The Sun.
London, England, 1868-12-29 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS. AMERICAN THIRST FOR "GAB."

The Telegraph asks why our legislators should be
assembled in the depth of the winter recess to transact
some formal business which only occupies a few minutes.
The uninitiated may not readily understand why the
Commons did not finish the work of ordering new writs
when they were about it a fortnight ago. By ancient
usage the writs for fresh elections during the con-
tinuance of a Parliament are issued under the
Speaker's warrant. But there is another rule,
that the writs are not to be issued where a petition is
pending in which the slat is claimed. Hence the writs
are not moved for until the time for petitioning is expired,
and as these servants of the Crown who sat for county
seats might yet have been petitioned against, it was re-
solved that the House should re-assemble after the day
allowed for challenging the first elections, and should
then order the necessary writs to be issued.
The procedure is highly legal, constitutional, and
proper ; but is it not somewhat circuitous ? It is
possible to get from Temple-bar to Charing-cross by
way of Islington, Roston, and St. John's-wood, but such
a course would be considered by most Londoners rather
devious. If we follow step by step the process of reason.
ing which induced the House to adjourn till the 29th of
December, we shall find more cause for admiring the
fidelity to ancient usage, than for indiscriminate laudation
of the usage itself.
Mr. Bright in office has become a favourite theme with
the Liberal journalists, says the Standard. The political
apotheosis of the Radical hero has caused great excite-
ment in various quarters, while some are surprised that
the British Constitution has survived after having accom-
plished the feat of making Mr. Bright a Cabinet Minister.
A man or a system can only conquer at the expense of
something, and there must be a victim to every
victory. In the present case it is not very
clear what enemy has been overcome by Mr.
Bright's preferment. As one of those who have con-
sistently opposed Mr. Bright, we are not desirous of being
weighed down by any sense of discomfiture at Mr. Bright's
elevation. On the contrary, there are many reasons why,
without changing our opinion of Mr. Bright, we should
approve of his accession to office. Some of those reasons
concern the welfare of the Constitution ; others, we do
scruple to say, have reference to the interests of our party.
In the first place, Mr. Bright had not only earned a right
to a place in the Government, but he had incurred an obliga-
tion duly to discharge that right. It was merit in
him that he sacrificed his personal convenience to his duty.
It would doubtless have been more agreeable to himself,
and more, consonant with his own tastes, to keep himself
free from the responsibilities of office ; but a man who had
spoken so much and so bitterly of the conduct of others in
power was bound by every principle of fairness to give the
world an opportunity of judging of his own superior
behaviour. There could be no parliamentary government
in the true sense, unless every man who took a part in
the discussion of public measures was ready to take his
share in the business of carrying them out. Every leader
of a party in England is, by the theory of the Constitu-
tion, potentially a Minister. There is no question here of ,

any personal ambition or private convenience. The State
requires everyone who is in the place of criticising the acts
of a Government to take his turn at government when it
comes to him in the due course. It may have no demand
for a Layard, but it can fairly claim a Bright.
The Daily News examines into the ruling principles of
our Government, and finds that the aristocracy still rules
England, though no longer in its own name, but through
the people, and in the main for the people. If any one
doubts where the instrumental and executive part of the
Government still resides, he has only to think of the
personnel of every recent Administration. It will be
enough, indeed, to glance at the names of the newly-
formed Liberal Government. While the Camp-
bells, the Stanleys, the Cavendishes, the itussells,
and the Cecils exhibit the qualities which their
present representatives display, they do not seem likely to
be deposed from their administrative ascendancy. We
neither approve nor quarrel with the fact—we simply state
it. The aristocracy, we repeat, governs England still ;
but it governs it, not in its own name, or by its own right,
but as the agent of the people, whose mandates it receives,
whose instructions it obeys, on whose favours it depends,
and to whom it acknowledges responsibility. Much of this
power and influence still retained by the heads of our great
houses is attributed by the Daily News to the in-
fluence of historical traditions, but the privilege of birth
is only of value so long as those who claim it have not
declined from their ancestral virtue and capacity. It will
no longer give success to marked inferiority. Even the
Premier Duke and Premier Earl of England, the chief of
all the Howards, whose majority was on Monday cele-
brated with all the honours, will not find the blood in his
veins enough. There must also be vigorous brains in his
head.

The Times, in entering at some length upon the best
mode of dealing with professional money lenders, thinks
that no doubt can exist of the extent or the reality of the
evil. Not only all young gentlemen going to college, but
all young officers joining the army, and all young civil
servants on receiving their appointments, are tempted by
voluntary offers of money from regular usurers on terms
more or less attractive. The path to ruin is made smooth and
easy, the unpleasantness of asking for loans avoided. The
circulars suggest extravagance which might otherwise
never have been committed, and it is not impossible that
in some cases these usurers may thus be really responsible
for the destruction of a life's career. Still it would be
difficult to make money lending a punishable crime, or to
enact that money lenders should be debarred from the
ordinary commercial privileges of advertising their
terms of business, though it would be hard
to find words too strong for the conduct of
those who trade on the possible weakness or
ignorance of youth. It was stated the other day that
in one instance a money lender was found to have made a
list of promising young customers, with the amount and
value of their respective expectations, duly appraised, set
against each name. In two or three cases also it will
be recollected with what success such concerted plots
were carried out : but the examples are rare, and the trade,
as we have heard, is not, upon the whole, a lucrative one.
It is said that even the enormous gains occasionally
realised do not in the long run cover the losses incurred,
and that money-lending at 60 per cent. is rarely a profit-
able business. The more thoroughly, however, the
subject is understood the better. Knowledge is
the best safeguard in such matters. Exactly in
proportion as the information or experience of youth
can be improved wilt that weakness disappear on which
money-lenders mostly trade. They represent their offers
of accommodation as easy, pleasant, and confidential. If
those who receive these communications will but remember
that there is a pitfall in every line of them, they will be
in little danger of succumbing to the stratagem. There,
at any rate, lies the best security at present available, and
it is with this impression that we have now recalled the
subject to the attention of the public.
The Herald, in commenting on the death of Sir Richard
Mayne, remarks that a general regret ensues upon the
death of a man who for forty years has been a zealous and
efficient public servant. At 33 he became an assistant
commissioner of police ; and the police, not of London
only, but of the whole kingdom, was then in a most un-
settled condition. It had to be organised, disciplined,
directed, when the new force was in a middle
state between expectation and unpopularity. From
the year 1829 until the close of 1868 he was
scarcely ever absent from his arduous but peculiar post at
Great Scotland-yard, and he was there the day before he
died, in the ripeness of age and, let us fairly add, in con-
siderable honour. But the system he was wedded to must
now, under a new chief, be seriously modified. It has
been evident for a long time that life and property are
insufficiently guarded. It arises, then, as a most urgent
question who shall be Sir Richard Mayne's successor, and
upon what principle shall he be appointed. Is he to have
the same arbitrary powers? Is he to continue in office
until the energies of his mind descend to razzias among
harmless dogs and prohibitions against sports which
are pleasant to children? Above all, is he to go on
making soldiers in one sense, and laughing-stocks in
another, of the constabulary? These points are not yet
ripe for final settlement. It may be found necessary to
increase the rank and file as the population increases—a
supposition which seems reasonable enough ; to enlist
men of better ascertained character for fixed and more
lengthened periods, reconcilin. g them to their bond by
better pay ; to enforce a stricter discipline, although in
that respect, considering the total of police offences, we
hardly think there is much to be charged against the
force ; and to provide a staff of subaltern officers
intermediate between the present superintendents
and the commissioners, to secure that the rounds of
London shall be duly gone through every labyrinth and
ramification wherever there is property to tempt or life to
assail, or the peace to be disturbed, or public morals to Le
offended, by night and by day. If the new Chief Commis-
sioner happens to be a man prepared to undertake till:,
task, he will find it a gigantic one, and those who clamour
most loudly against the police ought to be foremost in
desiring that tioi dillicultl,l of their work, and the neces•
s;ty f..r aidir,;; them to the utmost in their work, should
be a,:knowled!;, d.

RESPITE.—On Sunday morning the governor of
Taunton Gaol received a communication from the Hoire
°nice to the effect that the prisoner Robert Sweet—con
victed with Biegrove for the murder of a navvy at Wells—
be respited. Sweet, who has always strongly protested
that he was innocent of the crime, and has frequently
cNpressed his belief that he would not be hanged, received
the intelligence with great calmness. Bisgrove still
a•llieres to his statement that he alone committed the
murder, although Sweet was sitting on a stile. close by
him at the time, Bisgrove will 49,e*.e9_0cd Ac m ;Qum,.

The Hartford Courant recounts a visit made by tieneral
Grant to Providence, Rhode Island, where he was the
guest of General Burnside. A band of music, accom-
panied by a large crowd, appeared before the dwelling,
and, in response to their anxious demonstrations, General
Grant appeared in an open window and bowed his acknow-
ledgments. But the crowd wanted more, and, American
like, shouted for a speech. The General bowed again,
and was about retiring, when a voice high in the upper
key shouted, " Just two words, General." General
Grant: "No, sir!" (Great applause and laughter.)
This was his only speech in Providence, and was taken
verbatim by the anxious reporters of that city, who had
followed him in vain through all his travellings during the
afternoon. The crowd then passed through the house,
entering at the front door, and going out through an oppo•
"site passage, General Grant standing by the front parlour
doer and receiving each person with a shake of the hand.
The crowd, once outside again, insisted upon speeches
from the window. General Grant, who was quietly snn,k-
ing a cigar, said to General' Burnside, who stood in the
window, " General Hawley is here; he can make a
speech." The crowd caught it up, and cried for " Hawley,'•
who appeared and said, " Why, gentlemen, it is utterly
impossible to make a speech here. I made all my speeches
during the campaign, and I thank God that I was able to
do so." There were loud calls then for Mayor Doyle, and
that gentleman came forward and " got out of it" by
informing the crowd that Colonel Deming was in the
house, and, having been a mayor, could speak ap.
propriately. So the crowd called for " Deming," who
went to the window and said : " Gentlemen, I appear
here as a substitute for Mayor Doyle, and I wish to say
that among the great benefits which I anticipate from the
administration of General Grant, the greatest is that this
everlasting thirst for gab will cease. (Applause and
laughter.) No gentleman, with any reputation as a
talker, can escape being called upon on all sorts of occa-
sions. Why, it is a fact that a friend of mine in a horse
car in New York was called upon to respond to a resolu-
tion of thanks to the driver." (Great laughter.)