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    tfuT woild and his wife travel on railways , the Ax ^ trian rulers must allow the civilians under their nower some opportunity of making money enough to pay imperial taxes . In the Italian provinces the Emperor has . allowed railways , but with something of the same fear that Home tolerates the printing-press , and sanctions bofiks printed permissu superioncm . An illustration is given at Milan . The Una connecting Milan with the Sardinian frontier is making progress , and will be finished , it is thought , in the autumn . The company propose to build a magnificent terminus at Loreto , close to the gates of Milan ; bat the Austrians- wish to occupy the

    site with ' eight little fortresses . ' Those mere soldiers , the Austrian generals , men who have no ideas beyond the camp , who have not even a country to flght for , see in a railroad merely a possible route for an enemy , and to ' command the approaches ' is a cardinal point in military tactics . The management of the railway is a secondary consideration ; the regulation and despatch of passengers a small question . The saving clause is eight little fortresses . Imagine booking your luggage at the cannon ' s mouth , or some German

    sabreur stamping your ticket with the hilt of his sword . The idea of an irritable old Field-Marshal ruling a staff of railway officials is really worth considering as a kind of reform . A negligent pointsman would be bayoneted on the spot , passengers getting out before the train stops would receive a well-directed fusillade ; a sluggish coal-train would be accelerated by the brigade of field artillery in full pursuit ,, and an express train would be brought to by a "well-aimed cannon-shot . Another railway proposal of the Austrian Government beats Mr . Stephenson and . his Chat Moss work to nothing : —

    " The Austrian Government also "wishes to establish a mine beneath the bridge of Buffalora , on the Ticino , where the Lombaruy line and the Piedruoutese line are to form a junction . It has requested the Sardinian Government to do the same on its own side of the river . " This is truly excellent . Our miserable English Engineers have been blundering on from invention to invention as to the best way of stopping trains . Drags on the wheels , throwing sand on the rails , and . "" ol her devices have been adopted , but they are all contemptible beside this grand Austrian proposition . Accidcuts arc impossible when such a means of slopping headlong express trains arc in the hands of the railway authorities . To fully

    appreciate the wisdom of Ibis notion we must understand the peculiar position of any railway running direct from Sardinia to any part of Austrian Italy . The stoppage of oil trains on this ill-advised route would , in our opinion , be the best plan ; and no doubt sonic of the military managers of the road will keep their bands in ' by ordering " Held practice this afternoon to blow tip the 0 .-10 r . n . train , from the frontier . Ambulances for wounded passengers to be provided burial parties to be detached from the sixth military division . " . Heaven and the Kaiser can only know and appreciate the benefit to the empire of an oecnsional extinction of passengers from Piedmont , and when the spy system of Austria has acquired sufficient delicacy of detection , we may expect a brilliant bulletin : — train

    " Milan , Monday , —This morning nil express of Wens coming from this Sardiuimi frontier was blown up at Uuffulorn . Wo need not add that the ideas wore subversive . " At Bruges , what Mr . Disraeli Mould call " the genius of the epoch , " comes into competition with a very old institution . The newspaper , conies luce to face with the confessional . The Bishop of Bruges ( may hia pastoral crook never bo straight !) mis issued a circular to confessors regulating the injunctions to their penitents i n re newspapers . The penitents , after being examined in the roll of ordinary sins , arc lo be asked what newspapers they Wad . If the publications are radical or heterodox , the penitent is not to receive absolution until he

    proim ' sca to abstain from the forbidden pleasure . The penance for disobedience- is not . laid down ; to stand in a white shoot ( quito blank ) would not be inappropriate . The confessors arc instructed to condone some ^ iolations-of-the ^ goueral-Tulor— -IPost-ollioe-eiuTiui's way carry thorn about , and compositors may act up tho type— for otherwise they would lose their situations . Magistrates art ? permitted to poruso , that wioy may proseoutc , thorn ; and ' men of lot lurs ' « ro to apply for permission to read them , tluit they Jjjay ' refute them . ' This last clause , in inlcresting . Wo would advise Lord John Husscll , who is undeniably a ' man of letters , ' to apply to tin ; Bit > hop of London for permission to road the Times of last

    Wednesday . He will find in it an article which , he ought to refute . The management of the clerical and Bonapartist press in Belgium and Paris shows how this mighty engine of freedom , as some people caU it , is made the docile , mechanic slave of despotism . Some observers of the material progress of the world also anticipated that railways would overrun national distinctions and level high privileges , would make obsolete the baron's feudal fortress and the brigand ' s cave . We do not quite see the use of expecting mental or spiritual results from mere material novelties . The railway has not done

    so very much in this way . Aristocracy has its first class , and there are two other classes for the inferior castes . As to brigandage , the other day , in the Roman States , the brigands seized a station , signalled the train to stop , and robbed the passengers as adroitly and rapidly as the railway officials take tickets . Old , unreformed instincts of human nature triumph over the new ways into which an age of mud , iron , and machinery would bring us . As a compensation , we find that railways take little away from the romance of travelling . The old associations which hallowed the stagecoach and roadside inn now begin to cling to the

    train and the station . Lovers are expected by the express ; ' the next station ' and ' the down platform ' are words which , commonplace as they read , quicken the pulsations of the heart when the traveller thinks of the beloved face he is hastening to sec . When stage-coaches were first introduced , superseding family travelling-carriages , or when carriages themselves were brought in , superseding the saddle and pillion of lover and lass , husband and wife , the same feeling that the romance of travel ' was destroyed was mournfully expressed . Mrs . Slipslop , in ' Joseph Andrews , ' denounces the vulgarity of the stage-coach , and intimates that slie was not used to such a mode of travelling . Looking forward , we may expect the day when the romance of travel will be associated entirely with

    railways , and some new-fangled scheme of locomotion by air or magnetism will be denounced as unromantic and uninteresting . Then some Washington Irving of the Great Western will dwell with poetical pathos on all the dearly-loved features of the old-fashioned railway train , will describe how young and old welcomed its cheerful whistle ; bow favourite engines were tended by aged stokers who tearfully regretted the rage for reforms , how the wife and the sweetheart watched for the evening express until twilight faded into darkness and the starlight shone on the rails of the station , and how the retired station-master , surrounded by his grandchildren , told wild stories of the night trains—the little listeners asking to go next day to the British Museum to see a preserved specimen of tho laiSt locomotive .

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    THE NEW BELGIAN PASSPORT SYSTEM . When- France had resolved to relax the severity of her passport system—intensified for a few weeks after the January attempt , and still painfully rigorous—it wus scarcely to be expected that Belgium would adopt tho measures adverted to last night bv Mr . Monckton Miles in his question to tho Chancellor of tho Exchequer . We much regret that the new Belgian ministry has improved upon tho example ori g inally set by Prance , and added to -the established ' restrictions on tho intercourse between London and Brussels . Surely , IVlffium has nothing to fear from hor

    English visitors , from her close neighbours and cordial friends . As if her regulations wore not already vexatious enough , it is now decided that no Englishman is to receive a passport from tho Belgiuu authorities in London , us has been tho practice hitherto , but . that in all eases in which British subjects desire to visit . Belgium , they must provide themselves with British passports . Great inconvenience is thus inflicted , since in almost every instanco tho system produces delay , difficulty , and embarrassment . What , possible interest can bo of lishman

    served by impeding tho journey an Eng to Brussels , Spa , or ( Mend ? It is upon tho French frontier that impediments might reasonably bo-aiitieipatod ,-buL-. wh . y-, Bopiu > atoXoiidon .. aud . Jir . ii | . s . 1 sol . s , the ono fraternally linked with the otbor by an ' endless ladder' of stcam-packols and railways P Wo will cite two or three inoidents ot recent occurrence in exomplillojitiou of the system which wo have desoribed as ft grievance . An English gentleman has a daughter living with a relative at Oslt'iul . Ho received a telegraphic dospatoh announcing that tho young lady was dangerously 111 , ind hastened to tho Belgian Consulate at four

    o ' clock in the afternoon to obtain a passport . This the authorities were compelled by their responsibility to refuse . They referred him to the Foreignoffice , where it was impossible that he could obtain his passport until the next day . Thus he lost the Dover boat and forty-eight hours . Two English merchant ' s arrived in London from Liverpool on their way to Antwerp , whither they were oalled upon imperative business , for a few hours only . In fact , it was essential that they should return to Liverpool upon the second day after their departure . Arriving in London without letters of recommendation , they applied at the Belgian Consulate . There they could obtain no passport , and for two hours' business they suffered two days' detention . A City tradesman has a son at school at Brussels , and had an opportunity of running over to spend a Sunday with him . The new passport regulations took him by surprise , and he lost his trip altogether . Will the Belgian Government persist in thus limiting the intercourse between Brussels and London , inconveniencing London , and inflicting heavy damages on Brussels ?

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    THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS . The House of Commons was bewildered , pn Tuesday evening , by a discussion on the Straits settlements . Lord Bury , who some weeks ago presented a petition from Penang , Malacca , and Singapore , asked whether the Government were prepared to place those dependencies under the direct administration of the Colonial Office , and complained that they had been oppressively treated by the East India Company . The case of the settlers may be succinctly stated . They occupy two islands and a peninsular station in the Straits of Malacca , the great channel of communication by sea between India and China , and Singapore , in particular , has attracted an enormous trade . The general value of the Straits commerce rose from four millions sterling in 1840 , to fifteen millions in 1857 . Originally the settlements established by the East India Company in the Malayan waters were of peculiar importance to that body in connexion with its monopoly of the Chinese trade ; but these conditions having ceased , Singapore has been converted into a huge penal settlement . The necessity for this has also ceased , as Mr . Mangles admitted , since the Andaman Islands have been selected for penal colonization , and the Company does not appear anxious to retain its local prerogative . What the settlers desire , then , is that the Straits settlements shall be ranked among British colonies , with the prospect of a legislative council based upon their grand jury , and to this concession we think they are justly entitled . Their energies have fostered an immense traffic among the ports of Eastern Asia , and what has been their reward ? That they have been deluged with the criminal classes of British India . We think , however , that Sir John Elphinstone might reconsider his description of the Bugis as among the most lawless and savage of Oriental barbarians . It is of Indian convicts and Chinese secret societies that the European community at . Singapore complains , not of the pacific Bugis , who are the most industrious traders of the entire region , and who bring prosperity wherever their far-wandering flotillas anchor . The boldest of all the races in the archipelago , they are celebrated for their lovo of justice and fidelity to their engagements , aud of all tho merchants who carry their wares to the maritime mart of Dobbo , they contribute most to the . active trade of the Malayan Archipelago . The sight of a Bugis fleet is invariably welcome at Singapore . Even tho Chinese would be received without jealousy were the Government to keep them well in hand , and check tho formation of their secret societies , for they aro an entorprising race , and several members of the Chinese community at Singapore are among tho most respected of tho inhabitants . All persons locally acquainted with the Straits settlements will concur in tho opinion of Mr . Mangles , that the mysterious organizations of those strangers should be vigilantly watched . Moreover , no ono will deny that thaJUuMQJiso number of tigers swimming to tho island from the mainland constitutes airobstftclo to its colonization ; but surely Sir John El p hiustone cxanoeratod tho difficulty when ho desoribed it as insuperable , ' although ho foil short of tho mark when lie said " scarcely a month passed without some native being carried off bodily by those animals . ' * For a long time it has been computed that the lives lost from this oauso at Singapore have averagod one a day . But a nation that builda broakwUtors might

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    go ^ 21 , Afrie 17 , 1858 . ] THE LEADER . ______ 375

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), April 17, 1858, page 375, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2239/page/15/