The Northern Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-05-14 00:00:00

SPAIN.

MADRID, MAY 8,

An unpleasant occurrence at Malaga has given
rise to an exchange of notes between Lord Howden
and the Spanish Minister for Foreign Affairs. On
the 19th of April last'fi.ve petty officers, belonging
to Her Bri'annie Majesty's war steamer Curlew,
were on shore on leave in Malaga. They bad taken,
according to their own admission, two or three
glasses of wine a-piece, and some, or all of them,
may possibly have been slightly intoxicated, but
certainly not what is usually called disgracefully
drunk While passing through a street of Malaga
two of them began skylarking, one seizing the
other's Guernsey frock behind, and drawing it over
his companion's head. A guardia civil, or gendarme,
who witnessed this, appears to have thought that
they were quarrelling, and that it was incumbent
upon him to interfere, although what was
going on was nothing - more than the horse-
play habitual to Jack ashore, and which '
is daily witnessed and nowise heeded in our
.English seaport towns•. The gendarme's mode of
interference was of the roughest;, without word or
warning he struck a sailor two blows on the back of
the neck with the barrel of his musket. He was
about to strike a third time more violently, when
another sailor stepped forward to ward off the How
from his messmate. The gendarme pressed
.onward, and it is presumable they closed, for the
sailor was thrown upon his back, and his opponent
Ell upon him, Two Spanish soldiers came up to
assist their countryman, and one of them, an
artilleryman, beat the sailor with the flat of
of his short heavy sword. To cut the story
short, three of the sailors were arrested (without
resistance, and without having struck a blow);
the other two, who were walking on in front,
and had taken no part in the scuffle, were
pursued, , and also unresistingly made prisoners.
The square-ended clasp knives which they wore,
sailor fashion, suspended by strings to their necks
were cut off and taken from them. This was on
Saturday. They were' conveyed to the lock-up,

and kept there until Monday afternoon, when they
were transferred to the Common gaol, and herded
with robbers and murderws, From the time at
their arrest, until the Tuesday morning, no food
was given to them. By that time the English
Consul; Mr. Mark, was informed of their impri.
sentnent, and supplied them with necessaries
Foreigners enjoying the fuero aiiiitar in this coun-
try, the Captain-;General, as .the chief military
authority, took over the case and referred it to thf.
tribunal of War and Marine.
The British Minister at Madrid, informed of
these facts by the Consul at 'Malaga, placed them.'
in their true light before Senor Pidel, represent:
ing to him that the offence of the sailors, who had
in no way aggressed or resisted the authorities, was
of a venial nature; that it hod already been punished-
by forty.eight hours' privation of food, and a fort-
night's itnprisonrnent, and he trusted the, ina.tter
,would not .be proceeded .with, but that the nien
would be rcstoted . to .their captain, to re-
ceive such, further' punishment as they, might
be : considered to deserve. Signor Vidal ye-
plied that a communication .hid beentarnade to
-the Captain. General. of Malaga, :directing him to
treat the matter with the indulgence due to the
:circumstances of the case and to the subjects of a
friendly and allied Power. .Other motes have passed,
but all much in the same sense ; Lord Howden
insisting; more and mote forcibly, on- the fadts of
the case and the propriety of releasing the prisoners,
and the Spanish ,Minister doing little :more than
repeat in substance his first note, with assurances_
that the matter should be inquired info.
The expeditive forms of :.English criminal law
and police courts would render it inipossibie for
a trivial affair of this kind, occurring in England,
to give rise to diplomatic communications. Had
five Spanish sailors beea•brought upfataPiynidlith
or the Thames Polietm3ourt, on such a paltry charge
as this, they would assuredly have been released
at onee,.or at most, have been sent on board the
markLaf war to which -they belonged.; with a com
plaint to their ciptain. Unfortunately, in this
country things are very differently conducted.
Here are these five poor fellows, for an offence
.which can hardly be called one, shut up since, the
19th of last month in a Spanish gaol. It is traces.'
sary to know what a Spanish gaol is to appreciate
the extent of this unmerited punishment. But the
worst part of the case is that-if the matter be left
for the decision of the Tribunal of War and Ma-
rine, to which -it has been referred, the men may,
and probably will, be -in prison for weeks or
months longer; for although the. Spanish mill

tart' tribunals are more expeditious- than their
civil ones, their pace is terribly slow, and their action
impeded by endless. forms. The just and
common sense course to adopt is, as it is to be
hoped the Spanish Government will see; to.send the
mett at once on board their ship, sending with
them a statement of the charges against them:
Empty farina should not be allowed to impede the •
decisiofi in' a ease so clear as this, for, if they are,
justice is sacrificed to them. The men are not ac-
cused of having assaulted or resisted the authorities
they did not strike a single blow, and the utmost
alleged against then is, that they were tipSey and
squabbling ; although what the grave Castilian
gendarme took for squabbling was in fact mere
play. It would not be surprising if an 'attempt
were made to represent them as armed with knives-
and perhaps as disposed to use them; It is
pretty well known how unfitted an English Bailor's.
knife is for a weapon of offence, and hew foreign it
is to his character to use it as such. But in
Malaga, notorious in Spain and elsewhere ler its
disreputable and ettl.qtroat population, a scuffle
can hardly be imagined without a stab. It is only
about a year and a half ago that an English sailor,
named Hutting, was cruelly , stabbed and killed
in open day in the streets of Malaga, by a
Spaniard, whom he had never seen or spoken
to. The murderer had httd a qUirrel
with some`Arnerican seamen, and had vowed
that he would stab the first Bnglishinan
he met—he not knowing the distinction between
English and Americans: He met poor Hutting
and killed him. on the spot, in presence of a number
oC persons, including many National Guards, who
favoured his escape. The representations of the
British Minister at Madrid were long fruitless ; it is
said that the assassin himself was a National Guard,
and at any rate E.spartero's Government was too
feeble and supine to risk offending, the turbulent
Maiaguenos. A last the man was arrested, and is
now in prison, but it appears impossible to get him
punished as he deserves, although repeated
appications have been made to the Spanish
Government, anti it is far from improbable that,
one of these days, it will, be found that he has
escaped, or, in other words, that he has been re-
leased.

On learning the imprisonment of his mm, the
captain of the Curlew made verbal representations
to the Captain General, but without effect. A d
or two afterwards an incident oecured which
caused much excitement in Malaga. Three En;
lish men-of-war put in there, in consequence
of a severe gale. With that peculiar illogicalness
which is a characteristic of the Spanish mind-by
nature suspicious and susceptible—the people of
Malaga jumped to the conclusion that these ships
had come in consequence of the affair of the
Curlew's sailors. It would still, probably, be im
possible to persuade them that the idea was simply
absurd, and. thitt no species of submarine telegraph
has as yet been devised by which the vessels
could have been informed, while sailing over
the Mediterranean, of what had occurred at

Malaga. The arrival was a pure coincidence. The

captainswent, as is customary, to pay their respects
to the Captain-General, and, having learnt what had

happened, made suitable and strong representa
tions to him ; but these had no greater effect than
those of the captain of the Carlew. Shortly after-
.

wards the threw vessels left,

The appointment of General Lemery to the mili
tart' command of New Castile seems to meet with
the general approbation of the Madril press and
public. Several papers, of various politics, comment
upon it approvingly. The Diario Espanol congratu-
lates the Government on the selection, and adds the
following remarks :
"If, in the choice of persons for the disehlrge of
public duties, the Cabinet presided over by the
Duke of Valencia had had the same tact that it has
shown in this appointment, which has been per-
fectly well received by men of all opinions, its situ-
ation would be different, and it would now find itself
less isolated. If General Narvaez persised in this
path, and gave to his policy the character implied
by this nomination, it would not be long before ho
would collect around him the most important
persons that have alternated in the great events of
our modern political hlstory."
The Orbe reealls in terms of high praise the past
services of General Lemery, anit the fact that he
has always been of Progresista opinions, and a
faithful and consistent friend of Espaitero.
There have been reports this last day or two of
the intended removal of General Jose Concha from
the command of Cuba, but they obtained little
credit, as his term of service expires in October,
until when it was thought he would be allowed to
remain. Information, however, has just reached me,
from a highly trustworthy source, that his recall
has been decided in a Council of Ministers and
that he is to be replaced by General Lersundi, at
present Minister of Marine. The name of the
person who is to replace Lersundi is a matter of
conjecture, but it will very probably be offered to
Don Luis Gonzales Bravo. It would not be sur-
prising if there were one or two other changes in
the Cabinet; at least, it is generally thought that
General Figueras will not long remain at the War
• Department, a post he fills but very poorly. I
am not yet acquainted with all the reasons for
Concha's recall, but the recent scandalous ex-
tension of the slave trade in Cuba is believed to
be one of them. On this subject, as I before
informed you, Lord Howden has lately had
occasion to address frequent complaints to the
Spanish Government. General Concha has of
course, followed the example of most of his pre-
decessors, taken a per-eentage on the profits of the
illegal and infamous traffic. He is said to have
made the moderate sum of 1,000,000 of dollars, on
which, even if he receive no other appointment,
he will be able to exist tolerably on his return to
Europe.