The Press. — London, England, 1856-10-11 00:00:00

96t public never sent any political prisoner to Cayenne. The selection of Cayenne as a political penitentiary belongs entirely and exclusively to the Imperial regime. Such among the insurgents of June as were condemned by the Republican government were sent to Algeria. "Yellow Jack," writing to the Times this week, ob serves:— A white man, exerting himself as little as possible, shel tered from sun and dew and rain by a good house when indoors, and by an umbrella when abroad—riding or driving, but never walking, from place to place—protected in his sleep from mosquitoes and sand-flies by carefully closed curtains—generously dieted and judiciously clad, considers himself fortunate if he can preserve his life, I will not say his health, for few do that at Cayenne for any length of time. What must the condition of the ill-fed, ill-lodged, half-clad, and over-driven white galley-slave be in such a climate? THE ADVANTAGES OF TRAVELLING IN RUSSIA are alluded to this week by a correspondent of Le Nord. He writes : • The labour of leaving Russia is one worthy of Hercules. In order to obtain a passport at St. Petersburg, I have been compelled to undergo the following torture :—l. To be announced three times in the public journals-2. To obtain a certificate of the execution of this formality-3. To carry this certificate to the police magistrate of the quarter, who furnished me with a second certificate-4. To betake myself to the bureau of Prince Dolgorouki, where this certificate was exchanged for a countermark-5. To go to the bureau d'addreates, where another certificate was given me-6. To run to the governor-general, who fur nished me with a passport-7. To exhibit this passport at the steam-packet office before obtaining a passage. I was particularly fortunate, for the accomplishment of the above formalities took up only three day's; many others have been detained three weeks. A SINGULAR OPTICAL ILLUSION is recounted in a letter from Aden, Sept. 15th :—" Yesterday, a little after noon, the signal was made a steamer to the eastward,' and was kept flying the whole afternoon. Towards evening the signalman reported that the st anier was gradually receding, and supposed that she had either broken down or run out of coals. On nig the Political Resident ordered the Hon. Com• pany's steamer, Queen, to get up steam and go to her assistance. The Queen accordingly left about nine o'clock, and met the Oriental at three o'clock this morning steaming along all right. At the time the steamer was signalled she was 150 miles from Aden, and we can only account for this very singular phe nomenon by some optical illusion, such as the mirage THF. MALTESE JURY summoned to try the assassin Giuseppe Meli, for the murder of Captain Graves on the 25th of August last, in the face of the boasts of the prisoner before the magistrates that he intended to assassinate Captain Graves, and of the ee d--nce of fourteen medical witnesses—the highest medic authorities in the island—that the death of Captain Graves ensued from the effects of the wound inflicted by Meli, deliberately found—right against judge and evidence—that the death of Cap tain Graves was owing to "a supervening accidental cause, and not to the nature or consequences alone of such harm as Meli was only guilty of." The prisoner was sentenced to nine years' labour at the public works. AUSTRIA, as a great agricultural country, is thus des gibed by "J. C." in the Times : In reviewing the various productions of Austria, it will he found that she may truly be designated an agricultural country, as three fourths of the population, nearly 30,000,000, are in one way or other engaged in or depen- dent upon agriculture. The annual value of her agricul• tural produce has been estimated at 174,000,0001. sterling ; and if all the good land of the country were as highly cul tivated as England that estimate might be doubled. In examining the map of Europe one cannot but be struck with the fact that the greatest extent of rich corn land is to be found in the least civilised part of it. Beginning at the shores of the Black Sea there are all the fertile pro. vinces of Southern Russia, then Turkey and her rich Danubian provinces, then Hungary, Galicia, and Poland. In England we are accustomed to deal with a soil where nature must be constantly aided by art; and an English farmer will find it difficult to believe that in these out•of the•way countries there are immense plains of the richest corn land, many times larger in extent than in England, where manure is little needed, and, in the more favorable districts, possessing a climate which admits of a double crop in the same year. Hitherto their competition has not been formidable, because they have no roads to con vey a heavy corn traffic, and the river navigation has been obstructed. The expense of carriage over several hundred miles of country without roads is an effectual barrier against foreign demand; and, however fertile or populous a country may be, if there is no foreign demand, no market for the surplus, there will be no exertion made to gain a surplus. In some parts of Hungary at this moment corn is worth twice as much as in other parts, just as it was in England one hundred years ago, before roads, canals, and now railways have equalised prices. But the astute politicians who manage matters in Austria have discovered this defect, and in two years more the fertile provinces bordering the Danube will be tapped by railways in every quarter. The market of the world will then be open to them, and remunerative prices will at once be followed by increased production. THE PRESS. MR. EMERSON ON KANSAS. MR. EmEasoN attended the Kansas Relief Meeting in Cambridge, U.S., Wednesday evening, Sept. 10, and delivered a powerful speech in support of the free•soilers. He said . There is this peculiarity about the case of Kansas, that all the right is on one side. We hear the screams of hunted wives and children answered by the howl of the butchers. The testimony of the telegraphs from St. Louis and the border confirm the worst details. The printed letters of the border ruffians avow the facts When pressed, to look at the cause of the mischief in the Kansas laws the President falters, and declines the discussion ; but his supporters in the Senate, Mr. Cass, Mr. Geyher, Mr. Hunter, speak out, and declare the intolerable atrocity of the code. It is a maxim that all party spirit produces the incapacity to receive natural impressions from facts ; and our recent political history has abundantly borne out the maxim. But these details that have come from Kansas are so horrible that the hostile press have but one word in reply—namely, that it is all exaggeration ; 'tis an Abolition lie. Do the committee of investigation say that the out. rages have been overstated? Does their dismal catalogue of private tragedies show it? Do the private letters? Is it an exaggeration that Mr. Hoppa, of Somerville ; Mr. Hoyt, of Deerfield; Mr. Jennison, of Groton ; Mr. Phillips, of Berkshire, have been murdered? That Mr. Robinson, of Fitchburg, has been imprisoned ; Rev. Mr. Nute, of Springfield, seized, and up to this time we have no tidings of his fate? In these calamities under which they suffer, and the worse which threaten them, the people of Kansas ask for bread, clothes, arms, and men to save them alive, and enable them to stand against these enemies of the human race. They have a right to be helped, for they have helped themselves. This aid must be sent ; and this is not to be doled out as an ordinary charity, but bestowed up to the magnitude of the want, and. as it has been else. where said, " on the scale of a national action." Alluding to the hesitation tof the Government to afford effectual aid to the oppressed, and to put an end to this systematic war and defiance of all law and liberty, he remarked : We stick at the technical difficulties. I think there never was a people so choked and stultified by forms. We adore the forms of law, instead of making them vehicles of wisdom and justice. In this country for the last few years the Government has been the chief obstruction to the common weal. Who doubts that Kansas would have been very well settledif the United States had let it alone? The Government armed and led the ruffians against the poor farmers. Ido not know cny story so gloomy as the politics of this country for the last twenty years, centra lising ever more manifestly round one spring, and that a vast crime, and ever more plainly, until it is notorious that all promotion, power, and policy are dictated from one source—illustrating the fatal effects of a false position to demoralise legislation, and put the best people always at a disadvantage ; one crime always present, always to be varnished over, to find fine names for, and we free States men, as accomplices to the guilt, even in the power of the grand offender. Language has lost its meaning in the universal cant ; Representative Government is really mis representative; union is a conspiracy against the northern States, which the northern States are to have the privilege of paying for; the adding of Cuba and Central America to the slave marts is enlarging the area of freedom. Mani fest destiny, democracy, freedom, fine names for an ugly thing. They call it otto of rose and lavender—l call it bilge water. It is called chivalry and freedom—l call it the taking of all the earnings of a poor man, and the earnings of his little girl and boy, and the earnings of all that come from him, his children's children for ever. But this is union, and this is democracy; and our poor people, led by the nose by these fine words, dance and sing, ring bells, and fire cannon with every new link of the chain which is forged for their limbs by the plotters in the Capitol. What are the results of law and union? There is no union. Can any citizen of Massachusetts travel in honour through Kentucky and Alabama and speak lair mind? Or can any citizen of the Southern country, who happens to think kidnapping a bad thing, say so ? Let Mr. Underwood of Virginia answer. Is it to be supposed that there are no men in Carolina who dissent from the popular sentiment now reigning there? It must happen in the variety of human opinions that there are dissenters. They are silent as the grave. Are there no women in that country—women, who always carry the conscience of a people? Yet we have not heard .ine discordant whisper. In the free States, we have a snivelling support to slavery. The judges give cowardly interpretations to the law in direct opposition to the known foundation of all law, that every immoral statute is void. And here of Kansas, the President says: " Let the complainants go to the courts ; " though he knows that when the poor plundered farmer comes to the court, he finds the ringleader who has robbed him, dismounting from his own horse, and unbuckling his knife to sit as his judge. The President told the Kansas Committee, that the whole difficulty grew from " the factious spirit of the Kansas people, respecting institutions which they need not have concerned themselves about." A very remarkable speech from a democratic President to his fellow•citizens, that they are not to concern themselves with institutions which they alone are to create and determine. The President is a lawyer, and should know the statutes of the land. But I borrow the language of an eminent man, used long since, with far less occasion :—" If that be law, let the plougshare be run under the foundations of the Capitol ; and if that be government, extirpation is the only cure." I am glad to see that the terror at disunion and anarchy is disappearing. Massachusetts, in its heroic day, had no Government—was an anarchy. Every man stood on his own feet, was his own governor, and there was no breach of peace from Cape Cod to Mount Homo. California , a few years ago, SATURDAY, by the testimony of all people at that time in the country, had the best Government that ever existed. Pans of gold lay drying outside of every 1131111's tent, in perfect secusityi, The land was measured into little strips of a few feet wide, all side by side. A bit of ground that your hand, could cover was worth one or two hundred dollars, on the edge of your strip; and there was no dispute. Every man, throughout the country was armed with knife and. revolver, and it was known that instant justice would be irdminist,red to each offence, and perfect peace reigned. Fey the Saxon man, when he is well awake, is not a pirate., lout a citizen, all made of hooks and eyes, and links himself naturally to his brothers, as bees hook themselves to one another, and, to their queen, in a loyal swarm. He spoke, too, of the future : But the hour is coming when the strongest will not be strong enough. A harder task will the new rm.-oblation of the nineteenth century be than was the revelation of the eighteenth century. I think the American Revolution bought its glory cheap. If the problem was new, it was simple. If there were few people, they were united, and the enemy 3,000 miles off. But now, vast property, gigantic interests,, family connections, webs of party, cover the land with a, network that immensely multiplies the dangers of war., Fellow citizens, in these times, full of the fate of the ke public, I think the towns should hold town meetings, and; resolve themselves into committees of safety, go intu.per. manent sessions, adjourning from week to week; irons month to month. I wish we could send the sefteantid arms to stop every American who is about to. leave the country. Send home every one who is abroad, lest ho should find no country to return to. Come home and stay at home, while there is a country to save. When it is lost it will be time enough then for any who are luckless enough, to remain alive, to gather up their clothes and depart. to, some land where freedom exists. HINCKFORD CONSERVATIVE. ASSOCIATION. THE annual meeting of this association took place at Castle Headingham, Essex, on Monday evening. The meeting this year derives some additional in.. terest from the fact that, Sir John Tyrell having , announced his intention to resign his seat in Parlia ment, the chair was taken by Mr. Du Cane, the new candidate for the representation of the northern division of Essex. Among the other gentlemen present were Major.• Beresford, M.P., Lord Hadleigh, Mr. A. Hamilton, Mr. S. Onley, Colonel Bryce, Mr. Majendie, and. other gentlemen well known in the county by their advocacy of the Conservative interest. On the removal of the cloth after the usual loyal toasts, The CHAIRMAN, in proposing " the health et the Bishop and clergy of the diocese," alludtd i to the question of the maintenance or abolition et Church rates, and frankly and honestly stated that he would never be a party to the abolition of those rates unless a full and satisfactory equivalent were offered, in exchange, which he did not think would be t%* case. At the same time he was ready to admit that there were inequalities in the mode in whidt, the• rate in question was levied, and which ha would, lend a helping hand to remedy. Mr. 1)u CANE then proceeded amid loud cheers to give the toast of the evening, " Prosperity to the , Hinckford Association," and in the course of his. speech alluded to the position of her Majesty's Go. vt.,rnment He thought they. would agree with him that in thepro• sent Prime Minister they had embodied the veritalik sonification of Mr. Charles Dickens' clever fiction, and in the noble lord they beheld the thief of the Cireumlocu?. tion.oftlee, who had during the last six months contrived to keep the Legislature of the country in the arduous and somewhat complicated effort of "How Not to Ito it." Be thought that the members of the Government, and tie active snprorters of the able Premier, who were just now in the autumnal season engaged in " starring it " among their constituencies, when called upon to give sn accost' t of what they had done during the session, would be placed very Inuch in the position of Canning's needy knife grinder, and have to say, " Story, Lord bless you, 1 have none to tell, sir." Far be it from him to enumerate the failures of the Government during the past session ; their name was legion. The socialist attempts of the right hoe_ gentleman at the head of the Board of Trade to deans?) , the rights and immunities of corporations, the efforts ttaai er to get rid of the Christian character of the Legislature, the endeavours of the Government to deal inquisitorially and unjustly with the private affairs of agriculturists ff the kingdom, had all, with two solitary exceptions, been rendered futile. Like the kings of Banquo's shadowy line, they had shown themselves to our eyes to the grief off our hearts; they had come like shadows, andlike shadows , they had departed. Yet, in the face of those defeats. an in the face of a foreign policy which ba, gone far to. in* volve us in hostilities with our brethren of the Western hemisphere, the journal that is favoured with the personal confidence of the Prime Minister and with Cabinet secret , . boldly stood up and invited them to support Lord Pbl• merston as the real and only Conservative Minister of ti e day. They would surely agree with him in the truth of the remark which fell from Mr. Disraeli at the close of the session, that, if such were the case, it would be•more for • the interest of the country that a Conservative policy: should be carried into effect by Conservative statesmen. He believed that the time was not far distant whew they would be called upon to lend a hand in re