The Sun.
London, England, 1868-09-19 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

Speaking of the coming 'election, the status of the can-
didates, and the wishes of the constituencies, the Saturday
Review concludes that, notwithstanding the decline of
Fenianism and American animosity, an intelligent and
honest Minister is, after all, aware that his Cabinet and
his party occupy a position not altogether glorious.
That a Government should be in a minority is certainly
not advantageous to the country, and it is not even
agreeable to those who profit by an anomalous
state of politics. The obvious inference would seem
to be that the Ministry should have resigned in the
course of the spring, and not that, as Sir Stafford
Northcote recommends, they should contest the greatest
possible number of seats in the autumn. Every party is
justified in trying to increase its Parliamentary strength,
but the duty of fighting doubtful boroughs is not rendered
more urgent by the repeated defeats inflicted on the
Government during the last session. It is possible to
imagine a case in which, for the defence of some great
principle, a Minister might be justified in holding
office for a time after losing his ascendancy in Par-
liament ; but it is a condition of such an enterprise
that it should be reasonably hopeful, even if it is
not ultimately successful. Mr. Pitt triumphed
over a great Parliamentary majority in 1784, and
Sir Robert Peel, fifty years afterwards, failed in a similar
experiment which had been forced upon him against his
own judgment. Mr. Disraeli has for two years been
losing rather than gaining, and one of his colleagues now
admits that his only chance of reversing the majority
must depend on a desperate struggle for every doubtful
seat. The anomalous state of affairs has not only paralysed
both the Government and the House of Commons, but it
has mainly determined the policy of the Cabinet. Even
if the Reform Bill produces beneficial results, it will not
the less have owed its origin to the necessities of a party
which was utterly averse to its principle, and unable from
Parliamentary weakness to mould its details. The influ-
ence which the Conservative party can still exercise
would, for its own purposes and for the public good, have
been far more advantageously employed in opposition ;
yet Mr. Disraeli's tenacity of office will be condoned in the
improbable contingency of his commanding a majority
in the future Parliament. If the constituencies are really
attached to the Irish Establishment, its opponents,
although they will certainly not modify their opinion of
its demerits, cannot fail to admit that Mr. Gladstone's
movement was unseasonable.

The Spectator is disposed to think the whole proceedings
of the congress at Brussels very harmless indeed. We
must not shut our eyes to the fact that working men are
only beginners in an intricate debate, that their errors are
so vague as to lead to no action, that before action comes,
they are likely to have more light. In any case they
cannot but feel many advantages in the present circum-
stances—and this actually cropped up in the debate about
machinery, which is one of their stock topics of complaint ;
and as these advantages will increase with the progress of
time, they will be less and less likely to throw them away
for a mere Utopia, even if any practical proposition to
carry out their dreams is ever submitted. Take the most
formidable proposition of any, which was only assented
to, by the way, by a majority of the congress—
that quarries, mines, and railways ought to belong
to the community as represented by the State, but
the " State regenerated, and itself submitted to the law
of justice ;" that the economic evolution of society will
make it necessary to subject agricultural property to the
same rule ; and that quarries, mines, railways, and land
should be worked by concessions, not by companies of
capitalists, but companies of workmen. It is clear, at
first sight, that those who talk thus, and they indeed
expresAly say so, do not contemplate immediate action ;
but what if they did under any practical conditions? The
careful handling of agricultural property may chew that
even the dreamers do not all think of confiscation ; but if
confiscation is discarded there is nothing alarming in the
proposal ; the whole community may discuss its expe-
diency ; and the collective ownership of railways at least
is within the pale of practical schemes. Even if confisca-
tion is not discarded in this dream, people may be
reassured about it by the tendency of things to make
workmen holders of property ; the proportion of good
things held by those who do not work at all is perpetually
diminishing, and thus every year makes the sheer confis-
cation of property less and less likely. Those who are not
absolutely idle will have less to gain, and their own condi-
tion will tempt them less to violence. But if harmless in
one sense, as not heralds of a revolution which their
shadow seems to portend, the dreams of working men are
mischievous enough if too much indulged in. They are so
much subtracted from the energy of waking life which
might be devoted to better things. Thus, instead of pro-
testing against war, they might engage zealously in win-
ning political power, that is, practical influence under the
existing forms of government. Instead of vapouring
about collective property and devising new credit institu-
tions, they might do much to put capital into better
hands by promoting the amendment of the laws of succes-
sion, and to give themselves capital by means of, savings'
banks, friendly societies, and co-operative institutions.
Things are tending that way, and they produce some im-
provement, if they do not give that ideal perfection which
is unattainable. Instead of denouncing machinery or
doubting its benefits, they might devise schemes to draft
off to other places and employments the workmen whom
new machines displace, schemes in which we are sure
capitalists would not be sorry to help them. In the
present circumstances of the world, emigration holds out
a boundless field for displaced labour, and an emigration
fund could effect systematically what is already done
partially and feebly. It would pay far better than strikes.
Instead of dreaming about education in an ideal State,
they could lend a hand to many active efforts by which
education is being extended at once. If continental
demagogues would only learn, the congress would not be
without its advantages. Whether they do so or not, the
attitude of the English workmen is some assurance of the
safety of England at least from socialistic storms. If the
delegates who unite with continental democracy are so
guarded and practical, and so respectful of existing
arrangements, the feeling which guides them, we may
feel sure, is stronger and freer from admixture among the
large sections of workmen whom they could not pretend
to represent.

The Imperial Review believes that the Irish policy of
the Conservative party is every day coming into more
striking contrast with that of the Liberals. It is
true, Ireland is no longer the question before the
country. The confusion which reigned in the Liberal
party during 1867 has become worse confounded in
1868. Mr. Gladstone succeeded in rallying his party
within the House on the famous resolutions, but the
House was not the country ; and now that Mr. Gladstone's
followers are come before the people to give an account of
themselves, the position is somewhat ludicrous. A great
party struggle upon an Irish question two years ago would
have been a crime, and certainly a danger, but the
disappearance of Fenianism has at once removed
one of the most popular apologies for Mr. Gladstone's
measures, and enabled the defenders of the Consti-
tution to bring the question calmly before the nation.
It is well, perhaps, at such a moment to have had Sir
Stafford Northcote's calm review of Irish policy to contrast
with the vague allusions to Ireland by the Whig candidates.
That policy Sir Stafford Northcote explained as one of infi-
nite patience, firmness, watchfulness, and labour. It is
not a mere laissez faire policy. It is not a stupid revival
of the old Whig policy of bribing everybody round. Thus,
for instance, it is becoming every day more evident that
the land question is the real Irish question ; and that it is
the question in which the classes whom we want to con-
ciliate, the Celtic peasantry, takes a vivid interest. This
fact is conspicuous all through the present election pro-
ceedings. The Church is the test-question with the
priests, but the land is always the question raised by the
farmers. The priests are everywhere endeavouring to
keep it in the background. Sir Stafford Northcote's
account, at Bideford, of the action of the Government as
to the Roman Catholic University shews us that this pro-
position was a most thoughtful effort to grapple with the
great evil of Ireland— the ascendancy of the Roman
Catholic priesthood. It was a fair attempt to induce the
Roman Catholics to put themselves in such a position that
they, however Roman Catholic they might be, would
cease to be Ultramontane. The practicability of
such a project may be one thing. Of its excel-
lent purpose, and of the tnie appreciation it shows in
its framers of the wants of Ireland, no fair mind have a
second opinion. This is but a part of what has only been
the invariable policy of the Constitutional party towards
the Roman Catholics. To give them every fair play----every
encouragement to take up a position like other citizens--
to always watch the career of the If ttramontane priest-
hood as the most dangerous influence existing in any Con-
stitutional State.

The John Bull observes that, to say nothing of the more
devout sex—the numbers of men in High Church congre-
gation always strike the unprejruliced observers—awl
though for the moulc.nt ti ,e streteztli of the Ifigh Clinr,2%
play is throt-t;!1 infattEttion of i's fur
Mr. Gladstone awl their failure to see the perfect cons,s-
-I,•ticy of continuing the unflinching maintenace cf
Catholic Truth with political Protestantism against a
itreign pot, ntate, yet the Likeral pary will tint that their
Caureh supporters—mere worshippers of an individual--
are as unreliable as the mere Protestant followers of the
Conservatives. For the moment it suits Roman Catholics
and Radical High Churchmen to support a party which
bates dogma ; but before long they will perceive with what
edged tools they are playing. We trust tl a, in protesting
against this unnatural alliance, in protesting on political
grounds against a policy by which home or Infidelity
alone can gain, the Conservative party will not commit
the fatal error, for the sake of conciliating ultra-Protestant
support, or in disgust at the ingratitude and folly of many
Iligh Churchmen, of alienating those Churchmen who
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THE DREADFUL ACCIDENT AT

WASHINGTON.

The Northern Evening Express states that the calamity
that occurred at Washington village on Wednesday is a
much more serious affair than was at first supposed to be
the case. Four deaths have resulted from it, another
person is lying at what seems to be the point of death,
while four others are also suffering from serious in-
juries sustained on the same painful occasion. It
seems that on Monday last Ellen Stokoe, wife of
William Stokoe, ordered two gallons of what is called
diamond oil from a traveller in the employment of Mr.
Robert Logan, oil merchant, George-street, Newcastle.
Mr. Stokoe himself works as a blacksmith at one of the
adjoining collieries, but he has also a shop in which
groceries and drapery goods are sold, and this his wife
and family have been in the habit of looking after. The
oil was delivered on Wednesday morning, and the earthen-
ware jar containing it was temporarily put below a table
in the kitchen at the back of the shop. No person
in the house appears to have been aware of its
dangerous character, and no special precautions
were observed in handlir g it. 1. etw, en twelve and one
o'clock, William Stokoe, his wife, three daughters, two
sons, the daughter of a cousin, and the servant girl, sat
down to dinner in the kitchen. The food of which they
were to partake was placed on the table, below which was
the jar containing the oil. But just as they were about to
begin dinner, one of the company—believed to have been
John Stokoe, the youngest lad—accidentally hit the jar
with his foot. It fell on the floor and broke, its contents
rapidly spreading throughout the room. A portion
of the oil ran towards the fire-place, and there it
got ignited. A slight explosion occurred, and
the whole place, including its unhappy inmates,
were instantaneously enveloped in a red mass of
violent flames. They appear to have got hold of each
other, and in the midst of their great alarm huddled them-
selves together in a corner. After the lapse of a minute or
two, Thomas Stokoe, one of the lads, followed by his
mother and youngest sister, rushed out into the back
street, while Elizabeth Stokoe, the eldest daughter,
Isabella Taylor, the cousin, who was on a visit to the house,
from Gateshead, and Catherine Swinbank, the servant
girl, who belongs to Newcastle, ran, one after the other,
into the front street, screaming at the top of their voices,
and burning from head to foot. 'William Stokoe, the
father, also escaped through the shop by the front door.
The rector (the Rev. Julius Shadwell), the neighbours, and
a large number of workmen engaged in laying sewage
pipes in the streets, were most courageous in catching
hold of the persons enveloped in the flames, and getting
the fire extinguished as quickly as practicable. The
evidence at the inquest shews that the rector nobly
denuded himself of both his coats to put out the burning
clothes of two of the younger women. While those
who had escaped were being attended to by some,
others forced their way into the kitchen, where they
found Mary Stokoe, 16 years of age, and John Stokoe, 10
years old, lying on the floor, in the midst of the debris and
(lames. They were carried out into the street, when it
was found that all the clothes had been burned off the
former, and the 'boy had also sustained fearful injuries.
The poor girl's head was literally singed, and her knees
had been drawn up towards her chin in agony. She died
soon afterwards, and the lad succumbed later on in the
evening. The doctor's evidence at the inquest shewed that
all the others were most seriouily, some feared to be fatally,
injured, and in the evidence also will be found a faithful
description of the violent nature of the fire, as shown in
the damage done to the house itself. We need not state
that the greatest excitement prevails in the village and
surrounding district in reference to this sad affair. Thomas
Stokoe, of Stockton, brother of William Stokoe, and
Robert Stokoe, a younger man, son of William Stokoe
(who happened to be in Sunderland at the time), along
with the relatives of Isabella Taylor and Catherine Swin-
bank, were immediately sent for, and they arrived soon.
The following is the list of the killed and injured :—Killed
—Mary Stokoe, 16, daughter of W. Stokoe, grocer ; John
Stokoe, 10, son of W. Stokoe ; Isabella Taylor, 15, belong-
ing to Gateshead, daughter of W. Stokoe's cousin ; Cathe-
rine Swinback, 14, belonging to Newcastle, servant with
W. Stokoe. Not expected to live—Ellen Stokoe, 44, wife
of W. Stokoe. Expected to survive—William Stokoe, 51,
grocer and draper; Elizabeth Stokoe, 18, daughter of W.
Stokoe ; Thomas Stokoe, 13, son of W. Stokoe ; Hannah
Stokoe, 8, daughter of W. Stokoe. The inquest is
adjourned to next 'Wednesday.