The Sun.
London, England, 1868-01-13 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

According to the Times, the fact that so many special
constables have come forward makes it highly improbable
that they will be called upon to perform any real duty.
The most determined conspirators are awed when they find
society against them. It is, however, highly important
that the efficiency of the new force should be maintained. It
is obvious that the improvised police army recently created
can be of the greatest service as supplemental and auxiliary
to the standing police body. We have already a well-
organised force, trained and instructed, and what is desir-
able is that the volunteer constables should assist and in-
crease the existing force. It is accordingly recommended
that the special constables should be associated together
in parishes. Those enrolled in each parish should elect a
superintendent to command them, and one of the police-
stations in the parish should be appointed as the headquar-
ters of the division. It was originally recommended that
men accustomed to command as officers in the regular or
volunteer service should be chosen as superintendents;
but it has been apparently thought, and with reason, that
the special constables themselves might be trusted to exer-
cise a wise discretion in their choice. The special con-
stables in a parish may be divided and subdivided
where the parish is large, and may again be aggre-
gated with the constables of other parishes where
they lie in the same city or borough. Subordinate
to the police-station selected as headquarters, and the
superintendent attached to it, every police-station in the
parish should be used as a rallying-point, with a deputy-
superintendent commanding a subdivision attached to it,
and the subdivisions again may be divided into sections,
assembling at some outlying rallying point under their as-
sistant-superintendent. The hierarchy is thus complete,
though it manifestly admits of indefinite extension. We
might have a united division in cities and boroughs with
its superintendent-in-chief, divisions or palishes with their
superintendents, sub-divisions at every police-station, with
their deputy-superintendents, and sections at outlying
stations commanded by assistant-superintendents. Lists
of all the constables attached to particular points must, of
course, be kept at each, and the roll of the united force is
directed to be sent to Colonel Ewart, at the special con-
stables' office, at the Wellington Barracks. The facility
with which a body thus organised can be summoned to
action in case of necessity is manifest, and the Instruc-
tions of the Home Secretary contain a caut ion
against the abuse of a tempting power. The special
constables who have been enrolled are mainly men whose
time is occupied in their respective trades and employ.
ments, and who have come forward to defend the peace of
the families and homes they labour to maintain. Such
men must not be summoned to duty unless duty actually
summons them ; and superintendents are warned to
abstain from making undue calls on their time, and,
except under circumstances not admitting of doubt or
delay, not to turn out their men without the requisition of
the police or the order of a justice of the peace. Elemen-
tary drill may be taught if the men have time and aro
desirous of learning it, and the proper method of handling
the constable's staff is declared to be an essential item of
instruction. Under no circumstances should the loop be
passed through a hole in the staff, or the staff be attached
to the wrist by the loop.

The Daily News gives the Government the credit of
being actuated by the best intentions, but believes that
they make a mistake in prosecuting a hostile newspaper for
matter the publication of which they condone in friendly
or neutral journals. The pretence of public danger will
not bear examination. The prosecution will do more to
create disaffection than the conduct of the prosecuted
journal. The Government, against their wish and better
reason, are obeying a blind impulse which a few months
ago they felt themselves strong enough to disregard. In
Ireland, in almost all her times of previous trouble there
has existed a force of calm and liberal opinion which has
restrained the propensity of the Executive to gratuitous
measures of suppression, and has been a counterpoise to
the efforts of the more violent factions. There are few
traces of the existence of this feeling now. The t xtiu:
guisher has caught fire. The engines are pouring, not
water, but oil on the flames. The demand of excited
loyalty for acts of vigour is urging the Government into
petty and irritating measures. By all means let -Fenianism
be struck hard and home. But let us have no ran-
dom blows, nor any mere beating of the air. It is a
mistake to waste the forces of coercion and suppression.
The prosecution of the North Briton made John Wilkes a
martyr and a popular hero; and the prosecution of the
Irishman may do the same for Mr. Richard Pigott.

The Herald has no reason to doubt that the real evil of
Ireland is the evil that prevents the development of its
resources, and that Fenioasism is therefore only another
form of the malady it pretends to be curing. The misfor-
tone now is the same which preceded the English conquest.
Those who have, and those who have not, are equally
prone to keep unsettled the relations which fructify in-
dustry and beatify good order and manly independence.
All our legislation has been subject to these drawbacks,
and till these disappear we should only deceive ourselves
if we expect much more from any changes of the law we
may contemplate than have already been realised for
Ireland by the many great and fundamental legal changes
which have followed our repeal of the Test and Corpora-
tion Acts. There has always been a worm in the bud of
Irish industry beyond all the powers of treatment in the
English Parliament, and the damask cheek and the hectic
glow which we have been mistaking for the indications of
health have been only the symptoms of an internal and
deeply-seated disease that was undermining the patient in
the proportion we were invited to admire her. Whatever
we may do as legislators, therefore, we may expect little
really to be done until the day when we shall see esta-
blished a system of honest industry and peaceful order
based on the unwritten law of social fair play and manly
independence. In the meantime, one of the best things
we can probably do is to encourage people there to protect
one another against the felonious violence they are unable
to suppress, and to give the best help we can in the good
service.

The Slandc:rd asks the Daily News if it is content to
regarded as a Fenian organ, or, at any rate, as sympathiz-
ing with the Fenian movement ; and its reason for putting
this plain question is its insertion of a letter on Saturday.
from Colonel Burke's solicitor, calling upon the charitable
to subscribe to a fund for providing the expenses for that
person's defence. Now this Colonel Burke has been busy
for months in this country, purchasing arms, plotting and
organising a movement hostile to the Crown and the em-
pire. There can be no reasonable doubt in the mind of any
one who has perused the evidence upon which he has been
committed, that he is a prominent agent in the conspiracy
which is at this moment disturbing the three kingdoms.
The columns of the press teem daily with appeals for the
relief of overwhelming distress ; and amongst them the
chief claim is that of the poor and populous district of
Clerkenwell, laid desolate, as if by an earthquake's shock,
by this accursed Fenian agency, and yet the Daily News
lends the authority of its columns to an appeal for Colonel
Burke. Our contemporary has for some time past taken
rather a Republican than a Radical view of political ques-
tions ; and it certainly is a good deal more American than
lingli.,ll in its general reflections on the policy of this
country. But we would respectfully pat out for its con-
sideration that it is possible to overdo things. There are
American papers which do not advocate the annexation of
Canada ; and American journalists who do not consider it
necessary to espouse the cause of Juarez : nay, there are
influential journals in New York which have denounced
Fenianism in as strong language as any that has been
employed on this side of the Atlantic. 1\ o doubt the
Daity News was only carrying out its principles in sup-
porting the strength of the Federals against the South i no
doubt Quashee was a very good client in his suit against
Governor Eyre ; the King of Dahomey might serve a use-
ferl and even the great Neu is himself—but Fenian
fire and plot, never !

In alluding to the rumour of the probable retirement n 1
Sir ItiehardMayne, the Telegraph reminds us that, in
appointing his successor the principal object to be kept in
view is the special fitness of the chief to develcpe. the civil
efficiency of the corps. The post is one very difficult to
fill well, and, if filled by any one unequal to the position,
the injury to the public would be of the most serious kind.
Great firmness, rapidity of judgment, much knowledge of
the world, the habit of command, the power of discerning
character, are all required to make, not only a first-rate,
but a respectable head of the police. When the late Lord
Melbourne was urged to appoint a gentlepan to a magistrates, on the bench of police agistrates, he asked if the candi-
date had anything of a fool about him, " because," he
added, " a police magistrate's is the One position in life in
which the slightest element of folly is absolutely certain to
display itself." What is true of an ordinary magistrate is
still more true of a commissioner of police. Now, it is
obvious that many of the qualities which we have enu-
men
merated are more likely to be found among milita
than amidst civilians ; and therefore, in mac of a varycancy
in the Chief Commissionership, it is not improbable th:
Government should incline at first to appoint an &Al
soldier to the post. Yet, experience has shewn that such
a selection would be inadmissible. A man trained in civil
life, with a civilian tone of thought, civilian rules of con-
duct, and a true appreciation of civil relations, can alone
impart to our police that character which constitutes its
rea strength, and its hold on the public respect and
sur port.

The Post, in discussing our chances of success in
rthrs.iinia, would have us remember that Theodore has
already shewn hizasAf an adept in the art of keeping what
I,e has got, and there is every prospect that he will take
measures to send the captives, and, if he cannot reach
those at Magdala, at any rate those he has wit!i him, as
far away as possible from the reach of the British army
which is seeking them, and a very slight start would
enable him to place such a distance between the two as
would render the return of the force with the prisoners by
the end of March a, simple impossibility. But, unless so
much is effected, not only will the object of the expedition
not have been gained, but it will be exposed to the greatest
peril even in the matter of bare subsistence, and will have
to take up an entirely new position and task, involving
nothing less than a permanent occupation of Abyssinia
under the most unfavourable circumstances. As we know
that at present such an occupation is not intended, it is
probable that the eventuality has not been provided for.
Nevertheless, there are, as we have seen, the strongei-t
reasons for expecting that it will have to be met, and w,
can only hope that the difficulty of meeting it may be less
than it at present appears. But there is a-very great risk
of its proving rather greater than less,