The Sun.
London, England, 1855-04-10 00:00:00

second Sinope massacre to add to the sanguinary
laurels of the Muscovite.

The third course propounded is, that Russia
should engage to reduce her naval force in the
Black Sea within certain specified limits ; while
Fra,uce and England should be permitted to keep
up a fleet of equal strength. Now, the efficacy
of such a step would entirely depend on the good
faith of Russia. The Bear who submitted to the
paring of his claws well knew that they would
grow again during his winter's slumber, and
that be could again carry on his depredations
with unimpaired vigour. Many splendid speci-
mens of naval architecture might grow up at
Nicolaieff without anything being heard of their
progress, until they sheltered in the well-protected
bay, prepared for any enterprise. Promises so
closely allied to pie-crusts, and so likely to meet a
similar fate, cannot then be accepted as a satis-
factory settlement. Wherever we look, whatso-
ever we consider, we are the more confirmed in
our original opinion, that the demolition of Sebas-
topol is imperatively required, and that by no
other means can we obtain that which our Minis-
ters are so fond of talking of—an honourable and
permanent peace.

MA HMOUD PASHA, the Vizir of Yanina,
several years ago, after sipping coffee, and
smoking tobacco, and quaffing sherbet with the
Hon. ROBERT CURZON, was left by that amusing
traveller, sitting cross-legged on his red-cloth
divan "in great wonderment at the English
Government paying large sums of money for the
transportation of criminals, when cutting off their
heads would have been so much more economical
and expeditious !" Everybody who has read (and
who has not ?) that most delightful book, the
" Visits to the Monasteries of the Levant "—a
worthy companion volume to K ING SL A Kes
" Esthen," and WARBURTON'S " Crescent and the
Cross "—will remember, doubtless, the incident
here alluded to, related, as it is, after a fashion
the most comical, by one whose almost every
word proves him to be evidently gifted as a
humorist. " Incurring any expense," says
the son of Lord SCARSDALE, when relating
the circumstance with all his twinkling
appreciation of the ludicrous " Incurring
any expense to keep rogues and vaga-
bonds in prison, or to send them away from
our own country to be the plague of other lands,
appeared to him [the Vizir of Yanina] to be an
extraordinary act of folly ; and that thieves should
be fed, and clothed, and lodged, while poor and
honest people were left to starve, he considered
to be contrary to common sense and justice." Ob-
serve,! however, this is not all. Mark ! what fol-
lows. Listen to the comment pronounced upon
that opinion of MAH MOLID PASHA, pronounced
with an air so deliciously serio-comic, ley the
"celebrated Milordos Inglaisis" who records it—as
he afterwards reports of himself to the awe-in-
spired Monks of Mount Athos, the " great ally of
the Sultan's and of all the captains of all the
men-of-war that come down the Archipelago !"
Mr. CURZON adds, in reference to the views
entertained in the matter of Prison Discipline,
by the long-nosed Turk left by him squatting
upon the red-cloth divan, pipe in mouth, and be-
wildered beyond the power of language to relate,
at our preposterous system of criminal legislation—
" I laughed at the time at what I thought the
curious opinions of the Vizir of Yanina ; I have
since come to the conclusion that there was some
sense in his notions of criminal jurisprudence."
And so that droll memorial of an Anglo-Oriental
talk about the best way of dealing with rascalit♦
terminates.
We wonder very much how the Vizir of
Yanina would have looked from either side of that
long nose of his, if there could have been tumbThd
down before him in his hall of audience, one after
another, those weighty blue-books which have
since appeared, year after year, in the form of
Reports upon Convict Management, by -Lieut.-
Colonel JEBB, the laborious and energetic Sur-
veyor-General of the Prisons of England. How
his Highness would have glowered over
those elaborate arrays of statistics ! How he
would have puffed, amazedly, over his eterna.

chibouk as he turned the leaves of those Parlia-
mentary records of what has been done in all this
long lapse of time in the way at once of punish-
ment and reclamation

Since the period in which Mr. CURZON wrote
that most charming volume which has won for
him a high and lasting reputation among the
travelled contributors to our popular literature,
much has been actually accomplished of what was

then only vaguely hoped for, in the development
of the great scheme of Penal Discipline which ap-
peared so ridiculous in the eyes of the Vizir of

Ycnina. A variety of costly experiments have,
during the interval between then and now, won
for us a whole world of experience. So that

already the changes effected seem to us in
the retrospect but little short of the
miraculous. Insomuch so, that among other
marvels we have already made provision
within the limits of the United Kingdom
for the housing and disciplining of from 9,000 to
10,000 convicts altogether. There being, as we
have recently taken occasion to explain, in Eng-
land and Scotland alone, cells scattered here and
there for the accommodation of nearly 3,000
prisoner's doomed to undergo the proba-
tionary punishment of separate confinement.
While upwards of 4,000 others are capa-
ble of being safely and usefully grouped to-
gether upon some of our great public works, as at
Dartmoor, or Portland, or Portsmouth. Beyond
which, the time has even now arrived when we
may look back, as upon an evil already virtually
dead and gene, upon the monstrous system of
wholesale transportation to remote penal settle-
ments. If the long-nosed Vizir marvelled so
much over the folly of spending hundreds and
thousands of pounds sterlingon our criminal popu-
lation, what would he have thought, we may be
allowed to wonder in turn, if he hail learnt, as
any one 'may learn, from Colonel JELB'S last Re-

port to the Home Secretary (p. 96, Appendix),

'Sat the total value of convict labour at the Wool

wich-hulks, at Portland, and at Portsmouth, may

be estimated for the year, last past, at just

i 8,920/. ! An item in the statistics abon

Convict Discipline which we should have

relished much to have commended to the

Vizir of Yanina, if only that he :might have

dropped it, with his next pinch of tobacco, into

the bowl of his everlasting pipe—to :have smoked
it, thereupon, at his leisure, contemptatively !

Ia another part of our impression will be found
a. hotter of remonstrance from a body of men who
certainly have reasonable ground far complaint.
In, the debates on the mismanagement: of the War,
in February 1..4
-Lord PA.I3I2RSTO:N remarked
that there was great truth and force :in the obser-
vation of Mr. NEWDEGATE, in answer -to the charge
that the disasters of the army were. to be attri-
ated to the great number of gentlenzeu who were
offic ars in it. The Hon. Member, his opinion,
had made the most triumphant answer by showing
that. where the system had broken doi, " where
evil had arisen from want of capacity,wi .of energy,