The Sun.
London, England, 1864-02-29 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

SPECTATOR.—The British Government has taken
another step in the Deno-German affair, and en-
countered another humiliation. It is a fixed idea
with Earl Russell that it' people can only be induced
to meet and talk over their quarrels they are sure
come to an arrangement more or less acceptable.
He acknowledges, indeed, when the proposition
comes from the Emperor of the French, that dis-
cussion very often only embitters dispute ; but then
a French proposal and a proposal by a AN hig chief,
you see, are such very different things. Accordingly
he proposed to all the Powers at war that they
should conclude an armistice, and with the Power
engaged but not at war, the Diet, and the Powers
neither engaged nor at war, should hold a confer-
ence, and settle the dispute upon some new basis.
The only part of this proposal which was beneficial
was the armistice, tor nations once cool are at all
events less likely than before to rush again into
battle. The Austrian and Prussian Governments
were well aware of this, and they therefore declined
the armistice, but accepted the conference, being
ready for any amount of talk provided only they
could go on oceupyintt. and decreeing un-
disturbed. Indeed, the talk was rather an advan-
tage, for it. might amuse bystanders, who were very
quiescent, but beginning to get rather a❑ eager look
in the eyes. The Government had the meanness to
accept even this wretched concession, France gave
way in some disdain, and if little Danmark will
only consent, which is doubtful, and the Diet will
reply in the affirmative, which would be for it a
humiliation, then a conference will he held. What
is it to chat about ? It cannot re-affirm the Treaty
of 1852, for that document already has the signa-
tures of a majority of the German States, of Den•
mark, and of the five Powers, and while not one of
them has yet made an effort to carry out its letter
two are acting in direct defiance of its spirit. To re-
affirm its provision would be merely to stultify
the recent action of the Diet and of the enemies of
the Diet, to reduce the occupation of Hoistein to an
absurd display of official impudence, and to show
the invasion of Schleswig in its true light—that of
a crime committed in order to give Prussia and
Austria a position of great advantage in Germany.
Nor can the conference be called simply to secure
the concessions from Denmark, upon which, accord-
ing to Count Rechberg and Herr von Bismark, their
obligation to keep faith depends. For England,
Prance, and Russia have already offered to guaran-
tee the performance of those conditions, and a new
treaty i❑ that sense would be only a renewal of the
pledges in spite of which the Germans commenced
killing the Danes. Consequently, some new basis
mustbe found, and it can only strengthen or weaken
the Danish monarchy. The former theory is out
of the pale of discussion by men responsible for their
time, and the latter must be in some form or other
the intention of the proposers. England, therefore,
after advising the Dines to evacuate Holstein, after
promising to compel them to revise their internal
constitution, after, there is too much reason to fear,
preventing Sweden from marching to their aid,
after exciting the wrath of all Germany by recom-
mendations to moderation, is about to legalise that
diminution of Danish strength which she 12 years
ago framed a treaty in order to prevent. That, to
begin with, is a pleasant result of Earl Russell's
diplomacy ; but that is nothing, the point being the
ext :Int of this diminution. It cannot be that Hot-
etein is to be assigned to Germany and Schleswig
to Denmark—for that compromise would be rea-
sonable, and perhaps just, might have been secured
at any moment without war, and would not give the
Germans full oontrol of Kiel. Besides, it would
make the invasion of Schleswig as absurd as it was
wicked, and though the military tyrannies care little
about crime, they are aware that vitriol will bite
steel, and fear ridicule accordingly. It is barely pos-
sible that the basis may be the surrender of Holstein
and South Schleswig, for that rroposal has in it
sufficient of the necessary flavour of violence—
South
Schles wig belonging to Germany, just as
Alsace and Heligoland do—and it would cover
Kiel. But then what becomes of the indivisibility
of the two Duchies, and the rights of the Duke of
Augustenburg, and the pretensions of the Diet, and
the Treaty of 1832 ? The Diet, at least, will not
consent ; and if they do not consent, then, on the
next opportunity, say next time it freezes, the Diet
will threaten war, and Austria and Prussia will
help them, and will then take the affair out of their
hands, and Schleswig will be overrun, and the old
swindle will once more be a basis for a fresh con-
ference called to legalise illegal plunder. That can
hardly be the solution, and we greatly fear that one
whispered about is the only one that will ever be
proposed. This one contemplates the junction of
Schleswig and Holstein into a single Duchy as a
German State, with full self-governing powers,
King Christian to be Dake, and the Augustenburg
family to be declared next in succession to his own.
In other words, England, in her fear of income-tax,
is to propose that the most violent act of aggression
committed in our time shall be triumphantly suc-
cessful, that the nation she has tried to protect shall
be stripped of a vitally important province, which
the nation she has tried to resist will acquire in
full sovereignty. The war begun nominally to pre-
vent a few Germans continuing within a free but
Danish monarchy, is to end in placing many Danes
under a German and very much less free Duchy,
under, indeed, a Diet which is controlled by des-
potic sovereigns, and is created, as the fundamental
articles of the Confederation avow, in the interest
of the Princes. And all England will be called
upon by a Premier, whose single claim to rule is
that he protects English honour abroad, to sanction
and approve a velurtary initiative taken by Eng-
land towards betraying an ally. We are not only
to be " friendly bystanders" while our friend is
being garrotted, but to suggest to the ruffian that a
handkerchief would bo a quieter instrument of
compression than his arm!
LONDON REVIEW.—The tragedy of Monday last
recalls perhaps to some older men now living
the Newgate scenes which were more common in
the days of our fathers and grandfathers. For 36
years London has seen no such sight. The wretched

and sickening spectacle was only tolerated this •
week because of its imperative necessity, for strict
justice towards the murderer in the long run is
mercy towards society. The rough and hybrid
crews of vessels which, though nominally English,
never approach these shores, know little lass ; and
appreciate only, the plainest lessons. Many a
wretched sailor's life on board hangs by a thread.
The English merchant service is itself in reality a
colluvies gentium. Ships engaged at a distance in
the foreign trade are ;many manned by a comple-
ment of men, who, it may be, neither speak our
own language nor have a single feeliag in common
with us: Malays, Chinamen, half-east Spaniards,
Italians, creeks, Egyptians, all mixed together by
the fortune of the seas, and talking a barbarotis
patois that would be only half understood in any
European port; these are the crews that navigate
the ocean under England's flag and English papers.
Awful tyranny, cruelties, such as it is only given
to fierce and unreclaimed vagabonds to devise, bes-
tiality, lawlessness, and misery, are often the rule
and not the exception in such an occupation. Often
—but how often remains a secret with the deep—
murder stalks with a ghastly boldness across the
deck ; now releasing the tortured victim of oppress
sion from his burden of life, and at other times in-
flicting retributive vengeance on the oppressor.
It is for the sake of the long and dreary hours
spent by unhappy seamen on the deep seas hun-
dreds of miles away from any land, or from any
controlling eye, that London has endured the pollu-
tion of such a spectacle. No Englishman, high or low
—from the judge on the bench of the Old Bailey
to the ordinary villain who stands below—has or
can have the least conception of the kind of mis-
creant to whom this terror is meant to be addressed-
There are, no doubt, masses in England altogether
out of the reach of the sympathies or influence of
the educated classes of society—abandoned men,
women, and children, whom charity seldom reaches
and to whom religion is a thing unknown. Even
these have ties among themselves which they
acknowledge, and social restrictions of however
rude a character. It is different upon the seas.
There men who are to roam together have hardly
the connecting link of a common enterprise. Their
few months or weeks over they will drift away into
fresh sinks of iniquity, having gained only some
new and brutal experience by their last voyage.
From such a class the unhappy men are drawn who
suffered last Monday bpon the scaffold; and to such
a class their ignominious end speaks. The details
of the scene have been painted with more horrible
power than usual by the newspaper press. We
prefer to believe that in the almost pictorial de-
scriptions that have been given by correspondent
upon correspondent, the object has not been to pan-
der to any mere taste for sensations. It there ever
was an execution that it is a mercy to make notori-
ous it was this. Perhaps it may at some critical
and lonely hour strengthen the terror with which
the name of some British consul is regarded by the
villainous offcasts of the seas. Nor can it be said
that the men who died on Monday died in heroical
guise. The murderers of the day in this country
frequently display upon the gallows as indifference
and a callousness that arises less from ferocity than
from ignorance of what death is. Tnemiseraabie cri-
minals who never hesitated about shedding blood
wholesale upon the Flowry Land showed, when they
came to die, how little was their nerve when it was
a question of dying like dogs amidst the execrations
of a mob. There was little courage, and, strange to
say, less bravado in their demeanour, as they cowered
in a row upon the brink of death. Lopez, the man
who had planned all the murders and executed at
least one, came out of his cell alone with a defiant
air, Before the end of a few minutes he shook almost
to falling, ris lips were parched, his hands clasped
and pinched one another, and his eye wore the
frightened look of an animal just before its death.
Duranno, whose crime seemed the cruellest of all,
was deadly pale, and trembled and shivered limb
by limb. Blanco—a giant in physical strength, who
had struck down the mate, and who made it his
boast that he had flung him while praying for mercy-
Into the sea, who stabbed the sleeping captain, and
heat to death the captain's brother—came forth, says
a spectator of the scene, "hs if the very agony of
death was on him,"—so strongly did he show his
fear. Raw spirits were given him on his way to
the scaffold, and yet, eve a with this, the rope was
no sooner put about his neck than he fainted, and
had to be propped up in a chair till the drop fell.
A terrible and sickly scene ! There was nothing in
it to move admiration even among the most hardened
of their species. Ire recalled none of the days when
oold highwaymen, amid the laughter and congratu-
lations of their friends and the nosegays of their
women, were drawn jaunty and defiant to Tyburn,
encouraging one another and encouraged by the
crowd. When the five men on Monday were led out
to death, the swooning agony that came upon them
was the agony of men who knew well that they
died the outcasts that they had lived, and that no
living thing would . shed one tear when they
were gone. The most wretched consideration
connected with a most wretched spectacle is
that there is scarcely a way of reaching
the class of criminals to whom these five ruffians
belonged, except by brute fear, and that even this
argument makes itself heard but faintly. Thou-
sands of unhappy men who have been from their
childhood enemies of mankind this- hour are living
the kind of life that was the life on board the
Flowery Land. There seems no hope for humanity
in respect of them. No philanthropist can ever
reach them, for they form a world to which there is
no access. There are some evils in the world which
seem irreparable, and all that men can do in an
ordinary way is to banish thought of them. Life is
full of misery; but no misery or wickedness is pro•
bably so intense or so unchecked as that which is
the lot of those most interested in the fate of the five
pirates who last Monday paid the penalty of their
misdeeds.

EXAMINER.—Two or three years ago there was
great activity in the French dockyards, so, says
Lord Clarence Paget, it was necessary that we
should go ahead, w hich we did at a great rate in
blunders. We capped all the errors in the French
yards. We built huge ships which would not turn,
naval crocodiles, and when the defect was discovered
we only built more of them. The Warrior and the
Black Prince having been found unhandy, the
Minotaur, Agincourt, and Northumberland, the
largest ships ever built, as Lord C. Paget says,
were added to the unwieldy class. It had then been
ruled that an armoured ship of the greatest speed
could not be of less tonnage than 6,800; but Mr.
Iteed, the present constructor, represented to the
Admiralty that they were building ships of an
enormous tonnage and proportionate cost, having
the fault mentioned of steering badly, which would
expose them in action to be outmanceuvred and
run into; and he undertook to furnish
vessels much smaller, handier, and well pro-
tected, at a much cheaper rare. And accordingly
he has built a vessel under 1,000 tons, which, plated
fore and aft, will carry the heaviest guns, also,
another, somewhat larger. Lord Clarence is not as
communicative as could be wished about the per-
formances of these vessels. Ho says in general
terms that their behaviour at sea is satisfactory, hut
not a word about their rate of speed, which is the
main point. For if Mr. Reed's ships, thoroughly
well protected, can carry the very heaviest guns at
the highest rate of speed, they must be more than
equal in efficiency to the huge unwieldy ships which
cannot turn within the compass of a league or so.
And farther, Mr. Reed's success would dispose of
the assumption that short of the tonnage of 6,800
the highest speed is not attainable together with
complete armament, defensive, and offensive. But
Lord Clarence Paget is unfortunately generally re-
served upon the point of speed. He tells us, how-
ever, that a vessel is building of great promise in
this all important particular—the Pallas. indeed,
he goes so far as to say that if she succeeds she will
be the most remarkable vessel the country ever pos-
sessed. Her model is copied from the French, and
its peculiarity is what Lord Clarence Paget de-
scribes as as elongated bow, which we take to be an
upright stem, to support ber in a head-sea and pre-
vent plan zing. Lord Clarence says the prin-
ciple is adopted by the Admiralty, and oddly
enough in the next breath proceeds to state that
two small vessels are building, one with the elon=
gated bow and the other without, which is a whim-
sical mode of adopting a principle. But so it is,
that every thing is experimental in our naval con-
struction. And it is not much to the honour of our
science in building that we have always to follow
the French, and as we servilely do so in improve-
ment, we do also blindly in their faults. We have
repeatedly adverted to the delusion that pre-
vails as to the Warrior's reputed suc-
cess. The Bellerophon has put her to
shame. Instead of the Warrior's 6,000
tons the Bellerophon is 4,200, and with 1,800 less
tonnage she carries plate of 6 inches instead of the
Warrior's 41 inch, and an armament that will throw
a broadside of three-quarters of a ton of iron or
steel, which is more than the Warrior can do. Her
speed is expected to equal what is also expected of
the Pallas, but here again Lard Clarence Paget deals
in vague generalities, and does not specify the rate.
If these vessels prove successful the Admiralty will
deserve great credit for the improvement. But still
we have to ask at what minimum of tonnage, and
with what build, is to be obtained the maximum of
speed, combined with the best protection and the
most effective armament—effective 'not in the mere
number of guns, but range and weight of metal.
As for complete protection against improved and
improving gunnery, it is confessed to be impracti-
cable. It will be something gained, however, to
have got from the unwieldy, unhandy Warrior of
6,000 to the Bellerophon, her superior both in de-
fence and power of attack, of 4,200, and in process
of improvement a vessel may be built as superior to

the Bellerophon as she is to the Warrior. And in
the same proportion smaller, cheaper, and in every
way more efficient. At last we may come to a float-
ing fleet gun-carriage, a Vessel of the greatest speed
and handiness, able to carry one or two guns of
the longest range and heaviest Weight of metal, and
this is the great desideratum.
SATURDAY REVIEW.—if any one with an imagi-
native mind were inclined to personify so prosaic an
idea Re the ten-pound county frandhise, he might
make of it the subject of a truly tragic tale. A
touching myth might be constructed out of its sor-
rowful story. The enthusiasm it once inspired, the
uses it has served, and the uncomfortable dislike
with which its advances are repelled now that it is
no longer needed, naturally suggest the similitude
of the tilaiden wooed, persuaded, and betrayed.
Unhappily for the political Don Juane in whose
honour so ill-requited a confidence was reposed, the
simile seems likely to be followed out still further.
Their heart-broken victim, though driven from their
door, will not submit in silence to her wrongs, and
her importunity is becoming exceedingly vexatious.
Those who in times past overstepped the bounds of
a mere flirtation with her have mended their ways.
They desire to keep sober, settled, respectable so-
ciety now. They wish to forget the unseemly in-
timacies in which they once delighted, and to keep
clear of such low company as reform projects, fran-
chise exteneidne, and the like. But their victim will
not leave them to fulfil in peace their resolutions of
amendment of life. She will put them to the blush
by her unwelcome presence just at the most incon-
venient moments. Is there no remedy Must
they always have the sine of their youth cast in
their teeth, now that they have reached sober and
tranquil middle-age, and have put aside the guilty
sentimentalisma of their youth ? Is there no
way of reducing Mr. Locke King to silence ?
When a fashionable young man, having duly har-
vested his wild oats, resigns himself to respectabi-
lity and a bride, it is usual, in the interests of order,
to station detectives in plain clothes at the door of
the church, in order, in the language of the police,
"to keep an eye upon previous attachments." Can
no similar protection be afforded to the once wild
but now repentant leaders of parties in the House
of Commons? Stern moralists may think that any,
compassion for those who are undergoing the na-
tural retribution of their own errors is overstrained.
Be this as it may, at least some pity is due to those
who are suffering for the sins of others. The ma-
jority of the present House of Commons have never
bowed the knee to Baal. It seems hard therefore
upon them that they should be doomed to an annual
discussion, or rather two or three discussions, which
can issue in no practical result. The measure pro-
posed by Mr. Locke King obtains an illusory sup
port from members who have pledged themselves
to it in days when reform of any kind was thought
to be the winning cause, or who may now repre
sent constituencies that have been taught to apply
this particular cry as a test of political orthodoxy.
A few of the most extreme men may perhaps sup-
port it from the mere desire to get the crowbar any-
where into the fissures of the building which they
are eager to pull down. But it is very doubtful it
there is a single man who supports it upon its in-
trinsic merits. The angry controversies of the last
15 years, if they have done no other good, have at
least had the effect of thoroughly discrediting what
is called bit-by-bit Reform. At the commencement
of those discussions an impression prevailed, even
among practical statesmen, that the reform of the
Constitution was a very simple matter. It was merely
a question of addition and subtraction. Add a little
more power to the poorer classes here,take a little away
from the richer classes there, and continue that pro-
cess until the supremacy of the one over the other
should culminate in manhood suffrage. Some men
might wish to go further than others; some might
hope to stop short, at least for a considerable num-
ber of years, at some intermediate stage. But the
only difference was one of degree. There was no
contest whatever as to the direction of the movement
which the word reform was meant to imply. The
vehement controversy which has since taken place
has operated a great change in the modes of thought
under which these proposals are examined. Mr.
Bright's failure to influence the middle classes, and
the curious lessons which are being taught by the
working of practical experiments in America and
France, have dispelled the sentimental and practi-
cal halo which surrounded the question of reform.
Mr. Bright's speeches have shown that reform has
a hard pecuniary meaning. The object at which, by
his own avowal, it is directed is to transfer the
possession of 'and and money from the hands of one
set of people to the hands of another set of people.
If Mr. Bright knows what he is about, it has be-
come clear that the transference of political power
would carry with it a transference of a more mate-
rial and sensible kind. On the other hand, the
examples of America and France have convinced
people that things which to some minds are of more
consequence even than the rights of property are
placed in hazard by democratic change. It is now
no matter of theory, but of plain fact, that demo-
cracy necessarily carries with it equality ; and that
equality, by the operation of an irresistible law,
verges to the concentration of power in a single hand.
RAILWAY NEWS.—The delusion of " cheaper
fares and rates of the Continent" is one so wide
spread and general in this country that it seems
well worth while to oppose it by a few facts. Be-
fore us lies Bradshaw's familiar Guide, and at its
side its French brother, Indicateur Universal; Bul-
letin Official Chemins de Far. the Indicateur is not
only the orother, but the twin-brother of much•
abused, useful Bradshaw, for, leaving aside that its
form is four times as large, it is arranged exactly on
the same plan and after the same system, the diffe-
rent lines being divided in groups and branches,
the trains classified, and the mileage and fares run-
ning aside of the different stations. Thus, compari-
son between French and English fares becomes easy,
and all we have to do is to translate kilometres into
miles, and francs and centimes into pounds,
shillings, and pence. We open our Bradshaw
at the beginning, and passing over a few columns
of abridgements, find that the first railway
of which mileage and fares are given together
is the Great Northern. We read :—London to
Aberdeen-559 miles ; first class, 80s ; second class,
60s; third class, 40s. In other words, first class,
1 5 7d ; second class, 1 2-7 d ; third class, 6-7 d,
Now let us open Bradshaw's French brother, the
official " Indicateur." It begins with the line from
Paris to Marseilles, styled, in full, " Chemin de Far
de Paris a Lyon et ala Mediterranee." Tne line
we fied is of a length of 863 kilometres, or 515
miles, and the fares for the whole distance are :
First class, 95fr 65c, or £3 16s 6d ; second class,
72fr 50c, or £2 18s; and third class, 53fr 15c, or
£2 2s 6d. In other words, the French fares are at
the rate of 1 4 5d per mile first class, against 1 5 7d
English ; of 1 3-7 d second class, against 1 2-7(1 Eng-
lish; and of very nearly ld third class, against
6-7 d English. These are very notable figures, par-
ticularly as regards third class fares. The third
class traveller pays actually less for going over 559
miles of ground in our own country then for a rail-
way journey of 515 miles in France. Surely there
is
nothing
here in favour of the generally accepted
.
belief " the cheaper fares and rates of the Con-
tinent."

LAW TIMES.-Sir George Grey has introiticed
his Bill for the Improvement of Convict Discipline,
based upon the recommendations of the commission,
some of which are adopted, others rejected. He
proposes to extend the term of penal servitude,
slightly to curtail the dietary of prisons, to retain
the ticket-of-leave, but to make it the reward of
good conduct. If the holder should relapse into
crime, he is to be remitted to serve out the re-
mainder of his original sentence, in addition to the
sentence for the new offence. The Government
prudently abandon the proposition for transporta-
tion on a ;large scale to Western Australia, but
only in deference to the feelings of the Eastern
colonists, protesting that there is no equity in
the demand, and no foundation for the objections
raised. It is indeed monstrous that a colony at
one end of a great continent should forbid the
mother country to send her convicts to another
colony that wishes to have them at the other end of
that continent, separated as they are by 3,000 miles
of impassable desert. We fear that, as is customary
alike with communities and individuals, the assigned
reasons for the objection are not the real ones. How-
ever, they have prevailed, and there is an end of it.
This is the substance of the Government scheme. It
is a very modest measure. Its weakness is that it
steers timidly between two systems. There is the
theory of punishment for the purpose of deterring
the criminal by memory of pain and others by his
example. There is also the theory of treatment for
the purpose of reform and not of punishment. This
last is the system which we have been trying for
many years, and which has proved an entire failure.
The former one remained to be tried. Philanthropy
supported the one, reason the other. A great deal was
to be urged in favour of both, and opinion has been
fairly divided between them. But few will approve a
middle path, and it will probably be found to fail in
practice. In truth, the two systems cannot be corn •
baled. Punishment, to be effective, must be sharp,
and if sharp it must be short, or it will lapse into
cruelty. But reformation is a very slow process,
and compels long confinement and that demands
abundant food, comforts, and even luxuries, to which
the honest labourer is a stranger. Sir George
Grey's bill is not framed for the perfecting of either
system. It is, however, quite necessary to its work-
ing that sentences to penal servitude should be ex-
tended. Complaint was made that judges had been
too lenient. But the public do not thick so. When
longer terms have been inflicted, what a bawl of
reproach has been raised by the penny press. and
what torrents of abuse have been poured out
upon the judge for his severity. So long as
the law allows a large limit of discretion, it will be

A

for the most part exercised on the side of mercy, an.
in the majority of cases the smallest penalty per-
mitted by the statute will be inflicted. Only by in-
creasing the minimum can judges be secured against
the clamour that is sure to attend upon large sen-
tences of crimes that appear to be small. It is one
of the merits of the " punishment " theory that it
permits of the apportionment of the penalty to the
crime. It is one of the gravest defects of the " re-
formation" theory that f.t compels the subjection of
all crimes to nearly the fsa nao apparent amount of
punish meat.