The Sun.
London, England, 1859-08-11 00:00:00

THE PONTEFRACT ELECTION.

Mr. Bright has come out in a new character, and
has made a terrible mess of it. To do him justice
he has hitherto confined his violent denunciations
and odious calumnies either to classes whose power
and influence he disliked, or Statesmen of high
position who have ventured to dissent from his
peculiar views. He has not condescended to smaller
game, and fallen foul, either in Parliament or on
the platform, of humbler individuals, unless in-
deed such unfortunates could be represented as
types of a class or party. This week, however, he
has abandoned the higher position, and constituted
himself the accuser of one of his brother members.
Mr. Overend, the member for Pontefract, is the
object of this most unjustifiable attack, excused, of
course, as prompted by an imperative sense of pub-
lic duty. The charge, made at first in the absence
of that gentleman, was renewed yesterday in his
presence, and although the committee moved for by
Mr. Bright was granted, the explanation given by
Mr. Overend proved the groundlessness of the impu-
tation thrown out against him, and a great want of
taste and judgment in Mr. Bright. The charge as
made by Mr. Bright, was that Mr. Childers having
presented a petition against the return of Mr.
Overend, the latter gentleman agreed to refer the
whole question as to the right to the seat to a mem-
ber of the late Government, and thus having ob-
tained the withdrawal of the petition, refused,
upon some shabby pretext or other, to go on with
the reference ; in fact, as Mr. Bright himself ex-
pressed it, " defrauded" Mr. Childeis out of the
seat. Mr. Overend shows in his answer that no
such understanding as that implied existed upon
his part or that of his agents. The poposition for
a reference came from Mr. Childers, and was be-
lieved by the other side to be merely a dignified
mode of withdrawing the petition ; the reference, if
proceeded with, only embracing matters of smaller
moment, such as probably the question of costs. As
soon as Mr. Overend found that Mr. Childers ex-
pected to have the question of the seat included iii
the reference, he at once protested against such
a view, and refused to allow the matter to be gone
into. That is the real state of the case as vouched
by documents—the molehill out of which Mr. Bright
has raised his mountain. There was 'evidently a
misunderstanding between the two agents, the one
translating the reference in one sense, and the other
construing it in a diametrically opposite manner, a
difference frequently occurring between the most
honourable men where the terms of any agreement
are loosely drawn, but there is not the slightest
ground to assume fraud on either side. No doubt
Mr. Childers has been disappointed, but Mr. Bright
should have examined into the matter a little more
closely before asserting that he had been defrauded,
and charging that fraud upon Mr. Overend. Last
night he indeed withdrew the offensive term, but
unfortunately he could not do it gracefully. The
member for Birmingham is nothing unless virulent,
and exonerating Mr. Overend, he attacked even
more unjustly his agent Mr. Rose. That gentleman
however, was amply vindicated by Mr. Disraeli, and
Mr. Bright's defence really only made his case
worse. The House of Commons know what value
is to be attached to his generous profession of a
hope that the investigation would result in reliev-
ing Mr. Overend from all blame. When a man
comes forward as a prosecutor, his object is the con-
viction not the acquittal of the accused.
The explanation of this paltry move of the Radi-
cal leader is not far to seek. The disclosures made
before the Election Committees have considerably
disturbed the equanimity of the friends of progress.
They are confounded, not that their partisans bribed
largely, but that they bungled enough to be found
out. Their position is an awkward one. Every mem-
ber unseated was a Radical of the first water : not a
single Tory has been found guilty of corruption.
What, therefore, is to become of the stock bits of
declamation against Conservative wickedness, and
the glowing panegyrics upon Liberal purity ?
In the face of the facts it would be even too
much for a Radical mob to persist in its professions
of innocence. Something, therefore, must be
done to at least abate this scandal by making out
the other side as bad. Mr. Bright, no doubt, feels
the necessity, in the general interest of the party,
of trying an experiment or two in this line, and
has besides reasons of his own for turning public
attention away from Radical misdeeds. This peti-
tion offered a promising opportunity. Mr. Overend
was away in the first instance, and the accusation
had a good start of the explanation. It may sur-
prise some people that Mr. Bright, who but a day
or two ago complained of Mr. Roebuck's groundless
charge against Dr. Michell, should himself become
an accuser upon grounds at least quite as frivolous;
but there is a very great difference between the two
cases. If Dr. Michell were left alone, and his seat
vacated, a Tory. would at all events be got rid of,
and a chance given to a thorough Radical eager to
form one of the Bright tail. If Mr. Overend could.
be got rid of, a political advantage would be gained ;
at all events, some of the dirt thrown might stick
to the Tories, and thus leave the Liberals compa-
ratively not quite so black. That the end sancti-
fies the means is a doctrine devoutly clung to by
all good Liberals, and Mr. Bright's ungenerous
attack upon Mr. Overend will consequently only
be condemned by that great party because it failed,
as bribery and treating on their own side are only
denounced when, as this time, they are found out.
—Morning Chronicle.

TILE SERPENTINE.

(From the Times.)

While it is yet time Mr. Fitzroy would do well
to reconsider his course with regard to the purifi-
cation of the Serpentine. The more the subject is
discussed among practical men the more sweeping
and decisive is the condemnation pronounced upon
the plan on which he is about to act. If it were
only the waste of money involved in the execution
of the present design, that would be grievous
enough ; but when we regard it as the aggravation
of a great public nuisance the question assumes
very serious proportions indeed. If Mr. Fitzroy
will not retrace his steps at once, and put himself
into the hands of more competent advisers than
these who seem now to possess his confidence, at
least let him pause and inquire. If he be not will-
ing to yield now, he might be better advised six
months hence, when ho has been at the pains of
making himself thoroughly master of the subject.
He is not inops consi/ii, but rather tnagnus inter
opes inops. In no portion of the habitable globe is
this subject of raising water by steam power and
filtering it through beds of gravel and sand better
understood than in the immediate neighbourhood of
London. All the water—pump water naturally
excepted—with which London is supplied, is passed
through filter-beds by one or ,other of the great
water companies. Mr. Fitzroy can obtain most
accurate information not only as to the details of
the process, but as to the expense of it at every
stage. What amount of steam power will be re-
quired ? What will be the cost of arranging and
cleansing the filter-beds ? Whence is the water to
be obtained with which these filter-be& are to be
cleansed ? How is the refuse to be finally got rid
of? What sanitary precautions are to be taken in
order to save the neighbourhood from danger and
annoyance while this filth remains in situ? All
these are points deserving of the most serious con-
sideration, not only as concerns the public comfort,
but on the score of expense. If we are rightly in-
formed, Mr. Fitzroy has adopted the most costly,
the most complicated, the most inefficient, and the
most dangerous method of doing that which any
engineer accustomed to such work would pro-
nounce at once to be a very plain and simple job.
In discussing this matter we should remember
that on either supposition we must equally make
up our minds to get rid of the filthy deposit in the
Serpentine. The natural method of doing this" is
to drain the lake, and to leave the deposit for a
season, under proper arrangements for making the
process effective, exposed to a process of deodorisa-
tion. The ground is then levelled, the holes in the
bottom filled up, a bed of concrete is laid down, and
when a clean basin has been thus prepared clean
water is poured in. We will leave it to profes-
sional persons to determine how much of the refuse
can be safely left, and when it is to be covered in
with the bed of concrete; but even Mr. Fitzroy
will be compelled to cart all the refuse away in
the long run. He cannot create a permanent nui-
sance in Bensington•gardens by keeping one or
other of his filter-beds permanently in ventilation.
He cannot seal them up with concrete. He must
remove the offensive matter from each filter-bed in
turn ; and there will always be one which is under-
going this operation. Mr. Fitzroy's idea is just
this—He is about to cleanse the Serpentine by
pumping the dirty water out and by pouring clean
water in. The clean water will of course be pol-
luted again ; but it will be again brought up,
bringing with it in solution more filth. As the
dirty water is brought up it will be received in fil-
ter-beds—,, custodes sed g uis?"—how are the filter-
beds to be cleansed ? A correspondent informs us
that the filter-beds of the
great water companies
are formed of layers of cleanly-washedpore
Harw
Harwich
gravel od f
various fineness covered
with .
The water percolates through this bed, and as soon
as a sufficient quantity of deposit has been awested
the bed is laid dry. The surface of the sand is re-
moved as far as it has been impregnated with
impurities. The sand is washed either by mechani-
cal means or by a continuous washing with water.
In the works of a water company, where the water
is originally thrown into the filter-beds in a pellucid
state, these filter-beds require washing about once
a month. What will be the case with those which
are destined to receive the filthy liquid in the
Serpentine ? And where is Mr. Fitzroy to get
the clean water with which he is to wash his filter.

beds ? If, on the other hand, he should prefer to
use new sand at each renewal of the process, then,
as we said before, he will be obliged to cart away
the old sand, and with it every atom of filth which
he has drawn up from the bottom of the lake, re-
deposited upon fresh sand, for the mere purpose of
finally removing it when all is done.
With regard to expense, it is to be feared that
Mr. Fitzroy has been equally misinformed. The
£17,000 which he has obtained from the house will
not even suffice to set him up in business as a water
filterer. If he will take the trouble of visiting the
works of the New River Company at Stoke Rew-
ington he will find just such another " pellucid
cascade" as the one of which he speaks. This re-
sult, however, is brought about by the use of two
200-horse power engines during the day, and of
four of 150-horse power engines during the night.
This is a very different story from the little con-
cealed engine which Mr. Fitzroy conjured up be-
fore the imagination of his hearers. More than
this, many acres of filtering-beds are employed to
produce the result, and, finally, there is a steam-
engine used for no other purpose than that of
pumping up clean water to wash the beds which
have been polluted with the impurities of the
stream. Mr. Fitzroy, as we are inforfned, would
have done well to ask rather for £170,000 than for
£17,000, if he is resolved .t o proceed by means of
these filter-beds. There is another consideration
which has been pointed out to us of which Mr.
Fitzroy does not seem to have taken account. It
is, that a great portion of the pollution of the Ser-
pentine is due to the presence of organic matter,
and that his filtering-beds will wholly fail to purge
this away. They will not even touch it. As there
is a concurrence of professional testimony against
him, the wisest plan for Mr. Fitzroy would be to
surrender his judgment to the guidance of those
who have devoted their lives to the consideration
of such questions. If he cannot make up his mind
absolutely to retrace his steps and to ask the house
for a fresh vote to carry the matter through from
the first in a simple and workmanlike manner, at
least he would be doing his bare duty by the public
if he postponed action until he had made further
and better inquiry. He will bring more unpopu-
larity tipon the Ministry of which he forms part by
erecting a permanent nuisance in Kensington-
gardens than by almost any blunder which a
Minister of Public Works can commit.

THE EUROPEAN COUP D'ETAT.

(From the Times.)

As a people we are not alarmists ; we want to be
quiet and to take things as easily as we can. More-
over, the intense interest that we take in our own
domestic squabbles tends to satisfy our love of ex-
citement without sending our minds abroad. When
a stand-up fight between an " ex-" and, an " in-"
Commissioner of Works, or an " ex-" and "in-" First
Lord of the Admiralty, or a First Lord of the Ad-
miralty and an ex-Admiral of the Baltic, or between
any somebody and somebody else, who are privileged
persons and qualified by their greatness and
patriotic services to make a row any day that
they please, engrosses the attention of the whole
nation for two or three days, and when, fortunately
for us, this gentle excitement, which physicians
say is so conducive to health, is repeated at such
regular intervals, it is impossible to expect that we
can often seriously trouble ourselves and get up an
anxiety about foreign occurrences. And yet our
determination to be comfortable must be more than
usually strong if we can see the great black Italian
thundercloud now in the sky' without a little sub-
dued thought as to what it may forebode. We
will allow M. Mazzini so much as this—he has
a right to call our attention to the ominous
position of affairs in Italy, and to require that we
look at the phenomenon, and look at it seriously.
What is this gathering at Zurich to end in ?
Is it to end in simply reimposing the old families,
with a substantially unaltered policy, upon the
States of the Peninsula ? After a few ceremonial
recommendations of reform made to the returning
sovereigns are matters to relapse into their old
state again; and is Italy expected to forget every-
thing that has taken place during the last six
months, and to wake up out of a trance of liberty
to the'sober reality of Grand Dukes and Cardinals
without a touch of discontent ?

It is absurd to expect this. It must be remem-
bered that the Italian idea of liberty is not of
merely Mazzinian growth. It is not even a new
idea at all. It is an old idea, rooted in the soil of
Italy, and embodied in its history and literature.
No Italian can read the books that are put into
his hands when he is educated, or which he takes
up on his library shelves, without meeting it. His
classics—even his schoolbooks put it before him ;
they speak of days when the country had its own
rulers, and the fundamental spirit of the litera-
ture is national ; it is one which has naturally
been derived from a state of political self-govern-
ment, or at any rate from a state in which that was
the natural expectation, and in which the contrary
was only regarded as an exception to a general rule.
It is quite true that the Italian Republic was a
mischievous, factious, quarrelsome affair, barren of
all the fruits and pleasures of liberty except that
of the noisy sport and game itself. Our idea of
liberty now involves all kinds of the most solid
advantages,— physical progress, development of
national resources, and the like. This was not the
least involved in the Italian idea, but that is

nothing to the purpose in arguing with the
Italians. It is not of the slightest use telling them,
even were it true, that they are better off, and have
a more prosperous and easy time of it under
Austria than they had before. What they naturally
want is to govern themselves, whether they govern
themselves better or worse. If worse, how does
that concern you ? They will run the risk, and
they want to run it. They do not thank you a
bit for your benevolence in wishing to relieve
them of it. The gentleman in the play who found
himself under the despotic spell of a second wife's
admirable temper, which somehow or other con-
ceived that he should never have one fragment of
his own way in anything, longed for his old scold
back again, who could rail but could not manage
him. Liberty with the Italians is a return to old
associations, it is an ancient historical idea, which
is bound up indeed with a good deal of mischief,
but still there it is, and they appreciate it is an old
right, and do not feel themselves catching at it as a
new experiment. But this is not all. They have
imbibed sounder ideas of liberty of late years. Con-
stitutional as opposed to wild democratic principles
have decidedly gained ground. The example of
Sardinia has had its effect. They have before their
eyes an Italian State flourishing under a Constitu-
tional Monarchy, in which Representative Govern-
ment and liberty of the press are combined with the
privileges of a Crown. All this has greatly strength-
ened and compacted the Italian idea of liberty, has
united it with the consolidating principle of com-
mon sense, by which it has gained in substance
and power what it has lost in froth; for there is
nothing which gives such power as a sense of reality
when people see that what they are pursuing is not
a phantom or idea only, but something which works.
It is this political conviction which has been grow-
ing in Italy lately—a conviction which has been
formed upon facts.
The question then is, what is to be the decision of
the Zurich Congress ? Is Italy to take back the
Grand Ducal families, with their traditions and
policy, and to be told that not only must the dream
of the last six months be forgotten, but that all this
solid growth of thought must be undone ? Are
French and Austrian influence to combine to restore
substantially the old state of things ? If so we can
foresee but one result. If Italy is weak and must
give way for the time, it is utterly impossible but
that she must show the loathing with which
she submits. A very dangerous state of things
must ensue. It is folly to think that Italians
will return even' to their former state of subter-
ranean disaffection. They will be maddened by
disgust. If overt revolt is not open to them, we can-
not but expect that the dark abyss of the Italian mind
will cast up terrible matter of some sort or other to
the surface. These manifestations must produce
fresh severities, and from such action and reaction
a desperate political whirlpool must arise. It is
impossible to tell the sort of feeling which may
ensue when the rage of the people—and those
people Italians--has been excited to the utmost,
and at the same time every natural expression of it
is suppressed. We know the Italian character,
we know its good points,—its gravity, suavity,
fine feeling, intensity, susceptibility, reserve. We
also know its, dark points ; it is a peculiar dramatic
type of character, and not at all unlike what some
of our own great dramas portray. It is impossible
to conceive any state of things which would rouse
this character to its very depths more effectually
than a forcible reimposition of foreign rule after
the recent rapturous vision of liberty. But what
can it do ? Yes,—that is the question which may
naturally be asked. But unfortunately there is an
answer to it, and we all know what that answer is.
There are old classical tyrannicide theories which
have been revived of late years, and if a foreign
monarch has been thought a suitable and legiti-
mate victim of such a theory, still more may we
fear that a domestic despot, restored by foreign
force, will be thought so.
Let the Constitutionalists of Italy, 'then, reflect
before they allow themselves to be at all won over
by any plan which restores the old Austrian
families against the will of Italy. If they cannot
help themselves they cannot ; but do not let them,
at any rate, be entrapped into any consent. Let
them wipe their hands altogether of such a scheme.
The Mazzinian theorists have lost ground now a
long time, and Constitutionalism has baen in the
ascendant in Italy; but the only result of such a
scheme as this, it it come in at all with the consent

of the Constitutionalists, can be to throw Italy in
despair upon Mazzini and his party again. Con-
stitutionalism will be set down as a mere Doctri-
naire theory which yielded to the first temptation,
and nothing but wild democracy will have ithe
credit of fidelity.

THE NEW FOREIGN OFFICE.