The Sun.
London, England, 1855-09-10 00:00:00

VIDENCE."

"

Another attempt has been made on the life of
the Imperial Ruler of France—or rather a cari-
cature resemblance of one of these atrocious out-
rages. A half insane but wholly mischievous mis-
creant, on Saturday evening, discharged two small
pistols against one of the Imperial carriages, in
which some of the Dames d'Honnettr were seated.
It does not appear that either the carriage or any
of its inmates were in any degree injured, or that
it could be regarded as a serious attempt at regi-
cide, or anything more than a sickly effort to
attract attention. The EMPEROR himself was in
a different carriage ; and it is at present impos-
sible to say whether the offender fancied that he
was really endeavouring to commit a crime that
might have been attended with the most frightful
consequences to the cause of liberty and civilisa-
tion all over the world.

The scoundrel was at once seized by the police.
It turned out that be was a native of Rouen,
named BELLEMARRE, who, although young in
years, was old in iniquity. He was only dis-
charged from prison in February last, after three
years' incarceration, to which he bad been sen-
tenced for a libellous publication, denominated
" Motives for the Condemnation to Death of
Louis NAPOLEON." Previously be had been
convicted of swindling, although only six-
teen years' of age, and sentenced to two
years imprisonment. But there he experienced
the clemency of the EMPEROR, and was discharged
at the end of two months. It is said that on ex-
amination he appeared to be, if not a maniac, on
the verge of imbecility, and scarcely accountable
for his -actions.

The travestied attempt will remind many of our
readers of a similar outrage perpetrated by a
humpy pot-boy, actuated by a morbid craving
after notoriety, against our most gracious Sovn-
REIGN. The remedy then suggested has ever
since proved effectual against repetitions of the
foul offence. It was felt that the vilest and most
degrading description of punishment, that
of personal flagellation, would be most suit-
able for the crime, and would prove most
effectual in preventing parties from indulg-
, ing in such mock heroics. The efficacy of the
remedy has been tested by experience. Those who
might dare the extreme penalty of the law, worked
up byan over-excited imagination, or possibly some
worse motive, would shrink from the pain and
ignominy of corporal punishment, publicly and
soundly administered. There would be nothing
very heroic in such a termination, and we believe
that it would operate no less decisively in France
than it has done in England.

There was, happily, no mischief occasioned in
the present instance ; but when we consider the
inestimable value of the life against which its
abortive demonstration was made, and the evil
effects of such exhibitions, we should desire, that a
degrading punishment inflicted on the perpetrator
should alike mark the public detestation of the
crime—and, what is more important, should ope-
.rate to deter all others from similar outrages,
which would render them contemptible and
ridiculous in the eyes of their fellow-suljeets and
of Europe.

Query—after all—whether we have gained so
very much by the last re-organisation of her
MAJESTY'S Government ? True, no doubt (and
thank GOD for it !), we have contrived by that
change to get rid of the Cabinet of All the Talents.
But, in its place, have we not obtained, unhap-
pily, the Ministry of the Mediocrities ? Except-
ing the Prime Minister alone, there is Positively
not one member of the Administration of more
than second or third-rate importance. The ad-
vantages secured to the country by the recent
fluttering of the Volscians in the Corioli of Down-
ing-street would appear to have been for the most
part of a negative rather than of a positive cha-
racter. The arch-traitors have been driven out
of office, it is true—condemned, some of them, to
expiate their Ministerial crimes in the limbo of the
Back Benches, while others have been banished
by universal consent to that Coventry of the House
of Commons, the seat below the gangway, sacred
to the persons of the political bagmen of Manches-
ter. While, however, the principal delinquents
have been dealt with thus summarily—,the small
fry of their subordinates have, by a monstrous
oversight, been left altogether unmolested. The
underlings of place and party have been allowed
to maintain their position, except in a few scat-
tered instances, here and there, observable upon
very close examination, precisely as matters were
under the evil rule of my Lord ABERDEEN, that
Old Man of the Sea, so long saddled upon the
shoulders of the Sinbad among the Nations of
Christendom.

Everything considered, indeed, we are well rid,
by this last great act of Ministerial re-organisa-
tion, of much that was pernicious, pernicious even
to a degree beyond the reach of exaggeration.
But 'while we have lost much that was
detrimental to the interests of the nation,
it must be confessed that we have gained
little enough that is in any way calculated to
servo the purposes of improved Government. If
Lord ABERDEEN was dull and obstinate, Lord
PALMERSTON has shown himself to be both petu-
lant and frivolous. More than all which, he has
proved himself at the very outset of his career, as
First Lord of the Treasury, to be altogether as
squeezable as ever were his old friends the Whigs
—a fact notorious ever since he strained at the
gnat of a Division, and thereupon, immediately
afterwards, with a wry face and a miserable affec-
tation of indifference, swallowed the camel, in the
shape of Mr. ROEBUCK'S Committee. Again—if
we have no louger.at the head of our Admiralty
a "land lubber" so egregiously ignorant as Sir
JAMES GRAHAM showed himself to be, when he
babbled about "vertical fire" from ordnance used
on ship-board—we have the misery of knowing
that the Royal Navy of England is, at this great
crisis in our maritime destinies, presided over by
the most Wood-en headed and incompetent of all
our wooden-headed and incompetent Administra-
tors. Meanwhile—Chancery, with all its callow
brood of law reforms, still continues to be watched
from the snug nest of the woolsack, by a learned
baron, whose continual hatching of plans and
perpetual cackling over their excellence, provoke
among the observant a ludicrous similitude be-
tween himself and good Dame PARTLET ! As to
the Foreign Secretaryship, we might be tempted
to exult, Without any sense of reservation what-
soever, over the circumstance of that all-important
department being still confided to the guidance of
the pat.:404442A teluity-01-40y4uorris °taus-

DON, but that even hi- patriotism and sagacity
have been in a manner tainted by association,
during so prolonged and disastrous an interval,
with the treasonous imbecility of his Aberdeenite
co-administrators. Howbeit, it is altogether with
very different sentiments, indeed, that we turn
our glance from the Foreign-office, where Lord
CLARENDON is still dominant, to the Horse Guards,
where Lord HARDINGE has been only nominally so,
from the ill-omened day when the Noble Viscount
first undertook to wield the sword which had just
then fallen from the slackened grasp of our dead
WELLINGTON. From that moment in the con-
duct of our military affairs, the German, as every-
body knows, took precedence of the Anglo-Saxon.
Britannia resigned her buckler and her brand,
and with them even the yard measure and the
goose of her army tailor, to the keeping of Alle-
mania ! All-a-mania we should rather call it,
whether we look to absurd caps or absurder tunics,
to that wretched "British German Legion" [hor-
rid conjunction of names !] paraded nowadays in
the columns of the London Gazette, or to those
craven trucklings to Austria, and Prussia, and
Germanism-Rampant generally, in which origi-
nated the despicable Four Points and the conse-
quent Viennese Conferences. Rather than pause
for any length of time in contemplation over
the melancholy spectacle of this notorious gan-
grene in our military system—we would turn,
in some sort of a half-despairing hope, to the
Financial Department of her Majesty's Govern-
ment under the new regime, the regime of the
Palmerstonians, as contradistinguished from that
of their "identical predecessors," the Aberdeenites.
Yet there, too, can be discerned but small reason
for indulging in anything like unalloyed exulta-
tion—for if, in the person of Mr. GLADSTONE,
we have got rid of a hair-splitting and crotchetty
experimentalist (who, besides this, has proved
himself a traitor to the national cause by evi-
dencing his sympathy for the enemies of our com-
mon land, the foes, too, of our heroic Allies the
French, and for that matter, indeed, the threat-
eners of the peace of Europe and of the liberties
of Christendom), we have seen inducted into his
vacated office, not some eminent master of finan-
cial tactics, but the dreariest of metaphysicians,
and the dullest of all known editors of any of our
chief quarterly periodicals.

Compelled to pronounce ourselves thus du-
biously in regard to any hypothetical improve-
ment discernable among so many of the princi-
cipal departments of the Administration—
what on earth can, with any show of reason,
be said in commendation of the change effected
is the most important of all at this most imminent
juncture, meaning thereby, of course, the War
Department. Unable anywhere to discover a
CAnNOT for the crisis, Lord PALMERSTON replaced
simultaneously the Duke of NEWCASTLE and Mr.
SIDNEY HERBERT, by nominating as the successor
of both that astounding administrator, Lord PAN-
MURE—an administrator utterly astounding to
the country at large, if for no reason from the
extraordinary fact of his inaugurating his accession
to power, after a series of deplorable disasters
arising out of the incompetency of his prede-
cessors, by boldly avowing that his policy would
be identical with that which had just brought dis-
grace and almost infamy upon the Duke of NEW-
CASTLE. Supposing this insensate avowal, how-
ever, to be insufficient of itself as an indication
of the questionable advantages resulting, in this
instance at least, from the last general re-organisa-
tion of the Government, we may turn, as for
some more signal illustration of the fact, to the
nomination by Lord PANMURE either of a most
incompetent or of a most unpatriotic subordinate
to the responsible office of Storekeeper at the
Ordnance. Either, we say, and it is common
germ.) that drives us perforce to one or other of
these conclusions—either this Storekeeper at the
Board of Ordnance is a most incompetent or a
most unpatriotic servant of the Administration.
Otherwise the national interests would never :lave
been paltered with, as they have unquestionably
been paltered with just now in the Baltic—where
our gigantic fleet, a fleet costing us actu illy nit
less than 30,0001. per diem, has been left in the
lurch, placed hors de combat, deprived of the chance
of following up its partial success at Sweaborg, be-
cause, forsooth, this singularly competent and won-
derful patriotic Storekeeper had-not subjected the
country to an additional expenditure of merely
2,5001.--(the merest bagatelle, when taken into
account with this daily disbursement of 30,0001.
upon the Baltic Fleet exclusively)—an additional
expenditure of 2,500/. for about 500 13-inch
mortars with which to have replaced those used
up, burst, honeycombed, and crystallised by the
thundering ordeal of the bombardment. Where-
fore, we ask, was there no such provision for an
emergency like this, an emergency that was known
to be inevitable ? Wherefore, but that the pre-
sent Storekeeper at the Board of Ordnance must
be a man either monstrously incompetent, or,
worse than that, disgracefully unpatriotic ! And
for the nomination of this man to the important
office, the affairs of which he has so ill adminis-
tered, who else can be held responsible than the
Right Hon. Fox MAULS, Baron PANMURE, the
War Minister of this boasted Cabinet of Palmer-
stonians ? Enough, surely, has been here indi-
cated to justify every syllable by which we have
hinted a doubt as to the loyal ardour in the course
of the Great War against Russia, whether of the
chiefs or of the subordinates of the Administra-
tion. Enough, we conceive, has been here re-
marked to enforce, and that, moreover, rather
deplorably, the regret already expressed by us,
that wo should only have replaced the Cabinet of

All the Talents by the Ministry of the Mediocrities,

The Duchess of Sutherland has joined the noble duke
at Dunrohin Castle, N.B. ; and a select family party, in-
cluding the Marquis and Marchioness of Stafford, the
Earl and Lady C instance Grosvenor, and Lady Than-
tyre, will shortly meet at the ducal seat.
The Marquis and Marchioness of Breadalbane will
receive a succession of visitors at Tayinouth Castle
during the mouth.

The Marquis of Theeddale has arrived at Yester
House, Haddingtonshire, N. 8., from Kimbolton Castle,
Huntingdon, where the noble and gallant marquis pro-
ceeded to attend the funeral of the late Duke of Man-
chester.

His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge has
arrived at 11-oderick Castle, Isle of Arran, on a visit to
the Duke and Duchess of Hamilton, who are entertain-
ing a distinguiThed circle at their ancient family Feat.
The royal duke reached the castle, on Friday last, from
St. James's Palace.
Her Royal Highness the Hereditary Grand Duchess
of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, accompanied by her youthful
family, leaves the Duchess of Cambridge's residence at
Kew, to-day, on her return to join the Hereditary Grand
Duke at Strelitz.
His Imperial Highness Prince Charles Lucien Bona-
parte (Prince of Canino), it is expected, will arrive in
Glasgow early in the present week, to attend the meeting
of the British Association in that city.
The Duke and Duchess of Norfolk have, during the
last fortnight, received a select circle at Glossop, Derby-
shire. Lord and Lady Foley and the Hon. Adelaide
Foley, and Lord and Lady Edward Fitzalan, have been
among the guests.
It has been finally arranged that Mr. Duffy, M.P.,
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A LOCOMOTIVE FOR BATUSLAVA.—A small locomo-
tive engine called "the Alliance" was sent from the
railway foundry, Leeds, on Friday, for Balaklava. The
engine is what is called a tank engine, with 11-inch
cylinders, 17 inches stroke, six wheels of three feet dia-
meter, all coupled. It was purchased a few days ago
by a Government agent. The words " the Alliance,"
and the national flags `of England, France, lur4(ly, and
Saidiiia were painted 011 the engine.