The Press.
London, England, 1856-11-08 00:00:00

1076

him, and an hour or so afterwards saw them all
safely in Newburgh. Next day M'Knight (the
officer) and Charpentier crossed the river in a row-
boat, Charpentier still handcuffed. The same night
he was handed over to the authorities at New York,
and safely lodged in the city gaol.
Another transaction in the same case presents
some mysterious features. M. Emmanuel Tis.
sandier, of the Northern Railroad Company of
France, appeared before one of the New York judges
the day after Charpentier's capture, and prayed for a
warrant to search a certain house in New York.
M. Tissandier's suspicions were aroused, it is said,
by the following anonym ;us communication, sent
to one of the parties interested :
In the second storey of tenementliouse No. 197, West
Sixteenth-street, front room, lives Frederick Couvet, house
carpenter. In the sub cellar of said house, where fuel is
kept, and which is divided into wood rooms to accommo-
date four or five families who live there, in the woodhouse
apportioned to said Couvet there have recently been re-
ceived two tons of coal. The coal must be removed.
U oiler the coal is three inches of sawdust or earth. Be•
tween the coal and paving of the cellar, under the flagging
of brick or stone, whatever the cellar is paved with, is a
small wooden box, of about a foot square, inclosing a tin
box, which is soldered, containing the valuables.
The officers, on searching the house, found the box
precisely as stated in the above, much to the asto-
nishment of the people living in the house, who did
not dream that so rich a treasure was lying concealed
on their premises. It was very heavy—suggesting
gold coin and valuables : but they took it to the
police court unopened, where it was handed over in
the same condition to the agent of Mr. Belmont.

CONFESSIONS OF A FILLIBUSTER.
(From El Nicaraguense, Sept. 20th.)
AT five o'clock on the evening of Friday, the 10th
inst., Second Lieutenant Jennings Estelle suffered
the extreme penalty of the law by being shot on the
Plaza for the murder of Second Lieutenant Charles
Gordon, in the guardhouse in the city of Granada,
while acting as officer of the guard.
Estelle had been previously arrested for shooting
Thomas Edwards, and was, when he committed the
unfortunate act for which he suffered death, a pri•
goner confined to his quarters. He had a fair and
impartial trial, and the gentlemen who sat in judg-
ment upon him gave him every opportunity to estab-
lish a defence, but in this he utterly failed. The
deed was committed without any provocation or
without any aggravating circumstance. He was
sentenced to be hung, but the Commander-in-Chief
caused it to be so far mitigated as to allow him to be
shot.
There was a large concourse gathered to witness
the execution. Estelle walked with a firm step by
the side of a rev. father of the Church, who prayed
with him and for him from the guardhouse to the
place of execution.
When he arrived at the spot where he was to
breathe his last, he requested that his hands might
be untied, as he wished to address the crowd. This
request being granted, he spoke in a firm, unfaltering
voice. In his speech he asked forgiveness of the
officers and soldiers of the Nicaraguan army. Voices
responded from the crowd, " God forgive you!"
While in prison he wrote the following address,
which he requested to have publish"d

Granada, Sept. 15, 1858.
These a e the dying declarations of Jennings Estelle :
I was born in Marshall, Tennessee, in the year 1833,
and was raised from my infancy in Hinds County, Missis-
sippi. I started to California in 1852. On the road i had
a " difficulty " with a man of the name of Howard, and
shot him. I afterwards shot a loan of the name of Hays,
bit the wound did not Iv-ippon to prove fatal. In the
s true year I had a " difficulty" with Charles Robinson,
•id stabbed him in three places. My last two " difficul-
ties" while in California occurred at the State prison,
where I had been employed for the last two years. After
getting in the last scrape, I came to Nicaragua and sht,t,
Thomas Edwards. I afterwards shot Charles Gordon.
I must say that in all my " difficulties" I was not once in
my right mind. Twice I had been forgiven, and hope to
he forgiven for them all. I think there is a God in heaven
that will and can forgive, and He knows, and I know, that
it was not I that killed Charles Gordon. It was whisky
and my crazy mind that did it. I say that I was not in
my right mind when I did the deed, and God knows it.
For4t‘e me, officers and soldiers, and I can die a happy
man.

THE LATE LORD SCARBOROUGH has, it appears,
constituted his cousin and successor to the title,
Richard George Lumley, Esq. of Tickhill Castle, his
hi ir, and the new earl will have the estate at Sand-
heck, the Lumley property in Lincolnshire, and the
fan ily castle and estates in Durham.
THE SOLICITORS TO EARL TALBOT have addressed
a circular to the tenantry of the Shrewsbury estates,
calling upon them to pay all rents which have ac.
crued since the death of the Earl of Shrewsbury, or
which were current at his death, to the solicitors of
Earl Talbot, and offering on the part of the earl and
)u son, Lord Ingestre, a full indemnity against

THE PRESS.

eDrrtspouDtatt.

THE "MONITEUR" AND THE ENGLISH
PRESS.
TO THE EDITOR OF "THE PRESS."

Sir,—Dispassionate and thinking men must ap-
prove, in the main, of your remarks on the Moni-
teur's recent protest against the intemperate language
of a part of the English press. "It is excellent to
have a giant's strength ; but it is tyrannous to use it
like a giant." Irresponsibility to foreign nations
would, in a generous mind, insure the exercise of
discreet moderation ; but alas ! the anonymous
writer in Printing-house-square is above the influ-
ence of such sentiments ; and so long as this coun-
try submits to the dictation of every " anonymous"
and irresponsible writer who happens to be able to
wield his pen glibly, so long must it be content to
bear the cost of his mischievous productions, to
which it gives full sanction by its voluntary and un-
complaining support. For many years I, for one,
have withdrawn mine ; and T feel persuaded, that if
all those who dislike its want of principle, and its
reckless courses on so many subjects of highest
importance, were to cease to give it countenance, that
dangerous organ would at last have to own some
degree of responsibility to those by whom it lives,
but whom it now wantonly misrepresents.—Yours,
faithfully,
Nov. 0. T. G.

ELECTORAL INEQUALITIES.
[Third Letter.]
Sir,—The injustice on the aggregate to the coun-
ties is, that they have only half so many members
in proportion to their constituencies as the towns.
These constituencies consist of those parties whom
the Reformers said were entitled to the franchise and
capable of its due exercise; the injustice is therefore
clear on their own principles. But the injustice in
the aggregate, amounting though it does to the
practical disfranchisement of one class for the benefit
of another, is as nothing to the injustice when we
come to a selection of particular instances.
The following is a list of twenty-four towns with
their constituencies. Each of these towns returns
two members :

*Andover, coustituency 227 Leominster, constitueneysl2
Bodmin 382 Ludlow 427
lindport 654 Lymington 232
Chippenham 933 Peterborough 640
Cirencester 431 Poole 532
Cockermouth 300 Richmond 340
Devizes 903 Stamford 541
Dorchester 438 Tamworth 409
Evesham 991 Tewkesbury 407
Hertford 535 Tiverton 480
Huntingdon 390 Totness 930
Knaresborough 252 Wycombe 361
The sum of these twenty-four constituencies is
10,223, and the number (4 members they return
is fifty. Now, the constituency of the West
Riding is 37,213, returning two members, so that
these towns taken in cumulo return in proportion to
their constituencies between ninety and a hundred
times as many members as the West Riding.
Now, we ask any Whig who believes in the possi-
bility of any other principle of legklation than
pitch and toss, to say whether in the reformed
system (which we repeat has no right to fall back on
prescription as a defence for its anomalies), such a
state of things can be continued without stultifying
the whole Whig party, their ancestors and succet,sors,
from the days of Algernon Sydney, or, if you will,
from the days of the first Whig, down to the epoch
of history described by Mr. Macaulay's New
Zealander.
_. . .

I am quite aware that inequalities nearly as mon-
strous exist in the representation of the towns, inter
ae. Ido not pretend to tell why Manchester should
return only two members, when Honiton—which for
our readers' information we may tell them is a town
somewhere in England—returns as many ; or why
Caine, with a population of 5,000, should return
one member equally with Dundee, whose population
is 80,000. And were a free and independent elector
of Manchester or Dundee to meet a tree and inde-
pendent elector of Honiton or Caine, I would hold
the former quite justified in knocking the latter
down as one who robbed him of his birthright. But
this is injustice between the members of the same
class : what I complain of is the injustice done by
one class to another class—the one is an absurdity,
an anomaly ; the other is a political disfranchisement
of more than one half of the nation. It is a modified
system of serfhood; a notable step backwards iu
that progress of civilisation which lies hitherto
tended to make all citizens equal in the eye of
the law.

But the extent of the injustice done to the agri•
cultural population is not brought out to its full ex-
tent, either by the aggregate result we have deduced
or the particular instances we have c►ted. The Re-
formers invented another ingenious contrivance for