The Press. — London, England, 1857-05-02 00:00:00

426 700 barrels of flour destroyed—a particularly incon venient circumstance at the time, and entailing a most serious loss. A guard placed over the ruins, had been refused by Sir John Bowring previous to the catastrophe. Confidence in Sir John Bowring's ability to meet the crisis he has brought about does not appear to be generally felt : Our brave old Admiral Sir Michael, as usual, is always on the qui rive (says the China Mail), constantly on the river between this place and Canton, inspecting, instruct ing, and occasionally attacking ; while our notable Gover nor, Sir John }lowring, quietly takes his daily siesta, reiting upon the laurels he has acquired from his first active debut in London as managing committee man of the Greek loan, down to the time of his Kowloon deportation here, some short time since. It is a most absurd thing to imagine, and a great error committed by the Home Government to suppose that a literary man of Sir John's stamp and calibre can ever be the proper ruler of a military colony, and we think we express the sentiments of the largest portion of Hong Kong, when we say that the authorities at home would be conferring an inestimable boon upon us by ordering his recall. Talent he has to a certain extent, and of a certain order; but alas ! for the application. The Chinese at Canton are not making any effort to rebuild their suburbs or forts, but they have cmstructed some fresh batteries on the left hank of the river below the ruins of the French Folly Fort. At Fatslian they were fortifying the approaches a id blocking up the passage. The murder of the passengers of the steamer Queen seems to have arisen from the extraordinary negligence of the authorities at Hong Kong, after the case of the Thistle, in permitting a passenger vessel to leave Hong Kong with thirty-five Chinese and not more than eight or ten Europeans on board. Mr. Cleverley, an English official, who luckily escaped, gives the following version of the affair:— He was sitting alone on the upper deck, while the other passengers, all the Portuguese, were at dinner, when a Chinese passenger came up an asked him why he did not also go down to dinner, an commended him to do so. Soon after he went towards the cabin, at which time there was not an officer of the vessel anywhere on deck. Twelve or fifteen first-class Chinese passenger@ had come on board at starting, and there were several other natives, over none of whom was there the least supervision, nor was a cautionary guard placed from the time of starting. The loaded muskets were in the cheat on the upper deck, and were all seized by the Chinese, who then descended near the wheelhouse, and began to drive the others aft. They also fired from the above into the cabin, where the captain and passengers were at table, while some remained on the top, and kept every passage forward closed. Captain Wynn and Mr. Cleverley stood near the door, and the latter shot two Chinese. Tho captain was wounded in the head and jumped over• board, followed by Mr. Cleverley, whose thighbone had been shattered by a ball—both of them convinced that further resistance to the Chinese was useless. Three others were also then in the water, the steamer being near the south-western end of Lantao. Atter remaining about two hours in the water, Mr. Cleverley managed to attract the notice of the crew of a lorcha, who lowered a boat and picked him up, and on reaching the lorcha, hoisted the boat up to the davits, from which position lie managed to haul himself over the tatfrail and get .iown into the cabin, suffering great pain from his wound all the time. When he was picked up, he saw nothing of Captain Wynn or of the Chinese who had jumped overboard ; some of them may have reached land. The captain and mate of the lorcha treated him kindly, and he reached Macao about seven p.m. ; and in less than three hours after the rescue was carried up to his own house. The attack was conducted by Mandarin sol Tiers and pirates, who were on board for the purpose. The Queen was under Portuguese colours, and the Governor of Macao had sent a representaticn to Yeh regarding the affair, but the Portuguese passengers had since arrived safely at Macao. After th.s occurrence it was discovered that the guns on board some of the other passenger steamers had been spiked. The China papers complain of the remissness cf the authorities in not taking steps to check these attempts of the Chinese. Two lamentable outbreaks of coolies were re ported. One in the Peruvian ship Carmac, in the China seas, when the vessel was burned by tba coolies, who perished in her, the captain and crew escaping in their boats; and the other in the English ship Gulaare, when ten coolies were shot, several jumped overboard, and fourteen severely wounded before the insurrection was put down. SIR JOHN DAVIS ON CANTON. SIR JOHN DAVIS attended the Geographical Society's weekly meeting on Monday last, and read a very interesting paper upon Canton. Sir JOHN alluded in the first instance to the objects of the present hostilities with the Chinese. The objects were stated to be satisfaction for the past and security for the future, and for their attain ment Sir John Davis was of opinion that the capture and occupation of the provincial city was indispen sable. Canton was only seventy-seven miles from Hong Kong. The city was defended nearest the sea by the Bogue Forts, which had been three times taken by the English ; next by the First bar battery ; next by THE PRESS. the Barrier Forts, which would be impregnable were they not square, by which attacking vessels might approach at an angle without danger; and the last defences were the French Folly on the east of the city, which were destroyed by Sir M. Seymour, and the Dutch Folly, the Red Fort, the Shamir Fort, the Teetotum Fort, and the Bird's Nest battery. Admiral Seymour had occupied the Cow fort, and placed ships all *down the river, within signal distance of each other. The greatest danger was from fire-rafts sent from the shallow creeks, but that danger was not so great as might be thought, as they could be taken in tow by the ships' boats, and run ashore to burn out at leisure. The species of vessel most wanted was gunboats for the creeks, and no doubt when those despatched reached the scene of operations a good account would be given of the enemy. Almost every Chinese vessel in the neighbourhood of Canton could turn a hand to piracy occasionally, and it should be an object of the British expedition to disarm them, and confer thereby a great benefit upon trade. Sir John Davis next alluded to the probable occupation of Chusan; he regretted when he had had to abandon its possession on the payment of the indemnity money. With respect to the objects of the war, Sir John Davis was of opinion that we only wanted the com merce of China. The Chinese should be made to understand that our object was not to obtain territory, which appeared to be their impression, but their trade. Mr. CR.%WFORD said he bad himself never been in China—he had never got further than Cochin China, but he had lived amongst and had had authority over Chinese for twelve or fourteen years of his life. China was no doubt a very extensive and populous country, but it was an error, though a pogular one, to suppose that it was more thickly populated than Great Britain. The emigrants from China wera all adult men, and expected to return home again, though the great majority did not. The number of Chinese settled in the Eastern Islands was about 350,000, and there were large numbers in Cochin China and Siam. They were a very industrious people, and he never experienced any inconvenience from the misconduct of the Chinese. It had been said by one of the newspapers that the Chinese had been conspiring against us everywhere they were settled, but that was not true. In the Eastern Islands, the Chinese trailed on an equality with Eng lish merchants, and some of them were justices of the peace. THE MORMONS AND THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES. THE latest news from the United States indicates the probability of a speedy collision between the federal authorities and the Mormons. Brigham Young some time singe ordered all the records and papers of the Supreme Court of the territory to be destroyed. They were seized and deliberately burned, with a collection of nine hundred volumes of the United States' laws and reports. Young has also cancelled several decisions of the federal judge, and liberated and promoted convicted felons. As Brigham Young, by some extraordinary compromise of the late Administration, is the duly-appointed governor of the territory of Utah, he draws a salary from the Treasury at Washington in that capacity, and therefore burning the library and archives of the Supreme Court of the federal power becomes en overt act of treason and rebellion. The judge of the Supreme Court, Mr. Drummond, unprotected and a " Gentile," having no force behind him to carry out his decisions, unable to get verdicts, and altogether reduced to a cipher, has resigned, and sent in a for mal complaint and description of the state of things generally in the City of the Salt Lake to the Attorney- General of the Union at Washington. The case is, therefore, fairly before the Government. Judge Drummond states that the Mormon chief priest, like the " Old Man of the Mountain," has a sworn band of assassins—the Danites—who commit murder at the command of the Church as a religious duty, inflict bodily mutilations on offending persons as a secondary punishment, seize property, and are gene rally the " executive" officers of the chief. Suspected parties, or those known to be dangerous to the Church, disappear, especially in leaving the territory ; they are supposed to be murdered by the Indians ; really, the judge says, they are disposed of by order of Brigham Young. Mr. I)rummond's predecessor is declared to have been poisoned, and the late secre tary of the territory, Mr. Babbitt, and Captain J. Gunnison, and a party of eight others, Judge Drum mond asserts to have been murdered. The news paper rumours of such things have hitherto been doubted; but they are taking shape and form, and revealing the extraordinary fact that, far in the wil derness, there is a community of 100,000 people governed by an absolute theocracy, with polygamy as the basis of society and assassination a recognised instrument of the religious despotism. The anomalous condition of affairs is, next to the slavery question, the most perplexing domestic sub- SAtTIRDAY, ject now before the Government and people of the United States. Since the day the Mormons made themselves a power in the politics of Illinois, no Administration has possessed the courage to oppose them. Mr. Buthanan and his Cabinet, however, are about to attempt a revolution among the Latter-Dav Saints. It is proposed to send to Utah a military force, officered by persons of character, who have families ; and judges and executive officers of worth and high standing, who have families, are to be ap pointed in place of Brigham Young. These mea sures will, it is believed, afford ample protection t,) the territorial functionaries, and at the same time impart an enlightened and purer tone to the morals of the community. The order recently issued front the War Department, withdrawing General Harney from the conduct of the Indian war in Florida and directing him to repair to Fort Leavenworth, there to await special instructions, may perhaps have something to do with the contemplated coup d'etat of the Administration. THE "GREAT EASTERN." A DETAILED description of this leviathan, now rapidly approaching completion, has appeared this week in the columns of a contemporary. We subjoin the substance of the article. It is difficult, if not entirely impossible, for the mind to appreciate and realise its immense bulk at once. The visitor catches no glimpse of it till he enters Scott Russell's yard, when, though the ship is still at a considerable distance, it seems suddenly to shut him in—a mountain of metal across his path—while all around are scattered ponderous masses of girders, funn els, bulkheads, boilers, and machinery, like the debris of some colossal iron world. So vast is the bulk of the huge ark that from no one point, save at the river's side, can the eye take in its whole proportions, and even then its immensity is so great in comparison with all the notions previously conceived of monster ships that it seems to elude comprehension and weigh upon the mind—a kind of iron nightmare —a phenomenon, hard and unrealisable. It is useless looking at it, so you try by details to bring the mind to an approximation of its size, and wander about the yard in search of familiar objects which may restore to their equilibrium your disordered ideas of proportion. On the ground lies something like a field of red iron with a kind of edge of the same material all round it, and on this you walk until you find it to be the last and smallest of the bulkheads or watertight compartments, and which in the course of a day or so will be lifted bodily 100 feet into the air, and placed in the stern of the ship. Again dis turbed in your fancies, you seek refuge in the con templation of a labyrinth of spokes and stays, a semicircle of iron like the supports of a building— wid-ir across than King William-street, larger than the circus at Astley's, and which instinct soon tells you can be nothing less than part of one of the great ship's paddlewheels. By this time, halt' used to the Brobdignagian world around, the visitor can coolly walk down a couple of long iron tunnels, which in lightness, cheerfulness, and general popula tion, remind him forcibly of the Burlington-arcade. He knows these are two out of five of the ship's chimneys, but is reconciled to the fact and feels that on the whole they are quite what he expected. So with a row of red buildings which at first look like houses and seem the iron suburbs of the vast edifice which towers above them. These are the boilers, though the wildest ideas as to their use seems to pervade the mass of visitors who peep in at the manholes. They are evidently looked upon (especially by the ladies) as mere iron technicalities quite distinct from the ship, though useful in some remote and unexplained degree—probably as models, or as adjuncts to the captain's toilette. Each of these boilers, however, weighs 45 tons, and is in tended to work at a pressure of 251bs. to the square inch. Some have already been tested with the hydraulic pump, with a force of upwards of 60Ibs. per square inch, and proved so solid and faultless in their construction that a pressure of 1001bs. might have been applied with safety. It is very difficult for any amount of description to convey an adequate notion of a vessel which islß,ooo tons larger than the largest ship in the world. It may, perhaps, be gained by the visitor who walks to the edge of the vessel, looks up and down the Thames, surveys the domes of Greenwich Hospital, hasa bird's-eye view on t o th e d ec k s o f l arge W es t- Indiamen, and wonders at the diminutive proportions of the old three-decker used as the Seamen's Hos pital. Or, better still, if he turns his glance from the river and peers cautiously over the edge of the space where the upper and lower saloons for the cabin passengers by the Great Eastern are to be constructed. It seems like looking from a housetop into some ordinary metropolitan square, or the court of an extensive French hotel, at the bottom of which even the noise of the workmen is subdued, for they are