The Sun.
London, England, 1850-12-24 00:00:00

Valparaiso, was driven on shore on the Membra Shoal,
a.stwren Chundrey an:: St. Elena, Nov. 4; part of cargo
arr 1, but it is feared the vessel cannot be got off.
BEREUCE, Nov. 23. Trident, from the Clyde,
arrived here the 21st inst., with loss of rudder and part
clrgo thrown overboard, after being on shore off the
east coast, and assistei off; is discharging.
KINGSTOWN (JAMAICA), Nov. 30. —Ri Grande,
from St. John's, New Brunswick, went on shore and
was wrecked in Holland Bay on Nov. 25.

TRGSISOE, Nov. 13. St. Michel, of and for Hammer-
fest, from Ingoe, has put in here leaky, with loss of rud-
der, sails, &c.
PENANG. Nov. 9.—Courier, of Liverpool, driven on
shore on Nov. 11, has bean condemned and sold.

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

FROM TELE MORNING PAPERS OF THIS DAY.

DAILY NEWS.—The North-Western Railway
Company, which gives employment at first-class
wages to many thousands of workpeople, and which
is honourably characterised by the attention which it
pays to the religious, moral, and educational wants of
its servants and their families, is again threatened
with a strike of a portion of its engine drivers. It may
before twenty-four hours elapse be again plagued by
a strike, if the malcontents have the bad courage to
carry their dishonest announcement out; for to vio-
late a contract as these men intended (as the docu-
ment given in yesterday's Daily News showed they
did intend) is dishonest. Now, of strikes generally
it is to be observed that they almost invariably occur
in highly-paid departments of labour. The colliers of
Durham and Northumberland are probably the best
paid unskilled labourers in the kingdom; and they
have for years been notorious for striking on the most
frivolous and senseless pretences ; to the serious
injury of their employers, to the deplorable
increase of crime, and not to the benefit of
their " order." So with ship carpenters, so with
glass manufacturers, so with Sheffield cutlers;
all well-paid labourers, all confederated in
unions, are tyrannised over by disorderly workmen,
who trade on and live by the general credulity, and
interfere improperly with the good order of employ-
ment. So now, too, with engine drivers; they are
probably the very best paid workpeople in the king-
dom ; and they are, it is clear, getting into similar
bad habits. This is very much to be regretted ; for
engine drivers are, from their skill, their industry,
their general good conduct, and the danger of their
trade, well worth to their companies every penny
they earn ; and that company does not really study
its own interest or that of its proprietary, which
seeks to reduce their wages ; for, besides irregularity
and accidents; there would assuredly be a larger
amount of wear and tear of engines consequent on
any such reduction. First-rate drivers are really
invaluable, and cheaper by a third, at least, than
inferior men ; so, if their general character were
improved; the probability is that their wages
would rise, and yet their employing companies
save money by the increase of wages, which
would be more than repaid by augmented economy.
The public has, therefore, a great interest in well-
paid engine drivers ; and so also have railway share•
holders. Yet these men appear to labour under the
impression that there is a deeply laid scheme amongst
railway directorates to reduce their wages. From
all that we can learn this impression is the merest
delusion. It is not, in the first place, the interest
of directors to do se. But if it were, they have
not the rate of wages altogether at their command.
Wages, like bread and butter, are regulated by
supply and demand ; and the supply of engine
drivers being below the demand ; the directorates are
much more at the mercy of the drivers than the
drivers at theirs; particularly in reference to first-
doss drivers. And this the men seem to know very
well ; for no sooner have they any grievance, how-
ever small, however unreal or imaginary, than, know-
ing their places cannot easily be supplied, they strike.
Well, such being the growing characteristic of this
trade, the North-Western Company endeavours to
protect itself against the sudden recurrence of such
interruptions to its and the country's business, by
insisting that the drivers shall give it three months'
notice before quitting their employment, always, how-
ever, permitting them still to leave at the expiration
of a fortnight, should the inducement to go be better
employment elsewhere, and not the suspension of
work. Any fairer stipulation than this it really
seenas'impossible to devise ; it is at once protection of
the men's, the company's, and the country's interests.
Under its operation a goood driver can enter upon
higher wages, if he can find them, at the expira-
tion of fourteen days after they are found ; and
by its provision the company will have three months
to defend itself from the consequences of a com-
bination amongst tyrannical workmen. On wages
it has only one bearing : if wages from a
supply of additional hands tall, it protects the work-
man in his high wages for three months; if they rise,
it enables him to receive in other employment the full
benefit of the rise in a fortnight. And yet there are,
it seems, engine-drivers on the North-Western 60
dull and dead to their own pecuniary concerns that
they see, or affect to see, in this beneficial arrange-
ment a secret and subtle attack on the rate of wages
which they now have. And their reason is, that, in
another part of their rules, they are bound to obey
prospective as well as retrospective rules and regula-
tions issued by the directors. But such prospective
rules are obviously regulations for conduct and man-
agement of the line, its work, and servants ; not for
the alteration of wages already fixed and agreed on.
If, however, these men, against the advice of the dri-
vers on the Southern, who two years ago had some
experience of a strike, do leave or have dishonestly
left their work, without giving the fortnight's notice
they are by their existing contracts bound to give,
two things are certain—first, that they ought to be
punished for such a flagrant violation of contract with
the utmost rigour of the law ; secondly, that no other
railway company ought to take any one of them into
its employment. For men who, on the ground of
such an imaginary, contingent, and fictitious griev-
ance, attempt to suspend the intercourse between
two parts of the kingdom ought to be made a signal
example of. In all the records of strikes there is
nothing so unreasonable as the position these men
have assumed, and from it they must be routed. Such
combinations and strikes must depress instead of
raising wages permanently. For awhile the short '
supply of engine-drivers may give them a slight ad- 1
vantage ; but that advantage, thus used tyrannically,
will induce the masters to rear up and educate a
larger supply of competent men than the demand for
them re quires. And where will high wages be then?
Gone—never to return.
ADVERTISER.. —lt behoves the Protestants of
England to be on their guard. The peril is not past.
The aspect of affairs is sombre in the extreme. The
mission of Mr. Shiel from the Whig Cabinet to the
Roman Pontiff, is a very inauspicious circumstance.
We fear it is of evil augury to those principles on
which the Reformation was based. "Never did
Cardinal bring good to England." Never did any
one proceeding on a mission from the British Go-
vernment to the Pope of Rome, bring good to the
Protestantism of this country. Lord Minto's mission
was an untoward affair. The friendly advances
which that Noble Lord, the father-in-law of the
Premier, made to the Roman Pontiff, speaking in the
name of the Government of Queen Victoria, had much
more to do with that audacity which displayed itself in
the recent Papal aggressions, than most people imagine.
The very fact of making conciliatory advances to Pius
the Ninth seems to have turned his head never at
any time remarkable for its coolness. It was a grand
error to send Lord Minto on any such errand as that
on which he was dispatched to Rome. The result
has proved that it was so. It was altogether a most
humiliating affair for this country. The Pope waxed
more and snore haughty and arrogant, with every new
act of courtesy shown to him by the representative of
the British Crown. He could not control his pride
and presumption, on receiving attentions from the '
accredited representative of the Court of St. James's.
Instead of making us the expected concessions, in
return, he only, as we have stated, became more arro-
gant and audacious in his demands. What causes us
deep mortification, and fills us with amazement, is,
that alter the signal failure of the Minto
mission, and the discredit which that failure
brought upon the British name, the idea
should for a moment have entered the mind of the
Premier, to send another party on a similar errand.
It is not for us to predict the result of the mission of
Mr. Sheil. Possibly, it may meet with seeming suc-
cess. But that success, even supposing it were to be
complete, must prove humiliating to every man who
glories in the Protestant and English name. The
fact is not to be gainsaid, that the Government of
Queen Victoria, the Government of the greatest
country in existence, exhibits itself to the world in
the character of a suppliant at the feet of the Pope.
Mr. Sheil, disguise it as the friends of Ministers may,
is commissioned, when he reaches the Vatican, to soli-
cit, as an act of condescension on the part of the
Roman Pontiff, that he would withdraw his memo-
rable Bull of September last, and thereby allay the
apprehensions of the Protestant subjects of her Ma-
i-sty. Lord John Russell had no right to make any
advances whatever to the Roman Pontiff. In so doing,
he has at once compromised the dignity of his
NSave-
reign, and the character of his countrY• o wonder
though the Vatican became intolerably vain, when toe
Government of Great Britain, in the case of Loid
iliuto's embassy, appep-,Niin the humiliating attitude