The Sun.
London, England, 1864-12-23 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES. —lt is no slight testimony to the course
taken by her M ,jesry's Government in its dealings
with Federal America that Mr Seward, with the
animus he cannot conceal, is driven to make the
most of an opportuniey offered him by a person
wholly irresponsible as a representative of the nation.
Hie letter to Mr Adams on Lord Wharncliffe's pros
posal to mitigate the sufferings of the Confederate
prisoners, indicates the use he is prepared to make
of the least official slip on the part of our Cabinet or
representative. It may not be a matter of temper,
it may be a political, nay, almost a constitutional
necessity that an American Minister should speak
his mind out upon every Occasion. Mr Seward may
not be quite the offensive personage his correspond-
ence would lead one to suppose, but he must be hard
driven when he has to express so much indignation
on so trifling an affair. We, indeed, question the
wisdom and good taste of Lord Wharncliffe's offer.
Na doubt the condition of the Confederate prisoners,
as of all prisoners, is bid enough, but it is too much
to expect the Federal Government to make a public
admission of inhumanity by accepting assistance
from foreigners. As a mere affair of almsgiving, too,
the Federal prisoners in the South are much more
in want of any assistance we could tend them than
the Confederate prisoners in the North, not neces-
sarily because they are treated with intentional bar-
barity, but because the scale of living is now lower
there, in consequence of the continued devastation
of the soil and blockade of the ports by the Federal
arms. Such gifts as Lord Wriarnctiffe's, however,
are always of questionable propriety. The few thou
sands sent by some benevolent ladies and gentlemen
for the relief of the D ,nish wounded contrasted pain•
fully with the armies, the fleets, the millions of
money, and the dread risks of war which we did n t
contribute. In that case, however, we had avowed
out sympathy ; there were fresh and tender ties with
the oppressed vie iro; we pot the money into the
!lands of our good friends for to spend on a work cat
necessity; we did not invite the Germans to endorse
their own condemnation Lord Wharneoffe and his
friends proposed something of this kind to thsFederal
Government, and Mr Seward seizes the opportu-
oity to proclaim to the universe the hypocrisy, the
immorality the covetousness, the cruelty, the in-
sincerity, and ail the other well-known qualities or
the British people. We have to little knowlodgi-
ot the subscription and the proposal made through
Mx Adams twat we do not know what pretext Mr
Seward can have for identifying the contributors),
including Lord Wharnc'iffe, with the owners of
he Alabama and the Fiorida and the authors,
whoever they may be, of the present Civil 'War.
That an English nobleman should sympathise with
the Confederate rather than the Federal side is
probable enough, for reasons which it is needless
tiow to touch upon. But it is either bad logic or a
very gross calumny to hold the British people gene-
rally responsible in the le,,st degree whatever for
the supply of arms and ammunition or ships of war
to either side of the quarrel. It is on the face of
our trade Returns that our merchants have fur-
nished many times more arms and ammunition to
the Federals than to the " insurgents." Indeed,
the Federal Government has never protested against
the traffic, knowing well that, whatever question it
might choose to raise about ships of war, it could
not say 'a word, and had no object in saying a word,
about arms and ammunition. As to ships of war, our
readers must have seen by a letter in our columns of
yesterday that nowhere has the case and the duty of
neutral Powers been so exactly and decisively
stated as by the American Government itself when
called upon to stop the ray..ges of privateers
ailing out from its own ports to prey upon the
commerce of Portugal, with which Power it was at
perfect amity, Toe American Government could
only say that it did its best as far as the law and the
practical difficulties of the case would allow, but
that it could not be held responsible for acts done
on the open sea under a flag not its own, nor could
it declare a fl tg to be piratical because it could not
possibly sail out of any port of the Power to which
it professed to belong. Though it appears that
scores of privateers issued from the ports of the
United States belonging to American citizens,
manned and equipped by them, and that, after
hoisting the flag of a South American adventurer,
they proceeded without scruple to seize and appro-
priate Portuguese ships and cargoes, the Govern-
ment of Washington could only express their idle
regrets at the practice, which neither by law nor
in practice could they stain. One or two ships, in-
deed, were restored to the Portuguese owners by
the American Courts of Law, but that was all the
redress the Portuguese were ever able to obtain,
and it was in the course of law, not by any act of
the State. Mr. Seward, then, has no possible excuse
for imputing to us these annoyances, which every
toyer of justice and peace in this country would
gladly see prevented, but which, unfortunately, are
not prohibited by the Law of Nations, for the simple
reason that there is really no way of reaching them.
The sea is a very large place and a very free one.
it is the very home of fret dim and independence,
for it owns no supremacy and is amenable to no
police. We cannot scrutinise every flag which ap-
pears upon its surface, or inquire into the get).
graphical and mercantile conditions of the State it
represents. So says the American Government, and
no doubt it will stand by its own doctrine. The
Americans themselves, who made.a subscription for
the relief of our manufacturers, admitted thereby
that our own interests are in the direction of peace,
and that we aro fellow sufferers by the war. No
doubt, if our Government had the power, it would
stop that war as heartily and as energeically as a
war on our own soil. To what purpose, then, does
Mr. Seward talk of British subjects promoting and
protracting that war? It it only means that British
subjects make gunpowder and guns, and sell and
convey these articles to anybody who will buy
them, that is a practice as old as the world and as
wide as the world. It has al ways been recognised
by the Americans, and never more so than at this
moment. The best argument for the practice is that
it cannot possibly be prevented, either at the port
of export, where trade would be stopped altogether
if every package were opened and turned inside
out by the Custom-house officers or the police,
or at the port of import, where there is, of
course, under the supposition, not the least wish to
prohibit the importation. Any attempt to stop the
traffic could be only by an appeal to conscience, by
an examination of bills and cargo, and by the
position of oaths and declarations. All these means
have been tried long ago, and they only end in
throwing trade, manufacture, and commerce into
the hands of the utterly unprincipled, to the exclu-
sion of honest men. Mr Seward knows this far
better than we could tell him. He knows, too, that
in every one of the questions raised by the Civil
War we are only moving in lines already laid down
for us by the lawyers, the statesmen, the conscience,
and the public opinion of the United States. We
are in the same case as they are, and whatever abuse
Mr Seward chooses to lavish on us simply recoils on
the heads of his own people.
POST.—On Saturday Manchester was the scene
of an explosion the immediate result of which was
to deprive of life a father and son on the spot ; to
induce premature delivery of a pregnant wife, in.
volving death to the newly born; and, as there is
mush reason to fear, death before the time when this
will appear in print to the mother. The result, it
will be seen, was very melar choly, irrespective of the
Cause or causes in which it, originated ; not on that
account, however, do we now advert to it, The de-
struction of three or four lives would not in itself
furnish the elements of any great preaemineece for
newspaper comment now, at the time when the era
of heavy luggage trains has set in, and railway
accidents from collision are lamentably so rife.
The Manchester explosive accident possesses
other claims on public regard, as making
known a source of danger altogether new, so far
as we are aware, or rather newly discovered,
To set forth the particulars of the accident in
such a manner as shall make them most generally
comprehended, we would first call attention to the
frequent use now made in exhibitions of public
display of the powerful oxy-hydrogen lime or
Drummond light. At all seasons ii this ligh
nauchsemployed but moreepttc
especially f
iaollypuabtlitchepeta
sent season, when hardly any
enter-
tainment is without an optical ghost, a series of

dissolving views, an illuminated fairy scene, or, ice
short, one of the manifold diepleys wherein a bril-
liant illumination is needed. Now, it seems, but vc3'
w-r- no pe -vieaeiy etOgnisent of the fact, tn:At to
suer an tx cut hes the use of this oritliant Oglat
developed itself that the manufacture of oxygen
gas has become a somewhat important operation
amongst the minor branches of industry in certain
cities and large towns ; that this gas, when distilled
float the materials suitable to evolve it, is conveyed
trom he place of its manWA.eure to the place of
~e in mackintosh or ekstic bags. With these p,
lirninary explanations, !et us now set. tovin the par-
riculars of the accident by explosion at Manchester
on Saturday, and which resulted in the loss of 11fes
already indicated. In the first accounts wlect-::
reecried us on Monday, it was stated that S imuel
Crowther, the operator and eider deceasi d, Was
distilling oxygen gas from a mixture of peroxide of
manganese and chlorate of potash in a retort (11w
latter being an iron cylinder), NI; hen sucdenty the
retort burst with a terrific crash,its fragments scat-
tered about like those of a bemb,hell. Such was the
account that reached us, and we, doubtless like many
others to whom the intelligence came, waited for
further particulars, inasmuch as the result, accord-
ing to every previousexperience of chemistry at all
bearing upon the matter, should hive been impos-
sible, having regard to the materials and the con-
ditions involved. the distillation of oxygen gas
from peroxide of manganese and chlorate of potash
mingled together is an operation that nearly every
beginner in chemistry performs, and performs
under no more imminent fear of danger than such as
might happen. quite innocently, from the non-tX-
p'osive breakage or disarrangement of his apparatus.
We venture to affirm that, had a chemist been in-
terrogated as to the contingent possibility of an ex!'
tasosion of the grave character to which reference is
made, under the circumstances indicated, his reply
would have been emphatically in the negative. That
a meehaoical stoppage might have occurred, es in
any possible case of gaseous emanation, with force
exercised a tergo, is a proposition to which he
would have assented; but that any igneous ex-
plosion could have happened, he would have at
once and unhesitatingly pronounced as beyond
the scope of impossibilities involved by the
circumstances and the occasion. The coroner's
inquest holden upon the victims of this accident
seems to have removed every lingering doubt, to
have resolved the whole mystery. If the testimony''
given by the Professor of Chemistry at 0 werfs Cole‘
lege (Mr Roscoe) be unassailable, then the cause of
accident stands revealed. According to that gentle-
man-, the calamity is traceable to adulteration of the
peroxide of manganese—a black mineral powder--
with another black substance ; the latter, eeeneding
to him, either powdered coal or soot. Under these
circumstances, given this adulteration, Professor
B,oacoe explained to the coroner's jury impannellea
that peroxide of manganese, instead of remaining
harmless under process of distillation, became equally'
dangerous with so much gunpowder. Starting from'
this point of testimony, the purchase of the par-
ticular sample of peroxide of manganese to whica
the deadly result is attributable was traced in its
source, the shop of a chemist named Hughes, who
now, on the testimony of Professor Roscoe, stands
committed on the charge of caanslaughter. Having
teas stated tne issues, it would perhaps be rather
out of place were we to enter upon the chemical ra-
blonde of the theory of explos,on as contingent oil
the distillation of chlorate of potash and peroxide of
manganese mingled with coal or soot instead of the
pure psroXtde. Enough to state that, given any'
hydrogenous material, such as pit coal, for example,.
the itnmeniate conditions would be supplied for
generating fire.durop within the restricting wails
of the iron cylinder heated to redness. The result
of this will stand self-sugge-sted to any mind, how-
ever untrained in the principles and practice of
chemical science. As the result at Manchester would
have been pronounced impossible by any chemist?
reasoning upon the assumption that the peroxide of
manganese employed for the evolution of oxygen
was pure, so, conversely, the same result would be
pronounced next to inevitable on the assumption
of conditions as explained by the testimony of
Professor Roscoe. Inasmuch as this is the first
accident of the kind that we have heard of, perhaps
it may be fair to assume that the most reprehensible
adulteration disclosed by Professor Roscoe may be
either local or else may not have come into general
practice. At any rate public attention should be
given to this matter, now that our juveniles are so
frequently, and, as we have hitherto all believed, so
innocently recreating themselves by the production
of oxygen gas for purposes of holiday experiments.