The Sun.
London, England, 1868-04-10 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF T

PUBLIC JOURNALS.

In reviewing the story of Dr. Livingstone, his reported
death, and his ascertained safety, the Times gives expres-
sion to two feelings produced by it. One is of indignation
at those rascally Johanna men whose deliberate lies have
occasioned all this anxiety during the past year. There
can now be no doubt that those men deserted Dr. Living-
stone, and, taking for granted that he would come to harm
in the interior, ventured to fabricate the story of his de-
struction. In addition to the anxiety and pain they have
occasioned, they have put the country to the trouble of a
search expedition; and, besides the expenditure of money,
valuable lives have been hazarded in order to disprove
their falsehoods. The last we heard of them was that
they had had the impudence to send to Zanzibar to demand
their wages. Sir Samuel Baker recently expressed a
regret that, while Africa was so rich in specimens of the
feline tribe, it should be destitute of a cat-o'-nine-tails.
We suppose it is impossible to punish these rascals, but
we trust they have not received a farthing of money. The
other feeling we must entertain is one of gratitude to Sir
Roderick It rnrchison, who has maintained thronghout,

with a tenacity which some people called obstinacy, a
belief in Dr. Livingstone's safety. Perhaps his own
energy inspired him unconsciously with a conviction that
Dr. Livingston; like himself, would not be overcome
by any ordinary obstacles ; but, at all events, bis
acuteness and his firmness have rendered a most valuable
service both to the public and to Dr. Livingstone's friends.
As recently as January, so great an authority as Sir
Samuel Baker spoke of " hoping almost against hope "
for the traveller's safety, and observed that though we had
heard a good deal of him we had heard nothing from him.
Sir Roderick Murchison, however, with singularly saga-
city, has from first to last held to a conviction that Dr.
Livingstone was safe. He is now abundantly rewarded
by the receipt of these despatches from his friend ; but the
public would be ungrateful if they did not express a warm
sense of the obligation under which he has laid them.
The Daily News recalls the fact that when the rumour of Dr.
Livingstone's premature death was first spread, the feeling
was unmistakeably displayed, not in this country only,
but on the Continent and in the United States also, that
the loss would be in the truest sense a misfortune of uni-
versal import. It was not doubted that the ranks of
daring travellers would supply a recruit who should be
fitted for completing the investigations he had begun.
There was no fear about the ultimate opening up of the
recesses of Africa to the gaze of Europe. But the advent
of another Dr. Livingstone was an event which the
moat sanguine did not anticipate. With him would be
lost an amount of experience which could hardly be re-
placed, and a kind of training which was as difficult to
undergo as it was impossible to dispense with. In short,
we witnessed the rare spectacle of people in every part
of the civilised world united in the belief that, as an
African traveller, Dr. Livingstone was unique. Happily,
the sympathies exhibited at a time when he might have
ceased to profit by them need no longer be expended on his
memory. How far he may have added to the store of our
knowledge we cannot even conjecture. His course is like
that of one who explores the Mammoth Cave, carrying
a taper with him which serves to guide his steps, but
does not burn bright enough to dispel the thick darkness
and enable the spectators at the entrance to follow him
with their eyei. We must wait patiently, for the full
report which will in due time reach us, and we can do this
the more cheerfully because of the certainty to which we
have now attained that ere long it will be forthcoming.
Even should it not contain the solution of many problems
to which we hope the key has been found, we shall still
welcome back with heartiness the great apostle of civili•
nation in Africa. The sight of Dr. Livingstone is quite
as much to be desired as the disclosure of the secrets which
still puzzle those who would learn the whole truth about
the sources of the Nile-

It is not often, the Star de'-1 ,res, the 16 traveller in-
spires feelings such as those which Dr. Livingstone has
evoked. In truth, every step of his 'career has been fol-
lowed, for years past, by the admiring sympathy of his
countrymen. Thousands who had the vaguest idea
of the nature of his explorations, who knew less of
Africa than was known to the world before the days of
Bruce and Mnngo Park, who knew nothing of
the routes which he intended to traverse, or the
special scientific objects which he had gone forth
to pursue, yet felt a keen personal interest in his fortunes,
and prayed that news of him might always he good news.
It is not difficult to discover the cause of 'this goodwill.
Some of it; no dotibt, was due to the fact that Dr. Living
atone was
.a self-made man, and that :his achievements
were mainly the result of his own indomitable energy.
Then there was the conviction that he was a man of stain-
less honour—of perfect truthfulness—that he carried into
the wilds of Africa the chivalric virtues of a Christian
Englishman ; and that, when he reappeared among
his own countrymen, he was the most veracious
of travellers, who told a plain and unvarnished
story and instinctively shrank from those embel
lishments which have been resorted to by a very
different order Of explorers. But, above all, it was known;
that Livingstone the explorer, and Livingstone the mis
sionary, were one and the same individual ; and that the
purely scientific ends which he sought to compass were
subordinated to a sincere and even passionate desire to
promote the great cause of civilisation on the African
continent, to extirpate the slave trade, to develope legiti-
mate commerce, to substitute the arts of peace for the
cruelties of intertribal warfare, to, win the negro race to
the Christian religion--in a word, to repay to Africa the
great debt which Christendom owes to the land it has so
long ravaged, despoiled, and converted into a vast mart
for the plunder and sale of human merchandise.

The Post comments at some length on a letter from Mr.
Prideaux, in Abyssinnia. Mr. Prideaux concludes, in
common with the other prisoners, from the general tenour
of Theodore's behaviour, that " provided due care be taken
neither to exasperate him nor drive him to despair, a
result will be obtained which will be eminently satisfactory
both to the relatives of the prisoners and the public at
large:" This, our contemporary observes, evidently ex-
presses an opinion that Theodore may offer to give up the
prisoners without fighting ; and when taken in conjunction
with his reported speech to Mr. Flad, to the effect
that he anticipated great pleasure from enjoying the
sight of a disciplined force, and the fact of his sheaving no
anger when hearing of the disembarkation of our troops at
Zulla, would seem in some measure to justify us in enter-
taining the same belief. Theodore seems determined to
see our troops at all hazards, and with his reduced forces
he may trust to diplomacy and the advantage of having
prisoners to surrender to enable him to come to terms with
us which would not involve a serious joss of local prestige ;
and as our prestige is not likely to suffer much by not
fighting, we could readily afford to accept the prisoners
and leave the country, not even bringing Theodore with
us, which would be equivalent to giving up the unfortunate
country to intestine wars.

The Standard remarks that if anything were wanted to
prove the utter unfitness of some of our leading doctrinaires
to manage the affairs of men, it would be their ambition to
" elevate," as they term it, the condition of women. Mr.
Mill and his disciples are not content, it seems, with the
natural division of the sexes. They are disgusted that
men and women should ever be anything. but identical.
They would abolish a distinction which to them is
but arbitrary and invidious. Having succeeded in ac-
quiring some of the characteristics of the softer sex
—of that softness, at least, which is of the head—.
they insist upon bringing up women to their standard.
They arraign the laws of nature, and cry out against the
tyranny of society. Manhood suffrage is not a large
enough or a liberal enough item in their programme. They
must have womanhood suffrage. Looking within, they
are unable to perceive that there is any real dissimilarity
between the male and the female. Woman is to them
but a kind of man. We do not know how many of them
have wives, or what are their conjugal relations ; but
apparently they look upon the creatures of the other sex
as only so many undeveloped atoms of manhood. Perhaps
by the women themselves, as most certainly by the men,
it will be held to be a sufficient answer to this ludicrous
agitation, that the right to vote is not any privilege which
the women care to have, and that so far from their being
inferior by want of it, they are really benefited and privi-
leged, because they are spared from this and other man'r
work. We may conceive a man being aggrieved because
he has not a vote ; but we have never heard of a true
woman who believed herself injured by being deprived of
the franchise. Exemption from political power is, indeed,
rightly regarded only as part of the natural homage which
man pays to the superior sex. We believe it is so regarded
by the vast majority of womankind. The very fact of
Professor Fawcett being obliged to hold weekly meetings
at Blackfriars on behalf of the agitation is the best proof
that it is utterly absurd and uncalled for. Can we
imagine that if women wanted votes, they would not have
had them long ago? Because they have no votes, it does
not follow that they have no political power'; and the fact
that they have not got votes is the best proof that they
have not wanted them.

Can a lady be an ambassador? To this question the
Telegraph, looks in vain for any answer throughout the
erudite volumes which treat of diplomatic lore. The case
was not contemplated ; the contingency was deemed
impossible. But if the latest Yankee notion
reported from the other side of the Atlantic should
be carried into effect, this problem might he brought
to a critical test. A Mrs. Lord Bond— well known, we
believe, in the 'United States, as a spiritualist lecturer,
•or lectures;, and advocate of the rights of woven—has
set her heart on succeeding Mr. Adams as Minister to
Elle"laud- " (pc Jessie reef," says the French pro-
verb, "Drea le rent ;" and we should be sorry to predict with
confidence what female pertinacity aright not accomplish.
ie, •
posses.-te!; a singular qualification. She
aecording to the modern
man or a woman—whom
lent .I,wlee,on would Oppoint, and tvla so appoint-
t Air. Wade, the Pres!,leot of the Senate, a staunch
porter of ladies' rights, w.itdil not like to cancel. If
14,:rd Loud were only to come amongst us in the
ition which she is ambitious to till, and were to form
attachment in this country to one of the inferior sex,
sill the husband elect be designated as Ambassador-
.nrsort or hereditary Bonds-man ? Alas, to none of these
interesting speculations are we ever likely to receive a
practical answer. If, however, Andrew Johnson should
desire a plea for the nomination, we would humbly sug-
gest that while there are so many old women in the diplo-
matic service, it might be a change for the better to try a
young one.

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