The Sun.
London, England, 1842-07-26 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS
FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF THIS DAT.
GLOBE.—The Mines and Collieries Bill, which
some of our Contemporaries seemed to consider as
endangered by the opposition raised against some of
its essential clauses by certain Noble Lords inter-
ested in perpetuating the abominations it was
framed to remedy, has passed through the ordeal of
Committee in the House of Lords. We are no
less thankful on the score of humanity than we are
for the preservation of due respect in the public
mind for the acts of both branches of the Legis-
lature, that these apprehensions have not been
realised. If the intention was ever seriously enter-
tained of denuding the Bill of the clauses which con-
stituted its main excellencies, and without which it
would have been a mere mockery, that intention was
prudently abandoned. For Peers of the highest
rank to have allowed themselves to interpose their
own private interests as impediments to a measure
which was framed to prevent practices as much
opposed to the decencies of life, on which morality
must depend for protection from invasion and sub-
version, as they are to humanity, would have been to
adopt a course of all others the most likely to bring
their order into contempt, and thus to shake tha
foundations on which it, and every other institution
cf the country, must depend for protection and per-
petuity. The objection to the humane measure, now
happily beyond the reach of danger, was assigned
to the sections of the Bill, which prohibited, after a
day named in the Bill, the employment of females
of any age in mines and collieries. The Noble Lord
(Ashley) to whose devotion to the subject the victims
to a depraved system are so much indebted for the
means of their deliverance from the deep degrada-
tion and vast extent of suffering it entailed upon
them, had so fair yielded to the formidable opposition to
the measure which had been invoked against it, as to
extend the limits of the period below which male
children might continue to be employed, and the
date to which the present law was originally re-
stricted. Other concessions were made in Committee
to the mine-owners and coal-owners at the expense
of the Bill as it originally stood. In the House of
Lords it was proposed to allow the employment of
11mnliles above the age of eighteen ; and an ignoble
and unmanly stand was, not without reason, appre-
hended in lltrour of the proposition. We are happy
to find that—whether from a conviction of its hope-
lessness, or from a sense of shame at its utter un-
worthiness, we know not—this, and the other endea-
vours to deprive the measure of its vitality, have been
abandoned. In a few months—the Bill ought to
have come into immediate operation—this reproach to
our name, as a humane and enlightened nation, will
he rolled away.
sTA NI Lk It D.—ln the house of Lords last night,
Lord Shaftesbury again presided as Speaker, in con-
sequence of the absence of the Chancellor, from
continued indisposition. The Bishop of London, in
presenting a petition from a gentleman named Turner,
upon the subject of singing schools, took occasion to
allude to the language employed by Lord Wharn-
cliffe upon a former evening—language, it will
be remembered, noticed by Sir Robert Inglis
in the House of Commons. Lord Wharncliffe
explained his words as follows :—" What he had said
was, that he should consider himself unfit for the
situation which he had the honour to hold, if he de-
parted from the rule laid down by the Committee of
the Privy Council, and which had since been acted
upon, as to cducation." From this explanation it is
quite plain that the speech of the noble President was
inaccurately reported, and therefore misunderstood.
According to the report, his Lordship laid down
certain principles, which, if not latitudinarian, ap-
proached very closely to the cant of Liberalism.
His explanation proves that he laid down no prin-
ciples whatever, confining himself to a declaration
that he would adhere to what he found established.
because it was established. This throws a new light
upon the whole of the Noble Lord's speech ; for a man
may very often honestly support that which he never
would have originated, rather than incur the inconve-
nience of a violent change, one part of such inconve-
nience being the committing of injustice to persons who
had committed their interests upon the faith of a State
Establishment. The Bishop of London has rendered
an essential service to Lord Wharncliffe himself, as
well as to the public, in eliciting the explanation of
last night. - Upon the motion of the Earl of Devon,
that the Bill for the Government of persons employed
in mines (Lord Ashley's Bill) be recommitted, Lord
Brougham delivered a speech of some length, which
we do not know how to characterise in the usual way,
for after an attentive perusal of it we are unable to
say whether it was intended to support or to oppose
the measure. It was, indeed, rather a lecture than a
speech, but so very vague in its doctrines as
to be useless even as a lecture. The Noble Lord
proceeded upon the principle that it is prima
facie wrong to interfere with the employment of
labour—a proposition which r.o one will dispute, hut
one which is so very general as to he of extremely
little worth for vraetical purposes. Non-interference
with the employment of labour is doubtless the rule,
and it is of necessity the practice in 99 cases out of
100; but the rule admits of exceptions, like every
other general rule, and about these exceptions is the
whole question—a question the more important,
because the power of money in this country on one
side, and the helplessness of the poor on the other,
force very frequently arrangements between em •
ployers and employed, which the law ought to pre-
vent. It is quite idle to talk of the freedom of the
labour-market in a country where the poor must take
whatever employment is offered to them, or starve,
and where the rich have frequent temptations to em-
ploy the poor in pursuits injurious to their health and
ruinous to their morals. In such a state of society
the law must not bewilder itself with general prin-
ciples, but if it pretend to impartiality, it must either
give freedom to the poor, by raising their condition,
or at least iirotect them in their enthralled state from
the tyrannical exercise of the power of money, to the
injury of their health and morals.

GOODWOOD RACES.
(THIS DAY-BY EXPRESS.)

(Continued from our Third Edition.)

Sweepstakes of 300 sovs. each, h ft, King's Plate

• Course.
Lord G. Bentinck's Mustapha (lingers) 1
Lord Westminster's Van Amburgh
Lord Chesterfieid's -Mehemet Ali 3
Won in a canter.

The Gratwieke Stakes of 100 sovs. each, h ft. Mile

and half.
Lord Verulam's Robert de Gorham (Cotton) 1
Mr. Wreford's Wiseacre
Lord George Bentinck's Firebrand
Duke of Richmond's Balleine filly
Mr. Bowes' The Ladye of Silverkeld Well 5