The Sun.
London, England, 1868-01-04 00:00:00

Fenn OF vra Puraixo :mamas,

The Times demates the idea :of our gettipg up anti-
Fenian demonstrations, as proposed bY the Metropolitan
Working Men's Conservative Association. Such move-
ixtents are not required in this country. Of course it can
be easily understood that the indignation against
Fenianism which has been excited among the working class
by the Clerkenwell Explosion has in some cases, by an
easy transition, taken the form of hostility to Irishmen.
Of course our workmen ought to remember that all Irish-
men are not Fenian; and that, whatever may be the reck-
lessness of the race, there can be only a very small
proportion of them ready to blow up gasworks or
mann streetsful of people. But it is difficult even for
detectives to know a Fenian when they see him ; how
then are working men to distinguish the intend-
ing murderer from the sympathiser, or the sym-
pathiser from him who is innocent of any evil
design ? Unfortunately, too, Irishmen have long
tongues, and are apt to say a great deal more than
they mean. When a man has been abusing the
British Government for years, and predicting the glorious
advent of freedom for his " oppressed country," with
many allusions to Irish armies and the " Stars and
Stripes," his companions may be excused for believing
him a conspirator, though we who know Irishmen can
well understand that he is perfectly harmless. The fact
is that the Irish population generally is deeply suspected
by the English, and the threats of outrages in which
English working men would be the chief sufferers have
irritated the latter extremely. If they are kept much
longer in continual apprehension by these rumours, we
may expect a strong animosity to be engendered, which
any new atrocity would perhaps rouse into immediate
action. As it is, w© are informed that in some districts
one of the chief tasks of the police is to protect the Irish
workmen and labourers against their incensed neigh-
bours. In Staffordshire they are looked upon with
a distrust deepening into hostility ; in South Wales
it would take very
_little to raise the native miners
against them, and in London the most easy and
cosmopolitan of our town populations would never endure
a repetition of the Clerkenwell exploit. For these reasons
it would rather deprecate any course which would seem to
place the English in conflict with the Irish, and increase
the jealousy which present circumstances are arousing.
No Englishman of any class needs to give a pledge of his
loyalty, for nobody suspects him ; if he wish to assist in
keeping the peace, he can be sworn in as a special con-
stable. This is the most solemn as well as the most con-
stitutional and practical of demonstrations. Anti-Fenian
or, as they might become, anti-Irish meetings throughout
the country would tend to increase an agitation which it
is desirable to allay, and they might possibly, in some
case, produce an untoward event. With every respect for
the good intentions of our Conservative friends, we would
advise them to abandon their project, and be content to
know that their loyalty is taken for granted.

The Post thinks it quite time that the money-lending
trades should be put under penalties. It offers great
temptations to youths. It is too much to expect from
any boy, ignorant of the world and its ways, that he shall
resist pleasure in its most attractive form. Not only is he
ssked by scores of advertisements and confidential letters
to borrow money in sums which he has never before
possessed, but every device is exhausted to excite his
hopes and lull_to sleep his prudence. No term is fixed for
repayment if he is a my whose expectations are known to
be good. He may set his guardians at defiance before he
has left school, and discount a considerable part of his for-
tune at cent. per cent. This is not all. A system of touting
exists which is inexpressibly shocking. Some of these
ogres keep touts at Eton and other of the great
public schools. Money-lenders' touts may be numbered
by the dozen at the universities and military clubs. They
are even sent out to the chaplains and German professors,
who often finish the education of young men of fortune.
These touts receive a fixed percentage on every transac-
tion, and many of them make a base but plentiful living
by decoying their companions. There has been more than►
enough of this kind of thing, and it is quite time that it
should end. All persons who are entitled to borrow money
for any proper object may obtain it from twenty different
sources at a fair price, and from capitalists who are eager
to lend it. If, therefore, a money-lender thinks proper to
invest his means in so discreditable a speculation as an
attempt to defraud children too inexperienced to cope
with him, he should be left alone in every case to get out
of the trouble in which he may become thereby involved
without help from anybody.

We are reminded by the Herald that a telegram from
Aden of December 20 tells us that the head of the 2nd
brigade NV:LB expected there next day. The Scinde Horse
and the 4th brigade from Bengal were counted upon to
arrive about the end of the month or early in January.
Transports carrying the field telegraph staff, ordnance
stores, and connuissa.riat, were passing Aden daily en route.
Anuesley Bay. Her Majesty's ship Star was engaged
:n buoying and lighting the Abyssinian coast. No seiea•
thic appliance, no ingenious invention of modern times,
will be wanting in the complete furnishing of an enter-
prise which is without a parallel in modern times.
Some time back, when an enthusiastic gentleman
tuggested mildly the advisability of doing some-
thing to procure the liberation of the captives, he
was met by the scoffing question whether we were to get
to Abyssinia in a balloon. A port without a landing-
place, a plain without water, a pass that is all but impas-
sable, a country without roads, a people without a ruler—
these are obstacles enough to shake the resolve of the
most dauntless. Not for any chimera, any dream of con-
quest, any slight pique or occasion of quarrel, should we
have undertaken an expedition in the teeth of such diffi-
culties, or launched so many brave men into a situation so
surmounted with peril. It is because we know our cause
to be a good one, pure from all taint of selfishness or lust
of gain ; because we feel that we have been driven to this
enterprise by considerations of a character which we
cannot gainsay, that we feel so confident of succeeding in
it, now that we have once fairly put our shoulders to the
wheel and have our hearts in the work.

The Saturday Review does not hesitate to plainly tell us
that the recently published revenue returns speak of a
depression of industry increasing up to the end of the year.
The return is the worst that has been seen for many years,
not even excepting the period of the cotton famine, but it
is so mainly because we have been accustomed for so long
a period to uninterrupted progress that the slightest check
fills us with surprise and disappointment. After all, the
actual loss on the year is scarcely appreciable—less than t
per cent. of the entire revenue ; and thus far the ascer-
tained result is merely this, that we have lost one year of
our usual progress, and stand now pretty much where we
we were on the Ist of January, 1867, with the one impor-
tant exception that the interval which separates us from
the cause of the mischief is three times as great as it then
was. Moreover, it is to be remembered that the previous
return with which the comparison of the present is made
was one of an extraordinary kind. Notwithstanding the
panic, the revenue of 1866 shewed an improvement of
nearly £2,500,000, or about one-third more than the normal
increase. According to the usual estimates of the natural
growth of the revenue, two years ought to add
£3,500,000 to the national income in the absence of any
alteration in taxation. Of the last two years, one has
contributed nothing in the shape of increase, while the
other has given £1,000,000 less than the amount fairly to
be expected from the two together. This, therefore, is the
more exact measure of our loss. The ordinary increment
for eight months would amount to more than a million ;
so that if we group the whole period since the beginning of
1866 together, what we have to regret is a cessation of
improvement during some months, and that is all, unless
the stagnation should continue for some part of the coming
year. On consideration it may be thought that this is not
a heavier penalty than the nation deserved for all the fol-
lies that culminated in the panic of 18;6 ; nor is it one
that may not be borne with patience, and perhaps re-
couped by the first year of wholesome commercial
activity. Still, it is not a small thing for a country like
England to stand still in devels,ping her productive
power for two-thirds of a year ; and it is only to be
regretted that this and many other results of excessive
speculation are never remembered except at times when
excessive speculation is impossible. The tardiness with
which the influences set at work by a commercial crisis
produce their natural effect still further diminishes
the impressiveness of the lesson. Until very recently the
country was quite jubilant at the strange elasticity of the
revenue in the year when Overend, Gurney, and Co.
closed their doors, quite forgetting that the retribution
might still be impending, as we now know that it was.
-Nor is there anything surprising in this. Many of our
taxes are based upon profits and dealings at least a year
prior to the date of collection, and if a series of revenue
returns v:ere carefully analysed for the purpose, it would
probably be found that they measure, as a rule, rather the
prosperity of the previous than of the current year. If
this is so, Ave can scarcely expect a very early rebound.
The depression of trade has not yet been recovered, and
the national income in 1868 will probably suffer from the
stagnation of 1867, just as that of the present year has
suffered from the calamities of 1866. It is unlucky that
the exceptional expense of the Abyssinian expedition
should have fallen upon so unlucky a time, and we may
think ourselves fortunate if the additional penny of

income tax should prove to be the last of the demands

which the Chancellor of the Exchequer may have to make
on this account. Mr. Disraeli will, no doubt, have the
tact to see that these are not times for ambitious budgets,
and that the only sound financial policy of the Government
is one of careful economy and sober expectation.

The John Bull discusses at some length the tendency of
British policy in the East. In the opinion of our contem-
porary, it is a mistake to tie ourselves hand and foot to
what must beforo IQu mere corpse, and by so

doing fattffistrae a llostile attitude towards the living
sPirii-rta Pe6'Ple of Turkey. It is a mistake ti4o-
-
elate in the mindi of the future masters of Turkey the
name 14 England with the attempt—the futile attempt—
to preserve an odious and oppressive rule. Along the
Southern banks of the Danube and the Saye, stretch-
ing from the Black Sea to the Adriatic, lie the cities and
the corn-fields of an almost homogeneous race, which
:s day by day becoming whether we will or no—
tihe riiasters of these broad lands. Only our indifference
find the remains of the strangely mistaken policy of dead
Cabinets are driving these people into alliance with Rus-
Sia. It is true that similarity of language and ideniity of
origin and religion attract the Serbs of Turkey towards the
gOV'ernment of the Czar, but that very similarity and
identity are at the same time powerful motives of repul-
sion. The Serb nee, proud of the memory of its past
history, and living amid the ruins of the old monarchy of
Dushan and Nemania, aspires to a career of its
jwn, and thirsts for an independent existence.
Every Serb knows that such a career is incompatible
with a close alliance with Russia, which under existing
circnmst is but another name for absorption into
the great Slavonic monarchy of the North. For this
reasa, both the country and people of these provinces
look for sympathy and moral support to this country.
the very fears which we profess, and which blind us to
a Consistent course of action, ought long since to have
compelled us to lay aside our coldness and indifference
to these wishes, and should have led us to cultivate the
friendship of a ra..o which in its thirst for constitutional
government and for education is worthy of our warmest
sympathy and our Most earnest support. No firmer bar-
rier can be reared against the ambition of more empires
than that of Russia than the erection of a compact State
Which shall embrace the whole Serb race. Against this
licit only the ambition of Russia, but the fears and sell-
intereit of Austria, are arrayed, and hitherto English
states Men 'have blindly taken their policy from one or
other of these great rivals. This blindness, we trust, is
PaSsinE itr4-ay, and we have confidence that the present
Secretary of Foreign Affairs is 'too clear-sighted and pes-
Sesseii tot. calm a judgment to h 9 led away by the false
lights which dazzled the eyes 41 Lord Palmerston. On
the day when English statesmen understand the real
Position of affairs in Turkey, and when the English nation
cease to Ontound the independent existence of these coun-
actoriiiievt.ic.ra:vl:..,,fit.,,g3h thE,7prt,e4er.. v4autie.:ostni,o7f ~ have tbeheettAftwisesinilm..niagnh

4

MaskAL AND DRAMATIC GOSSIP.
•

Fe* will be surprised to learn that there is trouble in
ou'i Royal Academy of Music, which will possibly end in
its disruption. Mr. John F. Barnett's " Ancient Mariner"
Will shortly be performed in London. The Dean and
Chapter of Chester Cathedral have dared an innovation
which has long been wanted, and introduced female singers
into-the service. But then, like the harps at a never-to-
be-forgotten choral wedding in Westminster Abbey, these
heterodox implements of sacred music are screened out
of sight. Among the saddest things which it is the
historian's duty to chronicle are the mistakes made by
those who have been long public favourites, in refusing to
recollect that, be their summer and autumn ever so
long, winter days will come, when they are best at home.
It is painful to say that Signor Mario's appearance at St.
Petersburg has been disastrous. Something of this may
be charged on the climate ; but considering the present
state of his resources, his ill reception may be aseribeEl to
other causes. Artists are too apt to forget that in no
country save England is the public grateful enough for
past delights to be patient with the inevitable ravages of
time. The Parisians threw a funeral wreath on the stage
to the most consummate actress we have ever seen
—Mars—to remind her that she was " superfluous" on

the stage. It is something new for an English violinist
to travel the Continent as a virtuoso; but our coun-
tryman, Mr. Alfred Holmes, is making a concert-tour
in Holland, to his own satisfaction and that of his
audience. The 300th representation of " Der Freischutz"
has been given at Dresden. The date of the first ap-
pearance of this most popular of German operas taken
into account, this does not seem a very high figure ; and
the less so if compared with that of the operatic " runs"
of modern time, especially in Paris. "Antigone," with
Mendelssohn's music, and "Strueasee," with Meyerbeer's,
have been revived in Berlin. Lortzing's " Undine,"
with a Flemish text, has been given at the National
Opera-house at Brussels, established for the especial
encouragement of native talent. The following titles
of new Italian operas are given in foreign journals :
" La Bella Margherita," by Signor Battista ; " Giunitta"

(what has become of Signor Peri's "Giuditta"?) in Naplc3 ;
and " Clarice Visconti," by Signor Mari, in Ancona.
The only surviving actresses who played with Johu Kcia-
ble are Miss O'Neil (Lady Beelier), and Mise Steplieus

(Dowager Countess of Es3ex). In liernble's last season,
among its great attractions were "The stranger" (in which
the two chief parts were played by Eemble and Miss
O'Neil) ; and " Hamlet," in which Stephens warbled
Ophelia to John's wayward Dane. But these are things
of half a century ago. —Ath,enceum.