The Sun.
London, England, 1864-04-01 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES,—Her Majesty's loyal subjects will be very
well pleased to hear that their fi )vereign is about to
break her protracted seclusion. Next week and
the week after she will hold Courts at Buckingham

Palace,—the first hr the principal members of the
Corps Diptom4tique ; the second for such distin-
guished persons as she may invite for the occasion.
Various other announcements encourage the hope
that not only will Buckingham Palace resume its
place in the world of life, but that her Majesty will
herself reappear as its Mistress, and that before long
the whole Court will recover from its suspended

animation. It is almost seedless to enumerate the
classes possessing so personal an interest in this
revival that they have taken abundant care to make
their wants known and establish an actual griev-
ance. The West-end of this metropolis only enjoys
life for half the year, and after staking so much
upon its Royal and aristocratic patrons has to de-
plore the lot of those who trust in the favour of
Princes. But the Court has a loftier mission and
wider duties than the encouragement of deserving
tradesmen, or the prosperity of those who seek to
bask in its smiles. It is the very central and highest
institution of the country. It is the Court which
realises and arrays the Sovereign to the mind of the
people. Lawyers and legislators may understand
the Royal prerogative, and say what a Sovereign
may do and what she may not ; and they may de-
scribe her as the keystone of the arch, the symbol
of unity, order, and obedience. Princes, too, may
have that personal knowledge of the Sovereign
which reduces the splendid ceremonial to an idle
formality. But the people at large see, or think they
see, her Majesty surrounded by the ()Seers of State,
the representatives of foreign powers, and the nobi-
lity and leading gentry of our own realm, We are
not a people to take much on trust, or to conceive
that to be real which does not meet the eye, Every
body must here show himself in his appointed place
or his usual resort. If a gentleman is no longer lien
on the bench of magistrates, or at the covert side, or
wherever else the county chooses to assemble, he
loses not so much caste as existence ; and even a dis-
appearance for a few years becomes so much lee way
in his career and in the progress of his family. It
is an exigency that bears hard upon many charac-
ters who are but ill adapted to hold their own i a the
crowd, but it is a matter of public weal,and the public
wishes to have its rulers always before its eye, that
being the necessity of its own life, and therefore the
reciprocal duty of all who claim a public character.
We do not deny that it is possible to retire from the
public eye to a household or a select circle, and to
exercise, by force of wealth or position or some per-
sonal gift, a considerable power, and yet be almost
personally unknown. There are, it is true, men and
women who, yielding tither to natural taste or to
circumstances, shut themselves up and become names
and nothing more; known only in the past, or in
their inseparable connection with living p‘ rsons and
outward things There are such who are believed to
be models of piety, of goodness, and of accomplish
meat, whose virtues are often alluded to, and wno
are worshipped in a mysterious retirement by a se-
lect circle of congenial and interested admirers. But
in no position or rank of life is it possible to become
this impersonal and mystic being so completely as
to lose feelings and be incapable of opinions. The
most secluded people cannot make the world of their
own so complete as to shut out the reality; and they
who live ever so much in the past will still find the
living intrude. Indeed, they are apt to give way to
feelings upon the questions of the (LI all the more
because they have indulged too much in recollec-
tions and regrets, and all the shadows of a bygone
time. The present will assert its claims to their at

deed each day—to corporal punishment for the most
trifling offences. The slightest annoyance to a sen-
tinel is deemed worthy of corporal punishment.
Many youths and men hay• for this heinous crime
undergone corporal punishment either with clubs
or rods. This is brutal enough when applied to
the male sex, but what ar abomination is it when
applied to women ! Yet women have been
kuouted and flogged in the month of March of
this year of grace, 1864, not in autocratic Russia,
bat in constitutional Austria—Austria with two
Chambers possessing liberty of speech and discus-
sion. Is there no man with a heart within his bosom
among the hundreds of men in the Upper or the
Lower Chamber of Austria who will denounce these
horrors ? Is there no deputy, gent:e or simple,
titled or untitled, i❑ Austria who will ask for the
decision of the court, milttary or civil, prevotal or
mixed which condemned Julia Chorostouka, aged
thirty-four, manteau-maker at Lemberg, to be
flogged P Is there no one who will task for what
crime Catherine Samborska, domestic servant, has
been ordered to receive a like punishment. Four-
teen years ago Austria repudiated and disgraced the
monster Haynau for woman flogging. Snail it ba
said that the Austria of 1864 is more brutal and
barbarous than the Austria of 185 Q? In the days
of Mtiria Theresa, Austria, though a despotism,
was a mild, a humane, a beneficent despotism,
in the clays of Joseph 11. and Leopold it was a
Government tempered by philosophy, by gentleness,
and by toleration. But if the specific accounts con-
tained in the Debats, with names, and dates, and all
convenient certainty of time and place, be true,
Austria, instead of progressing, is retrograding—
instead of advancing, is becoming the scandal, the
opprobrium, and the shame of Europe. Unhappy
country ! unhappy people !