The Sun.
London, England, 1845-08-06 00:00:00

TH

written to every Member of that House, requesting to
know when he would be able to attend Committees.
The Marquis of CLANRICAIME then presented two
petitions against the London and York Railway Bill, and
concluded a lengthened statement of alleged frauds by
moving that the petitions be referred to a Select Com-

mittee.
This motion led to a discussion, in the course of which
the House was addressed by several Noble Lords, and
ultimately the motion was adopted.
the Small Debts Bill, and several other measures
were then forwarded a stage ; after which their Lord-
ships adjourned till Thursday.
The Commons met at Four.

Mr. B. DENISON presented a petition from the
Directors of the London and York Railway Company,
denying the allegations of the petition presented yes-
terday, which imputed fraud to the promoters of that
Bill. He moved that the petition be printed, and gave
notice that on Friday he would found a motion on the

subj. et.
After a short discussion, Sir R. PEEL suggested that
a Committee should be appointed, to inquire into the
allegations of fraud, made in the petition presetited
yesterday by Mr. lIAwEs, and ultimately the following
Gentlemen were appointed as a Committee of Inquiry—
Mr. HAWES, Mr. E. B. DENISON, Mr. BARING, Mr.
WARBURTON. Mr. B. ESCOTT, Mr. HUTT and Lord

CLIVE.
Col. DAMER stated, in answer to the address of the
House, that her MAJESTY had ordered 20,0(,0/. tubepaid
to the sufferers by the fire at Quebec.
In answer to Lord PALMERSTON, it was stated by Sir
G. CLERK that the Board of Trade disapproved of the
practice of attaching two engines to railway trains for
the purpose of propelling them.
Mr. WADDINGTON having alluded to the accident en
the Eastern Counties Railway,
Mr. WARD said that he believed it was owing to one
of the wedges having gut loose, and that no human fore-
sight ceuld have provided against it.
Colonel SIBTHORP thought the Government ought to
take measures to prevent such accidents, and that the
Company should make ample compensation to the suf
ferers.
Mr. GREGORY complained of the incivility of the offs
cials on the Eastern-Counties Railway, and thought the
Board of Trade ought to have more power.
Colonel WOOD thought one of the Directors ought to
reside at the station.
Mr. WARD said the Company had agreed, that morn-
ing, to pay all the expenses of every sufferer by the
accident.
Mr. HUME gave notice of a motion on the subject of
Irish workhouses.
A discussion then ensued, on the order of the day
being read for the consideration of the Silk Works Bill,
which, after several Hon. Members had addressed the
House, was adjourned till Friday next.
Lord JOHN RUSSELL then rose, and after a few brief
preliminary observations took a clear and compre-
hensive review of the business of the session, adverting
in the course of it to the various measures that
have been passed affecting our domestic condi-
tion and foreign pollicy, and concluding by ex-
pressing a hope that on the commencement of the next
session Ministers would be prepared to introduce mea-
sures more in consonance with the principles of free-
trade.
Sir J. GRAHAM briefly replied, and, after a few ob-
servations from several other Honourable Members, the
oust adjourned.

To the long catalogue of terrible catastrophes which
from time to time desolate our coal districts, and sweep
off human victims by whole hecatombs, but under cir-
cumstances of aggravated horror unknown to the wor-
ship even of the ancient Moloch himself—a new
calamity has just been added. It occurred on the morn-
ing of Saturday last at a colliery situate in Crombach,
between Aberdare and Merthyr Tydvil. We have to
direct attention to it, not, alas ! as some rare phe-
nomenon the impression of whose very terrors is almost
effaced by the absorbing astonishment and wonder with
which we contemplate the novelty of their aspects.
These explosions of fire-damp have become, unhappily,
rather the anticipated per-centage casualties to be allowed
for on the aggregate "lives" of a given district. They
have assumed their regular place and number among
the long array of columns ang divisions and tables that
are marshalled forth in the economic " returns" and
" reports" annually printed by order of Parliament.
They are a branch of the statistics of " premature mor-
tality," all the elements of which are calculate 1 w ith de-
liberation and certainty—save one : the specific periods
of their recurrence. Were the fact otherwise, were
these appalling visitations so " few and far between',
that they could be properly regarded only as violent and
convulsive throes of nature,like devastating earthquakes,
sn me tuna naa peen no oetter prepares 'toe by such
means as human sagacity and prudence could devise,
than its predecessor. Where the subterranean opera-
tions of nature that are to be most dreaded from their
destructive influence on human life are elaborated on the
vast scale of volcanic eruptions or widely-spread-
ing earthquakes, they cannot be guarded against.
For example—all that was known of the symp-
toms which preceded the destruction of Quito, in
1755, could not have enabled the inhabitants of the once
devoted city to escape from the second and more terrible
destruction of 1797, nor had the fierce eruption of Etna,
in 1830, enabled the inhabitants ofits most peopled region
to guard against the hideous combustion that rolled its
lava flood over Bronte in 1832. But it is certain that the
inflammation of that noxious gas which is so largely
generated in coal mines, although the gas itself be in a
process of perpetual elaboration. may be to a very great
extent prevented by precautionary means which prac-
tical science has long since applied to that salutary par
pose. The same labours which explore these mines
extract their mineral fuel, construct the galleries, and
maintain the shafts, edits, and drains necessary for their
profitable working, have necessarily given to those en-
gaged in such occupations that which no man will ever
be permitted to acquire with respect t earthquakes or
volcanoes—that is to say, no inconsiderable insight into the
manner in which the gas is developed, and the indica-
tions by which the fact of its development is to be ascer
tamed. The " Davy" lamp (which never seems to have
had a perfectly fair trial, owing in part to the avarice
of mine owners and the carelessness of managers, and in
part to the reckless apathy and obstinacy of the working
miners), is one of these means, and a most salutary and
remarkable one. But that system of ventilation—of
clearing away rubbish and slate—of drainage, on a
larger, more simplified, and economical scale than has
hitherto been in practice—of bricking up the final aper-
tures that have been left marking the site of exhausted
works and demolished passages—with the several other
plans adapted to the attainment of similar objects that
were submitted to, and favourably reported on, by the
Select Committee on " Accidents in Mines," which sate
some two or three sessions ago ; that system and those
plans, honestly and vigorously carried out into prac-
tical adoption, would reduce the number of these fearful
disasters in the proportion of at least three-fourths of their
present amount. It is very certain that that dismal
fate which, its a moment, entombed alive or blasted to
death upwards of one hundred of our fellow-creatures,
in the pits of the Haswell Colliery, little more (if we
remember rightly) than twelve months ago, might have
been averted, had the parties charged with inspecting
the condition of the works at stated intervals, previously
to setting on the men, properly discharged that duty.
There can be no reasonable doubt that if the recommen-
daiions of the Committee we have just alluded to had
been previously enforced by Government, this last coal-
mine explosion at Crombach, that has hurried nine-and-
twenty poor labourers in that colliery into eternity,
might have been avoided, that the desolation which
has overtaken the widows and the orphans, and
the childless ores who are at this moment vainly
wailing over their awful bereavements, might
have been escaped. By an account we else-
where publish, it appears " that this pit has
always been in bad repute on account of its deficient
ventilation." It really seems to us that 4 very onerous
responsibility attaches to her MAJESTY'S Government—
to that part of the Executive especially which is more
immediately connected with the Home Department—
for these and similar disasters. It seems to be the re-
proach of Sir ROBERT PEEL'S Government to grant
" commissions" and to slumber over their reports. Thus
a commission has pointedly reported on the expediency
of surrounding all machinery in the interior of factoris s
and mills in such a manner as to secure those who
must pass by it while in action from being caught
up and entangled iu its evolutions. Penalties, we
bolieve, are attached to the neglect of these pre-
cautions. With so much laxity, however, are they
enforced, that the provincial newspapers teem with
narratives of the most hideous accidents resulting from
uiprotected shaft-wheels, &e. In like manner, the
report on coal-mine accidents feerns to have become
utterly a dead letter. We doubt whether the casualties
have not become m ,re frequent since that report was
made than they were previously ; and, in nine Eases out
of ten, they are palpably the result of the neglect of
such precautionary measures as were recommended
by the report in question. We have ourselv a strong
impression that the Government has done no more
to carry out those recommendations than it has
done, in fact, uotwithstrnding the vague and slippery
assurances of Sir ROBERT PEEL the other night to