The Sun.
London, England, 1868-11-14 00:00:00

LOA' DON, SA7 URDAY, NOV. 14, 1868.

Lord STANLEY'S speech at King's Lynn, yesterday,
comes before the country most opportunely. Every-
thing considered, it is quite as well that the Foreign
Secretary's pronwicininento should have been post-
poned thus 'until the very eve of the General Elec-
tion. lie speaks throughout as a Moderator. Ilia
manner is equable, yet assured. Fl 3 flings no fire-
brands about him. His words are not, taunts. They
have the charm of coalmen sense. Every one can
understand what he means. Ile evidences au inerra-
dicable distaste, on the one hand for reticence,
on the other for circumlocution. Ile speaks
with a set purpose not to put a gloss
upon anything but to make his meaning quite
plain in regard to all the points, one after another,
of public interest demanding at this moment very
urgently the public consideration. Almost at start-
ing he seizes at once upon the imputation so persis-
tently flung in the teeth of the First Minister of the
Crown and his colleagues, to the effect that they
passed the Reform Bill simply because they wished to
retain office ; and that, actuated by that one motive,
the love of place, they are ever since then clinging to
power. Lord STANLEY, we say, seizes upon this at
once and flings it aside die taiufullp. As for him-
self, he says, it has been strictly by his own choice
that he has passed the far greater part of his parlia-
mentary life as a private member. Thirteen years
ago (1.855) Lord PALMERSTON offered him one of the
highest positions in his Cabinet. Ten years after-
wards (1855) Lord RUSSELL, then Premier by the
death of his chief, repeated the offer in terms even
more flattering. "Not wishing to sever myself from
the political connection with which I had acted," says
Lord STANLEY, " I declined both proposals."

It is equally worthy of remembrance in regard to Mr.
DISRAELI, as it appears to us, that when he became
Prime Minister no statesman had ever risen to supreme
power in a constitutional state more legitimately.
It may be said of him quite truly that he became
First Lord of the Treasury by direct right of inherit-
ance. Lord DERBY'S resignation of the Premiership,
by reason of his failing health, left the post vacant
for that one amang his colleagues whose reputation
was alone second to his own, and who had borne the
brunt of the fight for upwards of twenty years as the
leader of the Conservative party in that most for-
midable of all political battle- fields, the House of Com-
mons. Mr. DISRAELI was Lord DERBY'S natural suc-
cessor. The former had both earned and inherited that
supreme position as bead of the Conservative Govern-
ment. lie had advanced, moreover, in spite of how
many enormous disadvantages ! Without family in-
fluence to back him up, without great wealth or
high connection to give him a start in life, he
had had to fight his way as a very young man into
the front rank, first of all outside the walls of Parlia-
ment, in what is called the Republic of Letters, and
afterwards, inside those walls, in the mi Ist of the
representatives of the people of all shades of political
)pinion. It is an old story, and one that is perfectly
well known to the great mass of th 3 people of this
country ; but it is especially deserving of being re-
called to mind, thus, in passing, now that Lord
STANLEY, as a Minister of the Crown in the two
last Governments, first of all under his father's
eretniership, and then under that of his f ether's
successor, has seized upon this despicable taunt
directed against both Cabinets, namely, that they first
i,assed the Reform Bill, an I that they have ever since
.ontinued "in," purely and simply because they wished
:0 retain office ! Lord SCANLEY seiz:s upon the taunt,
ye say, and casts it aside disdainfully. Mr. DISRAELI,
tgainst whom it has all along been mainly directed,
:as, on the other hand, up to this moment, remained
(yet more disdainfully) silent altogether on the sub-
ject. A:id with reason : for the circumstance; under
which he has single-handed fought his way to power
without any adventitious aid whatever, is of itself an
:newer. and the House of Commons felt this, through
.-hat he himself in one of his happiest phrases h
lesignated its unerring instinct, when, upon the
moment of his acassion to power, it hailed his ap •

pearauce, there, with ringing cheers from both sides
indiscriminately, when he first walked up the House
upon that for him proud evening when he took his seat
for the first titne on the Treasury Bench as Prime
Minister of England.
Reverting to Lord STANLEY'S survey, in his com-
prehensive speech yesterday at King's Lynn, of all
the great public questions now before the enfran-
chised multitude for their consideration, we
cannot but remark at once with a sense
of satisfaction that •he avows himself to be
averse to the notion of the legislature immediately
upon its reassembling beginning to tinker away at the
old question of Parliamentary Reform, with a view
to the amendment of this or that detail in the last
great Reform Act. Enough for one while at any
rate upon that head, he insists and insists with rea-
son. As to our relations with other great Powers,
speaking as Foreign Secretary, he pronounces them
upon, the whole in the highest degree satisfactory.
There is a storm still broo ling, he admits,
over Europe; but he believes it will blow
over. France and Prussia he mentions point
blank by name immediately after saying this: but he
asks directly thereupon in regard to them, what has
either of them to gain by fighting? Had ho no
thought, when asking that question so confidently,
that France, for all her forty millions of people, might
answer upon the instant—the Rhenish Provinces ?
Prussia, in her remembrance of Sadowa, might be
perfectly well satisfied to leave her sword in the scab-
bard. But France, by reason of her remembrance of
Sadowa, might, on the other hand, be eager
to try the keenness-of the edge of hers, and to try
the strength of her arm anew, particularly with
that golden prize .to win lying there at her
very threshold, the prize she has been coveting, and
it must be allowed not unnaturally coveting to win
back once more into her own possession, ever since
the arrangements' of 1815, that golden prize of prizes
for her—the Rhenish Provinces ! However, the
notion of arbitration being set afoot between France
and Prussia has been very recently broached by the
Prime Minister of England, coupled with the sug-
gestion by him of the possible acceptance by those
two powers of England's Foreign Secretary as their
joint arbitrator. And, therefore, when the Foreign
Secretary that possible future umpire be-
tween the two—speaks so hopefully, almost
confidently of the still threatening storm
there even yet blowing over, who is there but will
eagerly echo the wish implied that these fair auguries
for the future may not be fated to prove illusory.
Holding in his hands the centre of all the complicated
network of our diplo.nacy, Lord STANLEY still
staunchly adheres to that very modern syste:n for
English Diplomatists, the safe, and new-(angled, and
economic system of Non-Intervention. "Our in-
sular position," he says, " requires an insular policy ;
and, if the worst come to the worst, we have
always au excellent ally to fall back upon
—the British Channel." It is certainly a
novel way of putting it, and at any rate a
manly one. Looking eastwards, he there distinctly
perceives on that far horizon a black cloud no
bigger possibly than a man's hand (the Sick Man's,
poor Bono JOHNNY'S), but a cloud that at any mo-
ment may spread far an I wide, until it darkens the
whole welkin. For those possibilities, however, we
have only to keep on the alert. As for Spain and the
Spaniards—he says—all we can give them, the best
we can give them is - our good wishes. As for
our own domestic improvements, Lord STANLEY
is very explicit indeed in the declaration
of all his own cherished predilections. lie is
against compulsory education. He is for
maintaining the present nicely adjusted balance be-
tween direct and indirect taxation. Ha is for grap-
pling, at the earliest opportunity, with the deadly
evil of pauperism, with a view to its systematic dimi-
nution. He is for the gradual reduction of the
enormous burden, of our national debt of nearly
£800,000,000. Finally, in regard to the great and
initninent question of the Irish Church, he is for re-
form, not for destruction. At least the electors of
King's Lynu have reason once more to thank Lord
STANLEY for nuking this comprehensive declaration
of his opinion from first to last as plain as a pike-
staff.

To-monnow is Sunday ; to-morrow is also the
eve of nomination day. It is certain not to be a day
of rest; it is certain to be a day of excitement. The
nation is on the point of deciding a great issue, and
the most strict Sabbatarian will hardly affirm that
the question whether the State (as distinct
from the nation) shall have a religion or not is an
unfit subject for Sunday talk. No doubt the
discussion will not be confined to the parlour ;
no doubt it will invade the pulpit. The
clergy who believe that the national recogni-
tion of a Divine Ruler is bound up with the
maintenance of a Church which the nation rejects,
will exhort their parishioners to take no part in Mr.
GLADSTONE'S "apostacy," just as their fathers exhorted
the parishioners of forty years ago to take no part in
the " apostacy " of PEEL when he opened the Legis-
lature to Roman Catholics. Men of larger minds
and clearer insight, men who see that the
godliness of a nation is shewn, not by its
outward respect for a particular form of
religion, but by the justice and equity of its legisla-
tion, will also have their say; and if it be at all com-
parable to the noble speech just delivered by Pre-
bendary WILKINsoN in East Somerset, or to the
article by Dean ALFORD which appeared in last
month's Contemporary Review, they will do well.
But while on the great question of the day
there will be opposing opinions, contradictory
arguments, there is one thing in which all
may agree—in exhorting their parishioners to
vote as loyal citizens and upright Christians. The
week upon which we are about to enter will bring
two great temptations—the temptation to compel by
violence, the temptation to seduce by corruption; in
a word, force and fraud. Whatever be our views upon
the Irish Church or any other question, we ought to
be all of one mind in resisting those evils.
It is the duty of the clergy, no matter what else
they may say, to use to-morrow's opportunity for
inculcating the two great duties of forbearance
and honesty. It is an opportunity, such as does
not often occur to them, for leaving endless
disputations about dogmas, in order to bring the
truths of their religion home to the practical life of
the nation.

There are, as it seems to us, two leading questions
for consideration. Firstly, how ought a man to vote ?
Secondly, how ought he to behave towards other
voters ? In asking the first question, we intend not
the smallest reference to Mr. GLADSTONE or Mr.
DisnaELr. We will suppose that the elector has
decided upon the merits of these two statesmen long ago.
It ought to be a mere platitude to tell a man that he
should vote according to his conscience ; but, unfor-
tunately, it is one of those precepts which require a
good deal of repetition. Some men are influenced
by personal friendship, some by their hopes of
gain, some by their fears of loss. The man who
votes on the score of friendship for a candidate
whose opinions he does not approve betrays his trust
and violates his conscience no less, though for a less
shameful object, than the man who is bribed. Then
as to the taking of bribes, what can we say of this ?
What but repeat that which we have said again
and again before—that it is a shameful sin,
dishonouring a man in this world, impe-
rilling him in the next ? And by the
taking of bribes we include not only the gross
form of it, the actual receiving of so many sovereigns
for a vote, but the more disguised forms : the shop-
keeper's expectation of fresh custom, the parent's

THE SUN, LONDON, SATURDAY EVENING, NOVEMBER 14, 15,

hope for his son's advancement, the townsman's
anticipation of a public grant,—all these are but
different manifestations of the same vice. Let it be
clearly understood that a man holds the franchise
not for his personal profit, not for the good of the
town in which he lives, but for the welfare of the
whole nation.

Turning to the second of the two lessons which
need to be taught, the duty of the elector towards
others, we find many considerations. We have
already by implication spoken of one. In condemn-
ing the taking, we have condemned the giving of
bribes. But, if there be any difference in the degree of
heinousness, the second is the worse offence of the two.
Only the needy man and his Maker know how sore
is the temptation which he has to resist when he is
enticed with the sight of gold or threatened with the
loss of income. Just in proportion as the temptation
is difficult to resist, is the tempter more utterly
wicked. To sin is human ; to tempt another man
to sin is devilish. If we fall under tempta-
tion let us cover our heads with ashes
and clothe ourselves in sackcloth, and repent
with sighs and tears. If we tempt another
we are beyond forgiveness, because we are beyond
repentance. Passing from this, the worst of electoral
sins, to another that is only less black, we come
to intimidation. Here again we meet with
a very odious vice. Every elector has an
equal right to vote according to his con-
victions. No matter how absurd his opinions,
how narrow and bigoted, how dangerous
and revolutionary, he has the same right that we,
who have more light and more wisdom, possess. Any
attempt to infringe or restrict that right is a wrong
and a robbery. Argue with the wrong-headed Tory
or the hot-headed Republican if we will ; try to cure
him of his folly or his madness ; try to inform his
reason ; but do not force his conscience. And as
with the individual so with the mass—let there be fair
play and absence front threat. Not only should the
elector refrain from intimidation in the house, but he
should be no party to clamour at the hustings ; he
should strive so far as he can, by example and by pre-
cept, to give all parties fair play. Truth loses nothing
by discussion—it gains rather ; for truth is of the light
and loves the light ; it is only error that has any
need to fear free speech. A politician should
be the first to wish his opponent to speak, for,
believing him to be in error, he will feel assured that
his opponent is then more certain of being confuted.
Error loves to lurk in secret places. It is most
dangerous when least seen. It cannot bear the broad
light of day : give it free course and it dies. Finally,
there should be toleration one for another. We may
be quite sure that an opponent is wrong ; we may
wonder at his stupidity ; but then we should remem-
ber that he is equally sure that we are wrong,
equally amazed at our stupidity. Differences of
opinion are inevitable even in the simplest matters ;
much more in matters so complex as politics ; most
of all in those which partake of the double nature of
politics and religion. Difference of temperament will
often induce difference of belief. It is easy to imagine,
for instance, how two men, both patriots, both
earnestly desiring the welfare of their fellow-
men, may be as regards politics wide as the poles
asunder, simply because the one thinks that legisla-
tion should be for the people, the other that it should
be by the people. If so minute a difference (minute
that is, as compared with the great end which both
have in view) can give rise to such extreme diversity,
there is ample room and need for toleration. Let us,
then, be pure, honest, and tolerant. Let us, while
avoiding the slightest deviation from conscience,
suffer patiently the widest diversity of opinion. We
are all seeking the welfare of the nation. We all
believe that

" Nought shall make us rue,
If England to itself do rest but true."

England is made up of Englishmen, and truth
must begin in each of us. That is the leaven which,
having leavened the individual man, will leaven the
whole mass.

BANK OF FRANCE.

PARIS, Nov. 12.

The following is the return of the Bank of France
for the week enang to-day, together with the cor-
responding figures of the previous account :

DEBTOR.

Nov. - Nov. 5.
fr. c. fr. c.
Capital of the Bank 182,500,000 182,500,000
Profits in addition to
capital (Art. 8, Law,
Juno 9, 1857) 7,014,776 02 7,044,776 02
Reserve of the Bank

and its branches 22,105,750 14 22,105,750 14
Reserve of landed pro-

perty 4,000,000 4,000,000
Notes in circulation
Banknotes to order and
receipts payable at
sight 34,022,415 03 33,895,448 18
Treasury account cur-
rent creditor 177,842,435 75 184,645,016 44
Current accounts, Paris 290,426,540 69 283,221,434 22
Do. branch banks 45,077,655 53,017,029
Dividends payable 907,022 939,177
Discounts and sundry
interests .............
Rediscounted the last
six months
Surplus of receipts not
distributed
Sundries

Total ............... 2,054,610,960 18 2,075,213,547 69
CREDITOR.
Nov. 12. Nov. 5.
Cash in hand and in fr. c. fr. c.
Branch banks
Commercial bills over-

due
Commercial bills dis-
counted, not yet due 239,577,436 63 242,953,281 47
Do. branch banks 226,442,686 226,259,883
Advances on deposit of
bullion
Do. branch banks 9,007,000 9,338,800
Do. on French Public _

Securities 12,962,400 12,519,800
Do. by branch banks 7,847,100 7,606,800
Do. on railway shares
and debentures
Do. branch banks
Do. on Credit Fonder

Bonds
Do. branches

Do. to the State (Con-
vention, June 10,
1857) 60,000,000 60,000,000
Government Stock re-

-.......___
serve__ 12,980,750 14 12,980,750 14
Do. disposable
Rentes Immobalisees __ _

(Law, June '2, 1857) 100,000,000 100,000,000
Hotel and furniture of
the 131.-nk and landed
propel ty branches 9,064,587 9,039,206
Expenses of manage-
ment 2,190,956 08 2,159,080 34
Sundries

Total
Certified by the Senator-Governor of the Bank
of France.

(Signed) RoULAND.

POLICE LV7ELLIGENCE,-This Day.

MARLBOROUGH-STREET.

ROBBERY BY A GANG IN OXFORD-STREET.—John
Grant, a young man, was charged before Mr.
D'Eyncourt with being concerned with others not
in custody, in stealing a watch of the value of £7
from the person of Mr. William Saunders, draper,
of 25, Lambs-conduit-street.
The prisoner was remanded.

ONE V.

P. MILT

•
An extraordinary attack on
o candidate for Westminster
came from Mr. , Coninghp-,n
of Brighton. Addressing Mr.
Mill, he asks, not vcii v court(
ous,y,
" Who are you?" and
replies as follow; s At the last general election you were
brought fr'rward to liberate Westminster from the alleged
dictation of tho Marquis of Westminster, by opposing
his relative, Captain Grosvenor. Finding yourself too woak
to stand alone, you coalesced with youropponent and intended
victim, and your supporters were carried to the poll in his
conveyances. Whilo declining yourself to contribute
one fax thing towards the cost of your own election, you
profited by his lavish expenditure, and your friends
and th 3 public were for a long time afterwards,
pestered with bogging circulars from your committee,
crying to the charitable, 'Subscribe, subscribe!' Your
subsequent Parliamentary career has been a brief
one, but it has been long enough to enable us to judge
of your claims to our confidence; your opposition to
the ballot' and your support of the ' minority clause'
are fresh in the recollection of all men. Your uncalled-for
interference at Northampton and Kilmarnock aro suffi-
ciently notorious, and you aro now brought here to attack
me behind my back in support of your disciple and fol-
lower, Mr. Fawcett. From the perusal of your last night's
speech I find that, for the sake of a temporary triumph over
an absent man, you sacrifice the first imperative duty of
speaking the truth. You profess to state my objections
to Mr. Fawcett, and with them you mix up those made by
others, which you insidiously attribute to myself ; you refer
to my ironical strictures on the severe enactments against
petty bribery, while wholesale rottenness in high places is
loft untouched ; and, garbling my statements, you charge me
with being the advocate of corrupt ion. You are said, sir,tobea
great philosopher. You have proved yourself an unscrupulous
sophist and a very bad politician. In your recently pub-
lished correspondence you reveal some of your secret aspi
rations. An ong them is one with which I cordially sympa-
thise—the one in which you expres your readiness to have
retired from Westminster in favour of Mr. Chadwick, for in
him we should, at all events, have had a man, and not a
Book in Breeches.' "