The Sun.
London, England, 1868-01-11 00:00:00

OPIUM OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS, which won Poland so much glory, and caused her such
terrible misfortunes in the service of other countries. As
, ---..--
; Austrian or even ad Prnssiap subjects they may engage
The Irish Government has at last taken a step which no
their old and triumphant enemy, but they will fight and
other Government would have so long forborne to adopt. ' die for Poland no more. The true finis Polonice has now
The proprietor of the Irishman appeared yesterday to been pronounced by Russia. and Europe will listen to it
answer a summons calling upon him to shew case why a and make no protest.
criminal information should not be filed against him for The Saturday Review, amid the number of its political
seditious publications, and the application was granted by articles, devotes a leader to the struggles with which
the police magistrate. A prosecution, says the Times, people -.vith fixed incomes have to contend in the in-
will therefore be forthwith instituted, and it will be for creasing trouble which their dependants give them. The
a court of justice to decide whether articles encouraging nuisance of unsatisfactory dependants, such as governesses
the Irish people to rebellion are or are not within the and servants, is certainly a very serious one. Servants,
liberty allowed by law to the press. That such was unfortunately, cannot be much improved by education.
the tendency, not only of the articles selected by the In some way which we cannot discern they are, we sup-
Government as the subject of criminal proceedings, but pose, made better by going to national schools ; but this
of many other paragraphs in the same journal, will be supposition is based simply on general principles, and is
doubted by no one who has referred to the numbers apparently contradicted by experience. The causes, too,
which have appeared during the last six months, or which make them bad are on too large a scale to permit
even perused the specimens occasionally furnished by our us to hope for any change for the better. The break-down
Irish correspondent. Whether such was the intention of the old parochial system of religion and morality is one
of the conductors, in spite of editorial warnings, few and of the chief of these causes, and a system that should re-
far between, against the danger of open violence, is a place and excel this old system is not to be built up in a
question into which it is needless for us to enter. The day. Young women in these days no more respect their
editors of newspapers, like other persons, must be pre- clergymen because he is their clergyman than they respect
sumed to know the necessary effect of the statements
Nebuchadnezzar. Both seem remote beings with a sort of
which they circulate, and cannot shelter themselves under
Sunday-school sacredness about them, but with whom
the plea that the offensive passages were not formally en- grown-up people have nothing to do. The other great
dorsed by themselves. In this instance some of the most .
cause of their shortcomings is the spread of wealth in
insulting reflections on the British Government are con- England, and we can neither wish nor expect that this
veyed in letters from the United States or extracts from ,
cause should cease to operate. Not that there is any want
American organs of Fenianism. An Irish paper exclu- of servants. The demand has not exhausted the supply,
sively composed of such materials, and containing not a . and a warning from New York, very like the warning
single original article, would be quite as effective an engine from Paris, has recently been sent to the effect that
of sedition as if it depended on Irish writers and reporters. I domestic servants have come over in much too great a
The real principle at stake is the moral right of the Go• number from England, and that no one will hire them.
vernment to protect itself, by means equally available to
But the employers on both sides of the Atlantic say
any private individual, against publications designed to exactly the same thing. They can get a great many bad
bring it into hatred and contempt. With every disposi-
servants, but very few good ones. The vast number of
tion to maintain the legitimate privileges of the press,
employers created by the wealth of England tempts
we cannot understand either how this right can be dis- persons to become servants, but it makes them much
puted, or how any one can doubt that it was high time to worse servants than they would be in a poorer country,
exercise it. for they can always get places. This facility is unfor

The Telegraph prays its readers to remember that the
prosecution is no attempt to fetter the liberty of journalism
in Ireland to discuss any question that the most ardent
patriots could raise, from the Rep23l of the Union or the
fixity of land-tenure to the exclusion of Protestants and
he establishment of a Republic. It simply propounds the

tunately much increased by the great laxity that pre-
vails about characters. In the hurry to get servants
which must prevail when a great number of tolerably
wealthy people are spending a large portion of their means
in receiving and entertaining, and in the indifference
which is at last provoked by a long wearisome succession of
failures in the attempt to get good servants, the truth about
a servant is neither asked nor told. This is an evil which
a moderate amount of sense and prudence on the part
of employers would go far to remedy ; and if servants ar
to be improved, it must b 2 in the first instance by em.
ployers resolutely going through the inconvenience of
being without servants. There is also one other thing
which employers could do if they would take the trouble,
which, although a slight thing in itself, would, we believe,
do more to improve servants than many far more preten-
tious schemes. They could, while giving good wages,
stipulate that a small portion of the wages should be paid
quarterly into a savings-bank, to remain there until a cer-
tain time had elapsed or the hiring came to an end. In
the first place, this might make servants less willing to
leave, although we own that to some minds the temptation
of leaving, for the mere object of throwing away all the
money on a very short visit to London, would be irresis-
tible. But this would not generally be the case, for the
possession of a little money is the basis of almost all self-
respect in every class, and the servants with savings would
have a little sense and prudence instilled into them. Maids
are so constituted that not only will they give their hearts
at once to the first butcher's boy they see in a new place,
but they will at once give the second butcher's boy the
reversion in their affections, supposing the arrangement
with the first comes to nothing. They are not so much
willing, as furious, to marry ; but if it were a question of
giving, not only their hearts but their savings, they might
learn to hesitate. Even a couple of sovereigns might be
enough to impart a rudimentary modesty and coyness to
their behaviour ; and as they rose in the scale of being,
avarice at last might triumph over vanity, and they might
learn that they could not at the same time nurse the love
of money in the bank and the love of gaudy cotton-velvet
bonnets.
The Spectator asks if the Irish members were in any
considerable degree unanimous, and if they were really
supported by a strong section of English Liberals, would
there not be enough of hope in their programme, and of
utter desperateness about every other outlook, to make
England listen attentively to the case on their side ? It
is felt that to revise the meaning of " rights of property,"
even in relation to land in a special locality, is dangerous
enough. What is conceded in one place may be demanded
in another. A sacrifice extorted from one proprietary
class may impend soon over other proprietary classes. But
still, bad as the proposed remedy may seem, are not the
alternatives worse? Is not chronic rebellion--which does
not so much limit as almost extinguish proprietary
interests—worse? Is not that drastic remedy, unflinching
cauterisation, which would probably bring on foreign war
in the attempt to stamp out civil war, worse ? Is not
separation, whieh would make Ireland into a hostile
neighbour, relying probably on France for protection,
worse? Even the most contemptuous of the critics of a
" perpetual settlement" for Ireland cannot but feel that
the day is approaching when some great experiment must
be tried to render Ireland loyal, unless the game is to be
thrown up altogether. And, on the whole, what remedy
--of the grand order— could be more moderate than Sir
John Gray's ? He says : " Give the landlord the choice
between granting a fee-farm lease at a fairly revised rent,
voidably only by non-payment, or selling at the full yams
of his property : compel him to choose between abandon-
ing that power of eviction which has created the present
terrible crisis, or of selling at the full, or even more than
the full value." If this be confiscation, it is so in a wilder
sense than that in which the compulsory sale of land to a
railway company is confiscation— and it would be enforced
on precisely the same plea, the public welfare. But, says
the Times, admitting that the remedy, if adequate, is not
immoral, it would not be adequate, it would not make the
Irish loyal. That is putting the matter on the trucissue. That
is a question on which it would be well to take a good deal
of careful evidence. It is no trifling matter that such a man
as Sir John Gray—one of the impracticable Irish patriots
he has hitherto seemed to be—should gravely believe that
it would render Ireland loyal. Prima facie it certainly does
seem that in a country where the rural population wink a
every outrage on the Government, and permit large parties
of rebels to steal hundredweights of gunpowder and
bivouac near the scene of the robbery without giving notice
of it, the rural population do not feel that they are risking
much by the overthrow of the Government. But would
not every peasant farmer in the country feel otherwise if
he knew that his absolute title to his land was identified
with the existence of the Government? How would a
foreign invasion be regarded by men who knew that with
the overthrow of the existing regime must come a number
of greedy competitors for the homes and lands in which
they were secure so long as it was sustained ? But we do
not ask more at present than that the question shall be
fairly discussed, not on the high d priori ground of pro-
prietary morality and English privilege, but on the more
reasonable ground of its adaptation to the end in view
the raising up of a loyal peasantry whose hands would be
with the Government, instead of against it. It is much—
'we believe it is almost everything—if we can but shift the
'issue thus. And we believe that the Irish members have
now, if they choose to be rational enough to act in concert,
a fair chance of thus shifting it. Never was it seen more
clearly by their worst enemies that the Irish question
grows more fearfully perilous to the empire with every
decade ; that in its new phase, the resource of fire and
sword is almost the most hopeless of all, as tending to
plunge us into the very war which would be Ireland's
grandest opportunity ; and that, short of this, the only
alternative is between keeping an Ireland in which all sorts
of property are all but nominal, and making some grand
concession by which the people would be tuined into its
national guardians. If every property-owner in Ireland
could (say) by paying 10 per cent. of his present income in
direct bribes, uproot every trace of disaffection for ever,
would he not think his bargain, even in a pecuniary point
of view, a glorious one? And if that be so, it is in the
interests of property no less than of peace that some
grand experimat such as we have proposed should be
made.
The John Bull answers the question so frequently askea
in Liberal newspapers : What are the Conservative prin-
ciples of which you talk so much ? First, then, the Con-
servatives represent the principle of a mixed monarchy,
Queen, Lords, and Commons, in which aristocracy and
democracy should have their fitting share. Secondly,
there is the mighty principle of Church and State.
Finally, the basis for all Tory reforms is reverence for
that which is. We know there are abuses in all systems.
We do not arrogate perfection to the State of England.
We know that we have to pay a certain price for every
benefit, that every object has its attendant shadow. The
existence of the hereditary principle, all-important as it
is, involves certain practical abuses. That is because
man is not an angel. But we do not wish to be reduced
to a bare collocation of individual units ; we do not wish
to break with our past, and found a new society from
generation to generation. That is why we are essentially
Conservative, and that is why Tories eueht to rule Great
Britain. Some of the principles here laid down would be
subscribed to by the best Liberal thinkers ; for instance,
by the writers in the Spectator ; but they only stink in the
nostrils of the great body of the Liberal party, and they
are the abomination of desolation to the Manchester
faction. We say, then, let wise reforms proceed from
above rather than from the earthquake pangs of the nether
regions, and let sensible Englishmen rally round a Ministry
whieh represents the great principles of many genera-
tions, and has inscribed, not only on its party banners,
but also on its heart, the watchword of Conservative
Reform.

. -
question whether the opposition can raise the flag of
actual revolt. Authority, having been gainsaid, appeals
to the tribunal of justice, asking the judicial arbiterto

say whether the is; has or has not been violated. The
right to make that appeal cannot be denied to any Govern.
nent. In a case like the present, inoentives to bloodshed
are only one degree less dangerous than bloodshed itself,
and they must be put down with as firm a hand. No
person recognises this fact more clearly than one of the
most ardent living advocates of free speech, Mr. Mill.
" Even opinions," he says in his noble p'ea for individual
'iberty, " lose their immunity when the circumstances in
which they are expressed are such as to constitute their
expression a positive instigation to some mischievous act.
An opinion that corn-dealers are starvers of the poor, or
that private property is robbery, ought to be unmolested
when simply circulated through the press, but may justly
incur punishment when delivered orally to an excited mob

assembled before the house of a corn-dealer, or when
handed about among the same mob in the form of a

placard." That is to say, when words are manifestly a
direct incentive to crime, they should be punished as
sternly as guilty actions. But the Irish agitators have
used the worst of all incentives to crime. They have
preached, not only spoliation, but armed conflict ; they
have preached violence to an excited people at an excited
time ; and the question now to be determined is, whether
the law of England permits the defiance of authority to
be thus proclaimed with impunity.

The Post speaks of the Queen's book as a pleasant sur-
prise to the wleole nation, and gives us a hope and confi-
dence in our future Kings which probably nothing else
could have done. Amidst many disturbing elements, and
some things which have been invested by the timid and
the reckless with almost a threatening aspect ; at a moment
when our institutions have been menaced by much gloomy
prophecy, the Queen has reassured and satisfied us. She
has come forth serenely to appease our anxieties and to
comfort us by her calmness, courage, and virtue. The ex-
tracts which will be found in our other columns from this
remarkable book are sufficient to prove a hundred times
over that these are not idle words only to be read
patiently in the atmosphere of a Court. It may be
safely predicted that no English book ever had such a sale
as this will have ; and generation after generation of her
Majesty's subjects will read it for themselves as the most
beautiful memorial of an enduring love and a noble life
that ever hallowed a throne. It is a very great and a very
good book. No such valuable historical record exists in
our national archives. It is altogether exceptionally in-
teresting. It is a book that will live as long as our lan-
guage, and it will rouse a widely spread and deep sympathy
in the minds of millions all over the world wherever the
English tongue is spoken. It will infinitely endear our
Queen to the hearts of her subjects and their descendants
to their remotest posterity as the best example ever given
by a sovereign to a people—an example that will teach
us for ever how to love, how to live, and how to be
happy.

The Daily News points out that what has been set down
was not set down for the public, and if now printed for

the public it has been partly in order to prevent a private
circulation from creating mysteries and suggesting false-
iood. It is essentially a private and domestic record, in
vhich the little incidents of a Highland tour are the
most exciting scenes. Hundreds of journals probably
-mist in which similar journeys are narrated in language
equally unstudied. The fresh impressions which a new
people, glorious scenery, a ruder and less constrained
life than usual, have made upon the mind of an intel-
ligent and cultivated lady, are all the claims to
literary favour which, had it come from another
pen, the volume could have presented. These
would have sufficed to make it a cherished memorial
of happy days in the author's own family, whosoever
she might have been. But they would not have
justified its publication. The reason for this, and the cir-
cumstances which will make this work perused with inte-
rest in every English home, lie apart 'from its literary or
.esthetic merit. They depend on the social position of the
lady who has thus frankly taken the public into her con-
fidence. The fact that the highest in birth and the
supreme in rank, the sovereign of the widest and most
powerful empire in the:world, the head of a Court in which
all ceremonial has for sole object to do her honour, has
thus invited her subjects to see how the woman lives under
the trappings of the Queen, how the heart of Royalty beats
with all the emotions that agitate the human breast, how
the forms and responsibilities of State are burdens which
are flung off with the same gladness with which the hardest
workers welcome the holiday of labour—this is the peculiar
interest of the book, and in this lies the lesson which, more
or less directly, it will teach to all its readers.
It appears to the Star that the only thing wanting to
these volumes, both that which is now published and the
"Early Years of the. Prince Consort," is that they should
be published in a cheap form for popular circulation. The
Queen lives in the heart of the people of this country ;
that affection has been true to her from the moment she
ascended the throne, and is as strong at this day at it was
when, a fair young wife, she made her first visit to Scot-
land. The rich and noble are not more loyal than the
common people. The latter may have no great castles or
splendid mansions which her Majesty might visit on her
journeys ; they may not have the right to stand near the
throne, their ancestors may be unknown, and they them-
selves may never be heard of in the busy world ; but
the strength of the kingdom lies in them, and
not in the higher born or more fortunate few. If
any convulsion were to arise in the State, the
noble may lead, but it is the million who make and un-
make kingdoms. The general population of these realms
are at the present day more truly loyal to the throne of
Queen Victoria than ever the ignorant Highlanders of last
century were to the House of Stuart. Each page of the
volume of which we now speak bears on its front proofs of
the ardent attachment of the people to their sovereign.
We should like to see those charming pictures of the
Queen's private life distributed by the thousand and the
hundred thousand, like Mrs. Stowe's " Uncle Tom's.
Cabin," or Sir Walter Scott's novels. That can only be
done if the price be reduced to meet the ability of the
multitude to buy, and in this case no thought requires to
be given to the wishes or profits of publishers. Mr. Helps
will do one more service to his sovereign and the nation if
he can induce her Majesty to consent to the speedy issue
of a cheap edition.

The long agony is now at an end. The name of
Poland, observes the 31 ruing He/cad, vanishes from the
snaps and from the language of diplomacy. A short ukase
has set the seal to the measures which for four years the
Russian Government has been taking to denationalise.
Poland, and make it an integral part of Russia. Its
separate administration has fallen bit by bit ; month .y
by month its government has been assimilated to that of
the other Russian provinces. The Polish language has
been suppressed as an administrative language, and
Russian substituted ; the Catholic clergy have been made,
as far as Government regulations can go, as dependent
upon the Government as the Greek ; the very use of the
Polish language in religious services is threatened, and
the choice left to the Poles of saying their prayers and
being preached to in one of two languages which they do
not understand ; and now; finally, the Treaty of Vienna is
set aside—the kingdom of Poland exists no more, and the
territory of which it was composed is to be known officially
as the Province of the Vistula. The Poles will long sur-
ive as a race, but they have no longer even in name a
a country. They will illustrate the valour and the failing 4