The Sun.
London, England, 1855-03-28 00:00:00

R')YAL OLY3IPIT. THEATRE.

Lessee and Hanger, Mr. A. Wigan.
TR I 3 EVENING.

Will be presented the new Comedletta, called TIT FOR TAT, In
Which Messrs. F. Robson, A. Wigan, and Miss Maskell will appear.
Followed by the Face entitled A BLIGHTED BEING, in
which Mr. F. Robson will appear.
Arter which, a new Fairy Extravaganza, entitled THE YELLOW
D .VARF AND THE RING OF THE GOLD MINES. Characters
by Mr. F. Robson, Miss Julia lit. George, Miss E. Ormonde, Miss
M4rston, Miss Bromley, and Mrs. kitzallan.

ASTLEY'S ROYAL AMPHITHEATRE.
Lessee and Manager, Mr. Wm. Cooke.
THIS EVENING,
The Gnarl Romantic Equestrian Spectacle called TIMOUR THE
TARTAR.
After which, the incomparable SCENES in the CIRCLE, and the
astounding evolutions of the Four Performing Elephants, with Herr
Endersohn's accomplished Performance on the Slick Wire.
An Equestrian Spectacle of peculiar construction is in act've pre-
paration for Easter Monday.
Box-office open from Eleven till Four. Stage Manager, Mr. W
West. Acting Manger. Nr. W. IL Cooke. Equestrian Director
Mr. W. Cooke, Jun.

NATIONAL STANDARD.
THIS EVENING.
For the Benefit of Mrs .R. Homer,
Will be performed, LOVE.
After which, THE SECOND BRUTUS.
To conclude with ASMODEUS, or, the Little Devil.

ROYAL STRAND THEATRE:
Under the direction of Miss Rebecca Isaacs,
THIS EVENING.

will be performed THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. Cha-
racters by Messrs J. Nalford, Rogerson, and Kinloch; and Miss Re-
becca Isaac, Miss Beaumont, and Miss Somers.
After which, 'IWAS I. Characters by Messrs. Kinloch and J.
Howard; Miss Isaacs, Miss Beaumont, and Mrs. Laws.
To concede with TRICK FOR TRICK.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
Tsui DAY —MorniLg 12 min.aftei 10 I Evenim 58 min.sh. 10
w—hiornini 39 mtn.aftta 11 1 Evening 0 niin.an. 0

THE WEATHER.—Sum Orrick March. 28.
THERMOMETER, IN THE GRADE.
50—highest since noon yesterday.
38—lowest this morning and during the night.
43—this day, at noon.
3AROMETER, 30'14.
WIND, E.—Light breeze, with rainy weather.

et.T:bt
74, n,

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 28, 1855.

The chief and by far the most important of the
Four Points is now under the consideration of the
Conference at Vienna. Sinister rumours hare
been industriously circulated as to the nature and
extent of " the humiliation of Russian power in
the Black Sep," which may be insisted ou by the
representatives of France and England. It is
positively asserted that the cession or even the
dismantling of Sebastopol will not be pressed. In
other words, that material guarantees will not be
required, but that the merely verbal pledges of
Russia will be accepted, and security for their duo
performance altogether dispensed with.
Can this be possible ? Can Sebastopol be per-
mitted to remain a standing menace to Constan-
tinople ? A drawn sword impending over the
head of the SULTAN, to be released on the first
favourable opportunity, when, by the chapter of
accidents or the insidious intrigues of Russia, the
cordial alliance now existing between the Western
Powers may be impaired or dissolved. Is there
to be an unceasing source of uneasiness and ex-
pense to those who have made so many sacrifices
in order to obtain a just, honourable, and pro-
bably permanent peace / Must a fleet be con-
stantly maintained in the Euxine, to act as a
counterpoise to the force which Russia had so
improvidently been permitted to retain ? No, it
cannot, it must not be ! After the enormous out-
lay that has already taken place, the heavy bur-
dens so freely sustained by the peoples of both
nations—above all, after the many valuable lives
which have been lost during the contest, the mat-
ter is totally and completely impossible. The '
blood of our departed brethren would cry from
the earth for vengeance against those who per-
mitted it to be shed in vain by allowing the War
to be brought to so lame and impotent a con-
clusion.

We shall not, until it is no longer possible to
resist the weight of unexceptionable evidence on
the point, do Lords PALMERSTON and J. RUSSELL
the injustice of supposing that there is any real
foundation for these assertions. The very notion
is sacrilege ; and as in this country every man is

supposed to be innocent until his guilt has been
clearly demonstrated we shall not lightly impute
so serious a crime to men whom we once re-
spected—a crime which would involve the neces-

shy of a public impeachment, and the heaviest

punishment sanctioned by the British law before
it could be adequately expiated. We therefore
now allude to the statement partly for the
purpose of declaring that it seems too
monstrous to be at all credible, and also
for expressing what, with some rare and insigni-
ficant exceptions, seems to be the unanimous opi-
nion of the country on the subject—an opinion
which has been promulgated through the public
journals of all shades of politics, and which no
Ministry could venture to set at defiance.
In corroboration of these rumours it is said,
and we fear on better authority, that Austria
would not feel herself bound to fulfil her contract
with, the Western Powers by declaring war
against Russia if the destruction of Sebastopol
411°111(1 be made a sine qua noa, without which
there could be no cessation of hostilities Is
Germanism then, indeed, so rampant ! Is this to
be the end' of the Austrian Alliance, so long
waited for, which so many sacrifices were made to
achieve, and which
was so loudly vaunted by the
"Joint-Stock Administration when it was fondly
imagined that it bad been attained?
We, at
least, were not among these who
$ by over credu-
lousness, invited deception. We felt from the
beginning that no confidence could be entertained
a Government that still
in the professions of
clutched a portion of the sp.)ils of plundered Poland
with an iron grasp—a Government alike remarkable
in bygone days for duplicity and grasping cupidity.
Where selfish considerations alone have
either with a Government or au individual, it is
impossible to place the slightest reliance on any
profession that, in all human probability, will be
disregarded the moment that safety and conveni-
ence is in favcur of a total change of policy.
We may now form sonic conception of the re•
sults that would have attended the admission of a
Prussian Plenipotentiary into the Conference.
Then, indeed, " confusion would be worse con-
founded." Tho German Powers, apparently op-
posed to each other, but really confederates, ready
to pack the cards or cog the dice on every occa-
sion, would play into each other's hands, and ren-
der the proceedings interminable, nuless, after dis-
gusting the c•renth and English Plenipotentiaries

by vexatious preorastinatfon, they milprht et length
induce them, from sheer weariness, to assent to
injudicious conditions and unreasonable stipula-
t ions. That evil has happily been averted, chiefly
because the conduct of Prussia, s graphically
depicted by the Nester of it he British
Senate, was too bad to allow of tho concessions
required byntEnmucx WILLIAM and his advisers.
After many fruitless efforts to obtain the co-
operation of Prussia, we tardily shook Off the in-
cubus, and placed her in the state of isolation in
which she now remains, and where she must con-
tinue until the adoption of a more generous and
high-minded policy by her Government. We
must act in the same way towards Austiia if her
conduit require similar treatment. Had France
and England acted entirely by themselves—had
it not been for the futile attempts to obtain Ger-
man co-operation, the War would either never
have commenced, or would have long since been
brought to a satisfactory termination. As it is,
we must make the best of a bad bargAin ; but our
representatives must be imbecile indeed if they
suffer themselves to be deceived, not, merely for
the second, but the twenty-second time. The
first NAPOLEON had a summary mode o convincing
German diplomatists and inducing them to make
up their minds as to the course to be adopted.
We trust that his worthy successor will be equally
decided in his proceedings, and that the represen-
tatives of England are too well aware of the value
of the French alliance to endanger it by any
further attempt to conciliate those who are not '
accessible to any but decided argumen ts.

It would be altogether erroneous to imagine
that the recent extraordinary changes effected in
the Criminal Code by means of the Act, 16 and 17
VICT., c. 99, have necessarily conduced to any
comprehensive or fundaMental modifications in
our system of Convict Discipline—either in regard
to the principles of general managenctent, or in
reference to the details of home administration.
It is not so. The matter deserves to be under-
stood by the multitude at large ; and, to be so
understood, it requires, perhaps, some few words
by way of familiar explanation.
According to the letter and spirit of the new
enactment, all that has been thereby effmted by the
Imperial Legislature, has been (immediately) the
virtual, and (ultimately) the total and permanent,
abolition of the secondary punishment of transpor-
tation. Correctly speaking, the 16th and 17th
VICT., c. 99, has already put an end to the ex-
isteuce of penal settlements in our colonial pos-
sessions. Botany Bay has long been nothing
more than a horrid memory of the past. Norfolk
Island is henceforth to be, in its old capacity, as
much a terra incognita to our judicial authori-
ties as even Cipango was to the mediaeval naviga-
tors, or the renowned Ultima Thule to the
geopraphers of antiquity. The annual crop of
felony reaped down in these islands by the two-
edged sword of justice is no longer to be con-
veyed away in ship loads to our antipodes, to be
there threshed and winnowed under an elaborate
system of penal discipline, and afterwards sown
broad-east by tickets of leave far and wide over
Van Diemen's Land, or throughout the length and
breadth of Western Australia. Instead of shoot-
ing rubbish after this horrible and wholesale
fashion upon the shores of our distant colonies,
we are from this time forth to gather it up care-
fully into certain spots selected for that purpose ,
within the limits of the United Kingdom, there
to discover what possible good can be brought
about in its regard by a series of processes equiva-
lent to those of careful sifting and exquisitely-
cautious disinfection. Otherwise, let us say, we
I have at length resolutely determined, as we ought
long ago, in mere justice and humanity to have
determined—not, as heretofore, to relieve our-
selves of a hideous burden and au almost over-
whelming responsibility by shifting it from our
own shoulders to those of our unfortunate colonial
populations. We have resolved in lieu of this,
and, as it were, in expiation for our past miscon-
duct towards our remote fellow-countrymen, to
make the best of it ourselves—ourselves to sustain
the weight of theburden, and to support, if possible,
the consequent and more cumbrous sense of the
responsibility. As we have intimated, the CROWN-,
the Lords, and the Commons of England' have
done all this by the transformation of a Bill into
an Enactment. That Enactment has already, we
have observed, abolished the whole scheme of our
penal settlements ; it has abrogated the entire of
one branch in our great system of secondary
punishments ; it has totally done away, that is to
say, with the secondary punishment of Transpor-
tation.

But--while this recent act of legislation has
done all this, it has by no means necessitated, as
a further result of the change In the law, any
radical or even superficial alteration either in the
principle of convict management, or in the de-
tails of home administration. The principle of
management is now, in 1855, to all intents and
purposes, identical with that defined thirteen
years since, namely, in 1842, by the Earl of DERBY,
then Lord STANLEY, in his capacity as Colonial
Secretary. The details of administration are at
this moment precisely similar to those arranged
five years afterwards, and consequently eight
years from the present time, that is in 1847. by
Sir GEORGE GREY, then, as now, the Minister pre-
siding over the affairs of the Home Depart-
ment. Wherefore it becomes manifest that
all that has been effected by this notable
Act 16 and 17 Vier., c. 99, is, as we have already
intimated, the putting an end to the system of
convict removal from this country to Van Die-
men's Land and Western Australia—and the
substitution of release by " order of licence" at
home for the plan of release with a " ticket of
leave" in our remote penal settlements. That is
all—voila tout ! The result is simple and easily
expressed. But if it is so, it is at the same time
most momentous. It involves, of course, an ex-
traordinary increase of reponsibility upon those
hitherto and still entrusted with the guardianship
of our criminal population. It requires ou their
part a corresponding increase of vigilance, saga-
city, promptitude, precision, and determination.
It taxes all their energies, in short, to the very
uttermost. It calls largely, and, moreover, sud-
denly, upon all their abilities, upon all the re-
sources of their invention, upon all the stores of
their cautious and protracted experience. It is
gratifying
to know that, up to the present junc-
ture at least, there has been no perceivable defi-
ciency in any one of these particulars among the
1 corps of officials directing the movements of the
I complicated machinery of our Penal Adrninistra.-
I ti,),. Under the
adroit
guidance and vigilant
supervision of the Surveyor-general of Prisons,
tLe whole department appears to have worked as
stoadily and efficiently as ever--and this,
i emem bered, under the
sharpest best, be it
trial, or-
deal, or whatever you may please to call it, under
The fact: is pecu. 1
liarly honourable to the -entire Depart-
ment andti' t fortuitous uai tno us astonishing
pressure of unexpected
circumstances.
; it is especially honourable to Colonel
JEBB as the Chief of the Department--
now more
utterly broken
particularly wlign so many other
branches of the public service have u