The Northern Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-01-27 00:00:00

SPAIN.

Madrid letters of the 20th inst. announce that
General Oribe was arrested in that city on the
18th. It is said his arrest is not connected with
any political cause. Previous to his being lodged
in the military prison he obtained leave from the
officer who was appointed to accompany him that
he might be brought to the house of Marshal
Narvaez, with whom he wished to have an
interview.

THE:TAXES UPON KNOWLEDGE.—We understand that
the annual meeting of the Society far the Repeal cf the
Tara upon Knowledge will he held in St. Martin's gall
in the course of the ensuing month. Sir J.)seph Paxton
we believe, hes consented to preside.
Die. levneosToei.—The weekly journal of the Scottish
Temperance Movement says :—" It may not be generally
known to cur readers that this dig inguished African mis-
sionary and traveller is a total abstainer. In a notice of
the presentation to him of the freedom of the town of thrall
ton, the local Advertiser states that ' the magistrates and
council and other gentlemen partook of cake and wine (Dr.
Livingston, who is a total abstainer, of course,) exceeted."
LEGAL FALSEHOODS.—There is one amendment of the
law which needs not wait for codification, consolidation,
or change of principle. It is simply to purge our statute
book and practice of direct falsehood. There is no defect
in the law so serious, or so calculated to destroy respect,
as the transparent lying which is maintained through a
blind adherence to custom. By a false caution in substi-
tuting for transportation of convicts penal servitude,
or the modified transportation of the present day, the law
with regard to sentences of transportation remains
technically the same while the practice has altered.
The judges are compelled to pronounce the sentence.
although it is not to carried out. Everybody knows
this. When Redpath, Burgess, and Tester were
sentenced to long terms of transportation the pri-
soners and everybody in court, knew that it was not
intended to transport them for some time to come, and
perhaps not at all. The sentences were "humbug," and
they were known to be such by the prisoners and by those
whom they were meant to deter. The breach of truth is
doubly sinful, when it is also a breach of justice. Perhaps
the grossest instance of formal falsehood, accompanied by
the infliction of personal wrong, is that fiction of law
which makes the only remedy for a wrongful conviction
pardon. The case of John Markham is the most recent,
though far from being alone or being the worst. While
John Markham was walking in Oxford.street, a police-
man tapped him on the shoulder and arrested him on
a charge of felony. In his alarm Markham unluckily gave
a false name, which probably tended to increase the
difficulty of proviug his innocence. He was taken to the
police court, committed for trial, and tried, in company
with Attwell, as James Anderson, one of the persons im-
plicated in Saward's bank forgeries. Witnesses swore to
his identity ; the jury convicted him ; he was sentenced
to four years of penal servitude, and actually sent to pri-
son as a convict. He had been obliged to part with every
thing he possessed for his defence ; his wife was reduced
to extremest destitution; his health has been entirely
broken. At last it is discovered that John Markham is not
Jas. Anderson. The whole treatment of the man has been
a mistake ; so now, " with the consent of Mr. Mullens on
the part of the bankers of Loudon," Markham is " par-
doned" by the Crown, and liberated. But the record of
felony remains. The " pardon" fiction rests on the assump-
tion that the whole course of anterior proceeding has been
regular ; that everybody could not have been wrong ; that
there is no power to undo the formal proceedings of judge
and jury ; and that the only appeal provided by our law
is to " the :mercy of the Crown." But the process is
equally against truth and justice. Instead of this cruel
mockery there should be a solemn procedure to cancel the
act of accusal and the conviction—to reverse the sentence,
with a public confession of error. Markham has undergone
an injury without any offence on his part • the reversal
of the sentence should be accompanied by ample
compensation. assessed in proportion to the damage done.
_Spectator.

THE POLITICAL STATE OF CONTINENTAL
EUROPE.

M. Louis Kossuth delivered a lecture in Manchester on
Saturday evening, ou the above subject. He began by saying
—" The great war is over, the money is spent, the dead are
buried, the Te Deums have been chaunted, and a French
ambassador, the illegitimate bro'her of a not very legitimate
emperor, marries a Russian princess." Who, he would ask,
was the better for all that ? He might say of Sebastopol as
was said of Blenheim, "It was a splendid victory." Turkey,
the poor "sick mart," was still ill of the " protection fever," a
disease very difficult to cure, Recurring to the condition of
Europe prior to the late war, he'said the system of continental
Europe was like a mirror, in which were shadowed the causes
of revolutions that were past, and the causes of the heavings
that were now experienced, and of the convulsions that were
now apprehended. The colossal power of the first Napoleon
brought against him many coalitions, for which England had to
pay the bill. The nations of the continent were treated as
cattle, and the whole of Europe as a farm. England was
moderate in that matter; the principle followed was that the
robbers should divide the spoil. (Hear.) The misnamed
" Holy Alliance" was based On two principles —first, that
princes ruled by direct divine delesation ; and second, that
the sovereigns who so ruled should co-operate for mutual
'assistance and support, and for the maintenance of thenr
absolute sovereignty against any aspirations for popular liberty.
Europe was thus divided horizontally ! the sovereigns
above, and the people below, But that state of despotism
could not long continue. Germany caught the fire of liberty.
From Germany it spread to Spain, to Naples, to Sicily, and
then to Piedmont. To put down these rising liberties, the
joint stock insurance company which the sovereigns had
formed for the upholding of absolutism had to be put into
requisition; and first Germany was reduced to a deplorable
condition, and became unknown as a nation. The coalition
formed to overthrow Napoleon thus resulted in a permanent
conspiracy against the liberties of nations ; and hence the revo-
lutions which had since taken place, and the dread which was
now felt of a continental rising. Austria, France, and Prussia
were each deputed in succession as the executioners of the
liberties of those who dared to aspire after freedom ; and
Russia remained behind to give confidence to the others, itit
did not actually assist, till a heroic arm proved too strong for
Austria; the arm of his own country, dear Hungary. If
Great Britain had been a second rate power, he should have
cougratulated them on being kept free from the despotism of
the Holy Alliance ; but Britain was a first rate power, and the
only representative of constitutionalism at the Congress, and
therefore she had not acted as she might have been expected.
A. passive dissent from _Rome was not an active opposi-
tion to Rome. A great power should either not
speak, or should give effect to what she said. The
lecturer then refered to the policy of George Canning—the
policy of non-intervention, and remarked that, had he lived,
not all the Czars of the world would have dared to raise a
finger against the independence of Hungary. Hungary and
Italy svould now have been tree, and Britain would
still have been a first rate power, Hungary deserved
a national existence, and was capable of maintaining
it; bet unfortunately there was nobody to receive
or pay homage to her as a member of the great family of
nations, and that rendered possible the treachery of Gorgey.
Hungary was not a dynasty but a people, and, therefore, not
cared for by the Holy Alliance, with whom the " balance of
power" meant the preservation of dynasties, and not of the
independence of nations. He believed the " joint stock
company of despotism" was more compact now than before the
late war, and that had been very happily illustrated by Punch,
who represented John Bull as playing second fiddle to the
Emperor, and the Emperor saying, " Take your rime from me."
Referring to the recent differences between Swit-
zerland and Prussia, he praised the noble inde-
pendence of the Swiss, and only wished the Swiss
confederation would pass an enactment forbidding the
people hiring themselves as mercenaries in the cause of despot.
ism or of Rome. The system of continental despotism bad
made it treason to love one's country, and death to defend its
rights; there was no escape from prison or death but
degradation or exile. There was now a nation of exiles,
who were, like the children of Israel, scattered in expiation
of national guilt, scattered in expiation of love of country,
while purple ambition walked in their land, glorying in
success founded on crime. He was tempted to exclaim—
"Oh ! Lord, how long ?" The instruction to be derived
from the state of the continent of Europe was two fold ;
first, that they were on the eve of a great political crisis
—bs.cause it was a condition so abnormal that it could not
last, Men might talk of peace, but it was very easy to
talk of peace; very easy for those who were comfortably seated
in the lap of freedom and security, with plenty of money, to
boast; but it was unjust, it was mad, it was absurd, to talk' of
despots growing just, and Europe would not long submit
to the state of degradation in which she was now placed,
The second instruction was that revolution, and nothing else
on earth, would again deliver Europe from the clutches of the
infernal coalition of despotism. The voice of history pro.
claimed that it could not be otherwise. Was it possible for
despots of their own accord to fall in love with liberty? Could
a rose bush grow where the upas now flourished ? Would the
wolf make the lamb his heir? Could the Ethiopian wash
himself white? Nonsense; it was a I,bel on humanity to
bolieve that mere reliance on the spread of truth among the
nations of the earth would do; revolution could alone effect
it. And revolution was never possible except when necessary ;
and it was necessary now. The lecturer then alluded to
the hopes of the future, and referred to France, remark-
ing that the influence which the Emperor had obtained in
the European system, and which had led some to call him a
" clever fellow," was not owing to any part'cular talent in
himself, or to any love and respect for him in the breasts of
the savages who pa'd homage to his will, but simply because he
was regarded as the keystone of despotism. But.he would fall,
and it might be soon, and the France of the future would not
commit the mistake which the France of 1849 had made,
That Britain might be prepared to take its proper place in the
revolution which was inevitable, he counselled his audience to
seek those reforms which, even in constitutional Britain, were
necessary; and to give the opposition to centralising measures
which were the first inroads on freedom. He concluded his
brief and eloquent lecture by bidding all hope on till the
period of emancipation for the oppressed nationalities arrived.
He hoped the word would not then be, as it was in 1848,
" too late ;" that British sympathy would not come " too
late;" but that, observing the darkness of the night, and
knowing that the night was darkest just before the dawn, they
would recognise on the horizon the first rising of the sun of
freedom, and as the skylarks rise to greet the sun,
humanity expects every Englishman to do his duty in the
conflict.

IMPROVEMENT IN THE TREATMENT OF CRIMINALS.--We
feel ourselves called on to notice the rumour, although we
do not vouch for its correctness, that the interest excited by
the case of the malefactor Holmes, who was released from
gaol by Sir George Grey because the poor fellow's health
was seriosly injured by confinement, is likely to lead to
considerable improvements in the regulations of the Home
Office with respect to imprisoned criminals. As we have
freely censured this branch of the Government, we are
happy to be among the first to announce that the Home
Department has at length opened its eyes to the imperfec-
tion of its present system, and is engaged in organising the
measures necessary to make it as uniform and complete as
possible. In fact, we are informed that Sir George Grey
(taking a hint probably from one of our weekly cotempo-
raries, whose pen is not his only instrument for communi-
cating instruction) has been for some days past in constant
communication with the Board of Health, and the most
eminent medical men in London, particularly the great
authorities upon climate, sea bathing and mineral waters,
with a view to remedy the glaring sanitary defects of
prison discipline in England. Abuses flourish so long in
this country before they awaken public attention or
inflame public feeling that probably few of our readers
have ever reflected on the disgraceful fact that, while all
other classes of the community are in a position to avail
themselves of change of air, or change of scene, when
their health or spirits require either or both ; or occasion.
ally to try the effects of a spa or salt water bathing, the
inmates of our gaols and bridewells are systematically pre-
cluded from all these advantages, though not less necessary
for persons in humble life than for the highest folk in
the land, and as advisable on medical grounds for an unfor-
tunate man who may chance to have made a mistake in
morality as for the most righteous member of the commu-
nity. It has probably never occurred to one of our readers
out of 100, that even in summer and autumn, when every-
body else flies from London, the unhappy occupiers of
Millbank and Pentonville never see a green field or draw a
single breath of country air. This offensive and heartless
anomaly it:will gratify the sentimental portion of our read-
ers to learn that the Home.otEce proposes to abolish. New
prisons will be built at most of our celebrated watering and
bathing places, where burglars, garotters, highwaymen,
and other victims of the law, will be removed at the proper
seasons, and oftener if necessary, from their present dull
and unwholesome places of detention. Sir George Grey
has been satisfied, on the highest professional authority,
that by such removals it is perfectly practicable to keep
clptive criminals in the very highest physical condition,
and that in no other way is so desirable an object
to be effected. When the new system comes into opera.
tion, the tender part of the public will no longer be
shocked, as no they are continually, by the spectacle of
a po ir fellow discharged from gaol, after the expiration
of his term, or upon a ticket of leave, with his bodily
strength exhausted, his nerves shattered, and his spirits
cast down and broken by confinement. It is even said
thi!t the Home-office have legal as well as medical
opinions before them with reference to this interesting
question, and that their lawyers are decidedly of opinion
that as penal laws must be strictly construed, and injury
to the prisoner's health forms no part of his sentence
under any law or statute, the punishment of imprisonment
cannot legally be carried out without the accompaniment
of the measures now in preparation. This view of the law
,e are assured is especially maintained by the learned
prisconsult who advised the liberation of Geo. Holmes.—
Examiner.