The Express.
London, England, 1858-07-13 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, TUESDAY EVENING, JULY 13, 1858.

now there is something worse against her. It is in'
Virginia that we find a perversion of law to the I
purposes of oppression which exceed' in cruelty ally- I
thing that Naples, or Spielburg, or Siberia can shoW.,
It is not from hearsay that we give this stagy. it
is not from a version by enemies or by statures,
nor through any medium of political opposition, er
State jealousy, or sectional hatred, that we derive
sad present the facts. The Petersburg Espress, the
buil paper from which we take the statement, is
la full sympathy with the perpetrators of the op-
pression. We take the persecutors' own account of
the transaction ; and at present we have no other.
Comments in abundance will no doubt arrive from
many States which will desire to repudiate all impo -
tation of sympathy with such a transaction; bu:, at
this moment we have only the primary statement,
supplied as local news from the spot.
Oa Monday, June 7, a steam-tug started dews the
river from Petersburg, which is Z", miles meth of
Richmond, the capital, and nearl7 100 =Bee above
Norfolk, the chief commercial port of Virginia. In
the evening, the steam-tag reappeared, towing the
schooner Keziah, Captain WILLIAM B. BAYLIS, el
Brandywine, Delaware. The Keziah was laden with
1,200 bushels of wheat, and her destination was
Newport, Delaware. Suspicion having arisen on the
Sunday that five misting slaves were on board the
Yezish, measures were taken by the owners of the
nevem, and by the police, to have the schooner
stopped at Norfolk, if she could not be overhauled
in the river. She was boarded within 30 miles of
Petersburg ; a negro woman, the accusers tell us,
was found drained in men's clothes and hidden
away under the cabin floor. On further search,
the four missing men were found stowed
among the wheat sacks in the hold. The negroes,
the captain, and the mate were all secured and
brought back, and "the gratifying intelligence"
that they were coming, and would enter the town
at 6 p.m., was forwarded to the authorities.
The wharves were thronged with impassioned
citizens, crying out for " tar and feathers, hanging,
" docking, lashing, burning, and every conceivable
" method of retributive justice recognised in the
" code of the celebrated Judge Lviscn." The pri-
soners were saved with extreme difficulty, and espe-
cially the mate, who, according to the men of
Petersburg themselves, was found to be apparently
ignorant of the whole transaction. He was more
than ones wrenched from the grasp of the police,
and " lunges made for his throat," blows inflicted
upon him, and eo on. But all reached the gaol
without serious injury. We have only the testi-
mony of the slavisholders interested in the cams.
They aver that the negroes were tempted away by
the captain, BAYLIS. One, however, it came out
afterwards, wanted to join his wife (who had before
escaped) in New York ; another was on his way to
Canada, where souse refugee friends had obtained a
situation for:hins as waiter at an hotel in Toronto.
A third had secretly amassed by " pig-raising"
600 dollars in the course of seven-and-twenty
years' industry at over hours. Of the other man's
ease no particulars are given. The woman was said
to be charged nothing for her passage, " having
" agreed with the captain that she would live with
" him on his arrival at home" (Delaware being still
a slave State); " but in what capacity," says the re-
porter, "we were unable to learn." This is, on the
face of it, an improbable story ; and the oases of
three out of the four men seem scarcely compatible
with the charge against BAYLIS that he put it into
the heads of these people to abscond, for the mks of
the 50 dollars or less which each was to have paid
for the passage. The supposition that any man
would, for inch a sum of money, brave the laws of
the slave States, in the face of much recent ex-
perience of their severity, would be inconceivable,
if the facts of the previous intention of three of the
negroos to escape, and of their correspondence with
friends at a distance, had not come out to corro-
borate the improbability. BAYLIS'S own declaration
is that he was taken in by a man in the town, name
unknown, who applied to him for a passage to the
Jerseys for the five, and that he had no idea that
they wee slaves. He was " innocent of any evil
" Intent." He had not made speed, having run
aground on the Saturday evening, and again on
Sunday, and taken things easy, making a fair start
only on Monday morning.
Large sums of money were found on board,
Without any appearance of inquiry as to whom the
money belonged, it was " confiscated to the State,"
together with the vessel, valued at 800 dollars. The
examination of the captain and mate did not take
place on the 9th, "in consequence of the great ex-
" citement in the public mind." The mate had not
been tried when the report was published. On the
10th BAYLIS was tried in the Circuit Court, before
Judge Num, found guilty, and sentenced—to forty
years in the penitentiary'—tight years for each
negro.

Forty years in the penitentiary ! In the States
which have abolished capital punishment the ex-
treme term of imprisonment for wilful murder is
twelve yean; and here are forty years for giving a
peonage to a party of fugitive slaves ! There have
been eases enough of imprisonment of coasting-
captains for the same offence, within a few years, to
show that life will not sustain such a sentence as
awaits any man whose vessel is used as a harbours,*
for fugitives, whether they come with or without his
knowledge. One after another has been carried out
to his grave, after a longer or shorter pining. What
else eau BAYLIS, or his wretched wife, and his chil-
dren thus strangely orphaned, expect in his can?
Forty years !

Yet we ars disposed to think that nobody else be
heves the sentence will be executed, if, contrary to
expectation, the man should live under such a
weight of penalty. Besides the instinct of mama
sense that such laws cannot go on to be executed
for forty years in a republic which is only eighty
years old at this hour, there are more definite reasons
for hope that the victim may be released ere very
long. It is under slave-holders' law that he suffers;
and the slaveholders are (as the world should ever
remember) only 350,000 in a population of 27 mil-
lions. They are even no more than three-tenths of
the white population of their own States. No sane
man can believe that so insignificant a mino-
rity will sustain laws and punishments like this,
when once the majority, not only of the na-
tion but of their immediate neighbours, shall
have become sensible of the disgrace in the
eyes of the world of such unparalleled inhumanity.
Nobody supposes that the crisis can be deferred
forty years; and whenever it happens, the
prises doors will be thrown open to such victims of
the slave system as Captain BAYLIS. We call
him simply a victim, for, by his own account,
he is no martyr. He is the victim of laws for the
protection of an untenable kind of property—of laws
which inflict upon him more than three times the
punishment for giving a passage in his venal to
fugitive slaves that he would Dave incurred in a
neighbouring State for the foulest of murders.
Wherever Americans resemble, on the 4th of
July, or any other day, it must rarely be
felt as a national disgrace and misfortune
that any of their group of republics should be is
this age resorting to severities of punishment for a
conventional *Sues for which the meet retrograde

State in Europe would be despised and reprobated.
Surely the rut republican majority will separate
themselves from the humiliation.
eft Court.

OSBORNE, JOLT 12.
Yesterday morning, her Majesty, the Prince
Consort, Prince Alhed, Priam' Alike, and Princess Helena,
attended by dm tailks end gentlemen in waiting, were pre-
sent at Divine terries at Whiptinnam Chureh.
no Kn. 0. Ptelltero *termed the service.
Td Priam Consort, attended by Captain the Hon. Dudley
do Ike, armed neer to Gosport this morning, to ass the
Ir.eke and buildings constructing there.

• tleoatattea from Aberdeen had en interview with the
Earl of Derby, yesterday, at his official residence in Down-
ing-street, the Universities (Boothutd) Bill The
deputation of Colonel By_ken,_ll. ,P. Lord John
Hay, M.P., Mr. Crum Ewing, M.P General Arbuthnot,
M.P., Lord Haddo, M.P., Mr. Gnat Ds LP. Major
Gorden Doff, M.P., Mr. Detail* LP., Lord nd,
M.P., the Lord Provost of Aberdeen, Dr. Obnalie,gallu. N.
Farquhar, and Mr. Angus, town clerk.
lord John Manners and Mr. Thwaites, Chairman of the
Metropolitan Board of Works, trannoted Dulness with the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, at his official residence in
Dowabaretrest.
.. _

A iipataiitia *ma the parishes of Darkkag and Great
Mord, Baas., tataistias of ths lies. and Rev. H. W.
Bartle, Vicar of Great Ilford ; Mr. Jolla Davis sad Mr.
Jetta 8. Thoespeoa, from liked; Dr. Men/ay Mr. John P.
PilaSOCk sad Kr. Christi= Moats' Scatter, from Barking ;
with Mr. Grimm, Veiny Clerk, introduced by Mr. T. W.
Brareaton, M.P., bad an interview with Lord John IL users,
First Commissionar of Public Works, yestaiday, at the
Office of Works, Whitehall-place.
The Turkish ambassador transited balsam yesterday at
the-officei
fro=es were received yesterday at the Colontal-office
overnora of New South Wales, Victoria, South
Australia, Taammuata, the North American Provinces, Van-
couver'. Island, and New Zealand.

His Excellency the Hanoverian Minister has left
the residence of the legation in Orcevenor-plece, for
Carlsbad.

Maria Marchionese of Aileebtuy has taken a resi-
dent.* ,re Hertford-street, Hertel'', for a term dram
The Countess of Sefton and Lady Cecilia Moly-
ass; and the Earl of Sefton, have left town for Croxteth
Hall, where they intend to receive company during the pre-
sent week.

The Counter of Craven and the Ladies Elizabeth
and Evelyn Craven Lett town yesterday, on a visit to the
Counties of Belton at Crrsteth Hall. The noble earl leaves
town today, on a visit to his mother the Dowager Coasters
of Craven, at Hampstead Marshall.

The Earl of lialteith returned to Montague Hours
yesterday, Gam a males is his yacht off the Isle of Wight.
Lord John float has left the Clarendon Hotel for
Kirkt*uk, Kelso, N.B.

The Right Hon. Sidney Herbert, M.P., and Mn.
Herbert left town yesterday for a tour in Getaway for stew
menthe.

The General Commanding-in-Chief will hold a
levee at one o'clock on Friday next.
The churchwardens of St. Barnabas intimate that
they have been informed—though the Mittel annowscement
hes not yet been promulgated—that the Archbishop of Canter-
bury has ccafirmed the decision of the Bishop of London se
to the revocation of the licence of the Rev. Alfred Poole.

It is said that all proceedings in the action
brought by Mr. Hughes eg•iast Lady Diaorben bare been
stayed, In erase to give bar ledyship La opportunity of sp-
pfyteg to the Court of Queen's Batch la November neat for
• new trial.

'ISITEST INTELLIGENCE.

THE MASSACRE AT JEDDAH.

The Daggs of this day observes on the late mas-
sacre at Jeddah :—" It is impossible to avoid con-
necting these deplorable events with the attempted
smassination of the English consul at Belgrade, and
there can been dembt that the simultaneous agitation of
most of the Christian provinces of Turkey has inspired
Mumnlmans with an increased hatred of Christians.
This furious sentiment makes them forget that the
European Powers will not see their people massacred
with impunity, but that such acts will bring down
a severe chastisement. The repression of these out-
rages would be easy and immediate if they occurred
in a country completely barbarous, and oat of the pale
of European law. Bat how is it to be done in the face
of Turkey, an allied power, which holds its rank in
Europe, which sits In our congress, which shows as
much irritation as ourselves at them crimes, which
claims the exclusive right of punishing them, and
which undertakes to do so ? We an evidently
but yield to these promisee, and hold the Porte it-
self responsible for the safety, on its own territory,
of the lives of our countrymen. And yet how can
we disguise the fact that with the beet will in
the world, Turkey, which has already more busi-
ness on its hands than she can sustain, is not
in a condition to keep up an effective police in every
part of its empire ? It is much more engaged in
defending itself against its Christian subjects than
in protecting foreigners. All its strength scarcely
suffices to assure its own existence, and very little
remains for securing respect to foreigners who live
under its laws. If this is the case at even the gates
of Constantinople, for much stronger reasons is the
Ottoman government stricken with powerlessness
in the distant parts of its empire, and especially in
Arabia, which nominally recognises its sovereignty.
It is very necessary, however, that means be found
to obtain of Turkey, for the foreigners who inhabit
it, the relative security which they enjoy in Mo-
rocco, in the Regency of Tunis, and many other
ginger places."

THIi.CAMhTTA, CHINA, AND

MAURITIUS MAILS.
We have been favoured by the Peninsular and
Oriental Company with the following despatch,
received by them from Marseilles this (Tuesday)
morning :
" The steam ship Vectis, with the Calcutta,
China, and Mauritius mails, arrived at Marseilles at
8 this morning.
" The mails leave for London at 10 a.m.
" The ship will be in quarantine until Thursday.

THE UNITED STATES.

(By ILICTILIC TZLZOZAPIL)

(MOE OUR OWN CORIUMSPONDIXT.)
SOUTHAMPTON, TUESDAY.
The Vanderbilt hu arrived; she left New York
on the 3rd inst.

The Indian Empire arrived at Halifax on the lot
inst. from Galway.
A large fire had done mach damage at Buffalo.
The New York markets were dulL