The Sun.
London, England, 1850-02-15 00:00:00

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LONDON, FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 15. 1850.

Cordial, and be it said to the honour of the House

}Commons, unanimous was the consent yielded last
evening by the national representatives, when Mr.
EWART moved for leave to bring in a Bill for enabling
town councils to establish, not only museums, but
public libraries. When this most excellent and
judicious measure shall have passed through its
elifferent stages in the Legislature, another great step
will have been taken in the way of popular education.
For, if the opinion of EDWARD GIBBON be correct, an
opinion referred to yesterday by the Honourable Gen-
tleman the Member for Dumfries, namely, that self-
education, that is to say the education which
a man gives to himself when he has left the
porch of the academy for the market-place, is better,
is more efficient, is far more important than the edu-
cation acquired from the instructions of a teacher—
then is a Bill of this simple character, to a consider-
able extent preferable to some more ostentatious
measure, involving the expenditure of millions of the
public moneys in the construction of national schools
and universities. By opening to the working classes
libraries stored with the treasures of ancient and mo-
dern literature we shall be holding out indeed
ten irresistable temptation from ignorance. The
fascination of knowledge will soon manifest
its influence among the more populous classes
of the community if we only afford those classes
an opportunity of developing their intelligence.
To do this nothing more effectual can scarcely be
conceived than the very scheme which the Member
for Dumfries last night found himself empowered by
the Committee of the last session to submit to the
consideration of the House for the acceptance of the
ilritish Parliament. Are we desirous of appreciat-
ing the force of the innate tendency to accumulate
fact or fiction from literature this tendency which
first evidences itself in each and all of us in the
inexhaustible curiosity of childhood—let us observe
the avidity with which the wretched catchpenny
periodicals of Holy well-str-et (that Grub-street of
the present generation) are bought up and devoured.
The curiosity of infancy, just mentioned as being the
first testimony of the innate yearning of our race for
iformation, is, in truth, so remarkably manifested in
all classes and conditions of society, from the palace to
tee cottage, in the garrets of Whitechapel and in the
drawing-rooms of Belgravia, that we might with
Perfect correctness designate Childhood a walking
and thinking Catechism—consisting wholly of ques-
tions and wonderment. As the offspring of the wealthy
and the well-to-do grow up, this wholesome hunger
and thirst of the intellect after the aliment of know-
ledge is directed by judicious teachers into proper
channels for its acquisition ; whereas the unfor-
tunate children of the over-worked and the desti-
tute are abandoned to the accidental teachings of the
streets—those peripatetic schools of depravity. There,
from the shop-windows, stored with the last num-
bers of the cheap publications—the veriest garbage of
literature, licentious in tone, and reeking with the
grossness of the depraved imaginations from which
they have emanated—the child of misery learns first
of all to acquire that taste for the lowest species of
romance, the melodrama of literature, which is con-
firmed into a passion by the tawdry scenes witnessed
from the twopenny gallery of some squalid suburban
theatre. These are the real nurseries cf crime, the
hotbeds of felony—where the outcasts of the popu-
lation, incited to all kinds c,f infractions of the law,
from petty larceny to homicide, by the pages that
d, lineate a burglar in the light of a hero—furnish
occupant, for the hulks and victims for the hangman.
To counteract, in some mariner, the pernicious ;
ence of such allurements to vice, should be anion,
the, foremost aspirations of the political philan-
thropist, and to effect this the most readily and
effectually no better project could be adopted
than the supplying of the masses of the people
with wholesome food for the mind in the
shape of literature. Let the people have access to
public libraries, and they will soon prefer the mental
aliment they obtain there to the foui products of some
ricketty hand-press—products for the intellect, more

of the character of poison than of nourishment. In-
stead of paying their periodical coppers for the vil-
lanous fictions penned in a villanous school, they
will naturally give the preference to those golden
repositories of books, those regions of the soul, where
the milk of wisdom and the honey of poetry are
flowing abroad gratuitously as in some intellectual
Canaan. What they can get for nothing, more
especially if it be of superior excellence, will of
course possess a greater fascination for them than
those inferior and detestable effusions, the deformity
of which will at once, by contrast, be rendered ap-
parent, and the enjoyment of which necessitates a
small, a singularly small, but, to them, alas! a heavy
expenditure. Tell us not that the people, or rather
that these, the most neglected classes of the people,
are incapable of appreciating the beauties of art and
the masterpieces of refined intelligence. They have a
capacity to recognise the genius of thought, as sen-
sitive as that of any of the inhabitants of May-fair,
untutored, it is true, but still, say we, as sensitive.
Watch them in the upper galleries of Drury-lane
when one of the glorious dramas of the great SHAM-
PEREis being represented by her MaJesTy's servants.
We doubt not you will hear them laugh the loudest
at the jests of Master Gravedigger, at the mincing
ways of Osaic, and at the garrulous absurdities of
Poeorsius. But not only during the humorous por-
tions of that, the sublimest of all dramatic master-
pieces, are the keen perceptions of the people mani-
fested, but when the apparition of the royal
phantom glides over the battlements, they can
listen with an awful attention : when HAMLET
moralizes over the skull of Yomme, they can drink
in from his words the sweetness of all his melancholy
philosophy : when LAERTEI mourns over the insanity
and death of OPHELIA, they can weep in sym-
pathy with all his imaginary afflictions. -These are
no idle syllables but records of "a truth
visible in every theatre in London on any night when
the dramas of SHAICSPERE are enacted. And' yet we
are told, forsooth, that we shoUld be throwing pearls
in a , direction that shall be nameless if
we were to dream of opening public li-
braries for the free admission of the popu-
lace ! As if SETAKSPERB were at the very base
instead of being at the very pinnacle of the literary
pyramid ! No, in rendering the treasures of litera-
ture accessible to the multitude, we are only enabling
the voices of the poets, and the historian:, and the
philosophers of humanity to become audible to men
hitherto deaf to their divine utterances, to men the
chords of whose hearts can vibrate as profoundly as
those of the most cultivated and refined. It is be-
cause we think thus that we rejoice in the ready ac-
quiescence last evening of the House of Commons in
the demand made by the Hon. Gentleman the repre-
sentative of Dumfries.

We had hoped that the present session of Parlia-
ment would, in one respect at least, have exhibited a
striking contrast to its predecessors ; that the urgent
and pressing business before the Legislature would
be dispatched with all convenient speed, and that no
valuable time would have been wasted through the
negligence or apathy of Honourable Gentlemen in
not attending in sufficient numbers to constitute or
maintain a House. Although so short a period has
elapsed since the meeting of Parliament the
" counting out" system has been already re-
sorted to, and that on a question of no 1
ordinary importance to the general interests
of the country. On Tuesday evening the House ad-
journed at half-past nine o'clock, twenty-five Mem-
bers only being present at the time. The subject
under consideration was the second reading of the
Bill to simplify and improve the proceedings of the
High Court of Chancery in Ireland, a measure which
it is more than probable will be extended to this
country also, and be calculated to remove some of
the most crying grievances and serious abuses by
which the suitor for justice is embarrassed and
impeded in the attempt to recover his just
rights. How many unfortunate persons who
have been pining for years under " hope
deferred," who have felt their hearts sickening and
despair arising at every additional delay and pro-
crastination, and every new demand for funds to carry
on their suits, must have felt surprise to find that
Chancery reform is considered of so little moment
that only twenty-five Members—less than one twenty-
sixth of the popular branch of the Legislature—could
be induced to attend in their places to listen to the
debate, and lend their assistance to pass the wise and
statesmanlike measures of the Solicitor-General
through one stage in its progress.
Through this unaccountable apathy, this cri-
minal negligence, the measure has been retarded,
but it cannot thus be shelved or got rid of. The
Fabian policy cannot be suffered to prevail ; the
Augean stables must be cleansed and purified ; the
absurd verbosity and prolixity, leading to such inter-
minable delays and enormous expenditure as to
render the Court of Equity the scandal and reproach
of the nation, must be abolished, and a more
simple and satisfactory system of pleading
introduced, by which the opinion of the
Court may be readily obtained, at a com-
paratively moderate cost, upon the real points at
issue, and for which alone the tribunal is resorted to.
As the Solicitor-General truly stated, when intro-
ducing the Bill, " the only question might be the
construction of some particular instrument—the
construction perhaps of five or six words in a deed,
or a couple of clauses in a will." And yet every
form, however useless, must be complied with,
months, aye, years wasted, and tenfold expense in-
curred, before a decision can be even asked for, while
the wretched victims are sustaining the greatest
distress—their funds being " locked up" during the
interval in the coffers of the Court.

In our impression of Tuesday evening we gave in-
sertion to a communication from a gentleman, detail-
ing his own experience of the working of the English
Court of Chancery, in a matter which, to the unini-
tiated, might appear of the most simple character. On
his return from a residence abroad, he found that a
relative had bequeathed him a sum of 3001., and left
similar legacies to four other persons. This was,
undoubtedly, an agreeable surprise. The fortunate
legatees, no doubt, supposed that they had nothing to
do but to receive their money after the year allowed
by law to the executors for making up the accounts.
There is, however, unfortunately, " many a slip Itwixt
the cup aid the lip."
The solicitor who had prepared the will thought it
only prudent that the trustees should take the opinion
of the Court on what he was pleased to term -" a
doubtful point." The trustees adopted his re-
commendation. A bill for the administra-
tion of the assets of the testator was
filed in due form of law ;'the necessary answers
were put in ; the suit brought to a hearing,
and an " interlocutory decree," as it is termed, ob-
tained, by which it was referred to the Master to tax
certain accounts. In his office it still remains ;
while all those whom it was the intention of the tes-
tator to have benefited have only received trouble,
vexation, and expense from the proceeding. Under a
proper system the matter might have been decided in
a few weeks at the outside ; but it has been pending
three years, and our correspondent has judiciously
sold his interest in the legacy, the greater portion of
which will, no doubt, be absorbed in costs, for a mere
trifle.

The case, thus plainly stated, is one of the most
ordinary character. We venture to say that it may
be regarded as a fair illustration of hundreds, aye, of
thousands of similar cases, where the legatees have
been ruined in their circumstances, and deeply in-
body, and estate," from bequests
jured in "mind,
which in their simplicity and ignorance they had re-
garded as causes for joy and self-gratulation.
Thousands of suitors are at this moment awaiting
with the most intense anxiety the termination of
proceedings which are apparently no nearer to their
conclusion than they were years ago
Some idea may he formed of the numbers of persons
interested in such ptoceedings, arid the amount of pro-
perty 'tnvolved, when v. e learn the astounding fact that
" no l .ss than 60,000,0001. sterling of money, valuables,
stock, are now standing in the name of the Ac-
countant-General of the Court of Chancery, awaiting
the, decision of various suits." This enormous amount
would be sufficient to pay the interest of the national
debt for more than two years, or to complete the
various lines of railway now in progress throughout
the kingdom. It would buy up all the incumbrances
on Irish estates, and render the proprietors free from
the demands of the mortgagees; or it would provide

on the most liberal scale for the expenditure on all
our national establishments, naval, civil, or military
for the present year, and leave sufficient to construct
the railway from " Calais to Moultan," which
astonished so many at the magnitude of the concep-
tion and the almost boundless outlay it
would require. And yet when the question
of Chancery reform, by which these enormous
evils may be remedied, is introduced, but twenty-five
Members can be found to remain in their places and
listen to their discussion. This is not as it should
be ; it is not what the nation has a right to expect
from the chosen representatives of the people. We
trust that we shall not again have to direct the public
attention to a similar instance of apathy and inatten-
tion, but that when the subject is again brought for-
ward it may receive the mature and attentive con-
sideration which its magnitude and importance so
eminently demand.

THE FRENCH REPUBLIC.

We have received the Paris journals of yesterday.
_ _

The adjourned debate on the Education Bill was
resumed on Wednesday by M. TRIERS, one portion
of whose speech, in which he speaks of his " honour-
able friend, M. DE MONTALEMDERT," was received
with shouts of derisive laughter from every part of
the Assembly.
After a short but telling speech from M. BAR-
THELEMY ST. HILAIRE, in reply to M. TRIERS, the
debate was again adjourned.
MM. TRIERS, MOLE, and CHANGARNIER, have, it
is said, refused to join the new Orleanist Club.
It is officially announced in the Moniteur du Soir,
that General LAELITTE, the Minister for Foreign
Affairs, is one of the candidates for the representation
of Paris. M.GARNIER PAGES is spoken of as likely to be
one of the Republican candidates. In the depart-
ments of Nievre, the Ariege, the Loire, the Upper
Vienne, and the Soane-et-Loire, the success of the
Reds is considered as certain ; and in the Cher, where
a coalition has been formed between the Reds and the
parti-pretre, one Red and one White will probably
be returned.

The Meniteur publishes the treaty of commerce
and navigation between France and Belgium, con-
chided on the 17th of November, 1849.

The President of the REPUBLIC visited yester day
afternoon, in company with the Minister at War, the
barracks of the Gendarmerie Mobile, in the rue
de Luxembourg. The corps, which is composed of
600 men, had been consignes in the morning, and it
was imagined for some time that a disturbance
was expected, and that their services were to be
required during the day. They were agreeably dis-
appointed, however, when, about two o'clock, they
were informed that the PRESIDENT intended to pay
them a visit, and they soon set about cleaning their
arms and accoutrements. The PRESIDENT soon
after inspected them and bestowed four decorations—
one of them to a gensdarme who only lately entered
the corps, but who volunteered to join the National
Guards on the 24th dune, 1848, and was wounded at
a barricade. Prince Louts NAPOLEON was very well
received, and so soon as the crowd that assembled in
the streets heard of his having decorated the June
volunteer, they raised repeated cries of " Vive Napo-
leon," " Vive le President." The crowd was so great
in the street that it was with difficulty his carriage
could move on.

PARIS BOURSE, FEB, 14.—Latest Prices:—Five per
Cents., 95f. 80c.; Three per Cents., 58!.; Bank Actions,
2.355 f.
BUSINESS DONE IN FOREIGN RAILWAYS AT THE
LONDON STOCK-EXCHANGE, FEB. 14.

East Indian, 334—Luxembourg, 21,4—'Namur and Liege,
7IA —Northern of France, 14—Sambre and Meuse, 2%.

SPAIN.

Madrid journals of the 9th have arrived. They
contain no news of interest. In the Senate on that
day, M. FACUNDO INFANTE opposed the Bill for
authorising the levying of the taxes. In the Chamber
of Deputies a report of a mixed Committee of the
Chamber and the Senate on the Bill on public ac-
counts was presented. M. Rios ROSAS, brother of
the deputy who was wounded in the duel with
BRAVO, took the oaths and his seat. More anony-
mous placards attacking the KING, QUEEN, and Go-
vernment had been published.

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