The Sun.
London, England, 1868-03-14 00:00:00

1-:,FIRIT OP THE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

The Government had two courses before them in the
matter of Ireland which would have been tolerably credi-
table to them. They might have considered the question
too vast to be dealt with by this moribund Parliament;
that it must be dealt with by a future one, for whose
ruidance the Government would collect information. This
course would, in the opinion of the Saturday .Review, have
commended itself to the House and to the country. On
the other hand, they might have defended the existing state
of things. But this would have been Conservatism, and
of all things that the present Ministry most dreads, there
is nothing so bad in its eyes as to be thought Conserva-
tive. On every point it talks a sort of set Conservative
jargon in order to please its own party, and then gives up
finally, by a sort of side wind, all the principles on which
Conservatism rests. The policy of the Government
about Ireland is really this :—As to the land, every-
thing is right as it stands, and the law of land-
lord and tenant, which is the same as that of
England on the subject, is perfeotly just, and
works perfectly well; but as we confess our general igno-
rance on this, and other subjects, we propose to make
considerable changes in it, and establish considerable dif-
ferences between the English and the Irish law ; and we
hope we shall very soon think out what these changes
shall be. As to the Church, we do not know whether it
is a good thing or a bad, or whether it has got too much
money or too little ; but we believe it to be an institution
so beneficial, and one which England is so deeply pledged
In honour to maintain, that we will maintain it at all
hazards until some one can shew us a convenient, practi-
cable, and popular mode of abolishing it. This is what
the Government calls its Irish policy, and although the
sentiments are not such as to call for any particular
blame or criticism, being the sentiments which truly
liberal Conservatives are most likely to entertain, yet it is
not only absurd, but most damaging to the Government,
to parade them as a policy.

The policy of the Government, says the Spectator, is
mischievous, illasory, and dishonest. What it gives is
bad. The baits it dangles before Irish eyes are false.
What it withholds is not honestly and boldly stated. The
only thing definitely given is the separate Catholic 'Univer-
sity. The Government are going to give the power to
confer degrees to a new body, over which they profess ang
anxiously declare that they shall keep no kind of control.
The scheme is carefully contrived to exclude any Govern-
ment regulation after the university is once started. The
State offers a new power of granting degrees to a learned
body for whose learning it takes absolutely no security.
The Tories do indeed strain at gnats and swallow camels.
They raised no end of uproar two years ago because the
Liberals were willing to give degrees to Catholic youths
who had not been trained in company with Protestants,
but whose education was to be tested in company with
Protestants, and by common tests the efficiency of which
the State kept full power of securing. Now they volun-
tarily offer the Catholics the right not only to educate
their young men separately, but to examine them abso-
lutely on their own principles, without reserving the
slightest power to condition for the efficiency of those
examinations.

It is all very well, the Imperial Review remarks, for
such useful politicians as Mr. Horsman to denounce the
'Church policy of the Government as inaction, their land
policy as procrastination, and their university policy as
retrogression ; but such pretty little epigrams serve in no
degree to elucidate what is the real policy to pursue in
order to pacify Ireland. Without for a moment accepting
the stigma which the member for Stroud thus sought to
affix to the Ministerial programme, nobody who has read
the three speeches delivered in the course of the same
evening by Mr. Horsman, Mr. Lowe, and Mr. Mill can
fail to recognise in the wide diversity of opinion prevailing
among the most prominent and original thinkers in the
Liberal party an ample justification of any amount of inac-
tion or procrastination on the part of a Government which
cannot command a parliamentary majority. The Opposition
cannot agree upon what is to be done—that is clear. But
it by no means follows that they may not find it very easy
to agree upon what is not to be done. Their wonderful
unanimity in decrying the proposed charter for the
Catholic University affords a sufficient sample of their
agreement in a merely negative combination. It may, in-
deed, be said that they were all united in demanding the
confiscation of the endowments of the Church in Ireland.
But although it may appear that these three particular
politicians find no difficulty in recommending common
action on this subject, it cannot he maintained that in this
they would be followed by the whole, or even by a
majority of her Majesty's Opposition.
According to the John Bull, Wednesday, the Ilth of
March, will be a day that generations yet unborn will took
back upon with anything but feelings of pride or satisfac-
tion. On that day, under a false notion that something
must be done, and mainly owing to the apathy of Church-
men (manifested as in other ways so by the untenanted
galleries), the House of Commons passed a bill for the
abolition of compulsory church rates. All honour to the
thirty who voted against it. That the Liberal party were
united on this matter, and our own not so, made it
doubtless wise not to risk a party divlsion ; but are
Churchmen going quietly to see this mockery of a corn]
promise become law? Mr. Gladstone and Sir Roundel-
Palmer were very eloquent on the necessity of not
mixing up with this Abolition Bill other questions
connected with the subject, the importance of which they
did not deny; but we are not so credulous as to the House
taking up the matter so easily when this bill is passed.
Members probably will be so sick of the subject, and so
convinced that they have done an injustice, that they
will not have anything more to do with the business.
The House of Lords will do well to refer the bill to a
select committee, which shall consider the various
Inestions alluded to by Mr. Gladstone. But the
question is, whether Churchmen will arouse them-
selves and petition the Lords. The scandalous unfair-
ness of preventing the vast mass of parishes from rating
themselves will, it cannot be doubted, be taken
into serious and unprejudiced consideration in the House
of Lords, if the Church party in aggrieved parishes shew
themselves in earnest.

We do not any longer, the L9nclon Review remarks, con-
sider a man wise because he maintains an impervious
silence all the day, and proceeds to snore immediately
after dinner. We have arrived at the discovery that a
woman may talk much, and be neither a nuisance nor a
born idiot. Indeed, we are beginning to believe that one
of the compensating graces of life—one of those accidental
ornaments which smooth down so much that is ungainly
and savage in our present civilisation—is this very faculty
of talking which is possessed, in various quality, by most
Avomen. A house that would be absolutely unbearable by
treason of the boorish sulkiness of the master, may be ren-
dered bright and attractive by the vivacious talk of the
mistress, A picnic which is being overshadowed by a
cloud of that inscrutable masculine dulness, of which an
explanation has never, we believe, been offered, may sin? -
denly wake up into liveliness when a little hock provokes
the cheerful chatter of the girls. A conversation between
two young persons, of opposite sexes, at an open window,
in moonlight, would, at the most trying period, die down,
and leave not an atom of matrimonial result behind, were
it not that the dexterous nimbleness of the young lady's
brain and tongue generally comes in to help her com-
panion over the pons asinorum of a proposal. There is
no situation in life which may not be brightened and
rendered bearable by this very faculty which mankind
has been depreciating for ages. There are few things.
for instance, of a more melancholy cast than walking
to church on a Sunday morning--particularly a
Sunday morning in the country. One's hastily-swallowed
breakfast is uncomfortably present to the mind ; the odour
of musk and the rustle of silk which mark the goodly com-
pany have a depressingly decorous effect; and the godless
Imagination wanders into innumerable adjacent valleys
and woods, in which it would be so great a relief to throw
off one's Sunday garments of respectability and precision,
and lie down under the alders, careless of mankind and
the damp grass. If it were not for the chance maid or
matron here.and there whose audacious cheerfulness keeps
her party from falling to sleep—whose little pleasantries,
moderated by a subdued Sunday tone, disperse that
melancholy silence which otherwise would attend the
measured churchward, walk—it is to be conceived that
anybody would ever get to church at all ?
The English girl of the period, once so " generous,
capable, modest y
, " is thus described by the Saturday
review She is a creature who dyes her hair and paints'
her face, as the first articles of her personal religion ; whose
sole idea of life is plenty of fun and luxury ; and whose
dress is the object of such thought and intellect as she
possesses. Her main endeavour in this is to outvie her
neighbours in the extravagance of fashion. Nomatter
whether, as in the time of crinolines,
she. sacrificedficed
decency, or, as now, in the time of trains, she sacrifices
cleanliness • no matter either, whether she makes herself a
nuisance and an inconvenienva to everyone she meets.
The girl of the period has done awayotier with such moral
muffishness as consideration for or regard for
counsel and rebuke. It was all veridw:olslin'i,,n old-fashioned
authority
adeto
obey,ai a
times, when fathers and mothers h
d
were treated with respect, to be tutored and
d in
but she is far too fast and flourishinagodtasini,fe,hs oci
Prerses to
mid career by these slow old morals ;
ex. everyonen
please herself, she does not care if she displeases
else. Nothing is too extraordinary and nothing too
rated for her vitiated taste ; and' things which in -tee-
selves would be useful reforms if let alone become meoran-
strosities worse than those which they have displaced
so soon as she begins to man;pulate awl 'improve.
If a sensible fashion lifts the gown out of the
mud, she raises hers midway to the knee. If
the absurd structure of wire and buckram, once called a
bonnet, is modified to sometbinn, that shall protect the
wearer's face without putting out' the eyes of her cr,m_
panion, she cuts hers down to four straws and a rosdbud,
or a tag of lace and a bunch of glass beads. If there is a
reaetion against an excess of Rowland's Macassar, and
hair shiny and sticky with grease is thought less nice than
if left clean and healthily crisp, she dries and frizzes and
sticks hers out on end like certain savages in Africa, or
lets it wander down her hack like Madge Wildfire's, and
thinks herself all the more beautiful the nearer she
approaches in look to a„maniac or a negress. With purity
of taste she has lost also that far more precious purity and
delicacy of perception which sometimes means more than
appears on the surface. What the deini-monde does in its
frantic efforts to excite attention, she also does in imita-
tion. If some fashionable devergondee en evidence is
reported to have come out with her dress below her
shoulder-blades, and a gold strap for all the sleeve thought
necessary, the girl of the period follows suit next day, and
then wonders that men sometimes mistake her for her pro-
totype,_ or that mothers of girls not quite so far gone as her-
self refuse her as a companion for their daughters.

THE GOVERNMENT AND THE
TELEGRAPHS.

The Herald is in a position to state that the bill already
drawn up by the Government embraces the establishment
of a telegraphic station at each of the ten district post-
offices in London, subordinate stations at the sorting
offices of each district, and central telegraphic offices at
each of the principal towns in the United Kingdom,
connected directly with the central district offices of
the metropolis. It is proposed to open deposit offices
where no telegraphic station exists, to make pillar
letter-boxes places of deposit, and to provide for
the payment of such messages in stamps. It is
believed that the scheme also includes a uniform
scale of charge for the transmission of any message of
twenty words from any one part to any other part of the
United Kingdom. By these and other administrative ar-
rangements, it is calculated that the telegraphs will be
brought closer to the population ; that the hours at which
the wires can he used will be considerably extended, and
that a great average reduction will take place in the cost of
telegrams to the public. For, as to the latter point, it appears
that the average cost in 1866 of an inland message was
ls. 11d., and we may fairly presume that if a uniform tariff
of Is. were adopted, the reduction would, as in Belgium, be
followed by a considerable increase in the gross number of
messages sent. It is, indeed, certain that the proportion of
increase would, under these circumstances, be far greater in
this country than in Belgium ; but, assuming that the same
rate of increase resulted as has already obtained in that
country, data sufficiently accurate exists to shew that the
united telegraphic systems of the kingdom would produce
an annual income of more than half a million sterling.
The price that must be paid for the acquisition of the tele-
graphic systems is necessarily a subject for serious consi-
deration. The market value of these shares at the present
time is about three millions, and it is known that the
total of their working expenses for the year 1866 amounted
to a little more than £340,000. If arrangements can be
satisfactorily made as to the annual sum that must be
charged to the Post Office on the score of capital required,
it is probable that a sum more than sufficient for all working
expenses will be derived for the income above mentioned.
For there is no doubt whatever that the working expenses
of telegraphs do not rise in proportion to the growth of
business ; and it is equally certain that a united is far
cheaper than a divided management in all matters where
good administration is required. It is probable that the
minor details of this scheme will excite considerable discus.
sion, and the promoters of the bill must be prepared to answer
categorically various objections that will be raised as to the
telegraphic abilities of the Post Office authorities. But as
we cannot close our eyes to the fact that commercial in-
terests and public convenience are marred by the present
unsatisfactory working of British telegraphs, as we know
that Government supervision is succeeding admirably else-
where, and as, moreover, the officials at St. Martin's-le-
Grand have shown themselves capable of work other than
the sale of stamps and delivery of letters, the bill will
come before the House under very favourable auspices, and
must commend itself to all those members who are in-
timately associated with the business transactions of this
busy country.