The Sun.
London, England, 1864-07-20 00:00:00

yet how that unhappy wife may comp letely cone
done those proven cruelties by the affectionate
prattle of her correspondence. In itself, one of the
most distressing cases that has ever been. brought
under the consideration of the Divorce Court since
that court was first opened down at Westm inster—
it is, in its result, about the very strangest tLat could
have been easily imagined. We all knovr the old
rhyming proverb about the woman, the whelp, and
the walnut tree, to the effect that the more you
whip theta the better they'll be ! And certainly
the correspondence brought to light by means of
this case of HOPLEY versus HOPLEY is entirely and
essentially a very case in point. In its tenderness
of affection, indicated by the lady in this instance,
the pamphlet that has come to us—originally
marked private, but with
,the word private now
very carefully scratched out—might vie with any
equal number of pages that might be selected from
the Yelverton Correspondence. Yet the incentives
to these manifestations of tender affection appear to
have been of the oddest kind in any way conceiv-
able ! What those instances were our reports of
the case of HOPLEY ',versus HOPLEY will
have shown the reader rather distressingly
from day to day as the trial proceeded. The
defendant's peculiarities were then brought out as
case opened to view pretty plainly, as every one who
at all watched the case will be prepared to admit.
His history is the history of a theorist, and, what is
more, of dphilanthropical theorist. His was a theory
of a threefold kind, and one, moreover, that had a
threefold illustration. His project has been so to
develops an educational scheme of his own
that, as applied successively to a boy-
pupil, to a newly-married wife, and to
a newly-born infant it should produce—a model
pupil, a model wife (and mother), and a model
child. The worst of it hes been that one of the
Theorist's intended model pupils was, somehow or
another, whipped to death—that one of the Theorist's

intended model children evidenced, somehow or
another, very early and very unmistakeable
signs of idiotcy that the Theorist's model
wife, somehow or another, was led in the
end to bring an action against him for
cruelty. But, in the latter instance, there was
(by reason of the truth expressed in the old rhyming
adage already alluded to) the possibility of these
proven cruelties being effectually condoned.
Happily for any other theorist's purpose who might
aspire to contrive means for having the rod
spared to the walnut tree, or (let us say
under MARTIN'S Act, for instance), to the
whelp—neither the walnut tree nor the whelp
could condone cruelties as can the woman (vide this
henceforth of course leading case of HOPLEY V.
HOPLEY) namely, by writing—after all sorts of
curious little eccentric proceedings on the part of
the Theorist, spittings in the face, kicks in the
back during the period of pregnancy, hammerings
on the head, and so forth—completely and most
effectually condone these and sundry other acts
of cruelty, any one of them worse than whipping,
by entering afterwards into a prattling correspon-
dence with the Theorist !

There are few points on which Englishmen of al
creeds and parries are more unanimous than detes

tation of the slave trade. Until they discovered that
the civil war in America was a war of independence
rather than of emancipation, and that the difference
between ABRAHAM LINCOLN and JEFFERSON DAVIS
had in reality no concern with the liberty of the

negro, this feeling enlisted the sympathies of most
of our countrymen on the Federal side. Even now,
when they folly recognise and shrink from the hypo-
crisy which would make emancipation a political

tool to ba used or not according as occasion serves,
the Southern advocacy of the barbarous traffic in
human beings militates against their full satisfac-
tion in the prospect of Confederate success, It is

not that they put any faith in the proclamations of
the Northern President, or believe that, were the

Union re-established to-morrow, slavery would
suffer from its resuscitation, but the presence of so
discordant an element in the body politic prevents
their having that full sympathy in the Southern

cause which otherwise they would have felt in the
efforts of a brave and self-devoted people struggling
for their independence. It is, therefore, not sur-

prising, when this is the prevailing sentiment o
the English nation, that one of the most venerable
and learned of our statesmen should rise in his place
in the House of Peers and declare that in looking
back over a Parliamentary life of nearly half a cen-
tury, there was no matter upon which he reflected
with so me.ch satisfaction as the part which he had
taken in the abolition of the slave trade. Such a
declaration is doubly Emphatic coming from the
lips of a man like Lord BuorGueet, distinguished
for his share in many another legal, social, and poli-
tical reform. The noble lord mentioned, in evi-
dence of the unquestionable success attending the
efforts of this country in behalf of the slaves in her
colonies, that three years ago a petition vv as pre-
sented to that House from a district in Jamaica,
whic'i was signed by 800 liberated slaves, 793 of
whom had written their names with their own
hands. But notwithstanding all the work that was
done by that earlier generation to which Lord
BROUGHAM may claim to belong, the satisfac
tory results of their labours and the undiminished
interest which England still takes in the welfare
of the unhappy negro, there is much still to be
done, The conduct of Spain in this matter is on all
bands admitted to bo most reprehensible. By every
obligation of right, of honour, and of gratitude,
she is bound to suspend the traffic, but in spite cf
all she persists in evading the treaty and in giving
every encouragement to the traffic. Cuba is the
stronghold of the slave trade, and so long as it
remains so under the open protection of the Spanish
Government, all our efforts for the abolition of the
trade will be fruitless. It is perfectly useless to
waste the lives of our men in watching the un-
healthy shores of Africa, when the high prices
given at Cuba for slaves stimulate slavers to run
any risk. By such a course we only increase the
horrors of the middle passage by inducing the
slave-dealer to make every effort to conceal his
illegal cargo. It is an unvarying rule of political
economy that so long as there is a demand there
will be a supply, but et once let us stop the market
and we shall scon dispose of the traffic. Let our
Government boldly insist on the Spaniards fulfilling
their treaty obligations; or, if not, let them demand
payment of the large debt duo to us from that
country. As Lord BROUGHAM very truly observed
the other evening, the giving of the large' sum
of £lOO,OOO is the only part of the treaty
which Spain has yet fulfilled, She has in-
deed passed a few timorous and inefficient
acts which were never intended to reeve their pro-
fessed purpose, but she has done no more, and the
consequence is manifested in the fact that in the 18
years between 1842 and 1850, the annual impor-
tation of slaves into Cuba has increased from 13,000
to 40,000.
The Spanish Governors of the island
have, it is commonly
reported, been bribed to
connive at the trade, and although there have been
of course some favourable exceptions to this rule,
among which the name of VALDEZ stands honour-
ably prominent, still the system is so well assured
that Lord BROUGHAM actually gives the rate of
profit. Three doubloons a head for the slaves
imported into the island ie the ciukr,;, , and in on*