The Sun.
London, England, 1868-08-27 00:00:00

SPIRIT OP THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The Times says all bad government, as Mr. Carlyle I
remarks in his diagnosis of the French Revolution, ends in
insolvency. The temptation of a weak Minister is corrup-
tion, and corruption means increased expenditure, and
increased expenditure means repeated deficiencies. The
weakness of an incompetent Minister is extravagance, and
extravagance has the same ultimate result as corruption. The
madness of a reckless Minister is profusion, and profusion
is another form of the same disease. Whichever way we
regard the position of a Minister who, placed in a
minority, is resolved to maintain his position at all
hazards, we are forced to the conclusion that the country
must suffer for his ambition. It is almost a necessary
consequence that, when we find the estimates con-
tinuously increasing and a surplus converted year
after year into a deficiency, we should conclude
that the management of affairs is for a time entrusted to a
man who is careless of everything except maintaining his
supremacy as a Minister. Is it, or is it not, the fact
that since the accession of a Conservative Ministry to
power the process of reducing the national expenditure
has been not only arrested, but turned backwards ? There
is only one answer to the question, and everyone is
so conscious of the truth that those who would have
it otherwise compare the present expenditure with
the worst years of the " Extravagant Parliament" in order
to find an excuse for it. It will he seen on examination
that the Liberal Administration bequeathed to their suc-
cessors an expenditure in process of reduction, and that
Mr. Disraeli has managed to change the order, and to con-
vert a yearly decrease into a yearly addition to the national
charge. We had, under the Liberal Ministry, a reduc•
tion of more than three millions in three years, and in four
years a total of taxation reduced or abolished of £13,693,000.
In three years the optional expenditure under the Conser-
vative rule has grown from £39,680,000 to £43,730,000,
and taxation is increased instead of reduced. Extravagance
has been winked at right and left.

The Daily News criticises the proceedings of the British
Association at Norwich in the section of Economic Science.
Miss Becker pleaded ably and eloquently for the equality
of the two sexes, but she practically asserted the supe-
riority of that "sex of man" to which she herself belongs.
When Miss Becker concluded her paper, a member
of the other " sex of man "—Mr. Joseph Payne—
naturally thought that as his turn had come he
might read his paper ; but the crowded audience
had been so excited by the vindication of the
feminine intellect that the sterner sex had not a chance.
The Section would not have even hurried extracts from
Mr. Payne's paper ; all that it would do was to discuss
Miss Becker. Into this discussion both sexes of man seem
to have entered warmly, but it ended in an entire rout of
the advocates of feminine inferiority. The practical con-
clusion at which the Economic Section arrived is perhaps
the best answer to the just complaints on which Miss
Becker's rather extravagant claims were founded. The
Council of the British Association are asked to appoint a
committee to consider how the scientific education of women
can be promoted. It is in a wider, more liberal education that
the female sex will find the remedy for that expulsion from
the great field of the world's work of which Miss Becker
complains. Let the faculties of each sex be trained with
equal thoroughness, and their inherent distinction will
come out as clearly as their essential oneness. Perhaps if
the emotional nature of men and the reason of women
were more thoroughly cultivated in their education we
might hear less of " supposed differences in the minds of
the two sexes of man."

The Standard considers that in the department of
Economic Science and Statistics Miss Becker is clearly
out of place with her " supposed difference" between man
and woman. Nothing she was able to prove under these
restricted conditions of inquiry could possibly be of any
scientific use. The lecturer's argument, if we understand
it rightly, is that there is no difference, moral or in-
tellectual, oetween man and woman—that the two
sexes are in all but physical respects equal—and not only
equal, but similar—that the variations which exist are
the result of the arbitrary and partial behaviour of the
men in respect to theiPnatural rivals. From the begin-
ning, it is certain that both men and women have acted
under the ides. or theit, dissimilarity; and are we to
believe now that this iaea, common to both sexes, was but
an arbitrary assumption not warranted by nature? Even
if we could suppose that the theory of the sexual differ-
ence originated in the superior strength or selfishness of
the male sex alone—which is a monstrous assumption—we
should be forced to admit this among the other proofs of
a radical and inherent distinction.

The Telegraph alludes to the plethora of Liberal candi.
dates. Given six candidates as the product of two months'
labour in Ilackney,how many more may be expected to
appear during the three months that still intervene before
the concentrated struggles of the polling day? No doubt
it would be rash to anticipate that all the eager competitors
for parliamentary honours will hold out till the final heat.
The list will be considerably thinned, from various causes
creditable to the prudence of the several competitors.
But the ell rt involves an incessant rivalry, during which
the competing candidate of similar opinions comes to be
regarded almost as an enemy, and personal predilections
—the most dangerous of all—are inevitably brought into
play. With feelings thus embittered, even a withdrawal
at the last moment may not conciliate support or induce
the long-divided ranks to re-unite. Dissension is easier
to denounce than to destroy, and jealousy is a fiend most
difficult to exorcise from the body which it has con-
vulsed.

The Times notes that a goods train was so timed as to
leave Abergele only half an hour before the Irish mail was
due at that station ; that it was bound to Llanddulas, a 1
station three-and-a-half miles further on ; and that at
Llanddulas it was expected to be shunted and broken up.
We must wait for the evidence at the inquest to establish
the time actually kept in all these proceedings ; but what
we know already is, that though a swift mail train was
within half a dozen miles of the spot, a fragment of a
goods train was left standing on the main line upon a steep
slope without a guard. The Times thinks there is no
remedy for these disasters but running the goods
and passenger trains on separate lines. The
block system would be inefficacious, because some
of its waggons might get separated from a train.
The Times draws attention to two points. The destruc-
tion was confined to that portion of the train which had
been put on at Chester in front of the carriages from
London ; in other words, four carriages, owing to their
position next to the engine, were consumed, while the rest
escaped. Now, if three or four empty trucks or luggage-
vans had been in this post of danger, might not much have
been saved ? Again, it is really necessary that some
impartial and independent inquiry should be made
into the system of locking carriage - doors. It
does seem to be probable that on the present
occasion the doomed victims could not have availed
themselves of any chance of escape, even if all the
doors of the carriages had been open ; but, still, the
reflection that passengers are exposed in locked vehicles to
risks so dreadful is enough to alarm the public mind.
Railway directors are always ready to assure us that the
practice is for the traveller's advantage. It may be so,
but we see only too clearly bow terribly it may tell in
an opposite direction, and this point, among others,
should be investigated in the public interest by the light
of this deplorable disaster.

The Herald remarks that the report of the preliminary
proceedings at the inquest reads as if it had been taken at
some meeting of excited village politicians, over which no
chairman presided, and at which, therefore, everybody
said, without let or hindrance, whatever happened to come
uppermost. Lawyers and laymen by turns took up the
parts which they had chosen for themselves, and the
audience chorussed their assent or dissent at the beginning,
the middle, and the end of every speech. One gentleman
complained that the property found in the d4bris had been
placed under the care of a private gentleman, and " drew
down the gods" when he said " it ought to have been left
to the police." The clerk to the magistrates explained
that this was done from. considerations of safety; the
police inspector described the place where the valuables
had been put, and the discussion threatened to become
interminable, when Sir H. Edwards very properly
protested against " this stuff and nonsense about the
custody of the property " being imported into an inquiry
with which it had nothing in the world to do. This senti-
ment was " received with applause," and having been
endorsed by Lord Farnham, there seemed a chance of
beginning business, when some one objected that
property could not be identified unless it were in some
public place. The objector having been applauded in
turn, Mr. Kane, a legal gentleman, won three successive
rounds of " applause " by pressing for an immediat
interment. The coroner, good, easy man, thought there
was no particular hurry, and, "as the bodies would
keep," he proposed to adjourn till Thursday, and postpone
the burial till then. This was received with angry
cries of " No, no," and something very like a free (wordy)
light ensued, the upshot being that the relatives adjourned
to hold a meeting on their own account, where they
criticised the coroner to their hearts' content, and passed
a resolution in favour of a funeral on the following morn-
ing. They came back to court, where there was a further
discussion about giving certificates for burial, a good deal
of wrangling, a very little actual business, and a series of
coronatorial proposals to adjourn till next day, next week,
next month, and all manner of intermediate dates, ending
in au appointment for Wednesday, at which we are not
surprised to learn the proceedings were commenced by
Lord Farnham, with the avowal of his opinion that the
coroner was totally unfit to continue the inquiry without
assistance, and that he meant to apply to the Howe Becre,
047 PPS ACIAIDAti • -