The Sun.
London, England, 1868-11-02 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC) JOURNALS.

The Times says :—Mr. Bright may paint the Tory,
Conservative, or Constitutional party in the darkest
colours, but the more he depreciates them the more is he
obliged to confess that there is one quality in which they
abound. They have to a wonderful degree the virtue of
courage. Always beaten, always overborne both by the
number and weight of their antagonists, they come up
again to the conflict as if they had never known defeat.
At this very moment, when their prospects are as
unpromising as can be imagined, they are cheerful and
even boastful. The often predicted hour is at last, they
declare, arrived, or on the point of arriving. The reaction
for which they have waited so long is, they maintain,
setting in. The signs of it are not, indeed, apparent to an
ordinary observer. It is necessary to have the eyes of
faith to see the symptoms of the turning tide ; but Con-
servative devotion is, as a rule, equal to the effort. A few
weak brethren there may be who have doubts and feel
hesitation about the result; but even these timid and
wavering ones flatter themselves that, though the battle
may be lost, there will be some brilliant charges, and one
or two important positions won from the enemy. The
Times then discusses the grounds of this confidenca, and
finds that the Liberal majority of uncontested seats is
more than ninety, according to a computation made,
but that in this computation there are about thirty-
four uncontested Liberal seats overlooked, against
only five or six Conservative uncontested seats.
A balance of some 23 is thus added to the pre-
viotts balance of and the corrected majority of the
Liberal party in uncontested seats (making up more than
340 of the whole House) is 120. It is unnecessary to add
a word to this statement. Those who believe that the
Conservative party will win two-thirds of the contested
seats—and it is necessary they should win so many to be
on an equality with the OppositiOn—are not amenable to
the arguments which weigh with ordinary men. The pro-
bability is that the contested seats will be about equally
divided, but it is obvious that under the most cautious
computation the Ministry must be in a hopeless minority.

The Standard cannot but think that the working men's
candidates are receiving very hard treatment at the hands
of the Liberal party. Indeed, what with scanty subscrip-
tions, with positive rebuffs, with sarcasms at their quality,
with injunctions "not to divide the Liberal party," it will
be a wonder if a single real working man is returned to
the Parliament which they pretend is of his creation.
Sic yes non robia mell4Licatis apes Beales, and Odger, and
Bradlaugh gather the sweets, and Hoare, and Dilke, and
Vernon Harcourt consume them. We trust that the
working men are satisfied with this division of labour. They
may be tempted to grumble, possibly, at a dispensation
which gives them all the work, and their aristocratic friends
of the Whig connection all the wages, but they should be
careful lest by their murmurs they " divide the Liberal
party." They may plead that it was they who, upon the
sheaving of the Liberal organs themselves, won all"this
proud privilege of household suffrage ; and that it is hard
to be excluded from the Eden of their own making. They
may ask, where were the Mares and the Mikes and those
fashionable Liberals when Beales was nobly leading his
battalions to the assault of the palings—when Odger con-
fronted the minions of Sir Richard Mayne, and Howell
staggered under a big banner past the trembling windows
of a bloated aristocracy? Where were our delicate
Liberals —our Vernon Harcourts, Brodricks, and the rest
—on that great day when :Elden bearded the Home
Secretary in his den—Mr. Hardy in his office.
The Star holds that in parting with Mr. Odger, under
circumstances thus honourable to him, the Chelsea electors
may and do entertain for him a high degree of respect ;
and those who have heard him speak and scrutinised his
conduct—amongst whom those who have thoughtlessly
satirised him in the press are not to be found—will share
our own anticipation that he will one day be in Parliament,
and refute by his career there the unhandsome and
gratuitous censures which some have cast upon him.
Sir Henry Hoare pledges himself to Mr. Glad-
stone, and has entirely discarded the timorousness of
his-pre-Reform-Bill days. He may, therefore, be re-
garded as a sufficiently satisfactory candidate to win an
easy victory over the two Conservatives. As lovers of
purity, ,s haters of unnecessary expense, we heartily
applaud 'these working men, who are as sincere as they
are stur y, and as enlightened as they are sincere. But
they ar simply carried away by their feelings, when, in
trying t , secure the return of a purity Liberal, they take
a cours which may let in an insignificant but inveterate
Tory. They have been led by generous sympathies into
an unt nable position, from which we trust they will, as
they r ay with honour, immediately retire.
Th Herald thinks it is generally understood that Mr.
Brit tisto be a leading member of the next Liberal. Cabinet.
It i well that he should be so for many reasons. In the first
ph a he will in any case greatly influence—we believe that
he does, and will, practically control—the policy of the
r rtY ; and it would be unconstitutional and iniquitous, a
f slid upon Parliament, an outrage on the public, and an
asult to the Queen, if her -Majesty were to receive from
her Ministers advice really dictated by one who was not
in her service, and if legislation and administration were
to be directed by an irresponsible and back-stairs mu:s-
caler. Next, wild and dangerous as Mr. Bright's views
are, they are those which the leader of the party is con-
tent to adopt. And this being the case, it is right that
their original and ablest advocate should have a scat in the
Government which carries them out. Nevertheless, the
mere' fact that Mr. Bright must be a Minister proves the
unfitness of his party to hold office. The country does not
trust him, and he is not loyal to the country, He is one
of those teachers of poltical atheism who deny that
England has any duties towards foreign Powers; who
would have us sit still, the patient spectators and virtual
accomplices of the foulest international crimes. In a
word, he is what in the old days of patriotic feeling and
plain language, would have been called a traitor ; he
avows it and glories in it. He hates the upper classes
of English society; he hates the landowners; he hates
the Church ; and a man who indulges in such feelings
towards large classes of his countrymen.is utterly unfit to
govern.

The Daily News still discusses the claims of the various
ecclesiastics to the vacant throne of Canterbury. The
Archbishop of York is a man of distinguished presence,
of moral and literary merit, and varied social accomplish.
ments. The Archbishop of Dublin's reputation rests upon
a broad foundation. He is a man of refined and scholarly
tastes, whose best years have been given to sacred studies,
and the numerous works in which he has brought the stores
of patristic and modern learning to the elucidation of the
Scriptures are known wherever our language is spoken.
His orthodoxy being unimpeached and unimpeachable, it
is an advantage to him that in his youth he was a
member of the John Sterling Club, and that the develop-
ment of his creed was at one time watched with appre-
hension. In energy of will he is probably much inferior
to Dr. Thomson ; although, if the strength of his character
were equal to its depth, there would be no doubt of
his fitness for the office. Of all the suffragan
bishops, it is usual to assign the palm of ability—or, at
least, of that kind of ability which it takes least thought
to appreciate—to the Bishop of Oxford ; but his name
is not mentioned now except to observe that his elevation
is impossible. Even if he had not done more than any
other bishop to foster the ultra-sacerdotal spirit which is
destroying the influence of the Church of England,
the public cannot trust the prelate who posed three years
ago for the well-known Oxford photograph, any more than
the House of Lords could respect as Archbishop of Canter-
bury the speaker who last session condescended to amuse
its members by mimicking the supposed tones and gestures
of another Christian minister. The appointment of the
Bishop of London would be more popular with the general
public than any other. The only objection against the
Bishop of Lichfield is that he is too high a Churchman,
but the Daily News believes that there is no prelate in the
Church from whom any of his clergy differing from him
might confidently expect to receive fairer treatment than
from him.

The Put remarks that, notwithstanding the man
improvements lately effected in the law generally, and in
procedure, much still remains to be done. Law reform is
still, in fact, in its infancy. With an increased staff of
judges the question will probably arise whether it is abso-
lutely necessary that individuals accused of crimes, hut
in the eye of the law presumed to be innocent, should be
detained for many months in prison awaiting their
trial. The intervals which elapse between gaol
deliveries are intolerably great. It is simply monstrous
that a man committed to goal in the month of March
should be compelled to remain there till July or August
before being put upon his trial, or, if committed in the
latter month, remain in confinement, even though with
the-means of establishing his innocence, until the following
spring. A winter assize on some circuits has done some-
thing to remedy this evil, but, even as matters stand, they
are discreditable to any nation priding itself on its adminis-
tration of justice. With a more numerous judicial bench
it is to be hoped that some means will be found of enabling
accused persons to obtain a speedy trial.

TII E ABYSSINIAN j rTa.—Witll reference to tile
mirncr,,,u3 applications which have been rec:ive'i at the
India Office fur payment of the Abyssinian donation
.I,aLta, a military contemporary says • " llaor•General
Pears has issued a request to the various army agents that
they will forward any certificates they may have received
from officers of her Majesty's Indian 2tafi Corps, shelving
that their shares have not been paid in India, with a view
to the question being taken into consideration whether it
will be practicable to pay their claims in this country
prior to the receipt of the roils, which have been called for
from India, of those who have not been paid in that
Fountry,",