The Sun.
London, England, 1868-07-16 00:00:00

SPIRIT O THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

The Timm observes that when Mr. Bright repeats his
scheme for regenerating both the Irish race and the
island of Ireland by the artificial production of peasant
proprietors, he is attempting what is utterly impossible,
what has no ground in justice, or in the sentiment of
equality, or in the public interest, and, what can only end
in failure and disappointment. It is due to Mr. Bright
himself that he should not sully a great career and dis-
credit the principles of liberal legislation by following an
illusion that can really lead to nothing but harm. No doubt
a peasant proprietorship, or a large class of " statesmen,"
as they exist still in some parts of England, would be
better, politically and socially, than a reign of absentee
landowners and the rest of the actual system. But the
peasant proprietors or small landowners must be of spon-
taneous growth and must arise out of encouraging cir
cnmstances. When such classes appear the condition of
affairs that produced them will maintain them, and will
either keep them sound or develope them into something
better. But where they do not exist, and arc planted by
force of law, no law will ever he able to sustain them
against the course of nature. Mr. Bright flickers the
bright expectation before his hearers at Limerick, but,
so far as we know, scarcely hints at the inevitable„
and, we fear, unconquerable difficulties. It would be
impossible to obtain proprietors of this sort without great
cost to the British public, great risk of further cost, and
great interference with the existing arrangements and
transactions of property. It would be quite impossible to
bind the proposed proprietors to any condition regarding
the management, letting, tenure, and transmission of
their estates. It would be impossible to prevent abso-
lute sales, vicious lettings and sub-lettings, divisions
and subdivisions, perhaps accumulations, perhaps a return
to the old state of things, perhaps even a resort to a worse.
Mr. Bright may be ready to justify, on special grounds,
the departure from the laws of free trade, for such it
would certainly he ; he would not be able on any grounds
whatever to justify the inequality of a boon which, if it
is worth anything, hundreds and thousands of English and
Scotch labourers would equally desire and have an equal
right to.

The Standard declares that'it has become a tedious anti
unprofitable task to criticise Mr. Bright's oratory, for
there really is hut one set of ideas and one series of argu-
ments running through the whole of these speeches. There
is nothing in this Limerick oration materially different
from all others of Mr. Bright's orations on Ireland, except
the reticence on points upon which in England Mr. Bright
was free to discourse, but which in Ireland would be
inconvenient and damaging to broach. What Mr. Bright
means by demanding on behalf of his Irish friends that
we should undo the legislation of the past two hundred
years it is most difficult to understand, unless we take it i
as one of the orator's familiar rhetorical devices. Is
it really Mr. Bright's opinion that we should
restore Ireland to the condition in which she was two
hundred years ago? Are we told that we cannot do jus•
tice to Ireland, unless we first obtain her " forgiveness?"
Is all that English wisdom and liberality have done for
that island to be obliterated, and no account taken of any-
thing but of English errors and English follies? To what
epoch does Mr. Bright propose to carry us back as our
model Irish period ? To go back two hundred years is to
return to an age prior to the rise of nearly all that Mr.
Bright would call liberty and civilisation in England. Is it
the cause for which the men of Limerick fought two
hundred years ago that has won Mr. Bright's
sympathy? Does he sigh for the return of the
good old days of that enlightened monarch James 11.,
Would he have Ireland be as though the battle had not
been won by the Protestants, and the verdict of time re-
versed ? To wish for this is a madness of which it is im-
possible to suspect Mr. Bright. He is perfectly aware
how blind, how foolish, how impracticable are his aspira-
tions. To utter such sentiments, therefore, to a Limerick
meeting of Liberals is nothing less than a crime against
the very principles of liberty and of civilisation which Mr.
Bright professes. He does not believe seriously that
Ireland would be the better for the reversal of the whole
legislation of the last two centuries. He only says so to
catch the votes of the party in Ireland who are inclined to
disaffection, and to attach them to the side of his own
political leader, Mr. Gladstone.
The Daily .Itiews says we shall probably hear that what
Mr. Bright says is very eloquent, but wholly unpractical,
and that it tends no whither. If it tend to stir up the
people of Ireland to hearty co-operation in the new Parlia-
ment with the policy of religious equality by impartial
disendowment which has been adapted by the pre-
sent House of Commons, the Daily News cannot
imagine anything more practical. Mr. Bright,
however, may fairly reply that he has made his
contribution to the settlement of the Irish diffi-
culty ; and unless the tone of the debates of the pre-
sent session, both on the land question and on the Church
question, be very misleading, the ultimate solution is likely
to be found in measures not very remote from the proposi-

tions which he has recommended. Irish landlords and
Irish Churchmen may go further and fare worse. Behind
Mr. Bright there is Mr. Mill on the one side and Mr.
Miall on the other. A little injudicious delay may trans-
form Mr. Bright's schemes from revolutionary projects into
compromises for which the time has gone by.
The Post calls attention to a peculiar feature in our
recent legislation which is particularly marked in the
Bribery Bill. It will be seen that the bill transfers to a
single judge functions which until now have been exclusively
discharged by juries. It is a very curious fact that not-
withstanding we were the first nation in the world to
introduce trial by jury, and although we profess to regard
it as the great palladium of our liberties, there has been a
growing tendency of late years to dispense, wherever it is
possible, with this time-honoured tribunal. The first blow
struck at trial by jury was dealt by those statutes conferring
summary jurisdiction on justices of the peace in particu-
lar instances. Several successive statutes increased this
jurisdiction ; then followed the Acts which in civil causes
enable parties to a suit by consent to dispense with a
jury, and then came the County Court Acts, and lastly
the Probate and Divorce Act, modified subsequently by
a statute empowering a single judge to determine a
variety of matters of pure fact in the absence of any
request on the part of the suitors to refer them to a
jury. In the present instance, it is proposed to leave
to a single judge the functions hitherto discharged
by a committee of the House of Commons, and not
only to determine whether a given individual has been
legally elected or not, but, in the event of the latter finding,
to impose upon him "an immense penalty "—that is to
say, his exclusion from the House of Commons for a period
of seven years. It would be a very curious circumstance
if an institution on which we pride ourselves so much, and
which is invariably borrowed by nations desirous of mani-
festing their advancement in the path of liberalism, should
in process of time be practically disavowed by us. One
thing is self-evident: we must have a very pure bench
when we countenance such changes.

The Telegraph notes that the Sale of Poisons Bill,
nr, as it is to be called, the " Pharmacy Act," has passed
Virough committee. The object of the measure is most
praiseworthy, but we are not certain that it will accom-
plish so much as its framers have desired. It aims a
legislative stroke at two great public perils connected
with the sale of deadly drugs—one, the compounding and
retailing of such commodities by ignorant dealers and
apprentices ; and the other, their too easy acquisition by
persons either desperately weary of life, or bent upon a
wicked purpose. There was yet a third mischief which
might as well have been included in the Act—the
adulteration of those drugs which, although deadly, aro
used in medicine, and may be rendered yet more dangerous
by the mixture. Mr. Tennyson has written in " Maud "
about the rascally pharmacist who " pestles a poisoned
poison behind the crimson lights ;" and while the Legit
lature was about the business, it might as well have
posed penalties on those who thus adulterate subtle and
sovereign drugs. But that, no doubt, is a minor point in
comparison with the twofold public peril which has been
defined. We want assurance against the guilty ignorance
or carelessness which in serving the customer over the
counter may give arsenic for arrow-root, or laudanum
for paregoric—ignorance and carelessness which in
hundreds of cases have turned the doctor's prescription
into a dose of death. A complete law should also affirm
the principle so anxiously maintained by Mr. Lowe, that
poisons should not be sold to unknown applicants. Having
these two purposes in view, the " Pharmacy Act"
sent down from the Lords, and just put through
committee in the Comraons, enacts, undoubtedly,
some very useful regulations. It provides that
rum New Year's Day next nobody shall retail,
dispense, or compound poisons, unless he holds
a certificate, which may be obtained in three ways.
He must be either examined in his knowledge of deadly
drugs ; or ho must have been long enough in business to
have obtained a presumable experience and skill ; or, if an
apprentice or assistant, he must be of full age, and have
passed two years in active employment. No doubt such
provisions tend to secure threug7iout the trade the
guarantee of actually proved competency, or of reasonable
empirical acquaintance with a drug4ist's duty.

CONFLAGRATION IN CORIC—A dreadful conflagra-
tion, by which nearly all the Cork Steamship Company's
premises have been consumed, occurred in Cork on Tuesday
night. The fire began in the oil stores of the company,
and spread, in spite of all efforts, to the adjoining buildings,
destroying the machinery and all the:contiguous pi emises.
A very large amount of property has been consumed. Fears
fur the safety of the steamers alongside the fire were
entertained, but they were saved by cutting away the
corarauniation. The fire lasted for several hours, and it wa3
at lifEnit;• :I.ytt tr 9 rij,:inir4 dc,truturtrail,