The Press. — London, England, 1858-11-06 00:00:00

THE PRESS, NOVEMBER 6, 1858. me, or knowledge of, other nations, seem to have done remarkably we ll. They have no beggars, little crime or disorder, beautiful scenery, r i c h and well cultivated soil, commodious and spacious dwellings, and as mu ch cleanliness as godliness. Of the Treaty we have just now concluded w ith them, the advantages, we suspect, will be mostly on our own side. Their country is "opened up" to us. But as they do not aspire to terri torial acquisition, we scarcely know how they would possibly be better off t h an they are, or what good they can derive from Minie rifles and Man chester cotton. They are, we are told, a remarkably " go-ahead " people ; an d we may erect,therefore, that they will not be slow to eat of the tree of knowledge with which Western Europe has tempted them. The first t hing which the Emperor expects is not unnaturally a revolution. Of all the new ideas introduced to his people, they are sure to take the biggest suga Plam9 first, and the decapitation of kings will be a delicious novelty r- to a people so long the victims of a single reigning House. From this point of view the yacht presented to the Emperor by Lord ELGLN in the na me of her Majesty, and not inappropriately named the " Dragon," must have loomed before that potentate something in the light of a comet or other celestial portent with fear of change perplexing him. We shall look for intelligence from Japan with the utmost curiosity for some time to come. The chronic anarchy to which all those portions of America between the United States and the empire of Brazil are subject, has again broken out in Mexico. When, however, we say broken out, we are not using that word in its ordinary sense; fc r, properly speaking, the complaint has never wholly subsided. What we mean is, broken out so as to involve the interference of other countries. As long as they kept their disturbances to themselves nobody cared. They might "gie one another a slash wi a claymore, or a stab wi a dirk," and civilized people, perhaps, rather congratulated them selves on the thinning of' so troublesome a race. But when the operation comes to be tried upon our own countrymen, the matter assumes a different aspect. We really know very little about the gentleman named GARZA Who has lately made himself master of the town of Tampico, beyond the fact that he bombarded it for two months last spring, and was then beaten off. However he has got it now. And the first use he very wisely made of his new acquisition was, in Chinese language, "to squeeze " the inhabitants. He made a demand of 1,4001. apiece on all the merchants of the place, and on their refusal to comply with this request, which he, perhaps, may have entitled "a benevolence," some twenty of them were marched off to a dungeon, superior only to the Black-hole of Calcutta in that it admitted the rain. In the meantime a Britisher, Mr. PETER HAZEON, strong in the protection of an English Consul, not only refused to be " squoze," but even spurned the usurper's invitation to a little quiet talk upon the subject. Clinging, it would seem, with fidelity to the national dogma that his house was his castle, he continued in that fortress till summoned to surrender by fcur officers of the enemy. He stoutly refused compliance, and called in the aid of the Consul. Soldiers were sent for to overpower the contumacious individual ; and presently, in the very teeth of the British flag, which was ineffectively flourished in their faces, the villains dragged PETER HAZEON from his citadel, and cast him into inner darkness. The last intelligence informs us that he was out again, as it were, on bail, and that he would be put back again if he didn't pay. Nor have fiercer suggestions been wanting from the conqueror's military councillors. To shoot one of the merchants, to encourage the others to pay up, is becoming a favourite idea—an idea erroneously applied, perhaps, in this instance, but not unworthy of consideration in regard to a certain class of British merchants at home. Such, it seems, are the facts of this out rageous case. We offer no opinion on the right method of dealing with it. There arc wiser heads than ours to look to that, as CAXTON observed %Olen he fired the beacon. GARZA himself may be hanged or shot before we can touch him ; and there is really no embodied Mexican State which can be held responsible. The remarks of his Royal Highness the Duke of CAMBRIDGE on the recent court-martial upon Ensign Scary will be read with pleasure by the public. What, in the eyes of that august body, may constitute ungentle manly conduct, if this young officer's did not, we shall not trouble ourselves to conjecture. But it is a very extraordinary thing that while all other pro fessions have a tendency to make boys men, that which ought to be the man liestof all has a tendency to make men boys. Your young Ensign or Cornet IS indeed in his own estimation a perfect man, while his seniors are still at school. His confident bearing, and knowing style of conveNation, lift him quite above an Oxford or Cambridge Undergraduate. Yet look at the aifterence in their lives. While at our two Universities the system of practical joking has become almost as much a thing of the past as the fights Logic-lane, or the flagellation of refractory students, our bearded military heroes indulge in amusements for which a fifth-form boy would despise them. No one can doubt the heartiness, manliness, and geniality of the present Commander-in-Chief. Ile is not one to have any undue ImPatby for milksops, to question the propriety of leaving young men, as far as possible, to themselves, or to take any other than a sound, wholesome 'new of" the may they have in the army." We may therefore very safely nminit ourselves to his guidance in this matter, and be quite certain that "Pith% which strikes him as disgraceful and ridiculous is worthy of immediate eradication. "If observation with extensive view surveys the world from China to rtru." it will find very much the same kind of thing going on at each end Perhaps one good effect of rousing up the Japanese mind may be . to induce th em to co - operate w i t h us i n exterm i na ting the pirates which infest those l a tit u d es . B ut t h e d estruct i on o f these desperadoes has hitherto seemed nearly as hopeless a task as the forcible prevention of the glare trade. After certain regular intervals we hear of a grand battue among the creeks of the Eastern archipelago : a certain number of pirat es 1085 are destroyed and a proportionate number of long-tails bagged ; but as soon as the covers have had time to lie quiet a little the game begins to return, and next season a goodly head of ruffians is heard of with much glee by the officers of her Majesty's squadron. One good thing is that a victory over these gentry is gained with really fewer casualties than fre quently befall an actual shooting party. Yet nevertheless, as the pirates, we suppose, do try to hit us, and as stinkpots and spears, to say nothing of cannon-balls, are even worse than a charge of small shot in the calf; or a few pellets sportingly lodged about the nose and eyes, it would be as well if strong measures could be taken with these troublesome rovers. To judge from the despatches recently received from Admiral SEYMOUR, her Majesty's servants seem to find it excellent sport, and may feel disinclined to kill down all the breed at once. But, seriously, we think some resolute and vigorous effort should be made to terminate this singular pastime. The principal subject which engaged the attention of the, Com missioners on Army Clothing, &c., at the renewal of their inquiries on Thursday last, was the system of purchasing timber for the Government. The main question at issue was this—whether the employment of brokers in this transaction was desirable or not. To judge merely from the evidence, we should say that the result was entirely in favour of open com petition. But then we must remember that th e bulk of the evidence on the other side was held back as being too voluminous for publication. The opponents of the broker system endeavoured to show that timber which could have been purchased direct from the importer at a certain sum, was purchased from the broker through whose hands it had passed at a much larger one. To this it was replied that the Government officers insisted upon picking their timber; so that if a broker purchased so many loads from an importer at a particular price, he was justified in charging extra for picked portions of the same. Yet, granting this to be the case, there is the broker's per-centage to be taken into account, and also, as it seems, a higher charge for lighterage than the direct seller is in the habit of charging. Mr. HOWELL, Director of Contracts at the War-office, appeared to be in favour of the brokerage system ; Colonel TULLOCH, Head of the Royal Carriage Department, and Captain FARMER, an officer under him, in favour of open competition. Not having, as before stated, the whole evidence before us, we can only write subject to correction. But nothing certainly has yet transpired to make us a convert to the system which entails an additional expense without, as far as can be seen, any corre sponding advantages. The " middleman" is already almost a proverbial character, and the 0711.13 probandi certainly rests upon his champions. Cardinal WISEMAN has been delivering a lecture to the inhabitants of the metropolis on the present condition of Ireland as presented to him in his recent progress. He disclaimed the idea that his journey was official, and then proceeded to state his conviction that Ireland was now at last recovering from a prostration of three centuries. Better farming, better tenures of land, and the diffusion of capital had combined, he said, to pro duce a marked change on the outward aspect of th,. peasantry. They were now smiling and prosperous, and the whole face of the country was assuming a corresponding appearance. We are sure we are only too happy to hear these tidings, be they from the lips of Catholic or Protestant, of priest or layman. But we very much wish that we could have asked the Cardinal this one question. If; as he declared, the people is just as much under the control of the priesthood as ever, is it not in the power of the latter to prevent such atrocities as that which has occurred in Donegal? And is not the Cardinal aware that the very thing to arrest the present progress of the Irish people, and to throw them back into the miserable condition from which they have emerged, is the revival of that lawless spirit which once made all improvement hopeless? A circular from the Cardinal upon this subject would do more to convince us of his sincerity than a dozen such flowing orations as he delivered on Wednesday last. The terrible case of wholesale poisoning at Bradford, where fifteen persons have died, and as many more lie dangerously ill, from the acci dental admixture of arsenic with some lozenges sold commonly at the con fectioners, has at present resulted in this—that three persons have been remanded by the magistrates on the charge of manslaughter. They are Mr. NEIL, the manufacturer of the lozenges; Mr. HonG*rx, the druggist from whom he bought the arsenic; and GODDARD, his assistant. In the conduct of the two former there seems, indeed, to have been culpable care lessness. What Mr. NEIL wanted for his purpose was a preparation called daff," and it was kept in a large tub in Mr. HonGsosellar, in which was also kept a large tub of arsenic open at the top and without any label. Mr. HonosoN, who happened to be unwell when Mr. NEIL ' s man called, sent his assistant to fetch the " daff," without, as it appears, giving him any warning. And now follows the result we have all hears a thousand times : GODDARD took the arsenic by mistake, and they e lamentable consequences ensued. But the extraordinary part of the bur ness is this,—that on Mr. NEIL'S being shown the tub from which t h e arsenic was taken, he at once exclaimed, " Why, that's not daff !" HoN v it possible, therefore, that he should not have made the same discover y i n the course of manufacturing his lozenges ? If he did so, and still con tinued to use the material, which, he confessed, gave him acute pai ns in the eyes and nostrils, without inquiring into the nature of the sub ,titute supplied him, his culpability is heavy indeed ; if he did not, his st i pidity is something superhuman. We regret that the French Government should have tat ;en what appears to us the very impolitic as well as the very unjust step of prose cuting M. DE 31o:crausmsEnt for the article upon England whit .h a ppeared in the Correspondant. A complete impression of the artti le will, we understand, be published by Mr. JEFFS in the ensuing week.