The Sun.
London, England, 1864-05-02 00:00:00

SPIRIT OP VIE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

THE "SPECTATOR" ON THE ASSUMPTIONS OF THE
POLICE.—There may be many opinions about the
Shakspere eelebre.tiOP last Saturday. Some May
think that " an eminent tragedian" planting an
oak it the foot of Primrose-hill is a noble and im-

posing spectacle. Others might contend that any
kind of celebration may teach some persons, who

otherwise would not, to recognize that merit may
exist and glory be won in the closet no lees than
in practical life. And others, again, may regard
the whole affair as a harmless tomfoolery. Even
these last, however, would ba that those

who like tomfoolery should have their: fill, and if
the imposing spectacle was too short should eke

out the day's amusement by a supplementary en-
tertainment. When the tree had been planted,

and the watering-pot emptied, and the verses in-
audibly recited by a lady unaccustomed to public
speaking,—things all very beautiful from an

mstheticPoint of view, but perhaps just a little
tame,—a body of impassioned orators denouncing
the aristocracy for a crime which they never com-
mitted seemed the very farce that was wanted to

complete the day. Mr. Phelps could not reason-
ably be expected to be as pre-eminently funny as at
Drury-lane, and Mr. Edmond Beales might well
have extorted from the audience the wondering ex-

clamation, " Why this is more excellent foaling
than the other 1" But alas! we shall never know

,) which of these two notabilities the palm should

have been awarded, nor fathom those mysterious
plots, by which Mr. Gladstone and Lord Shaftes-
bury had deceived the unsuspecting nature of
Garibaldi, but not the watchful jealousy of the
Working Men's Committee, For Authority was

on the ground in the shape of au inspector and
"large bodies" of police, and beyond arresting a

pickpocket or two had found no occupation for their
energies. To suppose that so important a person
as so inspector of police was to go home without
asserting himself is obviously absurd, and any re-
flections upon a Cabinet Minister would naturally
be irritating to one who, though in a subordinate
position, is still a servant of the Crown. The inspec-
tor determined to assert himself by silencing Mr.
Beales. Fortunately a general order existed forbid-
ding the holding of public meetings in the parks,
and the inspector, followed by " more than a dozen
policemen," approached the learned gentleman.
Whether he took Mr. Beales, who was addressing
the populace from the top of a benai, by the ancle,
just as the keeper grasped the insane gentleman
who was making love to Mrs, Nickleby over the
garden wall, we are not informed, but the speaker
felt probably that his position was insecure, and,
like the lunatic alluded to, came down. tip to that
moment there had not been the slightest sign of
distUrbahee, but of course people now began to hiss.
lor a moment it looked as if the consequential fus-
siness of this policeman might lead to a breach of
the peace, and so produce the very evil against
which doubtless he meant to guard. But fortunately
the Working Men's Committee were wiser than
could have been expected, considering the vocy
ridiculous opinions they had come there to express.

They exerted themselves to quiet the discontented,
and the crowd dispersed, leaving the inspector in
possession of the field. We can only hope that Sir
Richard Mayne will take some steps to reward the
victors. The issue of a medal to every policeman
who was on Primrose Hill that day is the very least
that will adequately mark what society owes them,
and by way of design we beg to suggest to the
engraver the inspector driving back with his trun-
cheon the horrors of anarchy. Prevention, it is
commonly said, is better tha❑ cure, but the maxim,
in politics at least, only applies when the evil is
sure to happen if not prevented. 'When there is a
reasonable chance that it may be avoided altogether,
we agree with the late Sir George Lewis that cure
is better than prevention. Talk is the surest of
safety valvrs, and so long as foolish people can meet
and proclaim their fancied wiougs they are not
likely to do anything more. Leave the meetings
alone and they will separate peaceably enough
when the orators are exhausted, or the audience
want their tea, or it begins to rain. Disperse
them by force and you provoke the violence
you desire to prevent. If it be argued that the parks
are not the proper places for meetings, and that they
are only thrown open to the public for purposes of
recreation, wo reply that from the first the English
people have been wont to amuse themselves moult
tristemeW, and that political spouting is one of
their recreations. To say that it prevents other
people from enjoying the parks is absurd. Nobody
need go near the talkers unless he likes, and all the
Sunday preachers that ever gathered in Hyde-park
have still left ample space for a far greater number
of walkers than aro ever likely to be there. Be-
sides, it is obvious that when you gather people
round a preacher they occupy much less space than
they would do when scattered over the park. On
this par:ieular occasion at all events it was impos-
sible that any one should bo molested, Mr.
Cowper had granted permission to plant the tree.
Everybody who went to Primrose-hill last Satur-
day knew that he was going into a crowd, and
whether the speakers talked rubbish about Shak-
spere or Garibaldi, about the dead poet or the living
hero, was a matter of no possible importance to any
one.

THE " SATURDAY REVIEW" ON THE EMPEROR
AND M. TRIERS.—The course which M. Thiers has
recently adopted, when the financial measures of
the Government have been the subject of discus-
sion, has naturally induced a portion of the French
press to consider what would have been the effect
upon French industry if the old order oZ things
had endured—if Louis Philippe had never left
the Tuileries for Claremont, and if M. Thiers
were now, as he well might have been, the leader
of a Parliamentary majority and the first Minister
of a Constitutional Sovereign. His critics remark
that M. Thiers is as thorough a Protectionist as
ho ever was, that he is all for keeping trade in its
old fetters, and that he relies on those artificial
props which were once supposed to be the firmest
supports of French industry. It is, therefore, a very
good thing that France has got rid of him as a
ruler. If his supremacy had lasted, the wonders of
the last few years would have been unknown. The
French multi have had few railways, and bad ones;
they would not have seen Paris built up from its
ruins in half a dozen years ; they would have had
no Treaty with England ; and, being condemned to
a perpetual system of protection, they would have
had the hopeless feeling that they and their chil-
dren fur ever were fated to eat or pocket those slabs
of sugar which the State, for the benefit of beetroot-
growers, insists shall have no sugar in them. It is,
however, rather a hasty assumption that, because
M. Thiers was a Protectionist in his old days, and
because he is a hardened Protectionist now, he would
have been a Protectionist if he had been in office, or
that Constitutional Government could never have
given France the benefits of Free Trade. When a
Minister is really in office, he learns by the mere
fact of his being in office what are the wants and
wishes of the country, and free trade must some day
have made its 'way in France, whatever was the
Government that happened to rule there. The very
greatest merit of Constitutional Government is that
it encourages free discussion, and free discussion
makes people think and talk, until at last new
thoughts become familiar and the opinions of a
nation are changed. With railways, and partly
through the great development of English wealth,
came a new burst of commercial life and energy in
France ; and it is not probable that this energy
would have been arrested because M. Thiers was in
office, or that M Thiers, having the choice between
learning new truths and the abandonment of office,
would have disdained to show a docile mind. The
examples of Spain and Italy show that constitutional
assemblies are capable of being convinced that the
mercantile interests of a nation are worth attending
to, and that, if a nation wants to get rich, it must not
stand aloof from the general current of the modern
world. It is true that in every country personal
influence does much, and that some one man is
generally conspicuous in the ordering of great
changes. Sir Robert Peel in England, the Emperor
in France, Marstal O'Donnell in Spain; and Count
Cavour in Italy, have stamped a seal of their own
on the first beginning of a new national activity.
The gain to a nation in time and trouble, when it
gets a really superior man to conduct it through a
crisis of commercial enterprise, is so great that it is
impossible to estimate how much these countries
have profited by the exertions and the intervention
of the men who have started in them new notions
and given them a new vigour. Bat in a country so
great and so enlightened as France, Free Trade
must have come sooner or later ; and it is far too
strung a criticism to say that, if Parliamentary Go-
vernment had lasted, M. Thiers and his friends
would be now engaged in keeping France as cons.
partitively backward and stagnant as she was twenty
years ego. While, however, it is impossible to sup-
pose that M. Thiers or any one else could have kept
France for ever Protectionist, the reesonal contrast
between him and the Emperor, to whom the rapid

and easy spread of Free Trade in France is mainly
owing, cannot fail to strike every Frenchman who
believes that the new order of things is the right
one. The Emperor is immensely ahead of M.
Thiero in his views on trade and finance, and in
France personal comparisons have a great influence.
All those who are making money at Paris and in
the provinces, who find it twice as easy to be twice

as rich as they were ten years ago, look upon the
Emperor as the conspicuous man of their way of
thinking. When they think about M. Thiers at
all, they naturally regard him as a conspicuous
man of the Wrong way of thinking.
mad they congratulate themselves that they
live under the Emperor, and not under M. Thiers.
The mercantile conamonity, and all the most
intelligent men who belong to it, adhere,
with mote 6t less of sincerity, to the Ern-

pire, because they know that any change
would hit them hard, and also becanee they think
that the Emperor understands what they went, and
how to live it them. This tends, no doubt, to make
their adhesion to the Empire temporary and trap-

sitory, for an Emperor who was not up to his work
might be distasteful to them. But if adhesion to
the Empire is taken to mean simply a wish that
Louis Napoleo❑ may go on reigning, the adhesion
of the mercantile classes is sincere and profound.
Of course the Emperor has his subordinates—men
who help him, make suggestions to him, and some•
times correct him. There are, for example, M.

Feuld and M. Michel Chevaliei, who have done

more to keep the finances of France straight, and to
get free trade fairly started, than any two men of
private station. But then they are avowedly
servauts of the Emperor, and occupy the position
towards him that the permanent secretaries of our
Government offices occupy to their Parlianientary
_ _

chiefs. They are not what M. von Schmerling is
to the Emperor of Austria, the originators and
maintainers of a line of policy which their master is
barely able to understand, and wholly incapable of
working out. They are useful servants, and the
Emperor carries out, or manages to make it sup-
posed that he carries out, his views through them.
The whole literature of modern France is pervaded

by the influence of the industrial spirit, as Indeed is
the literature of all modern Europe. Sometimes
this takes a bad form, and we have those specimens
of vulgar materialism which have disgraced the era
of the Empire. But sometimes also it takes a good
form, and expresses the hopes with which ardent,
enthusiastic lovers of their country and of all that
is best in it regard the future of France. That the

Emperor personally should be at the head of the in
dustryof France thus allies him with many men who
have no taste for Imperialism in itself, and acts as a
powerful counterpoise to the dislike with which the
restrictions placed on writing and speaking are re-
garded. Despotism does not appear before the eyes of
Frenchmen in its naked deformity when the despot for
the time being is the representative of what many
men, who command the respectful attention of the
public, regard as in eery way excellent. Nor is
it possible that this feeling should not be
strengthened when they tura their thoughts to M.
Thiers, and find that, brilliant as he is in debate,
and sound as is his philosophy when he contrasts
liberty with a military tyranny, he is still a pro-
tectionist, and thus stands aloof from the wishes and
hopes of all that is most stirring and ambitious and
intelligent in France. The very existence of such a
Government as that of the Emperor forces men to
conaLlpromiar politics under their personal aspects,. and
the
~.s.7e,e of M. Thiers in the Opposition
strenethens thistural tendency; and when poli-
ticians, not eyetems, are ~.p . mpared, seems obvious
rosp er ity goes, is
that France, so far as' ommere,lal p
gaining ground under her present .1.."1a(2,r*
THE "LONDON REVIEW" ON THE SER-
VICE.—The ninth report of her Majesty's Ce;11
vice Commission has this week been issued. t. a
shall not trouble our readers with an array of
figures. It is more important to note certain facts
which the examinations have brought to iight.
First we find that out of 813 candidates who com-
peted for 253 superior appointments, such as clerk-
ships, 291 were found to be below the minimum
standard of a pass examination. Nearly all who
failed broke down in ;the elements of education.
This fact is more significant when we observe that
out of 2,334 candidates rejected since 1856, all but
183 failed in orthography, hand-writing, or arith-
metic. The vast majority are of course the sons of
gentlemen aged from seventeen and eighteen t 3
twenty-five. Surely this result is highly discredit-
able to those who have had the charge of their
education. There is nothing in any of these
branches which, to a boy of the moot ordinary
capacity, shohld be unattainable. One at
least is purely mechanical; the others simple
enough. A boy with common application
should grow into them, and no doubt would, if
instructors did their duty. Yet here we have up-
wards of 2,000 young men out of 25,000 candidates,
who have been rejected for deficiencies which would
he disgraceful in a lad who had been brought up by
the parish. It they are unfit for the public service
on these grounds, for what are they fit ? Another
point to be noticed is the carelessness with which
testimonials to character are given. Really, there
is hardly any elms of document which deserves to
be regarded with more suspicion than testimonials
of this kind. The commissioners annex to their re,
port a list of cases in which persons of disreputable
character obtained nominations on the strength of
their vouchers. AB, for instance, had, under an-
other name, euffered 18 months' imprisonment for
forgery ; B C had absconded with funds intrusted
to him as adjutant and paymaster of a regiment,
and had been imprisoned for obtaining goods on
false pretences, yet " be produced an unusual num-
ber of flattering testimonials from well known gen-
tlemen occupying high positions, including two
peers and four mejorslgeneral in the army." We
cannot refrain from saying that the conduct of per.
sons who give testimonials without personal know-
ledge of those for whose characters they vouch, or
who, knowing them to be unworthy, conceal the
fact, is most reprehensible. It is an injustice to the
oublic service—a wrong done to candidates whose
characters are meritorious, but whose testimonials
will henceforth be looked on with suspicion. Natu-
rally enough the commissioners refuse to set any
value on " written testimonials, couched in general
terms, and passing through the hands of the parties
interested." And in truth those who pen these
vouchers offend against morality. But the sin is
common ; and men who would scorn to deviate by
a hair from truth in the statement of a fact con-
cerning themselves, out of a culpable easiness and
good nature set their hands to statements which are
grossly false, to oblige an acquaintance or help some
one they are anxious to serve.
THE "EXAMINER" ON THE CONPERENCE.—The
Conference is laid up with the gout; gone to sleep,
propped up with Eider-down pillows and wrapped
round with blanket from the Saxon loom. It has
not, as Sir G. Grey explained last night, adjourned
sine die, though he was unable to say when it would
meet again. It has taken to its bed, but not for
good, We never expected much from the delibera-
tions of a body whose members have so little in
common, and in which the countervailing forces
were obviously so unequal. Assuming that France
and England arc agreed in desiring to eccure some-
thing like fair terms for Denmark, they are doomed
to encounter at every point a combination of adver-
saries flushed with the perpetration of successful
wrong, and animated, it is to be feared, with far
more of a common spirit and purpose. The Court of
Vienna is said, indeed, to be anxious to see the war
ended in Slesvig before Garibaldi can set out on his
next expedition from Caprera ; and well it may,
But just in proportion as the part played by the
Austrian contingent in the past campaign has been
insignificant and ineffective, it now becomes difficult
for Count D'Apponyi to take a more moderate tone
in council than his Prussian or Saxon associates.
Prussia has got the lead, and means to keep it, if
arrogance and obstinacy can prevail. The darling
dream of the headship of Germany still haunts the
dynastic and bureaucratic minds of Berlin and
Vienna, and beguiles them equally from the peal
of wisdom and safety. The Prussian King and his
Minister are in the seventh heaven of exaltation at
having, as they say, by the almost unaided force of
Prussian arms, rescued the Duchies from a foreign
yoke Less than complete autonomy, Count Berns-
doiff is instructed not to accept for them; and
Baron von Beust has composed his own instruc-
tions in the like spirit. But what does this im-
ply ? If it were only the independence of
provincial legislatures, in all matters merely
affecting Slesvig, Holstein, and Lauenburg,
severally considered, the Danes would pro-
bably consent to it, in any reasonable terms which
might bo laid down. They have virtually agreed
to do so by the revocation of the patent of March,
1863, and by the steps in concession subsepently
taken by them. But autonomy may be easily con-
structed to mean something more than this, Prac-
tically, if not theoretically, it implies a degree of
control over the local administration, capable of
being used most efficaciously as a means for petting
the whole mechanism of government out of working
gear. Without, one common legislature supreme in
all matters of common interest, there could be no
permanent cohesion between States whose antece-
dents are so distinct, and whose feelings are so dif-
ferent. Christian TX. might be recognised by all
Europe as lawful King of Denmark, and Duke of
Slesvig and Holstein ; and, taught by bitter expe-
rience, he might do his best to trim the balance of
interests fairly and substantially, to let his German
subjects govern themselves in matters of religion,
education, and municipal law. But his best would
avail little. After all that has happened, and in
the face of all the schemes and devices of German
absorption which we know to be afoot, we cannot
disguise from ourselves that the Duchies, if admi-
nistered by natives, would be liable at any moment

to be alienated formally from the Danish monarchy ;
and if administered by Danes, to be kept in a state
of stifled disaffection hardly less perilous to the
stability of the State, and much more demoralising
to the people. In a word, autonomy means not
only what the late Mr. O'Connell used to ask for
Ireland, under the name of a Repeal of the Union,
but from the very nature of the case something in-
volving much more. In Ireland there was popular
discontent, originating in difference of race, and fos-
tered by hostility of creed ; but the classes possess-
ing property and intelligence were by habits and_
sympath:es more English than Irish ; no powerful
neighbours, speaking the same language,was within
sight or hearing; and the claims of no Pretender
filled the imagination or diverted the allegiance of
any section of the community. Yet politicians
of every complexion and degree in this country re-
sisted as one man the proposal of Irish autonomy,
upon the one plain and incontrovertible ground that
it would be incompatible with the secutity and the
greatness of the realm. How, then, can it be ex-
pected that the Danes should agree to a settlement
which would virtually settle nothing ex,r.ekat the
certain and proximate dismemberment ot. -their
ancient State?

Capture of a Notorious Burglar.

-4-

The police of Bristol have just succeeded in cap.
turing one of the most daring, accomplished, and
successful burglars who in history has ever been.
recorded. The prisoner's name is John Goodenough,
who for some time past has been the terror of jewel-
lers, silversmiths, and pawnbrokers in the south of
England. It was Goodenough whose booty was
recently discovered in Windsor Forest, and it proves
to be the same man who, within the last 12 months,
has committed several great robberies at Alton,
Emsworth, Gosport, and other places in the county
of Hampshire. The prisoner has assumed various
aliases from time to time, and when arrested at
Bristol (by the detective police, acting upon infor-
mation received from Superintendent Harvey, of
the Hants county constabulary, stationed at Gos-
port), he was known by the name of " Capt. Smith,"
and the furniture of his house was packed up in
readiness for removal to another part of the coun-
try. Although somewhat below the middle stature,
Goodenough is a powerful and determined fellow,
and three of the officers who succeeded in effecting
his capture were wounded, one receiving a severe
wound on the head, while a piece of the flesh of
another was literally bitten from his hand, and upon
the prisoner's person was found a siz•barrelled re-
volver loaded with ball and capped, which there is
no doubt he would have used had he not been
adroitly seized when not aware that he was in the
company of a detective officer. On a previous
occasion, however, when an attempt was
made to capture him in another, part of
the country, he held his assailants at
bay by the production of his revolver,
and managed to escape. The prisoner was brought
to Gosport, and has been committed for trial at the
assizes on three separate charges of burglary. Al-
though precautions were taken to prevent his
escape from the lock-up in which he was confined
for some days while ulder examination, Good-,
enough made the attempt to do so. It appears that
some years ago Goodenough was transported for
burglary, and his reappearance created considerable
surprise. We believe, however, that it has not yet
been ascertained whether he obtained a ticket of
icu ve or made his escape.