The Sun.
London, England, 1868-11-13 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

_ .
The Times has some suggestionto make as to the
elections, and urges that they should be got over as soon
as possible. This is a recommendation conceived in the
interest of no party except that of purity and order. It is
impossible to say whether Liberals or Conservatives
liould gain by further delay; whale it is certain that the
longer the elections are deferred the more violent will be
the passions excited, and the greater the expenditure of
money. We have already had too much of preparation
for the approaching contest ; but the worst influences
tare invariably reserved to the last. It is on the eve of
the last day of the contest that a power is resorted to
which all reprehend, but which all are not strong enough
to repel. If it be possible anywhere to hasten the day of
election a great stroke will be effected in the cause of
purity. The nomination for the counties on the Wednes-
day is recommended, so that the poll may be taken on the
following Saturday. The Times objects to give working men
A whole holiday on a day of general excitement, and suggests
to the heads of the great manufacturing firms of our par-
liaraentary boroughs that they should make some arrange-
ment by which an extra half-hour might be given to the
workmen who are electors, either in detachments through-
out the day, or by way of addition to the dinner-time, for
the purpose of recording their votes. With reference to
the Bribery Act, our contemporary thinks that as
yet, in spite of the months which have been spent
in active preparation, the rumours of bribery have
been excessively rare, and it is probable that no
election has ever been held in which such decisive blows
Were struck at undue influence as have been inflicted in
the last autumn. One after another the possessors of
power have been compelled to disavow all intention of
using it for the coercion of voters, and the election of
1868 will probably be more free from the influence of
intimidation, if not from the seduction of bribery, than
any known in the days of parliamentary government.

The Standard considers the retirement of Sir Roundell
Palmer from the contest for the University of Oxford as
very significant. With one exception, the conditions of
the contest were almost entirely in favour of the Opposi-
tion. They selected as their candidate the very best man
of their party. We have never gainsaid the commanding
pualifications of Sir Roundell Palmer for the representation
alth e university. His high character, his scholastic honours,
his allowed abilities as a lawyer and orator, all pointed him
out as a statesman eminently fitted to be the mouthpiece
of such a constituency. But the one essential question
raised by his candidature was whether the university
should depart from its ancient traditions, and deserting its
Conservative principles, should accept as its representa-
tive a politician who was pledged to the separation of the
Church from the State, and who preferred to remain
doubtfully neutral upon such questions as the disendow-
ment of the Irish Church and the secularisation of the
governing and teaching bodies of the universities. When
,Oxford rejected Mr. Gladstone he proclaimed that he was
at length " unmuzzled," and the crusade against the
Irish Church and the ecclesiastical prerogatives of the
university have witnessed to his disposition to make good
the covert threat. We do Sir Roundell Palmer, a man of
far higher moral calibre, the justice of believing that his
treatment of these and similar questions will not be in-
fluenced in the slightest degree by the reverse he has sus-
tained at Oxford.

The Daily News says : We should ourselves be guilty of
bigotry and prejudice if we attributed to squires and
clergymen exclusively what equally pertains to a very con-
siderable number of graduates who can plead no other
bigotry than that of party, and whose prejudices are
neither hereditary nor accidental. The loss of Sir
Roundell Palmer to Oxford is, to our thinking, one not
without compensation. Neither on his own account, nor
for the sake of the Liberal cause, can we consider it a subject
of pure regret. His election at the present crisis- of his
political career could hardly have been pronounced an
unalloyed Liberal success. Something of an equivocal
signification would have accompanied and followed it, and
might have thrown stumbling-blocks across Sir R. Palmer's
future path. For the present, it may be, he will be more
his own master in the modest Yorkshire borough he has
so. long and so brilliantly represented. There will always
be Mowbrays enough in the land to point the moral of
unreformed and exclusive universities, but it would have
been a national misfortune if a Bounden Palmer and a
Gladstone had surrendered to the keeping of non-resident
Oxford graduates the conscience and the intellect which
belong to their country.

The Star believes it is justified in saying that a majority
of the resident graduates of the university had tendered
the Lil;eral candidate their active aid, but these, though
they represented the intelligence and the scholarship, and
the formative power of the academic body, are not in a
numerical majority. The country clergymen, who vote by
voting papers, now rule Oxford, and these, according to
their kind, were bitterly hostile,withont knowing why, to Sir
Roundel' Palmer. They detested his culture, his political
eminence, his tempered Liberalism, even his devotion to
the English Church. They could not understand his public
conduct, and they recurred for base explanations to his
private friendships. They were the stupid party par
excellence, but they were also the strong party. In short,
Bm✓otia has conq.uercd Athens, and the Thebans call them.
selves Athenians.

The Morning Summary says neither one nor the other
of the representatives of Oxford, we may be sure—nor, let
us add, of Cambridge either—will be found to sanction any
revolutionary policy in Church and State. They will insist
that the universities shall continue seminaries of sound
learning and religious education ; they will oppose
any legislation on Church matters in a Parliament.
composed of men of all religions and of none, without the
sanction of Convocation ; and, moreover, they will give
practical effect to their convictions. Let us hope that the
example set by the University of Oxford will be followed
throughout the length and breadth of the land; and that
agricultural, commercial, and industrial constituencies
will not hesitate to follow the lead of an intellectual
body. Oxford men do not despise academic fame or
great reputation, but they prefer principle to bril-
liancy, and refuse to sever the time-honoured
connection which has ever existed between the
university and the great Conservative party in the
State. The Times threatens the university with
speedy annihilation for its daring to judge for itself at the
present crisis. Threatened men invariably live long. Tho
university trusts Mr. Disraeli ; Mr. Disraeli will not
abuse its confidence ; and both the leader of the Con.
servative party and the university have, we confidently
anticipate, a great, long, and successful career beforo
them.

The Times is astonished at the conduct of the clergy in
their devotion to a Church established. As for the Irish
Church, the English parsons feel annoyed when an Irishman
comes into an English town and by mere force of manner
•and words fills a church nobody had filled before, becomes
a favourite with the people, and wins a domain for himself
in that broad fringe of voluntary zeal existing within the pale
of our Establishment. They have to keep their tempers when
they hear of Irish adventurers filling fashionable chapels
to overflowing, running rapidly up the steps of honour
and preferment, and receiving our highest prizes. But
this does not prevent their straining every nerve to avert
the doom hanging over the Irish Establishment. The
Church in its present condition dooms the bulk of the
clergy to a hopeless poverty, from which a voluntary
system would perhaps rescue them, and if it were discon-
nected from .the State, the majority of the people and by
far the greater part of the land, wealth, education, and
influence are still on the side of the Church. At least
fifteen thousand of our clergy have a great and direct
interest in the remodelling of our Establishment upon a
voluntaTy footing, or on the principle of adjusting
the pay to the merit and to the work. They don't
choose to see this. It is the transition state, perhaps,
they dread. Any change of clothes involves a temporary
exposure to cold. Any deci4ve act costs an effort. One
cannot, then, be surprised at seeing people who have no
comfort left them but a roof, a fireside, and a bed shrinking
at the thought of having to turn out in the cold and start
forth in the dark, they know not whither. But England
is a warm place, and its people are warmhearted. These
men would find firesides, and most of them a good deal
warmer ones than those they had left, not to speak of
tighter roofs, better filled larders, and more cheerful
society.

The Telegraph remarks that adversity makes strange
bedfellows, and we are not disposed to judge with extreme
severity the devices of a party in ex!remis. Still there are
limits to the license of electioneering strategy, and those
limits have been oversteppda in Chelsea. Mr. Freake
and Dr. Russell have a per.f&:;t. right to adopt the crown
and bible for their symbols, to dub themselves the Con-
stitutional . candidates Conservative being a word
which apparently does not go down well in Chel-
Sca—and to buttress their claims upon the electors
by the anomalous declaration that Mr. Freake is
the lazgest employer of labour in the borough, while
is the historian of the Crimean war. But
neither the candidates nor their supporters have a right to
arouse sectarian bigotries vrladt they have not even the
poor excuse of profS.iiiig to chore themselves. Oa the
front of the Conservative committee-rooms at Chelsea,
placards are posted appealing to the Catholic electors not
to vote for Sir Henry Hoare because he subscribed to the
Garibaldi Fund. In other words, the champions of Pro-
testantism undefiled are labouring to damage their oppo-
nent by the insinuation that he has no claim to the confi-
dence of Catholics. To hold with the hare and hunt with
the hounds has hitherto been deemed an impossibility ' •
but the Chelsea Constitutionalists contrive to bid alike
for the support of Exoter Hall and the Brampton Ora-
tory.

THE CHAMPIONSHIP OF THE THAMES.

All the arrangements for this great race, which will be
'Pulled off on Tuesday afternoon, have progressed in a
most .satisfactory manner. Rendforth, the man in whom
the North-country folks have centered so many and
such strong hopes, has duly put in an appearance at
'Putney, and had already two or three spins over the
course, and the final stake of £5O a side was
made at the Bells, Putney, last night. Kelley, the
London man, is daily doing the work necessary to prepare
him for the contest, and his friends are very sanguine
as to his success, although the Northerner is the
favourite at 5 to 4. Both men are in good
condition, and since an opportunity has been
afforded to aquatics of observing the performances
of the two rivals for the championship, the excitement
caused by the anticipated struggle has materially increased,
and each day sees additions made to the number and
figure of the bets that are laid on the cvenb.

^HE DISCOVERY OF HUMAN REMAINS.

An inquiry into the circumstances attending the death
of Elizabeth Chandler, whose remains were on the sth ult.
found in a secluded spot amongst the hills near Ludlow,
has been concluded. It appeared that previous to the 17th
August, the deceased had been for a few days in the service
of a doctor at Manchester, but being ill and unable to do
her work she was discharged, and after vainly trying to
cbtain other situations she returned to the house of
Mrs. Holmes, living at Shrewsbury. Mrs. Holmes stated
that upon her return the deceased was suffering great pain,
both mentally and bodily, and the witness then formed
the opinion that " the poor girl had gone wrong," and
was afraid to go home to her mother, who was very harsh
with her. When Mrs. Holmes urged her to go home, she
exclaimed, "Oh! I am done. I shall never get another
situation, But it is all my own seeking—no one's to
blame." On the 18th of August she slept in the same
room as Mrs. Holmes, but would not undress herself,
and several times during the night, Mrs. Holmes
awaking, found her kneeling by a chair. She left the
house before breakfast, and from the evidence of other
witnesses was shewn to have spent the evening sitting in
the railway station, and the night in an adjoining shed.
On the next day she went by train from Shrewsbury to
Ludlow, and after being seen at various points on her
way home to Wigmore, was lost sight of, and nothing
more_was heard of her till nearly two months ago, when a
man, accidentally passing through the wood, discovered
her remains. The doctor who had made a post-mortem
examination was unable to speak as to the girl's condi-
tion, or to say from what cause she died, the pigs having
left nothing of her body but a few bare bones. The
jury returned an open verdict, and strongly censured the
parents of the deceased " for their unnatural and inhuman
conduct."