The Sun.
London, England, 1864-03-31 00:00:00

SPIRIT OP THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—A story has reached us from the other
side of the Atlantic which would have been invelu-
able to Mr. Roebuck in pointing his question about
Federal Recruiting in Ireland. This time it is the
Irish citizens on the other side of the water who
protest against the artifices used to inveigle their
countrymen into enlistment. The Boston journals
for this present month contain a full account of the
circumstances which have not unreasonably pro-
voked their resentment. It appears that Mr. Finney,
of whom we have heard something before, and who
announced himself as " Emigration Agent for the
principal railroads in New England," succeeded,
after a failure in Galway,. picking up 102 likely
young men in Dublin. He offered them a free
passage, steady work, £2 a month, with board, and
two suits of clothes a year. They were not told
where the work was to be, but it was to be on rail-
ways, and they were to be met at Portland by " a
real gentleman and a good friend, who would take
care of them." Accordingly they sailed from Liver-
pool on the 27th of February, and landed at Port-
land on the 9th of March. There 14 of the party
seem to have strayed away, and, strange to say,
eight of them were snapped up by the recruiting
agents. The rest proceeded by train to Boston, in
charge of Mr. Finney, and were lodged in an old
building belonging to a Mr. Kidder. Neither beds,
not even straw, nor tables were provided, nor any-
thing to eat, except some bread and cheese. The
same Right, but not until after liquor had been
served round by the orders of some unknown person,
Mr. Kidder presented himself and told them " that
the work they were brought over to do was not
ready, but that need make no difference; they
need not be idle for a single day; they could en-
list at once ;" and he ended by recommending a
particular Irish regiment to them. After listening
to this oration, it struck the men very forcibly
that they had been enticed from their homes on
false pretences, and were destined from the first
to be food for powder. This suspicion wm confirmed
by the fact that " recruiting agents hovered
around them, and in the course of the next
day gobbled up several," and that others, having
got into the police-station, were told that they had
better enlist to get themselves out. The greater
number, however, declined to join the army, and,
having lived on the charity of their countrymen for
a day or two and been turned out of their temporary
lodging by Mr. Kidder, lost all faith in that gen-
tleman, and did not respond to his subsequent offer
of employment on the Charlestown Waterworks,
In the meantime, the Irish inhabitants of Boston
and the neighbourhood took the matter up, and held
an indignation meeting, where a committee was
appointed to investigate the case, and another to
relieve the sufferers. It will be remembered that
the practices here disclosed are exactly those which
were described by Lord Palmerston in his answer to
Mr. Roebuck. "There is, we know, so great a
difference between the wages of labour in the United
States and the wages of labour in Ireland that in
order to induce men to go it is sufficient to tell them,
' Come as labourers. There is this railway and that
railway, this work and that work, and instead of
ls. and ls. 6d., you will get 10s. a day. They are
much too wise to talk of enlistment in Ireland.
They induce the people to go to find a better mar-
ket for their labour, and when these men land at
New York there are people there to induce them to
enlist in some Ohio regiment or another, and become
soldiers, with the chance of plunder and God knows
what besides.' The wonder is that the prospects
held out to Dublin mechanics, as these young fel-
lows were, were not more extravagantly glowing.
One was an employe on the Midland and Great
Western Railway, and was actually earning 2s. 10d.
a :lay when he was duped by the promise of £2 a
with clothes and board, into engaging him-
self as atis coin:non labourer in America. Why, in an
advertisement of a Wisconsin company, quoted
by Mr. Caird, 10s. a week was guaranteed, be-
sides 12s. for board. Perhaps it may have been
thought wise to offer the minimum that would
attract Irishmen across the Atlantic, so that the
bounty and pay of a recruit might prove the
more irresistible. Considering that Mr. Kidder
might have obtained 62,500 dollars for these men as
substitutes, it is impossible not to suspect that this
was his motive, and that the discomforts of their
reception were intended to drive them into the
army. At all events, nothing can be more flimsy
than the pretexts alleged to account for his share
in the transaction. Being questined, he fully
acknowledged Finney as his agent, and declared
that the emigrants were originally wanted for the
waterworks, though, finding that there was no
longer a demand for them, he had
.retracted the
order when it was too late. To this it was replied.
on the part of the men, that they never heard a
word about waterworks, but were engaged to work
on railways. It further appeared that the season
at which Mr. Finney was most active was just that
when labour at waterworks is at a standstill, and
that, as a matter of fact, the contractor at the water-
works knew nothing of the affair. Lastly, it was
"own that Mr. Finney was a notorious substitute
and had falsely represented himself as agent
New England railways, when he wa,
hut agent of Mr. Kidder. As to the
-eeedings there can be, we think,
their illegality, from the
we cannot but feel
-.lough to believe
-me, which
eon-

broke.;

for severs.

really nothing
iniquity of these pru.

out one opinion, but of
international point of view,

doubts. If people will be simple
such puffs as that of Mr. Finney's sent
appeared in the columns of one of our Dublin
temporaries, what Government can protect them ?
In this notable paragraph young Irishmen are in-
formed that nothing but " obstacles thrown in the
way by the mailboat agents, who feared it would
be a breach of International law," prevented this
redeemer of Ireland from carrying out with him
1,000, instead of 100. However, he is soon to re-
turn, " under better auspices, to bring out a large
number of the youth of this impoverished country,
to become citizens of a more favoured land, where
the labourer is worthy of his hire, where want
is unknown," &c. To entrap British sub-
jects in this easy way, and then to starve them into
serving with the American army, is cajolery and
deceit of the worst kind, but it is not enlistment,
for: enlistment surely implies consent on the part of
the recruit. It is an evasion of the law, but it is
not an evasion in the same sense as the illegal equip-
ment of a ship, for there the warlike character,
whether actual or constructive, is imparted within
the neutral territory. The victims of Mr. Finney
were not soldiers in fact or even in intention when
they quitted Ireland, and showed very little dispo-
sition to become so when they reached America.
Still, the existence of such a traffic is a great dis-
grace to the nation that is supposed to benefit by it,
and a great injury to that which is thus made to
furnish its quota to a foreign army. It is not so
much a case for diplomatic remonstrance as for
public exposure. Not long ago some very sensible
letters from Messrs. Smith O'Brien and Mitchell,
warning their deluded countrymen against the folly
of sacrificing their lives in America by way of
avenging the wrongs of Ireland, were circulated all
over Dublin. It is more than probable that these
letters were elicited by a knowledge of th 3 infamous
trade carried on by emigration agents. If so, we
have not had long to wait for a proof that the coun-
sel was opportune. There is no other country in
the world where respectable mechanics, receiving
good wages, could be kidnapped in this manner. In
the present state of the American labour-market a
prudent man might well be tempted to go over
spontaneously in the hope of bettering himself, but
to be carried over in gangs by a person whose pro-
fession and objects were perfectly well known, and
who would have everything to gain by making sol-
diers of them, without any fear of being betrayed,
could happen to none but Irishmen. Having hap-
pened once, or rather having once been detected
and exhibited in its true light, it can hardly hap-
pen again even in Ireland, and we shall be Bur•
prised if Mr. Finney, who is said to be a native of
•Galway, ventures to show his face in Dublin a
second time.

HERALD.-4n the vigorous and able speech which
Sir Stafford Northeote delivered at Exeter on Tues-
day he referred to the losses which the Whigs had
lately sustained, not in their numerical strength
alone, but in that class of members who, from their
character, ability, and tervice, constitute the bone
and sinew of a party. Some of those loeses, as the
hon. baronet feelingly observed, extended beyond
the party, and effiicted the nation itself. Men like
the late Sydney Herbert and Sir George Lewis,
though they acted with a party, belonged to the
nation at large, and all England mourned their loss.
But there are others who, without being entitled to
that high honour, do yet, from their commanding
position, their long services, or their known integ-
rity and moderation, form the grace and strength of
a party, and in the loss of men of this class the
Whigs have of late been singularly unfortunate,
their ill luck running dead against them in this as
in so many other instances, as if all the elements of
evil were conspiring for their discomfiture. And
now they are about to sustain another lobs of this
nature, which in their present position they can ill
spare. Our columns a day or two contained the
announcement by Sir Francis Baring that he in-
tends. at the close of the present Parliament to re-
tire from the representation of Portsmouth, the
borough for which he has sat continuously for 40
years. A bond so long maintained is equally credi-
table to both parties, and we are Conservative
enough to admire both the constituency and the
member which could remain true to each other in
the face of so many changes going on all around
them, and in spite of all those disintegrating influ-
ences which it is the special character of modern
Liberal notions to develop. But the character of Sir
F. Baring does not rest solely on the testimonial of
1 his constituents And their gonstAncy to him is the

midst of the general fickleness and volatility shownha
by their neighbouring Liberal boroughs. —a 0
earned for himself no mean reputation in the no:,
of Commons. 0 C late years especially he was oro
a class, always rarer than they ought to be,
but
on whose presence there much of the influence 0,1.
the house depends in the country—men who, thoup
they may remain attached to a party, are known !°
have passed beyond the ordinary objects of partyf
ambition, who are no longer tempted by vial°Defi,
place or power, and who have risen superior to the
din and turmoil of party strife to those serene regions
where they act rather as mediators than as parti`
sans. It is a grand sight on the eve of a great Party
division, when the House of Commons grows wear,'
of debate and clamours loudly for a division, to aee
..
how ail the tumult and uproar are hushed at once
into respectful silence as one of this class-4 me.l3,
weighty in his character and piety, as Virgil has it
—rises in his place, and with his first slow measured
'
s
tones stills the roaring of the multitude, and reca
them to their position as English gentlemen anl
representatives of the English people. It would I?e
invidious to enumerate the men who possess thl'
privilege, bat now that he is about to leave the as'
sembly where his portly figure has been so long
familiar there can be no indelicacy in saying that 1.
is possessed in an eminent degree by Sir Frool.o
Baring. Nor must it be forgotten that the privileg:
has its drawbacks. A man who aspires to this kin"
of influence must first make it clear that he has re;
nounced the desire of power. There was a tinl,
when Sir Francis was as eager as other men in tuo
pursuit of place, and in the course of his long carest
he has had his full share of it. There have been le°
Whig Governments formed since he has been in Far;
liament in which he has not held a place of more n'
less importance. He was a Lord of the Treasury
under Earl Grey ; a Secretary of the Treasati;
blossoming into a Chancellor of the Exchequer, under
Lord Melbourne; and First Lord of the Admiralty
under Lord J. Russell. His experience in official 111.
is therefore extensive, and we are bound to R&M'
that, with the exception of his unlucky Chan,:
cellorship of the Exchequer, it was well perfortnen,t
But on his elevation to the Exchequer he mie,
well have complained that he had fallen on ell'
times. The adoption of the penny postage systech
from which we now gather such marvellous fruit'
had just taken place, and Sir Francis Baring ane°
seeded to an empty Exchequer and an enormoaa
deficiency. And, unfortunately for him, he had IPS
the inventive genius to fill the gap. Had on
r
finances been in their ordinary condition no better
man could have been found for keeping them safe'
and for seeing that not a shilling was unnecessarily
or extravagantly spent ; but his was not the genics
that could discover new springs or invent pa',
modes of making taxation pleasant. Sir Robe'
Peel's humorous picture of him sitting on the Trans°
sury Bench and fishing for a budget was too hail)/
to be soon forgotten ; and the additional perseen‘
taxes to the customs and excise duties, which Were
the sole result of his angling, seem to have been pre'
served by all future finance ministers as a thonu;
ment of their helplessness and incapacity of one 4):
their predecessors. There was no need of such "
memorial. We should have remembered him by
quite other marks. Had a more capable Minister
than he been at that time in charge of our finatine.,
;
his successor would not have had the excuse 51
Francis furnished him with for imposing the incoar,
tax. But though not happy as a financier,
Francis Baring always commanded the respectful
attention of his party, and that respect, as we Wipe
intimated, eventually extended itself over the wile'',
house. His rising was always the signal for sileane,;
whatever was the temper of that mobile assembly
he could always secure attention. And as his Bre;
ments, though moderate in tone, and delivered wit
judicial gravity, were invariably urged in favour °
Whig principles and Whig conduct, there can
no doubt that the party had in him an adherent °
more value than many of those who would brill
more energy, more zeal, or more eloquence int
their service. The moderation of his opinions Walls
A
constant check upon the wilder and more advaan7
members of the party, and his own steadiness of ar,
herence kept many a waverer firm to the W 133
standard. We can well believe that there were
country gentlemen, the descendants of 0,
old Whig party, who had begun to doubt whethe,
the principles of Burke and Rockingham WV.
`
;
not better represented in our days by Lord De
and Mr. Disraeli than by Lord Palmerston and 14g
..,''
Gladstone, but who stilled their rising scepticlea;
by the reflection that so long as Sir Francis 1300:
and such as he remained by the Whigs the parl.4'
could not wholly have abandoned their traditiaCri
principles. But now these ties are loosening 010
by day. The men who were the ligatures of the
Ministerialist crew drop off or disappear, and th
motley crew which still calls itself the Whig parts
is fast falling into a state of decomposition. #
look forward with confidence to an approaching
general election to quicken the process and to re°
move it from the position it now occupies, whe,ret,
by the confes.sion of its own friends, it has beeow
~"
useless for any national purpose, incapable of carry'
ing any measure, and as, in fact, only cumberi°P
the ground.