Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-08-17 00:00:00

confess to a grave apprehension that even
Ministers may not as yet be duly impressed with
the magnitude of the occasion and of the danger.
Lord JOHN RUSSELL again spoke out what many
were thinking and beginning to ask themselves,
when he expressed some surprise that our vast
mechanical means of transport were made so
little available, that our screw steamers of war
should remain unemployed, while soldiers were
so urgen.ly and so instantaneously needed in
India, and that arrangements had not been
made to send some men by the overland route
to the scene of conflict. A few thousand men
arriving promptly would tell for more than five
times that number coming in leisurely some
months later.

Lord PALMERSTON'S assurance that he has no
fear of the result ought not to be held sufficient
to satisfy the country. Prime ministers are not
infallible, and it is better to be prepared too
much than too little. We must steadily persist
'n reminding Ministers and ourselves that the
discussion of causes, and even of reforms for
India, is quite out of place, and unseasonable
for the moment. We must first put our
countrymen, their wives and families, into
safety against Brahmin ruffianism and butchery ;
give assurance to India that our sovereignty is
unimpaired; put down the insurrection, and
inflict chastisement on its originators and its
instruments, from the meanest scoundrel who
has dared to insult an Englishwoman, up to the
puppet Emperor of Delhi, and the traitor King
of Oude. Happily, from all we can yet learn,
the insurrection continues almost exclusively
military. Some of the scum of the population,
and a few of the chiefs here and there, who are
more ambitious than wise, may have joined the
rebel soldiery, but the mass of both chiefs and
people are still with us. We hope it is true that
they all feel that far more would be lost to them
than gained by the subversion of British
authority. With all its faults, we believe British
rule is still a blessing to India, This very revolt
proves it, because it has hitherto found so little
sympathy from the multifarious populations and
kingdoms that constitute British India. Under
our disasters, this is some slight consolation to
us. But if our Ministers trifle and dawdle, and
under estimate this conjuncture of Indian affairs,
we have no security that the revolt will b
restricted to Bengal, or continue to be purely
military. By the latest arrival, eight or nine
new centres of mutiny are reported, all,
fortunately, still in the Bengal presidency, but
creeping southward, in the direction of Bombay.
Much, therefore, depends on our at once striking
a decisive blow. " What thou doest, do
quickly" must be our present word to the
Government. " Set thy house in order" will
follow. After chaos has been subdued, order
and beauty will arise. When rebellion has been
put down, and ruffian cowardice and cruelty
condignly punished, then neither the Govern-
ment nor the people of England will be back-
ward to reform all proved abuses, and to confer
all reasonable benefits, rights, and privileges, on
the hundred and eighty millions of loyal people,
who, amid the temptation of a military revolt,
and the evil example of eighty thousand rebels,
have remained faithful to the Crown and people
of England.

THE scene that lately took place at Stafford
gaol, on the occasion of the execution of
the unfortunate convict JACK ON, was such as
to add nothing to the dignity of the law, or, we
fear, to • the repression of crime. If capital
punishment could ever be defensible it would be
as a terror to evil doers, and as a riddance to
society of members that are found to be incor-
rigible. But the exhibition at Sttifford was con-
verted from a salutary warning into a scene of
disgust and horror; it resembled a savage
butchery; the wretched criminal sobbed, and
shrieked, and struggled, and gave every sign of
mania and utter despair. The tendency of such
exhibitions is to array our feelings against the
laws and its administrators. Probably all public
executions do more to brutalise the crowd than
strike a wholesome fear of repeating the crime.,
In a moment of passion Wien do not obey their
fears ; at the best, fear is but " the hangman's
scourge to keep the wretch in order;" but the
sources of moral improvement in men lie deeper
than their fears. We must touch their more
generous feelings, and we must rely on sound
habits, ana useful information, and honest em-
ployment, and improved tastes, for the diminution
of crime and the increase of virtue. We can
expect no such results from the shocking and
disgusting scenes of a public execution ;
culprit shrieking, weeping, and struggling against
the execution of the last sentence of the law.

It was a moat horrible and degrading sight for
a crowd of people to look on and witness an un-
fortunate fellow creature forced like a sheep to
the slaughter—like an ox to the shambles. The
effect upon the spectators must have been any-
thing but moral ; horror against the crime must
have been lost in indignation against the clumsy
and revolting mode of inflicting the punishment ;
and instead of conciliating respect for the law
there must have been a misplaced sympathy for
the sufferer. low long shall such scenes be
enacted in England, in the open face of day ?
They are shocking to every mind of ordinary cor-
rectness; they cruelly torture the better and
more refined class of minds ; and they harden
and brutalise that class whom they were more
specially intended to deter from the commission
of crime. We have always combatted the right-
fulness, the wisdom, and the expediency of