The Sun.
London, England, 1844-10-08 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

ruom THE EVENING PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.

GLOBE.— We took occasion, a few weeks ago, to
advert to the first Report of the Commissioners for
inquiring into the state of large towns and popu-
lous districts. We now return to the subject, for
the purpose of stating some considerations having
reference to the practical adoption of the measures
already indicated by the Commissioners as most
expedient. The subject naturally divides itself
into portions more or less distinct, and of varying
importance. Foremost among these, in point of im-
portance, we find drainage and ventilation, each having
direct relation to the chief object of the com-
mission. The evils developed in the course of these
two branches of the inquiry are, however, evidently
susceptible of very different remedies. The improve-
ment of the system of drainage now prevalent seems,
to a great extent, hopeless, without the vigorous inter-
ference of the Legislature. It is chiefly under the
management of Commissioners appointed under local
Acts, and governed by bye-laws 9, n d usages alike
destitute of uniformity and of fitness for attaining the
lirst object of an efficient system of drainage. It aims
almost solely at effecting a mere surface drainage ; thus
leaving the sewerage and drainage of houses almost
entirely unprovidei for • and confined as these laws
are as to the extent of their object, they are so loosely
constructed as to give rise to considerable differences
of opinion ; and are, moreover, seldom enforced
hut under the preisure of great local annoyance
from a want of drainage. The efforts made by
those who can afford to pay for a convenience
so essential to health and comfort as the proper
drainage of their houses, are attended with
much unnecessary trouble and expense, and the
convenience is at length conceded rather as a privi-
lege than as a common right; while those who stand
in greatest need of the accommodation, are effectually
deprived of it, though immediately surrounded by
every facility for it. In some of our large towns the
passage of house refuse, &c. into the drains is entirely
prohibited, and it is very generally forbidden to make
the drains subservient to the cleansing of the streets.
There being no general supervision in reference to the
levels, it is not uncommon to have houses so built that
they do not admit of effectual drainage, or drains so
constructed that their contents can only be partially
discharged. None but a legislative remedy can reach
evils such as those just enumerated. There are,
however, some others which may be cured by a
better exercise of the discretion at present vested
in the local authorities—such as the defective and
unnecessarily expensive methods of construction
at present very generally adopted, and the de-
tails of the arrangements for meeting the expense
of improvements. A complete revision of all the
Acts now in force affecting the subject, and the
formation of a general plan of drainage upon a scien-
tific basis, with regulations for an equitable imposi-
tion of the requisite expense, however, seem to present
themselves as essential requisites. If the art of i
draining towns is but little understood or practised
amongst us, that of ventilating our dwellings is
scarcely more so. But the drainage is under public
management, and comes properly within cognisance
of the Legislature, while ventilation is rather matter
of arrangement for private individuals. Much may
be done in widening streets and passages, and
prohibiting the erection of the most notoriously de-
fective class of houses, but nothing very effectual can
be hoped for without the hearty co-operation of the
public. It is already sufficiently obvious, that neither
the value of pure air nor the facility with which it
enay almost everywhere be procured, are sufficiently
known. Here the great barrier to improve-
ment is ignorance; and that is not to be re-
moved by an Act of Parliament. The poorer
classes especially require to be taught to what
an extent they suffer from this cause. All classes
would be the better for it, and we believe any means
by which the leading facts and suggestions embodied
in the report we have alluded to could be made gene-
rally known throughout the kingdom, would do much
to prepare the way for such legislative measures
as the Commissioners may ultimately think fit
to recommend, and at the same time tend strongly
to bring about changes for the better in the sana-
tory condition of the people which no legislative
interference, unaided by such knowledge, would
be at all likely to effect. How far the Govern-
ment should interfere to settle the terms of con-
tracts between private individuals, or to regulate
their personal habits in matters not most palpably and
directly affecting the public weal, is a problem yet to
be solved. Should its solution be required in this
case, it would, we conceive, be advisable to begin by
narrowing the ground of disuussion as much as pos-
sible. This might be done, perhaps, most efficiently
by, publishing in a more accessible form a condensed
view of the evidence already taken and published by
the Commissioners, embodying the facts and the sug-
gestions of practical men most immediately appli-
cable to those evils which lie beyond the ordinary
range of legislative enactments.
STANDARD.—There is in the Church a party,
we rejoice to believe a small one, who wishing well
to the scheme of Tractarian dissent, and lending to
the Romanising Dissenters all the aid that they
ssfely can, decline: boldly to assume Mr. New-
man s colours. This may be good worldly policy.
Such men are secure from being involved in the
fate of the more ingenuous and enterprising Dissen-
ters, should it prove disastrous ; while, in the event
of success, they prepare a claim to share in the
triumph ; and all the while they enjoy that praise
of moderation to " cowardice and craft so dear."
This, however, though a good worldly policy, is
not Christian policy. The presumption is, no
doubt, always in favour of moderation towards
those who act on the defensive, and who maintain
the admitted truths, even when they happen to
err on the side of excess, because their motive
is originally sound and honourable ; but the
presumption is against moderation towards the
aggressor, whenever there can be the slightest suspi-
cion of the rightfulness of his aggression. " When
thou sawest," &c., says the inspired King—
and how does the spirit menace the Laodiceans
who "were neither hot nor cold"—in the assertion of
divine truth ? It is not for us to mark out the re-
presentatives of the lukewarm party to which we
refer, but few readers can be at a loss to name them.
Doctor Hook, of Leeds,-has caused to be published,
a letter addressed lay him to a friend in Oxford,
which letter, with the replies to it from some
Romanising Dissenters,. we copy from the Trac-
tarian organ that has been favoured with them.
Dr. Hook declares that be will not attend to
vote against Dr. Symons, because the majority of
the members of Convocation are not disposed to set
aside that excellent and pious gentleman, in com-
pliance with the command of Messrs. Newman,
Ward, and Company ; and Dr. Hook, however
wiiling to be the unattached ally and abettor of the
Romanising Dissenters, does not like implicitly
to cast in his lot with them—least of all when
they, seem to be seriously threatened with a
defeat. This is the plain English translation
of Doctor Hook's shuffling apology to his
Romanising Dissenter friends, and some of his
answerers have made good use of its transparent dis-
ingenuousness and confession of self-seeking. But
though Dr. Hook will not vote against Dr. Symons,
neither will he attend to support the venerable war-
den's claim to what uninterrupted usage has rendered
his indisputable right, and what therefore cannot be
withholden from him without inflicting an insult and
an indelible stigma. Here is strange morality—
more extraordinary religion ! Here, says Dr. Hook,
is a grievous aggression threatened upon one whom
I acknowledge to be a most upright, pious, and
honourable man ; I Is ill not join in executing the
threat, not, ho sever, because I believe an unprovoked
aggression upon any man wrong—more wrong upon a
man such as the warden of Wadham—but because I
Wilk none will tyke part in it, save the most despe-
rate of the Romanising Dissenters; and it is not
my present convenience to identify myself with
them. Would such morality as this be endured in
any of the ordinary affairs of life? The proceeding
at o:tford, it is to be remembered, is not an election,
not a 'contest between A and B, where every one is et
liberty to weigh the merits of the respective candi-
dates, and to vote for one, the other, or neither, ac-
cordingly as his judgment shall direct. It is a punish-
ment ,threatened for an alleged offence ; an aggres-
sion, menaced for the gratification of revenge;
or a political manoeuvre, contrived for the purpose of
throasing the government of the University into the
handssof a particular party. Now we care not which
of thethree hypotheses be adopted; we assert that no
really honest man can escape from the necessity
of taking a part, as far as his opportunity and
convenience permit. If a punishment for trans-
gression is proposed, an honest man will vote
to punish the transgressor, or more cheerfully to pro-
tect the innocent. If revenge only is the aggressor's
object, every honest man will feel it a sacred duty to
interpose between the aggressor and his vengeance. If
the manoeuvre be purely a stroke of Uni-
versity politics to obtain ascendancy for one
party at Oxford, every honest man attached
to the University and to the Church, must feel
that it is his duty to take one side or the other.
Less learned men than the members of Convocation
remember the infamy justly attached by the Athe-
nian legislator to neutrality upon such a vital
question as is agitated. But Dr. Hook does not
disguise his feeling that not only Dr. Symons but
the other five judges of Dr. Pusey's sermon, as
well as the admirable Vice-Chancellor now in
office, ought to be insulted and stigmatised •
nor conceal the fact that it is on his an-
ticipation of defeat, and his care for the position
of himself, Doctor Hook, that prevent his join-
ing heart and hand with Messrs. Newman, Wrrd,
and Company, in the attempt to affix the insult and
the stigma. Honest and generous man! His pre-
text is the condemnation of Dr. Pusey's !sermon.
And why the condemnation of Dr. Pusey's sermon ?
pot deny that substantial justice

~~

;,' '

was done in the condemnation of a discourse which
laboured without disguise to establish, against the
Protestant Church of England and all the other Pro-
testant reformed churches, that doctrine which is the
distinctive doctrine of Popery—the foundation of
the power of Rome, and the great source of its
errors and its crimes. Dr. Hook will not say that
such a sermon, preached in a Protestant Univer-
sity, might not be condemned, and he does not
dare to deny the substantial justice of the
condemnation or its necessity. No, imitating
the example of some of the less honest Whigs,
in the parallel case of the repeal conspirators, he
evades the question of substantial justice, rest-
ing his complaint upon the pretext that the
party had no fair trial. What does Doctor
Hook mean by a fair trial ? The tribunal
was statutably appointed by the Vice-Chancellor,
under the obligation of his official oath, and it
comprised gentlemen supposed to be favourable to
Doctor Pusey's opinions. No other form of
tribunal was available without violating the
statutes. No better men it was admitted, before
they gave their judgment, by the Tractarians them-
selves, could be found in the University than the
six gentlemen selected. The corpus delicti, the
Romanising sermon, was placed in the hands of this
tribunal. Dr. Pusey was made acquainted with
the construction put upon its Romanising passages,
Ind invited to explain these passages, if he could, in
a manner to reconcile them to the Articles of the
Church of England, to which he had more than once
sworn. Neither then, however, nor since, has he ever
attempted any such explanation. Was not this a fair
trial ? If not, no man against whom a plea of
guilty has been recorded was fairly tried. What is
a plea of guilty ? Is it an acknowledgment that
the party ought to be hanged, transported, or im-
prisoned, as the case may be ? No ; it is merely a
confession that the accused has perpetrated the act
alleged against him, under the circumstances and with
the understanding imputed in the indictment ; but
after the record of his plea of guilty, is he allowed to
defend, as innocent, the act condemned by law ? No;
the law will not allow such an insult to its authority.
This, however, is precisely the case of Dr. Pusey's
sermon. His delivery of the sermon, and de-
clining to explain away the Romanising tendency
of its objectionable passages, was a plea of guilty.
Any defence after that, would be merely an
apology for the avowed Popish doctrines of the dis-
course, and such on apology, the Vice-Chancellor and
his assessors were by their oath and by the statues
forbidden to hear. This is state of things which Dr.
Hook represents as constituting a denial of justice.
Dr. Hook, however, will, we trust, find few followers,
as to-morrow's numbers will show.

REMOVAL OF COMMERCIAL RE-
STRICTIONS.

Although the commercial negotiations undertaken
by the British Government with foreign Powers
within the last few years did not meet with that ac-
ceptance and success to which they were justly en-
titled as the best means of improving the advantages
of traffic and of peace, yet we observe with pleasure
that a considerable impulse has been given to the re-
moval of commercial restrictions abroad, and that
the principles of a more liberal commercial policy are
certainly gaining ground in every country in Europe,
except in France. These subjects are still so imper-
fectly understood by a large proportion of the men
who are invested with the government of States, that
their reasoning upon them is an incongruous mixture
of political suspicions and commercial ignorance.
They are disposed to apply the old maxims of State
policy, which consisted in labouring by all means to
weaken their rivals, forgetting that one of the
greatest dangers to which a productive nation can be
exposed is to impoverish its customers ; and they still
attach such mysterious notions of prosperity to high
prices, that they do not disdain the aid of artificial
means to support them, even at the expense of their.
own subjects. The true reasons by which the vices of
this system have been exposed and demonstrated are
not unfrequently viewed by politicians of this class
with excessive distrust ; but meanwhile other consi-
derations, less sound in principle, but more effectual
in their result, insensibly urge them in the same
course, and the consequence is a general, though
gradual, movement in the right direction. If the ef-
fects of this jealous policy had not been extremely
detrimental to the best interests of the world, there
was something unspeakably ludicrous in the lan-
guage of the different States which evaded or rejected
the offers of England, for no better reason than that
they were British effers.
" Timeo Danaos et done ferentes"
was the universal cry ; and our own commercial
greatness appeared to have taught the world no wiser
lesson than that it was unsafe to associate the interests
of other countries with our own, and to adopt those
principles by which we hold that the common pros-
perity of nations may be most securely promoted.
The pedantic prohibitionists of Germany, the slave-
traders of Brazil, and the jobbers in Portugal, had
but one and the same theme; and by their deliberate
suggestions or ignorant terrors their respective Go-
vern:nents were led to reject an alliance with the best
market and the largest capitalists in the world.
Such folly must be short-lived; and although we do
not expect them to have the candour or good sense
to acknowledge the extent of theirerror, yet we perceive
with satisfaction that in many quarters serious prac-
tical attempts are now made to counteract its progress.
It must be admitted that the principles of commercial
reform, however just they may be in themselves, are
shown to great disadvantage when they are urged
upon the attention of a Government by a foreign
Power. In negotiations of this kind each State takes
an exaggerated view of the concessions required of it
by the other ; each seems to forget that external con-
cessions are in reality at the same time internal bene-
fits to the domestic consumer; and the value of a
commercial treaty is estimated, not by a general view
of its effects, but by a sort of balance of profit and
loss, which is derived from the most superficial ob-
servation of its immediate consequences. It is the
evident duty of a Minister engaged in a transaction
of this nature to promote and defend the interests of
his own country before all others ; but in the dis-
charge of this duty he is apt to lose the credit which
he may in reality deserve for equitable and prudent
intentions towards the other contracting party,
and, as we have repeatedly seen, the most allur-
ing and advantageous proposals have been tainted
and made repulsive by a foreign origin. For these
reasons our commercial negotiations have for the most
part failed, and we must he content to wait until the
progress of public opinion in various countries, the
effects of competition, and the claims of internal
interests bring about those changes which a more
enlightened and energetic spirit on their part might
have anticipated. This is the operation which we
confidently believe to be going on ; and the present
year has exhibited numerous signs of the command-
ing interest which these commercial questions have
everywhere assumed. The Austrian Government has
promulgated a new tariff, which shows that it is dis-
posed to follow with characteristic steadiness the
policy begun by the treaty and the tariff of 1838.
In Hungary the Diet has been agitated by vigorous
debates on the subject of free trade ; and amongst the
Hungarians, who are eager to assume that rank in
Europe to which they are justly entitled by their
population, their productions, and their free institu-
tions, there are few who deny that the improvement
of their commercial system is the first step to the ac-
complishment of their national desires. Holland, la-
bouring with financial difficulties which would over-
whelm a people of less prudence and integrity,
steers her course in the same direction, and the mo-
nopolies founded by the late King for selfish pur-
poses are tottering to their fall. Naples seems at
length to recollect that it rests with herself to carry
into execution the most essential parts of the treaty
which was so inexplicably and disgracefully frus-
trated by Lord Palmerston. In the other States of
Italy the idea of commercial union is gaining
ground ; and in the north of Europe Belgium has
concluded a treaty for six years with the German
Commercial League. In all these States there is the
same manifest tendency to remove restrictions and to
extend trade ; and even though the immediate purpose
r of some of these arrangements may be governed by no
friendly spirit to the commerce of this country, yet
we view them with no dissatisfaction, from the full
conviction that the commercial relations of the world
must be based upon general principles, and cannot be
narrowed by that worst form of restrictions which
consists in national preferences and exclusive privi-
leges. We have already remarked that the spirit by
which the German Zollverein was called into existence
is at work in various parts of Europe. It tends
to assimilate the several members of the Austrian
empire ; it will probably combine the Italian States ,
it has even led France to make an abortive effort to
join her commercial interests to those of Belgium.
But the failure of that attempt (without reference
to the important political considerations it suggested
at the time) shows in a striking light the conditions
on which alone such unions are practicable or can
he profitable. They indispensably require a low
standard of custom house duties, and a good
system of internal communication. In these respects
France had nothing to offer to Belgium : she would
have placed her within the circle of her own prohibi-
tive duties, but those duties would have cut Belgium
off from her maritime and trans-Rhenane neighbours.
She would have opened to her the market of France;

but France has as yet done less than any country in
Europe towards the completion of that system of rail-
roads which she, more than any other country, re-
quires. The commercial system, the ports, and the
railways of Belgium already assimilated her to her
German neighbours ; and although the French are
irritated with the Government of Brussels for
having, as they term it. " turned its back on the
revolution of July," they have nothing to blame
for it but their infatuated adherence to maxims of
commercial policy which every other State is gra-
dually relaxing, and . their very slow prosecution of

, . s

those improvements which have already opened most
important lines of communication in Europe, and
will eventually contribute, as much as anything else,
to the general interchange of the productions of every
part of the world.—Times.