The Sun.
London, England, 1861-09-23 00:00:00

As the Anti-State Church deities might not sell
for much, an eight-day clock and a passage lamp
were added to the booty, and hurried off to be sold for
less than a pound. As to the chemist, he fared
somewhat better. He, too, must pay 15s. 6d. ex-
penses for refusing 3s. 6d. ; but his payment was
not enforced by entering his dwelling-house. The
officials went off, content to help the Church of
England by taking what they thought proper
quantities of tea, coffee, pickles, and the like.
Now, we happen to know none of the persons
concerned in this disgraceful matter ; we are sorry
to say that even the names of the "Great Unpaid"
who put them to the warrant, were unknown to us
till we saw them in print; in a connection, in which
we cannot say that we are " happy to make
their acquaintance." But in the name of Religious
Liberty, in the name of the Church of England it-
self, we beg to remonstrate with all the moving
actors in this business. As the question now
stands, we may excuse the warm Churchmen con-
vening a parish meeting and levying a rate if they
can obtain a majority. For, tirough we are per-
fectly sure that they would do better for their
Church by adopting Sir G. C. LEWIS' advice and
troubling no one for money but the actual wor-
shippers, yet it might be too much to expect of a
hot political :party, to give up the opportunity of
displaying their strength. And. we regard the
Church-rate party, especially during the last two
years, as being nothing but a political
party; there is not a particle of religion in their
cause. It is the vested abuse party, under the
leadership of Lord DERBY; and, till he put himself
at the head of the cry—the Church-rate in danger,
it was daily sinking into into insignificance.
But surely it is quite enough, as matters stand,
to carry the rate in the vestry if it can be carried.
That triumph ought to content all reasonable men.
What further end can be gained by wresting
small sums from known Dissenters, at an extrava-
gant cost, we are at a loss to conceive. The
money cannot be the object, for we feel sure there
must be a score or two of Churchmen in Dorking,
who could pay voluntarily the whole amount
which Dissenters in Dorking could be made to pay
and not miss it from their bankers' balance, pro-
bably not from the loose money in their pockets. It
cannot be any principle, since that has been already
vindicated in their holding a meeting and laying
a rate, which, if legally laid, of course, they can
levy. It cannot be to frighten others, since all
Churchmen would willingly pay the rate laid in
accordance with the present law. If, indeed, the
Churchmen in Dorking would not pay except by
compulsion, they should be attacked first ; but as
the rate could not be laid without a majority of
Churchmen, the supposition seems impossible.
It is therefore difficult for those at a distance who
hear of these facts, to imagine any motive but a
very unreligious one for such acts as these.
Passions and feelings such as we pray in the
Litany to be delivered from, are what every reader
of these facts will at once believe to actuate those
who in the present state of public opinion can dis-
grace religion and their Church by seizing Dissen-
ter's gocds. The act is a public scandal. Many
timid but worthy people may feell,some doubt as
to how the offensive feature of Church Rates, that
of taxing those who voluntarily support their own
worship can be best removed—that is, with
most safety to the pecuniary interests of
the Church ; but we can hardly conceive
of any reasonable man at this time of day, having
the least least doubt that raids and forays on Dis-
senters' pictures, clocks, lamps, tea, coffee, pickles,
pomade, and so forth, are :calculated to bring the
Church in whose name it is done into hatred and
contempt.

We read further in our contemporary. " The mat-
ter, however, is not likely to end there, as a determina-
tion exists to institute legal proceedings against all
concerned in this act of spoliation. Donations of £lO
£5, and sums of smaller amount are already pro-
mised toward the commencement of an action in
the Court of Queen's Bench, and there is no doubt
that an appeal to the friends of religious liberty
generally for pecuniary assistance would be
promptly and liberally responded to." This shows
that there is something much beyond a money
question in this business. This is, in plain truth,
bad blood, and the parties guilty of originating
it must be the Rate party. We beg that party to
put themselves in the Dissenters' place. They are
Englishmen, and if they be, and if a rival sect came
to them, told them that they had legal power to
make them pay for their worship, in addition to
their own, we imagine they would button up their
pockets, and bid them take what they could get.
We certainly know that such would be our feeling;
and it is just because we fairly realise what we
should feel in the same position at Dissenters that
we denounce seizures for Church-rates as an
outrage on the religious sentiments of the English
public. The men who can, at this time of day, be
guilty of it, would, in Catholic countries, im-
prison men for reading the Bible, or would, as
in Spain, prohibit any worship but their own
altogether.

The proposed abolition of Passports in Holland
is a most satisfactory piece of intelligence, and one
that all lovers of freedom must rejoice at. Few of
the contrivances of despotic Governments are more
vexatious and prove more irksome than the enforce-
ment of that inquisitorial system. It interferes with
the freedom of travelling, as the complicated
arrangements of the passport office present
hindrances at every step. Another disadvantage
of paramount importance is that it places restric-
tions on commerce and prevents the carrying out of
many plans from absurd stoppages and unnecessary
delays, where immediate action is often requisite
and unfettered progress all but indispensable.
The intimation to her MAJESTY'S Ministers
declares that no subject of Great Britain
travelling through Holland will require a
passport. Such information is always wel-
come, both for the immediate good, and the
prospective advantage, inasmuch as any state that
inaugurates this system of free traffic and non-
interference is a pioneer of progress to less favoured
nations. England has always been foremost in
this cause and it is certain that we have fewer
conspiracies than those countries where the police
have the right of surveillance into the most minute
particulars of social life, and where the law permits
innocent persons who are supposed to be tiresome
to the authorities, or likely to prove at all in their
way to be committed to prison and kept there for
years par prevention. The very irritation pro-
duced by such unnatural regulations raises up real
malcontents in place of imaginary ones; these are
dealt with in their turn with all the rigour of the
offended law, and the cruel codes of such statutes
sow broadcast the seeds of revolution and fill the
prisons with wretched victims to the tyranny of
absolute rule and the wild rage of reckless
democrats. It is one great point gained, if the
English are allowed a free ingress and egress to and
from those countries where the light of their liberty
has not yet penetrated, and where the blessings of
their free institutions have not prevailed. The in-
fluence must be felt ; and if the example of France
and Holland be followed by the northern countries,
as has been suggested in the case of Sweden and
Norway, the day may not be far distant when the

5 -4''

traveller from our free shores may find reciprocal
advantages in the states he traverses, as the visitors
from those states have so long enjoyed when coming
to our land. Immunity from annoying arrange-
ments and restrictive interpositions will prove an
immense advantage to all engaged in commercial
transactions, and the Government of the King of the
NETHERLANDS has certainly made a step in the
right direction, and deserves commendation from
all concerned in the cause of freedom.

THE GREAT EASTERN.

(From the Examiner.)
The disaster of the Great Eastern raises two dis-
tinct questions. Was she sent to sea to cross the
Atlantic at a season when gales are to be expected
with all the proper precautions against bad weather?
Does her scale exceed the size of a good and man-
ageable sea boat ? As for the first question, it may
be shortly answered. It seems that nothing was
properly secured. Everything broke adrift when
the ship began to roll violently. The cabin tables
were not lashed, and the furniture was arranged as
it might be in a river steamer, where smooth water
may always be reckoned on. The consequence
was, that the vessel was internally wrecked by
her own motion as much as if she had been beat-
ing on a rock. A cow-house with two cows
broke into the ladies' cabin, everything movable
was flying violently about ; and as one of the
witnesses, who well describes the scene, says,
the stewards were capturing the various ar-
ticles of furniture and binding them down
as if they were so many wild and savage
beasts. A mirror and a stove fell out, and into a
conflict in which several persons interposing were
injured. The narrator in the Times had his head
cut, a finger dislocated, a tooth knocked out. In
another cabin an attempt was made to supply some
food :

The passengers catch hold of tho tables to support them-
selves. The tables are not fastened, for whoever supposed
the big ship would become so rampant ? The tables give
way, and the scene of the grand saloon is enacted again
with fearful violence. The stewards rush into the rescue,
but in two minutes every piece of crockery on the table is
inevitably smashed, knives and forks fly about in reckless
confusion, and the scene closes by a general accumulation
of tables, chairs, crockery, passengers, and stewards in the
middle of the saloon.

To realise what passed, imagine a large room
dashed violently about, the persons in it thrown
rapidly from one side to the other, backwards and
forwards, and every moveable article of furniture
becoming a restless missile. The astonishment is
that the passengers did not suffer greater injury,
but several, amongst them a lady, have been seri-
ously hurt. Who would have thought it ? will be
the apology for all the omissions of precaution, and
consequent mischief.

On deck things were not managed much better
than below. Indeed the disaster seems to have
commenced with the breaking of the tackles of one
of the forward boats suspended from davits. One
of the accounts in the Times says :
Efforts were made to secure the boat, but these proving un-
availing the captain ordered it to be cut away, at the same
time directing the paddles to be stopped and the helm to be
put down to bring the ship up in the wind, in order that
the boat might drift clear of the wheel. The vessel did not
answer her helm, but the boat fortunately went clear.
There must be error here, as bringing the ship to
the wind would have rendered it more likely that
the boat drifting to leeward alongside would foul
the wheel.

Another account gives a better clue to the primary
cause of the disaster. The ship was making head
against the storm when the accident happened to
the boat which made it necessary to cut it away,
and in order that it might drift clear of the wheel,
the ship's port side was exposed to the gale to make
a lee for the boat to drive wide of the other side.
The broadside once shown to to the wind, the vessel
could never afterwards be brought head to wind, or
near it. She had irrecoverably lost that advan-
tageous position for the whole of the storm, and
lay like a log helplessly tumbling and rolling in
the trough of the sea.
The first account to which we have referred says
that when the ship fell off, the captain ordered the
head sails to be hoisted for the purpose of bringing
her head up; but the effect would be the exact
opposite, and if the head sails were indeed hoisted
it was in the hope of wearing her, or bringing her
round not to the wind but from the wind. The sails,
however, were blown away, and it is probable that
in so large a vessel, wanting head-way, sails will
no more stand against the fury of a gale than they
would if set upon an immovable body.
The sails not being of a power to act on so immense
a body, offer a dead resistance to the wind, and are
torn to ribbons. One after another the paddle-
wheels of the Great Eastern were next carried
away.

In the endeavours to get the ship out of her
jeopardy in the trough of the sea, the rudder head,
a piece of iron ten inches thick, broke like a twig,
and the vessel was then thoroughly disabled, the
working of the screw having been stopped by the
wreck of the rudder. Happily, she had amongst
her passengers an American civil engineer, Mr.
Towle, by whose skill a steering apparatus was ulti-
mately contrived, but from Thursday to Sunday
the ship was labouring with the buffetings of the
Atlantic, for it was impossible to do anything
with her.

No other vessel, it is said, could have borne what
she bore, but the question is, whether another
vessel would have been placed in the same difficulty
and danger. We cannot but think that one of
Cunard's compact, handy ships, with all things in
due proportion, the steerage power equal to the
length, would have weathered the storm which
proved too much for the huge Great Eastern. In-
deed, the Candia, homeward bound, was near the
same place at the same time; and the little brig
Magnet, of Nova Scotia, made good weather of it,
and lay by the huge ship in her distress. It may
be, however, that the Great Eastern was in the
focus of the gale. Bat be that as it may, the ques-
tion is whether so huge a body does not offer too
much resistance to the wind and sea. A smaller
vessel, while she presents a less surface, yields
more.
It is to be remembered, too, that in the Great
Eastern a bold departure was taken from all experi-
ences. The steering power necessary to vessels of
ordinary size was understood and easy of adjust-
ment, and also the effect of the sails, but with the
vast length of the Eastern all this has been doubt-
ful and left to experiment. We may be reminded
that she has before been found handy, but she
was not then put to the extreme trial in which she
has been found wanting. When she was designed
the calculation was that the surges of the Atlantic
would be to her only what the ripple of the
Thames is to a river steamer ; but it would now
appear that she is like those sovereigns who are
either absolute in their sway over their subjects, or
powerless against their revolt. A smaller vessel is
like a constitutional king, whose safety lies in
timely concession.
Still it may be said that the ship has not
been fairly tried, but whose fault is that ? If
her boats had been properly secured her side would
not have been turned to the gale, in order to
get clear of one of them adrift, and she might
have continued to hold her course head to wind, or
to lay to in that safe position, with some head-way
from the screw to keep life in her. But still it
is an awkward fact that so small a derangement
as happened, taking the best view of the case, was
so disastrous and dangerous in its consequences,
and irremediable so long as the gale lasted.

HOOD'S LAST LETTER TO SIR ROBT. PEEL, AND
THE REPLY.—" Dear Sir,—We are not to meet in the flesh.
Given over by my physicians and by myself, I am only
kept alive by frequent instalments of mulled port wine.
In this extremity, I feel a comfort, for which I cannot re-
frain from again thanking you, with all the sincerity of a
dying man—and, at the same time, bidding you a re•
spectful farewell. Thank God, my mind is composed, and
my reason undisturbed, but my race as an author is run.
My physical debility finds no tonic virtue in a steel pen,
otherwise I would have written one more paper—a fore-
warning one—against an evil, or the danger of it, arising
froma
c ne
..as
iliterary m
humanity,
o ve noe
pnpt
oi
sni twe h
toi cthh
alt hcaavt
he
ohl
ia m
cd
ssho
ake sh
are,
a pseraur et:
sympathy, which felt with king as well as peasant, and duly
estimated the moral temptation of both stations. Certain
classes at the poles of society are already too far asunder;
it should be the duty of our writers to draw them nearer by
kindly attraction, not to aggravate the existing repulsion,
and place a wider moral gulf between rich and poor, with
hate on the one side and fear on the other. But I am too
weak for this task, the last I had se' myself ; it is death
that stops my pen, you see, and not the pension. God bless
you, sir, and prosper all your measures for the benefit of
my beloved country.—l have the honour to be, sir, your
most grateful and obedient servant, THOMAS HOOD." This
Sir Robert Peel answered in the following note :—" Dear
Sir,—l must write one line to express an earnest hope that
it will please God to restore you to health and strength ;
and that you may be enabled to apply your unimpaired
faculties to the inculcation of those just and really benevo-
lent doctrines which are shadowed out in the letter you
have addressed to me.—With my best wishes, believe me,
dear sir, faithfully yours, ROBERT PEEL."
A telegram received by Messrs. Glass, Elliot, and
Co. from Port Vendrel, announces that the submarine tele-
graph cable lately laid between that port and Minorca has
been joined to the cable laid between Algiers and Minorca
in September last, and that a direct communication is now
OStablished between France and Algiers.