The Sun.
London, England, 1868-01-11 00:00:00

which won Poland so much glory, and caused her such
terrible misfortunes in the service of other countries. As
Austrian or even as Prussian subjects they may engage
their old and triumphant enemy, but they will fight and
die for Poland no more. The true finis Polonice has now
been pronounced by Russia. and Europe will listen to it

and make no protest'
The Saturday Review, amid the number of its political
articles, devotes a leader to the struggles with which
people with fixed incomes have to contend in the in-
creasing trouble which their dependants give them. The
nuisance of unsatisfactory dependants, such as governesses
and servants, is certainly a very serious one. Servants,
unfortunately, cannot be much improved by education.
In some way which we cannot discern they are, we sup-
pose, made better by going to national schools ; but this
supposition is based simply on general principles, and is
apparently contradicted by experience. The causes, too,
which make them bad are on too large a scale to permit
us to hope for any change for the better. The break-down
of the old parochial system of religion and morality is one
of the chief of these causes, and a system that should re-
place and excel this old system is not to be built up in a
day. Young women in these days no more respect their
clergymen because he is their clergyman than they respect
Nebuchadnezzar. Both seem remote beings with a sort of
Sunday-school sacredness about them, but with whom
grown-up people have nothing to do. The other great
cause of their shortcomings is the spread of wealth in
England, and we can neither wish nor expect that this
cause should cease to operate. Not that there is any want
of servants. The demand has not exhausted the supply,
and a warning from New York, very like the warning
from Paris, has recently been sent to the effect that
domestic servants have come over in much too great a
number from England, and that no one will hire them.
But the employers on both sides of the Atlantic say
exactly the same thing. They can get a great many bad
servants, but very few good ones. The vast number of
employers created by the wealth of England tempts
persons to become servants, but it makes them much
worse servants than they would be in a poorer country,
for they can always get places. This facility is unfor-
tunately much increased by the great laxity that pre-
vails about characters. In the hurry to get servants
which must prevail when a great number of tolerably
wealthy people are spending a large portion of their means
in receiving and entertaining, and in the indifference
which is at last provoked by a long wearisome successionof
failures in the attempt to get good servants, the truth about
a servant is neither asked nor told. This is an evil which
a moderate amount of sense and prudence on the part
of employers would go far to remedy ; and if servants ar
to be improved, it must be in the first instance by cm_
ployers resolutely going through the inconvenience of
being without servants. There is also one other thing
which employers could do if they would take the trouble,
which, although a slight thing in itself, would, we believe,
do more to improve servants than many far more preten-
tious schemes. They could, while giving good wages,
stipulate that a small portion of the wages should he paid
quarterly into a savings-bank, to remain there until a cer-
tain time had elapsed or the hiring came to an end. In
the first place, this might make servants less willing to
leave, although we own that to some minds the temptation

of leaving, for the mere object of throwing away all the
money on a very short visit to London, would be irresis-
tible. But this would not generally be the case, for the
possession of a little money is the basis of almost all self-
respect in every class, and the servants with savings would
have a little sense and prudence instilled into them. Maids
are so constituted that not only will they give their hearts
at once to the first butcher's boy they see in a new place,
but they will at once give the second butcher's boy the
reversion in their affections, supposing the arrangement
with the first comes to nothing. They are not so much
willing, as furious, to marry ; but if it were a question of
giving, not only their hearts but their savings, they might
learn to hesitate. Even a couple of sovereigns might be
enough to impart a rudimentary modesty and coyness to
their behaviour ; and as they rose in the scale of being,
avarice at last might triumph over vanity, and they might
learn that they could not at the same time nurse the love
of money in the bank and the love of gaudy cotton-velvet

bonnets.
The Spectator asks if the Irish members were in any
considerable degree unanimous, and if they were really
supported by a strong section of English Liberals, would
there not be enough of hope in their programme, and of
utter desperateness about every other outlook, to make
England listen attentively to the case on their side ? It
is felt that to revise the mcanin.g of "rights of property,"
even in relation to land in a special locality, is dangerous
enough. What is conceded in one place may be demanded
in another. A sacrifice extorted from one proprietary
class may impend soon over other proprietary classes. But
still, Lad as the proposed remedy :nay seem, are not the
alternatives worse? Is not chronic rebellion---which does
not so much limit as almost extinguish l roprietary
interests—worse? Is not that drastic remedy, unflinching,
cauterisation, which would probably bring on foreign war
in the attempt to stamp out civil war, worse ? Is not
separation, which would make Ireland into a hostile
neighbour, relying probably on France for protection,
worse ? Even the most contemptuous of the critics of a
" perpetual settlement" for Ireland cannot but feel that
the day is approaching when some great experiment must
be tried to render Ireland loyal, unless the game is to be
thrown up altogether. And, on the whole, what remedy
--of the grand order— could be more moderate than Sir
John Gray's ? He says " Give the landlord the choice
between granting a fee-farm lease at a fairly revised rent,
voidably only by non-payment, or selling at the full valuf
of his property : compel him to choose between abandon-
ing that power of eviction which has created the present
terrible crisis, or of selling at the full, or even more than
the full value." If this be confiscation, it is so in a wilder
sense than that in which the compulsory sale of land to a
railway company is confiscation— and it would be enforced
on precisely the same plea, the public welfare. But, says
the Times, admitting that the remedy, if adequate, is not
immoral, it would not be adequate, it would not make the
Irish loyal. That is putting the matter un the true issue. That
is a question on which it would be well to take a good deal
of careful evidence. It is no trifling matter that such a man
as Sir John Gray—oue of the inipracticable Irish patriots
he has hitherto seemed to be—should gravely believe that
it would render Ireland loyal. Primal facie it certainly doe,
seem that in a country where the rural population wink a
every outrage on the Government, and permit large partiw
of rebels to steal hundredweights of gunpowder and
bivouac near the scene of the robbery without giving notice
of it, the rural population do not feel that they are risking
much by the overthrow of the Government. But would
not every peasant farmer in the country feel otherwise if
he knew that his absolute title to his land was identified
with the existence of the Government ? How would a
foreign invasion be regarded by men who knew that with
the overthrow of the existing regime must come a number
of greedy competitors for the homes and lands in which
they were secure so long as it was sustained? But we do
not ask more at present than that the question shall be
fairly discussed, not on the high a priori ground of pro-
prietary morality and English privilege, but on the more
reasonable ground of its adaptation to the end in view
the raising up of a loyal peasantry whose hands would be
with the Government, instead of against it. It is much—
we believe it is almost everything—if we can but shift the
issue thus. And we believe that the Irish members have
now, if they choose to be rational enough to act in concert,
a fair chance of thus shifting it. Never was it seen more
clearly by their worst enemies that the Irish question
grows more fearfully perilous to the empire with every
decade ; that in its new phase, the resource of fire and
sword is almost the most hopeless of all, as tending to
plunge us into the very war which would be Ireland's
grandest opportunity ; and that, short of this, the only
alternative is between keeping an Ireland in which all sorts
of property are all but nominal, and making some grand
concession by which the people would be turned into its
national guardians. If every property-owner ie Ireland
could (say) by paying 10 per cent. of his present income in
direct bribes, uproot every trace of disaffection fur ever,
would he nut think his bargain, even in a pecuniary point
of view, a glorious one ? And if that be so, it is in the
interests of property no less than of peace that some
grand experiment such as we have proposed should be
made.
The John Bull answers the question so frequently askea
in Liberal newspapers : What are the Conservative prin-
ciples of which you talk so much ? First, then, the Con-
servatives represent the principle of a mixed monarchy,
Queen, Lords, and Commons, in which aristocracy and
democra7l, should have their fitting share. Secondly,
there is the mighty principle of Church and State.
Finally, the basis for all Tory reforms is reverence for
that which is. We know there are abuses in all systems.
We do not arrogate perfection to the State of England.
We know that we have to pay a certain price for every
benefit, that every object has its attendant shadow. The
existence of the hereditary principle, all-important as it
is, involves certain practical abuses. That is because
man is not an angel. But we do not wish to be reduced
to a bare collocation of individual units ; we do not wish
to break with our past, and found a new society from
generation to generation. That is why we are essentially
Conservative, and that is why Tories „Light to rule Great
Britain. Some of the principles here laid down would be
subscribed to by the best Liberal thinkers ; for instance,
by the writers in the Spectator; but they only stink in the
nostrils of the great body of the Liberal party, and they
are the abomination of desolation to the Manchester
faction. We say, then, let wise reforms proceed from
above rather than from the earthquake pangs of the nether
regions, and let sensible Englishmen rally round 14 Ministry
which represents the great principles of many genera-
tions, and has inscribed, not only on its party banners,
but also on its heart, the watchword of Conservative