The Sun.
London, England, 1864-08-12 00:00:00

Federal Barbarities in Virginia,

The following letter has been addressed by es.
Governor Letcher, of Virginia, to the Mayor of
Richmond :

Lexington, Vs., July 5.
Finding that the Yankees would take the town
on Saturday, the 1 1 th, I left home near midnight,
Friday night, and went to Big Island, in B.dford,
where I remained till Wednesday morning follow-
ing, when, hearing the Vandals had lett, I returned.

I had previou-ly heard that my house had been
'mimed with all its contents The threats made by
he Yankees against me for the past two years satis-
fied me that they would destroy my house when
they came to Lexington, but I always supposed
hat they would allow the furniture and my family'e
c,othing to be removed. In this, however, I wus
disappointed.
When the Yankees took possession of the town,
Dr. Paton, medical director for Hunter's army, and
•vho hails from Manion county, Virginia, went to
my house, told my wife he was unwell, and said he
must have a room in the house. He took the room,
supped and breakfasted, and, when breakfast was
aearty over, remarked in a manner half jocular, half
earnest, to Lizzie, that it was the last meal she
would take in the house. Shortly after he left,
without taking leave of any of the family, nor was
he again seen by any of them.
The threats made by soldiers on Saturday even-
ing indu3ed my wife to fear that the house would
be burned, and she expressed her fears in the hear.
ing of Dr. Paton and Capt. Towns, of New York.
Capt. Towns very promptly said that I, being a
private citizen, and the house being private pro-
perty, burning it would be an inexcusable outrage,
.nd proposed at once to go to Hunter's headquar-
ters and ascertain. He went, and was directed by
Hunter to assure my wife that the house would not
be disturbed. The sequel shows that the sole object
of this assurance was to quiet her apprehensions,
and thus prevent anything from being removed.
About halt-past eight o'clock a.m. (Captain Berry
and his provost guard rode up, and the officer called
for my wife. She came to the door, when Berry
informed her he was ordered by Hunter to fire the
house. She replied there must be some mistake,
and asked for the order. He said it was a verbal
order. She then said to him, " Can it not be de-
layed until I can see General Hunter." " The order
is peremptory," he replied, " and you have five
minutes to leave the house." She then asked leave
to remove her mother's, sister's, her own, and her
sister's clothing, which was insolently refused,
Immediately thereafter camphine was poured o❑
the parlour door, and ignited with a match. In the
meantime my daughter had gathered up an armfu►
of clothing, and was going out when he discovered
her, ran forward,and fired the clothing in her arms.
He then poured camphine in the wardrobes, taireau
drawers, and ignited the clotbing•—taking out my
clothing, which he said he intended to take north.
Every house on my lot was burned save a small
granary over my icehouse. Not a particle of flour,
meat, or any thing edible was left, all paving been
carried off on Saturday.

My mother, now in her 78th year, lives on the
tot adjoining my own, having with her ono of her
grandchildren and servant. Atter my property had
been fired the fiends fired her stable, located about

PRICE ...4d.
STAMPED ....sd.

forty feet from the house. with no other virtw:.
than to burn her out also. The house caught twice
and would have been consumed but for the untiring
efforts of Captain Towns. who made his men carry
water and extinguish the flames. The captain be-
haved like a gentleman to wards my own and my
mother's family.

Generals Averill, Crook, Sullivan, and Duffle de-
nounced the whole proceedings as an outrage, in
violation of all the principles of civilised warfare,
and stated that Hunter alone was responsible for
these atrocities,—l am truly, and in haste, your
friend, JOHN L ETCH Ell.

Jos. 111.dy o, Eig., Richmond, Va.—lndex.

The End of the Polish Insurrection.

WARSAW, Aug. 5.

The final scene of a melancholy drama was played
to an end to-day. The last chief of the celebrated
Polish National Government and four of its mew.
ben died this morning upon the gallows. The un-
fortunate victims were Romnald Trangutt, a dis-
charged Russian colonel ; Krajewski, an architect ;
Joseph Toczyski, a bookkeeper; Zulinaki, a teacher,
at the Gymnasium ; and Johann Jezioraneki. a tax-
collector ; ail young men, none over 30 yews of age.
Originally 21 men and four women were sentenced
to death by the military tribunals, but the Viceroy
pardoned 17 of the men and all the women. It
must not be imagined, however, that the objects of
Count Berg's clemency have much reason to con.
gratulate themselves, for their sentences have been
commuted partly into many years of labour in the
Siberian mines, partly to shorter periods of confine-
ment in fortresses in the same bleak and inhospit-
able country.
The official Dziennik of yesterday gives a detailed
account of the whole prosecution, and furnishes
many interesting particulars of the manner in which
the insurrectionary government was carried on.
The following are extracts ;

"Owing to the discoveries made by the Military
Investigation Committee, and the increased activity
of the Wdrsaw police, numbers of persons concerned
in the revolutionary organisation were arrested at
the beginning of the year, and an extensive revolu-
tionary correspondence was seized. Upon inspec-
tion of the documents and examination of the pri-
soners further arrests were undertaken, which, com-
bined with information already obtained, rendered
it possible to gain possession of the chiefs of the
insurrection. The investigation which then took
place brought to light the main details of the orga-
nisation, and the action of the secret society, or,
so-called, National Government, standing at the
head of the movement.

" The National Government operated by means
of a special central organisation in Warsaw, and of
local administrations in the eight woywodeships
into which the rebels had divided the kingdom of
Poland. Up to October 10, 1863, the Government
was composed only of a small council, the composi-
tion and arrangement of which was veiled in the
deepest mystery. After that date an entire change
took place, one chief being recognised as the imme-
diate and independent leader of the entire revolu-
tion. This chief was the discharged Lieutenant.
Co:onel Romuald Trangutt, formerly leader of an
insurgent corps in Lithuania. After the dispersion
of his followers he fled to Cracow, whence he went
to Warsaw, ostensibly as a traveller for a mercantile
firm, under the assumed name of Michael Czarneche.
" The Warsaw central organisation, as chief
organ of the revolutionary Government, was com-
posed of six departments, under different heads—
Interior, War, Treasury, Foreign Affairs, Public
Press, and Poliee. In addition to its chief, each
deprirtment had a certain number of subordinate
officials and a secretary. Following out the prin-
ciple adopted in the entire organisation, the mem-
b.rs of which each department was composed were
unknown to its chief, and of the chiefs themselves
moat were strangers to one another. The local
administrations i❑ the woywodeships, whose mem-
bers were known through the various decrees dis-
tributed among the people, consisted-1, of com-
tniesioners possessing certain powers ; 2, of the
civil chiefs of the woywodeships ; 3, chiefs of
circles, towns, and communes," &o.
Toe Dziennik, then gives in some detail a resume
of the operations of the National Government to
the 10th of October, 1863, the date of Trangutt
assuming the chief direction of affairs, and con-
firms :

"From this period several heads of departments
into personal communication with Trangutt, whom
they visited at his lodgings in the house of Helene
Kirkow, in Smolne-street. Trangutt also fre-
quently went to the officials to make arrangements
with them. These meetings of the chiefs ceased in
January, 1864, after the capture of various mem-
bers. Thenceforth the communication between the
different diplomatists was carried on through female
agents.

The investigation proved that, besides Tran.
vat, the chief personages of the revolutionary
orgunisation were the following :-1. Secretary of
State, the architect Janowski. 2. The heads of
departments—lnterior, R. Krgjewski, noble, aged
29; his secretaries, T. Burzynski and G. Paprocki ;
Treasury, Joseph Toczyski, a bookkeeper, formerly
banished, aged 37, his secretaries, Iluaiki, a noble,
aged 50, and Summeki, noble, aged 19 ; War, Galp-
zowski, falsely called Golkowicz, Russian, a mili-
tary man ; Foreign Affairs, Dunagowski, pastor of
Si. John's Church; his secretary, Wolynski, also a
clergyman ; Public Press, Waclaw Prybylski, for-
merly teacher at the Wologodzki Gymnasium; his
secretary, Bognslawski, a noble, aged 25 ; Police,
Pinkowski, teacher at the Gymnasium; Wazkowski,
town captain, the son of a Warsaw citizen. 3. The
head of the publication department, Baron Zulinski ;
his secretaries and assistants, A. Krzcki, a noble,
aged 25; R. Frankowcki, student at the Warsaw
High School, a noble, aged 24; E. Trvebsecki, a
noble, aged 25; C. Hants, of Warsaw, aged 20. 4.
The Commissioner of Ways and Roads, J. lezior-
anski, a noble, aged 30. 5. M. Dobiecki, a noble,
aged 26, teacher at the 3d District School in War-
saw.

"These persons, with several culpable in a less
degree, had incurred the penalty of death, but his
Excellency confirmed the sentence to that effect
passed by the court-martial only in the cases of the
condemned men Trangutt, Krajeweki, Toczyski,
Zulinski, and Jezioranski. The sentences of the
other prisoners were commuted by his Excellency,
by virtue of the authority placed in his hands, in
limiki's case to 15 years' hard labour in the mines,
Dyborcki to 12 years, and eight of the others to 10
years' confinement in Siberian fortresses, each pri.
Boner incurring the loss of all civil rights.

"The court-martial also found Johann Muklano.
wiez. Helena Kitkow, the sisters Emilia and Bar-
bara ()anoraks, and Anna Wroblewska, guilty of
having illegally aided and abetted the rebels. For
this offence Mt:dame Kirkow Mecklanowiez, and the
Gazawskas were condemned to loss of civil rights
and hard labour in the factories, the Former for
eight years, the others fur six. Anna Wrobiewska,
also losing her civil rights, was sentenced to trans-
portation to Siberia. The present and future pro-
perty of the criminals was also confiscated to the
use of the State."

The fire persons condemned to death were exe-
cuted upon the gkcis of the fortress this morning,
sithongh a pardon was hoped for to the [fist mo-
ment. They stepped upon the scaffold firvlf, and
underwent their fate with perfect resignation and
cumposure, in presence of an immense crowd of ex-
cited spectators.
Thu? perished the latest victims of the ill-juc_7ged
and ill-fated Polish rising of 1863.

PRINCE NAPOLEON IN INVERNESS.-0:i Monday
evening Prince Nip9leon, the Princess Mural,
Count Ferra Pisani, and other members of the Prince's
suite, arrived in Inverness by train from the South, and
took up their abode in tha Caledonian Hotel. After visiting
the various oljetta of interest in the town and neighbour-
he el, the party procee,tied to Oban by the Caledonian Canal.
45'cotsm ait

The late Prince Albert's Speeches,

A correspondent of the .1 orning Advertiser,
signing himself " A Physician," writes as follows
(under date the 10th inst ), to our contemporary
Sir,—l was glad, as lam sure many other readers
were, that in the notice of the unveiling of the
excellent and striking statue or monumeut to the
:ate Prince Consort yesterday at the Licensed Vic-
uallers' Asylum, your reporter speaks so well of
:he science of the late ever. by-us-to-be deplored
' popular leader.
I must say for myself that I have been all my life
reading Bacon and Butler's Aoalugy," Whecvull.
and Mill, deduction and induction ; dreary Hunter
orations by the dozen, medical lee,ures like leaves
in Val Ombrosa for worible,sness or number; dry
platitudes r.chaufees at Orford of Sir William
Hamilton ; unearthly bombast es to ecience by
" Vestiges of Creation," plagiaried,
quackeries as to development, a brilliant
polished
castle of cards tumbled long ago, and leaving no
vestiges behind.
Au these and many more, but I never got the
true co-ordinating secret of what is or ought to be
inductive" reasoning and
,what " deduct;ve" till
I had read Prince Albert's speeches, especially the
' one at Aberdeen. That wonderful speech, though
obviously Written or spoken at the British As-.
sociation under the inspiration of Liebig, is pee.-
haps the most perfect thing of its kind in .he
English language. These speeches and Vuese
books of science are to young men like what a our-
ney right through the tangle, and thicket of Aus-
tralia might be to a set of explorers without a key
or map, or a ship at sea in a storm that had lost all
sight of stars or sky and also its compass—enaystifi-
cation, distraction and bother everywhere; made
more mystical by half-informed critics in so called
weekly science or other newspapers. Such were
the books, lectures, platitudes, bombast, When the
Prince, with masterly power, gave the key to the
whole chaos. Or it was dice that dreadful noise at
the Opera, when the trombones, fiddles, clarionets,
piano,
and fifes are tuning without end, but at
length comes the co-ordinating key or solemn wail
of the overture, maybap to " Fidelio." But w'a at
would three hours of discordant tuning be comp aced
to that opera itself? Such are too many of the
ecience books even now—discord, claptrap, at heism,
one-sided crotchets or law on induction, for which
Whewell and Herschel are the representative men ;
greet and grand laws of social economy or induce
tion that nobody believe now, though they were
hard nuts to crack at college once on a time. We
now have "Darwin on Species" every day mis-
quoted ; the gorilla question and the hippocampns
about as much settled as we settled Denmark and
the Duchies; toe old orchestra tuning still always
going on—our friend Cardinal Wiseman first fiddle.
The Times review writers who never spell " diocese"
or "chemistry" or half a dozen other words rigl-it
at the kettle-drums—Armstrong guns theone greet
particular science for them (not a science at
men mistaking Bulwer Lytton for Charles Oellelley
and denouncing Zineni, and chloroform, and
mesmerism as they would Toryism.

The great family of the Podsnaps, the 'higher
polite people of this kind of inductive science, are
in said woe at the poor, much-to-be-pitied inoffen-
sive people in the parks who sleep on the grass. But
political economy explains how it is so. We treat
the poor by rigid, cast-iron statistics as mere stocks
or stones. If it can be shown by Mr. Gladstoue'a
inductions that each unit of the population consumos
more claret and cigars this year than last ; that the
tonnage of export trade (the standing joke in Ire-
land or Scotland) also in some decimal or logarithm
bigger—no matter that the tonnage is for emigrant
ships, or poor Podge or Smith in the park never
touch cigars or claret, high-priced tobaccos, or
hair powder for servants—the induction of Bacon
or Whewell, the s tatistical fact of improvement
remains. But Prince Albert showed that inductive
philosophy is not at all adapted to such social or
physiological science; that as now talked in the
schools B icon is a caricature; that such science is
the key of mere physical discovery—it will do for
chemical analysis or calculation cf an eclipse, but
not in calculating social, medical, biological, cr such
problems; that hasty generalisation or ioduczion
is the bane of all our smaller every-day philo-
sophies, and that what is eminently the key of
biological, medical, poor-law social, life insurance,
or such problems, is the deductive method, or com-
paring one group of facts with another group. Are
the poor better off because cotton is leas abun..
dant, because railways in London are knocking
down their poor habitations by hundreds, emigrant
ships crowded, families broken up, or because
coroners' inquests make money for coroners in
Bethnal-green ; and "fashion," with the flimsiness
of a moth flying at a candle, runs after Paris silks
rather than Spitalfields goods ? Dundrearyism
and fashion in excelsis, with Parliamentary Toga.
rithma and decimals, and the old tuning of our
orchestra that " passeth all understanding," till
one begins to detest the word science. Prince
Albert and men like Victor Hugo evidently do not
look on the poor as sticks or stocks, to be treated by
the inductive science; or that excellent American
who gave half a million to the London poor.
As to what effect " fashion " may have, I have
been told by several wholesale merchants in that
line, that Spitalfields silks are all the rage as tha
best in Paris shops, bat would not be looked at in
the shops of Regent-street ; but that actually it is
common to make silks of the very beet kind at
Bethnal-green or Spitalfields, send them to Paris,
and bring them back to Ragent-street or Oxford,
street with the Paris mark on them, when Duna
drearyism and fashion will go into hysterics over
them. This thing has ruined all the trade in all
the chief towns of Ireland. Take one, Limerick or
Cork, known for brushes, gloves, &c. The very best
in the world are made in these two towns, but they
must be sent to Paris, and come back to Dublin or
London, like the Spitalfields silks. The deductive
logic looks into these things, reasons on them, know-
ing that in such butterfly flights of fashion, shifting
as the wind, the people are thrown out of employ-
ment ; but the logarithms of induction say it is all
right, as the tonnage of emigration is increased.
So induction says a man dies of chloroform by
diseased heart; deduction says it is exactly the
opposite, and says so correctly. Induction tells
such a man's life ought not to be insured for his
family; deduction shows such an induction is ab.
solute trash, and so on, Induction is most excellent
for eclipse calculations, though Bacon does not
know it, and does not use the word at all as usually
copied from one silly book to another. By induc•
tion, as Emerson well puts it, one man in ten
thousand ought to marry his grandmother or sat
old shoes because some units of the population at
Colney Hatch do so. But, finally, what I. hold is
this, that np to the time of the late Amented
Prince Consort's speech at Aberdeen, and a speech
by Liebig, this distracted, eternal dull tuning of
the orchestra of English science went on, leaving
our schools, like Eton, Rugby, Harrow, the deri.
sion of Europe; French and German science tra-
vestied ; Bacon a sort of wooden saint, worshipped
and even now never read or quoted, except as ladies
for fashion quote Balzac or purchase French silks.

O'CONNELL'S EFFIGY BITE.NED IN BELFAST,.
On Monday night the effigy of Daniel O'Connell
was burned on the Boyne Bridge—the name given to the
new railway bridge, by the Sandy row men. 'there were
certainly upwards of 40,000 persons present, and every in-
dignity was wreaked on the effigy of the man whose memory
was commemorated in quite another way in Dublin on
Monday. The burning mass was elevated on the bridge
while the train conveying the excursionists from Dublin
passed under it. The vast crowd separated peaceably im-
mediately after. A number of the county and local consta-
bulary were present, under Head Constable Rankin and
Chief Constable M 'Kittrick. On Tuesday night the burn-
ing of the etligy, which occurred the previous evening, was
followed up by the burning of a coffin which was supposed
to contain thst ashes of the effigy. A very large crowd
gathered, an.i, hitving beet proceeded to Friar's hush bury.
ing ground, where they were denied admittance, toey
returned back to Sandy-row. A full-mounted ct frEt was
procured, and after parading about with it for some time
they set fire to it and threw it into the Blacketaff. During
the proceedings the music of fife and drum, and cheers,
wet e heard. Some person originated a rumour that Christ
Church was being wrecked by the vound-streer, party, and
a rush was made to protect the building. The alarm, how-
ever, was discovered to be false, and after some more cheer-
lug, the very large crowd dispersed ridietly,—Bafan
Irt!er.

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