Star.
London, England, 1830-09-17 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE JOURNALS.

Cnaowiciw.—The opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Rail-
way has been clouded by a most unfortunate occurrence. The under-
taking itself has been as successful as the most sanguine of its pro-
jectors anticipated; but during one of the temporary stoppages, Mr.
Muskisson, who was in the space: between the carriage ways, on the
approach of one of the cars, which had fallen behind, fell on codes-
Touring to lay bold of the car beside him, and an engine passed over
his thigh. The consequence was a compound fracture, rendering am.
potation necessary. Unfortunately from the previous state of his health,'
his life is considered to be in the greatest danger. Down to the
time at which our Reporter's communication was sent off, he
was in s state which rendered it impossible for him to under.
go the dreadful operation. The Duke of Wellington seems to
have been greatly affected by the accident, and endeavoured to
have the business of the day postponed. This, however, after much de.,
liberation, the Directors did not deem themselves authorised to agree to.
His Grace, however, did not join the dinner party at Liverpool.—Ac-
cording to our Reporter, the speed of the cars was, while he observed
the time, at the rate of 18 and ID miles an hour; but he was assured by
Mr. Stephenson that, when they were pushing on to Manchester after
the interruption, the rate wu 24 miles an hour, and at one time even
331—This is unquestionably one of the greatest triumphs of mechanical
science. It is the commencement of a new era in loco-motion. We may
expect the construction of railways on all the roads where a dense
population would render the speculation profitable. Already the
Shares of this Company are at a premium, which is the best proof
of the general opinion as to the success of the speculation. Distant
cities are now brought near to each other. The ranting call of the Poet
to annihilate space and time, may almost be said to be realised. Before
a citisen of London could proceed in one of those lumbering ouches
which yet disgrace the streets of this metropolis, the strong hold of so
many monopolies, to the west end of the town, a Liverpool merchant
would have finished a journey to Manchester. The power of man over
the material world has been augmented within a few years in so extraor.
dinary a manner, invention having succeeded rapidly to invention, that
there has been generated a disposition to believe that the elements may
be made available to man to a degree far beyond any thing of which we
have experience. Had rail-roads along which carriages might proceed at
the rate of thirty-three miles an hour been hinted at to Swift, he would
certainly have deemed the speculation adapted for Laputa.

Trares.—Some of the !police Fe—ports have exhibited within these
few days, a picture of the relations too often, as we are told, subsisting
between the officers of East India Company's ships and their seamen,
which it was impossible to look at without disgust at the system, or
without serious alarm for its consequences to the public wdfare. It
appears that on board these valuable merchant-ships, and in a service of
such towering pretensions as that of the Holsourabte Company, a habit
of foul language has been indulged in by the officers towards the
sailors, wholly Incompatible with that grave self-respect which ought to
characterise the demeanour of s having authority over others,
and inevitably tending to uce on the minds of their inferiors a
bitterness or a prostration of spirit alike unfavourable to the dis-
charge of a seaman's duties. The Inglis, as may be collected
from the evidence offered before the magistrate, was on her voyage
home, a scene of the most deplorable insubordination, and as
usually—we do not say invariably—happens, the violence of the exas-
perated seamen may be traced to that which they had long experienced
from the Captain of the vessel and his mates. It is not • fit practice....
It is not a practice which would be tolerated en board a British man of
war, or indeed on board a merchantman at any nation but the English
to abuse men employed in laborious offices as if they were creatures de-
void of feelit.g, and when they show a natural and human sense of the
wanton indignities with which they en outraged, to tie them up and flog
them like wild beasts. Why, if English seamen had even the benefit of
the act of that generous.rninded statesman (ono* himself a sailor,) the
late Lord Erskine, the act against " cruelty to animals," no skipper
dons use them with a degree of harshness like that represented by the
witnesses on behalf of the crew to have formed their ordinary
treatment at the hands of the Captain of the Inglis, and one or more of
his officers. On the other side of the question, we are not insensible to
the difficulties imposed upon the Captain of a Company's ship, so far as
regards the seamen. With all their reputed wealth, and real power,
the India Company are the shabbiest set of shipowners whose vessels
traverse the ocean. Their ships are the wont manned, their size con-
sidered, and the casualties to which in long voyages and insalubrious
climates they are exposed,—the worst that clear out from the ports
of the united kingdom. It is not thi'l the number of their
crews are scanty ; but that from the poor wages they offer,—
the small precautions taken by them as to inquiry into cha.
racter,—the absence of all provision for their sailors and petty
officers after age or accident shall have compelled them to retire, and
the consequent bad quality of many of their seamen, as compared with
those who are admitted into his Majesty's service—the crew of an India.
man is often such as to ffiann the officers for the safety of the ship, and
for the lives of all on board her. It is not, therefore, as against the offi-
cers only that we should desire to see a set of regulations, with
respect to discipline, established end enforced by legal sanctions.
At present there is none but what proceeds from the assumed nee's-
%ity of each case as it arises: when the Captain, thwarted or insulted
hy his men, has recourse to violence for want of legitimate power.
Teach the seaman his duties by legislative authority, and the officer will
soon learn to respect his rights, because his own rights will be placed
beyond the pals of controversy. The situation of a ship, and of those
by whom she is navigated, is so peculiar, and the effects of crime so
prompt and dangerous, as to justify the application of more direct and
aPecihe remedies against wrong doing than such as may be extracted
from the ordinary provisions of the common law. We can imagine no
reason why a code of instructions similar (*stands seurantlis) to those
observed on board a King's ship, should not be applied to the mercantile
marine of England, and officers and men made answerable for their
complete execution. H amenity and the love of justice will assuredly be
spared, by such a charitable innovation, the pain of many a police re-
cital like those to which we have adverted above.
---see--
Porr.--The men of the revolution have, it is certain,
themselves of all the good things in France, with a degree of rapidity
Thiel) might have been thought incredible had it been asserted upon any
arthority inferior to that of an official and detailed statement of the
Prime Alinister of the Revolutionary King. The revolutionists have,
7deed, shown an insatiable avidity foe office in every department of this
mate but two. In the Military department, in the departments of to
hterior, of Justice, of Foreign Ankh.% there has bees no modes&
no respect to former service, however ancient, faithful, disaeet
"r meritorious—no merciful consideration for the families of the olds
!;<apants of office, however temperate or inoffensive may have been
'"nr political sentiments or conduct. Here the revolutionary
blecen_— has in all conscience swept clean enough. But in the Maks*
,n.n!l Finance departments it had been exercised mote sparingly, and for
thin comparative lenity the Minister offers apologies which ought to satisfy

the Revolutionists even who panted the most ardently to become naval
commanders or receivers general, while their mitosis cannot fail we
think to amuse all the rest of the world. The men of the Revolution are
necessarily deprived of their expected harvest of promotion in the de-
partments of Marine and Finance, because, to use the words of
the Duke De Broglie, the Marine is a " body which by its
nature requires the union of special knowledge and long
experience ;" and because " the situation of the Minister of the
Finances, as to the personal, was extremely delicate, inas-
much as the Officers entering into this department have confidence to
gain, and these is some danger in removing men of established credit."
Whatever we may think of any other part of the reasoning ache French
Minister, this at Iftst we believe to be founded on indisputable fact.
The Duke is unquestionably right in his opinion, that the political ad-
venturers, the Plea-- hunting Journalists, the vagabond loungers in
coffee-houses, the prating petits-stailres of the Wows, who have been
the principal instruments in exciting the French people to revolution,
are the very last men in the world who ought to be entrusted either
with naval commands or with any portion of the public money.

Hznat.n.—Some of our contemporaries have endeavoured to depre-
ciate the courage of the Belgians, and ridiculed them, partly by bunt
assertions of their own, and partly by their Brussels correspondence,
which, from its invariable partiality, and general ignorance of the sub-
ject appears to be of home manufacture. The Belgians have ever been
famous for their husseur bclhgeuse. Without going back to the records
of Roman History, which extols the valour of the Belgian cavalry on
many occasions, and particularly for the protection it afforded to the
Roman Legions on their disastrous retreat from Persia, under Crassua,
we need only advert to the high renown the Walloon regiments acquired
in the Austrian service during the late revolutionary French war, these
facts being perfectly within the recollection of the present generation,
with the exceptiocno
IA, oil very young men, young politicians, and
some newspaper ta, whose recollections are, perhaps, as
limited as their . The regiment of Latour (dragoons)
served with the greatest disdnetien, and was long the terror of the
French army. Four times was this regiment renovated during the cam-
pk= between 1793 and 1801, every and man having been either
kilted or put bore de combat, it being always indulged with the post of
honour—that is, the t nearest to the enemy. 'The Belgian infantry
was equally celebrated, and not only their regular regiments of foot in
the Imperial service, but even the contingent of the Ecclesiastical Prince
of Liege, under Colonel Wasseige, fought most saliently upon all
occasions, especially at the celebrated lines of Weissenbourg. Many
of the best Austrian Generals were Belgians. Geneva]. Clairefait,
Beaulieu, Belicgarde and Prince de lAgne, to wit; and the regiment
of Duke Albert of Six. Teschen, one of the finest cuirassier regiments
in the Austrian army, was recruited and officered from Belgium, as
well as that of Bossy Chasseurs a Cheval, who suffered so much by
their charges on their Consular Guard at Marengo had been recruited in
Belgium. On the other hand, let us inquire into the testimony of facts
as to the warlike spirit of the modern Dutch, either for themselves or
for any one else. lo 1794 and 1796. the French overran all Holland,
and scarce a shot was fired. In 1799 the Texel fleet struck to a regi-
ment of English dragoons, and the Angio-Runian army advanced to
within seven leagues of Amsterdam, the Batavians retreating before
them, till a French force hastened from the Upper Rhine, by forced
marches, to their assistance, and nand the fortune of the campaign ;
and afterwards when the Bstavians formed separate corps in the French
army, under Gen. Dunionceau, and even under Marshal Augereau,
the Duke of Castiglione himself, they never achieved any brilliant fait
d'armes ; for Napoleon, who knew how to form a very correct judg-
ment, seldom intrusted them with any military operations of conse-
quence. As to the patriotism of the Dutch, the inhabitants of this
dwelt:al land of liberty, sold gunpowder to Louis XIV. to blow their
own towns about their ears, better satisfied to turn a penny in this way
than to drive a trade in unprofitable patriotism.