The Sun.
London, England, 1864-08-22 00:00:00

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Liss, Sunday Evening.
A tremendous conflagration, more like one of tk e
prairie fires of the western continent than anything
we are accustomed to realise in this country, oc-
curred in Longmoore enclosure on Wednesday
evening, and in its course, which has only just been
arrested, has rendered a belt of country seven miles
in breadth and three in depth a scene of Wank des°.
lotion. Hundreds of acres of fir plantation, the
property of the Government, have been destroyed,
besides several plantations belonging to private in-
dividuals, end an immense quantity of r, me.
The fire commenced just below Seafonh gate, to
the right of the Peterstield-road. It was observed
to break out simultaneously is a dozen diarent
places, and owing to the dr2. fleas of the heath end
furze, it spread with alarming rapidity. It was
not long before the plantations became a sheet of
fire, which roared and crackled with ominous fury,
and tinged the sky for miles with a lurid glare
which inspired the belief in distant places that a
whole town was in flames. At Godalming, Guild-
ford, and Aldershott the fire was plainly seen, and
when the authorities of the latter piece had ascer-
tained its situation and magnitude, a body of troops,
consisting of the 75th and 83d Regiments,aad a dem
tachmcnt of the Royal Engineers—in all abcut
1,000 men—were despatched to Woolmer to dig a
a trench, and employ other mi,itary means for cut,
ting off and subduing the fire. By the time of their
arrival, however, the flames had extended over a vast
area of fir plantations, and it was evident that the
reduction of the conflagration 'would be a work of
Great fears were
entertained for the farms and other
some time, if not of difficulty,
dwellings near,
the mass of flame was so great and the heat so fear-
ful; and it was a fortunate circumstance that there
was scarcely any wind, as otherwise the flames
must have embraoed a still wider area of destruc-
'tion, and perhaps have defied every effort for their
extinction. Notwithstanding the active exertions
of the military, the fire continued to rage daring
Thursday, Friday, and a portion of Saturday, leav-
ing little but the blackened embers of thousands of
fir trees in once flourishing plantations, and trans-
forming the landscape for a long distance into a
dreary and blighted-looking wilderness. On Friday
the conflagration was a grand though almost ter-
rifying spectacle. For a mile mile beyond New
Inn the fire was burning to Weaver's Hill, a dis-
tance of at least five miles, scaring from the coverts
every living thing that it did not destroy, and
darkening the air as far as the eye could see with
rolling billows of smoke. Several cottages and out-
buildings fell a prey to the flames, and of the
quantity of game destroyed some idea may be
formed from the fact that no less than twelve hares
were taken out of one hole burned to death. On
Saturday the military succeeded in successfully ar-
resting the progress of the fire, and if no further
damage is apprehended the force will return to
Aldershot tomorrow morning.
The fire was evidently the work of incendiaries.
There is no one who ventures a contrary opinion,
and the supposition is strengthened by the fact that
the gipsies and broom sellers, who were allowed to
gather broom and heath, and to depasture their
cattle in the neighbourhood, have this year been
denied those privileges. Some of them were heard
to say that they would be revenged on this account,
and the extensive conflagration is pretty generally
considered as the fulfilment of this threat.
A considerable number of persons visited the
neighbourhood of the fire to-day, and gazed with
no small astonishment upon the scene of wide-spread
desolation. At least 1,200 acres of timber in various
stages of growth have been destroyed, and the
total value of which cannot at present be estimate
ed, but which must have, represented a large
sum of money.

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

pointment at the failure of Grant's expedition, and growing
financiniafavourl
of embarrassment,may perhaps at last produce a re-
action peace. It is impossible to foresee the
course of popular feeling, nor does it follow that urgent
sons will operate as cogent motives of action. Perhaps, how •
ever, the collapse of Grant's military reputation may render
a change of policy more feasible. The Democratic party some
time since postponed its convention at Chicago to the end of
July, with the obvious purpose of waiting for the result of
the pending campaign. If Richmond had been taken, it
would have been necessary either to acquiesce in the ro
election of Mr Lincoln, or to persuade the victorious cum •
mender to accept a Democratic nomination. As both can-
didates are now discredited by a succession of defeats, there
is at last an opening for M'Clellan. No rival has, on the
whole, displayed less incapacity, and the unwise enmity of
Mr Lincoln has converted his former General into an irre-
concilable opponent. The Democrats have for some time
discovered that it was useless to affect, in their contest with
the Republicans, superior enthusiasm for the prosecution of
the war. Even now their success is hopeless unless they
undertake to advocate a policy of their own, and there can
be no doubt that the majority of their leaders are sincerely
desirous of peace. For the present, it will be necessary to
possess a determination to preserve the Union, but the real
terms of compromise will consist in the recognition of
Southern sovereignty, to which it would be the policy of the
North to add a Customs Union, and, if possible, a common
fsreign policy. There are some indications that the Confe-
derate Government would not be unwilling to listen to such
proposals, and it might not be impossible to reconcile
Northern feeling to an alliance which-would partake of the
nature of a federation. Whenever the negotiations com-
mence, the scheme which may be adopted will be recom-
mended to popular favour by its Northern promoters on the
ground that it will facilitate the humiliation of England by
the conquest of Canada. There are, in fact, dangers of the
kind to be apprehended, whenever the present contest is
terminated; but, for some time to come, neither the North
nor the South will be inclined to engage in a wholly gra-
tuitous war of aggression.
THE SPECTATOIL—MR BROWN ON THE CANADIAN
FUTURE.—It is a pity that the speeches of colonial notables
are so seldom reported at home. They are frequently as
much superior to colonial articles as the Parliamentary de-
bates are to our own provincial leaders. The Hon. George
Brown, for example, member for " S nith Oxford, Canada,"
and author of the plan for the federation of the North
American Colonies, has recently explained his policy to his
constituents in a speech which is incomparably the best
essay yet published en the political history, position, and
prospects of Upper and Lower Canada. It does not add
very much except upon one grand point to the information
previously received, but it justifies the new policy suggested
'ey arguments which will weigh heavily withher Majesty's
Government. Mr Brown talks like an English statesman,
without a trace of bombast or dreamy oratory, states facts
simply, quotes figures which do not weary, bases a great
proposition upon intelligible grounds of national interest,
looks steadily at the future, and above all refers throughout
his discourse to ideas higher than those of mere political
expediency. The coalition which he has helped to frame is
in itself, he declares, a thing to be condemned. A combina-
tion of politicians who have always opposed each other
to take office ought, he argues , prima facie to shock the
public mind, can be justified only by the presence of some
overpowering national need, but in this instance the need,
he contends, exists. The state of things is, it appears, even
worse than was at first reported in this country. We all
knew that the political equality of the provinces had ren-
dered Government impossible, that three administrations
had been overset in thres years, that the country was in a
perpetual agony of elections, and that the finance of the
eombined colonies was wasteful beyond all precedent. But
we did not all recognise that the equality was based on a
radical injustice so great that unless another remedy could
befound one mast be sought in a dissolution of partnership.
Not only has Upper Canada outstripped her rival in popu-
lation by 400,000 souls, say 30 per cent., so that in one in-
stance a county member represents more electors than eight
other county members elected by the same class, but there
is still a greater inequality in taxation. Upper Canada,
possessing only half the political power of the united colony,
pays four-fifths of its taxation, contributing, for example, '
578,000 dole from excise duties, while Lower Canada yields
only 193,000 dole. The productions of the two provinces,
the best means of testing their comparative wealth, show a
still greater disproportion, the most important items being—

The Extraordinary Murder on the High Seas.

COMMITTAL OF THE ACCUSED.

SOUTHAMPTON, Sunday.
The adjourned examination of Adolphe Bjornsea, the Ger-
man sailor charged with murdering his captain on the High
Seas on the 21st June last, was resumed yesterday morning
at the Guildhall before Mr G. S. Brinton, the mayor of
Southampton, and a bench of borough magistrates.
listeners, who manifested the deepest interest in the pro-
ceedings.

Upper Canada. Lower Canada.
Wheat (bushels) .... ~.. 24,620,000 2,654,000
Indian corn (bushels).... 2,256,000 334,000
Value of farms and stock
for taxation (dols) . —306.442.000 178,870.000
Whatever, therefore, is taken as the basis of calculation,
population, or property, or taxation, or all three, the more
numerous and wealthy and highly taxed province is still
always the sufferer. Add to these facts that the equality is
in reality only nominal, that the lesser and poorer and less
taxed French Catholic province permanently governs the
larger and richer and higher taxed English Protestant pro-
vince, and we have a state of affairs which in the nature of
things could not hope to endure. It is as if England were
subject to Ireland under the semblance of strict political
equality, and compelled to provide from her own resources
a tribute to fatten her less energetic associate. This really
happened in the Canadas. The representatives of the
Lower Province always voting together always retained
the substance of power in their own hands, and they used
it to spend on the province contributing one-fifth as much
as on the province contributing four-fifths of the common
fund. "If an extra sum at any time has to be voted to
Upper Canada for any special purpose, a corresponding
sum must be invariably appropriated to Lower Canada to
maintein the equilibrium Three or four to one is the
principle of taxation—equality is the principle of expendi-
ture !" It does not need much to prove that an English
and Protestant majority is not likely to endure long so
preposterous an arrangement, kept up for the exclu-
sive -benefit of a French and Catholic minority.
So evident did this appear that even the French Canadians
admitted the propriety of re-arrangement, and only pleaded
for local powers of a very extensive kind. These, says Mr
Brown, are to be conceded, and this is the most important
hint in his speech. The details are not yet settled, but it is
obvious that the clauses in the American Constitution which
prescribe a monotonous uniformity of form to the different
State Govern:nents will not be repeated in the Canadian
federal compact. The desires and interests of the colonies
are too widely opposed. No clause prohibiting hereditary
power will be or can be sanctioned by the British Govern-
ment, the French Canadians are determined to uphold the
"right" of their Church, to place it beyond the power of a
Protestant majority; they are resolved that their language
shall not be superseded; they intend to keep the civil law as
the basis of their legislation ; and they will not give up their
own ideas, which are English ideas, upon the descent of
landed property. All these questions must therefore be
declared local questions, and it will be difficult to a
degree to retain for the central Parliament sufficient
authority to make unity any longer desirable. The
scheme, it 43 true, will admit of internal experiments, of
diverse or hostile forms of society highly favourable to
development, but then so would separate colonial life,
and the Coalition may go so far as to destroy the national
sentiment they obviously wish to foster, to create an
antagonism of civilisation in place of an antagonism of geo-
graphical position.Jhis is the rock upon which the Ameri-
canvery tenderly with the matter it will find that it has created
a powerless and therefore usually mischievous central as-
sembly. It is the enormous power of Parliament, its sense
of responsibility, which steadies its action, and to bind it in
paper bonds, to deprive it of the power of acting in emer-
gency with autocratic energy and decision, is to deprive it
of its greatest means of utility. Italy exists as Rome
existed, because her Parliament could at need create a Dic-
tator. Finally Mr Brown approaches the greatest subject
of all, the political future to which these colonies are to look,
and upon that point he is distinct and emphatic. He does
not want annexation either to the North or the Union, On
the other hand, he does not believe that Great Britain will
for ever lend her fleet and soldiers to colonies from which
she gains nothing that independent states would not yield.
He accepts the third alternative, and remembering British
America is larger than the United States, that her popula-
tion is incessantly increasing, her vast mineral wealth unde-
veloped, her forests unexhausted, her commercial fleet the
fourth in the world, he looks forward to the day " when the
whole of British America shall stand together, and in close
alliance and heartiest sympathy with Great Britain, be pre-
pared to assume the duties and responsibilities of a great and
?atelars I sl—an d s
now coming forward to the front of English
powerful nation." That also is the dream of the statesmen
form into which as they hope the Colonial Empire will be
transmuted. The " mother country" is to be changed
from an Empire owing dependencies she does not rule into
a kingdom ringed round with independent but cordial and
politics, the
faithful allies. If these are the views of many among the
leading politicians of Canada, we can congratulate her Par-
liament on its success in the very highest functions of Par-
apparently
British
Parliament,
let butit
Par-
liament—that of breeding and training statesman. One
only hint. we. w.noueldonavdidneoinnge
really of vital importance—lf the new coalition succeeds, as
it may, in conciliating all the colonies of the Atlantic coast,
point
and, as it will,
....
invent for the nation it will have created some common brat -tar, via Southampton ...... Aug. 18.
national name, some sound implying unity which a great (Calcutta), and Ceylon, via Southampton.. Aug. 18.
via Marseilles.... Aug, 27.
lation can use. The colonists of Victoria and New . South
13 din (Bombay), via Southampton Aug. 25.1
South Wales. Tasmania and Queensland, are all alike
via Marseilles Aug. 20. j
Australians, but the citizens of the United States, like those f-eortugal.... . ..
of the United Kingdom, have to this hour no name, ex. I Malta, Egypt, and Aden, via Soufaanapton Aug. 18.
cept one used in reproach and another begotten of arroganue. via Marseilles Aug. 18.
Aug. 31.
They are not Yankees, nor the only Americans, and when Newfoundland
and Vigo .. .
the Canadians join themselves with the people of New U. S. and British N. America, by Brit. packet.... Aug. 25.
Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland, they will by U.S. packet,
find it wise to adopt a title a little less unwieldy than that by Canadian pac ket.A.ug. 26.
of 13ritish North Americans. AU parts of West Indies, including Chili, Pen 1, I Aug. 29.
12..:44-1..

Mr B. Mackey was again present to watch the case for
the accused.

The prisoner was brought up in the custody of Superin-
tendent Enright, and having been placed at the bar,
Mr Eldridge, the clerk of the court, called
Heinrich Alten, who deposed—l was steward on board
the vessel Gustav Adolph. On the 21st June last I was
forward with the rest of the crew, I was half asleep. About
9 o'clock in the evening the chief mate ran forward, calling
out, " What is the matter with the second mate ? I think he
is mad." We jumped up and ran aft, as we did not know
what was the matter. As we cams aft I saw the second
mate walking up and down the quarter deck. By the time
we arrived there the captain came out of the cabin on deck,
with his right hand holding on his left arm. As soon as the
captain came on deck he called out, " Where is the second
mate ? Have you secured him ?" As he said [those
words the captain went towards the second mate, who said,
" 'What I secure me!" and I then heard a report and saw
the captain fall. The second mate stopped a moment, and
then walked leisurely towards the companion, and jumped
down the cabin. After that we were busy washing and
laying the body of the captain out. I remained with the
body, and procured fresh water and vinegar, while the
rest of the crew went forward. The body remained by
the skylight, and I, being afraid to remain by
myself, went forward, and begged of the crew to help me to
bring the body of the captain from aft forward, No one
would go with me, and I went back by myself. When I
came back the captain groaned several times, opened his
mouth, but could not speak. Although I called him seve-
ral times he did not answer. I then went again forward to
the crew and begged of them again to come aft, but they re-
fused. I had to go back again by myself. The captain was
still alive, When I proceeded the third time forward I got
two of the crew to come aft with me, and we carried the
body forward. The captain died about 20 minutes after he
was shot. By that time the chief mate wanted to go down
into the cabin, but the crew would not let him. About an
hour and a half after the captain was dead I proceeded aft
near the skylight and tried to lock down the cabin to see
what was going on. I went to the companion and looked
down the staircase, and saw the second mate, and was
frightened and went forward again, and half an hour after-
wards I saw the head of the second mate peeping out of the
staircase companion. The man at the helm then left the
wheel and made signs to us. After this several of the crew
went aft, and then the second mate came on deck. I stood
midships and saw the prisoner standing at the top of the
staircase companion. I saw he had one gun in his hand,
and another he gave to one of the crew. I saw him before
this bring several things on deck, and amongst them one
ham, one case, different clothing made up in a bundle, and
a large tin case containing biscuits. After this he went
in
to
the the port side into the boat. The things were put
the boat by several of the crew. The boat was lowered
and the second mate went away in her. One of the
sailors had two guns and fired two show at him, but
missed him. One of the guns belonged to the second
mate. He fired 'several shots, but they hit against the
mast. During this time two of the crew went below and
fetched up several fire-arms, which were kept in the se-
cond cabin, where the chief and second mate had their
berths. After this I and the chief mate went down below
to look for powder and shot. We went into the captain's
cabin, and saw several marks of blood on the table, sofa,
and at the back of the sofa. We found powder and shot.
I sew a hatchet on the top of the companion which ought
to have been where the second mate slept, On the floor I
saw two rings and the captain's hat, Oat of the captain's
berth was missed his gold watch and chain and his revol-
ver, as well as the gold watch of the chief mate. The
evening before the prisoner showed me a double-barrelled
pistol while at tea. He drank his tea but ate nothing. I
asked him why, and he said he had no appetite, Two
days before this I saw him pack up several things in his
clothes bag, and put in a berth under his own.
This closed the examination, and the prisoner was fully
committed for trial at the next assizes.