The Sun.
London, England, 1850-12-26 00:00:00

87, BEDFORD-SQUARE, LONDON.

Doctor of Medicine. Matriculated Member of the University of Edin-
burgh, Licentiate of Apothecaries' Hall, London, Honorary Member
of the London Hospital Medical Society, So.
This work contains an accurate and complete account of the
Anatomy and Physiology of the Reproductive Organs. It un-
fertunately happens that the unhappy victim of excessive indul-
gence and vicious habits, while suffering from their invariable con-
sequences, unwisely entertains a fear of applying to a qualified physi-
cian for relief. Shame and the dread so frequently, but erro-
neously entertained that these complaints are beyond the reach of
art, alike restrict him and prevent his seeking for assistance where
alone it can be procured. Dr. LA'MERT has taken the highest
medical honours, as his diplomas testify, and the great extent of his
practice for many years is a guarantee for his prof6sslonal experi-
ence, which has reference almost solely to the treatment of these

Published by the Author, and may be had of J. Gilbert,
49, Paternoster-row; gaßnaY, 63, Oxford-street; Stacie, Tiohborne-
itreet, Haymarket; Mann, 89, Coralll ; Gordon. 146, Leaden-
hail-street, London ; or,, free by Dog for forty-two Stamp, from
the Anthorie Iteddenoe, IT, Bedwalquire London.

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
TIMES.—The business of the London and North-
Western Railway is still menaced with interruption
from a general strike of the enginemen and firemen
employed on that important line. The occasion calls
for particular comment from ourselves, and for very
serious attention on the part of the public. Several
circumstances conduce to facilitate at this moment
the discussion of the points thus raised. The re-
monstrant workmen have embodied their case in a
written memorial addressed to the directors of the
company, and the authorities appealed to have made
their reply in a form equally precise, so that we are
in possession of authentic evidence on both sides of
the question. The threatened combination, too, is
the second instance of such a proceeding within
the last six months, and the experience of the
Eastern Counties' embroilment is at hand for our
guidance. Moreover, the event, though impending,
has not actually occurred, and as the disputes between
the workmen and their employers have not as yet
been embittered by much personal acrimony, there
is some hope that a timely consideration of the case
in all its bearings may avert an issue which could
bring good to none. The requisitions of the men, as
set forth in their memorial, are reducible to a
single demand. The directors of the company
have recently substituted for their old con-
tracts with their enginemen a form of engage-
ment which makes a three months' notice
necessary before quitting the service of the line. The
avowed object of this change is to preclude, as far as
possible, the contingency of a general strike ; but so
considerately was the alteration introduced, that the
new terms were exacted, not from the men already
engaged, but only from those coming on service from
time to time. In order to obviate all chances of miss
conception, the directors distinctly denied any intention
of reducing the present rate of wages, and even quali-
fied their terms by a proviso which stipulated that
for any bond fide purpose of exchanging service,
unconnected with a combination against the com-
pany, the ordinary notice of a fortnight should be
deemed sufficient. These are the conditions con-
demned in the four specific resolutions of the engine-
men, three of which directly demand the abandonment
of the new system, while the fourth, which would re-
gulate the connexion of the enginemen and firemen,
seems obviously intended merely to secure the com-
plicity of the ',Ater class of servants in the decisions of
the former. It will be seen, therefore, that there
is no actual complaint alleged by the workmen
against the company at the present moment. The
only point of difference is this—that the former
desire to retain in their hands the power of acting
on their employers by means of a well-concerted
strike, while the latter are anxious to extinguish
once and for all the chances of such combinations.
On behalf of the workmen, it may be said that
whereas their only means of effectively guarding
their own interests consists in combining resolutions,
which taken singly would be inappreciable, to de-
prive them of this power is to deliver them bound hand
and foot to the arbitrary will of their employers.
This objection, as far as it goes, is valid; but its
force is qualified by the considerations following. In
the first place, the risk of oppression to the workmen
is less than it appears, for by the immutable laws of
supply and demand it is wholly impossible that any
combinations on the part of companies could succeed
in substantially depreciating
the marketable value of
good service ; just as, on the other hand, it would be
equally hopeless on the part of the men to maintain
themselves in the receipt of a fictitious remuneration.
In this respect labour and hire will, undoubtedly, settle
down to their true relative values, which would vary
only with the fluctuations of the supply. Nothing
but a glut of good enginemen will permanently
lower a good engineman's price; and, if a body of
directors can succeed in economizing the expenses
of the company on this head, the very faot is suf-
ficient to justify their decision. The same remark
holds good of any conditions which it may be
sought to attach to the service exacted, so that, on
the whole, the risk of oppression incurred by
servants debarred from the resources of a strike is
not sufficient to warrant the suspeniion of laws
for preserving order in these important establish-
ments. In the next plebe, it is not strictly true that
the only protection of the workman's rights resides in
a recourse to these irregular conspiracies. So irresist-
ible an influence is exercised in the present day by
public opinion, that an appeal to this power would in-
fallibly answer any just purpose of the workman far
better than a combination for enforcing concessions.
In point of fact, the very case before us proves that it is
from public sympathy alone that a strike of operatives
can acquire any real influence or lead to any success.
If the enginemen were hacked by the public, the
directors would probably yield ; but if these sym-
pathies go with the employers, then every allowance
will be made for their embarrassments, every
assistance will be given to their exertions, and all
the resentment created by this injury to public
convenience will be visited on those who brought
the dilemma to pass. This conclusion is so palpably
evident that it cannot be overlooked, and what
we would press upon the consideration of the
enginemen is that as their success is thus wholly
dependent on the verdict of opinion, they would do
far better to make their appeal to this tribunal in
the first instance without interposing a measure by
which all parties are exasperated and none are in any
degree the forwarder. All that they can possibly
gain by combining to abandon their work would
have been more effectually, as well as more
innocuously secured, by
_publishing the sub-
stance of their demands. Finally, as many of
these considerations are applicable to the action of both
parties alike if arbitrarily exerted, it becomes a ques-
tion in whose hands, of the two, the advantage had
better be left, and we apprehend it will scarcely be
doubted that the board of directors is a safer repository
of such discretion than the council of the enginemen.
If one of two parties must have the upper hand, as in
some sense it must, the privilege surely de-
volves more naturally upon masters than upon ser-
vants, and is less likely in such quarters to be
wilfully exercised. There are no dictators more
tyrannical than the ringleaders of an operative com-
bination, and two or three features in the present
case are sufficiently characteristic to impress
us opportunely with the fact. The men em-
ployed in the southern division of the line are
well affected and contented and without any
desire to disturb existing arrangements, but they are
dragged into the quarrel by the others, and thus made
to swell the total of an opposition which in all probe•
bility bas no genuine existence excepting in the petty
ambitions of some half dozen popular leaders. What
should be still more instructive is the fact, that
this council of workmen did not hesitate in the
prosecution of their demands, to advise a violent
breach both of law and fair dealing; for whereas
they are bound one and all to give at least a fort-
night's notice of their intention to quit, they have
proposed with the view of creating greater pressure,
to strike work instantly and leave their employers to

obtain satisfaction by the circuitous and expensive
I forms of legal redress. After such a specimen of their
conscientiousness they can hardly claim to be left arbi-
ters in a question on which such vaat public interests de-
pend. We shall, perhaps, be thought to have argued
too pedantically a point which most sensible men
would at once decide by their instincts alone, but we
are anxious to disclaim all approach to partiality or
prejudice. We speak in the interests neither of the
directors nor of the engine-men, but of the public
at large. A total, or even a partial, stoppage of
such a line as the London and North-Western would
be attended with incalculable annoyance and loss,
and it is precisely the power of bringing
about such evils which we would not see left
in the hands of a few scheming agitators. It
is perfectly certain that no body of directors
would ever have dared, for the coercion of their
servants, to resort to such measures as the servants
have here recommended for the coercion of their
directors. This very case shows that in the
interests of the public a responsible beard
of educated men is more deserving of trust than a
secret committee of operatives, selected probably
for no better qualifications than superior audacity
and cunning. It was, we understand, actually
proposed by some of these agitators that matters
should be kept quiet till the time of the great
Exhibition, and that advantage should be then
taken of the unprecedented traffic to extort an
unconditional assent to thair:,demands, under pain
of instant stoppage. With these remarks we might
quit the subject, but we desire, in conclusion, to
point out to the men that their attempts, besides
being unjustifiable, are certain, as far as their per-
sonal interests are concerned, to be unsuccessful
too. The directors will resist their demands at all
hazards and all costs, and although vast expense may
be thrown on the company and vast inconvenience on
the public, yet the two latter parties will get through
the difficulty, while the men will find themselves
without service and with the prospect of being called
seriously to account by the public for their wilful-
ness, and by the company for their violation of the
law. They may create mischief, but they cannot
gain their ends ; and we put it to them, as reasonable
men, whether the only practicable result is worth its
inevitable cost.
HERALD.—In a week after these lines shall have
met the reader's eye we shall be entering on a new
year, and it requires no gift of prophecy to predict
that before the end of 1851 Italy will be the theatre
of remarkable events ; and, if we be not mistaken,
of remarkable changes. A spirit is smouldering in
the Italian Peninsula, from Chambery to Syracuse,
Agrigento, and Trapani, which sooner or later will
have an outburst—an outburst which, if it be not
prudently and discreetly managed, may become a
raging flame of devastation and destruction. The very
fact that such a spirit exists in the Peninsula ought
to engage the attention and awaken the solicitude of
the great Cabinets of Europe. England, from her
commerce—France, from her Mediterranean pro-
vinces—Austria, from her Italian possessions, are
all directly concerned in this question ; and though
Russia has no material and few collateral interests at
stake in Italy, yet of late this power has contrived to
meddle and mix herself up in every matter of Euro-
pean concernment. It is vain now to protest against
this. It is not an intrusion of to-day or of yesterday,
but it is an intrusion that dates back six-and-thirty
years ago—from the period of the sittings of the
first Congress of Vienna. The services rendered by
Russia to the cause of the allies, from 1810 and 1811
to 1815, gave her a footing and a status which she has
since taken pains to extend and to improve, and
against which it were vain now to protest by any
form cf words merely. We repeat, then, the condi-
tion of Italy ought to engage the attention—the deep
and serious attention—of all the great powers ; for any
combustion lighted there may extend to more than
half of the fairest portion of Europe. Of the king-
dom of Sardinia we have few fears. For the last six
or eight months the King, Victor Emmanuel 11., and
his Ministry, have pursued a national and popular
policy, and have done as much as could be expected
of them under the difficult circumstances in which
they are placed. A blow has been struck in Savoy
against Jesuitism and ultramontaneism by the Sic-
cardi laws, and by the stand made, both by prince
and people, against the arrogant assumptions of the
Pope and the Romish Church. The Sardinian au-
thorities will not any longer permit the substance and
property of the people to be devoured by tribes of lazy
monks and nuns, who neither toil nor spin—who
neither teach nor preach, nor edify by the sanctity of
their lives or the purity of their conduct and example.
Neither will the Sardinian Government permit the
clergy to be an order in the state above and beyond
the law, claiming a sacerdotal forum for the adjudi-
cation of all matters in which priests are concerned.
Priests are now in Savoy amenable to the same tri-
bunals as laymen, and thus is the independence of the
Sovereign asserted on the Italian soil against the au-
dacious usurpation of the Court of Rome. These cir-
cumstances, combined with freedom of speech—with
some freedom of the press—with open chambers, open
courts of justice, and a very tolerable code of proce-
dure, will save Savoy in the days of Italy's trouble
from any great danger, and if her monarch be prudent
and wise from any great internal convulsion. It
were, however, hard to say that a like result would
follow in the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom. Though
every portion of that country is garrisoned by an
Austrian army—an Austrian army commanded by
an experienced, popular, and successful warrior—
Marshal Radetzky—we fear it is but too true that
the spirit of revolt and of disaffection is not dead,
but only sleepeth in Lombardy sleepeth till
a fair occasion and a convenient opportunity may
arise for another revolt, probably as bootless as the
last. Nor do Tuscany and Lucca present those
guarantees of peace and order which we were wont
formerly to reckon on with such absolute certainty.
For the last two years and a half the Grand Duke,
anciently so loved and venerated by his people, has
become unpopular. The Tuscans, formerly so quiet.
so industrious, and so prosperous, have become dis-
contented. They complain that there is neither free-
dom of the press, nor of speech, nor representative
institutions, and they disadvantageously contrast
their position with their neighbours of Piedmont.
The comparison cannot be otherwise than offensive to
their pride and nationality, and it is rendered doubly
odious in the certainty that the Grand Duke and his
Ministers are not free agents in their dealings with
the Tuscan people, but the mere ministerial officers
and sberri, the mere delegates of the Cabinet of
Vienna. A yoke of any kind is bitter to an Italian,
but a yoke forged in the smithery of Vienna is about
the heaviest and the most distasteful that could be
placed on his neck. In the event of any commotion or
outbreak in Italy, we shall not be surprised to find
the Tuscans no longer the orderly, submissive, and
dutiful subjects they were in 1831, 1832, and 1833,
when they remained untouched by the disaffection of
the neighbouring Papal Legations. The people of
Tuscany are now sufficiently enlightened to see,
that while Victor Emmanuel of Sardinia has liber-
ated himself from an ignominious thraldom to the
Popedom, their own sovereign, on the contrary, has
become one of the most Pope-ridden and Papistical of
the sovereigns of Italy, always excepting Ferdinand of
Naples. The condition of the states of the monarch
of the Two Sicilies transcends belief. The reign of
the Jesuits is again restored. Espionage flourishes
with new luxuriance. The gaols and prisons are
full. There is neither liberty of speech nor of the
press. Everything like a national representation
is obliterated and blotted out. Everything savouring
of progress, of improvement, and of enlightenment
of any sort or kid is discouraged and discredited.
The King acknowledges but two masters—the Pope
and the Lazzaroni ; and he is prepared to obey the
behests of the one or the other against the most en-
lightened of his subjects. Can such a system long
last, even in the meridian of Naples, in the days in
which we live ? Must it not fall suddenly asunder
the moment a popular commotion breaks out in any
corner of Italy ? There remains, apart from Modena
and Parma, states) too paltry and insignificant to
speak about at length, but the dominions of his Holi-
ness the Pope. For the last two months we in Eng-
land have been so engaged in considering the auda-
cious aggression of the Bishop of Rome—his violation,
not merely of general international, but of English
statute law, that we have not had either leisure or
space to throw away a word on the condition of the
States of the Church. But of all existing Govern-
ments the Government of Rome is the weakest, the
most corrupt, the most soul-debasing, the most
tyrannical, the most rotten at core, the most putrid
iii all its members. The religious Government of the
Tat tsrs of Thibet is generally ;considered by histo-
rians the most absolute, tyrannical, and degrading
that has ever been palmed upon men, but since the
late aggressive attempt of Pius IX. the Government
of the Vatican and the Quirinal must be deemed
worse, and more wicked anal degrading than '
even this Lamaism. The Pope of R ime, so
agsgressive abroad, has not at home a duller he can
call his own. Fur the very bread and meat and fish
he eats Pio Nono is tributary to a Jew banker, one
of a tribe against whom this pious Christian, accord-
ing to the very latest accounts, has fulminated new
anathemas—one of a tribe on whose devoted heads he
has heaped new persecutions for doing an office of
charity ! The domestic servants of the arrogant Pon-
tiff—the noble guatd of the infallible Prlnee-Bishop,

his ministers and employes, are all in arrear of pay.
His Pontifical and stock scrip are unsaleable in any
mart or exchange. He is over head and ears in debt
—his people are overburdened with taxation—his ex-
chequer is empty—discontent is universal, and were
the strong hand of Republican France removed to-
morrow, the infallible Sovereign—the Prince-Bishop,
dare not show himself in the Corso—in the Via Ba-
buino—in the Piazza di Spagna—or in any public
thoroughfare at Rome. If the French troops were re-
moved to-morrow, he would be turned adrift as he
was in November, 1848, and again might he owe
(strange fate !) his safety to an exclaustrated nun,
who fled from an Italian convent, and who married
an excellent and accomplished Englishman 30 years
her senior, on whose death she became the wife of a
foreign Minister—again might be owe his safety to
Hide. Spaur. A Government cOnstituted as this is—
domineering, aggressive, unchangeable, unteachable,
and unchanged—amidst a discontented and a dis-
affected people—cannot, and ought not, to last long;
and it is for this reason that we would direct the atten-
tion of the politicians among the Cabinets to signs too
unmistakeable not to strike even statesmen ceco come un
Fiorentino (blind as Florentine), to use the words of
the Italian proverb.
ADVERTISER.—Now that Christmas-day is
past, and we are on the confines of a new year, we
trust that those public spirited men, who have deter-
mined on a vigorous metropolitan agitation for the
repeal of the window-tax, will embark, heart and
soul, in the enterprise without delay. The time is
short, and the work to be done is great. Parliament
will meet in a few weeks. And if the important ob-
ject which it is sought to accomplish is to be achieved
this session, there must be an immediate as well as
vigorous commencement of the work. The Chancellor
of the Exchequer usually forms his financial plans at
an early period. He generally has them matured be-
fore the Easter recess. If, therefore, the pressure is
not brought to bear upon him before that time, there
will be little hope of a successful effort this session, to
rid the country of the most iniquitous impost
which the fertile imagination of man ever conceived.
The window-tax is one of those few subjects on
which it is difficult to bring ourselves to reason.
It is one which cannot be contemplated without
emotions of pain. To shut out the light of heaven—
to deprive one's fellow creatures of that greatest of
all blessings, is practical blasphemy, of the worst kind.
It is not only oppressive to the creatures whom the
Supreme Being has formed, but it is an act of daring
impiety against himself. It at once destroys the
comfort and impairs the health of our fellow-men, and
seeks to defeat the benevolent designs of Him who
made them. He formed the sun to shine, but our
Government has forbidden the entrance of his bright
and invigorating beams into the dwellings of the
poor. The brute creation, roaming in the open fields,
enjoy the light of the sun; but myriads of human
beings, bearing on their foreheads the impress of their
Maker, are doomed, through this odious impost, to
spend their days in comparative darkness. To
reason on such a subject is out of the
question. It is a subject on which no man, with
the feelings of a man, can argue. The instincts of
right and humanity rise up and assert their sway in
every one's bosom, whenever his attention is called
to the window-tax. There is, we are told, hardly
any cause so thoroughly bad, that some one will not
be found to undertake its defence. It must be ad-
mitted that though all taxes are unpopular, nearly
every impost has been fortunate enough to find some
apologist for it. The window-tax is an exception.
No one, so far as we know, has ever undertaken to
prove that the impost is abstractedly right. We have
never met with the man who said it was in itself a
proper tax. Stern necessity alone is the only plea
we have ever heard urged in its defence. Supposing,
then, for the sake of argument, that there was, at the
time of its being proposed, an inexorable necessity,
owing to the state of the national finances, that it
should be imposed—we assume that no one will
venture to say, that this inexorable necessity
still exists. No one will say this who knows
anything of our financial position at the pre-
sent time. The state of our finances is much
more flourishing now than it has been for nearly
a quarter of a century. The current quarter's
revenue will, we are informed, exceed consider-
ably the few previous quarters—though some of them
have been unusually productive. And if, in conjunc-
tion with the increased productiveness of the various
departments of the national income, we take into ac-
count the saving that has been, and will still be,
effected in the expenditure of the country, there will
' be a disposable surplus in the next financial year,
which would enable the Chancellor to dispense with
the window-tax, although it yielded twice the amount
it does to the national income. The plea of necessity
cannot, therefore, be any longer urged for the main-
tenance of this obnoxous impost. That pretext for
continuing the tax mill no longer be available. The
means of remitting the window duty are in the hands
of Sir Charles Wood. He possesses the power, if he
only has the disposition. If he have it not, the country
must impart it to him. The country can do it. It
has only to will the repeal of the tax, and the tax will
cease to exist. There is, just now, a remarkable con •
currence of favourable circumstances for the extinction
of the window duties. In addition to that most favour-
able of all circumstances, the means of repealing
those duties without impairing public credit, or
deranging the finances of the country, there is just
now no other tax for whose remission there is so strong
and general a desire. The window duties are the
most intensely odious, of all taxes, to the great mass of
the middle as well as the humbler classes of society.
The agitation for the repeal of the impost will not in
any way involve party prejudices or partialities. It
is an agitation in which Whigs, Tories, and Radicals,
can all work in perfect accord. The tax, too, sought
to be abolished, is one which interposes insuperable
obstacles to the carrying out of those sanitary prin-
ciples which now universally prevail. All, therefore,
that is wanting to insure the success of an agitation for
the repeal of the window-tax, is, that that agitation
should be begun and carried on with vigour. An in-
telligent organization of existing forces, and the tact
which is necessary to turn favourable circumstances
into account, would render certain the almost
immediate extinction of the odious impost. Let,
then, the leading men in the various metro-
politan parishes, resolve on immediate, united, and
energetic action. If they do this, and at the same
time enter into an arrangement with the principal
provincial towns, there cannot be the shadow of a
doubt that success will crown their efforts before the
middle of the session. We attach great importance
to the circumstance of a correspondence being forth-
with opened with the populous towns in the pro-
vinces. In all the large towns the feeling against
the window-tax is not less strong than it is in the
metropolis. All that is wanting is that this feeling
should be fully called forth, and that it should be,
as it were, incorporated with the hostility to the im-
post, which prevails in London. If this were done,
it would be impossible for any Government to with-
stand the demonstration against the window-tax
which would then be made. The idea of resistance
would at once be abandoned. Ministers would make
a virtue of necessity. They would submit, with the
best grace they could assume for the occasion, to a
necessity which they saw to be unavoidable. Instead
of waiting to see the proposal for the abolition of the
impost brought forward by some one else, they would
bring it forward themselves, and thus endeavour to
obtain credit for doing that spontaneously which
they had in reality been compelled to do by circum-
stances which they could not control.