The Sun.
London, England, 1868-09-18 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The Times says the mere fact that the last Prime
Minister of Louis Philippe's reign comes forth from his
twenty years' retirement, that he breaks through the
course of ascetic studies with which he soothes the wean•
ness of a well-spent old age, gives M. Guizot's utterance all
the earnestness of a warning from beyond the grave. One
feels how great must be the emergency which induces the
secluded thinker to revisit the scenes of immediate
action, and one forgets how sadly he himself broke down in
the application of his doctrines, out of respect for the
soundness and accuracy of the doctrines themselves. M.
Guizot is, of course, no partisan of war. It was never his
opinion that Sadowa would have justified an outbreak of
hostilities. Neither, on the other hand, does he blame the
Emperor's Government if, upon its determination not to
make Sadowa a casus belli, it still deemed it necessary to
put the country in a state of defence. There was an
amount of armament, as DI. Guizot hints, which
the peculiar position of France fully justified.
Possibly the measures of military reorganisation
originally contemplated by the Emperor himself
had only a defensive object ; but under the influence
of the marshals the preparations of France assumed
an aggressive attitude. The scheme was not to create a
domestic militia, but to get together half a million of
thoroughly trained and seasoned soldiers, to be thrown
into any given point at any given time. So long as even
the remotest danger of a collision existed, it would have
been the height of madness for the Emperor's Govern.
ment to be found unprepared ; but there was equal
insanity in pushiug on national armaments to the
utmost verge of a menace at the very time that the
Government filled the world with the most positive
assurances, not only of its pacific intentions, but
of its unshaken confidence in the pacific intentions of its
neighbours. With peaceful prospects, 31. Guizot thinks,
armaments should be reduced to a peace footing. He
points to disarmament as the only measure calculated to
allay misgiving. The aged statesman and historian has
not been by any means the first to arrive at that conclu-
sion. Let us hope that the authority of his voice may
work that impression which the utterance of public opinion
under any other form has failed to produce.
The Standard fears that such a decision as that of the
revising barrister for Hackney is likely to make the
lodger franchise a grand contrivance for the manufacture
of fictitious votes and for the registration of unqualified
electors. At first the Hackney barrister thought the
claimant's signature must be proved, but he afterwards
came to the conclusion that proof of the service of the
claim would do, and was in fact primd facie evidence of
the qualification. In other words, if the overseers
proved that some one brought them a paper in which
some name was entered as a lodger in some house, occu-
pied by some one else, the mere delivery of the paper is
to prove the truth of the statements contained in it, and
justify the revisor in entering the claim upon the list of
voters. A glance at the reports of the revision court§ is
r.fficient to prove that the second thoughts of the Hack-
!' jy revisor are by no means his best. People of careless
habits or elastic consciences have shewn themselves won-
derfully indifferent to the strict accuracy of the declara-
tion which every lodger has to subscribe, and if it be once
understood that the revising barrister will ask no ques-
tions and require no proof, we shall have active
agents doing quite a brisk trade in the manufacture
of voters undiscoverable by any ordinary process,
but for whom personators will appear in full force
whenever contests run close. Of course there may be

places and people not requiring to be looked after, but i
that Hackney is not the chosen retreat of these impeccables
appears from a circumstance that occurred on the very
day that Mr. Bathurst gave the decision on which we are
commenting. The Middlesex revision was in progress,
and the county list for a parish in this very borough of
Hackney came under review. Mr. Bathurst had said that
the " overseers proved the service of the claim," and he
accepted this service as proof of the qualification, to he
held good unless rebutted by other evidence ; thus shifting
the burden of proof from the claimant, and leaving it to
the vigilance of objectors and the chances of the chapter
of accidents. How wide a door for vote-making this
opens we need not point out. It may in a measure be
guarded by party jealousy, but that is entirely beside the
question. The Act requires a certain qualification, and
one great object of revision by barristers is to secure com-
pliance with its provisions, irrespective of the volunteered
aid which political feeling may supply.
The Daily News says that the Act has had to be inter-
preted for the first time, and the confusion and reversal of
decisions have been very embarrassing. It is, however,
only fair to say that the whole tendency of the decisions
hitherto has been towards enfranchisement. Rigid re-
quirements have been relaxed ; and a few days' experi-
ence has brought about far more uniformity in the action
of the several courts. The revising barristers have shewn
a praiseworthy willingness to consider the intentions of
the Legislature to be rather in favour of inclusion than of
exclusion, and to facilitate the cumbrous process by
which lodgers get upon the register, rather than to make
it more cumbrous still by putting technical difficulties in
the way.

The &or is puzzled to know what to say about the
second accident on the Chester and Holyhead Railway,
occurring as it has so near the scene of an accident about
which we have already heard so much. It seems absurd
to begin anew the preaching of caution to railway autho-
rities; if this has not been taught them by recent events,
no words can do it. It is, perhaps, fair to conclude
that both accidents are traceable to some radical defect
in the traffic accommodation on this portion of the
line, against which ordinary and even extraordinary
care in the working of trains is of no certain avail. This,
the most charitable supposition,sofar as all the responsible
persons are concerned, only proves the necessity for a full
and most searching inquiry into a condition of affairs that
has clearly passed beyond their influence and control. The
Board of Trade has the power of making such an inquiry,
and the responsibility rests with it for anything that may
happen while the line is suffered to remain under the
doubts which as present exist respecting it.
While the law is put in force against the men whose
carelessness led to the fearful holocaust of Abergele, other
ervants of the same company have been guilty of the
same neglect. At the very time when the express was
due at Holywell, the shunting of the luggage train from
the down to the up main line of rails was going for-
ward, and no signals had been set to warn the con-
ductors of the passenger train that the way was not
clear for its advance. Here, evidently, says the Tele-
graph, there was carelessness even more gross than
that which had brought about the greater mischance.
At Abergele, if the trucks had not run back, there
would have been no collision ; the Irish mail would have
drawn up at the distance signal, and the worst conse-
quence of the bungling would have been a delay of a few
minutes, while the goods train was effectually stowed
away in the siding. The running away of the trucks
was, indeed, a contingency against which the arrange-
ments made at Llandulas did not completely guard ;
but it was in itself accidental, and up to that
point, though there had certainly been bad
management, there was no positive danger. At
i
Holywell, however, the arrangement nvolved a direct
danger ; for, as we have said, the goods train sprawled
across both lines, creating peril to trains running either
up or down and no signal protected it against the down
express. Here, then, on one of the best managed sections
of railway in the country, and within a month after a
disaster had occurred which is almost without parallel on
this side of the Atlantic, we have an accident which as
nearly as possible reproduces the Abergele catastrophe.
It is evident that we must look beyond the individual
casualties in order to find the causes.

With respect to the right of women to be placed on the
register, the Herald holds that there can be no question as
to what was the intention of the Legislature in conferring
the suffrage'on every who possessed a house and was
personally rated foritiwalt is absolutely inconsistent with
the well-In )v. gallantrynof the two Houses to sun). e
that, had they meantto n
aspecial compliment tr, the
women, they would not have
taken pains to expr es .hat
intention clearly. It is incredible
that they coin, have
meant io let in the sex to this great privilege under
ewer of the vague and illusive
e" man," a word, as
Miss Lydia Becker very properly
trves, which signifies
nothing. If we had no otherehieotos tile intention of the
Legislature, we have the positive
all-sufficient
t fact
that the very question of the admiassnicbil of women to
the franchise was formally raised and diycelcissi:d at the
instance of Mr. Mill, and that it was decided
majority that women should not have votes. yl'hlairage
deference, therefore, to Mr. Shaen's ingenious plea that
this was a resolution of the House of Commons alone, and
(foes not affect or qualify the action of the House of Lords
or the Crown, we must approve of the decision of the
revising barristers.
The causes which led up to the very remarkable murder
of Mr. Darcy M`Gee, being the direct results of two
distinct phases of Irish discontent, demand, in the opinion
of the Post, a much snore serious consideration of the cir-
cumstances connected with the atrocious deed than
ordinarily would be accor-led to a similar event.
Mr. Darcy INl`Gee before he left his native land
of Ireland, and in 'the fiery days of his youth, was,
unfortunately for himself, implicated in the mad folly
of Smith O'Brien's mischievous attempt to redress, by
physical force, the fancied wrongs of his most unhappy
country; and one of the res,tlts of that abortive attempt
was the removal of Mr. l);ircy Mies to the American
c,,ntinent. Strange, ho eve r, to relate, ha anon de-
veloped in that c,iintry the real virtues and talents
which formed the staple of Ids character, awl which
lay concealed under the phantasms of his more
youthful and excited imagination, and the very
curious spectacle was witnessed of a cer i-dant rebel
not only conforming to the dictates of law and loyalty,
but working his way to an impos taut position in the
Canadian Government, and even going out of his course
to instruct his poor, ignorant, and misled fellow-coun-
trymen, endeavouring to dissuade them from becoming
entangled in the delusions of Fen ianism. 'No
wonder, then, that a man whose every action in
I,l34i.sril)ey years was a potent protest against the existence
the infamous society which sought tot underminei the
loyalty of the Irish in Canada,' as in t iem
feelings of to England and thels Englishoexe. in every
part of the world where they resided should become
obnoxious to its bitterest hatred, and that he should fall
a victim to assassination, which is one of its recognised
weavoia. . .