The Sun.
London, England, 1868-09-11 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The stream of returning tourists has this year a splendid
addition. Queen Victoria has had the enterprise and the
good sense to see what every one of her subjects sees if he
can, and has accomplished a few of the most familiar,
most accessible, and, it may be added, most beautiful
objects in Switzerland. The Times confesses itself well
pleased that her Majesty's circle of travel should be
widened, and that she should see more than is visible in a
periodical oscillation between Osborne and Balmoral.
Anything to interrupt an inveterate habit and break the
spell of sorrowful and saddening recollections. Why else
were these marvels of creation given us, these glimpses of
a new heaven and a new earth IP There are few, if any,
who do not require, at least once in their lives, to have
the train of thought turned by some sweet violence into
a more practical and salutary direction. Since new duties
cannot be made, or new persons started into existence,
new scenes are the appointed method, and no balm is
more soothing or effective. Often and often are returning
tourists found to aver they do not come home rested in
body, or certainly better in physical health ; Lut that in
the fund of new impressions and the passing away of
old troubles they feel the certainty of returning health
and strength and a new lease of vitality. Having
thrown herself, with a laudable effort, into the great
European stream of tourists, even for a few days,
the Queen will feel herself once more in the living,
moving world. There, in the presence of a more than
human majesty, and in a Court higher than that of any
earthly realm, she has seen a gathering of all nations as-
sembled to offer at least the secret service of their souls.
It is an occasion and a spectacle to open the heart long
locked in private contemplation, to revive the sympathies,
and to reduce to its due proportion everything that
is exaggerated and engrossing. The Queen now shares
with her subjects many of the grandest recollec-
tions that nature can supply, and, that can at once
elevate and bring into unison the souls of all that have
them. In this way she is more at home with us, and a
sharer of thoughts and pleasures almost domestic in their
character. She has felt that touch of Alpine nature
which makes us all kin. The beauties of Switzerland are
household words in this country, and at every fireside
where they are known and remembered the royal tourist
will now be, in thought, a fellow-traveller and self-invited
guest.
The Post, whilst concurring in the exclusion of political
offences from the category of extradition crimes, can see
no reason why the existing list of some half-dozen offences
should not be made to include all those crimes which, on
account of their gravity, are classified by us as felonies It
appears to us that the guiding principle should be this :
that if an offence was of such magnitude as probably to
make it worth the while of a State, in the interests of its
own community, to seek the extradition of the offender,
that offence should find a place in the proposed Act of Par-
liament. With respect to the mode of procedure in the pre-
liminary inquiry, it is evident that it can alone be such
as is consonant with our established practice, and that
we could find no justification for delivering up, for the
purpose of being tried in a foreign country, any indi-
vidual against whom sufficient evidence was not adduced
which would lead us, in the event of our possessing juris-
diction, to commit him for trial in this country. The
French, for example, examine the accused, and, being
governed in their judicial procedure by no laws of evi-
dence, are satisfied with testimony which we would
reject ; but although, owing to this course, we may some-
times succeed in obtaining the extradition of criminals
by them, whilst under similar circumstances they
would fail in a like demand upon us, this discrepancy
cannot be remedied. By the Act of Parliament to which
the committee refer we have made considerable conces-
sions in order to facilitate the reception of evidence in
-cases of demands for extradition ; and this Act, which
expires in the present year, will probably be continued.
The facilities afforded to those whom we may be called
upon to surrender, to test, not only before a police
magistrate, but before one of the judges of the superior
courts, the validity of the demand for extradition, will
offer a perfect guarantee against the possibility of spirit-
ing an individual out of the country without-due inquiry.
The charge of the Archbishop of Armagh, like that of
the Archbishop of Dublin, is occupied with one subject—
the approaching disestablishment of the Irish branch of
the English Church. But whilst the Daily News is of
opinion that Dr. Trench may be pitied for descending from
literature and scholarship to sophistries and pleas for
'injustice, it thinks his brother archbishop, Dr. Marcus
Beresford, who is innocent of any contributions to litera-
ture or theology, occupies a somewhat different place. He
can scarcely be expected to see that the position which he
and his family have occupied nearly for centuries is a false
one. It has been computed, upon data of which
the substantial accuracy does not admit of denial,
that in three generations the family of Beresford
have drawn between three and four millions sterling from
the ecclesiastical revenues of Ireland. Dr. Beresford'e
relative and immediate predecessor in the archiepiscopal
see of Armagh is calculated during his ministry to li-tv
netted no less a sum than R 830,000 ; and Dr. Bcres'oro
himself has not starved during his ecclesiastical career.
To declare the Irish Church a wrong and abuse
would be to defile the graves of his ancestors
In the accumulation of vast sums .this inns
trious family has not neglected spiall gains. Be
fore Dr. Marcus Beresford acquired archiepiscopal
dignity, lie had won fame in verse, not as a singer, but as
the subject of one of Tom Moore's songs, called "The
Rector and the Curate, or One Pound Two," an amount
which Dr. Marcus Beresford formally claimed as balance
in his favour, from a curate whom he was dismissing, from
a salary of £7O a year. Prudence and frugality are virtues,
and Dr. Beresford is entitled to such credit as this display
of them may entitle him to. Whatever may be thought
of this episode, unfortunately immortalised in verse that
will last longer than Dr. Beresford's charge, the
Archbishop of Armagh is, we believe, a well-meaning
and well-disposed gentleman. But though he cannot
be expected to see a thinly-disguised family pride
and latent egotism beneath the veils of his own
Protestant and ecclesiastical zeal, he ought not to be
first to impute interested motives to the assailants of an
Establishment who have no personal motive in attacking
it by any means so clear or obvious as his personal reasons
for defending it.

The Telegraph would ask the Primate whether,
if ecclesiastical property be thus inalienable, the
Church can ever sanction any arrangement by virtue of
which any part of that property has been alienated by the
State. WO presume that she cannot ; and, if she cannot,
Dr. Beresford must undertake a slightly unpleasant, as
well as difficult, work. At one time or other, half the
soil of England and Ireland has belonged to the Church,
and she has been bereft of property to the amount of
millions a year by the action of the State or by the
treachery of those prelates and abbots who gave away her
lands to their relatives. The greatest nobles in England
and Ireland were enriched by what was ones Church pro-
perty. Does the Lord Primate deny the right of these
nobles to their possessions?

The Standard credits the delegates at Brussels with a
sensible conclusion on the subject of strikes. In order that
a strike should be successful, they agreed it must be just
and opportune— two conditions which the London cabmen
have caused themselves considerable inconvenience by not
remembering. The meeting seems to have been unani-
mously in favour of " absorption of capital by
work." If this means that the wage-paid classes
should endeavour by regular and systematic labour
and thrift to " absorb " capital, and so become
capitalists for themselves, the suggestion does great credit
to the congress, and the workmen ought to be encouraged
everywhere to carry it into effect. The artisans of the
world are on the high road to better fortune when they
once make up their minds that they must look for advance-
ment, not to the turbulence and selfish intrigues of dema-
dogues, but to their own exertions, wisely and properly
irected. So far as the Brussels Congress has impressed
this lesson upon the delegates it has done good which
everyone should be glad to recognise.
Adverting to the gallant defence of Samarcand by a
body of less than 800 Russians against an army of 50,000
strong, the Herald asks what is the inference to be drawn
from these events? We have already more than once
attracted notice to the fact that they are leading Russia
by rapid degrees up to the granite stronghold of our Indian
empire—Afghanistan. But we are not at present noticing
the siege and defence of Samarcand with any particularly
political purpose. That old city, whose gates have
been opened for centuries past to the mightiest caravans
of Oriental commerce, which is traversed by enormous
highways, familiar to the feet of millions, and which has
connected itself with splendid episodes of history, illus-
trates a strange condition of affairs in Central Asia.
Where are those manufactures once so famous ? Where is
the trade once so envied? The people seem to be dead,
and, although they can fight gallantly for a citadel and
flash out the sabres of the desert as nobly as did their
forefathers, they make no progress in society or civilisa-
tion ; they are doomed • doomed irreparably, to be eaten
up leaf by leaf like the Italian artichoke, by the vast creep-
ing power which already overshadows and will ultimatel:,
overwhelm them.

ncs warns the men in a triencily spirit that a com-
prehensive revision of the Acts affecting the trade is by no
means certain to end to their satisfaction, for many
demands have been preferred in the public interest which
neither owners nor drivers may find agreeable. At any
rate, we recommend them to resume their business now
with the same good humour which they have all along
maintained. They have brought upon themselves a
deserved defeat ; but we are all now quite ready to let
bygones be bygones, and to think no more about the
matter.

The Herald thinks the cabman might have remembered
that such demonstrations as those in which he has been
recently indulging have one cardinal and incurable
infirmity. They do not pay. They may look heroic enough
in some people's eyes, but they are not much good to men
who live from hand to mouth, and who often find it hard
work to pay house-rent and keep on good terms with the
grocer and baker. A struggle for £12,000 a year sounds
rather grand, but when it has to be kept up at a cost of
£50,000 a week, a very simple calculation settles the
question of possible profit from a strike which everyone
foreaaw could not lakt =my days. •