute com •
pleteness of the victory which has been thus at
length achieved by the Allied Powers over the
Tartar Government of the Chinese Empire, which
justifies us in the hope now entertained that the
war recently terminated by the united
efforts of
Sir HOPE GRANT'S tactics and
of the Earl of E ,
LOIN, S diplomacy, may
really put an end to these deadly periodical contests
between the most populous race of Asiatics and
those two Western Powers, who are the recognised
Chiefs and Champions of European civilisation.
Thrice within very little more than the last score
v.f these woeful conflicts have been necessitated
out there in China. Considerably less than a
quarter of a century has elapsed since the first of
those three deplorable causes of collision between
the Asiatics and the Europeans, between Chinese,
or rather Tartars, and Englishmen, resulted in the
discomfiture of the councils of the Manchou,

dynasty. That, we all know, history has already
related, posterity will long remember, was the
Opium War waged by England against the
Chinese Government. Afterwards, several
years afterwards, came that miserable affair
of the lorcha Arrow. And, as a disastrous
sequel to that, the last of these three deadly incen-
tives to war, the infamous massacre of four hundred
British sailors and marines by that execrable
ambuscade of Tartar gunners behind the screened
fortifications on the Peiho. It is this latest, and of
all the most heinous of the Chinese outrages, that
the forces who were last night complimented in
the Lords and Commons were (now scarcely a year
since) called upon to avenge as became English-
men. And nobly did they acquit themselves
of that weighty responsibility, led on to victory,
both aloat and ashore, with unerring sagacity
and courage by Sir JAMES HOPE and Sir HOPE
GRANT, and conducted at last through these mari-
time and military successes to the ratification of a
brilliant Treaty of Peace, under the skilled diplo-
matic guidance of the Earl of ELGIN and KINCAR-
DINE.

It fell, by right of his Ministerial position, to the
lot of the youngest Baron in the House of Peers to
move in that august assembly the thanks, to our
forces out in China, of the hereditary branch of the
Legislature. Lord HERBERT of LEA, as her
MAJESTY'S Secretary of State for War, had thus
the peculiar gratification of making his
maiden speech among his Peers upon an
occasion involving indirectly a eulogium upon the
conduct of his own most responsible and most diffi-
cult Administrative Department. The recollection
of the manner in which, the really admirable
manner in which, the War Department under his
guidance has conducted the whole of the details of
this war against the Chinese—a war carried on at
the remotest extremity of this hemisphere—goes
far to wipe away the recollection of the frightfully
contrasting mismanagement of that far larger but
far less remote contest lately waged against the
power of another gigantic empire, that of the
Russian autocracy, upon the fatal plains of the
Crimean peninsula, upon the deadly wintry
plateau under the granite walls and giant earthworks
of Sebastopol. No more green coffee berries yonder
in China, as formerly in the Crimea, served out as
rations to our soldiery ! No more naked frostbitten
feet among our veterans, while hard by in the hold of
some costly transport was mouldering away use-
lessly a forgotten store of boots and shoes ! All
these despicable and miserable blunders have
become now, thanks be to HEAVEN, as
much calamities of the past as though they had
occurred to " frighten the isle from its propriety,"
not seven years ago, but a whole hundred. Not
in vain did our land and sea forces go through
those appalling privations in the Crimean cam-
paign—those wonderful and still incompre-
hensible privations—which are yet borne like some
evil nightmare in the national remembrance. In
compensation for that gloomy and pathetic story
comes now, alter the lapse of but a very few years
indeed, the radiant record of this swiftly accom-
plished and resplendently successful campaign in
China, ending in the advance of the Allies upon
the mythic capital, in the flight of the celestial
EMPEROR into Tartary, in the capture of Pekin,
and in the dictation of the most triumphant terms of
peace by her Britannic MAJESTY'S representatives !
No wonder with such a history as this to epitomize
that his Royal Highness the Commander-in-Chief
found last evening in the House of Lords a congenial
theme for his soldierly panegyrics. No wonder
that in the House of Commons its veteran leader,
the Noble Viscount now Prime Minister of Eng.
land, found in that same fruitful theme, the victo-
rious expedition of our forces in China, a subject
upon which his practised oratorical powers might
well delight to expatiate. As already indicated in
these remarks, those thanks of the British Parlia.
ment were, as a matter of course, voted
both in the Lord and Commons unanimously.
The Ministerial motion for these Thanks, made in
the House of Lords by the Secretary for War, and
in the House of Commons by the First Lord of the
Treasury, being, according to a graceful Parliattlen-
tary custom upon • these occasions, seconded in
due form both in Lords and Commons by the
respective leaders there of her MAJESTY'S
Opposition. One exceptional objection raised
unhappily in both Houses—in the Lords by the
Earl of DERBY, and in the Commons by Mr.
VINCENT SCULLT I—tended, we grieve to remem-
ber, to mar the prevailing cordiality of the other-
wise unstinted approbation expressed by all parties
alike in both branches of the Imperial Legisla-
ture. This one exceptional objection having refe-
rence to what we ourselves have all along regarded
as, on the contrary, the one bright particular spot
shining luminously in the retrospect of this our last
(pray Heaven it may really and truly prove our last)
Chinese Expedition ! The avenging destruction—
namely, by fire of the Chinese EMPEROR'S Summer
Palace outside the Walls of Pekin the
avenging destruction of that gigantic palace
of Yuen-Ming-Yuen, seven miles in length
and crammed with the spoil of centuries—that
vast conflagration by which the soldiers of
England, in the most signal and effective manner
that was at all practicable (and this without the
destruction of human life ! ) avenged the infernal
atrocity of the murder, in cold blood, and in viola-
tion of all the laws of nations, of BRABAZON,
and ANDERSON, and BOWLBY, azd ethers of our
brave and lamented countrymen ! China will never
forget that lesson—we may be sure of that. It is
better than a score of victories. It is a beacon that
will cast a salutary glare of warning henceforth
before the eyes of those savage and ruthless Tartars
—bidding them beware, lest by any repetition of
their old atrocities they may light effectually in
the same way, another such stupendous and, as it
might prove perchance the next time, deadly and
far more devastating conflagration !

Amongst the not uncommon clerical scandals o
the day is that of clergymen refusing Christian
interment, in certain cases where conscience or
bigotry scents a case for tormenting the relatives of
the deceased. The Rubric furnishes them with
three classes of unfortunates—those who "die un-
baptised, or excommunicated, or have laid violent
hands on themselves." Over these it forbids them
to perform the burial service. The common law, on
the other hand, requires them to perform the service
over any that are buried in the churchyard; fromwhich
the doctors of the law have deduced the conclusion
that the Rubric defines the class of persons who
can be brought to the churchyard for burial. This
would seem to be, indeed, setting the Church in its
sectarian sense, as in the good old Tory toast,
before the King or the State. Such, however, we
believe to be the fact. And as the freehold of the
churchyard is held to be in the parson, although
it confessedly belongs to the parish, it would seem
that the parson could even prohibit the interment
of a corpse of the classes of persons referred to
from being buried at all.
The general case, however, is that the clergyman
refuses the burial service to the unfortunate person,
generally an innocent child, who dies unbaptised.
This
and
efrequent grievance of Protestant Dis-
senters;
the grievance is the more felt because,

with a dog-in-the -manger temper, they refuse to
allow other 'Christian minister to perform any
christ aiao;
service whatever! Methodists have been
much agg.riev ed in this way, whenever some small-
minded cle rig 3 denies the validity of a Methodist
minister's b e ptism. No Dissenting ministers in the
kingdom a; such servile Tories as those of the
Methodists r--they even profess a strong sentimental
affection fur the Establishment from which they
separated, Tout all has not availed to save them from
the spaniel's fate, with apparently the same result
as in that of the flogged animals. Another large
sect is, however, especially obnoxious to
this kind of priestly persecution. The Baptists
do not baptise their children till we should
deem them of age for confirmation. Hence,
should a person of this sect have a child die
where no cemetery or chapel burial-ground was at
hand, he would perhaps hardly be refused liberty to
inter it, on payment of fees to the clergyman, in
the parish burial-ground ; but, neither will the
clergyman perform a service at the funeral, nor
allow, even in the open air itself, the performance
of any by others ! Again, there are frequently
cases of children remaining accidentally unbap-
tised till death, especially if they die unexpectedly

in infancy.
So many cases of some one of these kinds have
appeared in the papers of late years, that we need
not tire our readers by referring to them—the
last, and as good an exemplification as any,
was that of a not over wise Vicar of an out-of-the-
way place, Horsey next the sea, in Norfolk—who
not only refused to perform the service over an
infant, who, accidentally, died unbaptized,
but prosecuted the mother and a worthy
Methodist for joining in singing a pious
consolatory hymn over the poor little
innocent's grave. It is surely time that the possi-
bility of such clerical cruelty should cease. We
believe the cruelty to be almost unconscious ;
superstition in religion has the singular power
of rendering even otherwise worthy men insensible
to the tortures they inflict on others. From the
times when it was thought a virtue to burn infants
in sacrifice to MOLOCH, to the present times—in
which, when the little innocents, being beyond
the reach of pain, the aching hearts of parents
can alone be made to smart, superstition has
inflicted its horrid sufferings, apparently with
perfect coolness, and even with complacency, in
the thought that it was doing GOD service,

It is not, however, for laymen of common sense
and unperverted natural and Christian feeling to
tolerate this cruelty to survivors. The law is a
little obscure now, but it is high time it were made
clear, and in the direction of humanity and Chris-
tian civilisation. We see, therefore, with pleasure
that Sir MORTON PETo, an eminently practical,
businesslike, and respected Dissenter, will endea-
vour to carry a bill on the subject. This ought not
to be a difficult task. The principle seems to us
clear—that in this day of religious liberty any
parishioner or other person who dies in a parish
should be entitled to burial in the parish church-
yard or cemetery, with such religious service as
the dying man or his survivors may prefer. We
would not indeed require the parson, more than
any other minister, to perform a service against the
judgment of his own conscience, but we would de-
prive him of the right to say that no other should per-
form one. Probably the classes of persons aggrieved
would At object to paying the narrow-minded
man his fees, little as he deserves them ; the sub-
stantial grievance is, that in those hours of sorrow
which may come to any of us at any moment, and
which we must all cause at some time to our sur-
vivors, a mortal man should be permitted to assume
the place of the Judge of all, and to add the most
painful sorrows to grief already severe enough.
Churchyards are the nation's property. Dissen-
ters, in objecting to Church-rates, never have objected
to keeping parish burial-grounds in repair, but this
implies that, as parishioners and therefore English-
men, they have a claim to the use of the national
property. There will, perhaps, be some purblind
old Tories who will resist the passing of an Act
of the kind indicated, and Bishops can hardly be
expected to enter into the feelings of other men
when a shred of penal ecclesiastical power is at
stake ; but surely, in the Lords as well as in the
Commons, the voice of natural sympathies and
unsophisticated Christian feeling, will be too strong
even for them. Sir MORTON PETo's bill deserves
the heartiest support of every man of the slightest
pretensions to humane and Christian feeling.

Sir G. C. LEWIS could not expect to please every
one by his proposal last night, but now it is before
us, all we can say is that we accept it, as about as
good as, and not worse than, half a dozen which
might have been made". Here are four seats long
ago forfeited, for reasons which should place many
more seats in the market. How shall they be
allotted ? Scotland clamours for more, with a popu-
lation less than that of London; Ireland, of course,
wants something when anything is to be had ; and
then English counties and boroughs, on different
grounds, claim the whole of the four seats, and
boroughs even seem likely to quarrel with
boroughs over them. As good a plan as any might
have been to put the names of the claimants all into
a bag, and let Mr. BENTINCK and Sir G. C. LEWIS
draw alternately ; or shake them up well, blindfold
Mr. BRIGHT, and let him draw for all.

Perhaps the Cabinet did do something of the
sort, for no particular principle seems to have guided
their choice. It seems, however, quite good enough ;
it has one merit at least, neither of the two great
counties, and neither the metropolitan nor the com-
mercial borough, will be likely to be guilty of
the sins of the boroughs whose privileges are
to be conferred on them. Politically the
arrangement seems fair enough. South Lancashire
has proved that by due exertion it can return two
Tories, though supposed to be safe for the Liberals.
The West Riding has been guilty of the same
offence in days not long past, yet the Liberal
Government hands over a seat apiece to these im-
mense populations—from five to eight hundred
thousand each, even omitting their crowded towns.
What the politics of the two new boroughs would
be, we presume no one would yet venture
to predict. The West-end of London ought to
have a number of influential upper class voters, not
very likely to be liberal overmuch ; and it Birken-
head be a commercial place, its parent borough,
Liverpool, has plenty of Toryism in it. As a party
question, therefore, the proposal of Sir G. C. LEWIS
ought to pass easily enough.
Now, it strikes us that a good deal of reform
might be done, without a Reform Bill, in the way
of tranferring seats to constituencies most deserving
them. Several boroughs are now awaiting their
sentence from the House of Commons—Gloucester,
Wakefield, and Berwick have all to be called up
for judgment. Might not their punishment be
something of this kind ? Reduce them all to one
member each. Reduce their franchise to the lowest
amount, and compel them to vote for this one
member by a rigorous enforcement of the ballot.
Give them a trial with one member and secret
voting. We should then have two more English
seats to allot.

But why stop here? There may be, and con-
fessedly are, good reasons for disfranchisement

where there is no suspicion of the less criminal
form :of corruption, known as bribery. Every
Reform Bill, 'Whig or Tory, has acknowledged
that extreme paucity of population, and
fewness of electors, is a reason why a
town should return bet one member or
more. Thetford, Arundel, 'Woodstock, and
others--we need not give the well known list
should part with one or both, in favour of the
great towns, and populous districts. Why not
bring in a succession of Bills—taking each of them
one trumpery little borough, and the important
constituency to which it was proposed to transfer
its member or members ? Why not commence a
regular persevering course of action of this kind?
The electoral demerits of the worthless influ-
ence borough in comparison with the claims of
some important place, would far more illustrate
the desirableness of the change than long schedules,
presenting no distinct points of comparison. We
pseseat the suggestion to our working reformers as
one worth their consideration. We are fully aware
that Toryism will scent Parliamentary Reform
stealing on them by such a process, just as eccle-
siastics tremble for their Establishment at the men-
tion of Church Rate abolition ; but still the reac-
tionary party, whether old Whigs or Tories, will
we imagine, fight at a disadvantage, in resisting
particular reforms, after all parties have got rid of
a "comprehensive measure." If we cannot have
Reform Bills, let us have Repairing Bills.

PUBLIC INCOME AND EXPENDITURE.

An account of the gross public income and ex-
penditure for the year ending the 31st of Decem-
ber, 1860, was issued yesterday. The total income
amounted to £71,067,494, the expenditure being
in excess of that amount £611,137, or in all
£72,578,632.
The income was as follows :

Customs £23,032,395
Excise
Stamps
Taxes (land and assessed)
Property-tax
Post-office
Crown Lands (net) 259,568
Miscellaneous

Total £71,967,494
The expenditure may be summarised as follows :
Expenditure connected with the na-
tional debt £26,833,469
Charges on the Consolidated Fund 2,239,898
Supply service

Total
We have disregarded the shillings and pence in
compiling this table, but have given the accurate
totals.

Her Majesty's Theatre was honoured last even-
ing by the presence of her most gracious Majesty the
Queen, his Royal Highness the Prince Consort, her Royal
Highness the Princess Alice, her Royal Highness the
Princess Eleanor, attended by Lady Churchill, Miss Stop•
forl, Lord de Tabley, Lord A. Paget, and Lieutenant-
Colonel de Ross.

ThE LATE RAILWAY ACCIDENT NEAR WIM-
BLEDON.—The coroner's inquisition into the circumstances
attending the death of Dr. Baly was resumed this morning
at the White Hart Tavern, Merton, and was proceeding
when we went to press.

GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY.—The ordinary half-
yearly meeting of the directors and shareholders was held
to-day, at the Paddington Station. The directors' report
has already appeared in The Sun. The recommendation
of the directors, that the same dividend should be paid to
the proprietors as was declared for the corresponding period
of 1859, viz., at the rate of 31 per cent. per annum, leaving
£13,601 19s. 3d. to be carried forward as balance to the
current half:year, was agreed to.

The dollars brought by the Mexican steamer
have been at length disposed of at 591 d., showing a decline
of Id. per oz. from the price realised for those by the
last packet. The absence of demand for China is the rea-
son for this depreciation, which reduces dollars to about
their actual value as silver,

THE FATAL ACCIDENT AT THE CRYSTAL PALACE
STATlON.—Yesterday morning Mr. William Carter, coro-
ner for the eastern division of Surrey, opened an inquiry at
the Paxton Arms, near the Crystal Palace, to investigate
the circumstances under which Ellen Lynch, aged 68, and
William Eager, aged 21, came to their deaths. The Jury
returned the following verdict:—" We find that the de-
ceased persons met with their deaths by accidental causes;
but we recommend that passengers should not be allowed
to cross the rails, hut that they should go up the stairs re-
ferred to in the evidence, or that such other accommoda-
tion should be provided as will prevent a repetition of such

an occurrence."

BERLIN WATERWORKS COMPANY.—The annual
meeting of this company was held yesterday—Mr. W. H.
Goschen in the chair—when the report was adopted and a
dividend declared of Is. per share. It was stated that the
progress of the undertaking during the past half-year has
been steady, although slow. The service-laying by the
company has considerably increased, while the amount
of similar works by local plumbers has augmented in
a still greater ratio. The additional customers, irre-
spective of those supplied by meter, comprise upwards
of 1,500 families. The increase of revenue from wa-
ter-rates during the past six months has been £936,
against £571 at Midsummer. It was also mentioned that
lately, while there were 42 degrees of frost, penetrating
3ft. 2in. into the ground, the temperature of the water sup-
plied by the company was four degrees above freezing point,
and that the cold has caused no injury of any consequence
to the pipe system. In answer to questions, it was stated
that there were no outstanding charges. The question of
extending the charter has not been lost sight of, but is de-
ferred to a more favourable opportunity. Of the 80,000
families in Berlin, 8,000 are supplied by the company. Some
discussion took place upon the propriety of increasing the
dividend, but an amendment to make it is. 4cl. was lost.
THE METROPOLITAN UNDERGROUND RAILWAY.
—ln consequence of the rapid progress of this underground
line of railway, steps are in progress at the west of the
proposed stations to proceed with the erection of them.
At the top of Portland-road the excavations have ex ,
tended to above 30 feet, and the foundations of the build-
ing have been proceeded with. At the commencement
of the line, near the Great Western Railway Station, a
more rapid progress has been made in the erection of the
station, as also at the station which is in course of con-
struction at King's-cross. Here also the underground line
has been greatly advanced. At Lisson-grove, near the
Yorkshire Stingo, an extensive area of ground has been
taken for the station to be erected at this spot, and by
which there will be an open lino of rails till it reaches
Marylebone-road, from which point it will pass under-
ground at King's-cross. At the end of Chapel-street, in
consequence of the station requiring a portion of Maryle
bone-road, the thoroughfare from Chapel-street has been
diverted, and a bridge is being built for the purpose of
carrying out the new line of road. At Baker-street on the
north and the south side of the Edgware-road, a station
will be erected, one for the up and the other for the down
lines. On each side purchases have been made for the pro-
perty required by the company. On many parts of the
distance the line of railway is completed, notwithstanding I
the obstacles which have been thrown in the way by the
late severe weather.

FIRE AND Loss OF LlFE.—Yesterday morning,
between five aid six o'clock, a fire broke out on the pre-
mises of Mr. Abbott, a retailer of ale and beer, nearly
facing the terminus of the Eastern Counties Railway. Not
more than five minutes after the alarm was given the flames
burst from the windows with the greatest impetupsity. A
scene of a most pitiable character then presented itself, Mrs.
Abbott having made her appearance with three children at
the second floor window. She screamed frantically for help,
but the heated smoke and sparks were entering her apart-
ment with such fury that she was compelled to throw the
three children into the street: Fortunately they were caught
by the police and bystanders, and received no serious injury.
Dl r. Abbott also managed to get safely out of the house, just
in time to see his wife jump out of the upper window. She
in falling :truck a policeman on the shoulder, and both were
badly injured Mr. Abbott, on looking round, found that
all the inmates, with the exception of two of his children—
one named Emma, 13 years of age, and the other William,
three years—had got out of the blazing building. Recol-
lecting that these children slept in the third floor back, he
again entered the house, regardless of the great danger he
ran. He could not find the children, and he groped his way
through the heated smoke into the front room on the third
floor. Before, however, he had time to look round this room,
he having incautiously left the door open, the flames entered
the apartment, and he was compelled to jump out of the
window, and was badly injured and taken to the hospital.
The Royal Society's fire escape arrived at the spot in less
than three minutes after the alarm was given, and, the
conductor having placed his machine in front of the house,
he Wail informed that the children were in the third floor
back. He at once ran up the escape, and entered the front
for the purpose of getting into the back, but the flames drove
him back, and he had great difficulty in again reaching his
escape. The two poor children, it appears, had crawled
from •the back room to the front, and, no cries being heard
to proceed from them while the conductor was in the place,
there is no doubt they were at that time suffocated. As
soon as the ruins were sufficiently cooled to allow the fire-
men to enter, they went in search of the missing children,
and found them in the front room on the third floor, not
extensively burnt, except about the feet. Mr, Abbott was
insured in the Imperial fire-office.