The Sun.
London, England, 1857-03-30 00:00:00

THE R,ESUL.

From the Times.)

LECTIONS.

The appeal to the people has been answered with
a force and distinctness beyond our anticipations
—we may even say our wishes. A mild rebuke and
moderate discouragement were the utmost that we
hoped or desired for a policy which was rather fac-
tious and mischievous than wholly unprincipled,
and we certainly did not expect the signal retribu-
tion which has fallen on the heads of its authors.
The League has disappeared from Parlia,ment.
Cobden has been beaten by 246 votes at Hudders-
field • Bright and Milner Gibson by from 2,000 to
3,000 votes at Manchester ; Armitage is beaten at
Salford by a Ministerial stranger only two or three
days in the field ; Walmsley is thrown out at Lei-
cester, and, nearer home, at the Tower Hamlets, we
lose the familiar name of Sir W. Clay. Layard loses
his seat at Aylesbury, and Sir F. Baring has
Scarcely saved his at Portsmo ;CO which he has re-
presented for 25 years. Mr. Gladstone loses the
noisy support of Mr. Phillimore, who has been
paired out with his brother, and, for the present at
least, the quieter vote of Sir S. Northcote. On the
other side are two remarkable casualties. Mr. F.
Peel has been beaten at Bury, and Admiral Ber-
keley, First Naval Lord, has been turned out of
his seat at Gloucester by Sir R. W. Carden.
Among the new members, the return of Coning-
barn for Brighton counts at least one against the
loss of some strong Liberals elsewhere, and King-
lake at Bridgewater is compensation for the loss of
Layard. The results of two severe struggles may
be set off one against the other. Lord J. Russell
has come in third on the poll in the City, throwing
out his antagonist, Mr. Raikes Currie ; and Mr.
Bernal Osborne brought in his colleague with him-
self against a powerful opposition at Dover. Lord
John Russell owes his return partly to the Tories
and partly to the grateful exertions of the commu-
nity whose political rights he has advocated with so
much perseverance and so little success, but whose
claims cannot be again postponed after the reite-
rated decision of the constituency in their favour.
Such are some of the incidents of only half the
general election. The Ministerial gain already is
over 20, and more may confidently be expected
from the counties and other constituencies yet to
declare themselves.
The moral of all this is very plain. The British
people do not like dictation. They will not be de-
liberately negotiated and sold by a coalition. 'I hey
will not be tripped up by a sudden and unforeseen
combination. They will not be snugly disposed of
by associations, or made the vulgar bondsmen of a
league. It is against tyrannies of the latter sort that
the constituencies both of London and Manchester
have successfully revolted. You have only to prove
to an Englishman that he has been superseded in
the exercise of his conscience, his judgment, or his
political rights, by some people who think them-
selves wiser and better than he is, and he is sure to
rise in insurrection. But what he hates the most is
hypocrisy, organised or not. He will not sell his
conscience at a moment's warning to any set of
gentlemen who may want a better warranty than
their own for a convenient opinion, an extempore
principle, or a factious censure. In this instance
the whole British people were suddenly called on to
censure, not only the conduct of a British Plenipo-
tentiary under most difficult circumstances and in
a course utterlyimpossible to be retraced, but, what
was more absurd still, the conduct of her Majesty's
Government, for not condemning and repudiating
what it is admitted on all sides they must, good or
bad, follow up. These self-constituted guardians of
public morality, finding England involved, through
her agents as they chose to think, in a national
sin, of which they fully intended not only to share,
but, if possible, to monopolise the fruits, conceived
the splendid idea of making the Government the
scapegoat, and then stepping in themselves, to
reap with a clean conscience the harvest of crime.
Nobody at home could prevent, or even remedy,
what had been done. Nobody even suggested the
idea of making amends. The most obstreperous
conscience-mongers did not; dare to whisper resti-
tution. It was assumed on all sides, by the most
sanctimonious as well as by the least pretending,
that, be the beginning bad or good, we must go on
with it. But these traffickers in conscience, these
buyers and sellers of public morality, and hucksters
of national reputation, thought it would be a pro-
fitable day's work if they could stigmatise what they
had not the least thought of revoking, and so blast
the character of their own country before ell the
world, for the sake of damaeing the position of
their political rivals. Now, this is precisely what
the English do not choose to do, or to have done
for them. They will not hold their consciences at
the bidding of political speculators. They admit
themselves to be fallible ; they may be seduced
into erroneous judgments ; they are addicted to
various fanaticisma of a religious and self-damaging
character, but they will not be the ready slaves of
a gainful hypocrisy; they will not suddenly pre-
sent themselves like a stage troop of devotees, to
shriek, in the words of a master, some morbid sen-
timent or some frantic objurgation. They will
think and feel for themselves. They will, too, be
both just and consistent. They will not save
themselves by heaping criminality on others not
less innocent ; nor do they think so lightly and
conveniently of a grave moral censure as to pro-
nounce it and set it at nought at one and the same
time.

The most decisive replies to this grand appeal
come from the more commercial part of the empire.
It is in its own birthplace that the League has been
extinguished. How is this ? If wo might venture
to interpret the voice of the people, they feel very
much about this Chinese affair as one of our highest
commercial author:ties, ant a man of undoub ed
honour, has expressed himself. The opiniOn of
Baron Rothschild is entitled to all the more weight
as it is given freely, and not extorted by political
pressure. "He had been asked," he said in
Guildhall on Friday, " how he would have voted
on the China question. Ncw, as a commercial
man, he would state, without entering int) the
merits or the details of the question, that he should
unhesitatingly have voted with Government. The
Government ought to avoid every occasion for
plunging the country unnecessarily into the
miseries of war ; but as a commercial man he
thought it well for the principal to confirm the
acts and contracts which his agents were empowered
to enter into and had a right to make. He knew
the disadvantage that lents laboured under when
the confirmation of their acts was doubted, and the
effect which that doubt and uncertainty would
have in the negotiation of other great questions."
This is a common-sense, and, as we believe, an un-
answerable, view of the case. It is necesary that
we should have Plenipotentiaries with the fullest
powers, and naval and military officers to co-
operate with them, for the preservation of our
great interests and rights in those dis-
tant regions. Of course for the selection of
these Plenipotentiaries the Governments at. home
are seriously responsible ; but, unless the case he
very strong indeed against them, we must adopt
their acts, or otherwise we shall never get men of
real honour and competent ability to accept such a
position or do their duty in it. In this instance all
sides are agreed to adopt the acts of our Plenipo-
tentiary ; nor is there any other possible course.
The only difference is one which, if it is no differ-
ence as regards the present question, is a most tre-
mendous difference as regards the national character
and the future position of British Plenipoten-
tiaries in distant regions, surrounded by difficul-
ties, and in the face of cruel and treacherous foes.
The difference we allude to is simply this :—While
Lord Palinerston's Government takes the regular
course of simply backing without censure proceed-
ings which it sees no reason to tonsure, the Oppo-
sition were for censuring by word, but backing up
in deed ; for disclaiming the author, but essuming
his work ; denouncing the seed, but gathering in
the crop. Hypocrisy of this sort is not only mean-
ness. In the East it would be well understood ;
for it is the way of tlie worst plotters and sit-
14,0hrners to accept the del and disown the doer.
attempt now defeated by the people of Eng-
land is a notable improvement on this very stale
hypocrisy, It aimed to procure not the commission
of a crime, but the ire utation of one • and so ob-
tain not only the spoilPs of the alleged victim, but
also the place of the alleged criminal.

COLLIERS AND CANntats.
—Like other men, miners
have opinions and prejud.ics ;
in their own calling,
they take them from their masters and their overtmkers,
Masters continue y'2ar after year to build cottages with-
the wants of health ; they know,
jega are broken by tho noel-
out due attentum
the shaft
moreover, that arms and,
dental fall of stones mon
_descend
neverthsless, they do not prop?rlY face Protect the
true c,untpas3ion
pit mouth. They know Colt men are burnt in thy pit,
and are generous to them, feel a
them in their suffering; but they do not ex'r_ themselves
sufficiently to strike at the root of all such accidents
because, at the working of pit' lid; been, 20 it
shall he. Nothing can he clone with tho miner
except throucTli the master. If the master come to
the opinion that all his men ought, for their own
safety and for the cre:ht of his mine, to work with Pafoty.
lamps--any praotiesl imprevorm,t, nr,,,,T,„.57 to Clio
lamps being first duly triode—he has only to say 80 tO bi-; •
manager, exolaining clearly why be is of that opinion,
and that he has firmly made up his own mind upon it,
and such hinps will he used. A master reiclent on the
spot has so much influence that, if he be in earnest, he
will himself speak to the charter masters who are in
authority over working companies ; or, better still, to I
all the men in public, and in private to those whom be I
knows to be more obstinate than their neighbours, or
more idloential. The men thus protupteci would not be
slow to see their own advantage; and, in a very short
time, they themselves would extingui3h an:,' naked candle
employed by a refractory companion.-11ousehold Words.