The Sun.
London, England, 1868-08-10 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

The Times maintains that the report of the half-yearly
general meeting of the Great Eastern Railway Company,
held on Friday, shows how potent individual energy still
is. An undertaking short of being the London, Chat-
ham, and Dover Company, could scarcely have been in a
more hopeless condition than the Great Eastern was
when Lord Salisbury accepted the post of chairman.
Before Lord Salisbury's accession to power the
company seemed sinking into irremediable insol-
vency. It is only since then that it has
begun to emerge. Partisans of the old board may plead
that the concurrence of the two facts is a mere coinci-
dence, that Norfolk cannot have despatched more farm
produce to town in deference to Lord Salisbury, or engine-
drivers been more careful of their passengers' lives.
Exactly in the same way a victorious general might have
his share of the glory of a campaign pared away. In fact,
the energy of a chairman is contagious through the whole
staff of the company, from his brother directors
down to the smallest station-master ; and a railway's
trade is flexible enough to vary no less with the conduct
of its officers than with the needs of its customers. The
embarrassments of railways have never arisen so much
from want of traffic as from their own financial mis-
management ; and a chairman who will not consent
to " make things pleasant" by deceiving the shareholders,
but frankly communicates to them, as partners in the
concern, the principles on which he means to manage it, is
able to exact from them the present self-denial necessary
for its permanent prosperity. It is not without interest
that the perpetual watchfulness and self-restraint
necessary to achieve such results—not the brilliant con-
quest of a rival company, but the conversion of his own
company to a policy of caution and economy—should have
been found in so eminent a degree in Lord Salisbury.
The Great Eastern Railway Company has some claim
on public gratitude for providing a statesman destined
to power, but prone rather to criticise than to
act with the training in the art of acting with other men
which, in default of his retaining the control of India, the
chairmanship of a great railway—a State in itself, with
colleagues to co-operate with, citizens to govern and
humour, neighbouring potentates to treat with, and new
worlds to explore and abstain from appropriating—could
most adequately supply.

The Standard says this company seems at length to have
turned the corner, and to be likely to surmount the diffi-
culties in which a generation of mismanagement had
involved it. Nor has this been purchased by imitating the
folly of other lines which have set themselves in antago-
nism to the travelling public. Only in peculiar cases, and
in localities where fares were unduly low, has any advance
taken place, the Great Eastern having resolved to leave
the suburban traffic free from auy such discouragement as
that which the southern companies have just inflicted upon
it. In other words, while the South-Eastern and its
allies are killing the goose that laid their golden eggs,
the Great Eastern's wish is to keep theirs alive and hearty.
There can be no doubt that this is the true policy of their
line, as of every other, and it is not unlikely that the
course thus taken may induce something like an exodus of
suburban residents from Kent and Surrey to hitherto
neglected spots in Essex and Hertfordshire. Meanwhile
the adjustment of charges between capital and revenue is
proceeding upon those " severs but just " principles
described by the Caledonian committee of investigation,
and though the shareholders are warned that the limit of
profitable economy has been reached, and that they must
not expect the net revenue always to progress at its recent
rate, there is good ground for congratulating them on what
has already been done, and on the brightening prospect
which the vigour and honesty of the new board is opening
before them.
The Times observes with amazement the statement that
the Archbishop of Canterbury has made formal applica-
tion that a royal mandate may be granted for the conse-
cration of a new bishop for Natal, and that the Duke of
Buckingham, the Colonial Minister, has given his consent
to the issue of such a mandate. This announcement was
made by the Bishop of Capetown himself at a meeting
held last week in Lonlon, but it is difficult to believe he
is not mistaken. Can it possibly be proposed by a Minister
of the Crown to lend the royal authority to the ques-
tionable purpose of one of the parties in this miser-
able quarrel ? Can it be intended to entangle
the Church and State of England still farther in the
squabbles of Capetown, and to enable the two bishops to
bandy between them not merely the theories of eccle-
siastics, but the solemn sanction of the Crown ? That any
responsible public officer should voluntarily interfere in
this matter is, indeed, inexplicable. It is conceivable
that Dr. Gray, claiming to be the head of a voluntary
a,sociation, should refuse to be guided by English law ;
but it is, we repeat, not conceivable that officers of the
Crown should give advice in defiance of the Crown's own
patents, and in practical opposition to courts of law.
The Post believes that it is in accordance with the advice
of Sir W. Jenner that the Queen has now visited Switzer-
-sand, and we may readily imagine that that distinguished
physician has been guided by considerations of a purely
psychological nature in counselling this course. Although
living in retirement, her Majesty will find herself in
daily contact with much that is new and strange, and
will be prevented from dwelling, as she would unques-
tionably have done at Balmoral, on scenes and subjects
which only serve to make the old wound break out
afresh. It is idle to conceal the fact that it is
of infinite moment that her Majesty should as soon as pos-
sible reoccupy that position from which she has so long
withdrawn. The Queen is scrupulous in the discharge of
what are strictly ternted State duties, but there are other
duties no less important which cannot be entirely over-
looked. No one, we are confident, is more desirous than
her Majesty to do everything which her people have a
right to demand from her, but until now it is no secret
that she could only have done so at the cost of her health.
The visit to Switzerland is certainly a pleasure excursion,
but it has been undertaken in the best interests of her
Majesty's subjects.

The Herald rebukes the Liberal party for having no
policy except of destruction. The future policy of its fore-
most statesman, :upon which he bases his appeal
for a renewal of the trust confided to him in 1865, begins
and ends with the demolition of the Irish Establishment.
Never was the manifesto of a political leader more
barren and evasive ; never was the programme of a great
party on the eve of a renewed struggle for power
more spiritless and meagre. The Liberal organs
are disappointed, and take very little pains to conceal the
fact. Now, as in 1866, they are conscious that their party
is being badly led, and that any day may witness the
break-up of the newly-united phalanx. Mr. Gladstone
has put all his eggs into one basket ; he has tied his follow.
ers together by a single string, and if that should break
the party would at once scatter and straggle until it
resumed that likeness to " a mere rabble " whereof Mr
Bouverie spoke but recently.

The Daily News, comparing the balance-sheets of the
principal London joint-stock banks for the six months
ending June 30 with the same period last year, considers
them, upon the whole, more than ordinarily satisfactory.
The baily News refers to the Credit Fonder Company,
and says that we boast ourselves to be the first business
nation of the world, but it is notorious that in foreign
countries the popular verdict is against our self-estimate.
The origin and fate of such an undertaking as this
Credit Foncier and Mobilier Company justify
their unfavourable opinion. No parallel can be
drawn between this scheme and the Credit Mobilier
of France, for the simple reasons that the latter was a
creation of the Imperial Government, and that its manage.
ment was confided to men of wealth and high financial
repute. The English imitation, when started, had nothing
to commend itself to public confidence. Its career has
been a course of transformations both as regards name,
capital, and management. It seems too clear that a large
proportion of £2,000,000 sterling has been lost in this
disastrous undertaking, and it is beyond doubt that
those managing it have largely profited at the expense of
the proprietors.

The Star complains of the way in which Mr. Gladstone
is treated in the Saturday Review. Referring to the
Finlen business, it says: But now, without being at all
cynical, let us just ask a question rather pertinent to this
Finlen business. Could the whole charge ever by possi-
bility have arisen if Finlen were a man of a higher class
of life? Would anyone think of starting a theory
that a public man ought to find out all about the
morals of each individual member of a deputation
made up of persons drawn from the upper or even the
middle ranks of life ? We venture to say that there is no
degree of scandalous immorality, provided it did not
amount to proven felony, of which a man of means might
not be notoriously guilty, without it ever occurring to any
public censor that a statesman ought to refuse to receive a
deputation of which he was a member. He might have
deserted his wife as well as his children ; he might be
living in flagrant vice with somebody not his wife ;
he might be a tainted turf-man ; a publicly stigma-
tised railway swindler ho might be anything in
the vicious way that a man can possibly be, short of being
actually a convicted Ll,,n, and no Saturday Rcriewer
would dream of complaining because some Minister or
us-Minister had spoken to him as one of a deputation on
seme political question. Do we not all know perfectly well
that such persons are thus received ? Do not names
actually leap to our mouths—the names of men answering
this general description ? There is a sickening hypocrisy
about raising a question in the case of a disreputable fellow
of the lower class, which would never be raised in the
case of any fellow, however disreputable, of the higher
ranks.

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