The Sun.
London, England, 1868-09-30 00:00:00

tgismlT PIIBLIELIOWINALB

rThe Times, referring to the meeting of the Zvangeffcals
for special prayer, says there is one part of the business
Vonn-which it is possible to be very prayerful and unpoli..
'al ; though we doubt it even as we say it. The usual,
and, indeed, almost universal manner of conducting a con.
tested election is a sore scandal to representative institu-
tions, and to all constitutional government. Every such
election is an appeal to man as he is, and it makes him
certainly not better than hews& He does not consider .
himself to be on his good behaviour like a
.man.going to
church, or to court, toga wedding, or a ch. nstening. On
the contrary, he thinks it a time of hcense, of self.
will, of self-indulgence, self-seeking, and every form
of selfishness. The candidates and their friends take him
on his own chewing and his own estimate of himself,
and he is either bamboozled, or intoxicated, or bribed,
Or cajoled with visionary hopes for himself or the nation.
Anyhow, he is treated as a man under the excitement of
he hour, and carried beyond the bounds of reason and
propriety. It is vain to suppose we shall ever cure this
by altering the electoral stratum, for, high or low, the
British elector would be found a very average piece of
unman nature. So here is something to preach and pray
for, and something to preach and pray down, if it
be possible. By all means let Lord Ebury and his friends
pray down bad agents, bad beer, bad spirits, bad argu-
ments, and bad practices generally. No quarter to the
club or the sub-committee that meets every night at the
Pig and Whistle, and keeps it up past lawful hours
to promote purity of election ; no quarter to that Pagan
divinity, the Man in the Moon ; no quarter to
the enthusiastic and utterly uncredited young men going
about with their pockets full of sovereigns, how come by
nobody knows, and ready to give as freely as they appear
to have received. If Heaven can be moved to stop all
this, it will be the miracle of the 19th century, and may
be presumed to be for the conversion of mankind to sound
constitutional principles. But even here the preach.
ing and praying must not be all on one side. The
Bible enjoins courage and independence quite as
much as it does temperance—nay, more, we should be dis-
posed to say. So if Lord Ebury and his friends preach
and pray against strong drink and filthy lucre, they are
bound to preach and pray with equal fervour and simpli-
city against intimidation, against influence, against all the
highly respectable, quiet, and potent means employed to
make a man vote as somebody wishes him to vote.
The Post approves of the appointment of Sir John
Young as the new Governor-General of Canada, but
cannot join in the loud chorus of praise which has been
demanded for the great disinterestedness of this appoint-
ment, the patrons being a Conservative or Constitutional
Government (whichever is the preferred epithet), and
the recipient, it is said, a member of the Liberal
party. It is very strongly in our minds that the
Government have ardently desired to do something
capable of being pleaded as a set-off when the Mayo job
comes to be discussed. If we are not misinformed,
Sir John Young has only been lately thought of for
Canada, though the Government have long known that
the duty would devolve on them of providing a successor
for Lord Monck, and though it is some time since Sir
John Young returned from New South Wales. It has
been freely reported that the Governor-Generalship of
Canada was placed at Lord Mayo's disposal, but that his
lordship thought nothing good enough for him abroad
except India ; and rumour has also mentioned Lord John
Manners in connection with the appointment. The Post re-
minds its readers that a bill was hurried through Parliament
to make the now extinct office of Lord High Commissioner
of the lonian Islands an office within the scope and
meaning of the Colonial Governors' Pension Act ; and
this was for the special benefit of Sir John Young, who
had been Lord High Commissioner of the lonian Islands
before he was Governor of New South Wales. We judge
from this also that there was then no idea of profiting by
Sir John Young's good qualities for the government of
Canada. The general approval with which his name has
been received may be taken also as a censure of the treat-
ment which he received at the hands of Lord Derby's
Government of 1858-9, when his position in the lonian
Islands having been made untenable by no fault of his, but
by the publication in London, through fraud, of an important
confidential despatch of his to Lord Lytton, he was
ultimately discredited and sacrificed ; and it remained for
the Duke of Newcastle, in Lord Palmerston's Govern-
ment, to do him some tardy justice by appointing him
Governor of New South Wales. Let us hope that re-
membrance of injustice formerly done has helped to lead
Mr. Disraeli to concur in this appointment. It is some-
what of a strain to speak of Sir John Young as a Liberal.
He was born and bred a Conservative, and he remained a
Peelite after Mr. Disraeli abjured Peel. He has been out
of Parliament now for many years, and has long since
ceased to be known as a politician.
The Herald says it would be interesting to know th
precise point at which, in the estimate of the Libera,
party, the interference of outsiders in elections becomes
" illegitimate." The definitions with which we have been
favoured thus far seem rather to indicate the heinous-
ness of non-interference. We have seen the Marquis of
Bute soundly rated because he declines to employ his in-
fluence on behalf of the Liberal candidate for Cardiff. The
Duke of Somerset's refusal to put on the screw at Totnes in
the interest of his party is attributed to the resentment of
a discarded placehunter. Lord Overstone's announcement
that he is not disposed to further the chances of the Glad-
stonian candidate for North Northamptonshire has goaded
a Radical print to sneer at him as "a nouveau riche and a
parvenu peer." If, as it would seem, abstention is a crime,
active intervention would, of course, be a sin of the deepest
dye. But the rule is not of universal application. The
Liberals draw the line at peers, and approve of any amount
of interference within that reservation. Their represen-
tative men are untiring in their efforts to impress the
electors in favour of candidates "of the true stamp." Mr.
Goldwin Smith, mercifully delaying his departure for
another and a better hemisphere, appears at one moment
at Exeter, at another at Oxford, at another at Marylebone,
championing the cause of those transcendant Liberals,
`Messrs. Coleridge, Harcourt, and Sandwith. Mr.
Stuart Mill, albeit he is rigidly determined not to
pay a farthing of his own election expenses, scatters
his cheques and his guineas wherever there is a chance
of buying a seat for a socialist or an infidel. Mr. Edward
Miall posts down to Maidstone to guarantee the ortho-
doxy of Sir John Lubbock and Mr. Angerstein. Mr.
Bright publishes to the world his belief that Northampton
cannot do better than return the sitting members, Mr.
Gilpin and Lord Henley ; and the Radical candidate for
Galway solicits the sweet voices of that mail-packet-con-
,tract-loving constituency with a written testimonial from
Mr. Gladstone attesting his" integrity and ability." In fact,
the great Liberal party seems to have resolved itself into
" a mutual admiration society," the members of which
make it their special business to go up and down
the country eulogising each other, and dinning it
into the ears of the constituencies that their dear
friend So-and-so is really the man for the seat.
The Herald reproaches the Liberals with ingratitude to
such men as Beales, Bradlaugh, and Odger. The extreme
'doctrines of Radicalism are taken up by the young aristo-
,cr and the other class is not wanted. Mr. Gladstone
ands party have used them and accepted their fellowship,
and it is simply shabby and mean to endeavour to throw
them overboard because they have done their work. They
were not ashamed of the Adeiphi agitators, nor unwilling
to accetat their aid in the struggle of the past three years ;
and the underhand attempt to drive Odger from Chelsea
and Bradlaugh from Northampton is as ungrateful as it is
disingenuous.

The Telegraph remarks that if the Liberal party is to
have a compact and commanding majority in the new
House of Commons, the sooner it sets its ranks in order.
the better. The largest army in the world, without
discipline, is simply the most formidable and mischievous
of mobs ; and we do not hesitate to repeat, that
what the Liberals eminently need at the present
'Moment is a good drill-sergeant. Of the ultimate
issue of the contest in which they are engaged there can
be little doubt. There is a strength in their principles
which must and will prevail ; but the hour of victory may
be indefinitely delayed by dissentions, jealousies, and
faint-heartedness. Even so glaring an abuse, so monstrous
an outrage on justice, as the Irish Church, may prove to
have yet a few years' life in it, if the tactics of its defenders
are more sagacious than those of its assailants. The Con-
servatives never fling away a single chance, and are now
fighting as loyally for Benjamin Disraeli as ever they did
for Wellington or Peel.
While agreeing with Dr. Ross's able defence of tne
right of women to medical education, the Daily News
differs from some of the arguments by which he and the
respected president of the society sought to gain the appro-
bation of the community for a medical college whose
graduates propose to limit the scope of their practice to
the diseases of children and the duties of the sage femme.
The argument to which we particularly refer is that which
assumes the unfitness of men to treat some of the diseases
and troubles peculiar to women. Such a position seems
to us not only based upon false modesty, but fraught with
evils to society. In the presence of disease, pain,
and danger, the consideration of sex should be,
and we believe is as a rule, banished, and
the only thought admitted—how to relieve or save the
sufferer. Without agreeing with Michelet, that woman
is constitutionally an invalid, all know that a large majo-
rity iof invalids are women, and that the sex is liable to
many and formidable ailments at every period of life. It
must be a long time, to say the least, before women can
generally possess the high scientific knowledge and
medical training necessary to render their sex all the aid
it needs ; and we deprecate the dissemination of prejudices
and sentiments which might, if prevalent, !dead them to
Ocur needless dangers, rather than seek the best skill that
car, le, obtained. whotlicr it bo that of roan or woman.'