The Sun.
London, England, 1868-08-12 00:00:00

SPLRIT OFT.ITE ii:JBLIC JOURNALS.

The Times is at a loss to account for the choice of Lord
Mayo as Governor-General. Those who give entire credit
to the report intimate that it is rather too "big a thing"
for a Government under sentence and with its very days
numbered. They even talk wildly of the appointment
being revoked upon this ground, and hint that very
shortly after the arrival of Lord Mayo at his post he may
find himself telegraphed for from home. We cannot
anticipate so severe and offensive a rebuke. Nor
is it at all necessary that a Viceroy should
be recalled simply on the ground of his ante-
cedent unfitness. If Lord Mayo should not be
the man for India, ho will show it as soon as he begins to
do anything more than he is told to do. He will soon
have to take a line of his own, as every Viceroy has in his
turn, and people at home will hear all about it. We will
not anticipate the verdict of a Parliament not yet in
existence upon questions which we hope will never arise.
But is it wise to run these risks ? That we hold
India at all is a standing miracle. At any moment
the natural probabilities seem against its con-
tinuance. The spell is inscrutable, and not to be pro-
nounced by mortal lips. How the strands were spun
and twisted, and of what material and under what planets,
none of us know. The fact and the apology is that we hold
India, and we must hold India. We cannot send her
adrift. We cannot drop her into the abyss. We cannot
see that fragile consistency broken into a thousand shreds.
A heavy burden has been cast upon us, and we must
bear it as we can to the very end of the chapter.
All we do know is that the story of our Indian
Empire is a succession of prodigies prodigies of
daring, of perseverance, of fortitude, of military
skill and prowess, of diplomacy, of statecraft, of tact,
of all the qualities that govern the world. British India
has hitherto always found men equal to the occasion. It
is not surprising, then, that even courageous and san-
guine people should scrutinise narrowly every fresh link
in the great human chain upon which so much depends.
At certain intervals the fastest railway train is arrested
for a few minutes while a knowing man taps every axle
and listens to the ring, for the slightest unsoundness in
any one axle might cost the lives or the limbs of the
whole train. India has passed through very great
perils. Those perils, it may be observed, have
each one been greater than that which went before, as if
we were gradually rising to a climax of difficulty, and to a
crisis beyond present anticipation. The questions upon
which our dominion hangs are becoming more and more
social. They relate more and more to the official relations
and the private intercourse between the governing and the
governed races ; and they tend towards the ultimate self-
government of India. A change in this direction will by
no means dispense with that wide acquaintance with
India, that singular devotion to Indian interests, for-
tunately for us all, long exhibited by our leading Indian
statesmen and rulers, but of which Lord Mayo has given
no sign.

The Post approves of the course taken by Mr. Justice
Hannen in sentencing the Ashton rioters in a batch. He
has drawn with a strong and steady hand the lino which
marks the boundary between judicial action and
philosophical thought. He has put—we hope we may be
right if we say established—the difference between the
duties of a judge administering criminal law and the sphere
of an essayist discussing distinctions capable of being
imagined or found in offences against it. It is time, nay,
more, it has become pressing, that this should be done ;
that the difference should be understood and recognised
and the recognition acted upon in all the courts of justice
in the country. Under the influence of the many-tongued
Social Science Associations juries and even judges some-
times have become bewildered with words and fine-drawn
disquisitions, as inane and as tiresome in their particu-
larity as the debates in the Courts of Love of the Trouba-
dours ; and to such a degree has frothy subtlety pushed
puzzlcdom, that refinement in definition has well-nigh
neutralised perception, and positive conviction come to be
regarded as a thing to be shrunk from and devoutly
repudiated. We want common sense on the bench and
in the courts, and Mr. Justice Hannen has given it to us,
as far as one man can give it, wisely, strongly, and oppor-
tunely.

The Daily News believes that the damage and suffering
were tenfold magnified by the sheer want of a due supply
of water. The season is dry, everything in our houses is
more than ordinarily inflammable, the supply of water all
over London is running short, and all the companies are
economising. A fire in our own houses, in our neighbours'
houses, or across the street, may break out any night, and
if it breaks out it will make rapid progress. The engines will
be sent for and will arrive, but the firemen may have to
stand looking idly on, while the flames leap from house to
house, and the terrified inmates vainly wring their hands,
and frantically shriek for succour: And all because there
is no water in the smaller mains, because we don't know
how to get at the larger ones, and because the company's
reservoirs are far away ! These reflections certainly point
to a grave defect in our municipal arrangements.
We have, only last year, recognised that fires concern
the community, and not merely the actual sufferers,
and, impressed with this fact, we have trans-
ferred the control of the Fire Brigade from the
insurance offices to the Board of Works, which for
the present represents our municipality. But we have
left the water pipes in the hands of private and separate
trading companies. So when the officers of the munici-
pality desire to work the engines, they are paralysed
because the water is private propeity, and cannot be
got at. Here is a solution of continuity in our civic
arrangements which may well startle us. It seems obvious
that such an arrangement must from time to
time produce the same results as those we have
just seen so terribly exemplified. It is impossible
to expect a public body and a private body to be always
prepared to work well together. We know not indeed if it
is even the duty of the water companies to provide water
for fires. But even if it is, and granting that in any case
they would be ready to do so, it is obvious that the service
cannot be efficiently rendered so long as their servants and
not the firemen have the command and knowledge of the

The Herald says that the arrival of Mr. Davis at Liver-
pool has naturally excited a good deal of interest and
attention. Nor is there any reason to wonder at the warm
reception he has met with ; though there is much cause to
rejoice at the quiet and unostentatious character which
the demonstration of respect and sympathy have assumed.
Indeed, wherever ho may shew himself among English-
men, Mr. Davis is sure to be welcomed with every mark
of esteem and admiration. The heroes of an unfortu-
nate cause are always popular with us, especially
when they have struggled and suffered on behalf of a
people battling for national independence. Kossuth,
fresh from a Turkish detention and from the Hungarian
rebellion, was greeted with enthusiastic applause by every
class of the community ; even Mazzini's name was popular
until the recollections of the gallant defence of Rome were
effaced by other and less honourable associations. Political
exiles always find us predisposed in their favour, whatever
their party and whatever the cause for which they
suffered. It would be unfortunate, and it would be
unworthy, were the American people to take offence
at the welcome given to the chief of the fallen Con-
federacy. We may request them to remember that
we have nothing to do with their present feuds and
merely political squabbles—with the abrogation of
. .

Southern State rights and the proscription of Southern
citizens. To us South and North are now parts of one
American Union, and Mr. Davis is a man honoured and
esteemed throughout one-half of that Union, as few
unsuccessful leaders have ever been honoured by those
whom they conducted to defeat and ruin. We welcome
not the enemy of the United States, but the chief of the
Southern people. We honour not so much the living as
the dead ; we express our sympathy with no present party
strife, no possible aspirations for the future, but with a
past that, however glorious, however honourable, however
full of lofty deeds and great achievements, is beyond

The Times thinks that it is on the question of the
Irish
Church. that Mr. Forster best deserves attention. We
should never dream of consulting Mr. Forster on intricate question of political science ; we should count atan
no great price his judgment on any problem of social
economy. His reasoning is too apt to be inarticulate. It
moves in jerks. There are breaks of continuity in his
processes of proof. It is when he is expounding some
simple truth to simple men that we welcome his arguments
as useful adjuncts to the appeals of more subtle reasoners.
The views of a candidate upon the Irish Church not only
furnish the test between a Liberal and a Conservative
but the way in which they are enunciated and developede
is the best mode of distinguishing between rival Liberals.
Mr. Forster bad something to say upon all the topics which
have lately come before Parliament, or appear likely to be
soon made the subject of discussion. He discoursed upon
economy, upon education, and upon the, completion of the
work of Deform, and these are an matters of importance,
but they are merely subsry to the main question
before the nation, and there is danger lest they
should be disproportionately magnified. In.fact, the man
whose views on the Iri:th Church are thoroughly sound
gives a pledge of economy, for the Irish Establishment is
a symbol of wasted power ; he approves himself a friend
of sound educational progress, for the Irish Establishment
is the embodiment of the errors which infect our educa-
tional system and retard its development ; and he is a
courageous Reformer, for he do':s not hesitate to assist in
dvstroying an anomalous institution however long.
established or deep-rooted

The Telegraph reminds us that when the Archbishop of
Canterbury speaks and acts, he is usually understood tc
express the mind and act the will of the Church • yet if
'
he should continue to sanction the stratagem by which it
is sought to set up Dr. Afacrorie as bishop in Natal, he
must sanction a policy that would place the Church it
antagonism to the law by which it holds its position it
this country. This would be far worse than schism in the
Church— it would be schism of the Church, severance of
the Church, severance of the bonds that unite the Churct
and
the State. If it is true that the Archbishop coup.
tenances such a course, he must answer to the grave charge
of dealing a 'blow at the relations between Church and
Statemian Illumorecybeor yld4n
morefatal than any of which Dia:
OlN4cd.